Conquest Calgary - Attack of the Great Devourer

I have been planning for Conquest Calgary for about 4 months working hard to get my Tyranid army totally finished. I managed to finish my last models a week before the event so I was primed and ready to go! The turnout was great as I think they had 55 people show up for 4 different leagues (hobby 40k and fantasy and Ard Boyz style 40k and fantasy). I had opted to play in the hobby league as I was looking for something more on the fun side.

Army List

HQ
Hive Tyrant w/ 2xScything Talons, Acid Maw, +1 Save

Broodlord w/ Feeder Tendrils, +1 str, +1 Save
8 Genestealers w/ +1 Save

Elites
3 Tyranid warriors w/ 2xDeath Spitters, 1 Barbed Strangler

1 Lictor (awesome lol)

Troops
2 x 12 Termigants w/ With Out Number

18 Hormigaunts w/ all major upgrads (so +1 Str/Initiative/WS)

Fast Attack
4 Raveners w/ Scything Talons, Rending Claws

Heavy Support
3 x Zoanthropes w/ Synapse and Warp Blast

Carnifex w/ Venom Cannon, Barbed Strangler, +1 BS, +1 Wound

Carnifex w/ Barbed Strangler, Scything Talons, +1 WS, +1 Initiative, +1 Wound, Toxic Miasma

1698pts

Overall I was happy with the list when I made it. The objective for this half of the tourney wasnt to have a list designed to CRUSH your opponent. It was supposed to be designed to be both fun to play, and fun to play against. I took a lot of units in this army that many people wouldnt consider "optimal or competitive". The really funny thing is those units were the ones that consistanly did the most each game (Lictor, Raveners and Hormagaunts). This is without a doubt the most fun army I have ever built and I felt it gave me a chance to win in each game I played.


Game 1
Tyranids vs. Space Marines (Salamanders)

With this tournament the idea was to have a narritive feel to each game. So the first game of the tournament was a break out mission with one the defender starting in the middle of the board, while the attacker starts in the four corners and tries to stop the defenders from escaping off any board edge. I was the attacker (I mean come on...could you REALLY see Tyranids being a defender for anything lol?). My opponent had pretty much my nightmare Marine list. Land Raider with 5 assault termies and vulkan, most infantry mobile with Rhinos, and 2 Vindicators. In the center of the board was a huge building, so he set up 2 x 10 man tact squads in the building as bait for my army, while the rest was positioned around it in a wall of iron to prevent me from shooting/assaulting his troops. He also made the classic error when playing a Nid player. Totally underestimating just how far Hormagaunts can assault lol.

High Points
- My lictor came in right between the two tact squads in the building thus giving everything that assaulted those squads re-rolls to hit in close combat (so my 18 uber hormagaunts, raveners, hive tyrant and a unit of termigaunts)
- Killing his tricked out terminator assault squad with my Broodlord Retinue and my hand to hand Carnifex
- He was running his Rhinos off the board and I managed to blow one to bits with a Zoanthrope (rolled a 6 on the damage chart) and I managed to catch him with my uber Hormagaunts and kill the squad, thus giving me the win (otherwise it would of been a tie)
- I managed to either neutralize or destory both vindicators in the first round of shooting. This one move more then any I think gave me the win in this game.

Low Points
- Honestly everything in my army worked pretty much perfectly. I was never out of position for the objective, I managed to blow tanks up when I needed to and I made sure I 100% kept my mind on the objective

Final Result:
Major Victory. The victory conditions were based on how many of his troops he got off the board. He needed to get more then half his troops off the board and because I managed to catch that last Rhino he only got one. There are two funny things when looking at this game. 1) If I was defender I literally couldnt of lost this game. There is NOTHING he could of done to stop me. The reason is my With Out Number gaunts. If he killed those units the automattically come back on the board the next turn. So I could just move them on, then in the run phase just run them off. 2) Because of the way the tourney goes and Quest points are scored he managed to get 3 quest points. So even though he lost the game he ended up with the exact same amount of points as I did lol.

