40K Battle Report: 1000 Points - Tyranid Swarm vs. Jetbike Seer Coulcil

So I just got back from my Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) where they run regular 'small' tournaments or campaigns over the course of a few weeks, with a small but respectable prize at the end for the winner (I have won this twice since he started doing it). This week started their 1000 point Side Bar Tournament. Basically you come with your favorite 1000 point list with a 250 point side bar. If you want to use a unit in your side bar, you need to swap it out for equal or lesser point value from your base list, making sure not to go over 1000 points. Your side bar can change from week to week over the 4 Weeks of the tournament, but you base list must remain the same. If a unit is wiped out during the course of the game you roll a d6. On a 6 that unit is fine for next game. 4-5 means the unit will start in reserve, 2-3 and the unit is in reserve until at least turn 3. On a 1 the unit can not be played in the following game. A really neat idea and something different for a change.

I decided that with such low points, my Tyranid Swarm list of almost 100 model at the start of the game would be just too many wound for most lists to handle and would score me a big win in the 4th week (Usually $50 of in-store credit for a $4 entry fee, not bad). The list is pretty simple, a Tervigon for an HQ, 2 huge units of Termagants, a 30 man Hormagaunt Squad with Toxic Sacs and Glands (my hammer unit), with some Hive guard an Zoanthropes to deal with light mech. My side bar is two big units of Gargoyles and another hive guard.

My first opponent this week was a good friend of my Anthony who, in his infinite wisdom, thought that a 10 man Jetbike Seer Council list would mop up the competition. His whole army consisted of 20 models, the 10 man seer council and 2 5 man Jetbike Guardian squads. Total!

I personally do not believe in 'death star' units like the Seer Council for the simple math of their Average Points Per Model, or APPM Rating. I believe I can credit Neil and the crew over at the 11th Company for this little tactical gem. Take this game for example. Antony's APPM was 50 Pints per model, 50! So for every model I killed in this game, on average, 50 points was coming off of the table. Where as mine with the termagants the Tervigon produce was in the neighborhood of 8. 8 v 50... it was no contest.

We rolled up capture and control with Dawn of War deployment. He rolled first turn and placed his Seer council right on the 24" line. His two JetBike Guardian Squads took up positions behind the Death Star.

I set up about 19" away from the council with my hormagaunt, and placed the Tervigon and the massive gaunt squad on the objective in my deployment zone (in cover of course), to insure that I would not get charged turn one. Here my guess range was a bit better then that and it turned out to be 20". So, turn one he charges forth with the Council 12", fires into my hormagaunt squad and kills 11 of them. His guardians both fail night fight rolls and can not hit the Gaunt squad they move 12" to shoot. In the assault phase he jumps back 6" with the council and guardians, placing both at minimum of 15" away. Perfect charge range for Hormagaunts! MY TURN!

My Turn one just plain brutal. I moved forward with the hormagaunt squad, move my Hive Guard and Zoanthropes in position for them to take pot shots at the council to soften them up a bit, and the Tervigon pooped out 12 more gaunts that got placed on the objective. The second gaunt squad move forward to threaten the guardians, but were just out of range to shoot, and the one from reserves made a run at the second objective. The Hormagaunts rolled 5 on the bounding leap and were clearly in assault range, and the Hive Guard/ Zoanthropes managed to Kill 2 Warlocks with shooting. ASSAULT! I charged the Council with 19 Hormagaunts at I6 and STR4 thanks to Adrenal Glands, so I went first in combat with 57 attacks, hitting on 4s and re-rolling ones thanks to Scything talons, wounding on 4s and re-rolling wounds thanks to Toxic Sacs. All-in-all, 26 wounds were done to the Seer Council. I killed 3 more Warlocks! In their attacks back poor, Anthony rolled 6 or 7 ones to hit and only managed to do 2 wounds, which, I saved! Hell yeah! So, the council lost combat by 3, rolls their Leadership and fails, re-rolls thanks to embolden and... wait for it... FAILS! In the ensuing sweeping advance I roll a 6, he rolls a 1, bye-bye 780 point Seer Council! Turn ONE Baby! The Hormagaunts are eating raw hamburger meat as we speak for a reward.

The rest of the game was mope up. In a rage Anthony deiced to charge the hormagaunts with one guardian squad and the gaunts with another. The first squad lost three models, did three wound and remained locked. Same for the second. By his half of turn three, the guardians fighting the hornagaunts lost another and did nothing back, the gaunts killed one more, broken them and they went 17" toward the table edge with no hope of coming back. My turn three killed off the remaining guardians, and that was game.

Overall, hell, I couldn't be more pleased with my performance. I never lost a unit, tabled my opponent, and had some laughs during the game.

So, moral of the story kids, death star units may look good on paper, but never really earn their points back. And when they die, the bulk of your army goes with them. So look in to that APPM ratting of your army and see where you stack up!

1-0 with 1000 Victory points for good 'ol Edvil209 and sitting pretty in 1st place. More to come on this mini-tournament.

Eldar Building Project

So I have been 40K-less for almost a month now. I got to play the week before the family vacation to San Fransisco. But the week leading up to the vacation was all prep work for this massive trip. I am really upset that I did not find this great new podcast called "The Independent Characters" (http://theindependentcharacters.com/blog/) which is based out of San Fransisco that I could have visited and played while I was there.

