Roll up, roll up,
for this week’s round of Asuryani v Tyranids! I’m running my favourite Hail of
Doom build, while Owen has decided he wants one more attempt at a Leviathan
Warrior-spam build. Last time I faced Warrior-spam with Aeldari it narrowly
pipped my Harlequins; can their more enlightened brethren do better? Read on
and find out…
Hail of Doom/Masterful Shots
Custom Craftworld, 7CP
Patrol
Farseer with Guide,
Convergence of Fate (Seer
Council) 90
Farseer with Fortune,
Will of
Asuryan 90
2 Warlocks with
Quicken/Restrain, Seer Council 40
10 Guardian
Defenders 90
2 x 1 Vyper with
scatter
lasers 80
1 x 10 Dire
Avengers, Exarchs with extra
catapult 120
2 x 1 War Walker
with two shuriken cannons 130
Outrider Detachment
Farseer Skyrunner
with Doom, Executioner, Kurnous’ Bow and Mark of the Incomparable
Hunter 120
Baharroth 140
2 Warlocks with
Jinx 40
2 x 3 Windriders
with shuriken
catapults 120
9 Windriders with
shuriken
cannons 270
3 Shining Spears,
Exarch with paragon sabre, Heartstrike, mirrorshield and shuriken
cannon 125
10 Swooping Hawks,
Exarch with The Phoenix
Plume 180
6 Swooping
Hawks 108
6 Dire Avengers,
Exarch with extra
catapult 72
5 Howling Banshees,
Exarch with Piercing Strikes, mirrorswords and
Cronescream 105
Webway
Gate 80
Total: 2000 points
You know it, you love
it (or at least, you probably don’t hate it as much as Leviathan Tyranids). The
only major change from previous iterations of this build is that I’ve made the
heretical decision to go down from 25 Dire Avengers to 16, and used the spare
points to bring along some War Walkers. I’ve been finding the Avengers to fold
a little too easily once exposed, so I’m trying out how I go with a few less of
them. In exchange, the War Walkers give me forward deploy, plenty of extra
shuriken cannon shots and some semi-durable units to sit on midfield
objectives. A good trade? Maybe, we’ll find out.
Hive Fleet Leviathan, 6CP
Patrol
Winged Hive Tyrant with Reaper, Adaptive Biology 190
Neurothrope with Resonance Barb and Synaptic Tendrils 100
3 Tyrant Guard 120
3 Zoanthropes 150
Maleceptor 170
3 Venomthropes 105
2 x 5 Warriors, one squad with a venom cannon 255
1 Exocrine with Voracious Ammunition 185
1 Harpy with 2 heavy venom cannons, Synaptic Enhancement 180
Patrol
Hive Tyrant with Shardgullet, Perfectly Adapted, toxin sacs 180
2 x 5 Warriors, one squad with flesh hooks 255
10 Gargoyles 80
1 Pyrovore 30
I gather this list was heavily inspired by Jesper
Unander-Scharin’s recent GT-winning Leviathan force, especially in terms of the
5-bug Warrior squads. That gives the list a lot more potential flexibility than
some other Warrior-heavy lists, and it’s backed up by all the usual suspects
and an Exorcrine. Owen wanted to try it out as a TTL pick, and in concert with
the Harpy and Walkrant it gives him a lot of scary firepower. Overall, this
list hits hard at range and super hard up close, it’s tough as nails and it’s
got lots of ObSec to fend off my sneaky Asuryani shenanigans. If you’re not
building lists with this in mind then you probably need to reassess your strategy.
Secondaries and Deployment
Secondaries were pretty easy for Owen. On Death and Zeal his
Tyranids can reliably score Stranglehold, Warp Ritual feeds into his plan to
stomp onto the centre and hold it, and his army is basically built around To
the Last anyway. Easy stuff. Life was harder for my Eldar. I’m still fairly
confident in scoring more on Stranglehold than Engage, and Owen’s list gives up
enough on No Prisoners that it’s probably a safer bet than To the Last. RND
ends up as the logical third pick on the basis that I can score an 8 fairly
easily, but I know Owen is unlikely to let me turn that into a 12. I could
theoretically score a 12 on Bring it Down, but only 5 of those points are
especially reliable when Owen’s already incentivised to hide the other 7.
