Post by mrdodo on Feb 28, 2022 11:15:24 GMT
Hey all,
Just wanted to share a small post about my tournament win this weekend, representing the hive mind with the following crusher stampede list :
- Flying hive tyrant (rending claws, -1 to wound relic, gestalt commander trait and murderous size)
- Swarmlord
- Malanthrope (cp refund relic)
- 3x3 warriors scything talons and bioweapon bond
- 6 hive guard (ignore ap 1 and 2)
- 3 raveners
- 3 scythed hierodules
- harpy
I will try to make a compact report of every game.
Game 1:
I was paired up against thousand sons, his list was ahriman, infernal master and deamon prince. 5x5 rubrics and 1x10 rubrics with flamers, big blob terminators, 3 chaos spawn and a maulerfiend.
Going into this game I knew he had the bad matchup. His only real phase was the psychic phase and maybe a bit cc with the terminators and the deamon prince.
I took to the last (hive guard, swarmlord and 1 of the hierodules), investigate signal and stranglehold.
I won the roll off, took the kronos trait for my hive tyrant and double moved him in the middle of his army (I made a hole in his lines with the hive guard) and killed some rubics. The harpy also flew in, killed the infernal master with the mortal wounds on charge and tagged the flamer unit. The hierodules just moved forward to the middle, flamed a little but mostly just were there to make sure I held everything in middle. Raveners started invetigate in middle
In his turn I popped the strategem which let psykers take d3 mortal wounds of a failed cast, which together with the -1 to cast from shadow in the warp and the d3 mortal wounds per fail from kronos was just killing. He autocast the stronger flamer psychic power and had to use the +2 to not fail the teleport strategem for the flamer unit so he only had straight casts for the rest of the casts. Rerolling a failed cast with ahriman into a perils, killing himself with the 3d3 mortal wounds and doing even more mortal wounds around him. The terminators and deamon prince failed to kill the hive tyrant in melee (terminators had the swords so wounded on 6's, that helped a lot to survive) and his teleported flamer unit rolled a total of 18 hits on 9d6 which ended up wounding a hierodule for 2 wounds.
In my turn 2 I just mopped up his entire army, terminators died with double shooting from hive guard, 1 hierdule flame and charge. flamer unit died from hierodule flame and charge + swarmlord charge, he had almost nothing left and we called it. Ending in a 100 - 26 victory for me.
Game 2:
Since I had 100 points I would be paired with someone who also had 100 points so I knew it would be either custodes (of which were many) or tau (only 2 players brought tau) and as thought a tau player on 99 points was my next opponent. his list: Tau sep with shadow sun, 2 commanders, ethereal, 5 crisis suits with shield drones, 2x3 broadsides with shield drones, 3 stealthdrones, 2 strike teams, 1x 10 kroot, 2x4 kroothounds and a unit vespids.
So this was going to be a lot more scary, first time against the new tau (but I watched a lot of BR for coming up with tactics against them) and I took stranglehold, no prisoners and assassination.
Good thing about my list is the straight forward deployment. hierodule on the left, hierodule on the right just in 6'' of malanthrope in the middle, swarmlord and hive tyrant direct next to malanthrope, hive guard in front of malanthrope in cover and in front of that raveners to screen against turn 1 charge or run out to go to middle if not against turn 1 charge. So his turn 1 was moving into line of sight, deepstriking his crisis suits in next to the homing beacon of the stealth suits and just open up. The -1 to hit was very clutch and transhuman on the hierodule against the broadsides. He did manage to kill the hierodule, but it took so much of his shooting that he didnt kill swarmlord, leaving him on 5 wounds. He jumped the crisis suits behind cover and it was my turn to strike back.