But, vacation was awesome, we had a great time, and came home. The week after was really recovery, as jet lack sucks as an adult, but the kids took it really hard. So I did not get any hobby or gaming done that week as I was just too beat. Then, my wife went to San Diego for a conference for work and I was at home with three boys all week. No hobby - No Gaming

We come home to find out that we have a small gas leak in one of our vehicles and we needed to get that taken care of as soon as possible, which sucked up my regular gaming night of Tuesday nights. NO GAMING!!!! However, the three day 4th of July weekend did give me the chance to get some hobby done.

So with a great three day weekend, I decided to go ahead and break the rule I had established with myself and started building my Eldar army. I only own at this time about 1,000 Points of Eldar and I thought it would be fun just to get them together. The next thing I knew, I had an old school Falcon built, a unit of Fire Dragons stripped, a unit of Rangers stripped, a Wave Serpent built, a ten man Dire Avenger Squad built, a Farseer built, and the new Fire Prism built all in two nights! Yea Hobby!

But now that I am staring at these freshly built models, I want to play them. So shoot me. I plan to take out the Eldar tonight and play a game or two with the unpainted Eldar. Now, I want to paint these, but with the blistering heat wave and high humidity we have been having in western PA this week, I did not want to chance spray paint to model. Trust me, they will be painted before I built any more models. I will buy more, just not build them. I want this army to be fully painted at 1850.

However, next week looks better weather-wise and I'll be priming and painting.

I plan to film at least one of the battles tonight and throwing it up on the YouTube page. I'll let you know what I learn tonight. I expect to get my butt kicked pretty well, as my gaming group has no idea how to take it easy on a vet player starting a new player. Got I love them!

40K Rants: Why Eldar?

So now that the effects of jet lag, that lovely stomach flu, and sick kids are beginning to subside and life is returning to some state of normal, I will be dedicating myself to the assembly, painting, learning and playing my new army, the Eldar. I am really looking forward to it, this being my now fourth 40K army. I can't help it, I just want to own them all some day, and to be honest, "it looks like it may actually happen" - Egon, Ghostbusters.

"But EvilEd209?" you ask, "if you are this super competitive, tournament player that you say you are, Why Eldar? Why not Space Wolves, or the new shinny Blood Angles, or the super duper tournament winning leafblower Imperial Guard. Or, why not wait a few months and go after those super scary Dark Eldar that are coming, really this time, we swear. Why Eldar?"

Well fine reader, I will answer that question. For starters, I am a competitive player, this is true. When it comes to tournament play or my gaming club, I often have a similar attitude to that clip of Herm Edwards when he coached the Jets saying, "You play to win the game". But I feel that not only do I compete with the guys at my FLGS and my Gaming club, but I compete with myself as well. I do not feel that to be competitive that you need to swap over to the newest, greatest army to smash face for a few months until people figure out how to deal with your army and then move on to the next best thing. That is not competitive to me, it is taking advantage of your opponent's lack of knowledge of your army to win. There is very little challenge in this tactics to me. The real challenge is to take your army and adapt to new armies and tactics out there. Or better yet, start and older army and try to win with it, this is what separates a good tournament player from a great one.

For example, do you remember when Nob Bikers were the scariest thing in the 40K Universe and they took advantage of that new fangled wound allocation thingy that 5th Edition introduced? I sure do, it was right when I first started playing 40K competitively. And I remember my first tournament and being crushed by those damned things and cursing them. However, I began to adapt my army to prepare for such thing. Playing Tyranids back then, the SniperFex with it's STR 8 Barbed Strangler Large Blast was more then enough to equalize that threat. Add in some Genestealers with Implant Attack and I was eating Nob Biker Lists alive. I adapted, I did not dump my bugs to go play Nob Biker Orks.

But this does not really answer the question, "Why Eldar?" Well for starters, as I was doing my research into the other 40K armies out there that were not Necrons, Tyranids, or Codex Space Marines, I was looking for something specific. I wanted start an army that was totally different then what I had been playing. At frist I was looking at the aforementioned Orks, but if I ran Orks, I would run them mob style, which is basically how I run my Tyranids now. So I moved on to Space Wolves, but these guys are only very slightly different from Marines and I did not want to cheese it up too much. I looked at Tau for a moment, but not only does the army not appeal to me at all, sorry Tau players, but I already had all shooty all the time army and it simply does not fit my play style.

So I then came across the Eldar. I know this will sound bad, but I have three sons who, gods willing, be playing 40K here in the near future. And I already have two "bad guy" armies and only one "good guy" army. So I started looking for another army who could be argued to be a "good guy". I started reading the Eldar Codex and I really started to get into the fluff. And I loved the story. That is what really made the decision for me. They were not bad guys, but god guys, from a certain point of non-Imperium view. The models look super cool, and this not being least of course, they can run Mech and are pretty good at it as well. They use a lot of Eldar Psychic powers and employ completely different tactics to play the army. It was perfect.

So keep your eyes pealed for pics of the new Eldar being built and painted with future army lists and battle reports to follow.