Tournament - Battleforge Games 3-08-08

Battleforge set a record for attendance on Saturday - 20 people showed up more or less on time, and the store manager managed to keep things rolling very efficiently with plenty of tables and three interesting scenarios. As you may or may not know, the 2008 Battleforge 40k season features 'Eavy tournaments on the odd-numbered months, where almost anything goes and players are encouraged to bring the hardest army they can muster. The even months are Hobby ('Obby?) tournaments where painting and army composition count more towards your final score. You can find Battleforge's ruleset and judging criteria for the two different versions here (link opens a word document). For my part, I had the pleasure of facing off against friendly opponents wielding three distinctly different space marine forces, and I came away with two big wins with a big loss in the middle. Here's some more photos of the event. Nick won 1st with his mixed eldar army, Chris won 2nd with his mechanized eldar, and Robert won 3rd with his Thousand Sons.

Game 1 - Space Marines

Deployment: Table quarters
Primary objective: Table quarters
Secondary objective: Kill enemy HQ with your own HQ surviving the game
Tertiary objective: Suicide squad destroyed before the end of the game
Bonus points: Keep 3 scoring units alive, control more uncontested terrain pieces

My first opponent was Brian, who had a chaplain and commander leading a large assault squad, two squads of terminators with assault cannons, a second assault squad, a couple of small tac squads with heavy and special weapons, a devastator squad with rocket launchers and a lascannon, and a whirlwind. Other than the assault cannons on the terminators, I wasn't worried about most of the marines. The only things fast enough to really circle me and shoot were the assault squads, and they had to get up close in order to do it. Genestealers led the charge with carnifexes providing fire support, and soon both terminator squads and both assault squads had been eaten. By the fifth turn, I had only lost less than half of my forces, and I was deep in his table quarter with the hive tyrant and a big stealer squad. Together they chewing up the rest of his army, right down to the whirlwind, while the rest of my units stayed back to capture quarters and terrain pieces. Tyranids: 19/22 points. Space Marines: 3 points.

Game 2 - Space Marines

Primary objective: Victory points
Secondary objective: Recon
Tertiary objective: Destroy the opponent's most expensive unit
Bonus points: Control more table quarters, keep highest point unit alive

I had seen Josiah around at plenty of the Thor's Hammer tournaments last year but never played against him. He had a pretty low-tech commander, a chaplain and a big command squad with three power fists in a land raider crusader, two or three small plas/plascan tac squads, two or three small rocket launcher/lascannon dev squads, and five land speeder tornadoes. His assault cannons and heavy bolters had just totally eradicated Jay's tyranid army in the first round, and our lists were fairly similar. And with so many tables up and running in the store, terrain was very light, so I knew it was probably going to be an uphill battle. I set up the majority of my forces on my left side in an effort to consolidate away from any short range fire and have at least a few of my assault units reach the other side alive and win back some VPs. Of course, it was not to be. As expected, the land speeders and crusaders flanked me on the right with utter impunity (even though I maimed or wrecked several of the speeders), and the command squad charged and smeared in assault everything his gunline hadn't already shot down. The only survivor was the hive tyrant, who slowly crossed the vast desert between our deployments and wrecked shop on several squads to little overall effect. I'm not sure what I could have done differently to affect a different outcome, short of hiding everyone, and there just wasn't much terrain to hide a horde behind anyway. Maybe I'll try some sort of defensive strategy the next time I find myself against a mobile shooty force (eldar, tau), but I'm not exactly holding out much hope. Space Marines: 22/22. Tyranids: 0/22.

Game 3 - Space Marines

Primary Objective: Annihilation
Secondary Objective: Defeat the most units in assault or sweeping advances
Tertiary Objective: No friendly units in your own deployment zone
Bonus points: Most units in enemy deployment zone, I don't remember the other one.

Frank was playing a fairly typical Frank list with an interesting exception: a small bike squad. He had a jump libby with fury of the ancients, a commander on foot accompanied by a tank-hunting 2-lascannon command squad, an assault-oriented scout squad, several small las/plas tac squads, two assault squads, three bikes with two flamers, and a rocket launcher/heavy bolter dev squad. I have a pretty even record against Frank, but we always have very interesting games and I was glad to be able to finish out the day facing his ultramarines. I deployed in a strong flank again on my left side, and just tried to move the stealer squads across the field as fast as possible. While I was consistently coming up with fives and sixes for fleet and armor saves, he was not doing nearly as well and his anti-infantry guns weren't able to cut the stealers down quick enough to keep them at bay. Two of the squads made it into assault with the scout and tac squad in the trees on his right, and the bikers and assault squad he sent out to try and slow the rest of the army down were eventually overcome themselves. The core of his forces in the center took casualties here and there from my sniperfex shooting, returning fire with mixed results against my bigger bugs, while the libby and his other assault squad circled around my right. I kept a stealer squad hanging back, and when they were in assault range I charged and wiped them out after a couple of turns with more excellent rending rolls. I did make one big mistake at the end that nearly cost me the game - I left the remnants of my very effective flying warriors standing dopily out in the open and they were quickly cut down by his heavy fire. The stealers in the trees on the left finished off their opponents and jumped out into the devastator squad in the center. He tried to fight them off with the remainder of his command and tac squads, but the 6th turn ended with the fighters still engaged in assault. Tyranids: 22/22 points. Space Marines: 0/22 points.

Been Caught Stealing

Ok, please forgive the cheesy title, I've been listening to Jane's Addiction lately, and I couldn't think of anything better. My point is, I painted up 7 more genestealers to finish my first squad of 8 - the protypical "Pure" brood. Only 40 more to go, though theoretically they should take a little less time as there's less yellow to work on - each of the other five schemes has different black bodyparts. Before I crack into unit no. 2, though, I'm going to work on either the warriors or a big fex.

I heard Space Wolves is not on the radar for a 2008 release, hopefully not true. BOLS had some commentary from JJ that they were "high priority," but that's not precise enough language to truly inspire me.

Tournament: Ninja Pirates 1-20-08

Ninja Pirates played host to a 2k Rules of Engagement tournament last Sunday. I took the newly inked nids and 2 objective markers. If you haven't played the RoE rules before, I definitely recommend giving it a try; a large variety of possible scenarios coupled with the freedom from having to tally up victory points at the end is the main attraction. The rules do take some tinkering to include in an effective tournament environment. The tournament organizer had changed up things a little bit, most drastically the way you capture objectives (you needed the most scoring units within 3" instead of simply the most models), and the all-or-nothing type missions were split into two possible points, but everything else was essentially the same. All in all it made for a very interesting set of games, with tactics playing a bigger role than the usual kill-or-be-killed smashups. Here was my list:

• 1 Hive Tyrant - toxin sacs, wings, 2 twin-linked devourers, warp field, enhanced senses


• 1 Carnifex - 2 twin-linked devourers, flesh hooks


• 6 x 8 Genestealers - extended carapace, scuttlers


• 5 Warriors - rending claws, scything talons, wings, adrenal glands (+1 I)


• 2 Carnifexes - venom cannon, barbed strangler, extended carapace, enhanced senses, bonded exoskeleton, flesh hooks

I got two wins and a draw, Jay got first place, and I lost the tie roll-off for "best general" (2nd place) to Cricket. Best army went to Frank's Ultramarines, speaking of whom...

