Blog Wars 6 1850pt battle report - nids vs nids - game 1

With a high percentage of nid players, 6 out of 34, it was no surprise for me to face at least one and a similar list to my own [pic at the end of the post]. Adam Robinson managed to beat me at my own game with Mycetic Spores and 18 Devgaunts per pod and with Ymgarls instead of my fortification, Biovores, Hive Guard and Mawloc. He also lulled me into a false sense of security by admitting this was only his 11th game with nids - I smiled inside, pride before a fall?

Psychic Powers Winged Tyrant HQ Winged Tyrant Tervigon CC TR Tervigon Plain Tr Endurance Enfeeble Life Leech Endurance Enfeeble Warp Speed Warp Speed Haemorrhage Doom of Malan'tai  Psychic Shriek

The low down:

• Purge the Alien
• Hammer and Anvil
• I think I lost  deployment but was promoted to go first.
• Warlord Trait - Master of Ambush [acute senses :( ]

This is the end of my first turn, I'd swooped the flyrant off to right in the hope of flanking in later turns. I realised that with only one piece of area terrain in my table half that's where the ymgarls were going to turn up so I positioned my Tervigons to cover the terrain. With hindsight it wasn't enough, I should have spawned and covered the terrain but I was deluding myself that I was 14kp to Adam's 12kp, which was irrelevant as the VP's were based on actual points of units destroyed so I could have spawned to prevent the Ymgarls turning up and gaining me their VPs

Having made my conservative move Adam opted to be aggressive.

Moving everything forward getting his flyrants into range of my front Tervigon and getting 5 wounds on the beast. My response was to swoop my Flyrant off round the flank, taking cover from the Bastion in the centre. Everything else came on from reserve except my second Flyrant.

  

In total I managed to put 2 wounds on the Iron Armed Tervigon and 1 wound on the other one [Axehead]. Overall I think my shooting was pretty ineffective I think I was starting to feel like I may have made a tactical error at this point.

Adam was able to fit almost all the Ymgarls in the terrain, I think losing only 2 miniatures.

Adam's Doom appeared smack bang in the roofless Imperial Church.

18 Devgaunts began to disembark from the Mycetic Spore

And were joined by their two Flyant overlords, yeah at this point I knew Id messed up. If I'd taken the advantage in turn 1 and attacked, with both my flyrants on the board I might have killed one or perhaps two of Adam's Flyrants while they were still on the ground. He may well have set up differently but I really should have siezed the opportunity. However that flyrant is my Hive Commander specialist so I do tend to be a little cautious with him to protect my deep strike bonus to guarantee it's success.

Shooting phase and the Doom sucks life

And my Hive Guard roll on their leadership...

Yeah, Ben, Liam, Otty, PeteB I know what that feels like!

The Doom engorged on 10 wounds, first blood to Adam.

Devgaunts set up to target my Flyrant - 54 shots, enough for one grounding test at least.

Ultimately the Flyrant was killed, not sure how many of the foes arrayed against him took part in his demise but he was toast and another bundle of VPs and Slay the Warlord to Adam.

My Vanilla Tervigon fell to the Ymgarls but my CC Tervigon smashed a good few for the loss of 1 wound.

My Mawloc took four wounds thanks to poisoned attacks from the Termagants, while my Doom was assaulted by Axehead, more fool him.

Axehead paid the price for his temerity in my turn, losing his remaining wounds.

And being sucked dry to strengthen my Doom. My second Flyrant landed to the right of these ruins but I'm not sure he did enough to bring down any opposing FMCs.

My Tervigon spawned to hold up the Ymgarls , he took another wound but killed the two Ymgarls he was in combat with, you'll notice a new spore pod has just landed next to him though, another 18 Devgaunts in my back yard!

My Devgaunts had passed their instinctive behaviour test, retreated into Adam's DZ and let fly on the opposing gaunts. I managed to wipe out the unit but then Adam spawned the magic 15 to replace them!

Adam's Devgaunts set up to take down the Tervigon.

All his other gaunts positioned to torrent the Doom out of his 6" bubble of death.

Both Adam's Flyrants jumped into combat with my Bastion and blew it to pieces, killing the Biovores inside and doing more damage to themselves and the Devgaunts than I'd done so far.

My Flyrant vector struck one Flyrant killing him and them shot the other one.

Unfortunately this put him with range of the Doom as it emerged from the Church... 

 

yes, again!

The Tervigon was thankfully out of range of the Doom, but not the massed Devourers which managed to wound 3 times.

And these were my saving throws!

Leaving my entire DZ empty and overrun by an alien Hive Fleet

As time was called Adam had killed 1660 points worth of models to my 1021, which if I'm honest was more than I thought. I think I still had the Doom and most of the Spore Pods in place but other than that I was overwhelmed. I totally believe I threw this away in turn one, with such a similar force I surrendered the advantage of going first by not attacking. I also failed to prevent the Ymgarls arriving by saturating the only area terrain with models so they couldn't arrive, that would have been 276pts dead instantly without shots fired or saves being made! Still, onto the next game...