Owen’s deployment basically sees him cramming as many Warriors and monsters into cover as possible, while the characters take advantage of being able to stand out in the open and the Harpy hangs out in the backfield. There’s nowhere I can safely be after committing to it, so it’ll probably be pretty secure back there. 24” guns are tricky to use sometimes!
My
deployment is nice and conservative as well, with only chaff deployed in
striking range of the Flyrant. The main excitement is my War Walkers hiding out
just outside 3” of both flanking objectives, ready to pick them up Turn 1 and
score me some Stranglehold.
I’d really love to go second here, but we all know the dice
don’t work that way.
Asuryani Turn 1, 15:25
Ah well, at least I have lots of chaff to commit. There’s nowhere for the Windriders to go while remaining safe from retaliation, so they stay hidden. The two War Walkers score me Stranglehold, while Baharroth and his boys go out to shoot some Warriors.
Time to do some chip damage for free. Hawks are great!
They kill a couple from the front squad, do a little damage to the Maleceptor, then disappear back to safety.
Aaaaaand
that’s my turn. Riveting stuff.
Tyranids Turn 1, 15:33
I’ve worked pretty hard to give Owen no good targets, so his turn is about as exciting as mine. One Warrior squad scores a six on its advance roll to get onto both the left and central objective, although a failed cast on Onslaught means they can’t try and charge my War Walker. The Neurothrope floats forward to Warp Ritual, while much of the rest of the army moves forward to closer staging positions. Owen is certainly dominating the centre!
The Harpy remains at the back, not prepared to risk
shuriken-retribution if it commits itself too early.
Not a huge turn, but it did what Owen needed it to, and
having both Catalyst and Hive Nexus on the central Warriors means they’ll be a
pain to shift.
Asuryani Turn 2, 35:33
To that end I bring in my small Avenger squad to shoot the Warriors up and RND, while lining up the big Windrider squad, Kurnous’ Bow Farseer and all the Hawks.
Psychic sees that Farseer unleash Executioner on the depleted Warrior squad I targeted on the first turn, successfully killing two even through the Neurothrope Imperative 5+++.
Owen had popped that to try and convince me not to Eldritch Storm, and it works; I decide I’m better off waiting for next turn. Shooting is largely just a heap of guns going into the central Warriors, and even with the -1D strat they get cleaned right off the table. Couldn’t do that with Ulthwé!
I also pop some wounds onto the Pyrovore with the
Hawks, then charge the last Warrior from the Executioner-ed squad with
Baharroth. He does what he does best, then returns home to safety.
Again, not too exciting of a turn, but half of the Warriors
are dead. Hopefully Owen runs out of them before I run out of turns!
Tyranids Turn 2, 35:46
The happy side-effect of those Warriors being minced is Owen only scores a 4 on Primary this turn. Aeldari beating Tyranids on Primary, amazing! Owen’s plan for the turn is to start to kill off my chaff and pick up Stranglehold again.
The latter starts with the Maleceptor coming out to melt my War Walker through a wall, as well as chipping some wounds onto the Dire Avengers.
Shooting from the next squad of Warriors targets some misplaced Hawks, but is unable to convert into any kills. The Walkrant is similarly unsuccessful, as while it hammer my other War Walker with 3 Shardgullet hits, I have an invulnerable save and 3 Fate Dice to spend.
The Harpy also whiffs
against the same War Walker, failing to get the wounds it needs to bring down
its prey. I do lose a Vyper to the Flyrant, however, before it Overruns to
safety behind the Tyrant Guard.
Finally, the Neurothrope casting Warp Ritual and the Pyrovore trotting onto the left objective mean Owen is scoring well on his Secondaries. Again, not a crazy turn, but it got Owen the points he needed to stay ahead of my Eldar.
Asuryani Turn 3, 54:46
My turn starts with a couple of big decisions. Owen decides
to pop the Zoanthrope Imperative, and I decide it’s time for my Eldritch Storm.
It goes off right in the middle of a lot of the Tyranid army, but some
appalling rolls to cast the Psychic Action means I only boost it with one
Farseer. The result is a bit of a whiff, with an okay number of mortals being
done but very few models actually being removed. I really needed a lot more
from this, so it was a big deal.
