Saturday 13 October 2012

The Voice Speaks -Meat for Meta. Or "How I recon I can get Tyranids to work...for a while.




Meta – its talked about a lot. Too much?  Maybe.

The fact is I started trying to write a blog on how the meta will/maybe develop and its started giving me a headache. The reason is – there is just too much dam choice now.  List development meta as it once was, I think, has gone out the window because with so many choices a counter can and will be found from one book or another pretty quickly to any dastardly list or trend that may appear. Already Andy O is possibly bringing back Venom Spam in an attempt to counter the Deamon/Nids/Genral Infantry heavy armies we see. And if that takes off?? I’m sure taking out 18 fast moving Av10 hull points will NOT be a problem to a tinkered with list from one book or another.

So, my meta predictions for 6th? Circles.  It’ll be like fashion. One thing gradually evolving into another until one day you find you are wearing bell bottoms again when you swore you never would again xxx years ago.  I think there will be common principles to list building, that’s a given,  but I don’t foresee a situation where your having to pick certain units BY DEFAULT because “I know I’m going to face razor spam GK/Marines a lot of times this weekend”. Flavour of the month is what I think will happen.  Ridding high in popularity for a list or build, but for very short bursts of time due to the infinite variety of ways of picking it apart as soon as it raises its head above the parapet. You will not see one list or book dominating to the extent or for the length of time that you saw in 5th. You will see people with large pools of available models changing their lists a lot.

The constant escalating way that some people build  lists to become “perfect” will ultimately cause a ever changing cooking pot of ideas where certain lists will have their 5 minutes and then sink again. I think this is good. I like this. It means my knee jerk way of changing armies every 10 minutes doesn’t hinder me and I can just get on with some games.

So anyway. My flavour of the month is Tyranids. I figured that scoring is such a big thing now that an army with good scoring options  for me and nice options for hoovering up the enemy’s would be a nice departure having played a lot of marines or marine based armies for a while now. Also with access to the Biomancy powers and spamming spells such as Iron Arm ( +D3 to Strength and Toughness), Enfeeble (minus one toughness for the enemy) and Endurance (Fnp and it will not die) you can really create an army where the big things get bigger and the little things can actually really start churning out some damage, especially when you add in Hive Tyrants ability to create Preferred Enemy bubbles (which as everyone knows is now rerolling ones to hit and to wound in both SHOOTING and assault). So shooty nids FTW.


So the list building – what will I need to take in to account while I work? Well, while there isn’t one army that seems to be that popular our there (see my above meta comments), there is an awful lot of models hitting the table. Hordes or at least lots of bums on seats seems to be the order of the day. But there is still flyers to contend with and also while there are far from everywhere, a few of the big tourney players are hitting the Necrons for the time being – so Wraiths, barges and scythes seems to kicking about a bit at the top (though I’ve not seen any 2 lists identical yet). So if your doing well then you have a good chance to maybe face a tin head army on the top tables.

So if I’m doing nids I’m going to need a few things:


  • Lots of weight of fire for the hordes
  • Some AA firepower
  • Scoring, lots of scoring
  • A way to deal with wraiths/multi wound models – but not to the point im weakening my list with something too specific - as this could very well change soon and make the unit redundant.
  • A way to deal with AV13 that doesn’t eat to much into my weight of fire – but again not to the point im building too specific for something I may never face.
  • Id also say an assault element just in case, but its nids. Its kind of built in lol.


So this was the first list I’ve bee trialling. Its 1850 which is still tourney standard. But had been practising at 1500 while I build everything. Since discussing this with peers however I was warned off by my good friend and Nid player James Ramsey: “you’ll never finish a game in a tournament. What with moving the gaunt’s and resolving that many psychic powers and abilities and explaining to people how it works and fiquring what exact combo your doing this turn with your 14 psychic powers -it’ll be a 4 turn game tops every time”

Flying Hive Tyrant. Twin Linked Devourers and Pref Enemy Bubble
Flying Hive Tyrant. Twin Linked Devourers and Pref Enemy Bubble

Doom in a pod

3 Hive guard
3 Hive guard

Tirvigon - 3 powers, fc and poison
Tirvigon - 3 powers, fc and poison
Tirvigon - 3 powers, fc and poison

10 gaunt
10 devil gaunt
10 devil gaunt


Which is a shame as I really liked the amount of firepower it could chuck out with that pref enemy bubble making all those ones reroll. The sky fire from the Hive tyrants was nice and getting lots of Iron Arms and Enfeebles and Fnp’s on things really was making me happy. I still may try it at this points level just to see though because my smaller scaled down lists/games at 1500 were very promising. The Hive guard were keeping the Necron Barges and wraiths honest but also wrecking any vehicles that turned up. Despite having no fast attack or Heavy support the scoring in all objective missions was never a worry. In fact I kinda liked having only elites sometimes as it made everything almost of equal threat in some games (If you have a Trygon Prime in big guns never tired for eg ..why wouldn’t that be one of the first things to die??) The Hive tyrants did get picked on but again if I got fnp or Iron Arm on them, then they lasted a good while to cause havoc.

At 1500 I only had 2 Tirvigon’s and 2 basic gaunt units and was really looking forward to trying the devil gaunts (gaunt’s with devourers). But apparently I have it on good authority that 3 Tirvigon’s will just bog the game down too much so…….

