Friday night game

Last weekend I took a trip up north to play a friend over at his house and to give his tournament list a run out. It also happened to be his first game of 8th. The tournament, Northern Invasion 5, is a 1000 point no lords of war tournament and I had decided to play the 14 command point list that I wrote about in a previous post. My opponent was playing a monster heavy tyranids list.

For a quick recap, my list included Creed, 2 company commanders and a MT prime, a MT command squad, 2 commissars, 5 infantry squad, a MT squad, 3 sentinels, 2 lascannon heavy weapons squads and finally a wyvern.

My opponents list consisted of a Brood Lord, Old One Eye, a Malanthrope, 15 genesteelers, 2 ripper swarms, 2 carnifex's and a trygon. Quite a small and compact army, but a hard one to take down, with lots of big tough multi-wound models.


Setup

Setup was simple, with the board being only 4x4. This did give me a bit of a problem, as it bunched up my troops more than I would have liked, but ultimately it didn't make much of a difference to the game. We also used the mission setup from last year, with 3 objectives across the centre of the board (with one dead centre) and one objective each to place anywhere on the board. The centre ones would be worth 2 points with the other worth either 1 or 3 points, 1 point for holding yours and 3 for holding the enemies. This worked alongside kill points (one for each unit) and the standard first blood, line breaker and slay the warlord.

The board. A 4x4 3d affair.

The tryanids deployment, 5 monsters.

The guard deployment and a few more than 5 models!

Turn 1

The game started well for me, as despite having about twice as many drops during setup, I managed to steal the initiative. Its abouthere that my luck changed. I moved up the sentinels to take the objectives early, trying to force my opponent in to focusing on them early in the game. With very little in shooting range first turn and some of what was in range not in line of sight, my choices were limited. However, my lascannons were all in range and could draw line of sight on to old one eye, however, they failed to do the job, only managing to take 7 wounds between 6 lascannons! There shooting didn't improve through the rest of the game.

Minimal damage

After a bit of a disastrous start, things didn't get much better. The trygon popped up with the genestealers, who promptly charged the sentinel sitting on one of the objectives, although the trygon failed his charge on the other sentinel on the center objective. The Steelers did there work on the sentinel but left it alive on one wound. Everything else moved forward.

Genestealers charge.

Turn 2

This turn started with a tactical withdrawal, namely the sentinel in combat with the stealers. This left them open to fire from the wyvern, who really should have done better. With 4d6 shots, I should have been shooting at least 12 a turn, as it was I didn't get double figures on 2 turns and was only above average on one turn.

Stealers feel the pain.

In other shooting, the lascannons failed again. Shooting at the trygon and failing to put it down. With 12 wounds, 6 lascannons with a possible output of 36 damage should of been enough, but no, whilst it did damage, it want enough.

bottom the bottom of turn two.

In response to my attempt to wipe out the Stealers, they moved forward and assaulted one of my infantry squads, along with the Broodlord(?)

The Guardsmen stand and receive the charge......

And promptly die.

The only bonus was that the stealers removed so many guardsmen that the Broodlord ended up 5 inches from the closest guardsmen and so was unable to strike when his turn came. As a result, the squad was not wiped out in combat. On the other side of the table, things were not going quite so well. The central Sentinel was destroyed by the combined attacks of the Malanthrope and the Trygon, while the far Sentinel was reduced down to a couple of wounds.

The sentinel pilot bravely stands his ground

But dies to a flurry of claws

Also forgot to mention, at the end of the movement pahse a squad of Rippers decided to pop up on the objective that the stealers had just vacated and another squad had appeared on the central objective. This central squad in particular were to become a thorn in my side for the next couple of turns. 

Turn 3

At this point in the game, i'm starting to get nervous. The big monsters were steadily advancing with little I could do about it and I was loosing control of all the objectives across the centre of the board.
I decided it was time to throw caution to the wind a little and push up. I pushed up on the right to move towards the centre objective and take out the rippers. I also decided to push forward to try and take on the centre monsters. Again, my lascannons massively underperformed, but they did manage to finally manage to kill of the trygon. It had only taken about 15 lascannon shots to strip 12 wounds or so, Crack shooting by the guard as always. At this point in the game my memory gets a little fuzzy. I know that the stealers were removed this turn, but I cant remember if it was because I fell back from combat or if my unit was destroyed and the stealers were removed in the next assault phase. I have a feeling that they were destroyed by shooting, which would mean that my guys fell back, but I really don't remember. Oh, and those rippers, yeah, two squads shooting with orders removed 1 base from the centre squad and I did a couple of wounds to the bottom squad. Not great.

