Hey all, Kevin from BAALS-2-the-WAALS here again to discuss the list a buddy of mine is bringing to TempleCon this Saturday for the 1850 Point Tournament. Now before I get into the list let me state that I am not a Tyranids player. I can say however that about half of the games I have played in the past year since the codex dropped have been against the bugs. Lets just say they are an old nemesis of mine due to my buddy, Marcus, playing them as well as my old FLGS community was made up of mostly Tyranid, Tau, and vanilla marine players (Yes very odd but it what was popular in my area at the time)..... anyway here is the list before I go on and on..... Here is his version of 5th edition Stealer shock....
Hive Tyrant w/ Wings and Hive Commander - 255
Hive Tyrant w/ Wings - 230
2 Zoanthropes in a Mycetic Spore - 160
8 Ymgarl Genestealers - 184
8 Ymgarl Genestealers - 184
8 Genestealers w/ Toxin Sacs and a Broodlord (w/ Toxin Sacs and Scything Talons) - 184
8 Genestealers w/ Toxin Sacs - 136
8 Genestealers w/ Toxin Sacs - 136
8 Genestealers w/ Toxin Sacs - 136
Trygon Prime - 240
Ok first of all elt me talk about a typical Nid tournament list. Its based off of Tervigons spawning grunts backed up by Hive Guard spam with the occaisonal zoans in a pod all rounded up by Trygon spam. The one flaw this army has is few shots and it has to foot slog/ out shoot MEQ's and Guard players alike. This works ok but is not a true competitive list in this day of MSU and Mech spam.
Now Fritz has gone a lot into how 5th Dimension Nids should play and he is right. The quicker you blitz your opponent using all sides of the board does work. It seems to be the way Nids can work in this edition and this list utilizes this concept in an effective way.
First the core of this list is of course, the Genestealer. Rocking in with Initiative 6 backed up with 2 attacks base and a decent Strength, toughness and weapon skill make the Stealer tough, IT is even tougher with its attack being rending. It is an assault machine that can tear through Khorne Berserkers like they are Guard Rough necks. Disregarding the 5+ armor they are the assault blitzing machine Tyranids need to focus on. Although all of these are good qualities the main point to using them is thier ability to outflank and infiltrate. Yet again a 5th dimension quality. Ymgarls are a less seen elite version of a genestealer with similar qualities except they can pop up in a designed way from any piece of terrain pre-concieved by the Tyranid player. This is another crucial element to the list design. Now lets look at our HQ, two Flyrants, also one with hive commander. This is another crucial point to the list giving you the ability to bring Troops from reserve in quicker than normal. The last two points of interest in the list are the Zoans ment for taking down the odd land Raider and a Trygon (Prime because of extra points).
Now lets talk about stradegy, Ymgarls hide in critical pieces of terrain and, with the threat of outflank, you box up your opponent in the middle. If you plan correctly you can have Ymgarls come in behind or in your opponents ranks ready to assault crucial elements and break up your opponents stradegy. Zoans come down and take down heavy support. Trygon comes in and distracts your opponenet as stealers break in and crash your opponents lines as well as break up vehicles. Flyrants fly around making crushing squads. If used correctly this makes a true Stealer Shock army very scary to play against. I played against this army as gaurd many times and have narrowly defeated him, and I play this due to experience with my own list. It has models showing up in the middle, the sides and in your opponents deployment and brings the game down to about a 2' by 3 foot block. Now don't get me wrong there are ways to counter this list but it can shake up the way people play. It gets in quick and puts a threat directly in your face. Plus all Stealer Lists can be very cool to see playing.
Now My friend Marcus has just played this list at the TempleCon singles tournament and went 2-1 with his only loss being a narrow loss to a Fateweaver daemon army. he placed 7th Overall at the tournament out of 30 players....Just more food for thought....I am very interest to see how this list plays out in the future....more on this later...
Hive Tyrant w/ Wings and Hive Commander - 255
Hive Tyrant w/ Wings - 230
2 Zoanthropes in a Mycetic Spore - 160
8 Ymgarl Genestealers - 184
8 Ymgarl Genestealers - 184
8 Genestealers w/ Toxin Sacs and a Broodlord (w/ Toxin Sacs and Scything Talons) - 184
8 Genestealers w/ Toxin Sacs - 136
8 Genestealers w/ Toxin Sacs - 136
8 Genestealers w/ Toxin Sacs - 136
Trygon Prime - 240
Ok first of all elt me talk about a typical Nid tournament list. Its based off of Tervigons spawning grunts backed up by Hive Guard spam with the occaisonal zoans in a pod all rounded up by Trygon spam. The one flaw this army has is few shots and it has to foot slog/ out shoot MEQ's and Guard players alike. This works ok but is not a true competitive list in this day of MSU and Mech spam.
