Battle Record - WH40K - Imperial Knights Vs Tyranids 01/04/26

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been #PlayingWarhammer with my son again! He's been home in the lead up to Easter and he wanted a game to get more experience in the lead up to his efforts to start a Warhammer Alliance club at his school.

I decided he could go Tyranids and I would be Imperial Knights 500pts each but based on the Combat Patrol missions. As I had 3 Armigers [2 Warglaives and a Helverin], I tried to beef his patrol with a Tervigon with Crushing Claws, 10 Termagants, 3 Warriors [2 with Deathspitters and a Heavy Venom Cannon], a Screamer Killer and a Carnifex with Deathspitters and Crushing Claws.

As per usual they went Invasion Fleet to give him Lethal Hits on Vehicles. 

 

Now I had no idea if this match-up was fair. Points wise the same, but the Combat Patrol warbands are usually about 400-440pts and Imperial Knights only get 2 Armigers so it concerned me a bit that I had 3.

Anyway, we rolled Scorched Earth for the missions and the 4 Ripper Swarms were the objectives to hold/raze.

Tyler got first turn and pushed forward, with his Tervigon skulking in the ruin top left. I think his shooting put a wound or two on one of the Warglaives.

My turn and I moved to engage. The Helverin blasted the Termagants, halving their numbers. While the Warglaive on the right melted the Screamer Killer in one round of shooting being in Melta range for both the gun and the Thermal Lance was just too much.

Having respawned the 5 dead Termagants in the brood, the Tervigon surged from behind the ruins in retaliation for the lost Screamer Killer.

And smashed the Warglaive to pieces with its Crushing Claws - fond memories of the old Warp Speed on a CC tervigon came flooding back.

Meanwhile the Carnidex, having an adrenal surge [Lethals Hits on 5+] crashed into the back of the other Warglaive and promptly stroked it's back rather than do any damage with its Crushing Claws.

Missing the opportunity the Warglaive sliced its remaining 2 wounds with ease and moved round to take on the Termagants, halving the brood once again. I think by the end of turn 3 we were both on 10 VPs each fro holding an objective each on turns 2 and 3. 

But the Tervigon was emboldened and headed for my home objective and the Warglaive.

 It's 'chicken feet' were no match.

With Lethal Hits auto-wounding.

No saves made and then the damage 3x D6+1 = 18 damage.

The Helverin was wrecked, with no explosion, and the objective secured.

My last Warglaive was able to wipe out the Teragmants, just, and tried to recapture the objective [if it survived Tyler's next turn. Meanwhile the Warriors razed their objective for 10VPs and the Tervigon scored 5.

Then the Tervigon and Warriors swarmed the Warglaive, taking the objective back.

But lost 2 Warriors for their audacity.

The Tervigon continued it's murderous killing spree and wiped the last Imperial Knight off the table securing the entire board. 

I think the final score was something like 35-10, but it was the probably the most enjoyable game of 40k I've played in 10th edition so far. Nothing seemed outrageous. It was a learning experience so although Tyler was shocked at the early demise of his Screamer Killer it didn't spoil the game. He remarked on the nature of spending hours painting a model only for it to be vaporised in one turn - totally understanding the 'new model syndrome'.

But that Tervigon was a beast and total MVP. I absolutely love seeing this model be so effective again. it might have been moreso with Scything Talons - more hits for it and the Carnifex might have capitalised on their Lethal hits. Although, without the higher AP they might not have got through the armour... Anyway, great game. Maybe next time it'll be 11th edition...

Battle record - 40k Tyranids Vs Ork Speeed Freeeaks - 23/10/25

I've been #PlayingWarhammer with a game of Warhammer 40k!We've been playing the darn game of 40k for 3 weeks now. Probably nine hours in already and although I was reluctant to finish it off we decided to.

We thought it'd be over pretty quick as we had very little left.

And then scenes of absolute dice chaos! 🎲

Three ones.

Followed immediately by three sixes and three threes.

Box cars when I absolutely needed it.

Box cars for Liam when he said he was going to 'roll like Dave'!

So we did have a lot of laughs at these insane dice rolls.