Game 1 - Ultramarines

I've played against Frank more than a few times now (he goes by Capt tyranus on B&C), but I haven't actually beat him since the very first time we were matched up in the 2006 citywide. Shortly thereafter, he perfected his infantry gunline, and he's thrashed my guard and witch hunters on several occasions in the last couple of years. This time, however, the dice gods cooked up the perfect storm for him from the very beginning. First off, we drew a board with plenty of dense urban terrain, rolled for the small L-shaped deployment zones, and I got to choose the corner with the most cover. Then for missions, I drew "Unconventional Warfare," which by luck required me to defend my own two objectives (placed conveniently in or very near my deployment zone), while he drew "Assassinate," requiring him to footslog into a tyranid deployment zone (yikes), kill my HQ, and capture at least one of my objectives. I rolled to pick to go second, which was another big advantage in this case. He deployed his 80 or so marines at the edge of his "L" and began to move forward as quickly as possible, pausing to take shots at what he could see - mainly my carnifexes - while his flying Librarian knocked a few genestealers down every turn with Fury of the Ancients. At the same time, his big scout squad and assault marines picked their way through terrain and prepared to pounce on my objectives. For my part, I just waited for his inevitable attack and tried to use the barbed stranglers to take some of the shooting heat off my stealer broods (to little effect). In the last turn, two of his small las-plas squads, one assault squad, and the big scout squad moved to contest one of my objectives. I counter-attacked with the hive tyrant, my flying warriors, and a few genestealer stragglers. The hive tyrant and stealers managed to bring the scouts and one mini-tac squad below scoring, and then it was down to the warriors vs. the assault marines. After the first round of marine fists were unable to inflict much damage, I lucked out again and rolled 6 rending hits. With my two scoring units to his one the objective was mine! He also tried to contest my second objective with a lone assault squad, but I had too many genestealers covering that one as well and I took the win, 2-0.

Game 2 - Necrons

Jay had a very diverse and well-painted Necron force, including the Nightbringer, a destroyer lord, two warrior squads, an immortal squad, four destroyers, three wraiths, two heavy destroyers, two tomb spyders, and a monolith. I rolled the "Hold Out" mission, and he got "Firebase." He split his undead mess up into two main wings, with the star god, wraiths, and one tomb spyder holding his right side, the monolith and wraiths roughly in the middle, and everything else slightly to the left. I put my flying warriors and half my genestealer squads into objective denial mode, while the rest of the bugs concentrated on holding my own objective markers. The Monolith, wraiths, and Nightbringer solidly fought off my stealer offensive, while the rest of his force marched slowly forward to shoot up my right side and deny me the objective in no-man's-land. I tried to circle his far right flank with the warriors, but eventually the Nightbringer got in their way and I decided to charge in headlong. This time, the nightbringer was out of cover and the warriors got to go first, their rending claws luckily scoring just enough wounds to bring him down before he could retaliate. Now that's a trophy kill! On my right, I moved up the hive tyrant and several genestealer squads to assault his tight firing lines. The tyrant smashed into the front warrior squad, killing just enough of them to force a morale check, which they failed, and the big bug ran down the survivors with a sweeping advance. My genestealers ate up one of the tomb spyders and his accompanying scarab swarms, and then moved into combat with the immortals, killing a few of them before he teleported them away to safety with the monolith. It ended up a draw, with Jay and I each capturing both of our objectives.

Game 3 - Eldar

The third and final game was against Ames and the "Grapes of Wrath" Eldar. Maugan Ra led her usual two squads of pathfinders, howling banshees in a wave serpent, harlequins, eight or so warp spiders, three war walkers, and two fire prisms. My mission was "Unconventional Warfare" again, while she had to capture both of her own. We had the big triangle deployment zones. I figured I'd be better off closing the distance with Eldar rather than try to hold back and defend, so I lined everyone up on my deployment edge and hauled ass out into no-man's-land. The stealers on my right got stung early by fire prism and pathfinder sniper fire, and so instead I sent the flying warriors and big gun fexes to take that objective instead. Everything else, including the hive tyrant and dakkafex, jumped out into the middle to assault the oncoming warp spiders, war walkers, harlequins and howling banshees, and to take the eldar objective in the middle. One squad got in early with the war walkers but were tied up and couldn't inflict any rending hits to damage them. It would take another two or three stealer squads to gang up and bring them down near the end of the game. The harlequins lost half their number to shooting from the hive tyrant, and the rest were wiped out by a rushing stealer squad, who followed up into cover and were assaulted in turn by the howling banshees. Despite the initiative advantage gained from their masks, the banshees were repelled and fell back off of the table. Same for the warp spiders, who tried to take on the dakkafex only to get swarmed by more stealers. After some good low AP shooting inflicted some early wounds, Maugan Ra finished off the hive tyrant, but he too was brought down by the rest of the swarm in the end. She used the fire prisms to harrass my big gun fexes for pretty much the whole game, almost bringing them both below scoring capacity; a pity they couldn't return the favor, but for their thrice-damned holofields. After I had wiped out everything but her grav tanks, we called it in the fifth turn, with me succesfully capturing my two objectives to her one. I only realized on the drive home that the scoring stealer squad that had been assaulting her fire prism on her own objective should have contested the marker, as I had second turn and they were all clustered in the same place. No big deal, I just need to take my time a little more with the wrap-up. Chalk it up to the end of a long day, not to mention I was coming down with a cold (sucks).

Scattershot

I inked up my tyranids this week. Initially I tried using Tamiya flat base matte medium mixed in with the ink and water, but after it dried it left a pale white stain in all the crevices and I had to go over the 7 or 8 miniatures I had completed with another coat of simply ink and water. This resulted in both of my big carnifexes, one squad of genestealers, and half my warriors looking a little "extra crispy." No worries, it's nice to be one step closer to completing the army's paint job, and I look forward to a few games with it in the weeks to come before I continue with the next color step.

BOLS has been posting a series of 5th edition "rumor" collections over the last few weeks. I'd be inclined to pooh them off completely if BOLS' prophetic clips from Warseer haven't come true so often (as long as I can remember). I've gone back and forth on how I feel about the suggested changes. At first I was worried that they would make it a more complicated and slow game, but the more I think about it, it's probably time for some changes about now anyways. At the very least they won't be reverting to a 3rd edition-style revamp, where all the old codexes are void and the new rulebook includes basic (read: crappy) versions of the army lists. The cover saves for vehicles sounds like a good deal. Maybe the nerf for SMF will be mitigated by skimmers being able to hide easier in cover, firing from cover saves more easily than other vehicles. All the other vehicle rule changes (defensive weapons, movement and firing options) are too complicated for me to their really grasp their implications just yet. The scattering blasts will take some getting used to, especially the way multiple blasts will be scattered. At least we can forget about partials and centering the blast over a single model. Still though, I agree with one of the commenters on the BOLS article in that many of these rule changes seem made for the sake of themselves rather than directly focusing on improving the 4th edition set. They do seem to fit well with the style and nuances of the most recent codices (eldar, chaos, orks).

After dusting off the Space Wolves last week, I'm really eager for them to release their updated codex, White Dwarf version or no. Hopefully I won't have to break, convert, or paint too many models to update my army lists. I'm keeping my ears wide open for any rumors about the new shit.

