Wednesday 12 November 2014

Blog Wars 8 1850pt battle report game 1 - nids vs Necrons

First up was Josh with a C'Tan shard, Overlord in a command barge, Necron Scarab Swarm and allied Helbrute formation! Josh intoduced himself as only recently returned to the hobby so still very much a 40k newb which boded well for me considering I seem to be regularly beaten by those either new to the game or new to their army. In particular Tyranid noobies seem to beat me without fail!

Psychic Powers
Winged Tyrant Tervigon Plain TrTervigon Miasma
The HorrorWarp BlastCatalyst
OnslaughtDominionDominion
Dominion



The low down:
  • Game 1 - Cleanse the Xenos with Hammer & Anvil deployment
  • I won deployment and went first
  • Warlord Trait - Deathleaper has Mindeater - +2VP for every IC slain in a challeneg
  • Night fighting turn 1.
Having found enough Genestealers to replace those I'd left G.O.D. knows where I  deployed 15 in the ruin in Josh's DZ. The remaining Manufactorum Genestealers occupied the middle ground alongside Deathleaper.

The remaining force spread out in my back field to keep them away from weapons and hopefully prevent the Helbrutes materialising.


And let battle commence.


Hive Tyrant swoops forwards, Genestealers stay put, they can't assault anyway so may as well keep them there. Carnifex advances alongside the Hive Guard.


With so many Scarabs heading my way I repositioned the Tervigons to potentially pump out some bubble wrap.


I unleashed the Flyrant on the C'tan and Brainleech Worms took 2 wounds off it.


Josh spawned more Scarabs, a risky tactic in Purge the Alien as you're just adding more VPs to the table, but he seemed unperturbed.


They skittered forwards and assaulted Deathleaper


He killed a couple but was swarmed asunder giving Josh First Blood and a healthy dose of VPS. Meanwhile the Command Barge assaulted the Genestealers in the centre ruin, killing a couple and the C'tan headed for the Stealers in the DZ ruin and may have killed the brood [or was this Josh's First Blood?]. A unit of Scarabs also assaulted the Stealers, only killing a couple due to the difference in Weapon Skill and strength/toughness.


With the Scarabs exposed the Carnifex peppered them with Brainleech worms, double strength insta-killing 9 bases!


The Flyrant also made use of Brainleech living ammo to shoot the C'tan.


Who promptly exploded, somehow it must have been ground as it only took one wound. Not sure how that happened.


With no other targets the remaining Genestealer assaulted the already engaged Scarabs and wiped them out. Meanwhile some of the Spyders took wounds.


The unengaged Stealers in the centre ruin joined their brood siblings and attacked the barge.


With some heavy duty Rending hits


The Command Barge was gone and thankfully didn't reanimate. A healthy crop of VPs for me.


Some strange smoke erupted from the wrecked vehicle! What? I'm forging a narrative here!


I think that Obyron joining the Warriors there, hoping to take out the wounded Flyrant.


Yet more Scarabs, and they're hungrily looking at all that Bastion to eat because I bubble wrapped the Carnifex.


Half the Scarabs assaulted the Hive Guard I think I came out better only losing one Hive Guard but we're all Fearless so we remain locked.


The Scarabs get they're nibblers on the Bastion


And reduce it to a sloppy mess, taking the Quad Gun and the Venomthrope with it.


With the Flyrant on the ground everyone assaults and Obyron accepts the Flyrants challenge and gets eaten.


As the ground up pieces of living metal fall to the ground they coalesce back into the Necron hero and his learning protocols remove all challenge acceptance confirmations for a Tyranid bioform of this scale.


Spyders eat through a brood of Genestealers.


Carnifex assaults the other Spyders, does some damage but comes off just as bad with MC Vs MC.


The Flyrant bashes Warriors but still can't get to Obyron, the Spyders head to break the stalemate.


More spawned gaunts join the Hive Guard but they begin to take casualties and the melee remains locked.


Helbrutes finally materialise, they put some damge on a Tervigon but mostly it remains unharmed.


Eventually time is called and we tot up the results 793 +2VP [Line Breaker and Slay the Warlord] to Josh's 919 +3VP. I was actually quite surprised I didn't do more damage and had been lucky as a lot of  my units were not passed the half strength mark so hadn't scored. I know I killed a lot of scarabs, which aren't much points but the Command Barge wasn't cheap. Perhaps the relief I felt not having to tackle the Helbrutes backfired in that essentially those points never got a chance to be secured by me, although I'm not so sure what could have taken them, probably the Carnifex...

Anyway, aside from the super quick deployment [all things considered] this was another typical first game loss but a fun game. Josh was quite apologetic about his list but although Scarab swarms aren't a fun concept I never once felt I wasn't enjoying the game and as I said at the beginning experience is no guarantee for success. Anyway, on to game two.

Josh and I mid game from From the Fang

16 comments:

  1. Great report Dave, unlucky, tell me fella was that board 6' by 4' because it looks a tad smaller but it could just be the camera angle and is that typical of the amount of terrain used at Blog War's.

