Crusher vs Thousand Sons

[No One]

Had a 1st/2nd game with CS that I thought I'd do up a bat rep of. (Sorry if a bit scuffed formatting, will try and make sure it all matches in a bit. Edit: In the meantime, right click 'load in new tab' works)

My list:

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Battalion: Leviathan Crusher Stampede

+ HQ +
Hive Tyrant [11 PL, 215pts]: 2x Monstrous Scything Talons, Adrenal Glands, Power: Aggressive Surge, Power: Synaptic Barrier, Relic: Biomorphic Carapace, Toxin Sacs, Wings
. Adaptive Physiology: Murderous Size

Hive Tyrant [11 PL, -1CP, 225pts]: Adrenal Glands, Lash Whip and Monstrous Bonesword, Monstrous Boneswords, Power: Paroxysm, Power: Psychic Scream, Relic: Synaptic Hive Blades, Stratagem: Alpha Leader-Beast, Toxin Sacs, Warlord, Warlord Trait: Rampaging Beast, Wings
. Adaptive Physiology: Murderous Size

The Swarmlord [14 PL, 240pts]: Power: Catalyst, Power: Onslaught

+ Troops +
Tyranid Warriors [5 PL, 69pts]: Synaptic Link: Bioweapon Bond
. Tyranid Warrior: Lash Whip and Bonesword, Scything Talons
. Tyranid Warrior: 2x Scything Talons
. Tyranid Warrior: 2x Scything Talons

Tyranid Warriors [5 PL, 66pts]: Synaptic Link: Bioweapon Bond
. Tyranid Warrior: 2x Scything Talons
. Tyranid Warrior: 2x Scything Talons
. Tyranid Warrior: 2x Scything Talons

Tyranid Warriors [5 PL, 66pts]: Synaptic Link: Bioweapon Bond
. Tyranid Warrior: 2x Scything Talons
. Tyranid Warrior: 2x Scything Talons
. Tyranid Warrior: 2x Scything Talons

+ Elites +
Hive Guard [12 PL, 270pts]
. 6x Hive Guard (Impaler): 6x Impaler Cannon

Lictor [2 PL, 37pts]

Lictor [2 PL, 37pts]

+ Heavy Support +
Barbed Hierodule [14 PL, 275pts]

Trygon Prime [11 PL, 190pts]: Biostatic Rattle, Synaptic Link: Feed

+ Flyer +
Harpy [8 PL, 155pts]: 2x Stranglethorn Cannon

Harpy [8 PL, 155pts]: 2x Stranglethorn Cannon

++ Total: [108 PL, 9CP, 2,000pts] ++

His list (approx):

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Magnus

Battalion: Duplicity
Exalted Sorcerer
Infernal Master
8 man rhubric
10 man rhubric /w flamers
8 man scarab terminators
Maulerfiend
Forgefiend /w plasma
Forgefiend /w autocannons

Deployment:

I deployed what I could behind the only centre LoS blocker, dima to threaten the left flank, and lictors on board for drops and DS/MW protection. 

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I took strangle, banners and assassinate.
He took mutate, BiD and engage.

Game 1:
Tyranids going 1st:
Tyranids T1: Moved up everything: harpies (and maybe dule?) to dense, flyrant and Swarmy to go in on Magnus, defensive flyrant moved up to hide behind terrain and outside of deny. Extra attacks went off on slung flyrant forward to charge Magnus, basically everything else in range and thus denied.
Shooting killed some stuff and forced -1 D: some warpflamers died, middle forgefiend died to HG double tap to clear reliable room for the flyrant charge. Don't think anything else of relevance happened.
Charged Magnus and sorcerer, killed sorcerer with breaking through, 3 CP (exploding 6s, reroll wounds, and implant attack after a tail dropped to 1 wound) to kill Magnus, and consolidated into warpflamers. Pretty good. Did forget strangle though, woops.

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Thousand Sons T1: Termis moved up to get LoS on Swarmy, warpflamers tele'd out of combat onto right objective and to flame right harpy.
Termis deleted Swarmy with all the buffs, warpflamers+right forgefiend did some wounds to the harpy. Maulerfiend charged and killed flyrant, lash whips did something (usually I just...don't die and instead live on 1 wound) and killed it with voracious.

