Hey all, Danny here, and well, I was unfortunately too right about my outing at Hammer of Wrath. Perhaps this was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but really, it was more that my list couldn’t deal with a lot of the heat that you are likely to see at major competitive event.
Here’s my list:
Spearhead Detachment:
2x Malanthrope
Old One Eye
3x Carnifexes with Talons
2x Stone Crusher Carnifexes with 1 Bio-Flail and 1 2x Claws
2x Mawlocs
Deathleaper
Superheavy Auxiliary:
Barbed Hierodule
Superheavy Auxiliary:
Barbed Hierodule
I knew the list would struggle against two things: infantry hordes and smite spam. What I didn’t factor in was that it was also weak to mega-melee beatsticks with invulnerable saves.
Game 1: Josue’s Bobby G gunline
I played a friend that I don’t get to see except for tournaments, so we had a great game. He was running a vehicle heavy Bobby G list with razorbacks and rifle-dreads. He had three units of Scouts as well to act as a screen and two units of Terminators that dropped into my backline.
This game went well for me as with the Malanthropes and no toughness lower than 7 on my front line, I knew I could weather a lot of firepower. I also have a low number of drops, so I went first, which doesn’t hurt. My mawlocs did work as did Deathleaper as my mawlocs put mortal wounds on several razorbacks while Deathleaper deployed near Bobby G but went after a plasma/lascannon-back and kept it from shooting for a turn. I was able to gun down two razorbacks the first turn, and I was consistently killing them at range before my Carnifexes hit.
Long story short, I managed to bridge without losing much, and I tabled him. To be fair, I had only one Barbed Hierodule and 2 carnifexes left because it took everything I had to kill Bobby G twice. So far, so good.
Game 2: Ryan’s Nurgle Mash
So Ryan from Rage Quit Table Flip is a damn great guy to play, but he also brings a damn mean list. This is where I learned a critical lesson: Even our best melee fighters pale in comparison to Daemons. The key thing here is that Ryan had Scabeiathrax, the Super-Unclean One, and boy howdy, he killed my army singlehandedly. I am not kidding. He quite literally killed almost every model in my army on his own (Deathleaper and the Mawlocs died to smites). I got three different charges off on him with carnifexes and Barbed Hierodules, and between Toughness 9 (10 with Epidemus) and a 4+ invulnerable save as Disgustingly Resilient, I just couldn’t do enough damage. Even if I had killed him, I would have spent most of my army on it, and I would have still had to deal with everyone else. He had summoned in a daemon prince and a Greater Unclean One, and with this Malefic Lords, I was drowning in smites, and I still had to fight through 30 Plague Bearers. On the plus side, I learned that rerolling the Death Throes roll for Mawlocs is worth it as mortal wounds in an aura is nice.
Game 3: Brandon’s Harlequins
Ok, so win a game, lose a game, such is life. Brandon had a beautiful, beautiful Harlequin army. He had lower drops than me, which was a problem, but more importantly, he had 33 melta-pistols. Each troupe had a ton of heat, and he was fast enough to get there. With the -1 to hit on his transports, my Hierodules couldn’t pop them fast enough, and I was swarmed with melta.
It was a hard fought match, and by the end, he had only a few harlequins left, but damnit, I was tabled. 
Game 4: Devon’s 1K sons
Ok, so I was ready to get back to it, and well, things looked good. I was going against a Magnus list with a mix of firepower and melee, but I had less drops, and I was confident that I could weaken Magnus at range and then take care of him.
Nope. First, Devon seized on me, so Magnus first turn charged my lines with his Scarab Terminators shooting me to hell as well. Just like Scabeiathrax, I put my whole army (was was left) into Magnus and could not kill him. a 4++ rerolling 1s is brutal, and he put down my army on his own.
Game 5: Bye
I was doing so poorly and with drops, I got the bye. So yay….2-3 (really. 1-3).
I had a lot of fun, and really, I’d do it all again. I learned quite a bit, and again, I had a lot of fun hanging out with all my teammates and my friends/rivals from San Diego.
- Seize happens. Always deploy as if you are going second.
- Tyranid Monsters cannot fight melee monsters like Guillman/Magnus/super Greater Daemons as we don’t hit well enough to get through the invulnerable saves.
- You need infantry screens in an army. I would have had much better chances in my games if I had these. Even losing a single Carnifex for 20+ gants would have helped me so much in Games 3 and 4.
- Mawlocs and Deathleaper are great. Mawlocs are especially great for dying and doing damage to in aura with their death. Always reroll of it.
- Always have a source of psychic defense or smite. You need to be able to stop a clutch smite or put a few mortal wounds on a hard target.
- Make sure to enjoy your games
Overall, it was a great weekend, and of course, big congratulations to Adrien for winning. For now, I am going to play around with my World Eaters for a change of pace while I let some new Tyranid lists percolate in my head. Thanks as always for reading, and of course, be sure to check out our Twitch channel where John and Adam interviewed Adrien, be sure to see all our cool pictures on the Facebook, and of course, go think about throwing us a bone for our troubles over at Patreon.
