Victory Point Denial Example: Tyranids

I have written two articles on Victory Point denial, each from a slightly different perspective. I would like to follow this up with some concrete examples of how to so do within a given army list. In this particular article, I will cover the Tyranid army. The next article in the series will cover Tau. If I get a great response for more specific armies, I will follow with them. For more general information, please check the original articles: Tactica Point Denial and Victory Point Denial. I'll start this article by talking about simply adjusting tactics rather than changing the army list. Then I'll move into adjusting the army list, but keeping the overall same theme or idea, just tweaking it to make it better suited to Victory Point Denial. Finally, I'll talk about making the most efficient and effective Point Denial list possible.

Using your current army list in a new way
Even without adjusting your list in any way, you can make use of Point-Denial tactics. Depending on the style of your army, some may be more effective than others, but they should all be useable by almost any army. First off, play hide and seek. Aside from Barrage Weapons and Deepstriking troops, they can't hit you if they can't see you. Get behind cover, stay out of contact and just generally try to keep away from the enemy. By itself, this won't win you the game (since you won't be getting any points either) but it can keep the bulk of your army alive while you utilize the next tactic, isolation.

Try to get an enemy unit isolated from the rest of the enemy army, then pounce on it with everything you have. Sometimes an enemy will do this for you (the afore-mentioned deepstriking troops, for example.) Other times, you may have to get them to isolate themselves, perhaps by offering a bait unit. When a single unit or a small group comes after your bait, hit them with everything you can. If a large detachment comes after the bait, pull a fade and try to hit something they left behind. If they stay in a large grouping, perhaps castling up in their deployment zone (standard shooty response) or barrelling forward in a huge group (typical assault response) then you use the next tactic, hit and run.

The more mobility and firepower (yes, in that order) you have here, the better. The idea is to damage the enemy a little bit without taking much damage in return. If you have longer range than they do, it's quite easy. Pop out so nothing else can see you and shoot whatever it is. If you can move in the assault phase after shooting, it's also quite easy. Jump, Shoot, Jump as the Crisis Suit Commanders would say. If you have good firepower, but not as much movement, then you have to be really careful with your line of sight. If you move so that only one unit can hit you, and you blast that unit to bits, they won't be able to tag you back. While most of these options are for shooty armies, there are some options for assault armies as well. If you have the Hit and Run special ability, you can zip up, smack the enemy unit for some damage, then run away again. Alternately, if you can stick around through the enemy turn, you've just tied that unit up for a turn, hit them over two assault phases, then you can run back at the end of their turn in time to do it again on your turn! Failing that, try to make sure that your assault unit (or units) will survive a bit longer (perhaps by tying up nearby units, perhaps by them simply being powerful and resilient, or perhaps by them wiping out the enemy unit and consolidating into another one. Finally, if you have no other option, try to make sure that their sacrifice was worth it. Perhaps the enemy unit they hit is the best chance the enemy has of taking on your army, so most of the threat will be neutralized. Or perhaps your unit will simply do more damage to the enemy unit (in terms of taking it under half or wiping it out for Victory Points) than your unit is worth. (If a 160 point unit of Genestealers wipes out a 250 point squad of Devastators or Assault Marines, you are 90pts ahead of the game even if the Genestealers are totally wiped out next turn.) Each of these tactics is a general idea, something you can use with almost any army, whether it be Tyranids, Tau, Space Marines or Dark Eldar. There are, however, some specific tactics that can be used by Tyranids, and I'd like to mention them next.

Army Specific Examples
Use your Gaunts. The conventional Tyranid army uses some form of Gaunt to tie up enemy units so that they cannot shoot or assault the rest of the swarm. Simply put, utilize them. If your killing units are Genestealers, for example, keep them hidden until the turn the lead Gaunts will be making contact. This limits the amount of points that the enemy can take from you, and it deprives them almost entirely of worthwhile (in terms of points) targets. On the turn that the bulk of the enemy will be engaged or Line of Sight-Blocked (from the ensuing combats) the Genestealers can start running forward. This generally means that they won't have quite as much time to do their damage, but it also means that they won't be giving up nearly as many points since you don't have to worry as much about them getting shot. Now that we've covered the little guys, let's look at the Big Ones.

Use your Monstrous Creatures. Monstrous Creatures block line of sight, just like vehicles. You can use this to your advantage in several ways. The first way is to make your own mobile terrain. Have some Genestealers or Raveners that need to hide behind something on the way to the enemy line? Put them behind a Monstrous Creature. Have a Monstrous Creature that is almost under half or is near dead? Duck behind another Monstrous Creature so that it's much harder for the enemy to get that next Wound. You can also use this to limit the line of sight of the enemy to a specific brood. If you put a Zoanthrope partially behind a Carnifex so that it can only see the enemy Predator, and it kills the Predator, it will be safe this turn. Finally, you can use a Monstrous Creature to limit your line of sight. The most common use for this is to try to remove heavy weapons from squads or to snipe characters. This is very difficult, but it can be very effective as well.