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Tyranids T2: Scored 10 on primary and 3 on banners. Uninjured harpy went to kill the tzangors and flip the centre objective, other harpy...I think was too injured to really do much, so just went in to bother the forgefiend. Trygon and flyrant...didn't do anything this turn, moved up?
Barbed was a bit limited in targets, not actually sure (maybe forgefiend?). HG killed infernal master (outside 3", woops), maybe some termis? Killed some rhubrics as well. Anyway, ended up killing the tzangors with breaking through, and right harpy just tagged forgefiend/flamers?
3 for stranglehold and max assassinate.

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Nothing really relevant after this point.
Thousand Sons T2: I'm not actually sure what happened after this: termis went onto middle objective, I think failed to kill the harpy, right harpy died?

T3: Scored 15 primary from now on. I think I just chilled here and killed what I could.

His T3: Other harpy died.

Final score:
Tyranids:
Primary – 45
Banners – 15
Stranglehold – 9
Assassinate – 10
Total: 79

Thousand Sons:
Primary – 5
Mutate – 3
BiD – 8
Engage - 0
Total: 16

So yeah, pretty brutal alpha that was pretty easily leveraged into a snowball both on board and scoring.

We then reracked, him going 1st.

Game 2:
Thousand Sons T1: Moved up basically everything on my left flank, termis tele'd into the left flank dense as well. Magnus had to kill lictor first, then knocked 9 wounds off barbed. Termis nuked Swarmy, forgefiend killed 4 HG. Ow. 3 mutate, 2 BiD, 2 engage.

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Tyranids T1: Assassin flyrant couldn't get in on Magnus for a repeat of previous game, so settled for going for maulerfiend and termis along with the barbed. Trygon moved up mid and -1 wound flyrant went on right flank to put some obscuring between them. Harpies moved up, one with obsec left flank, other right flank to try and kill the rhubric and flip the objective. Raise banners, but warriors can't get on the left objective without an advance and the lictor's dead. Woops (of course, not like I'm keeping that objective, but still).
2 CP for barbed +1 D, he -1 D on the termis, didn't even kill a termi but hey, 2 CP vs 3. Harpies killed some rhubrics and tzangors and dropped some mines around the termis to be annoying for smites.
Charges, killed most of the right rhubric squad with breaking through+combat, but one guy left, ouch. Both touched a forgefiend. Flyrant killed the mauler, barbed killed a termi, flyrant double fought to kill...3 termis, maybe not worth the 3(+2) CP. Could probably have played this better, but not sure optimal line.
His strikes dropped barbed to 3 wounds. 3 strangle

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Thousand Sons T2: Scores 5 for primary. Moved up Magnus a tad to be closer to the flyrant. Not actually sure what else happened in movement, don't think it was much. Flyrant died to psychic, Magnus had to smite spores rather than the barbed, one smite from termis into barbed...rolled a 3, RIP. Left harpy died to...psychic I believe, maybe finished in combat, right harpy lived, piled in on rhubric and killed it (with CP damage rr: in hindsight implant was the better strat, but whatever), flipping the point...except the harpy just died to the forgefiend who walked onto the point. (I could've probably stopped that if I remembered to base on the consolidate, but he also could've based me last turn and denied killing the rhubric, so...) Would've gotten hold more, alas: still made him holding that point awkward subsequently, as well as mutate later. Mutate 3, BiD 2, engage 2. 

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Tyranids T2: Score 10, 2 banners. Flyrant charged the forgefiend and killed it, trygon lined up for a charge on it as well but failed, lictor moved up. Nothing else meaningful happened. 

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Thousand Sons T3: Score 5. Termis and Magnus start to clear out my backfield, luckily leave one warrior from the mid squad (right squad so far untouched). Do a couple of wounds to trygon with warpflamers+forgefiend. Mutate 3, believe still engage 2. 

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Bit hazy from here on:
Tyranids T3: Score 10, banner 2. Lictor banners right objective. Trygon charges warpflamers, flyrant charges...I think made it in on both infernal master and tzangors? But also failed to kill them both. Not sure where breaking through went, if anywhere. Strangle for 3.

Thousand Sons T4: Score 5. Teles termis over onto his home right objective, just get lucky to shoot off my warriors, but fail the charge on my lictor. Magnus cleans up warrior, kills trygon with forgefiend. I kill his infernal master in combat I believe?
Tyranids T4: Score 0, 2 banners. Scrambling for max pts/denial in essentially last turn: believe it was obsec on flyrant, and just on objective to kill sorc for assassinate.

Thousand Sons T5: Score 5. Kills flyrant and lictor.

