Recent games have proven to be very interesting, I got my first proper tournament (well half a tournament as I couldn't play day 2)
I found myself doing something unexpected, at the start of each game I found myself rolling on tables other than Biomancy, or at the very least rolling on tables as well as Biomancy. so why did I make these decisions?
I realised as soon as I started to play competitively that one of the greatest advantages the powers tables have is that you gain huge flexibility. This only works of course if you have lots of powers - which the tyranids excel at - as you take a lot of the randomness out of the selections.
So what did I learn from each of these games?
First up Biomancy is still the core of your resilience and will usually be the place you need to start , a few Iron Arms or Endurances make a huge difference to the survivability of the list so if you roll either of those 2 early on your multi power monsters, Tervigons or Tyrants. Once you have a power like that in place you can start to consider the other 2 tables - and your enemy. Let me explain by elaborating on my opponents and the choices I made accordingly.
Game 1 - Greydar
I played against a greydar list, a wraithguard blob led by eldrad, fuegan and the baron. The force was light on troops (2 min bikes and a squad of 7 hellions) so killing them was going to be the key to victory, as killing the 1000 point wraithguard unit wasn't going to happen. The other big problem I had hear was that of course Eldrad would put a severe dent in my powers. Now that is a pretty big challenge to deal with.
Knowing this I had to double down on Biomancy in most cases to give my tervigons a chance to cause a problem.
So what I did was give all of the 5 Zoanthropes ( 1 in pods 1 not) the Primaris power Psychic Shriek as it denies cover and armour. I made a mistake of not giving it to the Doom.This was to make it almost impossible for the hellions or bikes to survive while the Tervigons & Flyrants distracted and damaged the blob and pumped out scoring units.
The 3 man zoans dropped in during the game, killing the hellions, with no cover save they were a soft target, it was even the first shot that saw them off, The dooms power killed a squad of bikes on the 3rd attempt - psychic shriek would have been much easier!
If I had been more ballsy in this game I could have loaded the Tyrants with shriek as well and just gone hunting.... even the wraithguard wouldn't have liked that much.
I won the game on the back of the powers I had chosen but it would have been much easier if I had chosen correctly
Game 2 - Necron
A Necron list - 3 night scythes, 1 doom scythe , 2 *6 wraith units with a lord, tomb blades, triarch stalker and 2 annihilation barges. The mission is the relic.
Clearly in this match up I am heavily outgunned. Learning from the first mission I thought hard about
what powers I needed. So on with the rolling. I did roll pretty well on my first or second roll on my tervigons (1 endurance and 2 Iron arms) - and yes I rolled each psyker fully before moving on. This allowed me to take a close look at Telekinesis and Telepathy.
Telepathy was ideal as 2 of the powers are warp charge 2, meaning the first 4 are quite likely to be rolled.
Dominate - good for slowing down wraiths
Mental fortitude - useless
Puppet master - ideal... more on why later!
terrify - scare the wraiths
I ended up with 2 puppet masters which is what I wanted.
The zoanthropes and tyrants went for biomancy or kept their existing powers : I got 2 Enfeebles
The powers in this game were used in the following way.
Turn 1 and 2 enfeeble was used to drop the toughness of the wraiths to T3 or T2, the T3 guys were picked on by the flyrants- S6 instant killing them really puts the pain on wraiths. Most of them died early. The T2 guys were pummeled by fire from spawned guants with fleshborers.
Turn 2 my tervigon cast puppetmaster on the Triarch stalker - who turned around and killed an annihilation barge (how fun is that!). Later on I even managed to roll a hit on a doomscythe, which promptly shot down another nightscythe (even more awesome).
Game 3 - Space wolves
The final game was against space wolves. No shakey stick libraro-wolves and lots and lots of long fangs and grey hunters.
Again in this game Psychic shriek was key, as well as the Doom of Malantai. Dropping in and stripping models from units, Marine units with ld 8 and 9 do not like psychic shriek at all. It gets very easy for the zoans to A get their points back and B cause hastle in the backfield.
In Summary
The flexibility of psychic powers in targeting opponents weaknesses or covering your own is somewhat unprecedented in the game, imagine what you could do if you could change wargear by opponent?
I still see psychic powers as one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal... right up their with flyers, but while folks are tailoring to kill flyers they don't seem to be paying the same attention to psykers.
