By TheGraveMind
In a game to both practice the upcoming Frostycon missions, and to gain more experience with the New tyranid codex, I pitted my tyranids against Nemesis' Crimson fist army.
The crimson fists are a small chapter, and have limited resources. Thus the bare models and unfinished droppods. haha.
We placed multiple objectives, and I chose to score each round, while He went for grabbing them at the end. I escalated the warlord secondary, to gain a point for each character I killed, while he chose line breaker to score a point for each line breaking unit he had.
He hit my left side with his first wave, killing both a warrior squad and a carnifex straight out. This gave him first blood and limited me to my far right objective while pushing towards the middle.
He then dropped more of his units into the middle, and managed to either contest or pull me off by half an inch each round. My mawloc proved effective, killing off 5 man squads every other round either by tunneling or in combat. The game looked bleak for the tyranids until the fatefull combat when I got my hive tyrant and Hive guard in combat with Pedro's unit. Pedro failed enough saves and LoS to die, but saved the squad for a turn. This huge turn of events allowed my forces in the middle to move out and pressure other quarters.
By turn 5, I had pressured enough of his units, where I was ahead by 1 point if the game had ended then. But I only had two units that could move out and three directions I needed to go to. In the end we He had Slay the warlord, and first blood, two objectives and two line breaking units for 12 points. I had line breaker, Four characters killed, and five points from objectives netting me 11 points.
As I had expected, the tyranid book still struggles in the same circumstances it always has. I was limited in my mobility, and in my ability to limit far reaching units. It took me 6 turns before I was able to get a unit to deal with the devastators he had brought. And they in turn kept my Warriors from moving to midfield as they were blowing apart a unit a turn. Due to my short range of weapons, and dependance of synapse, I could not attack both neighboring quarters at once, while he was able to fire onto me at near full effect regardless.
And this is why you will continue to see the use of Flying hive tyrants, mawlocs and Tervigons. A Tervigion unlike warriors, you will not lose ground when hit by missiles or lascannons until dead. The Mawloc ignores IB for most purposes, and replaces Doom and Other spore units as disruption and is basically uncounterable. The Flying hive tyrant is still the best AA, can handle a wide variety of units through shooting or assault, and brings a very mobile platform for synapse.