Throne of Skulls March 2016 - Battle 1, Tyranids Vs Tau

Game 1, back at Warhammer World after two years. We were starting a little later than previous visits but table numbers were on display from doors open so I was able to get a head start on unpacking while I put stuff out on the table I casually glanced at the next table where I saw a Warhound Titan being set up opposite a Tau KX139 Ta’unar Supremacy Armour but I thought ‘let them have at it’ and admired the Warhound at length, well it was red and shiny.

With my army unpacked and having had a couple of chats with people about the Skyshield I popped into Bugman’s to join the guys and have my breakfast. Halfway through my bacon and egg butty I needed to see if anyone had set up opposite and I could see what I was facing and have time to formulate a strategy while finishing breakfast. As I glanced across the tables from the other direction it was the Ta’unar Supremacy Armour that stood out and a cold dread trickled down my spine as mistakenly thought he was on my table. I quickly realised my mistake, breathed a sigh of relief as I saw my table was still empty and went and finished my butty.

Time to begin and as I’m stood waiting for my opponent there’s a small discussion going on next to me and I hear the Tau player say “well at least I don’t have far to go”… and so I got to meet Dan and his Ta’unar Supremacy Armour as he moved across one table! Oh sh…

Psychic Powers Winged Tyrant Tervigon Zoanthrope Broodkin Magus Dominion Dominion Dominion Psychic Shriek The Horror Warp Blast Warp Blast Shrouding Catalyst Paroxysm Dominate Broodlord Dominion The Horror

The low down:

• Into The Maelstrom - Contact Lost and 'Carnage points' for killed units. Vanguard Strike
• Warlord Trait - Warlord and three units Infiltrate
• Night fighting first turn, won deployment, elected to go second!

I needed to keep as far away from the Ta'unar as possible, which is way I gave up deployment, with hindsight that was probably a mistake.  Rippers are in the Spore Pod and Genestealer with Broodlord are outflanking [no I don't know why either]. I'll probably struggle to keep track of what went on as Maelstrom games are difficult to follow, moreso when I don't have a great record of Dan's cards.

Dan advanced forewards on my left.

The Ta'unar was opposite the Broodkin.

The Ta'unar focussed fire predominantly on the Skyshield, taking out the Venomthrope for First Blood, reducing my cover save and I became reliant on the Skyshield Invulnerable save. Unfortunately it couldn't help the Flyrant on the ground who took 3 wounds.

That'll teach me for having it under the Skyshield instead of on top but I feared those apocalyptic blasts on the table.

My objective for this turn.

Flyrants swoops forward and I think targets the Ghostkeel. The Devilfish gets wrecked by the Hive Guard, potentially with help from the Carnifex. Unfortunately those are Breechers who disembark so he's about to get roasted. I manage to score my VP but the other Devilfish's contents disembark from it meaning I don't secure that objective for next turn, meaning I'll only get three cards. The Tervigon spawns out first turn on 9.

The Culexus assassin does some damage

I think it gets in range of the objective to take me back down to 2 cards next turn :(

The Ta'unar manages to destroy the Broodkin, thannks to markerlights from the Pathfinders.

Breechers put an end to the carnifex

And their colleagues do the same to the other one.

The Zoanthrope also gets killed. This turn Dan gets 1 VP for 'supressing fire'.

The Genestealer arrive from reserve. And I pick two objective cards, which I can score with ease, if the drop pod arrives... which it does. Objective 1 is in front of the Ta'unar and although the pod deviates the Rippers get out and capture the objective.

The last of the Purestrains goes for the Culexus but it was a foolish plan.

The Culexus wipes it out with ease.

I manage to cull some of the Breechers to give me space round objective 5, meaning I now have this one too, to score 2 VPs.

Dan's turn and the Stealth Suits get an angle ont he Hive Guard, who'd whittled them down to two.

Breechers and Devilfish advance.

Trying to kill off the last of the Carnifex, but he somehow survives.

The Ta'unar charges the Genestealers, which if it kills them in combat will secure a VP for Dan.

The Stealers attack...

and amazingly I get three rending hits on it. Unfortunately it passes one Invul save and subsequently Feel no Pains the two remainders [bloomin Gargantuans!]. They then get stomped for their troubles giving Dan the VP, plus one for holding objective 3.

I pick up this card but it's deep in Tau territory, making it almost impossible to achieve

With nothing much else to do the Nids go on a killing spree, shooting the Breechers with abandon. The Tau can't handle firepower of such magnitude and both squads break and run, the squad in front of the Carnifex sprinting 12" to get away from him. The Stealth suits also break and run, the entire Tau front line melting back to their own deployment zone.

Dan pulls cards to get VPs for holding objective 1 [the Ta'unar had killed the Rippers and consolidated onto it after killing the Stealers] and objective 6 but he also gets a card that pays out 1VP for every 5 models killed [it is Carnage afterall].

Sorry, my notes are confusing here alongside the pictures. Somehow the Carnifex gets out of the ruins

setting his sights on the Breechers

making a significant charge

killing two with Hammer of Wrath

He remains on two wounds

While the spawned gaunts get to grips with the Devilfish

Wrecking it with glancing blows

The Hive Guard advance

The Ta'unar targets the Tervigon with all it's firepower

and manages to pop it!

