Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Battle-testing Hive Fleet Kraken - DS fury!


Old School here,
I just wanted to share some of my experience with the new Nids and throw out a list I have been trying. I wanted to make a list that used an almost alpha strike theme in which I come in turn 2 and really mess up my opponent's target priority and hopefully, his tanks and squads.
The first list I ran, I called Shock and Awe, it goes something like this at 1750
Tyrant - Scything Talons, Heavy Venom Cannon, Hive Commander, Paroxysm, leech essence
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Tyrant - Wings, Dual Devourers, Hive Commander, Paroxysm, leech essence
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2 Hive Guard
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1 Doom of Malan'tai with spore pod (with spine clusters)
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2 Zoeys in Spore Pod
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10 termagants
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10 more termagants
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1 tervigon with catalyst and cluster spines
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1 tervigon with cluster spines
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Trygon Prime
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Mawloc
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The idea here is that I can DS or burrow all the pods and big snakes into the enemy turn 1 and have the option to outflank 2 troops on turn 2. I played a CSM Death Guard army and tabled it by turn 4. The Trygon Prime and the Flyrant managed to gun down a DP, the doom did nothing on the turn it came in due to the high LD of Chaos. The Zoeys killed an oblit, the Hive Guard popped a rhino and the Tervigons killed a squad of Chosen all on turn two.
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Turn three saw the Doom come into his own as the opponent ignored him, thinking he would remain ineffective - that is when he rolled a 16 for leadership on the remaining DP and a 15 on his havocs. This not only killed both of those units outright, but eneabled the doom to insta-kill a squad of Oblits. The Prime then managed to drag down a squad of termies, the mawloc popped up under a squad of plaguers and AP2'd most of them to death. My Zoeys got killed and so did the flyrant, but by turn 4 that was all I lost, while my opponent had lost 9 of his 11 possible kill points. Oh yeah, turn 4, the Doom also killed a squad of terminators racking it's KP to 4 and the number of points it killed in models to 640!
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I liked how this list performed but there is a lot of fine tuning to do. I think I will switch the doom's pod's spines to the zoey pod. I will also give the foot tyrant a strangler cannon as the venom cannon did nothing for me. I am still up in the air about the flyrant, I like his dakka power, but don't like the points-cost of the wings.
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I have also looked at using 4 squads of warriors with a Barbed strangler in each squad and either devourers or deathspitters, but have not decided. I think they will probably go ignored in much the way my gants were due to all the crazy stuff in the opponent's midst and all the damage that stuff is doing. They would replace the tervis and gants.
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I will continue playtesting and will soon be converting my tervigons and painting one of my tyrants and both of the big snake bugs. Any and all comments and feedback are appreciated, so let me know what you think.

2 comments:

  1. I run basically the same list as this, but at 1500 (so I can't afford the Tyrant.) Have you considered dropping the Hive Guard for more Zoeys or a Deathleaper? The former give you some more nigh-guaranteed tank kills that don't have to worry about sitting on the field, exposed, as you wait for the rest of the army to drop in; the latter gives you defense against psychic powers and can perform a lot of handy "utility" duties.

    I would strongly recommend putting wings on the second Tyrant. Dropping the Prime to a regular Trygon could help a lot here. I also strongly prefer the HVC to Devourers, as Tyranids have lots of ways of killing infantry but few of killing vehicles. Whip/Sword is also generally stronger than Talons, as forcing enemies to strike at I1 lets you charge cover, fight Eldar, etc, without too much worry.

    Zoeys definitely need the Cluster Spines more than Doom; Doom _wants_ guys near him, Zoeys are terrified of squads of normal dudes.

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  2. Do you really like the heavy Venom Cannon? I just don't like worrying about a scattering small blast when it comes to tank popping.

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