1500pt battle report - nids Vs Chaos Space Marines

Some may recall earlier this year I returned to the Floral Hall Rock Nights these events used to take place quite regularly in the 90s but since the Floral has gone a bit more up-market they're slightly less inclined to allow a bunch of rockers back on the premises particularly when you know what the old Florals used to be like. Anyway, given the majority of rockers interested are the sort whose long hair has since made way for male pattern baldness and head banging has been denied thanks to a bad back and arthritic neck they let us crusties back in and the other weekend was the second Floral of the year. Sadly I didn't go but my mate Liam did, he of the scratch built Warhound and Warlord fame and to make up for not catching up we arranged a match up instead.

Now he's awfully apologetic that his army isn't painted but I was insistent he try out his new Chaos Space Marines even though most are still bare plastic. Therefore I could also try out something less than ideal and use my Hive Tyrant as the Winged variety and for the first time see what flyers are like. For some reason though I did switch off a part of my brain that was mentally taking notes so some details of the battle may be less than comprehensive but it was a fun match. Big Guns Never Tire [3 objectives], Dawn of War deployment I had 1 objective behind the building at the feet of the Troop Tervigon, Liam had an objective behind his Aegis Defence Line [ADL] next to his Quad Gun and one on the top floor of his building.

Not too sure on his army list but he had Kharn the Betrayer, two Defilers [the Brass Scorpion jobbies], two or three units of plague marines a big Chaos Cultist blob with a Chaos Lord/champion the ADL and Quad Gun and a Helldrake.

Psychic Powers Tervigon HQ Tervigon Troop Broodlord [Adrenal] Hive tyrant Life Leech Enfeeble Endurance Life Leech Endurance Warp Speed NA Haemorrhage Iron Arm

I had two Tervigons [HQ Tervigon with Warlord Trait +D6 on Run], Trygon, Winged Hive Tyrant with 2 Twin Link Devourers with Brain Leech Worms, 2 Hive Guard, Doom in Spore Pod, 4 Warriors [3 with Deathspitters, 1 with Barbed Strangler], min Genestealer brood with Broodlord and Adrenal Glands and 1 Devgaunts. This was our setup and Liam got first turn.

Liam let rip with the Defilers.

And blasted the entire Warrior unit off the board [they were out in the open in front of the Tervigon HQ], First Blood to Liam. He also picked off one of the Devgaunts and may have put a wound on a Tervigon and perhaps the Trygon too.

The Troop Tervigon spawned 9 and pooped out, I elected to save the HQ Tervigon so I could spawn them into the building with the objective - 6" spawn range and 6" move is really helpful with a 3 storey building! The Tyrant went +3 Iron Arm and Swooped over the building and shot at the defiler putting two glancing wounds on it.

Endured Genestealers ran for the crashed Aquila wreckage but couldn't make the cover. The Trygon was his usual lazy self and got snagged on a piece of architecture. Hive Guard shot at the Plague Marines in the building but didn't do much, maybe killing one at the most.

Here comes the Heldrake! Swooping in and putting 1 wound on the Hive Guard and killing a few gaunts and perhaps wounding a Tervigon.

The Hive Tyrant suffers two wounds thanks to combined fire, he may have crashed at this point from being hit but wasn't wounded.

My turn two and the Doom arrives, bang on target and manages to shrug off interceptor fire from the Quad Gun [phew] and sucks the life from three cultists making him strength 7. He winds up Cataclysm on the Defiler but it somehow denies the warp energies brought against it. The Genestealers, who'd been previously mullered by the Cultists managed to get in and assault the Quad Gun, no more Interceptor fire from you!

Everything else barrelled forwards, the Hive Tyrant Vector Struck the Plague Marines in the building but failed to damage. He then fired at the Defiler but it shrugged off the hits.

Liam's turn and the Heldrake flew back over the Tervigons doing some damage and then flaming the Devgaunts down to two.

