Elvensword Ambassadorial Test Mission

[fluger]

I think you are thinking of the Parasite of Mortrex.  Doesn't exist anymore.  Only IC that Nids can get is a Prime IIRC.  

[Lord Hanaur]

See edit'd post.  You are correct:  that IS what I was thinking of.

[fluger]

Yeah, all those stupid nid players have no clue. Just add a prime to buff up warriors! Simple! ????

[Lord Hanaur]

Yeah, all those stupid nid players have no clue. Just add a prime to buff up warriors! Simple!

Your words, not mine.  Im just saying they dont suck. 

[fluger]

How do they survive shooting to do anything? Warriors are hot garbage. What makes the flyrant useful is that it is survivable, mobile, and self reliant. The prime has to be in a unit which almost certainly will cost more than 75 pts and collectively they won't shoot as hard, be as maneuverable, and will be easier to kill.

[Lord Hanaur]

I feel like we are digressing.

 

You....survive shooting...by being in a unit.  Or better, being in melee.  Or using terrain.  Pretty much like every other HQ in the game I imagine.  I feel like you're asking questions to which you already know the answer.

 

This isn't about how good Flyrants are, because we already know.  =)

[Talonwinter]

I feel like we are digressing.

 

You....survive shooting...by being in a unit.  Or better, being in melee.  Or using terrain.  Pretty much like every other HQ in the game I imagine.  I feel like you're asking questions to which you already know the answer.

 

This isn't about how good Flyrants are, because we already know.  =)

You made get out my book for the firts time in a long time. lol

 

Honestly you can't dress him up as a good unit or even decent at that point cost.

 

Can't believe you are using Shadows of the warp as a plus to take him. I don't think this rules been useful since the codex came out in any game I have played, maybe once..maybe. You know the amount of games I have played.

 

Normal warriors have it as well so no need for him. for his point cost I can have 4 fully kitted out shrikes or warriors which is more survivable have more attacks and shooting.

 

The relic is crazy expensive and is not that good.

 

If what I am understanding 125 base + a for relic, for sword+lash, + Assault Grenades, shooting str 5, that's 195 ish with out poision which you will want. With 5 attacks on the charge cause the Nids don't get a bonus for having a gun and a weapon. The 2+ armor save is only for the combat phase so no tanking shooting. Having to spend almost 200 points for a IC with no ++.

 

Paying 150 to 200 points for a guy that can't ignor ap2 armor and doesn't have some kind of ++ save. Even Sister have better HQ for cheaper that IC.

 

Every army have supper cheap IC but Tyranids.

 

As for the rule for this I question you can sacrifice a tyrant guard as a Hive tyrant joins them as a IC. The New FAQ for Tyranids say he can leave like a IC too. Which gives a simple answer to our problem here.

 

A tyrant can sacrifice his guard which fits the point value need in the unit as well.

[Lord Hanaur]

Again...we are digressing.  We can chat about our opinions of Tyranid Primes somewhere else probably.

[Talonwinter]

Will the tyrant acting like a IC work for sacrificing the hive guard?

[AbusePuppy]

How do they survive shooting to do anything? Warriors are hot garbage. What makes the flyrant useful is that it is survivable, mobile, and self reliant. The prime has to be in a unit which almost certainly will cost more than 75 pts and collectively they won't shoot as hard, be as maneuverable, and will be easier to kill.

 

This isn't about how good powerful units are- this is about forcing an already-weak codex to take horrible, horrible units (TWO of them!) in order to punish them for how bad they are. It's just not fair to all the Eldar, Tau, Space Marine, and Daemon players if the Tyranids aren't playing down by 200+pts every game.

[Lord Hanaur]

Sounds like we will have more test games this weekend.  This should be the last few i need to kind of finalize it.  I feel like it's pretty close.  There will be another mission i am going to test as well, once I am satisfied with this one.  

[Lord Hanaur]

Will the tyrant acting like a IC work for sacrificing the hive guard?

I see the FAQ now.  I think that would be fine.  I'll add it to the Mission rules for clarity but it kind of makes sense to me.

[Talonwinter]

I see the FAQ now.  I think that would be fine.  I'll add it to the Mission rules for clarity but it kind of makes sense to me.

Sorry, tyrant guard not hive guard get those two backwards all the time.

[Talonwinter]

Thanks for the game fulger.

My list was in a way a really good counter to his for this mission.

I had no drop pods in this list. Using only the Wolf strike formation Great pack with aux murderpack. It worked really well hit like a ton of bricks. with parts fast as all get out. Saddly the formations cool rules where worthless vs all tanks.

 

I was attacker turn one.

Yep the first game was way to fast. Went like deployed, roll wolfen power, roll charge range, game over. With a pure tank list was not much he could do.