Plan B:

Flying Hive Tyrant. Twin Linked Devourers and Pref Enemy Bubble
Flying Hive Tyrant. Twin Linked Devourers and Pref Enemy Bubble


Doom in pod
3 Hive guard
3 Hive guard

Tirvigon - 3 powers, fc
Tirvigon - 3 powers, fc
9 Tyranid warriors - devourers and rending claws in pod
10 gaunt
10 gaunt


Less spitting out of gaunts slowing the game down but reducing my scoring somewhat. To make up for this a nice big unit of Tyranid warriors will be dropped in peoples faces instead. 27 (hopefully preferred enemy) devourer shots and rending attacks should make them a threat in the enemy lines from early on. They cant be ignored as they are scoring and there is 27 wounds in there too. Pot shots will not cut it. I want really to be charging these into the fire support units at the back if I can.

And Plan C:

Flying Hive Tyrant. Twin Linked Devourers and Pref Enemy Bubble
Flying Hive Tyrant. Twin Linked Devourers and Pref Enemy Bubble


doom in pod
3 hive guard
3 hive guard

Tirvigon - 3 powers, fc and poison
Tirvigon - 3 powers, fc and poison
11 gaunt
11 gaunt
Harpy
Harpy

Spending the points that was on scoring on 2 Harpys instead. By throwing 4 flying Mc’s at the enemy I hope to keep the precious Flyrants alive a bit longer. The Harpys also keep the high volume of armour saves that the enemy has to make from shooting as well as some ok vector striking at some of the lighter armoured flyers.

So thoughts? Personally I’m liking the warrior version if I cant go for plan A. But there are other considerations. Gargoyles are amazing in this edition especially with preferred enemy. Do the Hive Guard fall under that “too specific a counter” that thing I’m trying to avoid? I’ve taken them as they really help vs quantum shielding  but do I really have to worry that much? They are adding resilience to the army and 12 shots in to the pot vs infantry too. Mech hasn’t disappeared totally so its nice having them. But am blinkered. Should I just suck it up and maybe swap them out for a nice big unit of Gargoyles?

See, too many Choices. Lol.

Till next time

G

6 comments:

  1. Plan C looks a lot like my mate's list (with more hive guard and no Doom) and he's beaten me to ground a lot of times with it. Generally a very solid list for all intended purposes.

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  2. I think what's good about the current "meta" is that there isn't one. There's no list you can take that will beat all comers. 6th has shaken things up a lot with some of the whipping boys like Tau, and especially Daemons are real contenders again.

    The thing I'm not a fan of is allies. Whilst it allows for some interesting combos it dilutes the character of the individual races.

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  3. Ooh, Nids. It's nice to see them start to get some love again even though they're the most hated child in the 40k school-yard. I'd probably add more comments about the 'meta' or whatever but I've not played at enough tournaments yet to try to make any authoritative claims.

    What I would suggest about Nids though is there's been a big shift in the units they should be looking at. Obvious statement is obvious but its like having to learn to dance Gangnam Style for weddings when all we had to deal before with were the Macarena and the Funky Chicken.

    One build I'm looking at is:

    2 x Flying Hive Tyrant. Twin Linked Devourers, 1 Pref Enemy Bubble, 1 Hive Commander
    2 x 10 Ymgarl Genestealers

    Tervigon with 3 powers, FC
    Tervigon with 3 powers, FC
    2 x 10 Gaunts

    Harpy

    That's the core of the army and it should come to about 1650 pts. I like to link the Harpy up with the Ymgarls so that whatever they is hit has its I value halved if memory serves and with T5 and FNP (from the Tervs) they can weather the storm in the following turn when the enemy counter-attacks.

    As you've said yourself, with 3 Flying MCs starting on the board the enemy will have their work cut out for them but if you feel they're too soft you can always go with a 4th and put the rest of the points into the Gaunts to beef them up to 15 each and make them more survivable.

    Whether that's too little in Troops and shooting will be found in playtesting but you could always drop the Harpies for unit of Hive Guard or Zoans or a big blob of Gargs to cockblock. Flyers will remain a problem but you have all of those Devourer shots to pick on one at a time but you'll probably want to Biomancy buff the Flyrants and get them stuck in with the Ymgarls.

    The above list suffers from not having enough easy targets on the board at the start (Ymgarls not there, Flyers typically hit on 6 and Immune to Blasts) so the Tervs and Gaunts and whatever else is there will need to be hidden or kept well out of range.

    Thankfully when everything gets in shit dies fast: really fast. With all the Monsters getting the opportunity to Smash stuff at S10 you can character-hunt, preventing them from laying waste to your Ymgarls and should be more than capable of making car parks smoking wrecks.

    What it does lack in shooting it makes up for in speed and combat power - the Flyrants are more likely to take down a Flyer than the Hive Guard simply because they hit on 6's and he can spam the things to death and I must admit that I do like using the Flyerant's Devourers to precision strike special guys out of units before he gets stuck in. They're also very handy at tackling all of the Tzeentch Flamers out there without having to sacrifice a unit charging it.

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  4. And i see Mr James Ramsey came third at the Gt heat 2 with a similar list (to the one with harpies) proof!! Lol. well done james. Give those Necrons what for :)

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  5. Plan C looks loads better. I found Warriors to be too fragile, even in cover they get instagibbed too easy.

    I would consider ditching a Hive Guard from each unit. Reason is on average they will always miss. Something maybe to consider.

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  6. Its a consideration for sure. James was running 3x2 in his list.

    If i dropped down to 2x2 and the excess gaunts and maybe poison on the tirv's then it leaves 130 spare. Which gives you 18 furious charging gargoyles. Which is always nice.

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