Throne of Skulls March 2014 - Battle 4, Tyranids Vs Nurgle Chaos Daemons

Having been out for a few drinks last night with Ben's cousin Warwick Kinrade I'm only slightly hungover. If you're unaware of Warwick then check out the other of most of the Imperial Armour book from Forgeworld or more importantly if you like your WWII battles his rulebook - Battlegroup Kursk through The Plastic soldier Company is still available.

Chris Sharp had a Nurgle Chaos Daemon list - the first time I've ever faced Daemons. This may make me naive but I'm not stupid and there's something about committing to only one chaos pantheon that implies you know your stuff and clearly Chris did. He's got large units of Fearless troops that have Feel no Pain, invulnerable saves and adding Shrouded to cover saves. Any way you cut them there's opportunities for your wounds to amount to nothing. Oh, and when you add Biomancy into the mix...

Psychic Powers Winged Tyrant HQ Tervigon CC HQ Tervigon Plain Tr Zoanthope Dominion Dominion Catalyst Onslaught Catalyst Warp Blast

The low down:

• Emperor's Will - 2 objectives, mine between my Bastion and Skyshield, Chris deployed his in the wood on the far right.
• Vanguard Strike
• I won deployment, but let Chris go first and then won the initiative [again!].
• Warlord Trait - Outflankers with acute senses - useless!
• Night fighting turn one

I really have no battle plan for this, I need to try and oust his Plaguebearers from the wood but with 3+ cover saves AND FnP there's not a lot I can do. The Great Maw bashes through the ruins, I don't spawn because I'm going to try and do that when I get near to his objective. The Nephropid spawns out on 15 though who move ahead of it and get cover from the Aegis leaving the 30 Termagants to hold my objective.

I'm not sure what I do when I swoop the Flyrant over to that corner, there's only 4 Plague Drones and one has taken a wound so perhaps he was handy with his Brainleech worms. With hindsight I see now I should have just hovered him there for the entire game moving out of assault range and then contesting in turn 5.

20 Plaguebeares, how on earth am I going to get through these?

The advancing horde.

Chris's turn and his Plague Drones make some assault jump that puts them right next to my Biovore, I can see First Blood happening next turn so I move him into the building. I don't think it's even delaying the inevitable but you've got to try. The Hive Guard also move and try to shoot the Drones down, to little success.

The Flyrant Vector Strikes the Plague Bearers to take advantage of no cover saves, but they still get FnP. The Great Maw bursts from the Ruins intent on joining up with the Flyrant.

Nurglings mill about behind the ruins while the Daemon Prince takes his time advancing.

Plagebearers completely hide in the woods, to capitalise on their uber cover save and make getting them off the objective nigh impossible.

Drones attack the Hive Guard, which is surprising as I expected the Biovore to be the target but the Hive Guard have weapons that Ignore Cover so Chris identified them as the bigger threat, instead of the easy VP

A wound may have occured thanks to Overwatch, perhaps one of the drones was killed outright.

I moved my Termagants forward to take advantage of the Aegis cover save and despite preparing the Skyshield to repell the Daemon Prince so he couldn't land in it, ended up making a perfect landing spot in front of the Skyshield, Chris even thanked me for it!

Plaguebearers assault the Great Maw.

The Daemon Prince assaults the Nephropid [action shot!]

The Daeomon Prince is endured so I'm going to struggle to do any damage here.

The Great maw gets surrounded...

...and Enfeebled [bloomin' Biomancy] he takes a wound but at strength 4 he can't do much damage in return, even for a Monstrous Creature.

He takes a further 2 wounds, this isn't going to end well.

The Plague Drones are reduced to three but they do equally well in killing one of the Hive Guard, the balance is not in my favour.

The Nephropid also becomes Enfeebled, takes one wound and then another 4

Before it eventually succombs to the inevitable.

Thannkfully I still have my Zoanthrope to provide Synapse and not too many Termagants die when their progenitor implodes.

 

The Trygon arrives and the Great Maw's eight progeny head for the Plaguebeares objective.

The Flyrant jumps over the trees and attempts to root the daemons out of the woods but ends up taking 2 wounds.

Enfeebled again but catalysed the Great maw continues to keep it's head above the Plaguebearers.

The Trygon and Termagants manage to shoot a couple of Daemons.

I realise I need to contain the Daemon Prince and the remnants of the 30 strong Termagant brood surround him while their spawned siblings move to replace them in securing my objective.