Stealing Xmas

After another home game where the broodlord and zoanthropes underperformed, I've decided to switch them all out for 10 more genestealers. I also had to take away the 5th wound on both of the sniperfexes but I don't think it will have too much of an impact; they're 15 points cheaper and it still takes 3 T6 Sv 2 wounds to bring either of them below scoring. Thankfully I just happened to have 12 extra 2nd edition plastic stealers in an old box, already painted purple but thin enough to prime and paint over everything. The models do look different sitting right next to each other but in the mix of 48 genestealers I think the older ones will more or less fade into the background. In any case, maybe they'll give the broods a little more variety visually. I was left with a few extra points after the stealer switch, so I gave flesh hooks to the carnifexes to allow them to go simultaneously with most defenders in cover, should they ever want to charge. I also added enhanced senses back to the hive tyrant - I've really been missing those dependable 12-hit devourer blasts in my last few games.

As a side note, after I got some paint on him, I noticed that the elite carnifex that I converted up looks more like a big fat genestealer carrying devourers, so from now on I'm just going to think of him as some sort of giant über-hybrid.

The Megahive was specially bred by the incipient genestealer cult to subjugate one of the last loyalist holdouts on the doomed planet of Vivax. Together with scores of purestrain and hybrid genestealers, the Megahive launched devastating terror raids upon the defiant citizenry of Hullandose. After less than two months of sustained attacks, the cult's army had eroded all organized resistance within the complex and their "membership" had tripled. It would be the last real battle for the fate of the planet. The Tyranid splinter fleet, responding to the cult's psychic signal, arrived shortly thereafter and absorbed the broods into its own hive ships. The Megahive hybrid was presumed to have survived the battle for Hullandose.

HQ

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, toxin sacs, warp field, enhanced senses, wings

ELITES

Carnifex - 2 twin-linked devourers, flesh hooks

TROOPS

6 x 8 Genestealers - extended carapace, scuttlers

FAST ATTACK

2 x 3 Tyranid Warriors - scything talons, rending claws, adrenal glands (+1 I), wings

HEAVY SUPPORT

2 Carnifexes - venom cannon, barbed strangler, extended carapace, enhanced senses, flesh hooks

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 12-22-07

Saturday marked a long-awaited return to Dragon's Lair for a 2000 point tournament. Last month (or maybe October?) I was one of three people that showed up. It was a weird month then, though, and I figured the last hosted tourney of the year would draw more players to the store this time around. Eight folks in total played on Saturday, all familiar faces to me now, regulars from the Austin community. Kurt, the new Dragon's Lair 40k (maybe more?) coordinator, did a great job of running the games and we finished earlier than any other DL tournament I've attended before. I decided to take my latest tyranid list - basically switching out the lictor and psychic screams for a broodlord and a couple of extra genestealers. It worked alright I guess, maybe not as well as I'd have liked. After several tournaments at Ninja Pirates, I got to feeling pretty comfortable with the 1500 list, but I'm still clumsy with the 2000 point build. I never felt like the Broodlord was giving me anything a few more carapace scuttler stealers wouldn't, and they would move faster to boot. I didn't miss psychic scream, and the warp blasts never performed that spectacularly. I'm getting ever closer to dropping the zoanthropes entirely to fit in even more genestealers. I liked the flying warriors, very fast and lots of rending attacks for the price, but with the 5+ save they are pretty damn fragile and I haven't quite gotten the hang of using them in combination with my other units yet.

Game 1 - Eldar - Seek and Destroy

I knew beforehand Chris would be there with his sick McEldar army and I was fairly relieved to get our game over with in the first round. Chris is a very fun guy to play with, but it's hard not to get pre-demoralized fighting against his tournament eldar list. Extremely efficient and redundant: 2 doom/mind war farseers on jetbikes, 2 squads of 10 dire avengers in scatter laser wave serpents, a small squad of pathfinders, 2 squads of 5 fire dragons, a squad of 5 or so harlequins, 3 falcons with scatter lasers, shuriken cannons, holofields, spirit stones, and the Emperor knows what else. Things went about as I expected. He swears there's an art to it, but honestly it doesn't seem like he even needs to move his shit around that much, other than to just circle your units and apply assloads of doom and shuriken. I would think the odds are low you'll even shake more than one falcon a turn with a moderately shooty force, and with an assault army the odds must get even lower. I will admit that I was at a loss about the best way to deploy my forces and it probably shows in the photograph. I scored a couple of pyrrhic victories in the middle territory against some dire avengers, pathfinders, and half of one squad fire dragons, but eventually his falcons, dragons, and harlies wiped out nearly everything I had. A few squads of stranded stealers, including the broodlord, were holed up in a building away from the action, and if I hadn't had to briefly leave the tournament at the 5th turn he would have killed those too. On a bright note, lightning struck his dice not once, but twice, as both of his Farseers died from perils of the warp attacks. Who needs shadow in the warp, anyway? Eldar won, victorious slaughter.

Game 2 - Chaos - Take and Hold

Chris has been working hard on his pre-heresy Thousand Sons and I had the opportunity to face off against them in my second game. He had a tzeentch sorcerer, a small squad of lightning claw terminators, three squads of thousand sons, two squads of lesser demons, and two units of havocs with 4 autocannons each. I got to grips fairly quickly with few losses from inferno bolts, but he had some really good rolls on all his 4+ invulnerable saves, and the very few rending hits I could get in usually dinged off their magickal shells. The tough game ended in a draw.

Game 3 - Demon Hunters - Secure and Control

*** file deleted by the Inquisition ***

Matt's demonhunter army is slowly but surely coming together, and his girlfriend has applied more and more cool paint touches every time I see them. Since the last time we played, he's added a psycannon purgation squad, a few chimeras full of storm troopers, and a second land raider to drive around his inquisitor. He was getting pretty poor results from all his lascannons (like 5, all twin-linked) and only managed to wound my big bugs a couple of times. I think we both inflicted similar amounts of casualties to each other but I ended up holding four objectives, pushing me pretty far out ahead. Tyranids won, victorious slaughter.

A win, loss, and a draw - not a bad end for the 2007 season! I played in tournaments in four different stores, got to know most of the local community, and had a lot of fun. I won one first place, two second places, one third place, and best army four or five times, including at the citywide for the second year in a row. My tourney record, spread across the four stores, was:

wins/losses/draws

Witch Hunters: 8/2/2
Tyranids: 6/1/1
Imperial Guard: 4/8/3
Chaos: 0/2/0
Total: 18/13/6

My goals for 2008 are to get my guard win ratio up at least a smidgen, finish painting the tyranids and improve their game at the 2000 point level, and get my Saim Hann airborn and shredding some of those primitive monkeighs out there. Thanks to everyone I met and played this year, and a special thanks to everyone who cares enough to check out my blog from time to time!

Battle Report: Tyranids vs. Imperial Guard 12-13-07

Last night I threw down with Clay at Ninja Pirates in a 2000 point take and hold match. I used my latest bug list: 36 scuttling carapace genestealers, 6 flying CC warriors, dakkarant, dakka fex, lictor, 2 sniperfexes, and blast/scream zoanthropes. He was playing a big guard gunline army, with a high Ld CHQ with vox, a few heavy weapon squads (autocannons and missile launchers), a squad of ogryns in a chimera, two platoons with three infantry squads each (with autocannon teams), two hellhounds, two HB/LC leman russes, and a basilisk. He rolled to pick his deployment as well as to go first.