Now Fritz has gone a lot into how 5th Dimension Nids should play and he is right. The quicker you blitz your opponent using all sides of the board does work. It seems to be the way Nids can work in this edition and this list utilizes this concept in an effective way.
First the core of this list is of course, the Genestealer. Rocking in with Initiative 6 backed up with 2 attacks base and a decent Strength, toughness and weapon skill make the Stealer tough, IT is even tougher with its attack being rending. It is an assault machine that can tear through Khorne Berserkers like they are Guard Rough necks. Disregarding the 5+ armor they are the assault blitzing machine Tyranids need to focus on. Although all of these are good qualities the main point to using them is thier ability to outflank and infiltrate. Yet again a 5th dimension quality. Ymgarls are a less seen elite version of a genestealer with similar qualities except they can pop up in a designed way from any piece of terrain pre-concieved by the Tyranid player. This is another crucial element to the list design. Now lets look at our HQ, two Flyrants, also one with hive commander. This is another crucial point to the list giving you the ability to bring Troops from reserve in quicker than normal. The last two points of interest in the list are the Zoans ment for taking down the odd land Raider and a Trygon (Prime because of extra points).
Now lets talk about stradegy, Ymgarls hide in critical pieces of terrain and, with the threat of outflank, you box up your opponent in the middle. If you plan correctly you can have Ymgarls come in behind or in your opponents ranks ready to assault crucial elements and break up your opponents stradegy. Zoans come down and take down heavy support. Trygon comes in and distracts your opponenet as stealers break in and crash your opponents lines as well as break up vehicles. Flyrants fly around making crushing squads. If used correctly this makes a true Stealer Shock army very scary to play against. I played against this army as gaurd many times and have narrowly defeated him, and I play this due to experience with my own list. It has models showing up in the middle, the sides and in your opponents deployment and brings the game down to about a 2' by 3 foot block. Now don't get me wrong there are ways to counter this list but it can shake up the way people play. It gets in quick and puts a threat directly in your face. Plus all Stealer Lists can be very cool to see playing.
Now My friend Marcus has just played this list at the TempleCon singles tournament and went 2-1 with his only loss being a narrow loss to a Fateweaver daemon army. he placed 7th Overall at the tournament out of 30 players....Just more food for thought....I am very interest to see how this list plays out in the future....more on this later...
This is Marcus after the TempleCon Tournament celebrating his success, he is a much better player than you would think
Is this the new way for a Nid player to play? How do you play your bugs? Let
s get a discussion on how to bring Nids up to the top. Hope you all enjoyed and thanks for reading.
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3 comments:
His list hits a critical idea for effect competitive playing of bugs, namely we have to get into assault from all sides rapidly. this Type of list forces the opponent into the box where a nid player wants them to be. The box makes it easier to multicharge, everyone conveniently forgets their super armored vehicles has an armor 10 on the rear which is what is hit on the charge by rending stealer that's a lot of open cans.
This is one of those lists where I'd actually consider squeezing in Swarm lord. He makes genestealers really good. plus coupling his preferred enemy ability with ymgarls or even normal stealers is great.
As an Imperial Guard player, I have to say that Genestealers are the scariest thing in the Tyranid army. They're fast, they can show up practically anywhere, and they buzz-saw through just about anything.
However, they do have some major weaknesses that a canny opponent can capitalize on.
1) Lack of frag spines (or whatever the Nid equivalent of assault grenades is). I6 doesn't mean much when you're charging into cover. I have seen over-confident Nids assault my Guardsmen in woods and lose. Of course, in order to capitalize on this weakness, your opponent has to hide in cover, which plays to your strategy of boxing them in, so I guess this isn't really much of a weakness.
2) Armor Save 5+ means BEWARE OF FLAMERS! After eating a squad, consolidating into cover will save those Stealers for a turn while the enemy returns fire, unless flamers are involved. If there's a flamer nearby, the best thing the Stealers can do is spread out for fewer hits.
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