Elsewhere, the Banshees show up from the Webway to help secure the leftmost objective and RND that quarter.
I totally forget the
Guardians though, only remembering at the very end of the turn. Thankfully,
Owen is generous enough to say I should bring them in anyway. I repay the
favour by dumping them right at the back of my quarter, where they can
contribute absolutely nothing this for the next few turns.
The Hawks and Baharroth do their thing, while the big
Avenger squad pokes its nose out to target the central Warriors. The Windrider
deathstar zip out to light up the Maleceptor, while the lone Pyrovore finds
itself facing a hail of shuriken from the survivors of the small Avenger squad.
Shooting is a fairly disappointing affair. An absolute storm of shuriken and las-fire from much of my army manages to wipe out the central Warriors, but I have to commit a lot more than I’d like to bring them down. Doom and Jinx alone should have been enough here!
The guns start to open up
The Windriders also dramatically underperform, doing around half their expected output to leave the Maleceptor very much alive.
Further fire from the large Hawks squad is unable to finish it off, and I’m feeling pretty down until the Dire Avengers slaughter the Pyrovore. Sometimes it’s the small things. Baharroth also kills a Tyrant Guard in combat, which is some consolation.
I unleashed almost everything at Owen this turn, and only
actually killed two squads. I was feeling great about this game, but now it
feels like the wheels might be about to fall off the bus.
Tyranids Turn 3, 54:60
That starts with the Harpy flitting forward and dropping Spore Mines, which promptly kill three Banshees. Fresh off some recent validation in a Goonhammer Ruleshammer article, we’re still playing that the Mines can move after being dropped, but I definitely wasn’t feeling great about that right now!
It’s shooting blasts the nearby War Walker to pieces and wounds the Banshee
Exarch, while the Walkrant successfully obliterates the Vyper with
Shardgullet.
In the centre, there’s now a distinct lack of Warriors. So the Venomthropes are sent forward to hold the objective and body-block for the Hive Tyrants.
The Flyrant speeds forward to massacre some screening Windriders
before Overrunning to safety, while the Gargoyles move up to flip a couple of
objectives next turn.
Finally, on the left flank the last Warriors use Onslaught
to advance and charge onto the objective, slaughtering the Dire Avengers and
probably putting a lock on that flank. The Maleceptor also does its best to
hide, ready to frustrate me yet again next turn.
This turn felt really bad for me. Owen now has control over
his left flank, while almost all of my remaining force is pinned behind my
central ruin. I still have a lot of troops left, but I don’t know if I can
effectively utilise them with my current positioning.
Asuryani Turn 4, 74:60
Still, I have an opportunity for a couple of big swings
here. If I can bring down the Harpy and the Venomthropes, then there will be
nothing between the Flyrant and my Windriders. I can also pull some Eldar
trickery to reduce Owen’s Primary score, while unleashing my Banshees on the
Gargoyles to stop him doing the same to me.
The Eldar trickery part of that plan goes well, with the
small squad of Windriders zipping forward, receiving Will of Asuryan for ObSec,
then being Quickened forward to flip Owen’s back objective. They’ll die next
turn, but it’s worth it.
Shooting, unfortunately, is a repeat of last turn. First the Harpy is bombarded with a metric ton of psychically-boosted shuriken and survives it all.
Baharroth is finally able to bring it down, but that now means I don’t have enough shooting to kill the last of the Venomthropes, with one surviving on a single wound.
That’s a truly massive swing, as it means I can’t
target the Flyrant with my buffed-up Windrider squad. For context, that squad
averages around 15 wounds to a Flyrant, so missing out on that opportunity is
gut-wrenching. All they can target is the lone Venomthrope, who disappears into
a mist of spores as I hit it with 9 shuriken cannons.
Nor are those the only disappointments for the turn. The handful of Hawks that couldn’t see the Venomthropes target the Maleceptor and bring it, too, to a single wound. More dramatically, the Harpy on the left flank decides to explode when I finally bring it down. The nearby Banshees take the maximum three mortal wounds, losing me the super-Exarch and another Banshee just as they were about to hit combat.