Some time at the top of turn 3

I do know that in reply the right hand sentinel was finally destroyed after lasting a lot longer than it had any right to. Apart from that I cant remember what happened.

Turn 4

This turn I had to try and either hold up or kill off some of the monsters, with the lascannons again under performing and 6 of them didn't managed to finish off another of the monsters up on the top, I cant honestly remember which one they targeted, all the tyranid monsters look that same to me! Lots of shooting from the squads at the top tried to remove the rippers off the objective and failed. This was a problem for me, as I had hoped to drop in my scions on the objective, to enable me to bring both the melta guns and all the plasma guns to bare on the tyranids, in the end they dropped down further away and were unable to target what I wanted to. The infantry squads then went and charged the Malanthrope and Broodlord. Unfortunately they weren't very successful.

After the charge

After combat

The Tyranid turn was pretty short, mostly due to the fact that he had no shooing and most of the monsters were either in combat or charged into combat. It was nonetheless a bloody round, with a number of guardsmen slaughtered.

Post combat 

At the end of turn 4, the tyranids were right up in my lines, with 5 monsters still alive and 3 of them in pretty healthy condition. I was confident that I could claim objectives, but with the amount of units that I had lost, I was unsure if I could actually win the battle.

Turn 5

It was all or nothing now, and so I went all in. The remaining squad at the bottom of the table moved up and advanced, later they received an order to move again, and with a second good advance roll they moved up to capture the objective, after the wyvern and scions had removed the last remaining rippers. The last squads on the right flank charged in to the various monsters, or continued their assaults, all of which were reduced to nothing but mush. I cant remember who finished off the Broodlord, but I have a feeling it was the heavy bolter from the Wyvern.

Just before the squad advanced

The last ripper

The last ripper in the centre had become a problem and had cause me so many problems. In the end I had to resort to shooting it with overcharged plasma guns to remove it, after I had moved up to just within the 3" range with one of the Scions. Two obliterated the ripper in the centre and two shot at the rippers at the bottom before the squad there advanced. The centre scions just moved on to the centre objective, forgoing any shooting to capture the objective. 

3 central objectives claimed

Scions moving on to objectives

The last change of the Wyvern

The wyvern also charged in to one of the tyranid monsters, in an attempt to stop it moving to capture my objective. Which in some respect worked. Unfortunately, a different monster, the Malanthrope charged in to one of the Heavy Weapons Squads, after finishing off my infantry squad during my turn and then consolidated down on to the objective anyway. 

End game

So, at the end of the game I held 2 of the three 2 point objectives and also my opponents objective for 3 points. I did however loose my objective at the very end of the game, giving away 1 point and letting my opponent gain 3 points. The Tyranids also held one of the 2 point objectives, meaning that objectives wise, I won the primary objectives 7 to 5. I also claimed first blood and slay the warlord and well as line breaker, where as my opponent only manage to claim line breaker, meaning that I won on the tertiary objectives 3 to 1.

The centre of the board, bottom and centre objective held by me, the top objective held by the tyranids. The objective in the ruins held by the Scions, was actually my opponents objective and worth more points.

Unfortunately, the Malanthrope (the black base) holds my objective

Meaning that I was sitting on a 10 to 6 lead at this point. I was at this point however, that things went slightly wrong. The secondary objectives were based on kill points, I had wiped out 6 units but my opponent has wiped out a good chunk of my army. In total he managed to kill 11 units. This gave him 17 points, compared to my 16. So a Tyranid victory, 17 to 16. It was a lot closer than I though that it would be but in the end, if we had of played on further it would likely have ended up worse for me as I had nothing to really answer to the monstrous creatures. Luckily the tournament is fixed at 5 rounds and also it was gone 1am when we finished round 5 and past my bed time.

While I think that I played well, I would have changed a few things, namely that I would have dropped in my scions earlier, dealt with the rippers earlier and then been able to bring the plasma guns to bare on there intended targets, something I was unable to do, as I left it to long and the rippers got in the way. Also I think I should have used more command points, as I ended up with quite a few points left. In some respect I think that 14 points is too many for this game with the limited stratagems, but with the release of the new codex that will change.

I have also learnt since we played this game that the set up of the tournament will be changing, with just 4 fixed objectives and with Slay the Warlord, First Blood and Line Breaker, no kill points. So working on the new setup, chances are I would have won the game 7 to 5, but that's really a guess, as I think we probably would have played slightly differently, due to the differences in the mission setup.