Showing posts with label Hormagaunts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hormagaunts. Show all posts

Friday, 19 June 2015

Blog Wars 9 1850pt battle report - nids vs Chaos Daemons

Ben Leach, the only time I've played against Chaos Daemons was against Chris Sharp and his Nurgle Chaos Daemons which I recall as a particularly tortuous affair thanks to Cloud of Flies cover saves and Feel no Pain that I recently had flashbacks about thanks to the similar shenanigans of the Necrons. However, Ben had brought representations from all four chaos gods so I was going to get to experience all sides of the daemon host

Psychic Powers
Winged Tyrant WTervigon Plain TrZoanthrope
DominionDominionDominion
ParoxysmParoxysmWarp Blast
The Horror
Paroxysm

The low down:
  • Into The Maelstrom - like Maelstrom missions but with Blog Wars mission cards and VPs
  • Warlord Trait - Night Fighting Turn 1
  • Night fighting first turn, lost deployment, went second and failed to steal the initiative. 
Ben pretty much filled his deployment zone, I may be wrong but I think he was also unfamiliar with nids so we were equally naive about our opponents.


Skarbrand, the centaur on the left was leading the army alongside the Plaguebearers and the Bloodletters with a tiny unit of Flamers on that right flank. You can see objectives 3 and 6.


I set up the Stealers in the ruin in his DZ and another, those are Flamers of Tzeentch surrounding the objective there. That is indeed a bottle of Cider, not a proxied drop pod ;)


Tfex and a Carnifex hold up in my ruins, with everything else on the Skyshield,


Except 10 Stealers, Deathleaper and a Carnifex in soem ruins on my right flank. I didn;t want to concede the flank completely so I had to put some firepower there, still probably not enough to face the Bloodletters but anyway...


Battle commences. Now I thought I'd photographed Ben's score sheet so I could see what Ben drew and achieved but apparently not which will make this quite a difficult report to make as I only know my objectives but I'll muddle on.


Maybe you can make out his cards but I think one was a pretty easy objective secure that he already had.


Probably hold objectivve 6 as the bloodletters hung around and had a drink. Then the chaos winds struck and a random character on Ben's side was wounded for clearly offending his capricious gods. We rolled and typically Skarbrand was the victim suffering a wound or two, not a good start.


Everything else got forward but with little shooting I don't think First Strike was achieved. I drew 32, 15 and 22: 
  • 1VP for destroying a unit in the shooting phase 2VP for 3 or more
  • 2VP to secure objective 5
  • 1VP if at least one enemy unit with the psyker special rule was killed
First Strike and the shooting objective was doubtful as Ben's units were so big, except for the flamers but they were too far away. However, objective 5 was in front of the Skyshield and there were Psykers in the unit of Flamers behind the ruins next so I sent some gaunts to hold objective 5 and swooped the Flyrant over to the ruins.


The Carnifex and Tfex targeted the Damonettes of Slaanesh, I managed to kill 8 but there were still 13 left. The Flyrant shot at the Flamers and I was able to get enough Precision Shots to focus on one of the Psykers [the Herald of Tzeentch] who couldn't make his save and was out of cover to give me the VP [so I had 2 by the end of turn 1]


Ben's Plaguebeares sat on OB3, I guess it was a card he pulled.


The Daemonettes went for the Tfex who only managed to kill one in overwatch! They'd been Paroxysmed too by -1


But 6 rending hits will end most anything!


The Daemonettes danced on the corpse of the Tfex as I looked on, a bit stunned.


The Seekers of Slaanesh were desparate to add to the slaughter the Daemonettes had wrought on behalf of their god and so assaulted a brood of 5 Genestealers. Somehow they failed kill more than one Genestealer, whereas the premier 40k close combat unit killed 4.


Losing the battle the Daemons then failed their morale and I think daemonic instability caused a further 6 wounds wiping out the unit! So having lost my Tfex fortune suddenly shifted back in my favour. Again the winds of Chaos proved detrimental to the Daemons in some way and these results were just not showing favour to the daemon kind - what had Ben done in past lives to upset the deities so? The Fleshounds got stuck into the Termagants though.


My Rippers turned up, luckily deviating not to far and mishaping


While the Tyrannocyte with Hormagaunts deviated away from Skarbrand but I used it as a buffer between the Carnifex and his Warlord and the Hormies in a position to supprt the Termagants being eaten by the Fleshhounds


I spawned more gaunts and threw the Genestealers at the hounds but only managed a few kills an losing half their number but still Fearless thanks to Synapse.


Skarbrand got to grips with the Carnifex, 


the chaos gods smiled on him [for a change]


and then made a very grumpy face as he failed his save


I'm thinking it was the Termagants and Tyrannocyte that may have put him out of his misery, how galling!


