I know I'm like ridiculousy far behind on posting stuff for the blog, but that's life. I did bring my tyranids with me to the colonial GT this past weekend in ew Jerseey, which was also a fantastic event which I highly reccomend you guys to check out. My friends and myself ended up taking the entire top 5.
1st Luke Riabowl with dark eldar
2nd Andrew Gonyo with grey knights
3rd Rich Therkorn with sisters
4th Eric Hoerger with necrons
5th Nick Nanavati with nids
Congrats to us for sweeping the GT lol.
Here's the list I brought.
HQ
Swarmlord 280
Tyrant Guard- lash whips 65
Elites
2 Hive Guard 100
2 Hive Guard 100
8 Ymgarl Stealers 184
Troops
10 Gaunts 50
10 Gaunts 50
Tervigon- adrenal glands toxin sacs cluster spines catalyst 195
Tervigon- adrenal glands toxin sacs cluster spines catalyst 195
Heavy
Trygon- adrenal glands 210
Trygon- adrenal glands 210
Trygon- adrenal glands 210
It's my standard 1850 list which I've played easilly 100+ times. I know this army better than my grey knights and my demons combined, which I'm sure is a direct correlation to the list's success.
Round 1 I got paired up against a draigowing grey knight list in a kill point mission (which I will be battle reporting)
Rounds 2, 3, and 5 I got paired against horde orks and battle wagon orks, and balanced orks. Orks are an incredible easy match up for nids and I masacred all 3 of my games in relatively the same manner. It pretty much always comes down to the ymgarls and a crap ton of gaunts multi assulating 60-90 orks and killing them with fearless saves very early on. If you want me to battle report these I can, but all 3 games were relllativel simillar and there was very little in the way of advanced tactics in these games, no offence to any of my opponents, it's just that the match up was heavily in my favor.
Round 4 I got tabled by a dark eldar player (Luke who won) I play Luke almost weekly and I don't think either of us were surprised at all by the result, he's a fnatastc player who didn't make any mistakes. I can also battle report this one if you want, but it was pretty much on the lines of him rolling dice and me taking models off the table.
So onto round 1 vs grey knights
His list from memory
Draigo
Librarian- a crap ton of powers and 3 servo skulls
10 Paladins- 4 psy cannons 2 hammers, 1 staff, 4 halberds, 3 swords, all diversified, they had the banner of fuck you tyranids.
Solo paladin- hammer
Solo paladin- halberd
3 Ven dreads- 2 auto cannons with psybolt ammo
There was a lot of area terrain pretty much throown all over the board.
Looking at the list and the fact that it was kill points spearhead, I figured there was no reason for me to win. I won th roll to go first and took it. I deployed in my standard fashion with all of my monsters behind a gaunt wall ready to run riht at him... The ymgarls were put in a terrain piece where they could multi assualt 2 ven deads or the paadins if they came up.
The mission had special rules making the first 3 turns of the game night fight so his dreadnaughts were far up the board witht the paladins. The 2 solo paladins were deep striking.
On my turn 1 I felt that I had 2 options. Run away, hope to snipe off the solo paladins and hope the stealers kill the dreads or successfully run away also and barely win on kill points. Or run at him nd make a game out of it. After considering my options and realizing that regardless of how bad I lost I would get 7 points, I figured I should at least play for the win. So everything ran at him, I feel no pained a swarmlord and a trygon and immobilized a ven dread with hive guard.
My plan for this game was simple, get a multi assualt off on the paladins with 3 trygons and swarmlord (and the gaunts or stealers (to tie up the hammers and halberds) or try and kill the other 5 kill points in his army and not die, either were going to be easy.
On his turn 1 he walked back a little ( I was really hoping he would take the bait and charge at me) and shot a trygon down to 3 wounds (without feel no pain).
On my turn 2 my ymgarls failed to show up I think, and I pressed forward with the gaunt wall. I feel no pained the 3 wound trygon (making it unappealing to shoot at, but sitll appealing for the kill point) ad the swarmlord. My guns mostly bounced off the dreads thanks to night fight. I did manage to paroxize the paladins with swarmlord., bringing htem to WS and BS 1.
On his turn 2 a paladin with the hammer showed up and deepstruck near his paladins. Very close to where the ymgarls would show up, although my opponent didn't know that at the time. He walked his entire paladin unit into the center of his deployment zone and put every model in a forest. He continued to shoot the feel no pain trygon but it survived with 1 wound.
On my turn 3 my ymgarls showed up and multi assualted the 1 paladin and a dreadnaught, killing the paladin. (at the worst they trade kill points) I also spawn gauts with a tervigon. The gaunts walk up and so does a healthy trygon and the swarmlord. They all charge a dreadnaught that was about 6 inches in fron of his paladin unit. I actually failed to kill the dread though, damn venerable!
My plan was to use the consolidatin moves to move the trygon and swarmlord back and the gaunts in front to screen.
Since I failed to kill the dread I had to consolidate th un engaged gaunts and since when I moved them they were strung out in a congo line when I assualted they were a congo line and when I piled in they were in a congo line in fron of his paladins. His paladins could still assualt around them but we need a total of 12" on 2 different difficult terrain rolls.
Here's where I think my opponent made a fatal mistake. He charged the paladins into the ymgarls slaughtering them all. However, if he multi assualted the ymgarls and the guants (a very easy task) he could have made the whole combat a multi assualt in which my mosters would lose by about 10 and then get pulled into combat with the paladins. where they would quickly meet their fate to double hammer hand and auto passing force weapon checks.
But as it was he assualted the ymgarls and killed them, he also shot away the trygon with 1 wound, and I finished off the dread from the previous turn, cosolidating torwards his other dread.
His last paladin also showed up behind my army. I assume he didn't think I would tur around and split my army to deal with it. But against Draigowing like this every single kill point matters sO I was more than happy to just kill the paladin even if it meants putting my trygon out of position. I didn't relaize that that paladin had a halberd and would strike before my trygon though, thankfully he fai,ed to wond and my trygon killed it.
My swarmlord and trygon walked away from the paladins and charged a dreadnaught, killing it. They consolidated even further from the paladins. The gaunts that I spawned got right in front of the paladins , hopefully keeping them from moving anywhere useful.
Going into his bottom of 4 I'm up 4 kill points to 2.
On his turn 4 he said he wanted to disengage Draigo form the paladins (so the paladins could shoot something while Draigo killed the guants, but he ended his movement phase in coherency with the paladins. But I allowed him to fix this in the assualt phase and charge the gaunts anyway, killling them. The dread and paladins shot a tervigon and left it at 1 wound.
On my turn 5 the tervigon feel no pained itself and ran full speed away, 6" back plus 6" run getting out of range and sight. My hive guard failed to kill the last dread.
On his he failed to kill my hive guard who were in cover and had feel no pain.
The game ended there 4-3 me with a monor win for the nids with no bonus points. For such a terrible match up given the mission I'm very pleased about the result.
My opponent was a great sport and had an excellent looking army, we played a dentlemen's game and that's all I can ask for. Definitely looking forward to a rematch!
