Brothers in Arms - 2012. Epilogue

Brothers in Arms 2012 is my first team tourney as well as my first tourney outside my native country – Belarus. I’m glad that my friends pulled me out to the event and I’m delighted to play in the “Minsk & Co” team. Actually I have affected the team result not only in good way, nevertheless I tried to play at the very high level and succeed at the task.

Lets look at my expectations before the tourney and the outcome. My army was planned to be an attacker for different “platoon behind the Aegis” armies with minimum of mech. In every round of pairings I had a couple of good targets for attack and I think it wasn’t hard for captain to pick a good pairing for me. I think that I hit the meta very well, cause that was a usual situation, when I successfully attacked the very first enemy defender. As a result I think that it’s wise not to change the army “style”, nevertheless some tuning is still possible.

Lets make a unit by unit analysis:

Flying tyrants

My MVP units. They are awesome until… until you face a dicedown. Of cource you need the second tyrant to counter some bad dices – one tyrant is the choice for luckers:) In first game this guys ate tons of shooting and wiped almost all the enemy scoring-threatening units, including Storm Raven and brought me a solid victory! In the second game (with Daemons) they managed to rapidly change the target from my deployment zone to my opponents and brought me the second victory! In the third game they were hot on saves and tests and managed to single-handy punish the mech-IG! In the last game I faced a rock solid dice down and lost tyrants as easy as if they were gaunts.

What to change with this guys? Maybe it is point-wise to drop one Old Adversary and add up regeneration, which costs only 20 pts per model.

Grade: A-

The Doom of Malan’thai

A powerful and completely broken unit… but only on paper. In practice it did nothing valuable throughout 4 games! On the other hand, it is 2 easy KP’s with spore. So I cannot give him a good mark.

Grade: C

Tervigons

These monsters win us all objective games (5 of 6 scenarios, he-he). With a new Feel No Pain rules it was right decision to keep 1 tervigon with Catalyst only, while 2 others take 3 powers each for swapping where necessary. I felt no need in additional gants on the table, so I’m pretty satisfied with 3 brood of gants in spores as a tervigons unlocker.

As an option, I see that in most cases 2 tervigons can do almost the same as 3 tervigons. So if I find myself in need to add another unit in army, I can drop one terv with ease.

Grade: A

Gants with devourers in spores

They knocked the opponent down in the first game, they cleaned up my deployment in the second game (with Daemons), they managed to distract a plasma tank in the third game, where they found no valid targets. In the last game they were the single units to do some damage to the enemy. They also synergize well with flyrants, so they are somewhat a no-brainer tervigon unlocker for me.

Grade: A

Transport spores

Mycetic spores are a unit by themselves. They give cover for tyrants, block LOS. Deathspitters upgrade gave me 12 additional TL shots S5 per turn that was quite effective (especially against Daemons, where they managed to take the last HP off the SoulGrinder!!!). I personally feel that it is better to take deathspitters rather than 1 more gant with devourer. On the other hand, they are not necessary if you need to save some points. If in future we’ll receive the ability to disembark 6” from the spore my grade will be A+ definitely, but as we have our own codex rules…

Grade: B

All grades are done. It is obvios that I have some ideas on list tuning. As one can see, I’m not satisfied with Doom showings and if I drop him together with his spore I will increase the average Grade of my Army:) Minus 2 easy KP’s and plus 140 points! If I strip OA from one tyrant, I end up with a total of 165 points to play with.

After I examined every unit in the codex I decided that the most game-changing unit I could have on the tourney is Biovore Brood! Let’s see:

Game 1: Biovores vs a warbands? Cool! No more dense deployment around Coteaz!

Game 3: Reserve the biovores to take care of the enemy troops on the far away objectives! A great help for tyrants!

Game 4. I had no instrument to bring down some guardsmen hidden behind the chimeras wreckage on the enemy objective! Biovores are extremely good at this task.

Game 5. I feel like biovores could bring me the victory in that game.

As I can see, for a mere price of 135 points, biovores match my army design and makes it more aggressive and diverse.

What to take for the points left? I think about regeneration for tyrants. They are my MVP’s. As long as they control the sky, I win the game. So I want to prolong their lifes:)

Here are the resulting army list:

HQ 1: Hive Tyrant (170), Wings (60), TL Devourers x2 (30), Hive commander (25), Regenerate (20) = 305 Pts

HQ 2: Hive Tyrant (170), Wings (60), TL Devourers x2 (30), Old Adversary (25), Regenerate (20) = 305 Pts

Troops 1: 13x Termagants (65), Devourers (65) in Transport 1 = 130 Pts

Troops 2: 13x Termagants (65), Devourers (65) in Transport 2 = 130 Pts

Troops 3: 10x Termagants (50), Devourers (50) in Transport 3 = 100 Pts

Troops 4: Tervigon (160), Toxin sacks (10), Adrenal glands (10), Catalyst (15) = 195 Pts

Troops 5: Tervigon (160), Toxin sacks (10), Catalyst (15), Onslaught (15) = 200 Pts

Troops 6: Tervigon (160), Toxin sacks (10), Catalyst (15), Onslaught (15) = 200 Pts

HS 1: 3x Biovore (135) = 135 pts.

Transport 1: Mycetic spore (40), Twin-Deathpitter (10) = 50 Pts

Transport 2: Mycetic spore (40), Twin-Deathpitter (10) = 50 Pts

Transport 3: Mycetic spore (40), Twin-Deathpitter (10) = 50 Pts

TOTAL: 1850 pts.

I have 2 less easy KP’s here as well as I have a scary anti-infantry blasts that force opponent to deploy in anti-blast fashion that let me utilize my favorite “refused flank” strategy with my gants!

I also improved the survivability of my flyrants a bit. One flyrant wound costs more than 70 points, so if regeneration on both tyrants will work only once per game it will pay for its points twice!

Is this army optimal? Of cource, not. It’s just one of the variants I see today. As I said before, I can drop one tervigon for something more specific, like Ymgarls for anti-tank, or even tyrranofex with Acid spray. In either way, I’m going to investigate the reserve tyranid builds further.