 

 

Game two I was the defender.

He actually seized on me allowing me to charge him. Looking back I think he would not have done so. Also he reserved some stuff which lowered his damage output the first round.

 

He blasted a lot of things and kept me from getting a easy secondary. Over all my list just has too many saves that if I make them he then lose large parts of his army. to my counter charge.

 

As for the mission. Being able to get the secondary first turn needs to be looked at. Maybe saying you have to wait tell turn 2 or 3 to be able to do it. Would work better. Cause on turn one makes it was easy to take a commanding lead for the mission. Where the attacker has to kill most of your army to be able to score seam unfair. The defender should have to work to get his secondary as well not just have it on a silver platter. Making the defender endure a couple of rounds of fighting seams fair.

 

I can see where having the defenders reserves coming in where ever you want can be a huge advantage. I was able to put my speeder in the rear arch of his Russ's every time the came in no issues. I think randomizing it like with the outflank table would make it more balanced.

 

Something like:

You can pick for them to come in on our long edge or use the table but you , must pick at deployment.

1-2 left flank

3-4right flank

5-6 Any edge your pick

This way you do get to set up perfect counter deployment.

 

For points in our games.

 

Round 1:: 24 - 6 Attacker Space Wolves win

 

Round two 18 - 3 Defenders Space wolves Win

[fluger]

I did kill your warlord in game 2.  So I got at least 3 pts there.  But you would've had primary, StW, Linebreaker, and the quarters tertiary.  That should be 18-3...  

[fluger]

One thought I had was maybe on turn 1 the defender's sacrifice is worth 2 pts, 4 on turn 2, and 6 on turn 3 onwards.  So, you could go for the quick two points, or else hold out for more.  

[Lord Hanaur]

One thought I had was maybe on turn 1 the defender's sacrifice is worth 2 pts, 4 on turn 2, and 6 on turn 3 onwards.  So, you could go for the quick two points, or else hold out for more.  

hm.  I like that idea.  More dynamic.  The points for Primares and such were intentionally large to allow for "micro adjustments" in the missions.  

[Lord Hanaur]

Another two test mission goes in the books.  

 

In my own game, Shadowzilla chose to be the Attacker.  I deployed in the middle and formed a diamond around my Assassins, using the Rhinos, and backed away turn one to give me room to prepare for his drop. As expected, he dropped right on the Shrine point with obsec galore while Terminators fired at me from the rearguard.  His special bolter units were too far away and had to move.  Once he dropped in, he killed my Crusaders and shot up a couple of Rhinos and teleported his big bad wolf of ten Veterans and Libby in on me to help with all this. Split firing proved useful for him.  he was somewhat disappointed with the results.  I used Ruins and Night Fight to maximum advantage to stave off death.

 

Now free to charge in round two, i unleashed my Assassins on his big bad unit and killed them all with the Libby.  The Exorcist killed a far off Terminator while the rest fired and whittled his big pod unit with all the Psyker powers I feared (not to much avail, good saves in there).

 

From this point on reserves trickled in and I ended up with my Sisters and a Dominions squad having to come in from his table edge (what can ya do) and then not even getting to shoot because the exorcist killed the terminator they were going after.  so they spent a couple turns having to just get to the middle where the fight was.  My other reserves jaunted in from my table edge and ended up getting shot up something fierce before i could get there, so the Sisters Repentia never actually got to charge anything.  The other dominion and Retributors did serious work in the middle though when they got there and when he failed to kill ALL of them, they did more work, while the Exorcist killed a couple more of his Terminators, pretty much leaving him with his two Bolter units that had moved closer (and they did good work) and his final pod coming in which did a DEVASTATING amount of wounds and hull points.  I rolled like a champ though, but even rolling well he killed all but one Dominion, all but one Retributor, took hull points off both the Rhino and the Exorcist and pretty well sizzled my front line of attack.  the back line that had spent the turns coming from his board edge finally arrived and combined to nuke the remainders.  

 

He conceded with just his Bolter guys on the fringes controlling two Quarters.  

 

final score was 21-9, as he did control two quarters and he could have easily moved those guys to linebreak

 

the DeathWatch do SO much damage and because of the objective in this mission, they are going to REALLY get the chance to bake a LOT of people!  i think that with some small refinement of his list and better deployment with his Special ammo bolter dudes, the game would have been closer yet, but they were left out of the fight by how far away he placed them, valuing their cover more than their range initially even though I really have no range in my force.  

 

DeathWatch are scary.  if it wasn't for their low model count, I'm not sure how someone would even begin to handle the damage output.  Elite armies are going to struggle so mightily against the Deathwatch.  i was blessed to have Rhinos that could protect me from it just long enough but...