Good for the Biobomb!
I found myself doing something unexpected, at the start of each game I found myself rolling on tables other than Biomancy, or at the very least rolling on tables as well as Biomancy. so why did I make these decisions?
I realised as soon as I started to play competitively that one of the greatest advantages the powers tables have is that you gain huge flexibility. This only works of course if you have lots of powers - which the tyranids excel at - as you take a lot of the randomness out of the selections.
So what did I learn from each of these games?
First up Biomancy is still the core of your resilience and will usually be the place you need to start , a few Iron Arms or Endurances make a huge difference to the survivability of the list so if you roll either of those 2 early on your multi power monsters, Tervigons or Tyrants. Once you have a power like that in place you can start to consider the other 2 tables - and your enemy. Let me explain by elaborating on my opponents and the choices I made accordingly.
Game 1 - Greydar
I played against a greydar list, a wraithguard blob led by eldrad, fuegan and the baron. The force was light on troops (2 min bikes and a squad of 7 hellions) so killing them was going to be the key to victory, as killing the 1000 point wraithguard unit wasn't going to happen. The other big problem I had hear was that of course Eldrad would put a severe dent in my powers. Now that is a pretty big challenge to deal with.
Knowing this I had to double down on Biomancy in most cases to give my tervigons a chance to cause a problem.
So what I did was give all of the 5 Zoanthropes ( 1 in pods 1 not) the Primaris power Psychic Shriek as it denies cover and armour. I made a mistake of not giving it to the Doom.This was to make it almost impossible for the hellions or bikes to survive while the Tervigons & Flyrants distracted and damaged the blob and pumped out scoring units.
The 3 man zoans dropped in during the game, killing the hellions, with no cover save they were a soft target, it was even the first shot that saw them off, The dooms power killed a squad of bikes on the 3rd attempt - psychic shriek would have been much easier!
If I had been more ballsy in this game I could have loaded the Tyrants with shriek as well and just gone hunting.... even the wraithguard wouldn't have liked that much.
I won the game on the back of the powers I had chosen but it would have been much easier if I had chosen correctly
Game 2 - Necron
A Necron list - 3 night scythes, 1 doom scythe , 2 *6 wraith units with a lord, tomb blades, triarch stalker and 2 annihilation barges. The mission is the relic.
Clearly in this match up I am heavily outgunned. Learning from the first mission I thought hard about
what powers I needed. So on with the rolling. I did roll pretty well on my first or second roll on my tervigons (1 endurance and 2 Iron arms) - and yes I rolled each psyker fully before moving on. This allowed me to take a close look at Telekinesis and Telepathy.
Telepathy was ideal as 2 of the powers are warp charge 2, meaning the first 4 are quite likely to be rolled.
Dominate - good for slowing down wraiths
Mental fortitude - useless
Puppet master - ideal... more on why later!
terrify - scare the wraiths
I ended up with 2 puppet masters which is what I wanted.
The zoanthropes and tyrants went for biomancy or kept their existing powers : I got 2 Enfeebles
The powers in this game were used in the following way.
Turn 1 and 2 enfeeble was used to drop the toughness of the wraiths to T3 or T2, the T3 guys were picked on by the flyrants- S6 instant killing them really puts the pain on wraiths. Most of them died early. The T2 guys were pummeled by fire from spawned guants with fleshborers.
Turn 2 my tervigon cast puppetmaster on the Triarch stalker - who turned around and killed an annihilation barge (how fun is that!). Later on I even managed to roll a hit on a doomscythe, which promptly shot down another nightscythe (even more awesome).
Game 3 - Space wolves
The final game was against space wolves. No shakey stick libraro-wolves and lots and lots of long fangs and grey hunters.
Again in this game Psychic shriek was key, as well as the Doom of Malantai. Dropping in and stripping models from units, Marine units with ld 8 and 9 do not like psychic shriek at all. It gets very easy for the zoans to A get their points back and B cause hastle in the backfield.
In Summary
The flexibility of psychic powers in targeting opponents weaknesses or covering your own is somewhat unprecedented in the game, imagine what you could do if you could change wargear by opponent?
I still see psychic powers as one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal... right up their with flyers, but while folks are tailoring to kill flyers they don't seem to be paying the same attention to psykers.
Good for the Biobomb!
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