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| Miniwargaming |
"Dear Kirby,
I always read your forum, and I found it incredibly usefull to learn to tricks and strategy to use in my 40k games.
Since it's tyranid week, I would like to submit you the list the I brought to the last Throne of Skull, where I won 5 games out of 5. There were other 2 players who never lost: an Imperial Guard, and a Space Wolf with a big thunderwold unit (and 2 priests with JotW).
The point of my list was using one of my favourite models: the Warriors. I had 5 of them armed with deathspitters, since they were so good in the previous codex.
HQ
Prime - Dual Boneswords, ST
E
2 x 2 Hive Guard
1 Venomthrope
T
4 Warriors - Deathspitters, Barbed Strangeler
3 Warriors - Deathspitters, Barbed Strangeler
3 Warriors - Devourers, Barbed Strangeler
FA
3 Shrikes - Bonesword & Lash Whip, ST, Toxin Sacs
HS
Tyrannofex - Rupture Cannon
Trygon
Mawloc
tot. #1500
The tactic is pretty straightforward: Use the T-Fex as a big mobile wall (I use the forgeworld Barbed Hierodule as a model), with Prime + Venomthrope hiding behind it (a small unit, easy to hide, T5 from shooting and lash whip from the venomthrope); The trygon/ mawloc are close enough to have 5+ cover save, and Hive Guard and Shrikes are hiding behind them as well.
The second unit of Hive Guard is deployed in a way to be able to shoot and be hidden from enemy fire at the same time. The Mawloc appears behind enemy line on turn 2 to pressure the enemy and attract enemy fire (with T6 and 6 wound is pretty tough to take down), allowing the rest of my army to move forward. The Shrikes and Trygon should be in combat by turn 3, leaving big holes in the enemy battleline; The Shrikes are weak to enemy fire, so I was moving them carefully and slowly behind the trygon, until the right moment to strike. Flying will allow you to go over tank/ horde bubbles, allowing you to strike the best target.
The warrior were my objective scoring unit; with no S8 weapon aiming at them, the turned out to be pretty resilient (from shooting and in CC). The Barbed Stranglers were added for crowd control, since I had no other way to kill large enemy units. Of course the list is not perfect, since it needs 2 more Hive Guards, while the unit of warrior should be all armed with Devourers and be 3 "man" strong, but I didn't want to buy/build/paint the required units.
I played against (in this order):
Space Wolf - killing point and he had a lot of rhino/razorback, which I was popping 2 a turn. He was no expert of playing against nids, so he didn't target my HG.
Tyranid - I forgot that Malantai as also S equal to the number of wounds (and not only the shooting attack), and it killed in CC one of my warrior units. Luckily, the game continued till turn 7, so I had time to move a second unit of Warrior over an objective. Prime killed the enemy Hive Tyrant, using his ID Bonsewords.
Dark Eldar - Incredibly nice game, very close till the end. He went very aggressive with a portal in a 2 objective scenario, and he went all up instead of leaving a scoring unit in his side of the battlefield (in that case it would be a draw). It was my first game against a DE player (and I largely learned what to except from your articles ;) ), but I didnt expect the razorwing to be so killy (5 attacks, 5 wounds and rending??????????). They were the only thing that managed to kill my Tyrannofex (in 5 games)...
Eldar - My HG/T-fex got lucky, and managed to immobilize all of the enemy tanks (even if rolling 2 dice on the damage chart). And Eldar with no mobility is a dead eldar [cit. required]. Nice point: Eldrad (and his farseers unit) managed to kill both the Trygon and the Mawloc in CC (I got very unlucky trying to hit them).
Ultra Smurfs - very nice player, very balanced game, but it was at kill point, so I managed to make more damage than he did. Shrikes wiped the enemy honor guard, after playing Hide and Seek for 4 turns.
Other lucky shots I had: I had to play against the Space Wolf thunderwolf player in game 4, but I was switched to the Eldar player (since people already played each other), and I had to play against the unbeated IG as well, but I was switched again (I hate hate hate hate IG).
Cheers,
Stefano
p.s.
Sorry if I made any writing mistakes, but english is not my mother langauge."
Stefano, glad you did well with your Tyranids but not sure what you want here? List critique? I'll gladly do that so let's break it down.
Even though you won five games I feel your list is pretty weak. I like your HQ, Elites and some of your Heavy Support but your Troops will simply die to S8+ firepower. If I was playing against you in an objective game I wouldn't bother trying to down the T-Fex/Trygon but rather delay them with moving tanks, drop all your Warriors quickly and then move on from there. This can be great for the Tyranid player except the rest of your units are all pretty small and mostly MC based. What this means is you have nothing to really draw bolter fire away from say your Hive Guard/Venomthrope which will get wounds through at some point and nothing to swamp your enemy with.
With this in mind what I'd do is drop the Mawloc (it's shiny and disruptive but an expensive and weak MC which gives you a S6 blast) and probably the shrikes and look to get Genestealers/Hormies. These add to your numbers and add to your Troop count whilst increasing your combat punch. I'd also look to get some combat upgrades on the Warriors, even if it was just Lash Whips or Toxin Sacs, these guys can be quite scary. Deathspitters are nice in their way but also not really needed but they do give some nice ranged anti-infantry punch, I'd just prefer these guys to be running every turn. If you have them modelled that way though, all good.
I think these changes will help the list in keeping the role you want with the units you want but make it work more efficiently. Again, well done on your 5-0 but there is always room for improvement :P.
