Saturday, November 20, 2010

BATTLE REPORT: 1850 Nid Annihilation

So, since I skipped posting on Thursday all of you lucky, beautiful Internet people get a special Saturday post of Humanity Defending goodness! Today I have a battle report for you all available in both video and text forms (after the jump) detailing one of the first games that I had at my new club here in Madison, WI. Hope you enjoy!

p.s. don't forget to vote on my Ogre Champion poll on the right!






For those of you who prefer the textiness, here you go:

Mission: Annihilation
Deployment: Spearhead (i.e. table quarters)

My list:
CCS with 4 plasmaguns, plasma pistol in a Chimera (HF/ML)
PCS with 2 flamers and an AC in a Chimera (HF/ML)
IS with AC/GL, commissar and sgt with power weapons
IS with AC/GL, sgt with power weapon and meltabomb
IS with AC/GL
IS with no upgrades
HWS with 3 AC
SWS with 3 flamers
2 Veteran squads with 3 meltaguns, AC and Chimera (HF/ML)
2 Vendettas
Leman Russ Executioner with PC sponsons and hull HB
LRBT with hull HB
Manticore with hull HF

His list:
Hive Tyrant with wings, lash whip and bonesword, lots of upgrades
Alphawarrior with paired bone swords, regen
2 Hive Guard
1 Zoanthrope
4 Warriors with lash whip/bonesword, deathspitters and one venom cannon
22 Hormagaunts
2 squads of 14 devourer Gants
8 Ymgarl Genestealers
4 Raveners with spinefists
Carnifex with adrenal glands and regen

He won the roll to deploy first and did so thusly:
 Raveners and Tyrant chose to deep strike while the Hormagaunts outflanked.
 I on the other hand castled up. Since the game was kill points I decided to combine all of my infantry squads rather than leave one in a Vendetta. The SWS also started on foot to lend some flamery counter attack to any outflanking Hormagaunts.

Turn 1a: Not much happens. His forces move up a bit, and I think 3 guardsmen die to Hive Guard guns.
Turn 1b: It begins raining steel and lasers. Approximately half of his forces are wiped out as his Carnifex, Zoanthrope, Hive Guard, half a Gant squad and the Warriors are felled by the combined fire of my army. The Warriors were all slaughtered by a SINGLE MANTICORE ROUND. Strength 10 for the win I guess.

Turn 2a: his hormagaunts and Ymgarls come in from reserve, the former assaulting my wall of Guardsmen...
 ... while the Ymgarls pop up among my lines and blow up my LRBT.
Turn 2b: retributive fire from my Chimeras eliminate the Ymgarls. One squad of Gants is eliminated single handedly by the Leman Russ Executioner and the other squad is cut down to a single Gant plus the now attached Prime.

Turn 3a: Hive Tyrant and Raveners arrive from reserve, deep striking near my lines. Hormagaunts whittle down my blob squad to just the Commissar and half a heavy weapons team, the former despite my best efforts to get him killed.
Turn 3b: Again, firepower wipes the board clean as the Raveners are burned, the Tyrant melta'ed and Plasma'd. The Hormagaunts break free at last.

Turn 4a: The Hormies wipe out a SWS
Turn 4b: see below
I wipe out the Hormagaunts and eliminate the Prime and his single Gant bodyguard. Game ends with wipe out.


Afterthoughts:

On my end I did great. The army worked well together and nearly every element contributed to success. Some things I'm not sure about continue to be the autocannons in the Vet squads. While lending some long range punch in theory I'm not sure if I'll ever actually use them as they tend to be moving most of the time.

As to my opponent, if he had started up closer to the center line and deployed more things at the start I think he would have done better. Why his close combat warriors were deployed towards the back of his deployment zone I do not know, as I have plenty of guns that can reach that far back. If the Tyrant, Raveners, Warriors and Carnifex all charged me at once there'd be a very good chance that at least one would manage to break through my lines and cause some havoc, especially once the Ymgarls and Hormagaunts got involved. There were also lots of seemingly unnecessary upgrades, like the copious amounts of regeneration, guns on the Raveners, and seeming need to deck everything out like a Christmas tree. Finally, more anti-tank is needed; if you aren't maxing out your Elites slot as Tyranids then you are doing something wrong.

Still, the game was a good example of exactly how much firepower my list can throw out as well as the effectiveness of castling up in KP games. I hope you enjoyed the report, and I'll be chatting at you again soon.

2 comments:

Gotthammer said...

A convincing win, and your guys look great on the field with their bases all done up - my favourite pic is the second one with them all lined up infront of the Chimeras and Valks.

Max said...

Thanks! Yeah, the aerial shots really help bring out the theme of my army. Now if I can just nail down an army list/build more models so that I can have all of the suits more or less equally represented...