I gave obsec on the harpy and flew to his home objective (it was the mission where you get 4 points for holding enemy objective end of turn) shoot strikes and charge ethereal to make sure I was holding it which also ended up with him having 0 on primary on his next turn. Hive tyrant double moved thnx to swarmlord next to his crisis suits and shadow sun. the remaining 2 hierodules moved to middle to flame and kill the kroot/ kroot hounds. hive guard killed one of his commanders (after the psycic and flaming he was not save anymore) and second volley went into the crisis suits to thin out the shield drones. Hive tyrant charged shadow sun and did mortals on the charge making sure she died in the fight phase then consolidated into the crisis suits, taking nothing in return.
On his turn 2 he had to have a very strong damaging turn to get back into the game. So he moved his commander in, left his crisis in cc to fire and broadsides in position to shoot whatever he wanted. Swarmlord and the harpy went down, but the crisis suits did almost nothing with 5 flamers, 5 plasma and 5 ion against the hive tyrant and lost another 2 in melee after that. Problem for him was that he couldnt do any dmg on the 2 remaining hierodules which were still protected by the malanthrope and I took down most of his markers so hitting on 5's ended up whiffing.
In my turn 2 I smited and fought the crisis suits with the hive tyrant killing 3 of them, killing the last commander with hive guard and starting working on 1 of the broad sides units with my hierodules. After that round he was left with 2 crisis suits that were in cc and 2 units of broadsides, 1 of which was in cc with a hierodule. He knew he lost so we talked out the rest, knowing I would hold the entire map but he would survive with a few broadsides in the corner of the map. Ending in a 89- 46 victory.
Game 3:
So last game of the day, I was in first position so this game was probably going to determine the victor of the tournament. Loathe and behold I had to fight the other tau player which crushed his first 2 opponents. With my newfound experience I got ready for the next list: borkan with cadre fireblade, commander, ethereal, 2x breachers in devilfish, 1x kroot, 5 crisis suit, 4 stealth suit, 4 kroot hound, pathfinders, riptide and stormsurge.
I was happy to not see hammerheads again, but the no invul borkan strat might be painfull. Luckily he had a lot of dmg 2 things which would half his output because of the -1 damage. I took stranglehold, grind them down and investigate signal.
My set up was the same as last game, hoping for first turn but having my malanthrope as defence. He never played against crusher stampede and he was just as scared of me as I was of him (also he saw the results of the last game) He put his commander in reserve and won the roll off (oh dear). I gave my hive tyrant the regeneration trait if he decided to focus on him but not killing him.
His turn 1 plan was taking out the 2 hierodules out in front, he took the middle objectives with kroot hound and kroot, but kept his breachers behind cover taking a more careful approach (which I think was a good move) His crisis suits opened up on the hierodule on the left, not really doing a lot hitting on 4s and wounding on 5s, but still chipping away 7 wounds. the riptide and stormsurge opened up on the other hierodule, which ofcourse got transhuman and ended up only taking 8 wounds because the ignore invul shot only wounded once through the transhuman. The no LOS shooting took some wounds of swarmlord, but not so important.
My turn 1 I still had all my units somehow so I went all in, hoping I can take out all his assets that can control the board. My hive tyrant flew in to go for the crisis suits. I took over the objectives with the hierodules and raveners. Harpy got objective secure and took over his main objective, shooting and charging the stealth suits. Hive guard fired in 1 of the devilfish taking it down and the double fire was into the crisis suits to take out the shield drones. Hive tyrant charged in, did mortals and fought resulting in 2 suits left.
His turn 2 scored 0 primary and not a great position to be in. He had to take back the objectives and take out a lot of threats but really only had the stormsurge, commander and riptide left. The crisis suits fell back, the remaining breachers and devil fish pushed up to take a objective and his commander landed to try and shoot 3 warriors from another objective. His second turn was okay on taking back his own objective, taking the objective with the breachers and killing the warriors stopping me from getting hold more. Killing the harpy but not managing to kill the hive tyrant in a combination of bad rolls on his side and good rolls on mine. -1 to hit again coming in very clutch.
