Blog Wars 8 1850pt battle report game 2 - nids vs Grey Knights/White Scars

Sam Georgiou was up next, Josh's gaming buddy. He had Grey Knights, with White Scar Allies. I haven't really played against Grey Knights since PeteB got rid of his. If you recall PeteB often ran two Dreadknights so I should have been a little more prepared but I've probably forgotten much of my tactics.

Psychic Powers Winged Tyrant  Tervigon Plain Tr Tervigon Miasma Warp Blast The Horror Onslaught Catalyst Dominion Dominion Dominion

The low down:

• Game 2 - The Emperor's Relic with Vanguard deployment
• I won deployment and went first
• Warlord Trait - Deathleaper has Mindeater - +2VP for every IC slain in a challenge
• Night fighting turn 1.

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures until after turn 1 so you'll have to make do with the following description of the action. I was lucky in that our board had plenty of ruins so I had plenty of options to deploy the Genestealers successfully.  However Sam set up a unit of bikes in the right hand ruins, denying me access to the far right one but seemed to miss the fact the one further into his DZ had a first floor, so I deployed a unit there. 2 Broods were in the centre ruin and Deathleaper was to Deep Strike. In my turn 1 the Flyrant swooped towards the bikes that are shown driving off to the left. Brainleech worms did some significant wounds and Sam tanked them on the Space Marine captain who promptly failed his saves, died and gifted me First Blood!

 

My objective was in the Cathedral, surrounded by a brood of Stealers. I moved the Tervigons forwards hoping to push towards Sam's objective and reinforce the middle one I already owned. I foolishly forgot to spawn more gaunts. in fact thanks to trying to cast Warp Blast I forgot a number of things as because it's a Witchfire you automatically think you're in the Shooting Phase and carry on shooting and miss elements from a previous phase. I spread out my gaunts hoping to cut off the bikers that were trying to flank me and sneak for my objective.

I also deployed a brood in the cathedral in the centre of the board, with the centre objective [I only put one Stealer down as it was difficult to get my hand in].

Sam's objective was behind this hill.

Sam then decamped from the ruins and headed for his own objectives, moving the Dreadknight backwards to deal with the Stealers in his DZ...

which he promptly did by roasting them alive.

Bye, bye Linebreaker.

The Carnifex managed to do some damage to the dreadknight.

But was clearly punished for it's temerity, even with Catalyst and it's Feel No Pain. Honestly, all the hops you have to jump through to get the power and then it doesn't flippin' work!

Deathleaper arrives turn 2 and smashes open the Cathedral doors.

Shooting at Draigo and his Grey Knights but doing little. He then closes the doors and waits.

I charge the Genestealers into the Dreadknight, but can't bring myself to throw in the Tervigon too as I'm convinced it'll just get pummelled taking the Termagants with it. As a troop I need to keep him safe but this may have been a tactical error as the Stealer fail to capitalise on their weight of attacks on the charge.

With the Tervigon and some spawned gaunts holding the centre objective the Stealer brood  sally forth and assault the Terminators, one Grey Knight falls to the ultimate assault creature

3 Genestealers fall to the chopping Halberds and Hammers [sounds like an RPG]!

The second unit of Knights drop in behind my line, Sam went bold and only deviated a couple of inches, sadly no mishap and Interceptor on my Quad Gun does nothing

Unfortunately they can't really see anything to shoot so I get a healthy cover save meaning my Stealer remain intact while the second blob of gaunts head behind the Bastion to reinforce my objective and bubble wrap against the Paladins.

The other gaunts spread wide but that dreadknight can jump so they won't stop it, then again I probably should have charged and locked it in combat but I was trying to make a wide screen offering options to all three objectives.

Bikers and Assault Bikes multi-assault my termagants locking them in combat.

I do a couple of wounds but suffer a few dead and remain locked.

Dreadknight and stealer continue to play patty-cake, then the brood of three Hit & Run towards the locked Terminators leaving space for the Tervigon to move in next turn.

Deathleaper eventually joins this assault, challenges, Draigo accepts takes all six S6 rending attacks on his armour and then smears Deathleaper across the Cathedral walls [ultimate assassin creature my a$$]

The last Stealer is chopped to pieces too and the unit consolidates.

Th Stealer Brood from my objective charge the Paladins, losing 2 Stealers to 1 Paladin :(

Hive Guard join the 2 remaining stealers who are splatted, but the added bulk of the Hive Guard prevails

And the Dreadknight finally falls while the other brood attacks Draigo's unit who are more than happy to take them on thanks to their psychic powers and Apothecary.