The last Banshee joins Baharroth in
charging the Gargoyles, because I know that if any survive I’ll be getting a 4
on Primary next turn. Unfortunately, without the super-Exarch I’m only able to
kill 5 of the Gargoyles, giving Owen one more big swing for the turn.
I end my turn by setting up a nice little defensive position
of Hawks and Baharroth over on the left objective. Chances are Owen will just
kill the Hawks and flip it with the Gargoyles, but it’s my only shot at
avoiding that 4.
Tyranids Turn 4, 74:73
Owen still has quite a lot of tools left, and he sets about using them to make my life hard. The obvious first step is in the backfield, where a combination of the Zoanthrope Smite and the Exocrine easily obliterate my Windriders.
On the right flank, the Gargoyles and Flyrant move up to flip my objective.
The Flyrant charges into the Hawks and absolutely massacres them, allowing the 5 remaining Gargoyles to claim the point. The Flyrant then Overruns back behind the wall, as is its wont.
The Walkrant retreats behind
that same wall, leaving just the Neurothrope to control the centre for
Stranglehold. It’s a risk, but it means it will be much harder for me to take
out that valuable To the Last target.
Finally, on the left flank the Maleceptor and Warriors hold
firm, hoping to dissuade any attempts to flip this objective.
Asuryani Turn 5, 84:73
Theoretically I’m actually ahead going into this turn,
albeit only by a single point. Now, however, I’m really regretting going first,
as Owen has an easy route to a 12 at the end of his turn. After doing some
quick tallying up of the score, I realise that there are two ways I can win
this: if I can stop him getting that 12 and Stranglehold then I’ll win by 1, or
if I can take out two of Owen’s TtL targets then I’ll win by 4. Neither of
those seem likely, but at this point I don’t have much choice.
So it’s go time for everyone, with all the Asuryani surging forward to get angles and hold objectives.
On the left flank, my last Dire Avengers absolutely obliterate the Gargoyles before Battle Focussing onto the objective they were holding.
Baharroth and the Shining Spears zip up to try and
take out the Flyrant, while the Windriders scoot forward to draw LoS onto the
Walkrant. Doom, Guide and Jinx all go off, so I’m feeling optimistic. The Hawks
also flock forward to hold the central objective, along with the Guardians, who
wound the Neurothrope with their shooting before using Matchless Agility to
make it narrowly onto the objective.
In the Psychic phase, I make an absolutely
critical mistake. I cast Will of Asuryan on my Farseer Skyrunner, then Quicken
him across the field to flip Owen’s backfield objective. It’s a classic bit of
Aeldari trickery, but in this case the person being tricked is me; I’ve
forgotten that Owen went second, and will therefore score Primary at the end of his
turn, not the start! Instead I should have hidden my Farseer in the middle of
the Hawks, where he would have provided me with ObSec on the objective in case
the Guardians die. Critical errors!
Shooting and combat are unable to make up for my mistake. A torrent of shuriken from the Windriders leaves the Walkrant on just a single wound, while the Hawks fail to hurt either the Neurothrope or the Maleceptor.
The Spears bring the Flyrant down to just a couple wounds, but some clutch saves from Owen mean Baharroth can finish off neither of the Hive Tyrants in combat.
I Skyleap him back to the safety of my Dire Avengers, but
this failure is probably the game. Now Owen just has to take me off the central
objective and he’ll scrape a narrow win.
Tyranid Turn 5, 84:90
Sure enough, the Tyranid turn basically consists of everything flocking towards the middle, ready to kill some of the pile of Asuryani I’ve exposed there.
The Farseer Skyrunner dies an ignominious death to a Shardgullet volley, while the Exocrine evaporates half of my Guardians.
The remaining Guardians are easily hacked to pieces by the injured Flyrant, while the Warriors roll a massive charge move and are able to get onto the objective.
They promptly eviscerate the Windriders, giving Owen ObSec and a numbers advantage on the objective.
With that, Owen gets his 12 and Stranglehold and it’s game over, with a narrow 90:84 win to the Tyranids!
