Nids: 2 test games later

He rocks so much!

Good Morning!
Kinda hurts that Managarm beat me to it, but hey at least i got some info right from the table top!
I managed to lure some of the guys who started to play with me in 2nd and 3rd Edition into the mancave, and get 2 games in with the new Nids codex. Yes i have a copy. No you cant have it. But as always, google is your friend. ;)

So we sat down, each of us made an army and then we faced a randomized opponent. I played Black Templars first and then Space Wolves in the "winners bracket". 

I had to face, Land Raiders, Ragnar, Canis and tons of 3+ armor saves and armor.

So heres what i used:
Tyrant

3 Zoantrophes in Capsule

Deathleaper

3 Hiveguard

2 Tervigons

2x20 Termagaunts

3 Warriors

Mawloc

Carnifex in Capsule

With this i had 5 scoring units and the ability to generate even more. Lucky me i had to play loot counters both times....guess its just me. ;) How does it work? Keep everything in reserve, come in on 3+ or 2+ depending if the Liktor has showed up, autoenter on turn 3. Lots of fun. The army lacks  focus and i guess i could make a tougher one. But it had most of the units i wanted to try out.

So how did the units do? Well let me first say one thing, Mawlocs rock! They are awesome, if your enemy has foot units on the field, they will cry. Light armor? Still gets hit from behind with st6. And if your opponent shoots at the Mawloc, he does not shoot at anything else. And if you survive you can always charge into something or burrow again. AWESOME! He was absolute devasting in my second game, killed 4 fenris wolves and the wolves ran of the board taking Canis with them! He also killed like 10 or so more Space wolves. He didnt killed a single marine in my first game though, deviated all over the place.

The Tyrant is ok. He costs A LOT but he is worth it, IF you play a army list which makes use of his abilities. If all you want is a cc unit, go with Alpha Warriors. I used him with Insight, which grants me +1 on my reserves. Other then that, lash and sword is nice, heavy venomcannon is ok.

The Zoantrophes, did their job in the first game. They killed the Black Templars Land raider. Died when they got charged and the capsule killed some more marines and then died when it got charged. They failed in the second game, where they just tore off a lascannon. And then got killed by Ragnar and friends. They are good, and i will use at least 1 unit in every army, st10 ap1 lance is just to good to miss. 

Deathleaper, he didnt do much. Killed a few marines and immobilized a rhino. Hes in the list for another +1 on reserves and for his funny special rules. W3 malus on a opponents character model is fun, even more if its a psyker. And i mean come on Deathleaper, awesome name! ;) Stelek from www.yesthetruthhurts.com put me onto this one.

The Hiveguards are good, st8 shooting which does not need los is always good. They didnt do much in both games, just walked around and shot stuff. Ill guess that´s what they do.

Termagaunts you need them. They are cheap, they shot, they score and they can kill marines in cc with roids and poison from the Tervigons. Well and for each unit you can take a Tervigon as scoring unit.

The warriors managed to avoid action most of the time. They did shoot a few times, they got shot with lascannons alot and died. Didnt saw cc action, but i reckon they rock if they get there. Energy weapons which can autokill? Yes please!

Tervigons are good, really good. The option on a t6, w6, 3+, fnp, MC which is scoring, is too good to pass. I like them, i will use them, but not more then 2. They are not cheap by any means, but the ability to spawn more Termagaunts, boosting their power and tossing around feel no pain is worth the points to me. One always managed to spend their Termagaunts in one go and the other always spawned tons.

The Fex is still good, although he does get really pricey, really quick. Put him in a capsule, shock him, shoot, hope to survive and then run him into cc. Worked quite good for me.

Ah one last word on the capsules, they are really nice. I always liked the fluff on these and i think that its high time nids get some decent shock options. They can kill stuff with shooting and cc, are autokillable, but cheap. I think over on www.chainfist.com there is a cheap option, how to get some "eggs".

So let me conclude that i like the new Nids, a lot. The codex plays totally different from the last one and i feel it has a lot of options for fiendly games. It might not be the best for tournament players, but i will totally crush foot lists. If your not mounted up, you will die, thats what i learned from my first two games. Hopefully ill get some more in, in the next days.


So with that i wish you all the best in 2010 and a nice new years party. Ill head over to the kitchen and prepare everything for my birthday party!