Know when to say when. If a brood is down to one model, it may not be able to offer you much in the way of contribution to the rest of the battle. It does offer the enemy half the points of that brood, however. A single Genestealer out of a brood of 6 with Extended Carapace won't really contribute much more to the battle. On the other talon, it is worth 60pts and it can be easily Wounded by basic weaponry and it won't take much firing to wipe it out entirely. If it pulls back from the battle and hides, that's 60 Victory Points you don't have to score from the enemy to win.

Retooling the conventional Tyranid army
A conventional Tyranid army at 1500 points consists of about 60 Gaunts, a couple of Hive Tyrants, a couple of Carnifi and some Genestealers or Raveners or something. The Gaunts provide the tarpit, the glue that shuts down the enemy's shooting and keeps their units from reinforcing one another. The Hive Tyrants provide Synapse to keep the Gaunts in the fight and they can provide good long-range or close support, taking the form of guns or talons. The Carnifi provide antivehicle punch for the list. Finally, the Genestealers or Raveners provide Rending attacks so that they can quickly devastate an enemy squad.

By making our choices carefully, we can ensure a better chance of utilizing Point Denial tactics. I'll take a look at each part of the army list in turn to find the best options for it. We will start with the Gaunts.

Our proverbial glue doesn't need to shoot or do real damage in the assault, so we want to keep them as cheap as possible. Spine Gaunts are perfect for this. Termagants are a great value with that S4 gun, but if we don't need the gun, why pay 20% more per Wound? We can use the extra points to improve other units or to increase the size of our Gaunt swarms. That can save us a about 60 points, either giving us more of another unit type or simply bringing our Spine Gaunts to 72 instead of merely 60. Now that we've worked out the Gaunts, let's figure out how to keep them in the game with Hive Tyrants.

As to the Hive Tyrant, there are really two types that are the most effective. A shooting Tyrant with a Venom Cannon and something else (typically a Devourer for all the extra shots it pumps out) is very effective and since it will be operating at range, you can skimp on most of the other options. Give it what it needs to shoot (Enhanced Senses and Toxin Sacs) and what it needs to survive. I'd recommend Extended Carapace and just park it in cover. The enemy should have other things to deal with so it shouldn't take too much firepower. The other type of Tyrant is a Flyrant. The most effective versions of these tend to focus on close combat (allowing them to hide from shooting during the enemy turn.) Here you'll want a few more bells and whistles. Initiative 6 is a must, as is either Adrenal Glands (WS) or Toxic Miasma, so that it has an advantage over WS5 characters. Double Scything Talons give it the best number of attacks, and Implant Attacks make sure that anything that gets past a character's invulnerable save will do serious damage. Next up, the Carnifex, the other Monstrous Creature.

While Carnifi are big and tough and strong, they are also slow and don't have many attacks. This means that they aren't terribly good at close combat. While Ninjafexes and Devourerfexes are very highly efficient engines of destruction, the most effective one for Point Denial list is going to be some kind of Sniperfex. Give it a Venom Cannon to pop heavy vehicles, then back it up with another weapon, according to taste. If you are primarily going Heavy vehicle hunting, a Barbed Strangler is your best bet and can also go after troops a bit as well. A Twin-Linked Deathspitter is also highly effective against Heavy and Medium vehicles (better chance to hit, slightly less chance to damage.) Finally, a Twin-Linked Devourer gives great damage against Light to Medium vehicles and troops. This one should be very cheap and cheerful. Give it Enhanced Senses, park it in cover and call it a day. Now that we've got our Glue, Synapse and antivehicle work out of the way, let's talk about killing stuff.

In most Tyranid lists, Genestealers have the bulk of the killing duties. This is perfectly understandable, they can generally murder just about anything out there. (This weekend one small brood claimed a Bloodthirster before it could strike back, for example.) On the other talon, they aren't as fast as they could be and they are terribly fragile when exposed to enemy fire. Raveners have a similar amount of killing power, but they have much more speed to start behind cover, then get where you need them to go without taking any damage on the way. Just remember to either have good-sized broods of them or support them with something else. The key here is to cluster a bunch of them together and gang up on one unit that is stuck in your Gaunts. Without other units to reinforce them, that unit will quickly fall and the Raveners can then wipe out another unit on the next turn. In Victory Point Denial, you don't need to wipe out the enemy army, just enough of the enemy's units or points that you can pull out a win. Don't let your Raveners bite off more than they can chew! Now that we've seen how to tweak a conventional Tyranid army to get more Point Denial out of it, let's take a look at a much more radical altering of the list...