Because I think the Flyrant wiped the daemonettes out. I'd scored objective 2 in my previous turn and this was for
  • 1VP for destroying a unit in the shooting phase 2VP for 3 or more
With two units dead I just didn't have the firepower to get the third :( In part that was because the Carnifex in the ruins on the right kept failing his Instinctive Behaviour test so no shooting on that tiny unit of flamers.


Genestealers and Rippers tore into the flamers


The Fleshhounds alsogot wiped out but I have no recollection of how that happened, I can only assume they failed their daemonic instability test, although I do recal the winds of Chaos blew hot and foul once again at the detriment of the host with another character suffering wounds at the whim of their own patron!


I m,anaged to destroy a unit through shooting [though not sure which one] and secured a VP for that, and the Genestealers remained locked in combat which go tme Linebreaker at least, but as turn 3 came to an end there was no longer any time left so we had to call it.


I'd managed to score 6 VPs, plus secondaries of Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker, for 8VPs whereas Ben was only able to secure 5 VPs in total. In fairness to Ben his Chaos overlords really didn't want him to win, he suffered far more at their hands than my own I think. However, both of us committed a lot of troops to doingn not very much - the right flank was pretty much a game of musical statues. I was hampered by some poor Instinctive behaviour rolls but again when Maelstrom objectives mean just staying put it will hamper your forward momentum and with only three turns we didn;t have much opportunity to get those figures into play. But once again a really great game only hampered by the time constraints, I think it took us about 40 minutes to actually start the game but that's what you get when it's horde V horde! Anyway, this was Bens list:

And here's my scorecard.


Now I didn't actually think to take stock of where I came in the tournament at the time, I only checked afterwards, you will see I placed 30th, which is perfectly acceptable and I'm actually ambivalent about the result. Ben just beat by two places with PeteB being the best of us in 21st and Liam running way short of retaining his last place wooden spoon with 39th out of 48.


However, Alex has since mentioned that due to the current scoring system those who had say 1 major victory often ended up placing higher than those who had won more but less convincingly. So he will be having a new metric to include the imprtance of winning, in which case I would have leap-frogged all my buddies and got 15th place! Only Matthew Tennant and his Necrons made a bigger jump from 26th to 6th. Pete B would have gone up 4 places to 17th and Ben gained 9 places to 19th. Only Liam would have fallen foul of the new system losing 2 spots to become 41st


It doesn't really change anything but it was nice to see that in another dimension I actually did the best out of all of us. Tyranids are still $hit though :P Now bring on Blog Wars X

Wednesday, 17 June 2015

Blog Wars 9 1850pt battle report - nids vs Adeptus Mechanicus, Skitariiiiiii

Well this is new and exciting, fresh out of the forge Ian Plumpton and Adeptus Mechanicus - Skitariiiiiii. Quite interesting to go into a battle with absolutely no idea of the abilities of the models opposite but I think Ian was new to 'nids so we were both equally matched for the experience.

Psychic Powers
Winged Tyrant WTervigon Plain TrZoanthrope
DominionDominionDominion
ParoxysmThe HorrorWarp Blast
Onslaught
Psychic Scream

The low down:
  • Emperor's relic - 3 objectives - 5VPs for your own, 10VPs for the middle one and 15VPs if you capture your opponents objective - Vanguard Strike
  • Warlord Trait - Night Fighting turn 1
  • Night fighting first turn, lost deployment, went second and failed to steal the initiative. 
I set up with the Skyshield hidden again, making as much use of the Terrain to add even more advantages to my stacked cover saves [and night fighting, again!]. Deathleaper hid in the nearest ruins with the Flyrant and Carnifex, with the T-fex just in front of the Skyshield - I would meet his Dune Crawlers head on! My objective was under the Skyshield so I could hold it while on top and surround it with Ob-sec Termagants so it couldn't be stolen. The remaining objectives were in the midle of the board and behind the ruins in the top left.


I put three units of Genestealers in this ruin, but high up so it would be difficult to assault them but they would have options to take out the Rangers or go after the Titan, another brood was on the ground floor underneath the Rangers.


There were also some Rustalkers [or Infiltrators] behind the ruins so there were definitely options/threats.


While the remaining two Broods hid in the other


Ian moved the Knight round the ruins. Lots of shooting poured into the Stealers, reducing one brood to 1 which promptly broke and fled right in front of the Knight.


The rest of the Rangers were equally effective killing a Brrod in the opposing ruins for First Strike


Through careful manoeuvres I managed to get shooting on quite a variety of models but that may have been too many targets as I couldn't outright kill the Rangers, if only I'd cast Onslaught on one of the Carnifex or Tfex, but it was too late by then.


I sent the Tfex into the far ruins to take out some more Ruststalkers, unfortunately the Fleshborers weren't too effective and the assault less so. We remained locked in combat and the Tyranid took a wound.