8 of the big brood of gaunts burst through Synaptic Feedback and so do the Gaunts that just wrecked the Devilfish killing 17 in total on top of their brood mother [that's 3 victory points right there]

The Ta'unar also manages to kill the Tyrranocyte and secure objective 2 for another VP AND having killed 3 units that's 3 VPs = 7VPs, but wait... just as I'm about to start my turn I realise I need to do a morale check on the big blob, they fail and bolt 7" to my board edge and foolishly one of them is only 4 inches away. I lose the remaining models making a total model kill tally of 32, another 3 VPs scoring Dan 10 [plus I think another 2 for something else I can;t work out]

The game has tipped over, we've ten minutes left for my turn and I think Dan was on 17 VPs total as a lone Stealth suit on my right flank easily makes line breaker unopposed. I'm on 3 VPs with these cards

The Hive Guard manage to end the Ghostkeel, giving me Giant Slayer, just. I also manage to get Onbjective 3 with the Flyrant, but not before removing the Tau Warlord for Slay the Warlord and also gaining Line Breaker.

The Breechers flee from the Carnifex but he's too slow to catch them. I think I finish the game on 7 VPs to 17. Totting up the Carnage points Dan has managed to kill every one of my 120 starting points but with the 9 spawned gaunts gone as well I just have 9 remaining on the table in the form three wounds on the Hive Guard, two wounds on Carnifex and one wound left on the Flyrant. I manage to dish out just 40 Carnage points in return.

So, game one is a loss and the Ta'unar was pretty much instrumental in that catastrophic collapse of my army in turn 4, but really it was the cards - delivering so many VPs in one turn. So overall I didn;t feel slaughtered, even if what was left on the board of the nids was minimal. That said the Tau had just a couple of breechers, a Stealth suit and the Ta'unar, which is worth 600pts on it's own.

Anyway, a sound drubbing but it didn't feel that way, whether that's because of how quick it went down, whether it was the cards falling right for Dan or pretty much believing the Supremacy Suit was beyond my grasp anyway so what I did achieve despite was a victory in my eyes I don't know. Suffice to say I was surprisingly bouyant, it had been a great game, and Dan had been good fun. Lunch and then game 2

Throne of Skulls update.

Just a quick update on the weekend, it's going to take me a while to do the battle reports, which means I'll probably forget a lot of things but what can you do? Still, this is the headline, one of my gaming buddies only went and won the whole tournament!

And unbelievably it was Scott [on the left] who was graciously trying to share the trophy with the guy who'd come second, who he'd just played, who had given him the favourite game votes that elevated him to four votes meaning he won outright! Now I understand that's a contentious issue among visitors to Warhammer World, that it may have descended into some kind of popularity contest but knowing Scott I know he thoroughly deserves it, despite only having one game of 40k in 2 years [and that was last week].

These weekends are about having fun and with no restrictions on army lists the organisers want to reward good gameplay, not just winning. So you can bring your beardy lists but if you win at all costs you may not make any friends in the process. That said I think Liam won three games in 2 turns or under and still managed to get 3 best game votes so I guess theirs winning gracefully and beating your opponent.

All that said when the spirit of events like this and Blog Wars, where WAAC is not the primary goal it's nice to see even the part-time gamer can come away with a top prize. And if that's not what you think a tournament should be, I understand and luckily there are events to cater for that formalised  'best army and general on the day' but for me, I'm after fun.

And I had an absolute blast, these guys were thoroughly entertaining and fun to be around, genuine friends with a shared passion in the hobby and creative talents one and all.

Painting wise, none of came away with awards this time, the competition was fierce in all categories and nominations for best army went to just three, but Liam Otty and I did get 'honorable mentions' alongside a number of others. The best army did win in the end, here's Alexis Pollux from it [who also won best character], I'll be posting more pics eventually.

There were also some interesting things in the shop ;)

Amazing scenery

BEER!

£10 burgers!

£5 chips

Good times...

...and shocking dice rolls

and one of the best trips to Warhammer World ever! I will try to make sense of it all as soon possible and hopefully get an update on the AdSense competition [still keep clicking to guarantee second prize] which with the end of the month deadline means I need to put up more info for entrants so you can know what to do.

Throne of Skulls - Prologue

Right about now I should be on my way to Warhammer World. Liam, Ben, Scott, Otty and myself will be en route in the Otty's 'battle wagon'. We've got a table booked for Friday evening so we'll be having a 2 Vs 3 match, 'nids Vs Orks/Eldar/Tau - now that's an unholy alliance! Anyway, I finally settled on my list, which you can see below. I went with option 1, the twin Hive Guard and Gargoyles, [alongside the rest of my choices].

I have to print out 11 copies of these - one to give to the events staff, one for each of my five opponents to keep and then I use the other five to keep track of my games. It could probably have done to have been tweaked to better help with the Maelstrom missions but I don't know what the cards will be as the 'Carnage' deck seems to have a few different ones. That said it's a lot of work to create as I trim the pages of all the black surround so they're all rough edged. Once they were all complete [and the typesetting was a pretty farce too] I packed them ready and then started to doubt the Gargoyles, I just don't want to use them. They'll slow the game down, they're a pain to move and to transport, but what do I do?

I suddenly realised where I could save points - dump the Children of Cryptus. They're not ob-sec, they're overpriced and by switching to the min Stealer and Broodlord I keep the Psychic power, keep the Broodlord [which I wanted to enter as a unit in the painting comp] and I can have both the two Hive Guard and a Dakkafex! That's my high strength Impaler guns, rule of cool, two scoring units and 12 twin linked shots on an MC... one snag I was short 5 points, so I dropped the tunnelling on the Rippers - they're either going to start on the board or in the Tyrannocyte anyway...

So I re-jigged the list, printed, cut and finished and I'm much happier. Then I realised the Carnifex can be my unit of models in the painting comp as it can be 5 models or 3 of any on a base bigger than 50mm. The Broodlord can be the Individual and my Flyrant can be my MC entry. Anyway, all good, bring on the Carnage.