More Night lord action - this time its Tyranids

Another week and some more battling going on, this time my regular opponent tried to organise a battle with one of the other guys in our gaming group but when they were not available we organised something quite last minute between the two of us. He wanted to bring 2000 points of Tyranids which I would face down with my Night lords.

Recalling how this panned out last time round when I was royally crushed I set about designing my force, I may well have over compensated for my armies ineffectiveness from last time as it turns out but memories of Mawlocs eating units, exocrine melting down my command squad and contemptors being mugged by monstrous creatures all factored in my choices.

I started off with the core using some of the models I have completed which I just love fielding.

Praetor and command squad on jetbikes for starters

2 contemptor mortis dreadnoughts

The fire raptor, of course, since it looks awesome.

I then picked three outriders simply because I am in the process of sorting out the models which I hope will look really cool and as such they needed to be used so I can try and get more out of them and get experienced in using them properly.

After that I decided I wanted to try using veteran tactical squads, I have of late been reading other tactica on the web and these have been extremely highly rated so I wanted to give them a go. I selected two units of 10, two of them were given heavy bolters with suspensor fields and the sergeant was wearing artificer armour. I also gave each unit a vexilla, this is something I do not normally do but having read some comments on the web I have been starting to reconsider my preconceptions about them – still not sure banners really fit the gang culture of the night lords. These two units would be my compulsory troops due to the praetor employing the pride of the legion right of war which was the only way I could really test these guys out properly.

The final addition to the force was a heavy support squad with 10 guys all armed with volkite culverins, the sergeant wearing artificer armour and carrying an augury scanner.

The veteran tactical squads would be given the sniper special rule and it would ensure that pretty much all of my fire power baring that from the outriders would be able to wound monstrous creatures although they would generally get armour saves and probably feel no pain as well meaning I was only really hoping to kill one or two in each shooting phase meaning by the time the nid’s charged (probably on turn 3) I was expecting to try and finish off 2-3 in close combat and that’s assuming there was not something like a horde of Hormagaunts which with their speed could potentially charge turn 2 and thus would have to be targeted early to prevent units getting tied up in close combat or butchered.

As it turns out my opponent had decided to be nice and also recalled a lot of the previous battles so opted to bring no flying monsters (he remembered how annoying the daemon flying circus was) and he also avoided mawlocs since he knows they are savage against units of expensive power armoured marines which the legion force tends to have in spades. He did also decide to bring some of the new Tyranid drop pods which in hindsight I should have expected but at the time I did not even suspect he had the rules for.

The net impact of these two methods of army creation - me trying to optimise to deal with the main nid threats while my opponent was removing those threats to make a softer list to try and ensure a balanced game – basically led to my force being pretty much perfect for mauling the force he had brought.

The nids brought the following

Hive tyrant with lash whip and bone sword in drop pod

Tervigon

2 trygons

2 carniflexes with twin linked devourers

2 hive guard

3 zoanthropes in a drop pod

6 ravagers

3 swarms of 3 bases of ripper swarms

Exocrine

With this force almost half of it would be starting in reserve and deep striking in which I was not expecting when I planned my force and it jacked up the impact of the augury scanner on the heavy support squad was a lot greater than anticipated.

We rolled the big guns never tire with standard deployment, the battlefield we had was set up for us and had not a lot of terrain, what terrain it had was generally low and not that concealing and to be honest was much better suited to fantasy than 40k and meant that my forces had amazing avenues of fire. We did discuss getting some terrain but since it would have involved tromping up and down stairs and we were both feeling lazy we did not.

I won everything during the pregame , choose table edge, got to deploy first and go first and my opponent failed to seize the initiative. I won’t go in to details but suffice by the end of my turn 2 my opponent had been tabled and he was not happy, my dice rolling was insane with the snipers getting tons of 6’s to wound which resolved at AP 2 and so they carved through carniflexes and the like with incredible ease.

It was so quick and one sided we decided to restart and try again, this time we rolled up the relic and go hammer and anvil deployment, I again got the warlord trait to give my opponent -1 on his reserve rolls, this time he did not get the trait to allow him to reroll failures on reserve rolls and he felt he was doomed from the start.

Here are some photo’s from the deployment, I did not take any after this since both armies were pretty proxy heavy but my central unit in the ruins was the heavy support squad which just had an insane field of fire and dominated the battlefield and their 18” interceptor bubble was basically meant when something large appeared I could pretty much remove it instantly with 40 strength 6 shots unless it could hide in some format.