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    1. The boards are indeed 6’x4’ I think if you look at my BW7 reports you will see there was less terrain on the tables I played on but I think there was an improvement this time around. I’ll admit last time things were sparse but I can get over that, this time I didn’t feel any problems with terrain and the other two games look to have more going on.

      You can see in Alex’s picture at the end the table next to ours was similarly deployed but it looks like other tables further down were more dense. Also Alex had his battle reports on From the Fang so you can see some other tables and how much was going on. As I’ve said before when I bring my Bastion or Skyshield it doesn’t bother me much if there’s nothing else on the battlefield. I expect to get slaughtered anyway ;)

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    2. Im just thinking of my list and the possibility of playing next year at Blog Wars 10, the terrain looks about right to me and yeah I've seen the Fangs batrep's, great stuff.

      I would say I feel your pain Dave but I play Scythes and slaughtering Nid's is what we do, infact my first victory came at the expense of those foul beasts and I've got to say I have a taste for it now, ha ha.

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  2. Great Battle report Dave! I think your Flyrant only took 1 wound when it was grounded because it had FnP from some Tyranid witchcraft-magic, possibly? My memory is foggy at the best of times. I must say the C'tan exploding and grounding the Flyrant was one of the most cinematic bits of the day. All-in-all the dice were really with me that day. I got 3 pinpoint deepstrikes with my Hellbrutes around a Knight game 2 and Obyron was killed and got back up 3 times in game 3. 2 of those times in a single player turn.

    Thank you again - My first big step into the hobby and I couldn't of asked for a nicer player. The entire day was pretty darn perfect to be honest. Everyone I played was of the highest caliber, friendly and taught me so much. Your army is stunning. Really put mine to shame. I'm going to have to improve my painting a lot by the next BWs, which I will certainly be attending (if they let me back!).

    I've got 10 converted Nurgle bikers I need to paint up. Thinking I might run a far slimmer version of the list you saw with CSM allies. See if I can afford a couple Maulerfiends.

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    1. Yeah that was probably it. I couldn't work out the order, wounded by the blast, grounded saved by FnP from the second wound. Bloomin Necrons and they're reanimating ways!

      Josh, you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of with your army. It's fully painted and you've adopted a theme. You may feel it doesn't bare close scrutiny but I assure you there are many of my nids that look rough close up too. Be proud of getting so much painted and in a style you're happy with and look forward to how your efforts will progress, don't regret what you've done so far, it's great.

      It's still early days in getting back into the hobby but once you add in these other untis you'll have much more scope to play around and have more varied games so you're not apologising for the scarabs. I had a great game, I've not won the first mission in all thre Blog Wars so it didn't phase me. Thanks for searching out the blog.

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  3. I'd forgotten how beautifully painted your Flyrants are... Ahem. Sorry, I mostly looked at the pictures.

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    1. Do you know what? I find Battle Reports quite dull too and boy do mine go on. However I did find a Facebook page that does reports that's actually quite cool. Anyway, if you're just after the gratuitous hobby p0rn, then there's always this: http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/flufftastic-hive-fleet-gorgon-ferron_21.html

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  4. Fantastic bat rep. Your flyrants are beautiful. No other words for them. I love the blast marker you made for the destroyed bastion :).

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    1. Its an old Reclamation pool following a White dwarf tutorial [I actually ended up on White Dwarf Daily with it!]: http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/terrain-is-everything-nid-reclamation.html

      It's not actually what was on my To Do List, that's still to be created, or ignored given that this does the job effectively already.

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    2. That's even awesomer!!!!! Woooooooo

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  5. I look forward to seeing my vastly outnumbered heroes facing off against your numberless hordes in the next instalment of your battle reports! Sounds like Deathleaper had a bit of an off day though, all in all.

    Lovely blog by the way, you have some amazing stuff on here and I must admit I've bookmarked those ingenious counters of yours for future use.

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    1. Is that you Sam? If so it's up today and although you were outnumbered I was clearly outmatched. Hope the counters are of use.

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    2. It is indeed! I'm having a look now and it's looking really good.

      Thank you for the compliment - my experience is limited as I came back into the hobby at the same time Josh did, but I've had to get used to wrangling objectives from hordes of opponents from facing his Scarabs so many times!

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    3. Well that limitation held you in good stead. No disrespect to Josh but your tactics [no doubt honed because of a smaller force] seemed stronger [although he did beat me as well!]. We were playing Purge The Alien though, so there isn’t much tactical options beyond ‘kill those guys’. So it seemed like you’d played for longer. Still, as I tried to explain to Josh before our game experience isn’t always an advantage and clearly hordes and objective missions aren’t clear cut either.

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  6. Congrats on second place Dave, your army is beautifully painted.

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    1. Cheers, we had a laugh that that's my second second place in as many weeks. The banter in the car on the way home was Apocalyptic in proportions. So much fun, can't wait for BW9.

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