Cheers

Tyranids: Preliminary list building with codex in hand

 Greetings everyone,

Over the christmas days I had the chance to take a thorough look through the new tyranid codex. And as I had enough time to do so, I can remember most of the points cost pretty well. Usually I don’t put much effort into list building without haven’t seen the codex and estimated costs solely based on guess-work. But now, with a much more solid background, I played around a lot with some ideas I have for my own swarm. On the first look the codex leaves behind a rather good “feeling”, so to say. At a first glimpse, I haven’t seen a unit which seems too overpower/underpowered by itself. But surely it’s too early to say something definite and time will tell what combinations of which units will raise the cries for cheese. Only things I am somewhat disappointed are the new pyrovores, genestealers and carnifices. Those are not bad at all, but in comparison to other units they are a bit weak. But enough of that, here are some ideas for my list I am intending to build and play. Mind that I have seen the German version of the codex, so some names might seem odd.

HQ:
-    Hive Tyrant with lash whip, bonesword and heavy venom cannon, “tactical instinct”, 3 tyrant guards
I think a swarm should be led by a hive tyrant and as he will be footslogging he needs the guards. Expensive, but a hard nut to crack, a beast in close combat and I think some pretty needed anti tank capability.

Elites:
-    3 Zoanthropes
I always liked the models and the idea of bloated brains flying around and causing some serious headaches somehow appeals to me. And strength 10 ap1 lances are even more appealing. Sadly they are a single unit now, you cannot field them independently.

Troops:
-    3 warriors with 2 sets of scything talons each
-    3 warriors with death spitters or scything talons, too. Not sure right now.
It seems necessary to take more warriors now simply to keep the swarm under synapse control. And I like the models. Strength 8 will be the bane for this unit though. Against the Imperial Guard they will die quickly I guess. Maybe these 2 small units are not enough. But we'll see

-    2x20 hormagaunts with toxin sacs
Fast, cheap (with this loadout one gaunt costs the same like one kroot) and they pack some serious punch with wounding everything on 4+. And I think they can be left outside the synapse as you want them charging one way or the other. On the negative side: no chance against vehicles or walkers.

-    2x20 termagaunts with fleshborers
Very cheap , adds to the horde feeling the 'nids should have in my eyes.

-    10 genestealers with 1 additional broodlord
Actually I am not sure about this unit. I always feared the stealers and had prayed Clausewitz never fielded a broodlord in the past. To be honest they got hit with the nerf-stick more than necessary in my eyes. The downgrading of rending did that sufficiently to the stealers and the loss of inhuman strength does not make the broodlord more attractive either. But outflanking stealers are no bad idea at all and the Space Hulk broodlord is too nice to be left in the box. I definitely will give them a try.

Heavy support:
-    Trygon Alpha with regeneration
The stats of this pal are just great and with 6 wounds I think the regeneration could actually do something good. And another monstrous synapse creature with shadow in the warp isn't bad either. Expensive creature nonetheless (costs like a land raider with multi-melta).

-    Trygon with regeneration
Same like above, even without the synapse thing. And with the +1 on reserves (granted by tactical instinct of the tyrant) those buddies are likely to appear early in the game. Have fun with those two in your line.

And that's it yet at a 2000 point level. The big bugs cost their fair share now. But with more than 100 bugs on the field it's pretty cool I think. One weakness I see is the limited anti tank power I have in this list as nearly the whole troops section can't do anything against vehicles. At the moment it is up to the hive tyrant and the brain bugs. Maybe it is necessary to field hive guards. Fluff-wise they are meant to guard brood nests and spore chimneys and all those strange "buildings" but it seems it could be worthwhile to take them. They are relatively cheap and 2 strength 8 shots whithout the need for line of sight and on a tough ballistic skill 4 creature is nothing to make fun of.

So these are just my initial thoughts and it is far from finished. I would like to add some gargoyles with the special character (parasite of Mortrex?) and some raveners. And a brood of three carnifices as screamer-killers is something I'd like to try out. I could go on and on this way as the codex has soo many nice units which not only look great but seem to have some nice rules.

In summary I think this codex will bring a lot of fun as I dare to say there will be more than just one or two "viable" lists. The new creatures, and by that I don't mean only the so beloved tervigon, seem to be very interesting. Another interesting thing will be to keep everything in synapse range, especially as the warriors are a bit more fragile now.

Currently on the painting table are a hive tyrant, 2 guards and 1 zoanthrope (Santa Clause was nice this year...). The old gaunt box is still unopened. I'll keep you updated on this.

Daemon Prince of Slaanesh

Hi everyone,

with all the high expectations on the new Tyranids codex (which will be really great I´m sure) I like to just give a very short update on the last finished model of my Chaos Daemons army. I already possess a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch that was build from the original CSM Prince set. For the Slaanesh part of my army I decided to do a completely different approach to add the Prince. Because the original model lucks a little to bulky and not really fitting to the agile but nimble followers of the Prince of Pleasures, I used the Deceiver model as a base. I have seen this several times now and always like the arrogant look and the really nice posing of the model. With few additions (basically the Dark Pegasi wings and an Icon of Slaanesh from the Daemonettes pack) the model was finished quite quickly. So here is the pic :

Daemon Prince of Slaanesh

Prince Fen´ci

Nids....Nids...Nids....

