Blog wars 3 game 1

After a long night finishing off my Tervigon, I arrived at Maelstrom games for the third blog wars feeling a mixture of sleep deprivation, excitement and apprehension at the upcoming games. Having seen Alex and drawn a random table number, I headed over to see which army fate had decided I would be facing.

There was no other player at table 8 at the moment, just a pile of grey knights on the table behind, left unattended and staring menacingly back at me……ah, crap.

One of the very armies I dreaded facing and it looked like I would be facing them in the first round. His army consisted of the following:

Special character with bird (can’t remember his name)

2 x 9 purifiers (halberds and psycannons) rhinos

2 x dreadknight (one with the large sword, both with the mega incinerators and jump generators)

2 x pysflemen dreadnoughts (1 venerable)

4 x henchmen squads in psybacks

(sorry if I forgot anything)

Game was to be a pitched battle, kill points.

My plan was to deploy forward, using my hive guard to take out his rhinos, cast feel no pain on the trygons or the swarmlord depending on where I though the most threat would be coming from. Then move up the field hoping that shadow in the warp would prevent him getting his force weapon mojo on. I would use spawned gaunts to tie up the dreadknights in combat, where possible, then divert the swarmlord to finish them off (realistically the only unit I have capable of defeating a dreadknight). Which I thought was a fine plan/forlorn hope, until my opponent seized the initiative.

My opponent moved his rhinos and dreadknights up, the razorbacks and dreadnoughts held back. His opening salvos didn’t do an awful lot of damage, a few dead gaunts from the dreadknights and a couple of wounds on a trygon plus a dead hive guard.

I moved up trying to keep my monstrous creatures in as much cover as possible while also trying to keep my bigger gribblies covered with shadow in the warp. FNP was cast on the wounded trygon and the swarmlord unit, my hive guard tried to move as much out of sight as possible. I spawned some gaunts, however I forgot to move them (this was to cost me a trygon). My gaunts ran ahead of my trygons on both sides (this was where moving the newly spawned gaunts in front of the trygon rather than a depleted squad would have saved me). The hive guard took out one of the purifiers rhinos.

One of the dreadknights shunted to get out of swarmlords charge range, the other moved towards my trygon hiding behind the depleted squad. Concentrated fire from the grey knights took out the depleted squad of gaunts exposing my trygon to the charge. While the rest of the knights fire pattered of the swarmlord and trygon like a light summers rain, (I failed about 2-3 FNP saves in this game – Sorry Matt, I blame the new dice). The trygon was charged by the dreadknight, whose sword left 3 gaping wounds in the beast, my return attacks did jack all. Fortunately Matt failed his leadership test due to SITW. My shooting was fairly ineffective, the hive guard proving to be just out of range of the other rhino, although swarmy did manage to paroxysm the rhinoless purifiers. The dreadknight that shunted was just in charge range of my gaunts. With a little bit of luck they could hold it in combat until swarmy arrived to deliver the killing blow. The trygon was finished off by the dreadknight in combat.

The dreadknight now finshed with the trygon worked round to the tervigon at the back of my deployment lines. While the paroxysm affected purifiers ran for cover. Once again the grey knights fire pattered more or less harmlessly off my beasties, the still living trygon, took another couple of wounds I think. The dreadnight engaged with the termagants smashed a couple more, leaving 1 alive after passing it’s fearless wound (yes). The other dreadknight charged into my tervigon causing 2 wounds and taking 1 in return. My genestealers turned up on the left flank, while my surviving trygon positioned itself to charge the purifiers still in their rhino. The swarmlord moved up to show the dreadknight who the boss is. My engaged tervigon spawned another 16 gaunts. Every gaunt I had available charged into the dreadknight, about 35 all told (16 with preferred enemy). I did however forget about furious charge which would have seen me striking before the dreadknight (I think) and struck at the same time. About 25 wounds inflicted later the dreadknight was stopped his sword had impaled the tervigon though (causing about 13 gaunts to die). The swarmlord effortlessly batted the dreadknight aside, the pilot barely realising what was upon him before 4 bonesabres sliced in through his ancient suit of terminator armour. The other highlight was the genestealers at the back of the board. I had charged them into the dreadnoughts at the back with the hopes of just tying them up for a few turns, and with the multi charge hopefully damage the razorbacks. To my shock and awe though, each squad ripped through the dreadnoughts, tearing them apart in a frenzy of sixes. The trygon also took out the other purifiers rhino.

The squad of purifiers that had run for cover backed away from the swarmlord (or ran bravely towards the 2 squads of genestealers, whichever way you want to look at it). The newly transportless purifiers opened up on the trygon that had smashed their transport apart, taking its final wound. All available psybacks opened up on a squad of genestealers, leaving none alive. Other shooting saw a squad of hive guard finished off. The purifiers charged the surviving squad of genestealers killing them all for no loss. My swarmlord moved up the board towards a razorback, however he failed to reach it in combat, the hive guard wrecked another razorback.

The purifiers that had killed the genestealers held firm and opened fire at the FNPed hive guard, killing one. The other purifiers fired at the swarmlord killing one of the tyrant guard. The swarmlord charged into the squad of purifiers the remaining tyrant guard was killed, but they were stuck in combat till the end of turn 7 when the swarmlord emerged victorious. Yay, shooting cost me the final venomthrope in the grey knights turn.

With a tally up of kill points, the grey knights player was in the lead by 2 kill points, victory points were 1229 to the grey knights and 1225 to the tyranids. So a really close game and far more impressive then my last outing against grey knights. Matt was a great opponent and hopefully he enjoyed the game as well. With such a hard fought game that came pretty close to the wire at times it was hugely enjoyable.