The Tervigon gets splatted by the Plaguebearers, unfortunately I only managed to kill 2 of their number! How resilient are these things!

I think I managed to put a wound on the Daemon Prince from Fleshborers but the Termagants pile in regardless.

The Nurglings finally move out of the ruins and the newly disengaged Plaguebearers head for my Trygon.

The Flyrant continues to harass the daemons in the wood, he's on two wounds.

So I'm imagining that 'snake eyes' doesn't bode too well for him as he doesn't feature in any more pics. At this stage I may have realised I couldn't win, I suggest to Chris that we could call it. I don't like to, there are still a number of assaults to finish and it feels like I'm throwing my toys out of the pram because I've just lost my Warlord but I have to put my figures in the display cabinet...

...despite my no win situation I say we should carry on a bit more, just so Chris can feel he got the best out of the game. His army is solid and brutal, throwing in the towel so close to removing some big opponents wasn't fair on him. So the Trygon falls too, only managing to kill 1 Plaguebearer and I think it did that on overwatch! I think some other things went too but it's hard to remember.

And there we have it, that extra round of combat made the inevitable a rubber stamped certainty. Chris had First Blood and Slay the Warlord, I think we both had our objectives so it would have been 5:3 or perhaps 6:3 if those Plague Drones got Linebreaker too.

Oh wow, those Daemons are tough. What did I kill? A handful of Plaguebearers, a couple of Drones and a wound or two on the Daemon Prince. A brutal lesson learned but even though I was outmatched this wasn't an unpleasant experience far from it. The ability to put something down was practically impossible but the on target and wounding shots all proved that on any other force I'd have been quite effective.

Chris's army list, so few brought copies to share.

I think I need to consider more how I target objectives. Perhaps trying to secure Chris's so early on was a mistake. All I needed to do was contest as he couldn't get to mine. I could have swooped the Flyrant in on turn 5 having spent the game terrorising his back field. With nothing much to shoot him down I shouldn't get drawn in to an assault I can't win on the ground. I must think more on this. Anyway, one win and 3 losses, lets see what game 5 brings...

Throne of Skulls March 2014 - Battle 3, Tyranids Vs Dark Eldar

So far this tournament I've faced Tyranids [which I've never actually beaten for all my 'prowess' with them], Liam's chaos Marines [who I've never beaten] and now Simon Halstead's Dark Eldar. I've managed to pull a couple of wins out of the bag on the evil space pixies but I've been beaten twice with them by Liam and it was the third game at my last Throne of Skulls where Phil Clee tore me a new one and tabled me, the first time ever, with his Dark Eldar. I had just the Aegis back then so hopefully the additional Fortifications will help out.

Psychic Powers Winged Tyrant HQ Tervigon CC HQ Tervigon Plain Tr Zoanthope The Horror Catalyst Onslaught Dominion Psychic Scream Warp Blast

The low down:

• Crusade
• Dawn of War - 3 objectives which we randomly deviated 2d6" from each third of the board [which was a novel way to do it]
• Deployment - Simon deployed first, this I know.
• Warlord Trait - Reroll reserves
• Night fighting turn one, I think.

All three objectives ended up more in Simon's board half, one to the right of the Derelict Bastion, one in the woods and the last on the other side of the ruins on the far right. I set up to contest just the on on the left and the centre objective. I felt if I could focus on those two and hopefully get First Blood and Linebreaker then I could leave the third one alone.

Simon got first turn and moved up to secure the right objective. He also had a personal challenge that he wanted to 'capture' my biggest model with his Archon [or Haemonculus], some't about keeping it as a trophy in a pocket universe cage... whatever floats your boat evil space pixie.

Thankfully he hadn't any of those shadow fields that reduce my shooting range by 6" and aside from the splinter weapons and a fair few dark lances the only real concern was the Razorwing and some Scourges which might be able to contest an objective late on and deny me their VPs.

The Dark Lances managed to penetrate the Bastion and take it down, we replaced it with the trees [pretend they're billowing smoke clouds from the wreckage, OK, pretend harder then]. I obviously had to explain the rule about it but Simon was of the opinion anyway that he wanted to see blood for it to be 'First Blood' that's a true Dark Eldar player right there.

I on the other hand was not so particular, the Hive Tyrant swooped and targeted the nearest Venom and blew it up, getting me First Blood and leaving only two warriors left, but they would still need to go because of the objective close by and their scoring status. The Hive Guard went for the Eldar Raider and destroyed that.

