I managed to get my first game of 10th Edition in on Weds night and thought I'd report back - there was a lot of on the fly learning going on, so I forgot to take photos from the start, and only remembered to get them well into the game.

 

This was a 1500pt battle missions/temptest of war style game, we both picked random objectives.

Mission - Supply drop - 3 objectives in no mans land, one dissappears in t4, the other in t5.

Diagonal deployment. 

I don't remember the exact secondary objectives, so wont list them.

 

Tyranids

Hive Tyrant, lash whip+bs, venom cannon

Parasite 

20x termagants - fleshborers

20x termagants - devourers

10x horms

10x horms

5x barbgaunts

3x VRL's

3x venomthropes

3x zoanthropes

3x zoanthropes

3x raveners with thoracic weapons

Screamer Killer

Exocrine

160w

 

 

Dark Angels

Belial (w/knights)

Vindicare assassin

Judiciar - heavenfall blade (w/bladeguard)

10x hellblasters

6x aggressors with flamers

6x bladeguard

5x deathwing knights, master with flail

1x landspeeder hailstrike

3x eradicators

113w

 

DA won the roll off for T1 and went first.

DA T1 Remarkably little died, maybe 10-12 gants, a few gaunts. They played devastator doctrine for advance and shoot, so the aggressors sprinted 10" towards the objective on the top right, one stepping onto it, and then flamed one unit of gaunts T1, killing 9/10. Hailstrike fired the grenades into the gaunts and the rest into the screamer, doing a couple of wounds to the screamer and thankfully rolling low on the shots to the gants, despite getting +8 shots for the 20 of them - maybe 8 died. The venomthropes had a lot to do with this, giving the gaunts stealth and cover for a 4+ save at -1 to hit. Las-fusils shot the screamer, doing loads of damage, they're somehow D6 damage this time instead of the 3 they were before! Screamer is on 6w. DA achieve both secondaries, one of which was hold most of the no mans land objectives, and hold the one nominated by me. 

 

Nid T1

In my command phase I endless swarm the mauled hormagaunt unit bringing 6 back to life, then use it a second time with my tyrant on the termagant units , restoring 4 to one and 5 to another. As units were above half strength, no battleshock tests. Screamer moved forwards towards the aggressors, who overwatch it, lots of hits, 3/4 wounds with twin linked, no damage. Screamer shoots them and kills one, then charges in and bounces off with shocking rolling, killing one, before getting punched for 4W in return - I'm crucially holding the objective though vs the one aggressor on it. Exocrine shoots the eradicators and rolls a one, killing one. devilgants shoot them putting a wound through. I give up and charge them with the horms who do some damage and drag one down, however a couple get punched to death in return. I still hold that objective. Zoans shoot the bladeguard, killing maybe 1. VRL's get onto the middle objective, taking it, but dont charge due to the players whose turn it isnt having the advantage on the charge. I get the secondary for taking an objective from the opponent and one other. 

 

DAT2

Belial appears behind my exocrine, who overwatches and doesnt do anything. Belial fails the charge into the exocrine, needing a 10 for terrain. Eradicator falls back and the hellblasters shoot the horms, wiping them. Bladeguard charge the VRL's, who strike first and do nothing, getting killed in return.Aggressors punch the screamer to death (twin linked). Speeder moves onto central objective and shoots the tyrant and gaunts. 

 

NidT2

I drew defend stronghold and somthing else, so had to hold my home objective v belial. I used shadown in the warp to force break tests, and absolutely everything passed with marines Ld6+. pointless exercise. 

Heal the terms back to full with endless horde strat and moved the borergaunts onto my home objective to tie up belial, hopefully for the game. Zoans move forwards and opponent uses overwatch to put the lasfusils into them,killing one. This allows me to move my horms onto the objective held by the aggressors, denying it to them. zoans and gaunts put shots into bladeguard reducing them to one guy + judicar. Tyrant multicharges bladeguard and speeder, murdering both bladeguard and judiciar, despite them striking first (T10, 2+, 4++, 4+++).  Exocrine kills the last eradicator. 

 

DAT3

Belial move toward the exocrine, ignoring the gaunts, who scuttle towards him to try and block the charge, but also getting most on the objective, staying within 6" of zoans and venoms for the boosts. Belial gets the charge and poor rolling sees only 4 wounds knocked off the exo. Aggressors flame then punch the horms, taking back the top left marker. hellblasters pop the right hand zoans. no primaries for DA. 

 

Nid T3

Exo falls back to thwart belial. Gants shuffle more onto objective to stop them from toeing onto it and shoot belial, doing nothing. barbs shoot belial, doing nothing. devilgants shoot hellblasters, amazingly killing 4. With all my bad luck with zoan shooting, I forget about the blast warp blast and go straight for lance, with CP rerolls to protect me. Left hand zoans lance the aggressors, hitting, wounding, killing. The D3 shot blast is a trap, as you might just roll a 1 anyway, so 1/3 time you're better off with the better shot, even moreso against 3+ wound targets. Reveners pop up on the bottom right objective to hold it, out of LOS of the hellblasters. 