Completely overhauling it
A conventional Tyranid army can be played in a point-denial style (it even rhymes!) But there are a number of point sinks that you won't really be able to avoid. The Gaunts, for example. Even at their cheapest, 60 Gaunts is still 300 points, most or all of which will be gone by the end of the game. Genestealers and Raveners too can expect heavy losses, probably giving up another 400-500 points in a game. That's 700-800 points that you will probably lose, so you'll need to do that much damage plus another 300 to make sure you've got the win. If we completely overhaul the list, we can change that, however. First let's start by defining our winning conditions. We want to be able to do some damage to the enemy while limiting the damage they can do in return. Probably the easiest way to do this is to concentrate on shooting. Yes, a shooty Tyranid army. Remember, we don't need to wipe out the enemy army, just damage them more than they can damage us. In addition to taking various ranged weapons, we should also look into defensive upgrades that will keep our units alive, whether through their mobility or their sheer resilience. Also, we should consider the possibility of adding extra upgrades to the most resilient units. Since we expect them to survive the battle, putting more points into them denies more points to the enemy. Finally, we should do something to keep the enemy from engulfing our shooting units. To that end, I propose a mix of Monstrous Creatures and Gaunts, the two most resilient (in one way or another) parts of our army list.

The most resilient Monstrous Creatures we have available are without a doubt the Carnifi. Although they have the same base Wounds and Toughness and Armor Save as Hive Tyrants, they have far more in the way of defensive upgrades, and we can make use of all of them. Let's take a look at a basic point-denial uberfex. We'll start with a Venom Cannon and a Barbed Strangler for weaponry. We'll back that up with Enhanced Senses so it can shoot a little better. Then we get to the resilience portion. With Bonded Exoskeleton, Extended Carapace, Reinforced Chitin and Regenerate, it can have Toughness 7, 5 Wounds, a 2+ Armor Save and it has a chance of Regenerating Wounds once it becomes damaged. All that makes it very tough and runs 238 points. Thats a pretty good amount of point to deny to the enemy, especially if we put it in cover so that it has some save against things like Lascannons. We can do better, however. Most of the other Biomorphs available to the Carnifex can be somewhat useful (Acid Maw and Implant Attack, for instance. That way if it does get engaged in combat, it can be fairly effective.) More importantly, if this model is going to survive the whole game, the more points we have stored up in it, the more we deny to the enemy. With that in mind, we can take it up to a possible 322 points! (Note, there are a couple of options that are mutually exclusive, such as Tail Scythe and Mace Tail. When these came up, I chose the most expensive of the options so as to deny the most points.) (Below, please enjoy Moloch's lovely Scarfex!)

The other Monstrous Creatures we have available are Hive Tyrants. As mentioned before, the two most effective types are the Flyrant and the Shooting Tyrant. A Flyrant can be quite nasty, and there are a number of upgrades that really turn it into an effective uberkiller. Wings, double Scything Talons, Initiative 6, WS6, Flesh Hooks, Implant Attack, S6, Toxic Miasma and Warp Field are all highly effective. They also bring our monster up to 219 points. Not bad since we expect it to live most of the game. In addition, we could add Acid Maw, Symbiote Rippers and Enhanced Senses to bring it up to 241pts. It will probably spend most of the battle hiding behind terrain, but will fly out to be a very effective countercharge when necessary. The shooty Tyrant, on the other talon, will follow the lead of our Carnifi, even though it doesn't have quite as much survivability. A venom Cannon and Devourer work well as weapons. With BS4 and Toxin Sacs it'll get the shooting job done, and with 3 Tyrant Guard giving it 6 T6 3+ Sv extra Wounds, it should be quite rugged, especially if deployed in terrain. This brings it to 319pts, though it will lose some of that due to the Guards dying. We can also add on loads of extra options if we want to hide more points in it. We can take it all the way up to 372pts if we really want to.

Finally, we come to the Gaunts. In addition to needing to fulfill the Force Organization Chart's requirement for at least two Troops, we also need something there to hold up potential chargers from hitting our Monstrous Creatures. With only 5 of them, even one tied up is a big percentage of our shooting. To that end, several small units of Gaunts can sit near each of the walking Monstrous Creatures and act as charge-shields. Either by their simple physical presence making a barrier or by moving to intercept chargers, they will keep our other models shooting and alive. I would recommend 4 Broods of 8. Spread them out and don't let them all charge into a unit. Remember, they aren't there to do damage, just to keep the enemy from zipping into the Monstrous Creatures. Let a few get killed on the charge, then consolidate and they'll likely die in the enemy turn, leaving the enemy open to being shot on your turn.

Okay, so putting it all together, we've got 4 Shooty Monstrous Creatures that need to be in cover if at all possible. Each of them will have a small brood of Gaunts nearby to protect them. If they aren't in Synapse range, simply leave them lurking there and force the enemy to hit them or try to go around. The Flyrant will act as a nasty countercharge wherever it is needed the most and will hide behind terrain or other Monstrous Creatures when it isn't needed. The Shooty Monstrous Creatures have excellent weapons for taking down vehicles, and this is a great way to quickly build up a point advantage against an enemy army. Remember, you don't have to kill everything, just kill more points than the other guy does and you can hold on for the win.

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