I got first turn, just before that my outriders remembered to scout and rushed towards the relic, in my turn 1 the outriders completed their move on to the relic and everything I had opened up which resulted in a couple of wounds on the tervigon (I wanted to remove his synapse bubble and I hoped 40 volkite shots would do it but sadly his saves were pretty good). I managed to also get a wound on a carniflex and kill a couple of ravagers.

Nid turn 1 saw the outriders butchered in close combat and by shooting and I lost control of the relic to the ravagers and my opponent got first blood.

My turn 2 saw the fire raptor arrive (both games I got it on the first reserve roll) and I unloaded on the nids. A couple of ravagers were shot to pieces, the exocrine blown apart and that was about it with the shooting – I made the mistake of not moving the contemptors to ensure they got interceptor and then remembered it came with skyfire which made it utterly pointless and basically wasted a turn of shooting with them.

Nid turn 2 saw two ripper swarms, a trygon and the hive tyrant come down, my interceptor fire from the heavy support squad removed the trygon. Enemy shooting managed to put a wound on the standard bearer and two wounds on my praetor but achieve anything else and nothing was in charge range.

My turn 3 saw the fire raptor finish off the tervigon and the feedback from that killed four of the termegaunts it had spawned who then fled and got removed/forgotten. Massed firepower tried to take down the hive tyrant but I could only put three wounds on it.

Nid turn 3 saw another trygon appear along with the last ripper swarm but the zoanthropes which my opponent desperately wanted to try and deal with my contemptors refused to appear which only added to his frustration. Ripper swarms charged my heavy’s who obliterated them with volkite fire but that was the distraction to allow the hive tyrant to get in. The carniflexes tried to charge one of my contemptors but came in 1 inch short. Close combat saw the tyrant underperform and only win the fight by two and I managed to pass my leadership test to keep him locked there. Shooting did manage to get a few wounds on the command squad killed my carnabal sabre and then the last wound on my praetor saw a one for look out sir and then another one for the armour save and saw the praetor drop giving away slay the warlord annoyingly.

Night lords turn 4 saw the fire raptor go in to hover mode and unload on the carniflexes and kill one outright as well as using the side reaper cannons to obliterate all three bases in a ripper swarm. My remaining command squad whipped across to next to the hive tyrant fight to allow the banner to give fearless to the heavy support squad. My remaining shooting removed the drop pod, killed all of the remaining rippers, finished off the carniflexes and put 4 wounds on the new trygon.

Nid turn 4 saw the zoanthropes drop in next to the fire raptor, the trygon fled for cover. The zoanthropes managed to manifest warp blast and launched three lances towards the fire raptor, hit twice, penetrated twice and were jinked twice to massive frustration. The hive guard still sitting there fired at the fire raptor, got two more hits, two more penetrating hits one of which was jinked. The remaining hit immobalised the flyer which as it turns out was fine since it was not zooming at the time. The hive tyrant continued to slowly carve through the heavy support squad and I continued to fail to roll a 6 wound to at least try and kill it. 3 heavy support marines were left but still being fearless they held in there.

Night lords turn 5 saw me move to try and win the game, the jet bikes floated on to the relic, massed shooting took out the zoanthropes and their transport as well as finishing off the trygon as it had not been able to get out of line of sight. Close combat saw the hive tyrant fluff its lines and leave one of the heavy support marines (the sergeant) alive and he passed his break check to pretty much give me the game.

Nid turn 5  -  the nids only had 3 models on the table in the form of the tyrant and two hive guard, with the tyrant locked in combat during his turn and then certain to get shot to pieces in my next turn (if there was one) the game was pretty much over.

Not the best couple of games to be honest, my army in trying to counter the known threats of the tyranids had gone too far it seems and with the limited cover the nid’s never really seemed to stand a chance. This spawned a significant debate after the game were my opponent commented that he was going for softer lists to try and ensure fun games while I was continuing optimising the night lord list and we were getting towards a very competitive force. I think my opponent had expected things like the assault marines since they are painted and at 300 points they would have removed a lot of my ability to deal with bog monsters but as I pointed out they do nothing in that fight – he may expect me not to optimise but I cannot be expected to bring completely suboptimal choices. As it turned out though the main thing was that in taking the augury scanner for the heavy support marines against his army was insanely potent since my opponent had opted for a force which was 50% deep striking. From my point of view I felt I needed something like that because otherwise with some good reserve rolls my opponent could have had my force surrounded by monstrous creatures with me having one turn to reply, it could have potentially gone completely the other way.

This is I feel the main issue with deep striking forces, if it all turns up at once it is amazingly powerful and overwhelming but on the other hand when it turns up piecemeal it feels massively suboptimal and means you are fighting with substantially less points than your enemy has and it is telling.