10th ed index - your experience so far?

[Iryan]

Third game of 10th edition, 1250p against the banana bling bois. Quite a few misplays on both sides, but was a fun game with some pretty exciting, swingy rolls.

My opponent brought two squads of custodian guards with a shield captain each, plus a squad of 2 allarus custodians in deep strike, and one Forgeworld antrigrav tank.

My list was the same as my previous game, minus one of the hive tyrants (the one with alien cunning).

I cannot quite recount the entirety of the battle. I had the majority of my army positioned on the left, with the deathleaper infiltrating on the right, ahead of my 3 zoans, one squad of 3 pyros, and 10 termagants. My early shooting was of limited effectiveness, in no small part due to my opponent getting to use the -1 damage strat for free, but as that is only once per turn, my zoans were allowed to do some work on the other side. My opponent's shooting mainly slowly whittled away at the termagants, except for the grav tank, which on turn 2 dealt significant damage to the hive tyrant, turn 3 solo'd the Mawloc I had brought in and charged the tank with (to contest the objective it was parked on), and then turn 4 completely whiffed its attacks, dealing zero damage to anything. Overall midgame fights came down to the deathleaper and hive tyrant each surviving by the skin of their teeth, on one wound each, and then dealing terrible retribution in return.

For time reasons, we called it at the end of turn 4, but it was a foregone conclusion at that point; I was leading in victory points and was going to increase that lead, as well as quite possibly tabling him on turn 5, since all he had left was his grav tank at 2/3rds of its wounds, while I still had 3 zoans, 3 warriors, and my acidfex (and the 1 wound deathleaper and 3 pyrovores, but those were not in range to affect the tank).

The main takeaway points are:

1. 4+ invulnerable saves are (as always) extremely swingy, both on custodes and on hive tyrants or zoanthropes or the deathleaper. They can randomly shrug off the most devastating punishment when not expected, or they might randomly fail completely when you needed them not to. And as usual, overwhelming number of shots is key.

2. Having an army of only elite units without any cheap flexible chaff will let you get left behind in the dust. We even had a mission with only 4 objective markers, and I still outscored him due to weight of bodies.

3. Having no real efficient tools against hordes will let units like termagants run over you. I honestly feel like the little gribbles were a big reason why I won. A lack of good anti-horde weaponry meant my opponent had to use a disproportionate amount of force to get rid of my little guys, if he ever wanted to score anything, so they absorbed a lot more punishment than they were worth. Termagants may not deal a lot of damage, but they sure put in a lot of work.

Also: Pyrovores still slap, Zoanthropes still slap really hard, and Acidfex overwatch is still delicious, especially if its best buddy Hive Tyrant lets it do said overwatch for free.

[riverzora]

2k Ad Mech versus 2x1k Tyranids.
Tyranids absolutely wrecked the robots.

What I’ve learned is - ALL the Barbgaunts, ALL the Exocrines, ALL the Haruspex. That’s pretty much it. Everything else exists.

[garg]

Had my second game of tenth against my friend's guard, we're practicing for a GT but since we don't have much time we're doing 1k and hopefully we'll get one "full" game in beforehand.

Both games of tenth have been more balanced than they were in ninth which made it more fun. I find Tyranids to be quite slow now with assault being removed for our guns (I don't have a walkrant), as well as losing advance and charge. I struggle to see past 12*zoans as reliable anti tank. I tried an RC tfex and it didn't make to do a single point of damage with it's main gun, they're pretty tough though. Warriors are kind of meh.

[mattblowers]

Aug 2, 2023 14:02:39 GMT garg said:

Had my second game of tenth against my friend's guard, we're practicing for a GT but since we don't have much time we're doing 1k and hopefully we'll get one "full" game in beforehand.

Both games of tenth have been more balanced than they were in ninth which made it more fun. I find Tyranids to be quite slow now with assault being removed for our guns (I don't have a walkrant), as well as losing advance and charge. I struggle to see past 12*zoans as reliable anti tank. I tried an RC tfex and it didn't make to do a single point of damage with it's main gun, they're pretty tough though. Warriors are kind of meh.

My only caution against 1,000 point test games is it really is a different game. Granted I have played GSC more than 'nids so far this edition, but at 2,000 points you have to be more careful about unit placement because every objective will be contested by an opponents unit that needs shot or charged off or out OCed. At 1,000 points you can usually get your points with uncontested objectives because their aren't enough units to cover the field effectively. It's the same game, but it feels (at least to me) like comparing checkers and chess in regards to complexity.

[Iryan]

There is also the factor of lethality. In a game of higher point size, the concentration of units per square inch is higher. This means that there is more firepower that can concentrate on any given spot. This makes it a lot easier to take out singular priority targets quickly. For example, at 1000p, a single imperial knight is really hard to bring down even when focussed. At 2000p, depending on unit placement, a powerful shooty list might be able to delete it in turn 1. So if a unit seems extremely durable in a small game, do not be overconfident in its tenacity when you double the points.

