I dropped into the store today at the last minute, and finally managed to get a game worth writing about.

Armies and Deployment
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First Company Formation
Squad Goneril: 10 x Sternguard Veterans - 2x Meltas, 7x Combi-Meltas, Drop Pod - 345
Squad Cordelius: 8 x Sternguard Veterans - 2x Plasma Guns, Combi-plasma, drop pod - 251
Squad Regan: 10x Sternguard Veterans - 2x Heavy Flamers, Drop Pod - 295

Space Marines CAD
Librarian - Terminator Armor, Storm Shield, Mastery Level 2 - 125 (Warlord)
Tactical Squad - Combi-flamer, flamer, Drop Pod - 120
Scout Squad - Combi-melta, Land Speeder Storm (Heavy Flamer) - 105
Scout Squad - Combi-melta, Land Speeder Storm (Heavy Flamer) - 105
Stormtalon - Skyhammer Missile Launcher - 115
Drop Pod - 35

Arrayed against me was:

Tyranids, CAD
Hive tyrant- wings, 12-shot weapon (Warlord)
Hive tyrant- wings, 12-shot weapon
30x termagaunts- devourers? The three-shots each guns
30x hormagaunts
Tervigon
3x tyrant guard - Impaler cannons
6x spore mines
Zoanthrope

We roll up Big Guns Never Tire, with five objectives, and both feel secretly smug that we have no heavy support choices, which makes us feel very smart later when we see each other's lists let me tell you. The battlefield is four ruins placed around a central bastion: We alternate placing objectives on our side of various bits of cover, with the final one placed in open terrain in my deployment zone.

My librarian gets Perfect Timing (yay) and re-roll own saves (boo), and gets Night Vision as a warlord trait, which I re-roll into a reduction to my opponent's reserve rolls. His warlord gets Feel No Pain, and I choose it as the target for my First Company's preferred enemy. I win the roll to deploy and choose to make him go first- I also win the roll to choose table edges and put him with as little cover as possible. He rolls up a terrifying array of psychic powers, I do a null deployment, and he deploys everything but his warlord and the spores behind the ruin closest to his deployment zone, liberally bubble-wrapped on the side by gaunts. I don't try to seize.


Turn One
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He starts off by spreading out his gaunts to cover about half the board, and moving his hive guard up to his objective, on his side of the central ruin, while his non-warlord tyrant takes off and flies up to the top of the bastion. The tervigon sprogs a dozen gaunts, and he liberally buffs himself with Feel No Pain.

I bring my whole First Company on. Plan: kill as much as possible of his synapse off, and use the leadership Debuff to get his gaunts fleeing... That'll be hard, with no way to get close to most of it. Squad Cordelius, plus the librarian, drop onto the ruin he's hiding behind, but scatter badly backwards, and end up sharing the top of the bastion with a (presumably very surprised) hive tyrant, so I suppose that's their target. Squad Goneril does the same, more effectively, but scatter back far enough that only one combat squad can see the Tervigon: the others set up where they can see the large squad of termagaunts. Finally squad Regan drops between his hormagaunts and their closest objective. My librarian buffs his squad with Ignores Cover and prescience, and they fire everything at the tyrant, including ap3 kraken bolts and two plasma guns: the plasma guns get a hit each but roll snake-eyes to wound, and the kraken bolts only manage to get a single wound off it. Squad Goneril takes three wounds off the tervigon with their Meltas, and the other combat squad pick away at the large tervigon squad, scoring only a couple of casualties. The two combat squads of Squad Regan are more successful: double heavy flamers and a full set of poisoned bolt guns wipe out half the hormagaunts - but none of the three synapse creatures are dead, so they're still Fearless and alive. This is going badly- no first blood with an alpha strike list? What am I doing with myself?


Turn Two
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Turn two, both sets of his reserves come on, despite my trait, and the spore mines land inches from Squad Regan. The gaunts move forward to fill in the gaps that the casualties left, and the tervigon exhausts itself with only six more termagaunts, thank god. The warlord tyrant unleashes first a Psychic Shriek and then it's mega-bastard-cannon at Squad Cordelius, but their armour and leadership both hold, and only three die-amongst them one of the plasma gunners, worst luck. The Termagaunts pour firepower into the combat squad that shot at them, but don't quite wipe them out, forcing the newly spawned squad to finish them off, earning my opponent First Blood. The hive guard then knock a hull point off the nearest Drop Pod.