I'd debated long and hard where to send this Tervigon, with time running out we didn't have enough turns from to reach Sam's objective with spawning gaunts so I sent the tervigon to shore up my own objective and spawn more gaunts round it and landed the Flyrant to capture Sam's but although he survived some Multimelta fire, lost full control of the objective by the contesting bikes. Draigo [as a uber-scoring unit in BW8] contested the centre objective so my objective was where the final showdown would take place. The Dreadknight wisely disregarded the Tervigon and managed to roast all but two Termagants holding my objective. The Dreadknight charges and out of it's 5 monstrous attacks manages to kill just one of the valiant defenders. Unbelievably I've won 7:2 ... except I haven't yet, we forgot Hammer of Wrath so Sam rolls and unsurprisingly wounds. If I make my Armour Save I've won... that would a 6 I need then... doh!

So the final score was 17:2, 15 + Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker for Sam and First Blood and Linebreaker for me. This was a great game, Sam was very Tactical throughout, which given the limited units he had to secure/contest/defend three objectives he did amazingly. I was utterly let down by the psychic phase and Deathleaper in particular. Seriosusly, Deathleaper only had to take one wound off Draigo with six attempts and couldn't do it, pathetic! Once again the Stealers were the most pivotal units. even if they did very little it was them holding units at bay or being the first turn targets in Sam's DZ which meant he wasn't advancing and picking on my bigger more valuable scoring

Blog Wars 8 1850pt battle report game 1 - nids vs Necrons

First up was Josh with a C'Tan shard, Overlord in a command barge, Necron Scarab Swarm and allied Helbrute formation! Josh intoduced himself as only recently returned to the hobby so still very much a 40k newb which boded well for me considering I seem to be regularly beaten by those either new to the game or new to their army. In particular Tyranid noobies seem to beat me without fail!

Psychic Powers Winged Tyrant  Tervigon Plain Tr Tervigon Miasma The Horror Warp Blast Catalyst Onslaught Dominion Dominion Dominion

The low down:

• Game 1 - Cleanse the Xenos with Hammer & Anvil deployment
• I won deployment and went first
• Warlord Trait - Deathleaper has Mindeater - +2VP for every IC slain in a challeneg
• Night fighting turn 1.

Having found enough Genestealers to replace those I'd left G.O.D. knows where I  deployed 15 in the ruin in Josh's DZ. The remaining Manufactorum Genestealers occupied the middle ground alongside Deathleaper.

The remaining force spread out in my back field to keep them away from weapons and hopefully prevent the Helbrutes materialising.

And let battle commence.

Hive Tyrant swoops forwards, Genestealers stay put, they can't assault anyway so may as well keep them there. Carnifex advances alongside the Hive Guard.

With so many Scarabs heading my way I repositioned the Tervigons to potentially pump out some bubble wrap.

I unleashed the Flyrant on the C'tan and Brainleech Worms took 2 wounds off it.

Josh spawned more Scarabs, a risky tactic in Purge the Alien as you're just adding more VPs to the table, but he seemed unperturbed.

They skittered forwards and assaulted Deathleaper

He killed a couple but was swarmed asunder giving Josh First Blood and a healthy dose of VPS. Meanwhile the Command Barge assaulted the Genestealers in the centre ruin, killing a couple and the C'tan headed for the Stealers in the DZ ruin and may have killed the brood [or was this Josh's First Blood?]. A unit of Scarabs also assaulted the Stealers, only killing a couple due to the difference in Weapon Skill and strength/toughness.

With the Scarabs exposed the Carnifex peppered them with Brainleech worms, double strength insta-killing 9 bases!

The Flyrant also made use of Brainleech living ammo to shoot the C'tan.

Who promptly exploded, somehow it must have been ground as it only took one wound. Not sure how that happened.

With no other targets the remaining Genestealer assaulted the already engaged Scarabs and wiped them out. Meanwhile some of the Spyders took wounds.

The unengaged Stealers in the centre ruin joined their brood siblings and attacked the barge.

With some heavy duty Rending hits

The Command Barge was gone and thankfully didn't reanimate. A healthy crop of VPs for me.

Some strange smoke erupted from the wrecked vehicle! What? I'm forging a narrative here!

I think that Obyron joining the Warriors there, hoping to take out the wounded Flyrant.

Yet more Scarabs, and they're hungrily looking at all that Bastion to eat because I bubble wrapped the Carnifex.

    

Half the Scarabs assaulted the Hive Guard I think I came out better only losing one Hive Guard but we're all Fearless so we remain locked.