 

 

Start of DA T4 - the alpha objective in the top left has been removed from no mans land. 

 

After this photo, Belial moved towards the exocrine who opten to overwatch. To counter all my bad luck in this game so far, I rolled a 6 on the attacks, for 9 shots, then amazingly this:

From 9 shots, I rolled 5 6's, garnering an additional 5 hits. So 10 exocrine hits on belials knight unit, which was enough to wipe the remaining 2 and the grandmaster. That was pretty much game over right there. My opponent didnt have that much to threaten me, and no objective positioning, while I was all over the board. 

 

Mop up time. Evrything shoots the hellblasters and the raveners charge in finishing them off. 

 

Overall this was a fun game, with a lot of swings, however we spent a lot of time checking and double checking rules. This will get better hopefully as we get more used to the game. I'm not 100% sure it's less complex than 9th - each unit now has a bespoke rule that triggers all the time, as opposed to a set of universal special rules that are easy to remember. Some of the time consuming decision making still exists, like bladeguard having to choose whether to attack or defend, and then additional reactions like overwatch, while cool, slow the game down when you have to measure who is in range of what etc. It works in heresy as heresy is a faster system with pass/fail for saves, and no modifiers. 

 

In terms of unit performance, this is what I think:

 

Hive Tyrant, lash whip+bs, venom cannon - B+ - Venom cannon is pointless in this edition, ill go full melee next time. The free strat per turn is amazing. 

Parasite - D too weak, too slow, cant join gargoyles, sub par melee. Should be 50pts or so. 

20x termagants - fleshborers - B- Solid unit, output ws poor, but kept in the game with strats and held them objectives

20x termagants - devourers - B+ decent output, did some good damage, took up a lot of space. Better with a tervigon to proc lethal hits. 

10x horms - A - cheap, cheerful, fast, did the job of dropping OC20 onto objectives, surprisingly good in melee with 30 attacks per 10. 

10x horms - as above

5x barbgaunts - C - poor positioning from me meant they couldn't hit the opposing moving units. Considering the points they cost, I'll give them a C for performance, but a B+ for being 5pts per wound, and 10W and putting out average 18 shots. 

3x VRL's - C - in this matchup. Good for a speedbump but not much else, they can't break through power armour. 

3x venomthropes B - flat -1 to hit on everything is great, however they have zero damage output of their own. 70pts is a tricky investment. definitely if you're running more monsters, as the -1 will hurt lot shot stronger weapons more, also a good pick for infantry for the +1 save. 

3x zoanthropes -C+ Undecided. The blast version was underhwhelming, the lance was ok, but on BS3+. The battleshock thing never came up nd is too close range to ever have an impact on zoans, who want to be at 24" range. 

3x zoanthropes

3x raveners with thoracic weapons - A- great unit for the points - same cost and identical statline to VRL's however with deepstrike and twin linked instead of stealth and infiltrate. Deepstrike allows stealing of late game objectives, and twin linked is worth it's weight in gold with the increased T across the board. 

Screamer Killer - D+ - T10 and 3D is about the only great thing about this. It seems overshadowed by carnifexes, who despite having 2D are...1/3 cheaper at 120pts. I think 3 carnis are better than 2 screamers, and they get the blistering assault rule, and you can add OOE. 

Exocrine B+ - Blast means it cant shoot in combat, gun is still swingy from 4 - 9 shots (100% variation) At 135pts though, this is a good option, and T10 to boot, so overall a solid pick. 

 

Tyranids overall 

Adapations: The 3 'options' to privide to nids at the start (sustained, lethal on vehicles or precision hits) is silly, and only sustained hits to me is a good choice, outside of playing knights, which is never fun anyway. Precision is dumb as you'll put the odd single shot into a character, that likely wont kill them. Maaaaybe it'll have some use against stuff with really weak characters in...tough units? I haven't read all the indexes yet, but I don't see any characters so far that buff their units to such an extent that you need to kill them asap - in this game, perhaps the judicar, which would have stripped FF from the bladeguard? In my opinion, 90% of the time you'll be taking sustained, it's just so good, as exemplified by the exocrine above. 

 

Shadow in the warp was poor, which you can realise just by reading the rule and looking at Ld stats in the game. My opponent did, however only just pass many of the rolls, so I think you'll need to bake a neurotyrant into every list if you want to have a hope of this having an effect - even then it just takes marines from a significantly above average chance to pass (Ld6), to a very above average (Ld7) chance to pass. I wouldn't even think about this, never mind building around it. A flat -Ld when within 12" would have been nice, thematic and useful.