|
Sharpening the Razor Tyranids
The story so far... Big Problems General Operations
This involves having a large number of parts and I'll detail each in order... Antitroop: Both Tyrants and the Devilfexen are very effective infantry mowers at 18" range. In addition, the Gunfexen with their Barbed Stranglers can also do a lot of damage to troops. Finally, at close range, the Genestealers are antitroop weapons par excellance. Antivehicle: With 4 Venom Cannon in the list, long range antitank effectiveness used to be very good. Even though they could only achieve a glancing hit, lucky hits could still end vehicles quickly and the number of hits meant you stood a good chance of achieving _something._ With the changes to the Glancing hit table getting rid of the lucky hits, VCs are much less effective now. Now they are basically relegated to stunning and shaking enemy vehicles. The three Zoantrhopes with their Warp Blasts, have a decent chance of damaging any vehicle at 18" range, but their Ballistic Skill of 3 and the vagaries of the vehicle damage table make them much less than reliable. Scream Choir: With 4-5 Psychic Screams, this list can cause massive Leadership penalties to any units nearby. Causing 25% casualties to a unit will cause it to test on Leadership at -4, which means Space Marines generally have about a 5 in 6 chance of running away. While units can often regroup, they will at least be out of position and might even run off the board if they are close enough. This can be a massive game changer (I once shot a Tau army off the board by turn 3 because of this) but it is highly reliant on effecting enemy leadership values. Against Fearless armies, this has no effect except to occasionally screw up psychic tests. In addition, many armies have special leadership rules (such as Tyranid Synapse or Big Orky Mobz) that can allow them to ignore or at least reduce the effects of these psychic screams. The Wall: Having 7 Monstrous Creatures shuffling forward shoulder-to-shoulder allows me to create a moving shieldwall that protects the softer creatures behind. In 5th edition, that goes from completely blocking Line of Sight to simply providing a 4+ Cover save, which is a big change, but people still usually prefer to shoot at the Monstrous Creatures. Genestealers: Genestealers serve several roles in this list, but all of them revolve around them being essentially the Apex Assault unit. Basically, I can pit my Genestealers against almost any Elite assault unit that another army can muster and expect them to win handily. The first function they serve is as charge protection. Very few enemy units want to get close to my Wall of Monstrous Creatures, since that will bring them within range of the Genestealers. Against some armies, it is also very effective to regard the Genestealers as a "payload" that is delivered by the slow-moving wall. The Wall takes damage instead of the Genestealers as it moves up, then allows the unharmed Genestealers to run amok once it reaches the enemy line. Hard Times Slow-moving: Nothing in this list moves faster than 6+1d6 inches per turn or assaults more than 6". This means it doesn't react very quickly. Taking multiple objectives in vastly different areas of the board isn't a reasonable goal. Unfortunately, there aren't very many options for quick movers in a Godzilla army. It is possible to use Outflanking Genestealers to take outlying objectives, but I have to be very careful to either support them with my main wedge, or to make certain that the opponent will not be able to attack them. In addition, I can march my wedge forward, pushing the enemy away from central objectives and allowing my following Genestealers to take them while you keep your Wall between them and the opposing forces. I also have to try to keep the opponent focused on my central wedge and not on taking out those outlying objectives. Scoring Units: It used to be that any unit could claim an objective, but now only Troops can claim, which is not what this list was designed to do. Because of that design difference, it doesn't have enough Scoring Units and they are not very robust. While I tried to solve this by using a brood of Gaunts Without Number, it didn't work very well. It is too reliant on Synapse and it screws me up in Killpoint missions. The only Scoring Unit left that has no reliance on Synapse would be more Genestealers. I'll need more units of them and larger numbers in the units as well. KillPoints: With the demise of Victory Points and the rise of Killpoints, the structure of the list is working somewhat against it's original purpose. It has a bunch of small-point units that don't give much return each in terms of Victory Points, but that means that it has a bunch of Kill Points. The easiest fix for this would be to get rid of the Zoanthropes. That would let me drop 3 Kill Points right away. Sadly, that would mean the end of my Psychic Scream choir, as a -2 penalty to Leadership is just not enough to make a reliable difference. The next way to fix this would be to make at least some of my units tougher. One example would be to give my Gunfexen 2+ saves or an extra Wound, or both.
Okay, so now I've got some ideas for how to improve the list. Next week, I'll take a detailed look at each part of the list and how I can improve it. If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know |