The Scarabs get they're nibblers on the Bastion

 

And reduce it to a sloppy mess, taking the Quad Gun and the Venomthrope with it.

With the Flyrant on the ground everyone assaults and Obyron accepts the Flyrants challenge and gets eaten.

As the ground up pieces of living metal fall to the ground they coalesce back into the Necron hero and his learning protocols remove all challenge acceptance confirmations for a Tyranid bioform of this scale.

Spyders eat through a brood of Genestealers.

Carnifex assaults the other Spyders, does some damage but comes off just as bad with MC Vs MC.

The Flyrant bashes Warriors but still can't get to Obyron, the Spyders head to break the stalemate.

More spawned gaunts join the Hive Guard but they begin to take casualties and the melee remains locked.

Helbrutes finally materialise, they put some damge on a Tervigon but mostly it remains unharmed.

Eventually time is called and we tot up the results 793 +2VP [Line Breaker and Slay the Warlord] to Josh's 919 +3VP. I was actually quite surprised I didn't do more damage and had been lucky as a lot of  my units were not passed the half strength mark so hadn't scored. I know I killed a lot of scarabs, which aren't much points but the Command Barge wasn't cheap. Perhaps the relief I felt not having to tackle the Helbrutes backfired in that essentially those points never got a chance to be secured by me, although I'm not so sure what could have taken them, probably the Carnifex...

Anyway, aside from the super quick deployment [all things considered] this was another typical first game loss but a fun game. Josh was quite apologetic about his list but although Scarab swarms aren't a fun concept I never once felt I wasn't enjoying the game and as I said at the beginning experience is no guarantee for success. Anyway, on to game two.

Josh and I mid game from From the Fang

Blog Wars 8 - The Aftermath

Saturday was Blog Wars 8 and I had so much fun With PeteB, Liam and Ben. We all went as a group, PeteB taking his Space Wolves, Liam his Dark Eldar and Ben taking my arch-nemesis - Necrons. We all had a great time despite a less than stellar succes right [in gaming terms]. According to the results I came 18th, with Ben typically taking the best slot out of our group - 10th [although he faced some unique new combos that finally taught his crons 'fear']. PeteB came 22nd and Liam was dead last at 26th.

PeteB's Space Wolves

On the plus side that won him the coveted Wooden Spoon Prize, Certificate and £5 voucher for Element Games and on his birthday too! But the prizes didn't end there, PeteB picked up a spot prize when one of his unit was killed when his blast weapon deviated onto his own Thunderwolves. He picked up a pack of Tactical Objective cards for the failure and gifterd them to Liam [as it was his birthday.

Liam's Dark Eldar

Then Liam won best painted army [I cam 2nd], another £15 voucher for Element Game, and on his birthday he even picked up best Character for a further £10 voucher. to cap it all PeteB won a Voidraven bomber in the raffle and then 'on his birthday' Liam won a Muderfang Dreadnought so Liam and PeteB promptly swapped prizes. We owned BW8!

Ben's Necrons

Hive Feleet Gorgon - Ferron Splinter Fleet

I even managed to discover about a dozen packs of Tactical objective cards in the Element Games shop, they're right there on the counter and you can order online, although if you get chanc eto visit it is like Aladdin's Cave.

I did take pictures so hopefully I'll get some battle reports done. The only real downside to the day had nothing to do with the tournament or the games but the fact when I came to unpack my army at the start of the day, which hasn't been touched since Armies on Parade. I seem to be missing my CORE toolbox, not to mention a takeaway tub full of my latest Genestealers

Admittedly it doesn't look like this inside now, but it does contain my Warriors, Primes, some Stealers, both Broodlords and assorted odds and sods. Luckily I had sufficent models to make do in all my games but when I returned home I could find no sign of either of these in our back room. Of course it's full of allsorts at the moment but the CORE box would at least stand out. I can only imagine I left it at GW after Armies on Parade but can't contact them until Wednesday and I'd expect they would have tried to let me know if I had left stuff

Either way it put a downer on what was an otherwise fantastic day. Fingers crossed it'll turn up somewhere and we'll all make BW9 and 10

• Blog Wars 9 - Saturday 6th June 2015
• Blog Wars 10 - Saturday 7th November 2015

UPDATE:

The CORE box was indeed left at GW after AoP the manager even let me know on the Facebook group but I think my Swiss cheese addled home DiY brain excised that info from my brain, maybe it was the Inquisition? I think I even said in reply it would give me reason to return for my silver medal. The Stealers on the other hand... I think they may be hiding under some new curtains or a loo brush ;)