But despite some resurgence from the bugs, Old One Eye is an absolute must take. The Orks won the day. I think we had fun, but every unit feels like an unwelcome surprise when you come to use them. Again, rules were forgotten or overlooked and when you come back to them later in the game and realise it would have had an impact earlier on it just feels like you're stupid, rather than the game being overly complex. We not play again for a while but at least we had a laugh.

Meanwhile, Liam had been really busy at work so only had time to knock up a Vampire Counts army for Warcry! He's a nutter.

With an hour left in the evening he set up with Will for a 'quick game' but Will's Chaos Knights are absolutely rock solid. I'm sure we'll all end up playing it at some point. Might give me a reason to paint my Night Haunt... But I also have the Crimson Court too which I now have an idea of how I want to paint them, in a style very different to Liam's.

Battle record - 40k Tyranids Vs Ork Speeed Freeeaks - 16/10/25

I've been #PlayingWarhammer with a game of Warhammer 40k! After last weeks 4 hour gaming session on just the first turns we were all hoping to finish our return to 40k. We had agreed that we would come into this with open minds. We want to like 40k, I am addicted to it afterall. But to paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke 'no plan survives contact with the enemy'. 

Last week the Orks hadn't been particularly effective. 

The Tyranids however were more durable, seemed to kill whatever was put in front of them and their wealth of rules seemed disproportionate to the Ork buffs. 

As Ben and Liam started turn 2 this continued. 

Liam was lucky with his amount of shots, then many hits, but he couldn't seem to translate that into wounds. 

Even when they did, our high saves, or invulnerable saves left most of the bugs undamaged.

 As our turn started Ben and Liam had almost called it quits. Shadows in the Warp left most of the Orks battle shocked, adding to their woes.

But, when it came to our shooting and combat the dice failed us and we couldn't seem to thin the Ork Horde. The Norn Emissary, who was nigh unkillable failed to remove any of those that had surrounded him.

And with their ability to fall back, shoot and assault he was riddled with the weight of dakka.

Suddenly the game swung the other way but the damage had been done.

The game is depressing. Every unit came as a surprise and the wealth of buffs proved too much to ignore and just play the game. I couldn't enjoy our initial success while Ben and Liam felt overwhelmed. Then when the fates reversed I felt annoyed we'd gone through that complaining because all it took was some bad dice to put them in the lead. Ben admitted he too then felt bad because it was all going their way. Maybe with more games, familiarity with both the ruleset and the units may prevent the unpleasant revelations of "it does what?!" Put it this way, we only got to the bottom of turn 3 in another 4.5-5 hours. I wasn't interested in the scores but Liam checked and we were losing [just] 26 to 25. It was mentioned finishing it off next week but I have no desire because it wasn't a fun experience. 

In fairness I felt despite all the buffs there must be balance in the game for us to have been so close. We both had shocking runs of dice rolling that did very little and allowed the other players to come back into the game. So really it isn't that bad. It just brings out the worst in us, because the depth of rules and interactions gives the impression it's unbalanced. I don't want to go through a debate every time about a unit's rules and if it's OP every time we play. I didn't write its rules. As we have plenty of other game options that don't feel so overwhelming, and are more fun, so why play one that does? We may try it again sometime. It's just a shame we couldn't make it work for us.

Battle record - 40k Tyranids Vs Ork Speeed Freeeaks - 09/10/25

I've been #PlayingWarhammer with a game of Warhammer 40k! You read that right, actual 40k that I am supposedly an addict for. We had a full shed of Otty, Ben and Liam. Ben brought his Speeed Freeeaks, which was supposed to be 2,000 points, but due to balance updates was now around 1,780. I managed to combine Otty and my own Tyranids and bring it down to 1,735 [the 2,000 point list looked awesome]. Even so when Liam and Ben set up the plethora of vehicles with so many still in reserve it felt like we were severely outgunned. Anyway, we lost first turn and managed to weather the barrage of fire, mistakes were made and progress was painfully slow. I think we just managed one turn each! Our counter-attack was much more effective and quite a few vehicles were trashed. But aside from the mistakes and bad luck I actually think when we finish it off it will be close and challenging for both sides. We have the advantage but if the game turns then it could prove interesting for us all, which is the most important thing. We want to like the game but if it's no fun then what's the point when we have more pleasant game to play instead?