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[BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11078		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  Markconz [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 4:51 am ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
Squeezed in a game against a returning SM player today. This was just a learning game of EA for him and not a proper playtest.  However, I thought it was worth reporting because of a weird situation, and because it was interesting to see how the bugs went...

Rules were Handbook Beta 1.0, 8.4 Bugs (Markconz variant), and... well see below for what the Eldar took.

Things were wiggled a bit because of the units he had available, and because he had based his list on some pre 1.8 stuff he had downloaded (which had overpointed things somehow as I have just worked out!). But main point was I thought the list he'd made would do to illustrate the mechanics of EA and Eldar to a new player.

Eldar:
- Phantom, pulsar, fist (NOT a warlock in this game!)
- 5 Falcons
- 5 Falcons
- Guardians 2 Platforms
- Guardians 2 Platforms
- Guardians 2 Platforms
- Guardians, 4 Wave Serpents
- 3 Fire Prisms (based on his reading of old list)
- Revenant (just a single to make up points).
- War Walkers




Tyranids
- Harridan 4 gargoyles.
- 2 Hierophants (1 formation!)
- Nexus, 3 Carnis, 3 Thropes, 8 Termis, 2 Hormis, 2 Gargoyles.
- Nexus, 3 Carnis, 3 Thropes, 8 Termis, 2 Hormis, 2 Gargoyles.
- Assault, 5 Biovores
- Assault 8 termis, 4 hormis,
- Meiotic Spores
- 3 Lictors
Author:  Markconz [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 4:56 am ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
Setup:

As below. War Walkers garrisoned near eldar objective 3 and  no other garrisons.

My plan was just to rush the 3 clumped eldar objectives, with everything bar one cheap swarm and the spores left to guard my blitz and other objectives.
Author:  Markconz [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 5:06 am ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
Turn 1

Eldar sweep around the right flank. Bugs advance, the heirophants try to double but fail and so just move. Phantom and H&R War Walkers damage left most hierophant for 2 points. H&R Revenant kills a biovore which spawns back.

Harridan moves and shoots the first lot of falcons, but only places a blast marker. The second lot of falcons double and gun down the harridan. It's 4 gargoyles are also lost in end phase.
Author:  Markconz [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 5:30 am ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
Turn 2

Eldar win Strategy roll. Phantom sustains on the hierophants, dropping the first one to 1 DC. War Walkers then hit and run again and manage to kill it! The remaining hierophant advances to hide behind a forest instinctively. The Revenant then blasts it doing 1 DC.

I move and fire with the Assault swarm (still staying in cover) guarding my objectives, at the falcons that had just killed my Harridan. Stunningly, my 3 Warriors  with 3 dice needing 6's,  roll three 6's! Two falcons are lost and the broken formation backs off behind a hill.

The other falcons race around to my blitz and shoot up 4 spores. The other two spores wobble and stay where they are.

I engage the War Walkers with my centre Nexus swarm and gobble all but one of them, which backs off to it's blitz.

The Wave Serpents move to my blitz.

My second Nexus swarm doubles to the forest in front of the hierophant, and a Thropes get lucky and kill 2 guardian stands ahead of them.

Some other minor shooting occurs, but most of the tyranid losses are spawned back. Falcons rally.
Author:  Markconz [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:06 am ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
Turn 3:

Lictors arrive to put ZOC's on Revenant and Guardians and threaten eldar blitz. Avatar arrives in face of large Nexus Swarm. Eldar win initiative.



And here's where things get weird. Phantom wants to engage heirophant in CC. To do this it must take a direct line and step over a couple of the nexus swarm units (which are 2cm wide) on the end of the formation.  At the time to keep the game moving I said yeah just do it and I'll clarify it later.  Reading over rules now I believe it shouldn't be able to do this because of the ZOC wording (1.7.3), but then again - the Titan 'stepping over things' rule just says 'units' in addition to impassable and dangerous terrain... should it say 'friendly units'? Is there ever a situation you can step over enemy units? The bit about how it can step over impassable or dangerous terrain also makes it seem somewhat more ambiguous.

So anyway playing that it could step over 'units' as opposed to just 'friendly units' the phantom promply proceeds to rip the head off the hieorphant without taking  a scratch, and moves back to support it's friends...

Dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee = Right hook to left mandible...


and retire...


The revenant then shoots two Lictors, and the remaining one moves to the eldar blitz.

The biovores fail to activate and shoot the nearby revenant, doing a point of damage, and a critical - there go the holofields!

The Fire Prisms kill a thrope and carni from the Nexus swarm opposite the Avatar.

Here I do something a bit dumb, my centre most Nexus swarm doubles and shoots the guardians near the Avatar, and get into FF support position on the Phantom. However ,the phantom is not intermingled with the guardians and Avatar so I end up having to just attack the Avatar and guardians with the other Nexus swarm (rather than Avatar Phantom and guardians as I was intending).

First round combat the Avatar is untouched but all the guardians are dead. Phantom support fires, and dead bugs are stacking up, and two termagants from the other Nexus swarm support fire against the Avatar. One termagant hits, does a DC damage and boom, a critical. Lots of Eldar formations take BM as the Avatar goes down. Feeling naked without it's holofields, the Revenant breaks at the horror of it all, and runs back towards eldar blitz.

