Monday, January 30, 2012

Results from the RTT

The RTT had some really stiff competition there with a lot of the NJ big names showing up. I think there were about 22 players in attendance, and 4 of them (myself included) participated in the Nova Invitational.

I played the tyranid list which I posted earlier,

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

The tournament was a little light on terrain which made my life difficult as a tyranid player but it was alright. It used standard book missions with a win/loss/draw format with no margin of victory, however there was up to 4 battle points you could get each round.

Round one I got paired up against a young guard player who wasn't very experienced but had a great attitude about the game. He was the definition of a casual player that just wanted to get better. He didn't have an optimized list or any idea how to properly use it but he was a great sport.

His list was a bunch of infantry squads, a few special weapon squads, a company command squad, yarrick, some ogryns, 3 leman russes, a few ratlings, and a banewolf.

The game was dawn of war capture and control. I won the roll for first and put swarmlord and 2 tervigons on the line as far up as possible. I also deep struck my trygons. He came on but he didnt really have the long range fire power to deal  with me so his shooting was ineffective. When my ymgarls came on they multi charged 7 (yes 7) different units and made them all run off the table. It was a pretty bloody tabling but he was a great sport and I tried to teach him tactics wherever I could to help make him better. He seemed to be having a blast at the event despite being so new, which is all one can reasonably hope for at a tournament.

I maxed out on that round and got paired up with necrons for the first time since the new book released. I'll go into more detail about the next 2 games.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Tyranids at a tournament!

There's a local 1850 point RTT coming up. and I think I'm going to bust out my nids, although my demons are looking pretty appealing.

Here's the list I'm planning on bringing.

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

Thoughts?

Monday, January 23, 2012

2011 a year in review

It's a little late to think of things from 2011, but I'm doing it anyway! The reason I do this is to find trends that occur twhen I play (good and bad) and see how I can correct them. Plus it's a bunch of random facts, and random facts are fun!

(Note that all data is based off of tournament games only)

Grey Knights
Win % = 82.7%
Win % against Space Wolves = 100% (5 games)
Win % against dark eldar = 100% (2 games)
Win % against ork = 100% (3 games)
Win % against blood angels = 100% (2 games)
Win % against Necrons = 100 % (1 game)
Win % against Space Marines = 50% (2 games)
Win % against Chaos Marines = 100% (1 game)
Win % against Guard = 66.7% (3 games)
Win % against Sisters = 100% (1 game)
Win % against demons = 100% (2 games)
Win % against Tyranids = 100% (1 game)
Win % against Grey Knights = 0% (1 game)

So we learned that I have lost to guard, vanilla marines, and other grey knights. What we can take from that is that we now know an army that is better at shooting down transport vehicles than I am has the upp edge against me. I noticed this trend afteer Nova and I think the answer for it is paladins, but I've yet to play test it.

Tyranids
Win % = 100% (I've gone undefeated with them in 2011 so I'll just list the armies I played against and how many times)
Space Marines (1 game)
Orks (3 games)
Eldar (1 game)
Space Wolves (2 games) (both were standard jaws missile lists)
Grey Knights (1 game)
Deathwing (1 game)

Although their sample size is smaller, based o win records this does lend itself to me making tyranids my go to tournament army 2012 (at least until 6th ed). More testing to follow.

Demons
Win % = 62.5%
Space Marines = 50% (4 games)
Tyranids = 66% (3 games)
Chaos Marines= 100% (2 games)
Deathwing= 100% (1 game)
Dark Edar= 100% ( 1 game)
Blood Angels = 0% (1 game)

Okay, now that I've complete going through my tournament list here's some interesting food for thought. space marines are the only army to have better than a 100% loss record aginst moore than one army. In fact, 2 polar opposite armies, gery knights and demons, This goes to show that they are perfectly capable of balanced, competitive lists, and that blanaced lists are the ones that prevail.

Also take note that Space Wolves never won a game out of the 8 that were played, and 2 were against tyranids. This is good evidence to prove that they really aren't that big and scary anymore. This also explaiins why many space wolf playerzs are switching off the band wagon.

Now if we look at what my records mean we will realize that vanila marines have the strongest showing against me, personally. That pretty much means I should start taking them more seriously and testing against them more frequently.

What else do you guys think this means?

Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Brown Paintbrush is back!

It's been a very long few months of non stop college and school crap but that's all over with now. So far I've gotten into Rutgers for those of you who care, and I'm still waiting to hear back from a lot of schools.

I've done a lot of thinking over the past few months on where I want to go with my gaming and I think I'm really going to keep trying to make my tyranids work. I've gotten only a handful of playtest games in over the past few months, but they've all ben very successful. I keep putting myself against some of the best compeitiors I can find with som awful match ups (dark eldar) and usually I just come out on top or I just barely lose. Pretty much all my games have been close and I now have a 50-50 record against dark eldar with nids, a match up I previously believed was unwinnable.

As far as upcoming events go I've missed a few I really wish I could have attended like Mechanicon and Conflict GT. Congrats to my friends Simon and Andrew for taking Mechanicon and Conflict. I'm also going to be missing St. Valentines Day this year, another event which I've previously attended frequently.

But! Now that I'm more or less done with school I can start going to GT's again. I'm going to Templecon in February, although whether I'm going to playing the Warhammer tournament or the Warmachine tournament on Saturday has yet to be decided. I've also signed up for Colonial GT which is run by my buddy Chris Nanry. And I'm all signed up to go for Adpeticon. I've been invited to be part of 2 different ATC teams, but I'm not sure if I can make it out there or not.

Anyway that's a lot to digest at once, but the point is, you should pay attention to my blog again, because I can actually post things now!