Long Overdue update, and Tyranid thoughts.

So it's time for a long overdue update.  Unfortunately I hadn't been doing much table top over the last little while, I've done more board games with the family and some MOBAs like League of Legends and SMITE, but luckily that is changing.  The local store in the Michigan Sault has a decent sized group running, and while they have been more Fantasy oriented, they are running a 40k escalation league (not super heavy Escalation) over the next few months that is geared to be a paint and play league.  So that means more games.

The bad news, my Dark Eldar army is vast and about 75% painted, so I wanted to do something different and build/paint to a ridiculous scheme.  So I'm breaking out the Chaos Space Marines, technically it will be a counts as Black Legion army painted in a Dragon Warriors paint scheme using lots of walkers and warpsmiths.    I've got a couple test minis that I will upload this week, a cultist and hellbrute; hopefully the camera can pick up the scale details.

So this past weekend, I went across to play a warm up games and picked up the new Tyranid codex.  I was excited about this, the Tyranid kits are all awesome to put together and paint, and looked forward to seeing some viable non-Doom lists.  Boy was I disappointed; almost everything in the book took a nerf.  I don't get it, an underpowered book became more underpowered, and while a lot of things saw points reductions, it was offset by increased upgrade costs.

Tyranids, brought to you by Raid!

So I'll start with the things I did like in the book.

• Sporemines: the player actually moves the spore mines now.  They move and assault, and explode when they get into assault.  I love this, it reminds me of the 3rd edition Scarabs.  Better still, other mines hit by the blast aren't wasted now, they add to the strength of the initial blast.  This makes running them down with tanks a bit scarier.
• Harpy: This mostly ties into the point above, because it can drop spore mines all game now.  I double checked and it doesn't seem to be once per game spore mine bombs, correct me if I'm wrong.  Also it's an actual bombing run now.
• DeathLeaper: Overall, worse or equal to what he was before, but it adds some nice variety by putting him into the HQ slot.  Interesting point, he can only ever be shot with snapfire, so no flamers(why didn't all Lictors get this?); now if you have to snapfire your Overwatch will that mean that you cannot overwatch with your flamers?

On the fence.

• General points reduction: Good and bad, instead of targeting the units that needed the points reduction to make them viable compared to other choices, looking at you Carnifex, they just reduced everything so units that were overpriced compared to the rest of the Force Org choices are still overpriced.  The swarm will get even swarm-ier now with gaunts seeing a 1 pt reduction.
• New units: I'll give a nod to the fact that they added some new units.  Nice to see, but they seemed too forced either thematically, or visually.  
• Haruspex has rules that seem to fit with the existing tyranid theme, but the model seems a little too forced.  
• Exocrine on the other hand, looks awesome, but while the model screams 'BIG BIOVORE' he ends up being something else.  
• Hive Crone has a bit of both, the model seems a little clunky, and the rules don't really mesh to make it seem like part of the lean, world devouring Nids.  I think the hyper-evolution experienced a hiccup here, it was supposed to be anti-air, but then someone gave it a flamer?
• Tervigon: Got nerfed really hard, as expected, but no upgrades to bring it back.  Need 30 gaunts to make them troops, no more giving gaunts the benefit of Tervigons biomorphs, Master Level 1 and no option to increase that.  The last one is probably the worst, I would gladly have paid 30-50 pts to make him mastery level 2, it makes it much tougher to get the FNP gaunts now.  These aren't the force multipliers they were for the swarms, I think they will be seen less and less on the table.

The bad.

• Genestealers: No points reduction, worse Broodlord powers, no new tricks to get into assault and there were so many easy outs; give all Broodlords the option to buy the Ymgarl artefact, give them an invuln save vs. overwatch, allow them to assault from outflank.  These guys needed something, everyone wants to see the genestealers again.  Space Hulk and genestelaer cults, they are as much a core theme in the game as Space Marines.  These guys are what would have sold the Tyranid army and they missed the boat, a big boat full of money.  Lets hope we get some sort of supplement that helps these guys out.
• Old One eye:  Moved to HQ, awesome, doing nothing to make Carnifex in the army better as an HQ, not so awesome.  Being a worse 'Old One Eye' than the new Haruspex? absolute joke.  So the theorycrafted reason to take OOE before was the crazy regen, but now he regens just the same as anyone else, so with the addition of the regain a wound in combat of the Haruspex they have better regen than OOE.
• Warrior Prime still no wings:  So the removal of the Parasite seemed like a great reason to give the Prime access to wings and let him run with a Shrike brood to make awesome 'big gargoyles'.  But he was pretty much a cut and past from the last book.
• Zoanthropes: I know the change needed to happen, 3 individual psykers in a unit made for a lot of book keeping, but I'm not sold on the brother hood of psykers.  I don't think there is enough return on investment to take more than 1.
• Biovores: Biovores are still great, and the new spore rules are awesome, but I dislike that Biovores are worse with bigger broods.  Here's the issue, the new spore mine launcher determines where the "first template" will land, and if it does not hit anything you place a D3 spore mines.  So 3 biovores can potentially get 1 spore mine, while 1 biovore(or harpy) could get 3 spore mines.  When I first read through I thought it was d3 per biovore, and many will likely see that, but after re-reading it a few times, it was much more underwhelming.

Overall, somehow GW managed to convince us to buy less models with the new Nid book, and with so many little nerfs made the combined army so underwhelming that I think the bugs will continue to live in the closets and dark corners like true insects.