One of the carnifex had been wounded, probably by the Dunecrawler. The Knight couldn't get round the fleeing Genestealer without losing half it's move in a detour so it stayed put and melta'd the Stealer into slag.


It then targeted the wounded carnifex who was just out of the shrouded cloud from the Venomthrope


And vaporised it. The remaining Carnifex was assaulted by the strider things [S8 on the charge!] I think it took a couple of turns for me to take one of them out while the Flyrant seems to have taken a couple of wounds, he may have fallen out of the sky thanks to shooting from the remaining Rangers and lots of Heavy Stubber fire from the Dunecrawlers.


I'd moved the brood of Stealers underneath the Rangers to the other side of the wall but they were hunted down by the Ruststalkers. So let see what happens when the five of the 40k universe's premier cloase combat troops get into assault with the new robots on the block - well wiped out by the looks of it. All five dead, I think the Ruststalker have multiple wounds by the looks of it so I did 5 wounds and took 5 in return!


The Tyrannofex had been locked in combat for about 2 turns so I sent some spawned Gaunts [once again spawning out on double figures] to break the combat. It made not as much difference as I'd hoped and the Tfex took another wound.


The Tervigon also added it's weight to the combat with the Strider but again to little effect.


The Flyrant swooped off and headed for the Ruststalkers and to add synapse to the newly arrived tunnelling Rippers in the ruins. The last of the Genestealer in the left ruins had been killed by the Rangers but they fell in return to a lot of Devourer shots from the Flyrant.


The Rippers were quite happy to sit on the objective, it was worth 15pts afterall.


Meanwhile I still couldn't get the last brood of Stealers out of the ruins and the remaining Rangers/Vanguard were still alive and being a pain.


The Knight turned it's weaponry on the Flyrant...


and managed to kill it for Slay the Warlord. Not sure if it was a lucky shot and falling out the sky or a variety of it's potent weaponry but the beast was removed. 


And to make a bad situation worse so were the Genestealers, vaporised in a large blast!


On the plus side the Strider got smashed and the two MCs moved out of combat.


And started another one in my turn taking on the entire squadron of Dunecrawlers but it was just too much and the Carnifex got trampled underfoot and the Tervigon was untouched by the mech but was still nursing a wound from previous battles. This was not going to end well with my high strength combatant gone.


Luckily the Tfex killed the last of the Ruststalkers but not before they killed the Gaunts.


My Tyrannocyte arrived and I disembarked the Hormagaunts, in Ian's turn the last three Ruststalkers assaulted the Rippers and I was left with just one wound on one base for their efforts.


The Knight headed over to the combat in the middle, Ian wanted to assault the Tervigon but I didn't think that was possible given he couldn't get into base contact [remembering this game from 6th Edition 2 years ago] however the new rules seem to suggest if he can make the charge and be within 2" of a friendly unit already in combat then the Knight could take on the Tervigon too. So I was satisfied [although not looking forward to the result] that he could do it. However, Ian rolled a 5" charge which was enough to get the Knight within 2" of the Dune Crawler but not enough to get him into combat with the Tervigon. 


Which left it to focus it's attentions elsewhere and it spied the nicely bunched Hormagaunts who I'd forgotten to Run in my turn, and would have been in cover. Instead they were out in the open [although Ian did think there was cover from the pod] and so were wiped out


The Dune Crawlers piled in, which gave Deathleaper the opportunity to sneak out from his hiding hole. For these missions the Special Character is Objective Secured so thanks to the Crawler stepping off the objective he now had a direct path to stealing it.


With my Rippers dead [it looks like they took at least one model with them] the Ruststalker advanced, leaving their objective. Unfortunately with the los of the Hormagaunts all I had was the Tyrannocyte which floated towards the objective, but having confirmed my recollection in the rules cannot Run [or charge] and so was an inch or two from securing the 15pt enemy objective!


With the Tfex joining the assault I had one last decision to make - include Deahleaper or not in the melee and the answer was no. He could have been squished instantly losing me the objective, instead he played the mission rendering the assault moot, time was up and I had 15pts from the objectives and 1vp for Linebreaker. I failed to kill the Warlord, he was in that unit of three Rangers who just wouldn't die, as he didn;t when i attempted First Strike. Ian just had Linebreaker and StW for 2pts.


This was a great game with some interesting new adversaries. Rangers shooting ability is not to be underestimated. The Ruststalker too are particularly handy in combat, I'll consider them similar to Flayed Ones in future. The biggest blunder was not running the Hormagaunts, if I had I'd have won 32 to 2 but it was still a really great tactical game and although he didn't do very much it was Deathleaper who won it for me [though thats only thanks to Blog Wars rules] still, worth taking... now for my last game, what delights await?