Adam's army list

Terrain is everything - 'Tis the season to pick up your trees

A couple of years ago I picked up a bag of model trees from Dobbies, our local garden centre [and craft shop]. They only have them in the run up to Christmas as they're for making your own Christmas scene with miniature revelers and holiday nik-naks.

Now I haven't had chance to go this year but I'm betting they're back in stock and just thought I'd remind folk about them. The set I got was 21 pieces from a company called Lemax for £13 which I think is good value. Clearly there's at least two that are just a bit too big, they're the same size as my 40k outpost that got bigger! but great line of sight blockers for a Trygon!

Of course they weren't going to fit with my table so I decided to paint them - undercoating them all in Red Oxide primer and then repainting them in shades of yellow.

And here's the finished result:

Blog Wars 6 - result

Saturday was great at Blog Wars 6, Alex put on a great event, probably one of the friendliest and relaxed tournament atmosphere I've been to. That didn't stop me getting my usual nerves or clumsiness but it did mean a lot of fun was had. Ultimately I came 4th out of 32 which wasn't bad considering I lost my first game quite foolishly. I also won best painted army, as you can see from the poor scan of my framed (!) winning certificate, I also came runner up in the best painted character.

With my winnings I treated my Dark Angels to one of these as it was only 30p more:

Big question is how do I paint it:

1. Dark Angels Green
2. Ferron Proxima red
3. Matt Black Honored Imperium Verdigris Copper
4. Combination of 2 for the walls and 3 for the metal reinforcements

Anyway, I'll post some [less than comprehensive] battle reports when I get chance but first game was against Tyranids, which was a similar list to my own but in the hands of Adam who had only 10 games under his belt. I threw that one away somehow - too many conservative approaches to current games when I should have gone uber aggresive, he did and won.

Second game was against, erm, 'nids and Phil from Armoured Sentinel. This was the most fun I've had gaming in a long time. There were some absolutely hilarious moments and Phil was a real sport even when things started going comically wrong for him. It may not have been as much fun for him on the receiving end, the 25:1 score line implies he was practically tabled but there was a lot of give and take, I just ended up in objective scoring positions.

Last game was against 'nid... killers - Dark Eldar with Eldar allies. Daniel's army was heavy on the Reavers and light on poisoned weapons but again I made a tactical error in the first turn and spent a lot of time trying to catch up. Somehow I was able to be in objective scoring positions as the time ran out, we were 15 minutes shorter to try and get finished on time. I didn't get my full turn but if we'd have had the extra 15 minutes I may well have lost in turn 5, swings and roundabouts.

I'll get the reports done asap, thanks to everyone I played. Incidentally PeteB managed to fill in for a 'no show' and came 26th. He was hoping for the wooden spoon at one stage but managed win one, fortunately/unfortunately depending on how much he wanted the wooden spoon and £5 booby voucher!

Blog Wars 6 prep

I should be hip deep in gaming right about now, hopefully my back will be able to take another day leaning over the table. Anyway it's Blog Wars 6 today, I'll be there with my son and PeteB and his son. PeteB didn't think he'd manage a complete list in time so wasn't able to enter but he's there to soak up the ambience and have some quality time with his son. I on the other hand am forcing mine to engage with something other than digital content, although not so successfully as he'll no doubt be taking a Nintendo DS and probably his iPad. Still the two boys get on well and they're taking some board games too, so there's hope.

Anyway, I nipped round to PeteB's the other night for a practice game, I've another Space Marine report to write up and I wasn't fussed about 'prepping' per se but we haven't played a big 1850pt battle and he'd just painted his boards red to go with my terrain so why not? Anyway, we tried to play the game to the 2.5 hour time limit and eventually I realised taking pics wasn't going to help with that so this is no battle report because I stop after the top of turn 2 [coincidentally when the ship hits the fan ;) ], which is a shame as the game was a doozy. I'll do a bit of a lead in though but it makes me realise the upcoming reports may be thin and lacking in pics. The last thing I need is not to finish a game because I was taking pics.

Anyway we played one of the scenarios - Emperor's Relic/Vanguard Strike - three objectives, one each at 5VPs and a 10VP objective in the centre of the board - like the Relic but you don't have to pick it up. After the last game against PeteB's eldar I was a bit worried and then to see two Wraith Lords, a Wraith Knight, Wrath Guard and an Avatar, this was scary stuff.

Thankfully I had a lot of terrain to hide behind and pretty much all the psychic powers I needed to get the job done.

PeteB had first turn but I'd made it difficult for him to get any shooting in so he advanced.

I spawned out on the CC Tervigon, it's gaunts getting round the Bastion and running into the outpost in front.  I also spawned a dozen or so with the plain Tervigon to secure my objective.

My gaunts nice and secure in their outpost.

PeteB headed further into the centre and secured the Tau objective marker.