Finally he tries to charge the Hormagaunts and new Termagaunts into the two halves of squad Regan- but both are fairly long charges, and fail after the first couple of deaths to Overwatch.

In my turn, all of my reserves also arrive. The tactical squad land on the objective nearest the hormagaunts, and the other drop pod lands on one of the objectives hidden in my deployment zone- both score direct hits, which is nice because something had to hit something, for gods sake. I bring both the Storms and the Talon on near the termagaunts, with the talon lined up nicely to shoot at the wounded Tyrant. My librarian buffs his squad again, and both they and the Talon shoot the wounded Tyrant- rending weapons and plasma help a little, and it takes a couple more wounds. The land speeders and their crew fire heavy flamers and Bolter Drill bolters into the large squad of Tervigons - but they're too spread out and benefit from feel no pain, and I only kill a dozen or so. Squad Goneril kills the tervigon with poisoned weapons, thus getting my first conclusive strike against his Synapse- but the zoanthrope is still around, and Regan and the tactical squad kill many gaunts (and the spores, through some very dodgy template placements) but wipe out no squads, and they're still all fearless! The arrival of all my reserves has helped, but not much.


Turn Three
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In turn three he sets up both his Tyrants for firing on my Stormtalon, while again charging the gaunts towards my ragged gunline. The warlord Tyrant has set himself up cleverly, and unleashes a Psychic shriek that takes wounds off the remaining Goneril combat squad, and kills all of Cordelius save one veteran and the librarian. The first oh-god-how-can-it-have-twelve-shots gun takes out the Stormtalon straight away, despite frantic Jinking, and the second turns round and blows a Land Speeder Storm out of the air - thankfully it jinks the penetrating hits so doesnt explode, but the scouts fail their pinning test as they bail out, and dive for cover rather than doing anything useful like shooting the Oh So Many Goddamn Termagaunts. The Oh Dear Lord They Still Make Thirty Shots Termagaunts then Stun the other storm, preventing it from shooting. If you're wondering at what point I'll remember that my Storms can fire Large Blast Blind weapons, it's now, after they stop being useful. Blind doesn't even use Leadership, so Synapse doesn't help! Hive Tyrants are Initiative, like, two! I'm hopping with self-loathing at this point.

To add injury to insult, the Hive Tyrants extend their range and heap the Impaler shots onto the librarian and his last living buddy, who fail all their saves (I think - they might have also taken a Warp Blast?) and end up dead. The Termagaunts kill two of Squad Regan - neither of the heavy flamers, thankfully. The Hormagaunts put their heads down and charge the tactical squad - after overwatch it's five versus five, and i'm not sure if i can win this, but the gaunts only kill the sargeant and my attacks back kill two of them - they lose combat and run away ahahahah no I STILL havent killed the Zoanthrope, which manifested Domination, and they're still fearless. This is painful, and the most fun i've had in the game in ages.

My turn comes around, and I consider my options. One objective has nobody on it - one sternguard combat squad, still at full strength, retreats towards it. The Zoanthrope is the only synapse in an entire half of the board now, so I can still turn this around - kill it, break the gaunts, and i can drive them off the board. The last four members of Squad Goneril open fire on it - the melta misses, and they only take one wound with poisoned weapons. The other half of Squad Regan fire heavy flamers at it, but fail to wound, and that's it. One squad of scouts is pinned and the other is Stunned - I fire them both at the termagaunts, but they're Snap Shotting so do nothing. The Hormagaunts and tacticals whale on each other - one more casualty each.


Turn Four
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My opponent brings the Hive Tyrants back towards his army to cover for the Synapse, and rolls a six for his psychic dice. I manage to Deny Psychic Shriek by the skin of my teeth, but that leaves the Zoanthrope to cast Paroxysm on my tactical marines and give their opponents Feel No Pain, which is pretty scary. (I'm meant to be the one making people WS1!) In the shooting phase, both murder-by-the-dozen weapons do typically great damage: one glances the tactical squad's drop pod to death (had it exploded, it would quite possibly have killed the Hormagaunts out of the combat) and the other finishes off squad Goneril. The Impaler cannons also kill Goneril's drop pod but I dont care because it's not on an objective or a Heavy Support choice so **** it, kill it twice, whatever. The termagaunts - they're still here and shooting holy **** - unleash hell on the other storm... or did they? Actually something else must have done, because it exploded, and took out one scout from each squad. I dont know. I might have been confused about the turn order. The scouts from the exploding storm pass their pinning test like professionals.