[Lord Hanaur]

i edit'd the original post with the mission changes.  After seeing the effects of various changes, I have decided to change the table for reserves and also to change the way Defenders fall back.  I think this will counter a little of the Defenders advantage that was reported by some players.  In some cases, its difficult to tell if it was truly an issue since they didnt always play BOTH as attacker then as Defender.  Sometimes winning and losing do color perception.  Nonetheless, i think the mission will now provide an element of danger in the form of competing priorities to think about.

 

My main issue and the one i just cannot seem to decide on is the 24" issue.  I've seen a ton of games now and i'll be honest:  18", while it "cramps" the Attacker less, seems to be too far a swing for what is essentially just an inconvenience of deployment.  It leaves a gap in the Attacker deployment zone, but its not huge.  18" makes stealing the initiative for the Attacker inadvisable in many cases, which seems an undue influence.  Another issue is that one wrong move by the Defender would be catastrophic at that range, and I wonder aloud if I really want someone losing just because of an "Ah ha!" moment where they kind of missed the threat until it was too late nd they are so used to starting distances of 24".  A game over in turn one seems...unlikely to be fulfilling?  One bad game isn't so bad if you learn from it and one hopes people are practicing beforehand but...  It's definitely something i have to consider.

 

I truly am open to more thoughts on this if you have played the mission.  I've heard from many of the players but am vacillating so much on this one issue...

[fluger]

I like the changes.  It definitely hits on my biggest complaint of the defender just auto-arriving whereever is most advantageous.  I think, with that change, that 24" is better.  

[Lord Hanaur]

Okay and others have given me input that they prefer the 24" as well.  I feel that this mission is as thoroughly tested as we could have made it.  I think it looks quite a bit different than it did when we first started, which is a testament to the time people took to practice it, for which i am very grateful.  It seems a worthy, and different, test of a generals true ability, which is what we want in tournaments of course.  

 

The actual results we got do not deviate from what one would expect to see in normal games.  The five most recent games were much closer affairs and played by people who had seen the mission before so it was better play and showed both players more cognizant of what they needed to do, so i think that helped them be closer.  While there will never be a way to account for terrain and generalship in raw numbers I was satisfied with the low number of outliers.  We have had a total of 20 test games now.  I think we have a winner here.

[WestRider]

3.  Player will alternate deploying their units, starting with the Defender.  Defenders may only Deploy up to 1/2 (rounded up) of their total starting  number of Kill Points.  Reserves are declared last when deploying.  Drop pods and their occupants coming in turn one are included in this number, which may limit how many you can deploy directly on the board.  Defender units must be entirely within 12" of the center of the board (The Shrine point).  The Shrine Point is considered to be on ground level, reaching upwards to infinity, meaning that any scoring model within 3", regardless of elevation, can contest or control it as normal.  Infiltrators the Defender elected to start with can be announced and used as normal.

How does this interact with the Talon Strike Force, which lets the Player roll for Reserves starting on Turn 1, so there are a random number of Units coming in Turn 1? I think there are one or two other Formations that let you start rolling for Reserves for them on Turn 1 as well, which could be similarly problematic.

[Lord Hanaur]

I need to make sure I understand the question.  Here is what the mission says:

 

Defenders may only Deploy up to 1/2 (rounded up) of their total starting  number of Kill Points.  Reserves are declared last when deploying.  Drop pods and their occupants coming in turn one are included in this number, which may limit how many you can deploy directly on the board. 

 

So based on this (current) writing of the mission, those placed in RESERVE that will come on round one are part of the total that can be deployed turn one.  In other words, whether I have the choice or I dont (normally) to bring them in turn one, the total units that come in turn one (from reserve or otherwise) is limited to 1/2 your starting kill points.

 

So an army that could normally drop 14 kill points on the table turn one may, in this mission, only ever place up to 7, minus any that were placed on the board to start.  So if I started turn one with two units deployed and 12 that can come in turn one, only 5 more can actually do it.

[WestRider]

So what happens if I deploy two, keep 12 in Reserves, and then pass 9 of the Reserves Rolls on Turn 1? The Rules don't have an option to not make Reserves Rolls, or to not bring on Units that I made a successful Reserves Roll for.

[Lord Hanaur]

The Mission does restrict it specifically, and it trumps all that.

 

The Mission specifies that in your scenario, only 5 kill points could drop in turn 1 (14 total KP's, 2 on the ground, 5 more coming in via deep strike would then be allowed).  so you would roll for reserves until you run out of eligible (5 in this case) units to drop/reserve in.

 

I thought the text was fairly clear that this included the possible restriction on first turn reserves but will work on language to make it more clear.