Kharn, his crew and the Defiler multi-assaulted the Doom and Spore pod but not before losing another of their number to the Doom's leeching ability. The Doom was on 5 wounds by the end of assault due to trading damage. Kharn also killed two of his own squad with wild swings. My next turn and the Stealers moved over the ADL and assaulted the Cultists. Not thinking about positioning the Broodlord was overwatched for his final wound and Look Out Sir failed to save his a$$ the Doom eventually met his end and Kharn consolidated over the ADL.

I'm not entirely sure of that 1 and 3 is significant to what was going on at this point, perhaps it was the charge range to the Trygon - not enough. Meanwhile my two remaining Devgaunts had shot at the Heldrake, 1 hit, 1 glance!

My Hive Tyrant was gunning for the second Defiler but still no more

than 1 glance. The following turn he managed to get two hits with his autocannons and I failed both saving throws! Quite a spectacular loss as the Winged Tyrant slammed out of the sky!

Having taken 5 wounds the HQ Tervigon spawned 11 gaunts into the building who assaulted the Plague Marines and pulled them off the objective.

The Troop Tervigon got just enough on the dice to assault the cultists through cover but was slaughtered by the Chaos Champion whose Black Mace required a Toughness test, anything but a 6... oh!*

The Heldrake returned to my backfield and killed three more gaunts, but I was just about holding my objective.

The Hive Guard was assaulted by Kharn and his boys, he wasn't going to survive...

The HQ Tervigon spawned some more gaunts into the building. The objective was completely contested now and Liam was winning by 2VP for Linebreaker and killing my Trygon.

So I gambled with the HQ Tervigon, hoping I could assault the cultist blob, pull it off the objective and hopefully snatch the game. Unfortunately the Defiler [being a scoring unit] doubled up on the objective but my charge roll was just sufficient.

The Tervigon took 4 wounds and the 6&4 passed but the other two went onto Feel no Pain and as you can see the top two dice came out in my favour. Throughout the entire game I'd been 'lucky' with FnP making many crucial saves when Liam had failed to make use of any of his FnP rolls. Without making this save I'd have lost the Tervigon altogether. 

So we rolled for turn 6 and it didn't come, we both had Linebreaker, 1 Objective each but Liam had killed my Trygon and secured First Blood so he won 6-4. It was a really fun game, I certainly enjoyed playing Chaos more than his Dark Eldar. The Dark Eldar should be weaker but with mostly Grotesques and skimmers which you can't shoot unless you're 6" closer than your max range most of my weapons are too short to hit and not strong enough to penetrate. His Chaos may be tougher, with better saves, FnP and even Fearless but at least I can hit them and close with them in combat. I look forward to our next game when no doubt many more figures will be painted. Hopefully he'll send some pics through as and when he finishes painting them. 

* Although a Toughness test is based on equal to or less then your stat, so in the case of the Troop Tervigon of T6 it would seem that it cannot fail don't forget pg7:

AUTOMATIC PASS AND FAIL
When taking a characteristic test, a dice roll of 6 is always a failure, and a dice roll of 1 is always a success, regardless of any other modifiers. However, if the model has a characteristic of 0 or '-' it automatically fails the test.

Warhammer World - Random shots of senseless violence

Here's some of the other 'action' shots I took at Throne of Skulls, first up my mate Ben playing the 5 Tervigon list of Lee Durkin. Coincidentally Lee lives in the same village as my local friendly neighbourhood gaming club and since ToS has been in touch to ask about popping down. I'm sure we'll all look forward to facing his nids ;) 

I may have shown all these when I showcased Otty's figures but they deserve being seen again. Now this is how to secure an objective!

And this is how to man the battlements.

His Mycetic Spore is so large and has so many bits on it you can forgive the size because you're forever spotting another 'Tyranid bitz'. Otty was convinced it was the right decision to take a Tyrranofex purely for the amount of fire it absorbed. I gues the 6 wounds and 2+ save is quite special but still too many points for me to ever consider.

