Battleground Games Post Tournament Breakdown: Bringing a Knife to a Gunfight...

The tournament certainly had some ups and downs. I won best painted, but also received some serious clock cleaning. Although I went 1-2, I had some fun, fantastic games against three great opponents and best of all, I received a serious wake up call about where the game is heading, how it has changed, and how I perceive Warhammer 40,000 in general.

The tournament used the ETC format which, like an idiot, I didn't bother reading or understanding ahead of time and boy, was that a gigantic blunder. I didn't figure on the scoring procedures being so complicated, so maelstromesque. So basically, you could say I had a glass belly button because I was still able to see and play with my head completely up my ass.

Before the tourney I planned on bringing Tyranids. I figured I could bring a ton of monstrous creatures to make my movement phases less restrictive. What I didn't figure on was bad rolling and having no screening units to protect the big guys...

I posted on the Tyranid Hive to ask for a little advice on the following list:

Flyrant with 2x devourers and electroshock grubs 240
Flyrant with 2x devourers and electroshock grubs 240
Mucolid spore
Mucolid spore
Crone
3x Hive Guard
2x Zoanthrope
Malanthrope
Dakkafex
Tyrannocyte
Tyrannofex
Exocrine
Allies:
Tervigon with crushing claws
10x Gaunts

Most of the advice aimed at 1. Adding deep striking ripper swarms 2. Dumping the tervigon 3. Adding another flyrant if possible 4. Dumping the zoanthropes. 5. Adding gargoyles. I ignored the advice completely.

For one, I couldn't figure on the ripper swarms, I have some painted but they've never worked out for me. I did want to add some gargoyles and I have 20 built but not painted. The thought of painting 20 of those little fuckers doesn't exactly make me want to do naked cartwheels with a kazoo up my ass if you know what I mean.

At any rate, I'll briefly touch on the battles and at the end I'll talk about how I should change things up if I want to take tyranids to a tourney again.

Game 1 vs. Eldar

I played a dude named Keith, also known as The Cosmic Serpent over at the Evil Dice forums. We knew each other from discussions online but had never met in the flesh.
His list (From memory):
Four bike squadrons
Wraithknight
Four different tanks with fire dragons
Two of the same troop squad, one with some kind of cannon.
An HQ (Autarch?) on a bike

We both sort of castled up in our respective vanguard strike deployments. He kept all his bike squads in reserve, which may have hurt him later on. I had some amazing dice in this game and he had troubles bringing down the big bugs, especially with the malanthrope in the ruins. I was also rolling armor saves like a boss.

Here's a decent pic of the end of the game. We were dice down at turn 4. From my deployment zone I had easy access to three objectives from the comfortable confines of the ruin. All I really had to do was limit his movement and contest or attempt to claim the others.

Full points on this one.

Game 2 vs. Marines (Imperial Fists/Ultras) vanguard strike deplyment

For the next game I got to play Brian Freitas, a dude who gave me a tough match at the last tournament I played. He's a great player and a true gentlemen. I was somewhat befuddled at the deployment and at the mission objectives and Brian was more than cool about it and very patient. Thanks dude. The two of us have now played two close games that went down to the wire.

Here's his list:
Tigurious
Pedro Kantor
Chaplain
10x scouts in land raider
2x tac squads with melta and rhinos
2x devastator squads with lascannons
scout snipers (Ultramarines I'm guessing)

Brian's list is really cool because it doesn't look like much at first but it's very durable and if you can't bring down the land raider...Well, you get punched in the dick by all kinds of dudes with invisibility.

This was my first encounter with a double special character list and boy, there's a reason why Tiggy is so good. When the contents of that land raider assault it hurts. The scouts get four on the charge due to Kantor's special rule and they're invisible most of the time. The chappy gives them all rerolls on the charge...You get the idea. The way to stop this list is to try and stop the land raider, not always the easiest thing to do.

I performed some real boneheadedness in this game such as only rolling one dice for two zoanthropes, and forgetting that one of my tyrants had FNP. So that's all on me being just dumb. I also sort of spaced on my haywire templates early in the game...I just sort of choked out of nervousness or just not playing the game much lately.

The only issue that came up during this game was Tigurious' ability to deny the witch on a 4+ while inside the land raider. I know a psycher can do this to another unit in line of sight within 12" but I wasn't sure if Tigurious could do this while inside the raider, to the raider. Whatever though, I'm not clear enough on the rules and like I said, Brian is a quality champion who knows his rules in and out. I'll look it up later.

In this game I featured some epic failures with rolling. It was really bad. I couldn't stop the land raider even though I was trying to warp blast the hell out of it and after four turns when the damn thing finally had just one hull point left, I haywire templated it and rolled a nice little one. On top of it all my tervigon crapped out in the first turn with just eight gaunts. Fucking A.

Although Pedro and the boys ran roughshod over my entire backfield I did manage to score decently on a good amount of the mission objectives. So it was a loss, but I did still get a few points (6) out of it.

Here's a nice shot of Brian's crotch.

Good game and next time I've got some good ways to bring down that damn raider...

Game 3 The relic (Dawn of War)

I played some dude named Mike with the following Sisters of Battle list:
Celestine
2x dominion squads in multi-melta tanks
A ton of those organ flute tanks that suck
A bunch of other tanks
Lots of melta sisters
A vendetta with some vets
A chimera with plasma dudes?

So...12 or so tanks. I saw this army walking in the door and silently prayed not to fight against it. This thing was a bitch and my dice completely failed me in every way. I rolled all the shitty psychic powers, failed on the deployment and first turn rolls, Christ it was epic. It was so bad that I could see Mike's heart sinking for me. This was the worst ass-kicking I've received maybe ever.

He got the deployment and there was a piece of terrain in the middle of the board that completely blocked line of sight. He scouted up two squads of dominions and then in his turns they came up another 12" and two squads of meltagunners came out, rolled some weird ignore cover power and then nuked my flyrant. It was quite a surprise and if I had known those cunts could do shit like that, I would have deployed very differently.

Mike was a very good player and make no mistake, he was a hard core player. His army was painted by Goat Boy and he was quick and efficient. He knew my weaknesses and took me out. Like I said, I can't remember the last time I got my ass reamed that hard. When we were done at the end of turn five there was an hour left to play.

At the end of it all Brian received third place and Mike, second, so at least I didn't lose to slouches and hey, I got best painted. So a bit of a moral victory there.

My list could use some serious work. For one, I'm now thinking about how valuable those deep striking ripper squads could be. Going to this tournament also opened my eyes to the theme of this post which is "Don't take a knife to a gun fight." Battleground Games is known for hardcore lists and mine was Harvey Milquetoast. The tyrannofex (175 points) was useless and slow in all three games. All in all the list wasn't built to compete in an ETC mission. I need mobility in a bad way and tervigons are just huge point sinks now. I now know why competitive tyranid players bring four hive tyrants...Because they're fucking awesome. And shit, lictors are good, maybe worth a damn now.

So, lesson learned. I plan on painting up some gargoyles and redesigning everything. There may even be a third hive tyrant in my future...