Well the rule books and cards are in my FLGS so I did what anyone would do and asked if anyone wanted a game :)

 

Adam jumped in. Adam is a friend my son ( and the son of one of my friends) so while we have not played each other since covid we have known each other long time. He is just starting out with a new Tyranid army having been mostly a Guard player for a very long time. So we cut ourselves down to 1000 points. Which gave us more time to read the rules as we went. FLGS did a great job having 11th terrain already and a rulebook and card set out ready for us. 

 

He is playing Invasion Fleet Tyranids. Something like

Hive Tyrant with Guard

Tervigon

Tyrannofex

Zoanthropes

2 Big units of Termagants

 

I cut my list down to 

2 Lone Spears

War shaper with 10 carnivores

2 x 10 carnivores

Hounds

Vespid

Pirahna

Farstalkers

Pathfinders

2 x 3 Krootox riders

 

We agreed to chill on the DP stuff so I took the additional AAC - but quietly decided not to use any of it strats or rules. It was just for the disposition as I wanted to practice the disposition that I have locked in on.

 

T'au (Kroot) vs Tyranids. Recon Sweep vs Purge and Secure. Search and Destroy

 

Turn 1

 

I rolled to go second so I scouted quite defensively.  Farstalkers chilling in my natural expansion, hounds moving up ready to get into the far quarter

 

The tyranids move up to touch the central objective while the Tyrannofex takes a long range shot at the only visible target - the hounds. It massively over-kills one hound

 

On my turn 1 I move into all 4 table quarters and move up to touch the central objective to OC it with the unit of kroot with my war shaper in. The war shaper begins his run of really not doing much despite shooting into infanttry. I set up to grab some secondaries at the end of his turn and score 6 on my primary

 

Turn 2

 

Adam is denied any primary, he pushes into my kroot to try to take the objective from me but finds himself falling short so I still hold it. He is spreading out and beginning to chip at my units

 

I have a very big scoring turn, hold one plus maximum table quarters plus I max 15 on secondaries. I put wounds on things, kill models here and there but don't kill any units.

 

Turn 3

 

Having set things up on the previous turn the tyranids begin to score, they swarm my kroot on one objective with termagants and OC me. My hounds finally die, he pushes me off the central objective. My krootox really underperformed in combat and at this point died to the hive tyrant and buddies. A better scoring turn for the tyranids as they get 10 on primary and 5 on secondary

 

Facing the horror of Shadows in the Warp my shooting is hindered by my pathfinders not working. My war shaper snaps his own unit out of battleshock with his once per game ability. Even so things are a bit rough here. I do remove the Zoanthropes and cut through most of his guard but my last krootox dies in an ongoing combat with the Tervigon. I drop my Vespid into the backfield and don't do nearly as much to the termagants there as I hoped with the combined shooting of them and a lone spear. 10 primary score and 5 on secondary with the kill

 

Turn 4

 

The tyranids are beginning to roll over me in the center and there is little I can do to their big high toughness bugs. I lose a lone spear and to my distress lose my entire unit of vespid from failing 5 4+ saves out of 7 even after trying a CP reroll. That was Beacon lost :(  He finally finishes off the remaining kroot on his natural expansion - his ability to keep returning models to that unit eventually overwhelming the per-model superiority of the kroot. The piranha was grabbing a table quarter and took a real punching but survived on 1 wound.

 

I pull a dead unit of kroot onto his back line and start work on the Termagants that the Vespid failed to kill. I badly need assassinate so my farstalkers are now not on the objective but are chasing the Hive Tyrant. They get in range and grenade it then take it down with lethal hits. The piranha flew away and hid, still holding table quarter. Only 7 on primary as I was running short of units but 7 on secondary helped.

 

Turn 5

 

He has to cleanse with one unit of termagants and he shoots and charges my unit of kroot with his other termagants. 4 kroot die. They fight back and cut the termagants down to 6 models. 7 Primary, 7 secondary - I'm not repeating my mistake of letting him kill anything on an objective.

 

I need to stop him getting Beacon so I push up the pathfinders, wounded piranha and my last Lone Spear - easily removing his Termagants. On the other flank my kroot remove his last termagants in melee. While the survivors of the far stalkers do a cleanse. 11 primary and 7 secondary scored.

 

Kroot win 79 to 59

 

Playing at half the army size is interesting - we both felt that the mission stretches your forces a lot more at this points level and taking multiple units out for actions is harder to justify. I actually think this was pretty respectable scoring for having half as many units

 

The pathfinders are a very solid piece to add and the Ion Rifles did kill 3 regular dudes but I think that was worth it, I need to be more careful with my targets - overcharging into the Tervigon was not worthwhile trade as it all bounced off the saves anyway

 

Morale and Battleshock

 

A lot happened with morale and battleshock The Shadows in the Warp did hinder my shooting and scoring for a turn, the only unit that took longer to recover was a lone spear and that hardly mattered. Being able to pull a unit out of battleshock with the War Shaper had a 7 point VP swing and in a closer game that would have been decisive.

 

The piranha was in danger moving up on turn 5 but successfully hit the termagaunts with battleshock so they could not overwatch. I think with 3 of them this will be a more significant rule - but against Tyranids it struggles do do much until you kill most of their Synapse.

 

Shadows in the Warp is pretty bad news for T'au in general and did really knock back my momentum. But its not entirely terrifying unless it has additional penalties,  which tyranids can apply but I think they need a more mobile list if they want to apply that -1 penalty to a lot of my units. 

 

Thoughts on the mission

 

I think this is a mission that very slightly gives the edge to Recon but not by much. The ability to get scoring early and deny scoring to your opponent early can apply pressure - but kroot are still paper-thin and don't last long. I had the chance to give up the central objective one round earlier and I should have taken it - that would have eventually awarded less VP to my opponent and forced him to either let my unit get away or find another unit to go camp that objective while he chased them down to kill them. Getting off objectives to cut down enemy scoring matters in this match and I was not paying attention that that enough. But also it was my first practice game in this mission, so lesson duly learned.

A lot of this came down to me doing just enough scouting, getting just enough in place to stop him scoring any primary on turn 2 and still limiting it a bit on turn 3. My thinking here is that even if my opponent has an amazing go turn they might actually hit the 15 VP primary cap and not benefit enough to fully catch up.