Turn 1

After the genestealer squads scuttled forward towards their lines, Clay's guardsmen loosed their heavy guns and tried to squash as many bugs as possible. Several different stealer squads, one sniperfex, and the dakkafex all took wounds from mass ordnance, rockets and autocannon fire. His hellhounds moved forward into the center piece of terrain, one of them burning up an entire stealer squad in great one gout of flame. The ogryn taxi moved up as well. In my turn, all the remaining stealers moved up, hiding in terrain whenever possible, and thanks to a six inch fleet move, a squad of six made it into combat with one of the fire support squads. A predictable amount of bloodshed ensued, and they consolidated into a nearby missile launcher squad. The hive tyrant and winged warriors jumped to face the right guard flank, the tyrant's devourers bringing down the senior officer and three of his attendants, leaving the commissar in charge. The sniperfexes and zoanthropes stunned one of the hellhounds and destroyed the other, leaving it stranded in the center terrain. A damn fine first turn for me! I had managed to turn down the heat some (literally), hurt the command HQ a little bit, and tied up most of his left flank.

Turn 2

In his second turn, Clay pulled the ogryns back to support the center of his line, and finished off the last two stragglers from one of the genestealer squads. He also reduced the stealer squad on my far right to a single man. Then he charged into the melee in progress on his left with one of the nearby infantry squads. With their high initiative, the genestealers broke the missile launcher squad and hacked apart most of the infantry that had just charged them. In my turn, the sniperfexes destroyed the chimera with a glancing 6 from a venom cannon and entangled the passengers. After some unlucky armor save rolls, one of the ogrys died in the explosion, another took two wounds, and the commissar also took a wound. The lictor emerged from a shed in the middle of his gunline and assaulted a nearby infantry squad, only killing one or two before taking a wound himself. The hive tyrant dealt heavy casualties to a missile launcher squad, sending the survivors fleeing for the hills. The flying warriors jumped into assault with a squad of guardsmen but was only able to kill a few of them. The zoanthropes tried to finish off the hellhound in the middle to no avail, only managing to stun it once more. Another stealer squad charged his center left, tying up two infantry squads and killing four men from each unit. The last surviving black-headed stealer on my right was finally made it into assault with an infantry squad as well, but was knocked in the head with a rifle butt and killed after his own swings went wide. Things just kept getting better for the bugs, and we decided to tentatively play out a third turn to see if the guard could turn things around...

Turn 3

They couldn't. It was too late, and his subsequent guardsmen charges into my genestealer units were mostly ineffective. He managed to bring down one of the flying warriors with his commissar, and a command squad helped infantry squad remnants kill off the lictor, but I had dug pretty deep into his lines and we decided to call it as an inevitable victory for the bugs.

This game was probably more fun for me, but there were some great misadventures on both sides. I liked fielding a strong flank with the genestealers - it worked much better than spreading them out across the entire table. The warriors were about as strong as I expected, in other words not that strong, but I thought the one squad definitely served its purpose by supporting the zopes and sniperfexes in the middle, providing synapse and counterassault if necessary. The hive tyrant did well against guard, even with a lower BS than usual; we'll see if the good results can be repeated against marines. I think the most important thing was keeping the stealers away from the leman russes. Even if he destroyed four of the six squads, it only took the two stealer units that made it across the board to wipe out all the infantry on his left flank.

Action Report: Tyranids vs. Space Marines (The Anger Sharks) 12-8-07

Last Saturday I got in a 2000 point game at Ninja Pirates against Russell and his DIY chapter (using the Blood Angels codex). He had 3 Baal predators (I'm pretty sure we covered every triple testicle joke imaginable), a couple of standard assault squads, a veteran assault squad, 2 melta/asscan land speeders, a death company and chaplain, and a sanguiniously winged librarian with might of heroes. I was running the 2 squads of 3 winged talon/rending warriors for the first time, mixed in with my usual bug army: 2 sniperfexes, 3 scream-blast zopes, 5 6-man genestealer squads, a lictor, a simple dakkafex, a broodlord with a 6-man genestealer squad, and a flying dakkarant. The mission was cleanse, and I believe Russell went first.

This was a great game. The predators and land speeders chewed up several genestealer squads early on, including the Broodlord's team, leaving the stragglers to try and rip up assorted vehicles and assault jump squads. The Hive Tyrant was supporting a stealer squad moving into an adjacent quarter until things started to go bad for me in the middle. The winged warriors had been sent packing, and only one stealer squad remained to fight a standard assault and veteran squad, while nearby the Death Company hacked apart one carnifex and headed towards another. The Tyrant flew over, and together with the dakkafex they put the kibosh on the Death Company in shooting and assault. Eventually the Tyrant was killed, in a manner that eludes me just now, as well as one of my zoanthropes. Near the end of the game, Russell was looking to occupy my home quarter, as well as one of the adjacent quarters, with his maimed but essentially intact landspeeders and predators. The lictor and genestealers had managed to finish off the veterans and assault marines after sustaining heavy losses. Then, in stunning succession, a small squad of genestealers and two of the carnifexes leapt from cover to destroy all 3 of his predators in one turn. It was not enough to keep him from holding my home quarter, however, and when the smoke cleared, he had earned enough victory points to secure a crushing victory. Scree! The bugs scattered into the woods.

I think my main mistake was giving up so many troops to the ridiculous Baal loadouts. I extended myself too far, and thanks to his overcharged engines he managed to fend off two or three units at a time, whittling them down all the while. The armored part of his force is definitely the sharp end against nids. After this game, I decided to ditch the Broodlord entirely and drop a few other upgrades to buy scuttlers for all the stealer squads. The hive tyrant can live without enhanced senses, considering the rerolls he gets for shooting, but he'll keep toxin sacs for the extra odds against marines and vehicles in assault. He's a little cheaper in any case. The warriors are also cheaper now, after I took away their toxin sacs and adrenal glands. They can be startlingly ephemeral in the face of any decent size group of enemies. From now on they'll be either providing mobile synapse and counterassault for the guns of the army, or sneaking up on the more static portions and tying them up for a turn or two. The fexes and zopes were shooting like shit this game, but that happens sometimes. And psychic scream: you're definitely on a fast track to excision. Shape up or ship out!

Weekend Update

No real big news to speak of this week, other than the usual messing around with various conversions and army lists.

I thought modelling so many little identical bike squads in my SH army might be a little lame, so I've decided to ditch one of them for a 4-man squad of Warlocks with destructor, singing spears, and enhance. They'll all have panel steering left arms, dire avenger exarch right arms, new guardian bodies with greenstuff runes on the chestplates, and helmet-less eldar heads, with white kamikaze bandannas flapping in the wind behind them. I'm hoping they will really evoke the Wild Rider theme. And it's only right for a jetbike army to include Shining Spears as well, so I'm including them for now in my updated 2000 point list:

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, spirit stones, singing spear, doom, edritch storm, runes of warding

4 Warlocks - jetbikes, 3 destructors, 1 enhance, 4 singing spears

TROOPS

5 x 3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

10 Dire Avengers - exarch with twin shuriken catapults and bladestorm
Wave Serpent - shuriken cannon, twin-linked shuriken cannon turret

FAST ATTACK

3 Shining Spears - exarch with star lance

2 Vypers - spirit stones, starcannons

2 Vypers - spirit stones, bright lances

HEAVY SUPPORT

3 Fire Prisms - holofields, spirit stones

I also did a little work on my bugs. I ripped all the guns off my tyranid warriors and replaced them with genestealer scything talon arms. I think they'll fit in pretty well in my newest tyranid 2000 point list:

HQ

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, toxin sacs, enhanced senses, warp field, wings

Broodlord
6 Genestealers - extended carapace

ELITES

Lictor

Carnifex - 2 twin-linked devourers

TROOPS

5 x 6 Genestealers - extended carapace

FAST ATTACK

2 x 3 Tyranid Warriors - adrenal glands (+1 WS), toxin sacs, talons, rending claws, wings

HEAVY SUPPORT

2 x Carnifex - venom cannon, barbed strangler, enhanced senses, extended carapaces, reinforced chitin

3 Zoanthropes - psychic scream, warp blast

Action Report: Tyranids vs. Imperial Guard 1500

I got in a game on Saturday against Kingsley while he was in town for the holidays. I used the same 1500 tyranid list I used at the last Ninja Pirates tournament, with the bonded exoskeleton (+1 T) biomorph on the two fexes instead of spine banks and the zoanthropes' psychic scream. Kingsley had his guard army: HQ, anti-tank squad, infantry platoon with three squads, armored fist squad, two sentinels, two leman russes, and storm trooper and veteran squads. I was going to write up a full battle report, but it was really too one-sided to be very interesting. I was almost completely wiped out by the end of the third turn. None of my genestealers survived to assault and most of my big bugs were killed. In retrospect I think I spread my forces too thin across a long front; it might have been better to focus my forces on one side. I probably would have still taken heavy casualties, but then at least a few units might have made it into close combat. Kudos to K’s bug hunters!

We did talk a little about a possible 2000 point comp. Since I’m so eager to get cracking on my Saim Hann army, I don't really want to get any more models for the nids, so I wanted to work with what I currently have: a broodlord, a lictor, an old dakkafex, and five warriors. I also had a few old gargoyles lying around, so I took their wings and pinned them to the backs of the warriors.

They might not look as cool as the newest warrior minis, but the price is right and they'll definitely be more effective than they would be walking or leaping. Also, I want to bring back psychic scream and get rid of the bonded exoskeleton. Since people are normally shooting at the fexes with high strength, low AP guns anyway, the extra toughness doesn't seem to make them that much more survivable to be worth the 40 points. Plus they're usually far enough back to have to worry about mass lasgun fire anyway. And long live the screamer choir!

Here's the first 2000 point list I'll be playtesting:

HQ

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, toxin sacs, enhanced senses, warp field, wings

Broodlord
6 Genestealers - extended carapace

ELITES

Lictor

Carnifex - 2 twin-linked devourers

TROOPS

6 Genestealers - extended carapace

6 Genestealers - extended carapace

6 Genestealers - extended carapace

6 Genestealers - extended carapace

6 Genestealers - extended carapace

FAST ATTACK

3 Tyranid Warriors - scything talons, rending claws, adrenal glands (+1 WS), toxin sacs, wings

3 Tyranid Warriors - scything talons, rending claws, adrenal glands (+1 WS), toxin sacs, wings

HEAVY SUPPORT

3 Zoanthropes - psychic scream, warp blast

Carnifex - venom cannon, barbed strangler, enhanced senses, extended carapace, reinforced chitin

Carnifex - venom cannon, barbed strangler, enhanced senses, extended carapace, reinforced chitin

Tournament: Ninja Pirates 11-18-07

On Sunday I went to another 1500 point tournament at Ninja Pirates, taking along my increasingly painted Tyranid army. After much deliberation I had replaced the two fexes' +1 toughness biomorph with the cheaper +1 wound, and with the 10 points I had left over I gave them spine banks. In retrospect, the extra wound was an excellent choice over the boosted toughness, but the spines were pretty much wasted because most of the time I really don't want enemies to get within 12" of them anyway, and they definitely won't be charging anyone hiding in cover. The zoanthropes' psychic scream also did not have much of an effect in any of these three games, but I'm still not convinced that I should drop it. Usually I keep them hiding in cover, lurking if at all possible, picking off heavy infantry and vehicles when they can. I'd love to give one of them Shadow in the Warp instead, but it's only available to the hive tyrant and I'd have to take away his 2+ save. Given my propensity to jump him out to a forward position and lay into squads with his devourers, as well as the amount of return fire he usually attracts, he needs warp field to stay effective for as long as possible.

So let's just say I drop the spine banks and psychic scream. In return I could put the extra toughness back on the carnifexes, making them more durable but also more expensive (208 points each). Or I could add two genestealers to one of the squads - boooring. I think upgrading the fexes would probably be the better choice (if not the cheesy one), but honestly I still really like scream. Obviously it messes with enemy leadership, but sometimes it also allows me to pre-measure the zoanthropes' big beam shooting range, slightly making up for their irritating BS 3. As far as tournaments go, it may be a moot issue anyway, since Ninja Pirates is moving up to 2000 point tournaments in December (though I won't actually be able to make it to that one). They will also be adding painting scoring as well, so I really need to get cranking on finishing up my yellowjackets. The way things are going it looks like it's going to be late spring before I get the Saim Hann up and running, er, biking. Another question: why shouldn't I put two venom cannons on one of the fexes, and two stranglers on the other? Mixing the guns seems like I'm somehow wasting one type half the time. Two strangler hits on an infantry squad would be awesome, and so would 4 S10 venom shots, even if they can only glance.

Game 1 - Blood Angels - Cleanse

Last time I faced Russell it was at the 'Ardboyz tournament preliminaries, where he was fielding his Imperial Stormtrooper marines using White Scars traits. He has since switched over to the new Blood Angels ruleset, and his 1500 point comp on Sunday included a flying librarian, two large jump assault squads, two Baal predators, two landspeeders, and the inevitable Death Company (7-man squad). I was most afraid of his armored units, each of which could theoretically take out a genestealer squad a turn, and since they were deployed fairly close to the center, I tried to take them out early. One speeder went down to a zoanthrope blast, and the other was destroyed by the hive tyrant's devourer fire. Thanks to a big piece of terrain in the middle and nids' proficiency in moving through cover, several squads of stealers jumped out and rended both tanks to death in the first turn (thankfully, no explosions). He kept one assault squad in his home quarter, and with the other he flew around with the librarian and tried to shoot up a stealer squad that had run into one of the adjacent quarters. The Death Company came streaking out to surprise one of my carnifexes, rending off a limb at a time and leaving him dead before the big guy could strike back. He never had a chance! The blood crazed marines segued into the nearby hive tyrant, so I swarmed them with stealers before they could do the same to him. Once they were quickly disposed of, I moved everyone over to kill the librarian and assault squad. Two more fast-moving stealer squads eventually caught the surviving assault squad in the far corner of his home quarter, but were unable to bring them below scoring before the game was ended. Result: Tyranids win, victorious slaughter.