The Wraith Knight jumped over onto my flank - so jump troops take a dangerous terrain test if they land in difficult terrain but Monstrous Creatures are immune to dangerous terrain tests - oh well, lets just go wherever the hell we want then!

And so with one shot with his Distortion weapon insta-killed my plain [still spawning] Tervigon. I failed the FnP [which I later found out you don't get with insta-kill] and failed my 5+ cover save and he was ripped apart 6 wounds and all! I thought this was going to go so bad from there.

What followed was quiet a battle though. I stopped taking pics and then all my reserves arrived. The Doom was taken down to 2 wounds through the Quad Guns interceptor but sucked the life from four units and PeteB's Leadership rolls were appalling, although his invul saves weren't too bad to mitigate the problem. My Spore pod bomb worked super effective and I was able to take out quite a lot, probably doing more damage than PeteB had done in his turn.

In retaliation the Doom was targeted and his one save failed leading him to be insta-killed on 10 wounds! Eventually the Avatar was killed but my Devgaunts behind the Eldar Defence line were slaughtered. The Wraithknight was also destroyed, with I think 3 turns of assault from one of my Flyrants. Eventually the game hinged on a Wraithlord with 1 wound contesting the central objective. Warp Spiders contesting my objective [with no way to shift them in the time remaining] and my Warlord Flyrant just alongside the Matt Black Honored Imperium statute. I swooped him across the board to kill the Guardians behind the Defence Line, tried to kill them but they went to ground and only two died, saving their objective. I tried to kill the Wraithlord with my two remaining Hive Guard and they failed. The game was lost, PeteB had won

As soon as the Flyrant had fired I'd realised my fatal mistake, I'd chosen the wrong target - a 24" swoop to engage fortified Guardians or a 12" jump to engage the Wraithlord. Realising the error we played out what would have happened, the Flyrant would have shot and it wounded just once [one 6 out 11 dice? I'd already had that off 14 and 15, my rolling was well below the odds in some circumstances] but he failed the save and would have died, even so I could have got into assault and would have most likely died, leaving my dev and spawned gaunts to capture the objective.

I have to say, even though I lost, I was amazed how close I came and if only I'd made the right call [thanks pressure] I could have stolen it. Ultimately it did put some faith back into my list. I was terrified at what the Eldar could do from our last game [I mean Dark Eldar fear] and I saw some new tricks that didn't make me any happier but I still think I've got a list than can perform even when something goes drastically wrong. Ultimately I need to be playing quick and decisive and having fun so lets hope that's what's happening right now. With mainly Space Wolves, Eldar and Nids I can look forward to the sort of things PeteB has plus Wave Serpents, or Long Fangs and their Priests opening up cracks in the earth :( or face my own medicine against the Doom - which is always am interesting challenge on who knows how to play the codex better. Or, it could be none of the above, I'll let you know.

'nids part 106 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers

Happy Hallowe'en and here's to my mojo! Yeah baby I've turned a little corner on this, although I may stall progress as I've got Hallowe'en tonight and Blog Wars at the weekend which always results in post tournament apathy. Anyway, as you can see I cut me a load of pop bottle ends and even managed a shandy and a Sprite bottle for a bit of clarity.

Here are my 6 chimney spines made from foamboard that the pop bottle plates will be attached to. The largest is the same height as the tallest spine on my Bastion, the other is about 5cm shorter and the remaining four 5cm shorter still.

It actually took me a long time to get here. I'd sourced some Plywood discs for bases, experimented with some cork ones but noticed they were just slightly thicker and I wanted consistency. Beveled all the edges with my Dremel-alike, hence the scorched edges. Before I started the chimneys I'd already spent about 3 hours, cutting the pop bottles foamboard, and discs.

 The tallest chimney has 5 chitin plates made from the pop bottle ends, the second tallest has 4 plates and the smaller ones 3. That will be 21 plates in all compared with the Bastions 20, of which these will probably be all the same thickness as the bigger plates. Considering the smaller plates on the Bastion can be half the thickness I may well be able to start estimating how long this will take to make, should I feel masochistic enough...!

 Each plate is pinned to the foamcard and then I used masking tape to try and hold all the pieces together. It doesn't matter too much what they look like, I'll be filling the insides in a bit with tissue paper or tin foil and then coating the entire chimney with adhesive tile grout, like I did with the Bastion.

   

The grout makes the entire structure stronger, then the bottle plastic won't flex as much when I apply Milliput or air drying clay. I'll sand it back so it has a consistent surface but still sufficient enough to act as a 'key' to the sculpted surface material.

   

Lastly I hot glued some foamboard strips either side of the chimney spine just for added support at the base. They may not need it when all the sculpting material and 'crater ruptures' are added but I thought I'd build it up just in case. This was another 1.5 to 2 hours, so I'm on about 5 hours work so far.

So, next up a bit of filling the interior of the chitin plates so they're more substantial and I'm not wasting sculpting materials.