In my turn my hive tyrant regenerated 3 wounds though the warlord trait and 2 through the strategem (not my normal pick of strategem, but it was more a moral hit on him seeing the hive tyrant back to more than half wounds) and went in to get the riptide. The hive guard mopped up the commander and remaining crisis suits, hierodules took back the objectives against the breachers. Leaving him with the stormsurge, fireblade and a damaged riptide in cc after ending my turn 2.
Defeat was certain for him, we had a beer, rolled a few dice for things we wanted to roll out while talking out the rest of the stuff as it wouldnt be any fun for him anymore. It ended up with a 94-35 win.
After game thoughts:
So first of all the game is a dice game and I got a bit luck now and then, which helped a lot!
In general my list worked as intended, the malanthrope, sturdy hive tyrant, harpy and hierodules were amazing. I think after this I will change my list a bit. remove 1 of the warriors link (I never needed more then 2) and 1 of the hive guard (they were good, but I think 5 can give the same result I need for this list) and punt in another unit of raveners. That way I have a small unit to take another objective and more insurance I can go for investigate if the first unit dies.
Besides that I am thinking of making the hive tyrant even tankier by not giving the hive guard the ap ignoring, opening up adaptive biology on the hive tyrant and making him -2 damage after first phase. Combined with catalyst armies will have to put so much into him that the rest of my army goes free and if the ignore him, I have a 12 wound objective secure on their main objective, so that is most of the time not an option.
I think I was lucky not to go against any custodes (I will have a hard time going through their invuls) or the list containing 2 fire raptors (if they go first and kill hive tyrant and maybe some hive guard, I have no effective way of dealing with them anymore and I will just keep losing assets every turn).
So at the end of the day I won the tournament! Harlequins and Black templars coming next and after that mostly custodes which faced eachother a lot in the other games. (the 2 tau players even though they both lost big against me ended up in the bottom of the top 10 because of the huge wins on their other 2 games).
Sorry for the long post and if there are any questions about choices or what I thought or what happened, let me know!
Just wanted to share a small post about my tournament win this weekend, representing the hive mind with the following crusher stampede list :
- Flying hive tyrant (rending claws, -1 to wound relic, gestalt commander trait and murderous size)
- Swarmlord
- Malanthrope (cp refund relic)
- 3x3 warriors scything talons and bioweapon bond
- 6 hive guard (ignore ap 1 and 2)
- 3 raveners
- 3 scythed hierodules
- harpy
I will try to make a compact report of every game.
Game 1:
I was paired up against thousand sons, his list was ahriman, infernal master and deamon prince. 5x5 rubrics and 1x10 rubrics with flamers, big blob terminators, 3 chaos spawn and a maulerfiend.
Going into this game I knew he had the bad matchup. His only real phase was the psychic phase and maybe a bit cc with the terminators and the deamon prince.
I took to the last (hive guard, swarmlord and 1 of the hierodules), investigate signal and stranglehold.
I won the roll off, took the kronos trait for my hive tyrant and double moved him in the middle of his army (I made a hole in his lines with the hive guard) and killed some rubics. The harpy also flew in, killed the infernal master with the mortal wounds on charge and tagged the flamer unit. The hierodules just moved forward to the middle, flamed a little but mostly just were there to make sure I held everything in middle. Raveners started invetigate in middle
In his turn I popped the strategem which let psykers take d3 mortal wounds of a failed cast, which together with the -1 to cast from shadow in the warp and the d3 mortal wounds per fail from kronos was just killing. He autocast the stronger flamer psychic power and had to use the +2 to not fail the teleport strategem for the flamer unit so he only had straight casts for the rest of the casts. Rerolling a failed cast with ahriman into a perils, killing himself with the 3d3 mortal wounds and doing even more mortal wounds around him. The terminators and deamon prince failed to kill the hive tyrant in melee (terminators had the swords so wounded on 6's, that helped a lot to survive) and his teleported flamer unit rolled a total of 18 hits on 9d6 which ended up wounding a hierodule for 2 wounds.
