Battle Report 2

Now with pictures! (Click to enlarge)
Game two was my Nids vs Beau's IG. The game was 1250 points, Capture and Control, with Pitched Battle set up-- I went first.

Terrain set up

Deployment

Using my Calgar-like tactical acumen, my first turn consisted of everything moving forward. I know, I'm an awesome general.

Mad dash for cash... or biomass

Beau's first turn had him moving up a couple of squads and unleashing blast template hell on my army with his various vehicles and mortar squads. Gaunts fell here and there, but nothing too exciting.

Notice the zombie observer on the near hill.

Top of turn 2-- once again my army trundles forward... only this time I get into combat! One unit of Genestealers outflank on the left and eat a squad, my two units of Hormagaunts shred two squads of guardsmen, nearside Zoan manages to give himself a wound then promptly misses his shot, Warrior's Strangler shot scatters into nowhere, and my Hive Guard decide to do nothing as well.

Bottom of 2-- Beau charged up his flashlights and unleashed hell. His Valkyrie shows up and uploads the melta vets on top of my objective. The Chimera (with a heavy flamer) moves up and unloads the commissar and friends... who also have flamethrowers. (Needless to say the nearside Hormies were served extra crispy.) The Executioner plasma blasts my Hive Guard to very hot puddles and the farside hormies were flashlighted to death. The Manticore killed off a Warrior. Things were not looking good for me.

Stupid tanks.

 

Very lonely and self-wounded Zoan is lonely...

Top of 3-- The other squad of Genestealers shows up right where I want on the far side and immediately get stuck in. First squad of stealers charge the Manticore and get 24 auto hits needing sixes to auto-pen... I roll one six and immediately follow it with a one (sigh). Termagants move up and unloads on the closest squad and kill off about half. Warriors move over into cover and shoot up the vets while one zoan misses and the other immobilizes the Chimera.

Pile in!

Bottom of 3-- Beau adjusts his lines to move back onto his objective and shoots up the Gants and kills off the far Zoan. Nothing much else happens.

Top of 4--The genestealers make up for their failure last turn by blowing up the manticore, and kill off two of their own in the resulting blast. (As scary as it was, all it killed all game was one warrior and the suicidal stealers). The Gants kill off the Commissar's squad and he flees (sadly, commissars do not execute themselves in this scenario). The Warriors charge in and wipe out the vets, and the far side stealers are about an inch out of range of charging the command squad.

Bottom of 4-- Beau unloads on the both sets of stealers and does a lot of damage killing off the far side completely and picking off a couple on the near side. The last Zoan passes all of it's saves (amazingly).

The flamer template was left there as a subtle warning

Top of 5-- Stealers move up a bit ready to charge the vehicles. The zoan kills the main gun on the Executioner.(My long range anti-tank was rather disappointing all game).

Bottom of 5-- A few more readjustments from Beau, including charging the Valk over to contest my objective. The Zoan, the Gants, and 3 stealers die.

Top of 6-- The Stealers charge the Executioner and whiff, the Warriors (well, the Prime with them) manage to bring down the Valkyrie despite needing a whole mess of sixes to hit and hurt it.

Not much left on the table

Bottom of 6-- Not much happens as my two remaining units are either out of range or out of LOS, one stealer dies to the multilaser.

Turn 7-- Last turn. With nothing much else to do I get the brilliant idea to move my last stealer around the Executioner and into range of the squad holding the objective in order to contest it. I make it into combat and fluff my attacks while surviving the return attacks. In his turn Beau charges in the command squad, it all comes down to the melee phase... If my stealer survives I win, if he dies we tie. The Colonel fluffs his power sword attacks, the rest of the two squads manage to put on 2 wounds-- I need 5+ to save. Roll one-- 6! Roll two... 4. We end our game in the best tie ever, bloody, battered, and laughing.

It all came down to this

All in all it was an excellent game (with a few rules mistakes on both sides, but hey, we're still learning!) A special thank you goes out to our ghetto TO Jason, who was kind enough to look up rules, take pictures, and provide an excellent commentary throughout.

The guy on the right is awesome. True story.

Missed out on playing this week

My grandfather had his 82nd birthday so I was at the party rather than playing, it was worth it though, my grandfather is the cutest old man ever. Instead, I offer some of my randomly collected 40k humor.