 The Ruins of Osgiliath? One of the Lord of the Rings themed tables which I just thought was awesome so had to take a pic.

Otty's nids against Necrons.

Necron Bastion.

Ben's last match against Space Marines.

Apologies for the next five pics, they're all pretty much the same but this 'tableau' of Immortals positioned atop the Chaos Mound looked so cool I kept on trying to take a picture of it without disturbing Ben's opponent but couldn't quite manage it.

Allied with what?

I'm currently under a certain sense of confusion, I can't work out whether the internets have deluded me or if I've misunderstood something but I'm having real difficulty getting a handle on 'allies'. I know as Tyranids we don't get allies but on the many discussions on blogs, forums and whatnots relating to Tyranids and the allies matrix I was led to believe that we could at least ally with another Tyranid force. The main reason for doing so was to open up more Elite slots - the slot with most of the goodies according to other people. Personally I was hoping to get some more troops but that's by-the-by.

So up until this point I haven't really looked at the rules but when I wanted to try out a winged Hive Tyrant band still see if I can get a Tyranid Prime and a Tervigon I was curious to see if I could fudge it with another allied detachment of nids. I start reading and I think I understand the bit where it says a single allied detachment for each primary attachment but it was this bit on p109 that suddenly made no sense to me

As with the primary detachment, all units in the allied detachment must be chosen from the same codes, and this must be a different codex to the one used  for the primary detachment. 

Now I've just looked at the next page and I see that for battles of 2,000pts or over you can have another primary detachment FOC but it must be from the same codex, which explains where folk were excited about the extra nid elite slots. But what of the sub 2,000pt games - the popular 1,500pt ones and what have you. Admittedly the inability to choose a secondary detachment from the same codex affects everyone but given nids can't actually ally with anyone it hits us that little bit harder.

The fact is allies throw up some interesting options for folk and we saw that at Throne of Skulls, Necrons with Imotekh the Stormlord night fighting for most of a game whilst the Tau allies with night vision shot with impunity! However, I'm more inclined to stick to one codex. To return to my old martial art of Kendo there are different ways to fight.

The standard style - chudan no kamae both an attacking and defending stance that everybody learns and is the most widely taught way to do kendo.

Then there is jodan no kamae, I've mentioned this before when I was looking to pose my son's Wraithlord in a kendo stance. Jodan is a purely offensive stance, using the projectile like attack from on high to reach your opponent long before they get in reach. The real problem with this technique for a beginner is that you do not have the wonderful bamboo sword acting as a measuring stick between you and your opponent telling you they're within distance. Kendo is very much about distance and you need a certain level of experience to judge the right distance and even more so without the sword to help. So this is an advanced technique and quite often people will stick with chudan for their entire kendo lives as that is sufficiently challenging enough.

Lastly there is nito, or 'two sword technique' this involves the use of a long and a shortsword. The long sword is used in a similar fashion to how you would do jodan but obviously with one hand. The short sword is used as a parrying weapon. It's very difficult to master and very few people will practice it although many people will have a wish to do so as it is an exciting challenge in itself, oh and it looks cool.

All I'm really getting at is that for me personally there is far more to master from using a single codex than to try and master two or discover the optimum synergy between them. That's not to say there aren't ways to do that - the Tau/Cron pairing was obviously inspired but for me it's a way focus how I play, even if it is a flawed belief. Ultimately though the opening up of the Force Organisation Chart with allies and the ability to field what you want, although inviting abuse, is once again a bonus to all, except Tyranid players! Marginalised yet?