Game 2 – Eldar – Secure and Control

For the second game I was paired against Ames, who had just earned a slaughter herself against a nurgle chaos force. We only rolled for three objectives, which I think is the lowest number I've ever actually played with before. She picked the side closer to two of the objectives, and set up her two pathfinder squads right on top of them in heavy cover. She also had a lightly armed Autarch (mainly for the extra strategy dice and reserves bonus), a largish squad each of warp spiders and harlequins, three scatter laser war walkers, and two fire prisms. The Autarch paid off and she got first turn, putting a few holes into my fexes and one of my zoanthropes with AP1 fire prism and sniper fire. Unfortunately her units were just too close to my genestealer squads, and a few made it across the board quick enough to catch and rend up the war walkers, warp spiders, and both pathfinder squads. Two of the three War Walkers exploded (always a danger with rending), killing a few genestealers in trade. The Autarch went down under a hail of tyrant devourer fire in my first turn, as did the harlequins in my second turn. One of the carnifexes was eventually finished off by pathfinders and fire prism shooting, but at the end of the game most of my units were intact and I held one objective. Her fire prisms contested the other two, despite the best efforts of my hive tyrant and three squads of stealers. Hiss! Blasted skimmers! Something is just not right about holofields working against assault attacks. Ah, what am I really complaining about? Shut up already! Result: Tyranids win, victorious slaughter.

Game 3 - Tau – Take and Hold

Finally a game against an army with the same shite strategy rating (though for completely different reasons)! For my third and final matchup I was paired against Jay, just like last month, but at this point I probably wouldn't have it any other way. Even though he had made it to the top bracket, he was already a little irritated with his army, which was apparently performing in the precise manner that had caused him to put it in storage lockdown until very recently. He had two 3-man squads of plasma and rocket battlesuits (one with the HQ), another squad of two battlesuits with fusion guns, three units of firewarriors (one with a devilfish), a hammerhead tank, an ion head tank, and a broadside suit with shield drones. I won the first turn roll but elected to go second, partly because I was so used to going second by that point anyway, but mostly as an insurance policy to hopefully allow me to jump surviving units out of cover and into the middle at the last second. The stealer squad attempting to flank his right was wiped out by the various battlesuits and tanks before they could get through their first piece of terrain. The hive tyrant was also brought down in the end, but not before he waxed a battlesuit or two along with a few fire warriors for good measure. The fexes and zoanthropes never made too much of an impact, but two genestealer squads carried the day by charging straight through the center piece of terrain and barely catching one of the suit units just behind it, destroying it and a nearby fire warrior squad over a couple of turns before following up into the broadside. The broadside was really the most challenging foe – he played a big roll in killing the hive tyrant, his shield drones made it extremely difficult for me to shoot him down in return, and he repelled a genestealer squad that literally couldn't rend to save their own lives. The tanks also survived but I had enough scoring units in the middle 12" to grant me a third big win. Result: Tyranids win, victorious slaughter.

I came in first, Robert with his Eldar placed second, and Josef won the morale officer prize. As a side note, the rumors about the 5th edition rulebook (2008?) are flying already, and for Tyranids it looks like the biggest effect will be the changes to rending. With all honesty, after three gratuitous victorious slaughters in which genestealers played the biggest part, I think the changes are a good idea. Skipping the wounding roll was always ridiculous and even the sharpest unpowered claws should not be able to penetrate a goddamn land raider. The changes to skimmers are also welcome for general balance. Forced march, not so much. It sounds a little interesting in theory, but I think it will just add extra confusion to the movement and shooting phases.

Action Report: Tyranids vs. Chaos

My blasted allergies kept me out of the first week of the assault on Terra on Thursday, so I made up for it today by meeting with Rob for a little 1500 point game up at BFG. A host of Thousand Sons marines under the sway of a slaanesh sorcerer searching for lost magicks has stumbled upon the outrunners of a tyranid invasion, and a crappy, decrepit old gryphon statue will soon become the nexus for a battle royale!

I had a winged warp field dakka tyrant, six squads of six genestealers, three zoanthropes with warp blast and psychic scream, and two carnifexes with venom cannons, barbed stranglers, and extra toughness. He had a slaanesh lash sorcerer, three squads of nine Thousand Sons (with sorcerers), and two squads of nine havocs with four lascannons each. Our random mission was Take and Hold alpha.

The cover was a mix of forest area terrain and 4+ ruins and walls. I started most of my shooters on my right behind a big forest with the genestealers lined up along my middle ready to sprint forward. I drew first turn and advanced all the stealers toward his position. Two of the squads hid in cover on my right. Due to some shite distance and line of sight estimates on my part, I wasn't able to get any good shooting in on the first turn. A barbed strangler kill failed to pin one of the havoc squads. He pressed the advantage and creamed three of my stealer squads with his havocs and thousand sons, sending a few survivors fleeing for the hive tyrant on my far right. Another of the squads he lashed backwards, though they passed their pinning test. On my second turn, the lashed squad sprinted back towards the chaos lines, mostly to draw fire away from the big bugs; I realized at this point that all the stealers were going to be AP3'd toast in the end and it was up to the big guys to secure the objective. My zopes moved up and put scream and warp blast pressure on one squad of havocs, while the tyrant and one of the fexes shot up one of the thousand sons squads. In spite of the tyrant inflicting 11 wounds, only of them one fell. However, the zoanthropes and my other gunfex inflicted enough casualties on the havocs to send them fleeing back towards their table edge, unable to regroup. The Thousand Sons barely winced at the casualties and proceeded to double-tap the surviving genestealer squads to death, leaving only two or three stragglers left on the board. His other havoc squad moved out of their terrain piece and moved forward to a better firing position. The tyrant and one of the fexes moved up some more and let fly on the thousand sons again, this time dropping seven of the dusty automatons, leaving only the sorcerer.

On his next turn, he lashed the hive tyrant towards his own position and charged in with one full squad of sons and the leftover sorcerer. Though the Hive Tyrant finished off the straggler, he was killed in the end by the other sorcerer's force weapon (he just barely passed the psychic test due to the psychic scream interference). Scree! Down goes the hive tyrant. His second havoc squad inflicted two wounds on one of my gunfexes and another thousand sons squad finishes off a few remaining genestealers. Mourning the tyrant, the fexes and zoanthropes brought down a few more thousand sons through combined fire. His havocs finished off the wounded carnifex but couldn't inflict any casualties on the other fex or the zoanthropes with his inferno bolts.

On the final turn, my second carnifex charged into the squad of thousand sons that were holding the center. It killed one marine, and a failed "fearless" armor save brought down a second, taking them below scoring capacity. In a last ditch bid for the win, his HQ sorcerer and the last scoring squad of thousand sons charged into the fray with the big beast, but their force weapons were unable to wound it. Instead, it raised up a mighty hoof and squashed one last thousand son taking the last squad below scoring. Victory Tyranids!

This was an awesome game, really a lucky finish for the bugs. I might have deployed everyone more centrally and had a greater number of genestealers survive to assault, but those lascannons would have eaten up my big creatures pretty easily, and the 4+ save on thousand sons makes rending mostly moot anyway. The Tyrant is still my favorite unit in the entire army, and I was once again convinced of the zoanthropes' merits (though they did shoot worse than average in this game). I could switch them out for a third gunfex but I like the variety of tricks.

Some WIP

Recently I broke apart my exorcist and immolator and changed around some parts, putting the missile launchers on the immolator turrets and gothic top armor. After a day or two of pondering my leftovers, I used the old whirlwind launcher axle to hold two heavy bolters to remake the immolator. So above we see the final Exorcist. Here's what they used to look like. Still gotta find a way to bring that banner pole back in. I'm probably going to ditch the immolator entirely when I can get my hands on another set of whirlwind and immolator bits and make a second exorcist similar to this one.

I finally decided to add wings to my hive tyrant, so I broke apart two smaller fex scything talons and stuck them on his back where the two double fin thingies used to be. I think it came out looking pretty insect-like, which is great since I designed the army's look around yellowjackets. I took away his psychic scream and gave him warp field instead to keep the 2+ save. He's expensive but I think more ded kunning overall (this new orks madness is getting to me). Here's another yellow bug army that I found on the nets. I like shiny black armor better but the shaded grey is cool too!