In back field the Eldar have chance to take game if they can take the bug objectives from the assault swarm (which is hanging on grimly in it's buildings with grav tanks whizzing around outside). Combined Eldar setup and firefight by falcons and wave serpent guardians fails however. The Wave Serpent formation breaks and races off camera, and the assault swarm engages and destroys one of the falcon formations.

Finally, the last War Walker guns down the last Lictor.

End of turn... no objectives held either side.

Bugs spawn some stuff. Eldar fail to rally Wave Serpents and Revenant.
Author:  Markconz [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:19 am ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
Turn 4

Eldar win Strategy again.

Fire Prisms kill a thrope and carni, and the Phantom barges into the Nexus swarm to it's right and sends them packing with support fire from the guardians. It suffers 2 DC in return, but staunchly H&R to place itself inbetween the next Nexus swarm and the blitz. The war walker shoots the Nexus swarm doing nothing.



I sustain with the biovores doing 1 DC to the Phantom and  a critical - no holofields, just at the right time for the bugs. The Nexus swarm engages and destroys the Phantom outright.

The Guardians FF the swarm but break and run away.

The 3 remaining Falcons FF clip the assault swarm which has spread itself thin to cover two objectives. They win and the swarm retreats. The Falcons claim the two take and hold objectives but cannot reach the bug blitz.

And that is basically it...

Final score 1 objective each, points go to bugs by slim margin (not by a >10% margin which our group commonly looks at to get an idea of whether it is an worthwhile victory or not - based on WFB and 40k tiebreak rules, and some other rulesets).
Author:  Markconz [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:34 am ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
Conclusions:

Well tough game despite it being a 'teaching game' - funny how often that happens to me... :)

Don't really want to draw too many conclusions from it, but something I've been thinking is that the 'remove all blast markers' clause in the Markconz variant, in addition to automatic rallying  is probably too much, on top of disposable gaunts and other tricks....  the way every swarm, no matter what you do to it is automatically fine as soon as the round changes, seems a bit artificial and dichotomous to me (this is a problem I have with the other variants too). Possibly just automatic rallying and removing half BM as other armies do might be better (and maybe give leader to Synapse bugs. I think some other people might have already suggested this.

Hierophants - maybe just unlucky, but gosh I seem to have a bad time with bio-titans (no matter what rules I use...)...

Harridan - my own fault for trying to tango with Falcons...
Author:  Ilushia [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:44 am ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
On stepping over models: I don't think you can do this for formations other then the one you're assaulting. But thsi one has me wondering too. When I was thinking about what to use it for the only thing I came up with was 'When broken you can withdrawal ignoring ZoC so you could escape a surrounding or move through an enemy formation, potentially'. But the withdrawal moves forbid moving directly over opposing units (Not sure if the Titan rule would overcome this or not as it does specifically mention units). The rules as they stand, I think, basically just allow a Titan to move over terrain and friendly units, but could potentially step 'over' enemy units so long as it was assaulting that formation (Rather then barging them out of the way I suppose). Likewise I believe when taking a counter-charge you could potentially do this, perhaps, but I'm not sure since you're supposed to move towards the closest enemy unit.
Author:  Kagetora [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 2:11 pm ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
This may help.  I asked a similar question on the SG boards a while back.  Read the whole thread...its an answer as to what a WE can step over:

http://forum.specialist-games.com/topic ... C_ID=13336
Author:  Soren [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 2:30 pm ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
Mhm. The auto rally is a must. If I look at the Chaos lists, nids should at least as good as cult units. ?And because only gaunts are disposable (and they are infantry) any swarm consisting of AV is quite easy to break (AV are expensive).

The problem of the bio titans is always the same. No fields make them vulnerable to MW and TK, more than any other titan, but they stay more expensive and slower. Now as they have lost their immunity to blastmarkers, maybe there is a light boost to apply. (DC +1 or erease the instant kill critical comparable to Wolfhound and Subjugator/Questor ones.)

my 0,00000002 cent


Soren
Author:  BlackLegion [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 3:36 pm ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
I suggest Invulnerable Save for Bio-Titans again :)
Author:  Chroma [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 3:41 pm ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
Thanks for the report Markconz!  

Would it be possible to get more detail on what you spawn back in a game, just to get a feel of what is returning?


(BlackLegion @ Nov. 25 2007,14:36)
QUOTE
I suggest Invulnerable Save for Bio-Titans again :)

Well, my variant has that...  :D
Author:  Dave [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:36 pm ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
In the games I've played (yes the reps are still forth coming) I found disposable gaunts to be a bit too powerful when it came to breaking gaunt invested formations.

Auto-rally but only removing half the BMs always made sense to me and has been what I've argued for in the past.  I think it would be a bit more realistic, as much as 6mm hive based organisms can be realistic at any rate ;).
Author:  Soren [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:49 pm ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish
realistic would be no BM at all. Tyranids are completely fearless, more than any other organism in the 40k universe (maybe Chaos-spawns are in the same category)
Author:  Chroma [ Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:52 pm ]
Post subject:  [BatRep] (3K) Nids 8.4M vs Eldar 1.8ish

(Soren @ Nov. 25 2007,20:49)
QUOTE
realistic

I think "realistic" is far too strong a word to use when discussing the 40k universe... let alone Tyranids.  :)

We should probably use "appropriate", "playable", or "plausible".
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