Post-Game Analysis
Well, that was somewhat infuriating. At the start of Turn 3
I was feeling totally in control of this game, and then everything started to
go wrong. A combination of bad luck, a couple of key errors and the innate
disadvantage of going second in this matchup saw my advantage evaporate as Owen
mercilessly ground me out of the game.
I’m not going to spend too much time on the bad luck,
because that’s just a feature of the game that comes up sometimes. My Turns 3
and 4 saw me kill way less than I should expect to, but that’s why it’s a dice
game. The Harpy’s explosion was especially gut-wrenching though: without it I
would have had an extra 13 Howling Banshee swings and D3+1 mortals going into the Gargoyles,
which almost certainly wipes them. At that point I hold my left objective on
the following turn, score four more VPs, and then only have to commit my units
to killing one TtL target in the final turn instead of two. Given the Walkrant
was left on one wound, being able to throw Baharroth and all the Shining Spears
into it would have almost certainly sealed the win for me. It just goes to show
how close this game was, that one explosion was enough to derail it!
The moment I knew it was all going wrong
I shouldn’t blame it all on the dice though, because some of my mistakes prevented me recovering from their swings. Had I actually thought through what I was doing with the Skyrunner, he could have sat on the central objective in total safety and given me the ObSec I needed to hold onto the central point. All I had to do was not cast Quicken and I probably win this game! Less dramatically, the placement of my Vypers and left War Walker were pretty bad all game. I kept exposing the War Walker and one Vyper to shoot onto the centre, but this allowed Owen to get angles on them with the Hive Tyrant, which is an awful trade. I needed those vehicles to survive and hold the objective, not do some meaningless chip damage to Warriors I already had the guns to kill.
Why was I letting this happen when I could have just not?
I also placed the other Vyper too far forward, allowing the
Flyrant to Overrun to a safe position after killing it. I’m used to Flyrants
using Encircle to have an almost infinite uninteractible threat range, and
hadn’t really registered that I can play around them a bit these days. 16” is a
long way to move after fighting, but it’s not the whole board.
Finally, I think I should have committed more to either
flank and less to my central castle. Part of this was my forgetting the
Guardians and bringing them in out of position, and another part was the
terrain, which only gave me one safe ruin, but I still think it would have been
worth the investment to get more troops out to the flanks. Even putting my big
Dire Avenger squad in reserve and bringing them in on the right flank would
have helped a heap with keeping that critical objective contested. I couldn’t
have freely RND’ed in my own quarter on Turn 1, but I could have just used the
Windriders anyway, or sacrificed a turn of the small Hawk unit shooting.
This shot definitely shows the weakness of my strategy here
Speaking of Dire Avengers, I’m still uncertain about my
choice to ditch 9 of them for the War Walkers. I loved having the forward
deploying vehicles to hang out on the side objectives, they gave me an early
Primary lead that nearly let me coast to victory. On the other hand, it would
have been great to have one more hammer unit to show up and blast some ‘Nids. I’ll
have to experiment with this some more, but I think I’m happy enough with the
change to stick with it for now. Perhaps 1 War Walker and 5 Avengers is a good halfway point that still lets me forward deploy while having another RND option as well.
The Tyranid list felt really strong to both Owen and I, we
agreed that the 5-bug Warrior bricks were really potent. The big 9-bug squads
are super powerful, but they stop you taking TtL and they suck up your CP for
their defensive strat. The medium-sized squads seemed to present a nice middle
point where they were infuriating to take out and worthwhile investing
defensive buffs on, while still being inexpensive enough to throw out onto an
objective and lose. And there’s not much that can survive attacks from 5
Warriors anyway, adrenal glands or no. Our little gaming group has been pretty
lukewarm on Warriors since the new book dropped, but a build like this makes
them feel a lot less like a liability.
Those Warriors just kept soaking up damage
I hope you enjoyed this battle report between two giants of
the meta, we certainly enjoyed playing it! Let me know in the comments what you
thought of the report and lists. Are these medium-sized Warrior blobs the best
things in the Tyranid book? What do you expect from the coming Chapter Approved
for both these lists? And did the dice derail this game, or am I just feeling
salty that my Hail of Doom winning streak is finally at an end? As always, I’m
keen to hear from you.
Until next time, may your opponent’s Harpies never explode on top of your key units!
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