'nids part 65 - Ymgarl Genestealers

I've been sitting on 4 Ymgarl Genestealers since I won those bargain ebay sales which provided a fair few Termagants and 4 Hive Guard conversions. I finally managed to win another auction of 5 Stealers, but with loads of heads for variety. Below is the basic builds with the 5th Ymgarl in the rear on the right, using Hormagaunt Scything Talons bbecause I was under the mistaken impression I had no more Genestealer 'stubby' talons. Still these are mutating every turn so there should be a little more variety in these and I need them to stand out compared to normal stealers. Therefore, with no real need I decieded to make some tentacles for some slightly more unique Ymgarls [you'll have seen my tutorial on this the other day].

First up, is the triple tentacled fiend, using the 'blind' stealer hed and some Monstrous Creature armored plates. I appreciate this is showing all it's mutations at once but my Ymgarl genestealer mutation markers handle that aspect of their rules so I can indulge my modelling however I like.

The tentacles did break in some places so a healthy dose of Superglue is holding it all together, and my fingers for a tense few minutes! 

The double tentacled Ymgarl has the same 'blind' head but I was short an extra armour plates so I split one in half and positioned it at the front and then used two Termagant armour plates behind it and it works pretty well.

The tentacles on our left are a bit flat, thanks to the heat unwarping them but the right ones are spot on. There's still an argument that just because they have weight doesn't mean they should droop and as it is turning away from the arms on the right they would fly out a bit...

The single limbed stealer. These tentacle came out the best but I was concerned the might stil snap so notice the claws manage to cover and protect the Milliput. 

The extra armour plates are made from a single Monstrous Creature plate with the blade edge removed, then split in half. Then a Warrior Plate was also split in half and they were joined together. Quite a neat little hatchet job that I think wil be nigh indestinguishable once painted.

Lastly was a complete mix-and-match. The last tentacel [the worst of the bunch] a Hormagaunt Scything Talon, a Rending Claw and a normal hand. 

Ectar armour courtesy of termagant biomorphs. I jst wanted to use up some bits and show how mutated they could be even though I had plent of limbs to kit it out more uniform.

Here are the four brothers

And this is the complete nine Ymgarls. Granted you can pretty much see these are two groups but the silver lining is if I had one more stealer I could kit it out with Tentacles so I could run two broods of 5 which would be handy.

Now to get some paint on them!

Impromptu tentacle maker

There are a couple of tools out there at the moment for making your own power cables/tentacles out of green stuff. Green Stuff Industries Tentacle Maker and Masq-Mini's tube Tool being two of the more well known offerings. However, what happens if you just have a quick need to make some tentacles and can't wait for either of these two 'fit for purpose' devices. Well I'm not sure which blog I read where they casually mentioned a fairly common-place alternative but here's what  I did when I got all squid-like for some Ymgarls.

First up I rolled out a tube of Milliput [again I'm using what I have to hand here and green stuff, surprisingly, is still not something I've invested in]. I used an old phonecard [who remembers them] as a roller, later on I put a few drops of water on the cutting mat so the Milliput didn't stick.  

Here's the tentacle maker - a common or garden comb. Being follicly challenged this is my sons. You will note the tool comes with two gauges, particularly useful in illustrating how the ridges get wider as the tentacle gets fatter towards the base.

OK, these aren't the best examples I did, but they were first attempts. Adding the drops of water helped with definition.

And as you can see they got a bit better because of it. You have to be quite careful though that the pressure of the comb doesn't ended up amputating the lower, thinner tips of the tentacle.

I doubled and tripled up some tentacles for the Ymgarls, pictures to follow. I then added a piece of wire so I could pin it to the Stealer armpits. This may have slightly smudged the ridges but overall it was a good effort.

One other point of note was that the Milliput wasn't drying out quite quick enough for my likeing so I rested them on a radiator, which in fact made them wilt a bit, like you'd put a dough in the oven. Eventually after some curing I returned them to the radiator and they dried out in the same curved positions I had intended.

Alternatively check out Eye of Errors awesome tutorial on making octopus tentacles, I wish mine had the wire core in now, I seriously doubt the tentacles are durable enough, but we'll see...