1500 Pts Tournament - Prep and Practice Games 1 - 4 Thoughts

The last tournament at my LGS was 2500 hosted as a mini ard boyz.  Now we are doing one per month starting back at 1500.  I have been able to get in 4 practice games so far but sadly have only gotten practice against only 2 different armies:  Space Wolves, and Tau.  In those 4 games I've changed my list 5 times.

Doing a tournament a month is actually very nice.  The group of players have gotten to know each other at least a little better and of course it's fun to be almost certain to get good practice against different armies.  Moving to 1500 points has been quite a challenge for me mentally.  I too look through the interwebz to find terms such as "scaling" in reference to how well an army "grows".  I still don't know I understand what this refers to besides maybe to how "easy" it may or may not be to simply add units / upgrades to a current list.  I have not found much on how to "decrease".  So, with that said I took this as an excersice not only on how I would build a list I'd like to play but how would I build a competitive list if I was someone else?

I play against Space wolves, and Tau quite a bit.  After that I got some good games in against Blood Angels, Eldar (Mech/Foot), and some CSM just not at 1500.  Those practice games have allowed me to see some pretty "nice" lists and how many vehicles / troops / shots to expect at different point levels.  Of course at 1500 I've been limited to practicing against Space Wolves and Tau so Jaws, Krak missles, and Railguns have played a pretty big part on my list changes.

My nid lists have gone from two units of 10 stealers with Brood Lords no tyrants to Tyrant and 2x TFexes back to stealers with Tervigons and Harpys etc...  Believe it or not the stealer lists were quite good and enjoyable.  At the end of the day the stealers lost out because I'm unable to get the quality AT that I want in lists with them (although I'll be touching on my "stealer" lists later).  For example the only points left at 1500 after taking what I consider healthy unit of genestealers, were only enough to buy Harpys and with Railguns around I reconsidered.  Another unit that has surprisingly done well for me to deal with Long Fangs / Devs or applicable to Pathfinders / Scouts etc... has been the Ymgral Stealers.  They have done well for me disrupting enemy movement, deployment, and shooting.  So now a days at least in my 1500 point lists there is at one unit of yealers.

All this rambling has lead to the following list:

Tyrant (2)
-BS & LW
-HVC
-Old Adversary
-Armored Shell

Tyrant Guard (2) (one for each Tyrant)

Tervigon (2)
-AG & TS
-Cluster Spines
-Catalyst

Termagants (10) x 2
Hive Guard (2) x 2
Yealers x 7