Game 2

Tyranids vs. Space Marines (Space Wolves)

I think I am already seeing a trend with the armies that I am playing against. In fact after 6 games FIVE were played against marines...sigh. The neat thing about this game was my opponenet built his army in the exact same way as I did. He took one of everything to see what worked and what didnt. The objective of this mission was table quarters. The deployment was very strange though because it basically pinned you in your own corner. Another thing about deployment was you divided your army in half, putting one half on the board, putting the other half in reserve. The half you put in reserve then Outflanked (even if they didnt have it). The one thing in Trevor's army that truely scared me though was a Pysker with a power called "Jaws of the World Wolf". This is without a doubt the stupidest Psychic power in the game. You draw a 24" line anywhere you want within 24" of the Wolf Psyker. Anything touches that line has to roll equal to or under their inititive or DIE. No saving throw, no nothing!. My carnifexs have an Inititive of 1...soooo...it basically just kills them with nothing I can do about it.

High Points
- I rolled just crazy well for my reserves. Literally every single unit I had in reserve came in on turn 2. Also, they ALL came in on the one side excet for the broodlord and his retinue lol.
- My Lictor was pretty awesome again in this game. He managed to take out a couple land speeders since they didnt move the previous turn.
- His wolf unit lost almost half of their number from one round of shooting from my Tyranid warriors and promptly ran off the board..which was kind of funny lol
- His Psyker thankfully never in range with any of his psychic powers, which made me very happy

Low Points
- I couldnt manage to really kill any of his units in the different quadrants. His one bloodclaw squad with his Psyker just WOULDNT die lol.
- Logan Grimnar and his terminators came on the board RIGHT behind my broodlord and stealers. He killed them but not before my Broodlord took out all the terminators with him.

Final Result
Draw. Neither of us could rid the other of their contesting units. He had only two units that could score by the end of the game and I had 3. It was an incredibly hard fought game with tonnes of back and forth. Went right down to the wire which really added to the games enjoyment.

Game 3
Tyranids vs. Space Marines

Of all the Scenarios I think this was the weakest one. Basically there was almost no way you could win the game as we only had 12" deployment zones and the objective of the game was to have more troops in your opponenets deployment as well as your own. The thing is after turn 1 you had to roll to see if you had "High Gravity" or "Low Gravity". The first half of the game was high gravity, so all my troops were moving 3" per turn, so there was no way I was completing it. With all my troops in my deployment zone there was no way Kevin could win either. The bugs did incredibly well in this game though. I really did take the fight to him and he had almost nothing at the end of the game (just one rhino with troops, and a razorback with 5 guys).

High Points
- The Raveners. They had been doing fairly well up to this point, but this game they went completely gonzo. In this game they killed 2 attack bikes, a 5 man combat squad, a predator Annihilator and a devestator squad. Crazy
- Even though the high gravity sucked for my movement it reduced the range of all of our weapons by 6" including the scatter on blast templates, which helped me greatly. My barbed stranglers turned into sniper rifles :)

Low Points
- Taking 3 full turns to kill 5 terminators in hand to hand combat because (on average) Kevin would make 14 of 15 armor saves a turn. The only good news was his rolling for damage was just terrible. I think in the 3 full rounds of combat he killed 5 hormagaunts total

Final Result
Draw. As I mentioned we realized this fact literally on turn 2 lol so we just ended up playing the game out for fun (which it was)

Game 4
Tyranids vs...(you guessed it) MARINES! (Space Wolves...Again!)