I figured I would split my nerdiness off into a seperate blog

I'm a longtime Warhammer fantasy player who decided to make the jump back into 40k recently (recently meaning the end of November, and by back I mean "I played some in 3rd edition".) and I thought it would be fun to keep track of my various victories, defeats, and observations.

First things first-- my army. I chose the Tyranids for a few different reasons: I love their fluff, I like the look of most of their units, and I'm a big fan of melee combat. (It also helps that the whole "crazy alien creature" look hides the worst of my painting mistakes.) Most rookies go for the Space Marines but I thought I would be a bit different by saving them for my second army...

Crappy pictures link: Hooray Nids!

I'm living in the middle of a gaming black hole, so I was really pleased to find two other guys in the area on a forum who have a dedicated table set up in their basement. After the requisite jokes about rubbing lotion on skin and such I went over and met Jason and Bo who were both very nice, funny, and not serial killers. (You can tell this because I'm still alive and I am also still in possession of my epidermis.)

As a ghetto battle report (without pictures, as I do not own a digital camera and was far too busy stumbling along trying to play to take any even if I did own one) I present the following:

My list:
Warrior Prime with boneswords, deathspitter, regen, toxin sacs
2 Hive Guard
2 Zoanthropes (seperate units)
5 warriors-- 4 with deathspitters, 1 barbed strangler, scything talons
12 Genestealers with toxin sacs (outflanked)
2x20 Hormagaunts with adrenal glands and toxin sacs
21 Termagants
Trygon Prime with adrenal gland and regen

Jason is also a Tyranid player (ironic that I chose a less popular army and find someone else in the middle of nowhere who did the same)
His list:
Hive Tyrant with lashwhip and bonesword, heavy venom cannon, hive commander
2 Tyrant Guard
Zoanthrope
2 Hive Guard
3 Warriors-- two with deathspitters, one with barbed strangler
8 Genestealers with Broodlord (outflanked)
12 Hormagaunts (outflanked using hive commander)
2x 14 Termagants
Trygon Prime with adrenal gland (deepstrike)
Trygon with adrenal gland
Biovore

Set up: 6 pieces of terrain, two woods, a ruins, two hills, and a small church.
Mission: seize ground with 4 objectives
Deployment: Spearhead (which really screwed me up since I am still stuck in pitched battle mode from playing fantasy for so long)

Highlights:
Jason had the first turn and he used it well, lots of shooting dropped one unit of ubergaunts down to 10 models, a few other gaunts were picked off here and there. Biovores are nasty against other Nids! My first turn was marked by poor shooting but saw the start of close combat, where the surviving 10 ubergaunts charged in and wiped out his regular trygon on the charge (30 poisoned attacks!).

The following rounds are a bit of a blur-- units from both sides would charge in, wipe something out, then get shot to pieces. My second unit of unbergaunts were charged by his Tyrant and guards-- and managed to hold them up long enough for my Trygon to finish him off. My Trygon in turn was killed by his second Trygon who was then shot up and killed in close combat by my warriors. Zoans and Warriors from both sides were ID'd by each others Hive Guard, and his Genestealers outflanked in and wiped out my blob of Termagaunts... leaving them open to eat deathspitters and the charge of my own Stealers who outflanked in behind.

By turn 5 I still had my prime and one warrior sitting on an objective, one Zoan, my Hive Guard, and about 8 Stealers on the way to finish off his last real unit. Jason had his Hormagaunts sitting in a forest on an objective, and 4 Termagaunts a few inches out from my Warriors. I took a calculated risk in sending my stealers off the objective they had been sitting on to finish off his Hive Guard, but it didn't pay off-- at the end of the turn we rolled a 1 to finish the game and after a quick measuring Jason had one Termagant barely within 3 inches to contest my Warriors objective.

I really like my glass hammer ubergaunts,they were by far my favorite unit to watch in action. Nothing really let me down outside of my Zoans (who where sitting in SOTW and rarely got anything off). My next purchase will definitely be a Tyrant and Guards, they look great and offer up some really good buffs.

All in all, it was the most fun I've had in awhile with a game. I made quite a few errors, especially in my deployment, but I was surprised at how close I managed to keep it. Crazy power swings happened every turn and all three of us were laughing the entire time. We're supposed to get together again in a few days and I'll have a chance to take on Bo's Imp Guard. I'll try to keep notes and give a better report.