Friday, November 16, 2012

Psychic Choir - Tyranids Psychic Shriek thoughts


Last Saturday I ran the Psychic Choir list I discussed, and now I'm back with the results!



So I played two games with the list, and in the process I learned a lot of interesting little tid-bits about it. Here are a few:

  1. You MUST roll "to hit" (based off of Ballistic Skill) for all "Witchfire" powers, even if they have no strength or AP. This added die roll can add more chances of failure. As it stands, after a Psychic Test and Deny the Witch there is a 76% chance to do some wounds with the power, but when you factor in the Ballistic Skill roll (assuming the Zoanthrope's BS of 4), that becomes 51% per each power. That's not very awesome.
  2. Also, because Psychic Shriek is a Witchfire power, Broodlords automatically miss, and therefor cannot cast the power due to their BS of 0.
  3. Tervigons and Hive Tyrants have a BS of 3, meaning that after everything their Psychic Shrieks only hit 50% of the time, and thus they have a 38% chance in total of doing wounds which is unrealistic, no matter how many copies of it I have on the table.
In the first game, I played a fairly tailored-for-bugs Space Marine list, complete with flamers, missile launchers, and a Thunderfire Cannon. Yippee! I actually didn't do to bad against this list, as I ended up holding one objective to his zero, but he killed my Warlord and thus ultimately we drew.

In the second game, I played a really cool and fluffy Tzeentch list, but it had psykers EVERYWHERE, ready to use that 5+ Deny the Witch, and man did he! Throughout the game my units would reliably kill and wound his until I discovered the "roll to hit" part of Witchfire. Things went rapidly downhill after that, and his Black Mace-wielding Daemon Prince of Tzeentch was mopping up units left and right. I ended up drawing with him  in yet another very close game.

Moral of the story? Nids still suck. Other armies do not have to jump through the same hoops that Tyranids have to to even be remotely killy. I'm avidly awaiting a new book. I might try a Tervigon list after this, but this list needs to be put down like a lame horse.

3 comments:

  1. Phil Kelly has strongly hinted that he'll be writing the new one. Just gotta bide your time a bit. :)

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  2. Trust me, I'm looking forward to the 6th Ed Blood Angels and Nids books. :D

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  3. I tried the list again last weekend in a game against Space Marines, and in this one I had the Flyrants and Tervigons take Biomancy. Long story short, I won the game nine victory points to five because I was holding an objective worth four points, two worth two points, and had scored a point for Linebreaker, while my opponent scored one point for Slay the Warlord, one point for First Blood, and held a three point objective.

    If we pretend that the objectives were worth the same, I would have only won four to three which more appropriately shows how close the game was.

    I'm still not satisfied as I strayed away from the theme quite drastically and it showed in that game.

    This weekend (if I have some time), I'll get in a game with either some super nasty Chaos, or an early 5th Edition-style Blood Angels list.

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