The scenario was a modified Annihilation (kill points). The thing that I really liked about this mission was the orgainzers made us assign 20 kill points to our army (so some units were worth 2 KP, while others were worth only 1). The nice thing about that is it makes every army equal, like it should be since kill points is maybe the stupidest thing about 5th ed (WHY cant we just use victory points like in past editions lol?). Shawn told me that he has never had a good game against Tyranids so I said "I cant promise it will be a good game, but I promise it will be a fun game" and I had him laughing almost the entire game, so that was good. He had 3 drop pods (2 with Terminators and a dreadnought) and a unit of deepstriking Bloodclaws (jump pack guys). The rest of his army were foot sloggers that were placed in some buildings. Everything went pretty much pefectly for my army this game. He fired at the stuff I wanted him to shoot at. I set up my army to minimize the damage his drop pods could do. It worked really well as the first turn he managed to kill about 4 termigaunts with a unit of terminators and a dreadnought. Bad news for him was he Deep Striked his first terminator unit about 8" from my ENTIRE ARMY!!! So naturally they were charged by 18 uber hormigaunts and 4 raveners and promptly disapeared that turn. This was the last game of Day 1 and like the final game of any tourney we were quite rushed so I didnt get any pictures.

High Points
- Raveners did it again. They took out a unit of 5 terminators and then moved over and charged a unit of 10 grey hunters and scored SEVEN rending wounds thanks to the lictor that popped out from behind one of the buildings.
- The Broodlord got his revenge on Logan Grimnar and he just thrashed him. Logan actually never got a single attack off in this combat as he was out of position on the first roun (all the terminators died without doing a wound). The second round the Broodlord and 8 genestealers did him in.
- Boomfex caused complete carnage lol. He blew up a building, killed all the long fangs inside, then ran over and helps the hive tyrant dispatch the last of the grey hunters.
- My broodlord killed all his characters in hand to hand combat...which was satisfying

Low Points
- All the low points belonged to shawn on this game. There were certain points where he couldnt BUY any good luck. On turn two his Bloodclaw assault troopers scattered off the board but luckily came on the following turn. Only problem there was they got warp blasted into the next century.

Final Result
Massacre. Shawn had 5 models left at the end of the game and had only managed to kill the Lictor, Raveners, my Sniper Fex and a unit of without number gaunts.

Game 5
Tyranids vs. Imperial Guard

This was the game where I thought to myself "What on earth can I possibly do here?" as he brought an 'Arb Boyz list to a fluff filled Hobby tournament. In his list he had 11 Vehicles (a Demolisher, a Leman Russ, a Basilisk, a Valkyre, 2 Vendettas and 5 Chimeras), literally everything was mounted. Typically my army's single biggest weakness is its tank busting ability at range, since it viturally has none. Another awesome thing about this game was Scott chose a battle field that had no terrain in between the two table edges except a couple of craters. The mission was based on the idea of an archeological dig site. So whenever you entered a piece of terrain you rolled a dice, on a 5 or a 6 there would be something there and became an objective. After the first two turns and most terrain checked 2 of the objectives were far in his depoylment zone and one was in my deployment zone. I told Scott before the first turn happened that I was going to steal the initiative, and of course I did lol. I never lost sight of what I was doing and every move I made was towards securing those objectives and that was the real turning point in this game.

High Points
- There were many as this was easily my best played game BY FAR in the entire tournament.
- Raveners...again. They killed a Veteran Squad, ripped off the battle cannon from the Leman Russ, helped blow up a command squads Chimera then promptly destroyed the squad inside. Just awesome
- The Sniper Fex was a BEAST. He blew up one of the vendettas with shooting. He then he imobilized two Chimeras with shooting. Flipped one of those Chimeras when he got to it then destoryed the Demolisher
- Both the Lictor and Broodlord had perfect timing. The Broodlord came in first and cleared everything off of one of his objectives and took a tonne of shooting to take out, which spared the rest of that flank that was coming in for support. My lictor helped the raveners blow up the one chimera as well as killing the squad.

Low Points
- I know this seems like the theme for this tournament but I cant complain about anything. Everything went according to plan, no horrific dice rolls (other then a gaunt squad rolling 3 "1's" for difficult terrain lol)

Final Result
Minor Victory. In the end I blew up 7 of the 11 Vehicles in his army. Because I was focused on the main objective I couldnt complete the secondary or tertiary objectives, but that didnt really bother me. All in all was a fairly decent game.