In my turn 2 I just mopped up his entire army, terminators died with double shooting from hive guard, 1 hierdule flame and charge. flamer unit died from hierodule flame and charge + swarmlord charge, he had almost nothing left and we called it. Ending in a 100 - 26 victory for me.
Game 2:
Since I had 100 points I would be paired with someone who also had 100 points so I knew it would be either custodes (of which were many) or tau (only 2 players brought tau) and as thought a tau player on 99 points was my next opponent. his list: Tau sep with shadow sun, 2 commanders, ethereal, 5 crisis suits with shield drones, 2x3 broadsides with shield drones, 3 stealthdrones, 2 strike teams, 1x 10 kroot, 2x4 kroothounds and a unit vespids.
So this was going to be a lot more scary, first time against the new tau (but I watched a lot of BR for coming up with tactics against them) and I took stranglehold, no prisoners and assassination.
Good thing about my list is the straight forward deployment. hierodule on the left, hierodule on the right just in 6'' of malanthrope in the middle, swarmlord and hive tyrant direct next to malanthrope, hive guard in front of malanthrope in cover and in front of that raveners to screen against turn 1 charge or run out to go to middle if not against turn 1 charge. So his turn 1 was moving into line of sight, deepstriking his crisis suits in next to the homing beacon of the stealth suits and just open up. The -1 to hit was very clutch and transhuman on the hierodule against the broadsides. He did manage to kill the hierodule, but it took so much of his shooting that he didnt kill swarmlord, leaving him on 5 wounds. He jumped the crisis suits behind cover and it was my turn to strike back.
I gave obsec on the harpy and flew to his home objective (it was the mission where you get 4 points for holding enemy objective end of turn) shoot strikes and charge ethereal to make sure I was holding it which also ended up with him having 0 on primary on his next turn. Hive tyrant double moved thnx to swarmlord next to his crisis suits and shadow sun. the remaining 2 hierodules moved to middle to flame and kill the kroot/ kroot hounds. hive guard killed one of his commanders (after the psycic and flaming he was not save anymore) and second volley went into the crisis suits to thin out the shield drones. Hive tyrant charged shadow sun and did mortals on the charge making sure she died in the fight phase then consolidated into the crisis suits, taking nothing in return.
On his turn 2 he had to have a very strong damaging turn to get back into the game. So he moved his commander in, left his crisis in cc to fire and broadsides in position to shoot whatever he wanted. Swarmlord and the harpy went down, but the crisis suits did almost nothing with 5 flamers, 5 plasma and 5 ion against the hive tyrant and lost another 2 in melee after that. Problem for him was that he couldnt do any dmg on the 2 remaining hierodules which were still protected by the malanthrope and I took down most of his markers so hitting on 5's ended up whiffing.
In my turn 2 I smited and fought the crisis suits with the hive tyrant killing 3 of them, killing the last commander with hive guard and starting working on 1 of the broad sides units with my hierodules. After that round he was left with 2 crisis suits that were in cc and 2 units of broadsides, 1 of which was in cc with a hierodule. He knew he lost so we talked out the rest, knowing I would hold the entire map but he would survive with a few broadsides in the corner of the map. Ending in a 89- 46 victory.
Game 3:
So last game of the day, I was in first position so this game was probably going to determine the victor of the tournament. Loathe and behold I had to fight the other tau player which crushed his first 2 opponents. With my newfound experience I got ready for the next list: borkan with cadre fireblade, commander, ethereal, 2x breachers in devilfish, 1x kroot, 5 crisis suit, 4 stealth suit, 4 kroot hound, pathfinders, riptide and stormsurge.
I was happy to not see hammerheads again, but the no invul borkan strat might be painfull. Luckily he had a lot of dmg 2 things which would half his output because of the -1 damage. I took stranglehold, grind them down and investigate signal.
