My second game was against Paul. He's a local veteran of the scene, but we've never had a chance to face off. I've also seen him place in the top three of several other tournaments with some unconventional lists, so I know he's a good player. He brought out his daemon hunters for one last hurrah before the new codex is tournament legal. This was also my first (and last) game against daemon hunters, so I really had no idea of what to expect.
Paul's list (I'm probably making some mistakes in here):
Grandmaster + terminator retinue
Inquisitor + some melta guys
10 PAGK's
10 PAGK's
10 IST's
Dread + lascannon
50ish guard on foot including 40 guys with a commissar, lascannon team, missile launcher team, and melta command squad
The game was DoW, Annihilation. Paul won the roll to go first.
Pre-game: I really don't know what to expect. I know it will be a tough fight as he doesn't have any easy kp's. DoW/KP is my least favorite match as it can hamstring nids by starting half your army even further back. Paul's list probably will out shoot me and could out-assault me if I'm not careful.
Paul deploys his grandmaster and retinue as his HQ, with one PAGK squad and all 50 guardsmen as his second troop.
Paul's turn 1... He walks on the rest of his army just left of center.
Everything is out of range or fails night fighting.
My turn 1... I move everything up and walk on the whole army. I bring the warriors, hive guard, and tervigon on behind the mountain to block LoS from his heavy weapons teams which are in the terrain in the upper left.
I give the toxic stealers FnP and run everything. I try to place them out of assault range of the PAGK's, but hopefully in my own fleet range next turn.
Paul's turn 2... He shifts up the massive blob of guardsmen up on the left.
On the right, all of his grey knights, IST's and inquisitor move up to gun down genestealers.
I lose about 6 toxic stealers to all the stormbolter fire. I lose a couple naked stealers and devilgaunts as well.
My turn 2... I move everything else up. I realize about here that all my devourers, deathspitters, and impaler cannons are only in range of his front unit which my genestealers want to assault. I've bunched up my short range firepower and he's layered and gauged range good enough to counter my whole formation. He's also placed the dread behind a tall peak and fully out of sight of my tfex. Naked stealers could be in assault range of his huge blob, but I roll a 1 for fleet. Toxic stealers get a 2 for fleet and make it into assault by about 1/8th of an inch.
I'm hoping my genestealers lock so he has to counter charge next turn, wipe me out and be in range of all my dakka next turn.
However, my poison rolls are on fire and I wipe out the squad. I get a 6" consolidate and try to get a majority in cover and sting back into synapse.
Paul 0kp, Me 1kp
Paul's turn 3... He moves up the rest of his GK's and the huge blob on guardsmen.
My turn 3... I move the naked stealers towards the big blob. I think I rolled 2,2,1 for terrain and a 3 for their fleet, leaving me in assault position, but he will have more bodies to contribute. My warriors form a firing line to gun down terminators.
Deathspitters, barbed strangler, and devourer put 16 wounds on the terminators and he only loses 1... Tfex kills a couple PAGK's. I assault the blob of 40 guardsmen with 15 naked stealers and win, but don't realize the commissar makes them stubborn. This was a big mistake.
Paul 1kp, Me 1kp
Paul's turn 4... He backs up and hides everything except the PAGK's.
My turn 4... I move the tfex and devilgaunts towards the PAGK's as the terminators are out of LoS. I hit them with a full broadside from the tfex, devilgaunts, and warrior squad, but 1 still survives. The survivor is 1/2" out of assault range from the tfex too...
Paul's turn 5... His lone PAGK goes kamikaze on my devilgaunts.
He kills my tfex with lascannons. He kills 1 gant with shooting and assaults, killing 4. I inflict 3 wounds and he saves all 3... I lose by 4 and fail all 4 no retreat saves, losing the whole unit to 1 GK... Genestealers and guardsmen continue to whittle each other down.
Paul 3kp, Me 1kp
My turn 5... Now I'm a bit worried and starting to play sloppy. I want the PAGK kp and need more to catch up. I can't kill the dread and the terminators are out of sight. I move up the warriors and hive guard to go for heavy weapon teams and spawn 6 gants. I successfully kill the last PAGK and hive guard ID some missile teams and the survivor flees. In combat, I kill 5 more guardsmen and he inflicts 5 wounds. I fail all 5 armor saves and lose my genestealers.
Paul 4kp, Me 3kp
The game goes on.
Paul's turn 6... I misjudged the distance to his terminators and he assaults me. is grand master inflicts 2 wounds and successfully ID's a warrior. I only kill 1 terminator. He swings with a thunder hammer and ID's 3 more warriors. I lose by a ton and lose the rest of the unit and prime to no retreat.
At this point, he's up 6-3 and I don't have enough left to even draw so I concede the game.
Post-game: Well I was outplayed and out-diced here. Having no experience vs daemonhunters didn't matter a lot, but in hindsight I should have deployed differently. I now know 40 guardsmen with a commissar will beat 15 genestealers too lol. I rolled several 1's for fleets during this game as well as failing enough no retreat armor saves to lose 2 units. That combined with Paul's above average armor saves on his terminators and PAGK's made for a pretty solid win for him. Paul went undefeated for this event and ended up taking 2nd overall. He's a great general and fun dude to play. Now I'm really scared as he picked up 3 boxes of new models and the new codex for next month's tournament hehe.
I think the terrain beat you more than anything in this one. It channeled your assaults, plus his going first allowed him to have first pick of the critical LOS paths, which effectively controlled both assaults and fire. I also notice you didn't do a whole lot with your tervigon, and by "a whole lot" I mean make it visible to maybe split some of his heavy weapons fire. More gants might have helped things, especially on the 40-guard side of things, but they are a disadvantage for KP missions, so I understand keeping them back. The gunline did a good job sticking wounds on the terminators - I doubt they would have weathered a second round of that so well; but that GK termie assault was flat out painful.
ReplyDeleteAs far as terrain + first turn advantage: in situations like this the goes-second player can often wait the opponent out, but that is usually not a good option for a tyranid player; against tyranids waiting usually gives the opponent a continued advantage. Units that can more or less ignore terrain are key here - gargs, HGs, biovores.
Interesting game - thanks for posting!
Sorry Aaron this one might be my fault. I made Paul play me 3 to 4 games with my nids to get ready for AdeptiCon. Each game it was harder to win.
ReplyDeleteNo worries mate. I look at it this way. He assaulted me witha lone PAGK and I inflicted 3 wounds. He should have failed one save but didn't. That one roll would have made it 5-4 instead of 6-3. If I had gauged the terminator assault range better, maybe even 3-4 in my favor if everything else happened the same. Either way he outplayed me but I see where my mistakes were and learned from them which is more important in the long run.
ReplyDeleteThis was only my 4th 1 on 1 game since taking 2 months off for the wedding and I still feel rusty. A few more practice games and - should be back in the groove!
Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteInteresting enough, I play both nids and GK...and have to say, we (as nids) have our work cut out for us going against GK.
I hope to hear a lot more comments out there on dealing with GK and DE with nids...
thanks again for the post.
You seem to recognize the errors you made, you learned something about IG blobs, and hopefully you shook out all the bad Fleet rolls from your dice.
ReplyDeleteAwesome batrep! (Hey, if I can learn something from your mistakes, and possibly avoid making them myself, then that's what's up....yeah, I woulda assaulted those Guardsman, too....)