[murderfiesta]

Lanchester's Laws provide a great illustration of why this is (video here relating it to Age of Empires 2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpjxWBwLkIE)

But to summarize, lethality of the game increases superlinearly with game points totals. So if you double the number of points, the lethality of the game increases by more than double since there is more ability to concentrate more firepower to punch bigger holes in the enemy army and create more skewed outcomes.

[garg]

I'll definitely take those points into consideration, we also have the problem of not being quick. Ideally I'd like to get in two 2k games beforehand but realistically I'll be happy to get one in.

Thinking more about the games I'm disappointed about our army rule and the fact that we don't have access to three core stratagems. Tank shock is particularly frustrating as we had similar in the 9th codex and in crusher stampede, we'll likely get something similar in the monster mash detachment then we've got one less there.

[mattblowers]

Aug 3, 2023 20:42:58 GMT garg said:

I'll definitely take those points into consideration, we also have the problem of not being quick. Ideally I'd like to get in two 2k games beforehand but realistically I'll be happy to get one in.

For tournament prep play 2-3 rounds and call the game. You usually know. Then reset and start over. You get 2x the number of games.

Some tricks to speeding up your play:

- When moving a unit, measure the furthest front model for farthest movement and the back model for furthest rear movement and put every other model in between the two: I have never had an opponent object to this in a tournament except once, and he was a look every rule up kinda guy.

- Plan your turn while your opponent is taking his. you should have little or no thinking to do before you start your turn unless you are drawing tactical objectives. Even then your are tweaking your plan, not doing a hard reboot.

- Use a chess clock, it will help reset your internal clock to speed up play. My guess is that you play more club or "casual" type play where time isn't really a big factor. This will really increase the stress on you trying to adjust to time constraints and pressure of a tournament at the same time.

- Declare out loud your intentions of what you are trying to do while you are doing it. This solves a ton of arguments and rules checking that slows down game play.

- Have your dice in pools of a certain number: I keep a pool of 20 dice, a pool of 6 dice (5 of one color and 1 of another), and a pool of 10 dice. Each pool is different in color. Need to roll 18 saves? Just pull 2 dice out of the pool of 20. Rolling 15 attacks and 5 'extra attacks' with a different profile? Pull 5 out of the pool of 20, grab the 5 of the same color from the pool of 6, and roll them all at once. This is a massive time saver.

- When rolling dice don't pick up your hits, pick up your misses/no wounds. Then it's easy to take any rerolls and your opponent has plenty of time to look at the dice to confirm. Then pick up and roll all your hits to wound at the same time.

-Any rule that you aren't completely sure of look up while your opponent is moving, looking it up after your turn starts is a ton of dead space but it doesn't feel like it to you because your mind is engaged.

[ausnid]

Over the weekend I came in 9th of 36 at a local RTT, running:
Walkrant and guards (alien cunning)
2 x Haruspex
2 x Exocrine
1 x Malaceptor
2 x 5 Barb gaunts
Lictor
Deathleaper
2 x Biovores
Pyrovore
3 x 6 Zoes

1st/2nd/3rd was Eldar, Daemons, Eldar, and there were also 3 Imp Knights, a GSC, and an Ork army above me.

Game 1 was against Admech with a couple of onagers, lots of the striders, two big bricks of kataphrons, couple of the teraxi units, couple of ranger units and the transports.
We didn't get the full game in but when time expired I was up 57-51, and had broken the back of his army, though had lost most of my big bugs in return. The rad zone deployment thing was a pain, and the kataphron units buffed up did a number of my big bugs (at one point I took 27 wounds on overwatch). Zoes cleaned up, and lictors scored well, with biovores doing their secondary things. 

Game 2 was against a CSM list running 3 units of termintors (one lead by abaddon), a unit of noise marines, a big cultist blob, two units of oblits and a Lord of Skulls. Ended up ekeing out a 63-62 win, with some big swings and roundabouts on dice - the LoS was a right pain to kill, including a fully buffed haruspex bouncing off him, only for him to lose his last 3 wounds to a failed pact test. The regenerating cultist blob took ages to finally get rid of, and we were playing the purge the foe mission so creating objective spores often gave up primary. Obliterators tore chunks out of my army but by the end of the game he only had the noisemarines on his backfield, one unit of termies and one unit of oblits left, but I nearly threw away a handy lead by trying to push forward and kill him (essentially he made his oblits lone operatives with a CSM strat so I couldnt shoot them, and then in return pumped his score by killing units off objectives. Moral of the story is protect a lead!

Game 3 was against one of the Imp knights running two big boys (one of which could deep strike and once per game teleport), 5 armigers and an extraction squad. Sadly I lost the first turn roll off, and made a mistake in deploying my haruspex into reserve (I should have protected my gun bugs/more zoes). I didn't protect DL properly so lost him early, but this was always fighting uphill, especially as all his armigers had anti-fly so were just able to blitz my zoes as soon as they turned up, and though I kept in it with secondaries and some janky primary positioning/scoring, on Turn 5 he tabled me, allowing him to score 29-0 for the turn, and roared home for a 81-62 win. 