My set up was the same as last game, hoping for first turn but having my malanthrope as defence. He never played against crusher stampede and he was just as scared of me as I was of him (also he saw the results of the last game) He put his commander in reserve and won the roll off (oh dear). I gave my hive tyrant the regeneration trait if he decided to focus on him but not killing him.
His turn 1 plan was taking out the 2 hierodules out in front, he took the middle objectives with kroot hound and kroot, but kept his breachers behind cover taking a more careful approach (which I think was a good move) His crisis suits opened up on the hierodule on the left, not really doing a lot hitting on 4s and wounding on 5s, but still chipping away 7 wounds. the riptide and stormsurge opened up on the other hierodule, which ofcourse got transhuman and ended up only taking 8 wounds because the ignore invul shot only wounded once through the transhuman. The no LOS shooting took some wounds of swarmlord, but not so important.
My turn 1 I still had all my units somehow so I went all in, hoping I can take out all his assets that can control the board. My hive tyrant flew in to go for the crisis suits. I took over the objectives with the hierodules and raveners. Harpy got objective secure and took over his main objective, shooting and charging the stealth suits. Hive guard fired in 1 of the devilfish taking it down and the double fire was into the crisis suits to take out the shield drones. Hive tyrant charged in, did mortals and fought resulting in 2 suits left.
His turn 2 scored 0 primary and not a great position to be in. He had to take back the objectives and take out a lot of threats but really only had the stormsurge, commander and riptide left. The crisis suits fell back, the remaining breachers and devil fish pushed up to take a objective and his commander landed to try and shoot 3 warriors from another objective. His second turn was okay on taking back his own objective, taking the objective with the breachers and killing the warriors stopping me from getting hold more. Killing the harpy but not managing to kill the hive tyrant in a combination of bad rolls on his side and good rolls on mine. -1 to hit again coming in very clutch.
In my turn my hive tyrant regenerated 3 wounds though the warlord trait and 2 through the strategem (not my normal pick of strategem, but it was more a moral hit on him seeing the hive tyrant back to more than half wounds) and went in to get the riptide. The hive guard mopped up the commander and remaining crisis suits, hierodules took back the objectives against the breachers. Leaving him with the stormsurge, fireblade and a damaged riptide in cc after ending my turn 2.
Defeat was certain for him, we had a beer, rolled a few dice for things we wanted to roll out while talking out the rest of the stuff as it wouldnt be any fun for him anymore. It ended up with a 94-35 win.
After game thoughts:
So first of all the game is a dice game and I got a bit luck now and then, which helped a lot!
In general my list worked as intended, the malanthrope, sturdy hive tyrant, harpy and hierodules were amazing. I think after this I will change my list a bit. remove 1 of the warriors link (I never needed more then 2) and 1 of the hive guard (they were good, but I think 5 can give the same result I need for this list) and punt in another unit of raveners. That way I have a small unit to take another objective and more insurance I can go for investigate if the first unit dies.
Besides that I am thinking of making the hive tyrant even tankier by not giving the hive guard the ap ignoring, opening up adaptive biology on the hive tyrant and making him -2 damage after first phase. Combined with catalyst armies will have to put so much into him that the rest of my army goes free and if the ignore him, I have a 12 wound objective secure on their main objective, so that is most of the time not an option.
I think I was lucky not to go against any custodes (I will have a hard time going through their invuls) or the list containing 2 fire raptors (if they go first and kill hive tyrant and maybe some hive guard, I have no effective way of dealing with them anymore and I will just keep losing assets every turn).
So at the end of the day I won the tournament! Harlequins and Black templars coming next and after that mostly custodes which faced eachother a lot in the other games. (the 2 tau players even though they both lost big against me ended up in the bottom of the top 10 because of the huge wins on their other 2 games).
Sorry for the long post and if there are any questions about choices or what I thought or what happened, let me know!