The hormagaunts can't kill any tactical marines - because reducing WS is rubbish - but don't take any casualties in return because FnP is really good.

In my turn, one squad of scouts moves towards the objective out in the open, and the other moves for Linebreaker and to shoot the Termagaunts. There's too much Synapse in the area for me to expect to kill it all, so my next target is Objective Secured. Squad Regan's two combat squads are my only effective units here - One moves fully onto the objective and reduces the non-warlord tyrant to a single wound, the other has to choose between the Zoanthrope and the Tyrant Guard - The Guard are on an objective, so I shoot them - but alas, heavy flamers aren't so great against T6 FnP, and I only manage to do a single wound. My Tactical squad strike back, though, killing the last-but-one hormagaunt and, thank god, remaining locked in combat.

My opponent looks at the board, with two objectives in my hands, my scout squad approaching the other unmolested, and the others contested.

"Oh my god", he says. "You're winning."


Turn Five
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Time to do something about that. The drop pod on the objective is a long way from anything, and he swings his warlord right across the board to deal with it - no matter the location however, it's in cover, and the twelve-shot-****-machine can only take off two hull points. He can't shoot my tactical squad, since it's in combat, so his Hive Guard and Tyrant fire one at each combat squad of Squad Regan - my luck really shows itself here, however, and they only take one casualty each. They're also fearless, so ha, now he knows how it feels. My tacticals finally pistol-whip the last hormagaunt into mush, and consolidate onto their objective.

This might be the last turn, but I need to be prepared for it not to be. One scout squad moves onto the objective in the middle of nowhere, and the other takes Linebreaker, but both have to run to do so so can't shoot. The two heavy flamers move into range of the Hive Guard's objective and fire heavy flamers again, but only manage to do two wounds. The other combat squad shoots again at the tyrant - one wound left! One wound! - but it's still flying and re-rolling ones as imperial fists doesn't help when you need sixes to hit and to wound.

At the end of turn five, I hold four objectives, am contesting the fifth, and have Linebreaker. My opponent has First Blood and Slay The Warlord. I've got this: if the game ends now, I win. We roll the dice...

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4. Play on.

Turn Six
Now it all goes wrong. Both hive tyrants drop out of Flying mode - one wipes my scout squad off it's objective, while the other fires at Squad Regan - power armor does it's thing again, and they're saved. The tyrant guard charge the two heavy flamers, one survives the overwatch, and the hive tyrant got Dominate off so they're still within synapse range, so no Fear! The survivor can't kill either veteran but they can't kill it back, either. On the other side of the board, the tyrant charges the last four members of the other combat squad, including sargeant Regan himself. Surely they can take one measly wound off it... surely... two hits on overwatch. Only need one six to kill it... nope. It's high initiative and a monstrous creature, and it slaughters them. It consolidates carefully away from the objective to stay within range, and have Linebreaker.

In my turn, the tacticals and scouts can't see anything, and the sternguard can't kill the Tyrant Guard. Game over



Results & Post-Mortem
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He has Linebreaker, Warlord, First blood, and two objectives. I've also got two objectives, but only Linebreaker. He wins, 9 points to seven.

I've not played many games where i've felt quite so outmatched - I've lost a lot of games before, but never when it was so clear I was being outplayed. And it was great! Being ****ed over by the dice is no fun, and ****ing someone else eventually feels a little hollow, whether it's by dice or by clubbing a seal. Every victory I got in this game I earned, and I would have earned a win, if I'd had one.

Should I have taken the first turn? Killing the Tyrant before it started flying would have been great, but was unlikely... maybe the plasma squad could have done it? But with that scatter, they couldn't do anything. Should I have brought down less of the Sternguard, hoped they survived, and waited for there to be space to drop a more effective squad in? I'm not convinced there ever was space, and punching those holes in the gaunts helped later on, when they started shooting and assaulting. A five-gaunt charge was scary enough, let alone twenty of them.

I think the list works, more or less. What else would I have taken? A full CAD list - ten sternguard, forty tacticals, all in pods, plus some devastators and a thunderfire - would probably have hit the same sort of rock, and while a thunderfire cannon and four frag missiles would have done nasty things to those big squads... I don't know. I think it works. Not played something like it before. I'll keep trying it, at least.


I missed writing battle reports!