Hello all, I played two games this weekend at 4000pts. The first game was against eldar and the second was against Chaos. I used the stats from the 5.4b list as I was not yet that familiar with the new stats but I tried to use the new rules for review. I used the following list.
Lesser Synapse Node
Lesser Synapse Node
Winged Hive tyrant 6x Haruspex 4x Raveners 6x Hormagaunts
Dominatrix 9x Hormagaunts 5x Gargoyles
Harridan 10x Gargoyles 5x Raveners
Lesser Synapse Node 3x Biovores
Tyranid Warriors 17x Termagaunts 2x Zoanthropes
Tyranid Warriors 17x Termagaunts 2x Zoanthropes
8x Genestealers
2x Lictors
1x Heirophant
1x Heirophant
3x Mycetic spores
Against both opponents I used basically the same tactics. During the garrison phase I placed my warrior swarms across the center of the board, creating an anti-air barrier and limiting my opponents moves. These were supported by the genestealers and the LSN with biovores. On board edge, the dominatrix was placed centrally, with the hive tyrant on one side and the Harridan on the other. Both heirophants were placed on the far flank closest to the hive tyrants swarm.
The basic tactic was to thrust hard on one flank with the tyrant and heirophants and support as needed with stealers, dominatrix and harridan.
Against the eldar my main attack was blunted rather quickly but did enough damage to slow down the eldar forces. This included an aspect formation, a guardian formation, falcons, 1 scorpion, night spinners, 2 shadow weavers, some rangers and the avatar. The Dominatrix and Harridan then tag teamed the opposite side and completely over ran 1 guardian formation, and a unit of jet bikes. These were supported by the warrior formations who took the center objective from the rangers. At the end of turn 4 I had one goal (2 objectives in my opponents side of the table) and my opponent had none. although he nearly held my blitz after a very strong air assault with banshees and warp spiders from a vampire, but my genestealers were able to wipe him out shortly there after.
The tie breaker with synapse at 3x and independant at 2x had him with a less than 400 pt lead, so it was a tie. we both agreed that adding in 50% broods would not have reflected the results of the game very well.
Against chaos, again the same tactics were used and again my armoured thrust was absolutely pounded by 2 death wheels, 2 units of 4 termies, a marine group with 3 defilers, 8 predators, and some supporting fire from a second marine group with 4 stands of havocs. in return I managed to kill the death wheels (finishing them off using my harridan) breaking the havoc marine group, and predators and keeping the remaining units off of his forward objective on that side. On the opposite side of the board I was able to push a dreadclaw dropped unit off of one of my objectives but my opponent used a forlorn hope unit to contest one of my objectives and deny both my defend the flag and they shall not pass goals. At the end of the 4th turn I managed to hold two objectives in his half of the table with a tyranid warrior swarm (nearly untouched) and by destroying his death wheels I had acheived the break their spirit. He had acheived no goals.
Result Victory 2-0 Tyranids
I had quite a discussion with both of my opponents after the battle. My eldar opponent appeared quite happy with both the way the tyranid army worked and was rather satisfied with the results given by the tie breaker. In particular the spawning rules, the regeneration rules, and ignoring blast markers all appeared to be reasonable and worked quite well. My chaos opponent felt totally overwhelmed, but we both agreed that that is part of the feel of the army. to quote him directly "it just didn't feel like epic". I think this is more of a new army syndrome, and he admitted it likely was, but this is his second game against me and he tried to come with the best tyranid fighting list he could think of. Another comment that was made is that he found there was far too much re-enforced armour in the army. Something like the Haruspex I suggested moving to a 5+ reinforced, but he mentioned that he would even see a 3+ normal save as being reasonable. This is something that would be rather interesting? Again most of the rules felt really good and we had no real problems with them save one. IF it had gone to a tie breaker by points, by killing only 3 creatures (dominatrix and 2 heirophants) he had earned himself 2700 victory points. He of course had killed far more than this, but if we were to include the 50% broods he would have killed more than 4000 pts worth easily. To me, completely excluding broods is a better way to go, as even if someone tries to take advantage they will end up very low on the activation curve.
I hope that some of this information helps.
Dave
[edit: added some forgotten comments and made some corrections]
_________________ "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
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