You just can't keep an old fex down, and this guy's proof. Probably the first tyranid model I ever bought, only now he's articulated in something of a running pose, with new fex devourers and armor plates above the arms (without them the new segmented arms looked a little goofy coming out of the fat old body). I kept the tusks I had added to him the last time around, but I won't actually equip him with it in the game. He's just a cheap elite dakkafex to soak up wounds, sit on objectives, and maybe squeeze off a few corrosive larvae himself a time or two.

I also put together my new second sniperfex, dabbed various colors of paint on some genestealer carapaces to differentiate squads, and took a 2000 point mess up to Dragon's Lair on Sunday to have a go at their advertised tournament. Only two other guys showed up about 30 minutes late, and it seemed more like they were just friends coming in to play a casual game. Soooo I took a rain check on the whole shebang. The new 40k coordinator at DL, Kurt, said the Sunday tourney was more like an experiment to see if people would show up, so maybe next time more folks will show up on a Saturday. Whathaveyou. I did see their new drop-down game board, and it was quite an impressive piece of lumber - I think they used like 5 sequoias to make the cabinet. The board itself is a cool ruined highway with two sides perfect to scatter buildings on, which they also had handy.

The evolution continues

With my second place prize at the tournament last weekend I picked up a second carnifex, which I plan on equipping with a venom cannon and barbed strangler. The old screamer killer will go back to the bits box for a while until I put some devourers on him. Slow's ok for gunners but I want my assault units to be quick. That said, I'm going to forget about wings for the hive tyrant for a while and keep him like he is. I had to go down to 6 stealers for the Obeselord's retinue, but that will only make it easier to hide him 12" away from enemies. I also gave him acid maw; theoretically he'll deal 3 wounds on the charge slightly more often but he won't be as good in any subsequent rounds of assault. I just want to play around with it for a game or two.

So here's my newest 1500 list:

HQ

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, toxin sacs, extended carapace, psychic scream

Broodlord - acid maw, 6 genestealers with extended carapace

TROOPS

10 genestealers with extended carapace

10 genestealers with extended carapace

10 genestealers with extended carapace

HEAVY SUPPORT

Carnifex - venom cannon, barbed strangler, extended carapace, enhanced senses

Carnifex - venom cannon, barbed strangler, extended carapace, enhanced senses

3 Zoanthropes - psychic scream, warp blast

Tournament: Ninja Pirates 10-21-07

I played in a standard format 1500 point tournament today at Ninja Pirates. They've been pretty quick to jump in and fill the tournament void (in North Austin at least) with the recent loss of Thor's Hammer just before the Hardboyz Regionals (I should have a late report for that one up in the next day or two).

I took my barely painted Tyranids - dakka tyrant with scream, fatlord with retinue, three squads of ten carapace stealers, three zopes with blast and scream, a fex with talons and tusks, and a sniperfex with a venom cannon and strangler. The combat fex was pretty much worthless the entire game and will have to be swapped out for a second shooty fex at a later date. The scream choir did a few cool things here and there but overall it didn't work well on the particular opponents I drew. I think the dakka tyrant needs wings to be more effective; though it will bring him down to a 3+ save and I'll have to cut 15 points somewhere else, wings will make him much more mobile and dangerous. That being said, without wings he still got his points back in every game today. On his worst round of shooting he inflicted eight saves on one unit. Only eight! I drew three agreeable opponents, played three fun games, and won second place out of 15 or so.

Game 1 - Space Wolves

Trent had a pretty mixed Wolf army: wolf priest, venerable dreadnought, wolf scouts, one squad of grey hunters, two squads of rhino'd blood claws, an exterminator, and a land raider. It was the wolf priest that first stymied psychic scream today, as whenever the tyrant or carnifex would shoot up a squad of marines he was always nearby with the blasted fang of Morkai to ignore the subsequent leadership test. I still think he's overpriced for what he does (give him honor of the chapter and litanies of hate already!), but in this game he kept two squads hanging around almost forever and essentially negated 40 of my wargear points. Later I think he polished off the last wound on the assault fex just to prove that he could, the bastard. Early on I tied up the grey hunters and one blood claws squad with the broodlord and his buddies, while everyone else swarmed the middle to grab objective points. They didn't make much of a dent in the hunters but I think it might have distracted him from getting to the center for several turns afterwards. The exterminator earned its name first turn and took out half of one of the stealer squads, but a glancing 6 from one of the zoanthropes blew it up in the third turn. The punchy fex jumped out of the middle to destroy an oncoming rhino full of blood claws, destroying it and pinning the squad for a while. When they regrouped and jumped a zoanthrope, a squad of stealers rended them all to death before they could even strike back. In the end I had two stealer squads and the sniperfex holding the middle against his venerable dread. Tyranids win, solid victory.

Game 2 - Tyranids

I had faced Joseph before at the Citywide this year, when I was playing guard against his chaos. Now we were pitted into a patrol mission - bugs on bugs FTW. I was a little nervous to see that he had much faster and scythier (?) army than mine: broodlord and retinue, two flying warrior squads, a big line of hormagaunts, and two big genestealer squads. Once again, psychic scream was worth next to nothing. I tried to play my strengths and take advantage of the fact that I had the only guns in the game, setting up most of my units on the flanks and in cover where possible. At first I think he was going to split his force to come after me, but he took some early shooting casualties from my heavily armed right and soon started a conga line with everyone moving back towards my left flank. It was there that two squads of genestealers held off a 32-strong hormagaunt squad and four flying warriors inside a set of ruined fortifications (the "roach motel"). On the third turn, they charged into the forwardmost squad and lost eight of their number right off the bat. They hit back with 72 attacks but only generated five unsaved wounds! Though I had begun the game playing for a draw, I started to think I might have a real chance at pulling out a win. Then his gaunts piled in and engaged a second stealer squad nearby, and over the next few turns my two units slowly ripped the 350 point squad to shreds, fending off a nasty slicey warrior squad that tried to jump in to help. There were only four of my stealers left at the end but neither squad had been entirely wiped out and the enemy roaches had been repelled! The motel was mine! Elsewhere, the hive tyrant and carnifex shot down one of his genestealer squads that had made an isolated dash into my deployment zone, pinning them for two turns until they had all been killed. The zoanthropes also got some more shooting in, and by the last turn only his broodlord team and the second warrior squad were left alive. Tyranids win (me), victorious slaughter.

Game 3 - Deathwing (Dark Angels)

Me and Jay are starting to have something of a rivalry now, as this was the second time we ended up in the top bracket, the second (extremely entertaining) ground-out draw, and the second occasion I've grabbed second place from him by a very small margin. He had Belial and a command squad deployed in a land raider crusader, three squads of five terminators (one deep striking), and a plasma cannon dreadought. While my broodlord and 28 genestealers streaked across on the undefended right side, I left the zopes, carnifexes, one squad of stealers, and the hive tyrant on the left to try to repel his entire army. He had some great rending rolls and the fexes went down fairly early, but not before one of them took his dreadnought out with a glancing six from a venom cannon. The zoanthropes immobilized the land raider, ejecting the command squad but not pinning them (fearless!). Belial and the boys charged in and laid the zoanthropes low. Then for nearly three turns they engaged in a 10-yard stare-off in the middle of cover with a stealer squad, neither unit wanting to charge and go second. The Hive Tyrant moved just close enough to hit Belial and only one of his retinue, and of the eight 2+ saves Jay had to take, he failed four and Belial and his buddy were killed! Amazing. The various terminator squads returned fire, leaving him just barely alive enough to stagger over and kill three more terminators in the command squad! Their once fearsome opponents reduced to a man, the genestealers pounced and killed the remaining model. Then they jumped out, tried to stop one of his other terminator squads from moving into my deployment zone, but could not finish the job and bring them below scoring. It was a draw points-wise, but I had two more units achieving the recon objective than Jay did, and I think that's how I ended up placing above him overall. It was a great game to end the day.