Game 6
Tyranids vs. Marines (shocker I know)

This army was almost unit for unit the EXACT SAME as the first one I fought. Only difference was he had Pedro Kantor instead of Vulkan and had a unit of Sternguard insead of the extra tact squads. Like pretty much any army you will play in 5th ed 40k every last thing in this army was mounted. The mission was Head Hunting aka kill all the enemy HQ. One lucky thing for me though was he didnt have a single weapon that could fire over 24" (meltas, bolters, vindicators etc.) while I had a fair amount of big, armor popping guns so I knew he had to come to me. I set my army up accordingly using my Termigaunts as a shield, then using my Warriors/Raveners as a shield for my MCs. I kept the fast response stuff back or in reserve (so hormagaunts, broodlord, lictor) for after he made contact. I then started trying to figure out just how I was going to get those marines out of those damn transports. A weird thing happened right then...my opponent just got out of them making it so I didnt have to worry about it :). At one point in the game he got 2 ten man Marine units out of his rhinos to shoot at my broodlord and managed to only kill 4 genestealers. The ensuing combat had my Broodlord, 4 genestealers, 18 Hormagaunts, 4 Raveners and 12 Termigaunts assault them. They lasted exactly 1 full turn and did almost nothing back to me.

High Points
- Broken record here...but my Raveners did it again. They killed 6 Sternguard and the Librarian in hand to hand combat, then moved forward and help dispatch another 20 marines then moved halfway across the board and helped out in the combat against Pedro Kantor and the assault termies. Just nuts
- The final combat was pretty awesome (if you were a bug). I had my Hive Tyrant, Boomfex, Lictor, 2 Raveners and 15 Hormagaunts in base to base with the 5 Assault terminators (only 2 Thunder Hammer/Storm Shields). Needless to say they never attacked back.

Low Points
- It should of been a far tougher game then it was but my opponent just made the game too easy for me. He kept thinking he could cause enough damage to my army after getting out of transports not really realizing just how layered the force I took was.

Final Result
Major Victory. If we played the game out 100% it would of been a Massacre, but at that point there really wasnt any point in continuing. He only had 4 tanks left, everything else had been eaten by the great devourer. Also, the main reason we didnt fully finish was because they had just served lunch and we didnt want to miss out lol

Tournament Result
1st Place overall. I figured I had won best painted since while I was playing my last game I had about 10 people come over and ask what my army's number was. So when they read the name of someone else who won best painted I knew I had taken the top prize. The one thing I really tried this tournament was to make sure my opponents were having as much fun as I was. I am pretty confident that this was the case. I also have to say this army is by far the most fun army I have ever taken to a tournament. Was great having so many different types of models with different abilities. Another really nice thing is I managed to blow up 21 Vehicles over the course of 6 games. And when you consider that in the first tourney I took these guys to I didnt blow up a single one with shooting, that is an awesome stat :)

Things I learned about my Tyranids
- Don't listen to other people in regards to what they tell you is a "good" unit vs. a "crappy" unit. I read a lot of stuff online that said that Raveners were a complete waste of time and how nobody should bother with them. And when you look at their stats vs. how expensive they are it would support that claim. The one thing people fail to think about is someone's play style and how they plan on using said unit. The Raveners 100% fit my play style and as such ended up doing incredibly well. My army has so many threats they just get forgotten about and because of their insane speed I make my enemy pay for that mistake

- Gaunts really are a great unit, I just wish I had more of them finished. They dont ever really kill anything but having a screen that gives everything else in your army a 4+ cover save and protects your MC's from getting assaulted by pesky Assault Terminators (which every single army these days seems to have...and literally every marine army I faced this tournament had). Since I seem to do very well with this army I have to say I just cant WAIT for the new Tyranid Codex that is coming out in Jan :)

- Tyranids just seems to be MY army. Since I started playing these guys I have won 9 games, tied 2 and lost once. I have also gone to two different tournaments and won both of them. All that is just icing on the cake because of how much I love playing these guys and just seeing them on the table.

- Ghoulio