Thousand Sons:
Primary: 20
Mutate 12 (missed either T3 or 4)
BiD 14
Engage 10(?)
Total: 56

Tyranids:
Primary: 20
Banners 6
Strangle 9
Assassinate 6
Total: 41

[windwalkerranger]

Ummm... Your list umm... lists... 4 synaptic links? I thought max was 3 at 2000 pts, am I missing sth?
Nice alpha on game 1. I also play thousand sons and I don't think Magnus cuts it. Great second game it seems.

[purestrain]

Jan 4, 2022 17:50:46 GMT windwalkerranger said:

Ummm... Your list umm... lists... 4 synaptic links? I thought max was 3 at 2000 pts, am I missing sth?
Nice alpha on game 1. I also play thousand sons and I don't think Magnus cuts it. Great second game it seems.

You can have any number of links, you can only Use a number equal to the game type. at 2000 points that is 3 of them.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Jan 4, 2022 17:53:18 GMT purestrain said:

Jan 4, 2022 17:50:46 GMT windwalkerranger said:

Ummm... Your list umm... lists... 4 synaptic links? I thought max was 3 at 2000 pts, am I missing sth?
Nice alpha on game 1. I also play thousand sons and I don't think Magnus cuts it. Great second game it seems.

You can have any number of links, you can only Use a number equal to the game type. at 2000 points that is 3 of them.

Double checked this and it's 100% correct RAW. Here's the quote:
The number of synaptic links you can use per battle round is dependent upon the battle size.

That raises some interesting list building ideas where you build for redundancy on crucial links.

[tylertt]

I typically bring two warrior links for redundancy. Usually always find I have 20 or so pts to spare, especially in Stampede lists I've been working on.

[niiai]

First of all thank you for writing up. It takes a lot of time. This forum is not the most active* so thank you very much.

You killed Magus turn 1?! Wow, just wow. I just aquiered 2 scything heirodules. But I found out for myself that they can have problem getting to the other side of the map with SL when brackedet. But flyrant are faster. I have always felt the flyrant dies very easy! Nice to see it can get the job done!

Nice to see we stil have a chance even when we go second. Did you grab the Trygon only for the fall back and charge synaptic link? Can be quite useful, but I generally do not like the trygon. (Relic adrenal glands makes it better at charging from reserves though. (There are also some stratagems that let's ur roll 3d6 discard lowest.) Although turn 2 the timing does not work on the link. And it dies to a stiff Breese.))

Also, wow. We can have more then 3 synaptic links. That changes a few things.

*While not many active user post on this forum, we might have many watching. But I am also on Dakkadakka and that forum has as small number of users that are very toxic. I find almost all people on this tyranid forum are just generally nice people. Thanks for all of you, I try to nice as well.

[Master Chief]

Can I ask why did you chose "Assassinate" as a secondary?

It is not that easy to take out some enemy charachters and to do that sometimes you have to sacrifice a lot of things in exchange.

Don't think is really worth it and I would chose other missions easier to score and that give you more points.

I.E. in the first game you basically wipe your opponent in 2 turns and you only did 10 points on that.

Maybe I am missing something, please enlighten me in that case.

[No One]

Master Chief said:

Can I ask why did you chose "Assassinate" as a secondary?

Not because it was good, but because everything else seemed worse. Magnus was a 'guaranteed' kill if I could get to him with sword flyrant, and even otherwise as long as I was able to kill some of the rhubrics/tzangors, the other 2 would be fairly easy to get to with breaking through/flyrants.

Mission would've been something like 2-8/0. No prisoners 7/5. TTL 10/0. BiD 8/4. Grind...12-15/0? And warpcraft into TSons sounds like a horrible idea liable to net me 0.
Maybe could've scored a bit higher on some of those going 2nd with better/different play, but yeah outside grind as a 'go big or go home' choice? BiD may have been the better choice going 2nd, killing off the forgefiends is fairly easy and limits the damage, but not excessively I don't think (would've resulted in a 5 pt, maybe 10 pt swing, as I could kill it/tzangors instead of the chars and block primary, but probably more coincidence than anything like a strategy).

niiai said:

Did you grab the Trygon only for the fall back and charge synaptic link?

Pretty much: getting stuck killing chaff mid is really not where anything in this list wants to be. But so far I've found that not an issue, either with no use for it or the link not having the range, and with the trygon lacking in mobility to be useful otherwise. Swapped it and a HG for a scythed in most recent drafts.