Great Friday

I got in a couple of games at the house yesterday with Thomas. We decided that the chance to sit down, eat snacks, and swill Mt. Dew was worth more than full sized tables and fancy terrain; so we played at my place instead of the local GW store. Thomas brought over his Necrons, Orks, and some Tyranids so that I could borrow bugs instead of always proxying. I'm still trying to figure out what type of list that I want to get good with. The bigger TMC's are the ones that I'm leery of buying when I don't know if they are going to work out. I picked up a Trygon with the GW gift card and then bits ordered a Carnifex and some warriors. I have a few lists that I'm trying out and the games against Thomas are a great chance to test things out in a more stable environment then a standard pick up game at the store.
My concerns are mainly around the Carnifex, Mawloc, and other questionable picks. Some of the TMC's look good on paper and others don't. I've never really been into all of the interwebs hype and TheoryHammer so I like to run things on the field to get a feel for how I do with them.


Our first game was 1500 points with Thomas driving Necrons. We rolled for annihilation and I asked if he would be ok with a different mission. I'm not going to get a good idea if all our games are kill points. We decided to do a Capture and Control mission and then rolled Table Quarters for the deployment. His list was something like:

Nightbringer
Lord - Orb, phase shifter, phylactery
3 x 10 Warriors
5 Pariahs
Monolith


I used a mix of units that I've put in lists from the beginning as well as a couple that I hadn't. The real change was using a Hive Tyrant since I was able to burrow Thomas's. My list was something like this:

Hive Tyrant - Heavy Venom Cannon, Hive Commander, Life Leech, Paroxysm
1 Tyrant Guard
10 Termagants
Tervigon - Catalyst
10 Genestealers - Broodlord, Implant attack
3 warriors - Death Spitters, Barbed Strangler
2 Zoanthropes
Mycetic Spore "Mikey"
Deathleaper
6 Ymgral Genestealers
Trygon Prime


After my last game with Regeneration on the TMC's I figured that I'd try going without it this game. I found that even on the bigger monstrous creatures it really didn't do that much. Playing with the numbers was a little tricky this time since I was using the Tyrant.

I have decided that in these early days where I'm toying around with the different units I really wouldn't put up battle reports. Especially when I'm going to be plowing through a couple of games a day. Instead I'll be putting down my thoughts of how the units worked with each other and how I want to try and use them in the future. I'm not a big fan of doing the whole unit by unit breakdown thing. If you're looking for those there are a multitude of other blogs that can give you that. I'm going to work with the nuts and bolts of how I play each one and how they worked together. Hopefully this will get more refined as I try and build a competitive list for myself and start looking at the tournament scene. My goal is to hopefully have a chance of going to Conquest NW next year and do fairly well. It's not the going that I need to be hopeful for it's the doing well so, We shall see.

In the 1500 point game there were a couple of big lessons. First and foremost, if anyone was wondering, you must Shoot Nightbringer. Since the objective of the game was home base control I started throwing everything that wasn't a troop at the beast. Nightbringer floored a Trygon Prime in one round of combat after it sustained a couple of wounds while slithering up to him. Nightbringer then killed a fresh Tyrant and it's guard in two rounds of combat. He is just too much of a pain with it's wounding on 2's and no Invulnerable save on my TMC's to try and go hand to hand with. Any time I see him on the table he will be shoot and nothing else. I tried to get the Genestealers with Lord to him but since they were the only thing that "death" was afraid of the Stealers were target number one for all Gauss fire. Implant attack would have ruined the Nightbringers day so the stealers weren't much for this world.

Ymgral Stealers would have been cool except for the fact that they showed up one turn before the Monolith and an ordnance blast has a way of making them melt.

This game was another chance for me to try and down the 'lith with the brain bugs. Zoanthropes are becoming more and more a once in a life time kill for me. In the last two games that I've shot at the monolith they have yet to destroy it. Two Zoanthropes are just not strong enough to do it with any precision. It may just be me, I don't know. I just can't get a good shot in with all the rolls required to get there. This doesn't mean that I'll stop fielding them though. They are still the best chance I have against Land Raiders and Monoliths. I'd rather have some chance instead of no chance. They also have the AP3 blast which makes Marines melt. I should learn to stop shooting at the monolith and start melting Necron Warriors instead.

The Tervigon in the game had a chance to make two units of Gants. This was the first time that I'd used it's ability since it wasn't annihilation. I rolled doubles on the second roll but that was still enough wounds on my home objective to ensure that it was pretty safe. I don't think that I'll ever run more than one Tervigon since I don't actually have that many gant models.

Those were the major lessons for the first game. I'll have to make sure that I don't repeat mistakes in the future.


Our second game was 1000 points against Orks. Thomas decided to go for an all foot horde. His list was surely not the most optimum, but gave me a chance to see how the bugs would do against more wounds. I told Thom that I needed to try and figure out how to use Deathleaper the right way. All the games so far have not been great as he was concerned. Thom wanted to do something a little different so he let me take Leaper for free and he took a unit of Lobbas for free. The idea was to see how it would work for the "attack the back" maneuver. Funny thing Leaper didn't come in till turn four. Oh well.

Thomas played a list like this:

Warboss - Cybork body
5 Mega Nobz
2 x 30 shoota boyz
30 Ard Boyz

4 Lobbas with a bunch of Grots (free)

For my list I wanted to try and get away from some of the units that I had been playing and move on to something a little different, but not too much. Instead of the Tervigon and Gants I took this list:

Tyranid Prime - Lash whip/Bone Sword, Death Spitter, Regeneration
4 Warriors - Death Spitters, Barbed Strangler
2 x 10 Genestealers - Brood Lord, Implant attack
2 Zoanthropes
Mikey
Carnifex - Bioplasma

Deathleaper (free)

This mission was Seize ground and Dawn of war deployment. I put the Prime and warriors on the table and infiltrated a unit of Stealers. The other unit was Outflanking and everything else was normal. Thomas started with the Boss and Manz and a unit of shoota boyz. I let him take first turn.

The biggest lesson from this game is that the Broodlord with implant will ALWAYS be in my stealer units. The next big lesson was that if I get the charge on a 30 shoota boy unit I will crush them, if 30 Ard Boyz get the charge on my stealers there is no hope for the stealers.

The infiltrating unit of stealers set up the assault on a mob of shotta boyz and in two turns the Orks were gone. The same unit then assaulted the Boss and Manz in the next turn and implant attacked the warboss. By the end of the phase the manz were dead and the only one left was the Broodlord. They totally made their points back, if that was how I was counting it.

All in all it was pretty cool day. Played some good games, got some substitute bugs, and had a bunch of laughs.

Until Next time.

Tim.


P.S. Still don't really know how to use Leaper...