Playing for fun and Winning!

It's been a while since we have had a good article and I am sorry for that. However, this going to change and I plan on getting out an article every week at very least.

To the point today I want to talk about playing for fun and winning. As of late around the blogoshpere as we near Adepticon I have read articles or have viewed battle reports in which some of the more well known 40k personalities have been slowly dusting off the the armies in which the the ap of a boltgun matters to them.

I have recently done the same if you guys have been following our battle report page you have seen that I am playing tyranids on a regular basis. As so many have said before me just in the last few months, I'm tired of of the 3+ armies at the moment. I am an avid space wolf player and my Dragon Lords are my pride and joy, but it just gets to a point where you need a break because it's just not as fun.

So, enter the tyranids, the second army I picked up of my many 40k armies. Why you ask would you play tyranids and at that a none competive at first glance list. Well the answer is that I find tyranids fun. Yeah, they are underpowered, lack a true you've got to have it unit and if it's not a zoanthrope then you have no invulnerable save, but there is so much more to learn from playing such an army. You learn how to win through synergy.

Yes that awful word, I'm now using it because it's true. Playing a codex like tyranids not only teaches you how to win, but it teaches you how to make your army work as a whole. What am I talking about you ask? Well, again it's synergy. Let's take a unit of hormogaunts, in a a recent game against a Purifier spam Grey Knight list I used them to defeat two full squads of purifiers. That would be twenty men. Sounds impossible I know, but hang with me and I will explain the synergy of it.

First it starts with my Hive Tyrant taking the skill hive commander, which allows me to take those hormogaunts and out flank them. This saves me from being fired upon by his army. Now, the same power, hive commander, coupled with my lictors allows me to add +2 to my reserve rolls. So, on turn 2 I have to roll a 2+ to bring them in, which is exactly what happened and then I used their fleet roll to get them into assault range.

Here is where it gets tricky, how do you defeat the purifiers in hand to hand? It goes something like this, first I move up the tervigon to cast catalyst on the hormogaunts and give them feel no pain. Next I use the hive guard and lictors in my list kill the two nearby psyfleman dreadnaughts. For those whom don't know, lictors have a shooting attack from flesh hooks and you can have the lictors arrive anywhere when they are available. So, right behind on of the dreads, with the rear armor being squishy. Anyway, then the hive tyrant has moved up again and casts paraxsyum on the purifier squad that the hormogaunts are about to charge. Bam ws1 makes these guys not so mean and with the shadow in the warp and feel no pain the cleansing flame is not so bad.

For the enevitable counter charge coming from the other squad of purifiers, we use every other gun that I have in the army to whittle them down to a managable number. Then block them form the combat with a throw away unit. Also if the Hive tyrant is close enough, you get that good old adversary working, which I do not run without, yes I know my hive tyrant is almost 300 points. But, for me that is part of the synergy to the tyranid codex. I know this is just one assault and a lot of work to get rid of a unit of purifiers but nothing is easy in the tyranid codex.

Now, I won this game through a lot of interesting tactics, but it just goes to show that it doesn't matter what codex you run it's how the general runs the army. The other part is that tyranids are more fun for me than any of my other armies right now, well other than my ogryn heavy guard, but it is so much fun to run something other than a 3+ army and still be able to win. It takes trial and error but playing a "lesser" codex will teach you how to win and you can have fun doing it.

Senger signing off...... end transmission... lol....