The surviving Archon and his retinue leap clear of the wrecked Raider and tried to secure the objective.

The looked suitably at home in the dark, dark, woods where the dark, Dark Eldar play!

    

Some more pics of the cheeky monkey's securing the wooded objective. In turn two the Nephropid [CC Tervigon] spawns out on 13, I didn't spawn earlier due to the congestion in and around the Skyshield.

    

While the warriors hunkered down in the wood the two from the downed Venom entered the derelict Bastion and tried to pick a couple of wounds off the Trygon.

One Scourge unit arrived, but came on as reserve from Simon's board edge.

The second Scourge unit also walked on but the Razorwing was still en route to the battlefield and failed it's reserve roll.

The Flyrant Vector Struck the Scourges on the left hoping to rout then and pick off the other Scourges with Brainleeches. Unfortunately even though they were reduced to two and one model respectively they would not fall back. The Trygon got to grips with the Bastion and Detonated it, killing all inside. My Gaunts head for the objective

The Scourges are still a risk for contesting, the Great Maw spawns out on 11 or or 9 [can't read my writing]. But the Ravager targets the Trygon,

and gets a further two wounds on it.

The Ravagers on the other side of the board capitalise on it's weakened state.

and take it's last two wounds. It may not have done very much, killing two warriors [and a Bastion] but it's taken the heat of my Tervigons and my Flyrant.

I finally get my Tervigon off the Skyshield, it's starting to be a bit of a liability. I get my gaunts into the wood to contest and further consolidate some of the spawned gaunts onto the other objective. I manage to remove the lone Scourge and leave the unit of two with only one left. Simon still has the objective on the right so I'm winning on First Blood and Linebreaker at the moment.

The Hive Guard get a bead on one of the Ravagers which should take some more pressure off my dash for the objectives. Everything else pours fire into the warriors in the wood and they all die and I get the objective. My Flyrant has also crossed the board to Simon's only objective left, I don't think he quite gets into contesting range but in another turn he will.

The Razorwing finally arrives but is far from accurate with his rockets, deviating wildly and only clipping one or two Termagants that thanks to Catalyst save most if not all of the wounds! Then I think he fired again and from the looks of future pictures managed to kill the brood. Either that or they retreated behind the Aegis as I can see one of them in a later pic, but I was sure I was heading for Linebreaker with them but the only thing where they were going is a piece of orange foam so who knows what happened???

We're rapidly running out of time with 4 minutes to go, I say to Simon if we want another turn he has 2 minutes each. He says he'll be quick and tries everything to kill the 2 Termagants holding my objective, it looks like he does, wounding both but then I remember they have Catalyst and one saves his FnP, even if he hadn't there's another brood of Termagants there to take his place. Time runs out but I'm still allowed to finish my go.

The Great Maw gets the objective previously held by the spawned gaunts all the other gaunts hold the centre objective and my Flyrant gets to contest Simon's, this leave's the score 8:0 to pick up my first win of the tournament.

Pretty much everything went right in this game. OK, the bastion went first turn but it took some of the heavy shots away from my squishy things, as did the Trygon. He may not have done much but his sacrifice may well have won me the game. The really big learning experience is just how restrictive the Skyshield is when you have two Tervigons on board and a bunch of Termagants. It becomes grid-locked trying to get off and you really need high dice rolls to do so. I must thin about how it slows me down, essentially it adds another 6" to my forward push 3" to get up and 3" to get down and you need at least 5" to do both otherwise it can't fit underneath/balance on top. I'll probably be using this more than the Bastion in the future though so hopefully I'll get a system that works for me.

Also I think the Zoanthrope manning the Quad Gun is the way to go, or at least close by to take over. He's a higher BS than a Termagant is really only providing Synapse and occasional psychic buffs so giving him something to shoot makes up for Warp Blast being so darn restrictive as a ranged attack.

Anyway, I've won a game so I'm happy. As long as I manage one win at these tournaments it's enough. This time last ToS having been beaten by Dark Eldar I was very much disheartened, especially by how helpless I was against Phil's list. Simon's army was a lot more manageable, made worse by the delayed arrival of the Razorwing. In truth I chose not to Intercept with the Quad Gun when it did, it had taken so long to get here it deserved it's chance and I didn't want to interrupt the turn as I didn't think we'd get another one and Intercepting may well have prevented that turn finishing, silly really.

Anyway, I find out I've been nominated again for best army so bring on Day 2!