Hit and Run

So, in going over all the Tyranid hoopla, I was struck with an idea. The biggest weakness to alot of the units seem to be Synapse. So I was thinking of using an old Third edition trick in a new way.

In previous editions, the enemy didn't always get a counter movement when you assaulted them. So it was important to choose when and where you assaulted a unit. It's one of those skills that is lots on alot of players who didn't play in previous editions. However, it may again prove useful.


Here's my generalized thought. Using a Hit and Run unit, pick an enemy unit near the edge of synapse range, assault the model farthest out of synapse try and keep as far back as you can, don't assault far into the unit. They will have to counter move towards you.

Once you have them pulled away, if you have gotten them out of Synapse, great, against a feeding unit, hit and run out, and make them move that much further out of synapse.

Otherwise, you wait till the end of the opponents assault phase, and hit them again if they are still in synapse.

Once the unit is out of Synapse range, they should be easier to deal with, you can pin or sweep the unit as you have available. This is also useful to get units away from the buff/debuff units like Tervigons and Hive Tyrants

Of course, that brings us to the biggest problem with the strategy, our only Hit and Run unit are Hellions, and Lords who join them don't gain the ability. So we may be wanting to keep another unit close to help back them up.

How to put the RAID in your Raiders

So the new book has hit, and they are full of new creatures, and changes to lots of the old creatures. Regardless of my opinion on the book, the important part is how do I deal with them with my Dark Eldar army.

First, the Dark Eldar rely on movment, and high initiative to win, with a good spread of high strength weapons. So first we need to identify what can threaten those strengths.

Although they've gotten greater access to deep strike, and infiltrate, overall the Nid army isn't much faster than it was before, probably more flyers, but less 12" chargers, so we shouldn't have to worry about movement and speed. If you've already gotten used to the Marine drop pod armies, then the spore pods shouldn't be a big issue, just be sure to hit them with a Dark Lance, they can pack some decent weapons and you don't want that surprise later.

What we do have to worry about is high initiative, virtually all of the Tyranids have access to Adrenal Glands, which grants Furious Charge. Combined with alot of 4 and 5 initiative values means that we have to avoid being charged. To add to the pain, a number of models can gain access to Lash Whips, which can reduce the intiative of all models in base contact to 1. This is going to bring up an argument vs anyone with drugs that 'always go first', I'm of the mind they will cancel each other out.

The drawback the nids really took in the teeth, is most units lost access to grenade type upgrades, and they are succeptible to instant death again. So assaulting into cover they are going last, or at the same time with lash whips, and a well placed Dark Lance shot means a very dead 3 wound warrior.

What does all of this mean for my tactics? Choose your targets when assaulting, use Dark Lances on units with extreme prejudice, and hide in cover and wait for them to come to you.

That being said, there are a few oddities that stand out and need their own priority.

• First among these is likely the Tervigon, who is a large breeding pit. This guy will likely be surrounded by termagaunts, and spawning more. He gives bonuses to all the termagaunts around him, so trying to assault him will be difficult, your best bet is consider him a vehicle and make him a primary Dark Lance target.
  

• Second is the Swarmlord. This is basically a Hive Tyrant(check some of their issues below) with 4 Bonesabres. The problem with him, is his swords inflict instant death and force you to re-roll any successful invulnerable saves, and give him a 4+ invulnerable save. This means he's a big problem for your wyches, wych lords, and shadow fields especially. If he has a couple Tyrant Guard, expect them to be sporting Lash Whips. The good thing is he is slow, so either avoid them, or shoot them.

• Hive Tyrants are as good as they were before, but aren't quite as bad as the Swarmlord. They do have a few new tricks that can be problematic though. The most annoying being Paroxysm, which is a psychic shooting attack that reduces a units WS or BS to 1. This means he can very effectively neurtralize the Warrior snipers, and make combat much harder for some squads. If you use the goblet of spite regularly, then you won't have much to worry about, otherwise hit him with multiple units and bring him down. Also watch out for Leech Essence, another psychic shooting attack that inflicts a D3 S3 AP2 wounds, that heal the Tyrant. All of that in addition to being able to fire 2 weapons plus a flame weapon from the thorax means may not want to get too close.
  

• While it may not seem bad at first, the Parasite of Mortrex can cause some real issues if it manages to hit our low toughness warriors. We can very quickly end up outnumbered by ripper swarms that weren't even on the original list. Again, high initiative, multiple wounds, but only T4, so Dark Lances and Blasters are great.

• Last bit of hurt I'd like to address is the Broodlord. Sure, he's basically a glorified genestealer seargent now, but it's one of his psychic powers that are hurtful. Hypnotic Gaze. Basically it works similar to the Eldar Mind War, but the brood lord has to select a model in base contact with the Broodlord, and if he rolls higher on the combined D6+Ld, the selected model cannot attack in the following assault phase. That means when you are moving your guys into assault, again, pick where your Sybarites and Succubi are.

Beyond that, it's standard slaving with the rest of the bugs. Shoot the little ones, use Agonizers on the big ones. There are some other threats you can read about elsewhere, like the lance Zoanthropes, but the Str 10 shot was plenty on us before, so it's not as big a deal for us.

Good luck breaking the bugs, the first of my bug slaves are sure to go under a giant magnifying glass in the sun.

Feel free to share any experiences against the new Nid Codex, hopefully I'll have some soon.