List wise I think I'll drop one unit of the barb gaunts (going into infantry they are good, but in the meta two units is probably unnecessary), and think about dropping the tyrant guard. They allow me to play a bit more aggressive with the tyrant (and his advance aura and free strat were very important), but perhaps I can just be more careful with him and use the points elsewhere. A second malaceptor may be the way forward, or I could look at a tyrannofex - am not sure if two haruspex are optimal. They are okay but without an invuln save they tended to be splatted fairly easily (even with a FnP), and really need to start on the board/or be rapid ingressed in to do anything when they arrive. 

[purestrain]

Knights really are an outlier of Beyond S tier atm.

[mattblowers]

Aug 7, 2023 3:00:01 GMT ausnid said:

Game 3 was against one of the Imp knights running two big boys (one of which could deep strike and once per game teleport), 5 armigers and an extraction squad. Sadly I lost the first turn roll off, and made a mistake in deploying my haruspex into reserve (I should have protected my gun bugs/more zoes). I didn't protect DL properly so lost him early, but this was always fighting uphill, especially as all his armigers had anti-fly so were just able to blitz my zoes as soon as they turned up, and though I kept in it with secondaries and some janky primary positioning/scoring, on Turn 5 he tabled me, allowing him to score 29-0 for the turn, and roared home for a 81-62 win. 

List wise I think I'll drop one unit of the barb gaunts (going into infantry they are good, but in the meta two units is probably unnecessary), and think about dropping the tyrant guard. They allow me to play a bit more aggressive with the tyrant (and his advance aura and free strat were very important), but perhaps I can just be more careful with him and use the points elsewhere. A second malaceptor may be the way forward, or I could look at a tyrannofex - am not sure if two haruspex are optimal. They are okay but without an invuln save they tended to be splatted fairly easily (even with a FnP), and really need to start on the board/or be rapid ingressed in to do anything when they arrive.

Imperial Knights are a rough match up. GSC actually match up with them much better as knights struggle to deal with that many bodies. It's their one weakness.

[alx51]

3x6 zoan is probably too much, most performing lists run 2 at best. The key point is that only 2 units will have the fnp strat.. and if you hide one of the 3 you lose a lot of firepower. 1x5 barbs is enough also, they don't have a lot of good targets in current meta (though gsc provides some). Tyrant guards are not very efficient as well, I think you can improve your list with the points spared, try acidfex and pyrovores (for me mandatory to run at least one pyro to deal with terminators with benefit of cover, found in all the ts / csm lists and most sm lists, too hard to delete otherwise)

[ausnid]

Yeah, theres a pyro in the list already and he's another one I'm undecided on - cheap enough i spose and if he gets into position to strip cover it can be good. Dropping down on the zoes I am less convinced on, but will explore a couple of iterations...

[tylertt]

I've had most success with Zoeys in 3x3 but going to experiment going 2x3 for a bit. Its hard where they are so stinking cheap and offer anti-tank/elite to an extent.

[dkng]

Here are my 2 cents after some games:

Exos are absolutely fantastic. Position them well and they will serve you as a great anti-elite. If facing a vehicle-heavy list, the lethal hits can punch through armor with surprising effectivness. Ap-3 is so sweet and rare in our army. Tagging an important target with rr1 is a nice cherry on top.
Speaking about Ap-3 - Zoes. Are. Golden. Slow as hell but once in range they will decimate anything they target. Remember about Lethal Hits when using the focused fire! Hive Tyrant is their best buddy - Assault is so useful on these guys as is the FnP - they will get focused by any competent opponent.
Haruspexes are a bit overrated - cheap and quite durable but their melee is lackluster due to (please do not swear) Ap and their speed, coupled with no means to charge after advancing turns them into clumsy distraction Carnifexes. Ymmv but I’m not impressed. Still worth it though.
Maleceptors are very nice - good shooting, great durability and their aura is very nice. Weak melee is sad as on one hand you want them in CC while on the other they don’t fare well in brawls.
VRLs are weak. They get shot off the objectives easily so their infiltration is a tad moot in this regard. What they do great is denying enemy infiltrators and screening your other units. The HI trick is useful if you know how to do it but their melee is not impressive. Fun but not too competitive imo.
Same goes for Raveners. My beloved sweet Raveners. Deepstrike is always welcome but their durability and again (please do not swear) Ap makes them meh at best. Shame…
Gargoyles as usual do their gargoyles thing - fly quick and die even quicker but their OC2 can be a game changer. Deepstrike and move-shoot-move is a great Objective stealing combo. Love them.
Walkrant seems to be the best leader. Both abilities help the bugs tremendously with survivability and lack of Assault. I still like to run him with TGs but it’s more of a habit than necessity.
I’m yet to try out Tyrranofexes, multiple Lictors and a ’gaunt heavy list.
Overall experience - we are waaay slower and hit weaker in melee due to drop in Ap. A Dreadnought saving Haruspex claws on 4+ just seems wrong. Shooting is decent, some even comes with Ap-3. Wow. Perhaps it’s just a sentiment or „good ol’ days” syndromie but I liked Tyranids in 9th much, much better than nowadays.