Action Report: Tyranids vs. Chaos 10-15-07

Me and the missus played an extremely fun 1500 point game the other night pitting bugs against new chaos. Incidentally, I think it will be fun to call it new chaos forever. The mission was cleanse. C2’s list included a bike lasher, 10 terminators, 10 berzerkers with a rhino, 10 thousand sons with a rhino, and 10 havocs with a lascannon, missile launcher, and 2 heavy bolters. I played bugs and used a psychic scream dakkarant, three squads of 12 genestealers, 3 squads of 12 gaunts with fleshborers, a sniperfex with a venom cannon and barbed strangler, and 3 zoanthropes with 2 psychic screamers and 1 synapse creature. I think the lists meshed well to create an interesting game but they probably both need a little tweaking (I’ll get to that).

The dakkarant is awesome, like a mobile heavy bolter squad re-rolling hits and wounds. At least three times I inflicted 10 armor saves on various chaos units with the big guy. The fex was hit or miss (hur hur) but when he landed those barbed strangler shots into massed troops it always did some pretty good damage. The infernal thousand sons can and did decimate genestealers at short range; I’ll have to remember to watch out for that. Probably the most interesting elements of the game were the bike lasher and the psychic scream choir. The sorcerer kept a large genestealer squad at bay for the entire game just by himself and it really weakened my whole approach on that particular side. On the last turn, after confirming that lash can indeed move monstrous creatures, she almost kept me out of one of the adjacent quarters by pushing the hive tyrant 8 inches back (a squad of genestealers was barely able to sneak in right at the end and keep it). The multiple approaching psychic screamers made powers and other important leadership tests (target priority, pinning) increasingly difficult, and that coupled with the fact that C2 was rolling pretty poorly for the entire game ensured the Tyranid win. I was able to wipe out the havocs and thousand sons entirely, plus half of the berzerkers, losing two gaunt and two genestealer squads in the process. If I remember correctly, I believe controlling the two adjacent quarters gave me a crushing victory rather than a solid or a draw.

While I was impressed with how new chaos held up to the bug advance, I don’t know how good of an all-comer list it really is. I might drop some squad sizes down a tad (havocs, berzerkers) and change the havocs gun loadout to try and fit in an obliterator or two just for more high strength, low AP weaponry. I’m changing up the tyranid list also, mainly to excise the pointless gaunts, but also take the 3 genestealer squads down to 10 (or maybe 5 squads of 6?), add a broodlord and retinue, and a second carnifex with talons, tusks, and carapace. Without the gaunts I really don’t see a reason to have a second synapse creature in the zoanthropes, since everyone’s Ld 10 and all but the genestealers will likely stay in range of his bubble, as he’ll be hiding behind carnifexes until he gets into shooting range anyway. Just one more scream to add to the choir!

Some weekend work

I made a few conversions today after tweaking my 14th Tiefwalder Combined Arms regiment list. The main list change was replacing both the 3 sentinels' lascannons and the fire support team's heavy bolters with autocannons. I switched out the storm bolters on the Chimeras for hunter killer missiles, added a heavy stubber gunner to the hellhound, and switched out the meltagun in the command HQ for a grenade launcher.

I adapted a few backpacks for my veteran squad and created a vet sergeant with the legs and torso from a vehicle sprue, catachan arms, and genestealer upgrade sprue (extended carapace shoulder pads and scything talon knife). He also has a genestealer skull on his belt and a toothed bolter (from a Space Wolves accessory sprue). I envision him as the sole survivor of a different Tiefwalder regiment wiped out by an encounter with my own splinter fleet. The 14th itself has not yet faced tyranids and hopefully "Patch" will give me some good juju going into such a battle.

I've also been working on the hive tyrant's paint job. He's in the final highlighting stages now. I finished the lictor and after going over lightly with 90:10 white:yellow highlights, I went back and applied the same look to the prototype genestealer and gaunt. It improved their appearance quite a bit so I continued on with the tyrant. Now I'm considering using some ultra-thin ink pens to add scores of tiny black spots in the yellow just around the solid black armored areas. I need to go pick up the pens this week.

Vivax Revisited #3

Excited about the psychic scream choir I’m building into Splinter Fleet Vivax, I refreshed myself on all things leadership. I couldn’t remember whether leadership was a kind of morale check or vice versa; fortunately it’s the other way around and all morale checks are specific types of leadership tests. That means those negative modifiers should work wonders when the enemy gets shot up, defeated in assault, whittled down to the last man, takes pinning tests from barbed strangler kills (yessss), or tries to shoot at the warriors or zopes hiding behind the mass gaunts. Even fearless troops have to worry about being pinned and subsequently rended.

Today I realized I actually over-counted the number of genestealers I own when making my last list, and was pleased to find that removing two from the broodlord’s retinue freed up enough points to give the sniperfex (ordered and on his way!) the reinforced chitin and bonded exoskeleton biomorphs. Sure, he would cost 208 points, but what a bad motherfucker! He’s got one pinning S8 AP5 large blast shot, two S10 AP4 shots, toughness 7, and 5 wounds. At initiative 1, I suppose his weakness would be powerfists, but if someone manages to maneuver an expensive multiple powerfist squad into a swarm of high-initiative rending bugs to get at him, they’re more than welcome to hack away at the big fella (I think I’m gonna call him Bumble). It’s also nice to have a smaller squad with the broodlord, as it will make things easier when I’m trying to infiltrate them behind cover 12” away from an enemy.

I painted up one trial genestealer and gaunt over the last couple of evenings, just to see how my paint scheme was going to come out. Here they are:




These are early versions, though, as I still want to brighten the yellow as well as add various black markings to certain skin areas to differentiate squads and give them more of a yellowjacket look. The gloss on the carapace is GW’s gloss varnish, which is really nasty looking stuff while it’s in the jar, but I definitely liked the finished effect. It does dry out pretty quickly, so I’m going to have to water it down more in the future. After I finish these, I've only got 97 more models to go!

Vivax Revisited #2

After some thoughtful consideration and a few tips from the 40k Online Tyranid forum, I've changed up my 2000 point tyranid list a bit, and I completed necessary conversions on 8 genestealers (used to have scything talons) and the dakka tyrant today. Now I need 2 more zoanthropes, a new plastic carnifex, and one more Macragge set of bugs.

The main point of this list will be to busy the opponent with 86 gaunts and genestealers while the scream choir/dakka elements move up and start "encouraging" reduced leadership checks. The sniperfex and zopes try to bring down mobile armor as they advance. I'm really excited about the first time I'll get to shoot with the tyrant. 12 twin-linked shots at BS 4, S5, AP5 that reroll to hit and to wound