Victory Pointless

After a longish period of being too busy to do much Warhammering, I’m back with a new army – Tyranids this time.  Did I really need another heavily H.R. Giger-inspired xenos faction after Necrons?  Yes.  Yes, I did.

The Armies

Tyranids – Invasion Fleet – 1000pt: Neurotyrant, Norn Emissary, Screamer Killer, Psychophage, 10 Termagants, 10 Hormagaunts, 5 Barbgaunts, 5 Genestealers, 2 x 1 Ripper Swarm.

Dark Angels – Gladius Task Force – 1000pt:  Azrael, Gravis Captain, 3 Aggressors, 5 Deathwing Knights, 2 x 5 Hellblasters, Redemptor Dreadnought

The Mission

We were using the Leviathan deck and pulled Supply Drop with a Search and Destroy deployment.  Dark Angels won the roll off and took first turn.

Turn 1

The Dark Angels began to slowly make their way out of their deployment zone.  A few pot-shots took a couple of wounds off the Norn but otherwise did no serious damage.

I advanced the Tyranids across the board, occupying the central objective.  Shooting killed a Hellblaster and then the Hormagaunts got off a charge and killed a few more of them.

Dark Angels: 0
Tyranids: +5 (Area Denial)

Turn 2

The Aggressors moved out on one flank, the Deathwing Knights on the other.  A round of shooting from Azrael’s Hellblaster unit and the Dreadnought hit the Norn and brought it down to a single wound.  The Dreadnought then charged into combat with the Hormagaunts and picked up a handful.  The Aggressors took out most of the Termagants brood in a hail of bolt shells and frag grenades.

The Termagants regenerated, moved onto the left-hand objective, then foolishly charged the Aggressors and were wiped out without doing any damage.  On the other flank, the Genestealers moved onto the objective but didn’t charge the nearby Deathwing Knights.  A brave Ripper swarm did, got mushed and then allowed them to consolidate onto the objective.  Dumb Rippers.  In the centre the injured Norn Emissary braved a hail of overwatch fire to charge into the second squad of Hellblasters, killing them all and almost taking out Azrael himself before finally being cut down by the Dark Angels’ Chapter Master.  The Screamer Killer charged into the Redemptor Dreadnought, killing it but causing an explosion that also engulfed the nearby Hellblasters and Hormagaunts.

Dark Angels: 0
Tyranids: 5 + 5 (Primary)

Turn 3

The Aggressors and Barbgaunts exchanged fire, the Barbgaunts coming out of it the worst but slowing the Aggressors.  The Deathwing Knights trampled the Genestealers and secured their hold on the right-hand objective, taking only a single wound from an exploding spore mine for their trouble.  Azrael cut down the Screamer Killer and the last Hellblaster killed the last Hormagaunt.

The Psychophage and Neurotyrant, starting to feel a little lonely, moved up into the centre of the board and together managed to finally bring down Azrael with their mind bullets.  The Psychophage charged into and ate the final Hellblaster, denying an Engage on All Fronts secondary.

Dark Angels: 0 + 10 (Primary) + 5 (Secure No-Man’s Land)
Tyranids: 10 + 5 (Primary) + 3 (Defend Stronghold)

Turn 4

The Shadow In The Warp fell over the battlefield.  The Aggressors failed their battleshock test, which didn’t matter as the alpha objective they were on vanished anyway.  The Knights passed and held theirs, however.  The Barbgaunts were wiped out by the Aggressors.

The Psychophage and Neurotyrant took up defensive positions around the key central objective, looking to hold off the assault that would inevitably come next…

Dark Angels: 15 + 8 (Primary)
Tyranids: 18 + 8 (Primary)

Turn 5

The central omega objective became the sole scoring objective remaining and the Aggressors and Terminators charged in in a pincer movement, killing the Psychophage and managing to toe in to the central objective, seeking to deny it to the Tyranids.

However, fire from the Neurotyrant and Biovore managed to kill the Aggressors on the objective, meaning that the Neurotyrant managed to just hold on to the central objective 3 OC to 2.

Dark Angels: 23 + 10 (Paint)
Tyranids: 26 + 15 (Primary) + 10 (Paint)

Final Result: Tyranid Victory, 51 to 33.