Hey,

well if you check the net these days you will find the rumours about the new Nids codex is all the rage. The rumours run strife and everyone seems to have a inside intel on what to expect in the new Nids codex. Even Managarm fell in love with the Hive Mind. ;)

Question is, will it REALLY change, that much?

Trying to find out more, I recently visited the german GW headquarter and had a nice chat with the guys there, and while they weren't allowed to tell me hard facts on the codex, they were pretty clear bout a few things.

1. Nid standards will be able to kill transports, semi reliable
2. You will still be able to play Nidzilla, most likely it will be even better then before
3. Warriors will be worth bringing now
4. Nids might be even more dangerous in CC now
5. You will get more reliable AT power
6. More hordish feel, standards will be cheaper

We really talked about alot of other stuff, but these are the points they were allowed to confirm. Except for the Trygon ofc, everyones new favourite monster.

So what do we take home from this?

Nidzilla wont die, some people already screamed doom from the rooftops. Others feared after the statement of a certain GW guy, that Nids will bring even more MC´s. But for non-Apoc games, I feel you wont be able to afford that much more then the usual amount of MC´s. And lets face it 8 MC´s is hard enough, if your army can deal with them your army can deal with 2 more.

The main problem will be the increased amount of standards + better CC + better AT. I reckon most Zilla players will just improve on their standards and get some better AT for their MC´s. When the cheaper standards can kill tansports reliably, mech will be in some problems. We gonna have Nidzilla v2.0.

Depending on the amount of AT on the warriors, we gonna  see some warrior heavy armies, but I'm still not sure about this one. Because if they don't get an improved a statline, I look at you 4+ armor save, they still die to anti-infantry fire.

What really floats my boat are the improved standards, if the rumoured point values aren't that much of. Its gonna be a pain painting all of them, but then you can finally play the Nids as they supposed to be played and be competetive.

Unluckily for all us Nid fans the new codex is postponed to the middle of Jan, due to some misprinting issues. So I guess well see how it will work out. Good for you guys, now that Managarm decided to jump on the Nidwaggon, we gonna see some nicely painted bugs. And perhaps I get myself to finish up on my old school 2nd edition models. Then we can have some sort of Darwin battle! Survival of the ugliest and badest bug in town! At least I got some Biovores and Zoans ready, following GW´s normal strategy, they gonna be good in the new codex.

Ah I cant wait, the tension is killing me!

Cheers!

Incoming: Tyranids

Greetings,

I was considering to start a new army for a while now and as I have two more or less shooty armies with Marines and Tau I wanted an army for close combat. My initial thoughts went in the direction of Khorne Daemons with the possibility to add World Eater Marines later for a mixed chaos army. But that would mean to paint marines again and after having painted about 6000 points worth of loyalist marines I wasn't too eager about that. And a not too unimportant point was to start a more organic army with some kind of monstrous creatures (daemons would fit those criteria as well) where I could use techniques as washing and dry brushing to get some nice results quickly. To make long things short (actually I am thinking about that since early summer) I decided to start Tyranids. And as the rumours got more solid that the bugs would get a new codex in 2010 I was definetely signed in.
So lately I got myself the last battle force at my FLGS and the last box of gaunts on top of it. And so after the tournament was over I started painting. But oh my, what colour scheme would be nice? After a long process of trying different things with old gaunts Clausewitz left at my site years ago and playing around with the army painter in DoW II, I decided to do something similar to the colouration done in Imperial Army IV: The Anphelion Project. It's a grey-ish, boney body with green or brown carapace.  So take a look at my version of it:

Hormagaunts

Warriors

Carnifex

The "swarm"

As you can see I have nothing shooty yet. And that's the way I want to go, a close combat heavy army with lots of bugs. As I want to play a horde-style army, I had to find a colour scheme which is easy and quick to paint. The base colour is bleached bone, the carapax is painted with knarloc green. Then everything gets a wash with thinned devlan mud, then again bleached bone dry-brushed over the body. The red edges are done with terracotta. Finally the carapax gets a coat of gloss varnish. I think they get a more organic feeling that way. That's it for the little critters, the bigger bugs get a bit more attention and so the green parts get more washing steps with ogryn flesh/devlan mud mix and thraka green. And I highlighted the terracotta parts with uneven brush strokes of blood red.

So that's it for the moment. Left on the painting table are 8 gaunts with fleshborers and 4 genestealers (assembled), 8 gaunts of both kinds and the remaining 4 stealers left in the box. After those are done, I think it's time for a hive tyrant and some tyrant guards. And I am really curious on the new plastic raveners and gargoyles.