Post Mortem

This was my first game in 9 months, and my opponent’s first game in 20 years, so this was more of a (re-)learning game for both of us than anything ultra-competitive.  I think quite a few rules mistakes got made on both sides.  So, it’s probably unwise to draw too many conclusions about particular units’ performance based on this game.  But I’m going to do it anyway:

• The bggest rules mistake we made was to do with discarding secondaries.  I *thought* you could discard secondaries for free but we couldn’t find it in the rules, so we didn’t play that way.  Turns out, you can, it’s just that particular rule is in the ‘Begin the Battle’ section rather than the bit on secondary missions.  Great rules placement there, GW, very helpful, THANKS A LOT.  Indeed, a general complaint I have coming back and re-learning how to play is how incredibly badly organised the rules are.  Even when I know a rule exists and just want to review the exact wording it is *never* in the section I would expect it to be in.  Trying to look stuff up quickly on the fly is a no-go.  This is without even going into the fact that the rules you need to know to play are spread out over a dozen different rulebooks, codices, cards, leaflets, supplements and balance updates…
• My biggest tactical blunder was charging in with the Termagants and Rippers.  I forgot that consolidating onto objectives was a thing, so this just resulted in two wiped units and gifted my opponent two objectives a turn earlier than he might otherwise have gotten onto them.
• I also could have made better use of my deployment advantage – having more units meant I could take control of the match-ups.  In hindsight the Barbgaunts would have been better Vs the Deathwing Knights – they lack guns to shoot back and -2 movement is a big deal to Terminators.  I could have kept them bogged down by Barbgaunts and spore mines and instead of wasting Genestealers on them sent those up the other flank to put more pressure on the objective on that side.  I also forgot the Genestealers have a scout move which may have helped.
• Tyranids are squishy.  Most of our units die to a strong breeze and even the big beefy stuff like the Norn went down surprisingly easily.
• Tyranids are not Necrons (specifically, ‘Gaunts are not Necron warriors).  My general game-plan was to try to tie up my opponent’s scary stuff with chaff units letting the big bugs pick and choose their targets.  This sort of worked with the Hormagaunts but in general the aforementioned squishiness meant that my attempted tar-pits evaporated pretty much instantly.  Even though they can be regenerated with a stratagem, by the time you want to use it they are likely below half strength and if out of synapse are likely to be battleshocked, meaning they then can’t be targeted by said stratagem, so it’s nowhere near as reliable as Reanimation Protocols.  I don’t think the approach itself is a non-starter, but it needs more investment (i.e. more Hormagaunts) and more synapse support.
• Tyranids (or at least, the ones in this list) also aren’t particularly heavy-hitters.  I didn’t have much firepower, and against the Deathwing Knights and Agressors I didn’t really feel like I had anything that could hit them hard enough in melee to not get instantly deleted in the counter-attack and for the trade to be worth it.  Consequently I spent the whole game trying to keep anything I cared about as far away from these units as possible while occasionally feeding them chaff to slow them down but without any real hope of doing serious damage to them.  I’m intentionally going quite melee-heavy in this army because that feels more Tyraniddy (and Necrons are my ‘shooty’ army), but maybe I need an Exocrine or Tyrannofex or something to give me some decent ranged threat and to counter tanky but short-range units like these.
• The advantage Tyranids *do* have, especially in this matchup, is manoeuvrability and speed.  I think this is what won the game for me – I managed to seize the key central objective and push beyond it quickly to lock most of the opposing army in their own deployment zone.  It does come with some challenges though – while most things in the army are fairly fast everything has a different base speed so my carefully constructed synapse/Neuroloid/FNP aura formation fell apart pretty rapidly.
• I was also lucky with the mission.  I had no realistic chance of capturing those side objectives, so it was convenient that they just popped out of existence in the later turns.
• As documented previously with my efforts using Necron Scarab Swarms, I like the idea of nuisance units, but I don’t feel like I’m using them effectively.  I never found a use for the Ripper Swarms and while Spore Mines did one mortal on a Terminator and made their charges slightly longer, they didn’t actually prevent any.  Single bases of these things just aren’t big enough to move block effectively.  If Engage On All Fronts or similar had come up it may have been worth taking them, but it didn’t.  I may swap the Rippers for some Neurogaunts – more board presence and some actual OC would have been far more useful.
• I need more CP.  Invasion Fleet has some really great stratagems but whenever I had a good opportunity to use them, I was… Command Pointless (roll credits).  I may need to add a Hive Tyrant and/or Swarmlord to the army, I think.