Tourney Prep: 1850 Tyranids vs Ultramarines

Marsh and Pat has suggested that I take part in the next 40k tournament. Now, those who have followed the blog for a long while, will know that I took part in Sporecon 2011 which actually marred the tournament experience for me. It was because I went in with the wrong expectations. I did not expect to see fully cheesed up lists and ridiculous combos. Granted, the boyz at ABO, we play efficient lists (with the exception of Sam), but the combos that I saw in 2011 blew us out of the water. 

That said, forward to 2015. 4 years and the meta not only changed but ABO grew to include Marshall. He loves to game the system and brings hard lists. 

He will be my sparring buddy for this series of tourney prep. 

Just in: it seems that Marsh forgot to put the deposit for my entry fee and I cannot participate in the tourney. Nonetheless, the game I had yesterday was still very fun and engaging. Hope you guys enjoy it. 

Mission: 

Primary - following Maelstrom Mission and each player draws up to 3 cards at the start of his turn. Player may drop a card at the end of his turn. If there are objectives that is impossible to score (e.g. Demolitions and your opponent does not have Fortifications) you do not auto discard.

Secondary - Kill Points: each KP is worth 1VP at the end of the game. 

The batrep has fewer photos as I was focusing on the game a bit more. Hopefully the recaps will help. 

Standard DoW deployment

I brought the Living Artillery Node so took the largest ruin on my side. With 2 Venomthropes, this granted my Warriors and the Venomthrope a 2+ Cover Save. On the other side, I deployed the Tervigon with another Venomthrope for a 3+ Cover Save. I also had the First Turn unless Marsh could steal it.

I spread my Gants out across the table as I knew that Marsh had 3 Drop Pods waiting with Meltaguns and Plasma guns so I had to bubble wrap the LAN in the ruins. Space Marines have a tendency to drop under AP2 blast templates!

First turn to the Nids and I spread out the Gants with the Flyrants in the middle supporting a Turn 2 push

Nothing much happened in Turn 1 owing to being out of range. My Biovores tried but failed to wound anything. The Tervigon did not birth any babies as the KP game was on and I did not want to give out free KP.

Scored one Objective

I usually take pictures of the objectives but for this game I forgot. Will do it moving forward.

Ultramarines make the drop

Turn 1 saw 2 Drop Pods arriving. The Ultramarines focused majority of their fire on my large unit of Hormagants who dropped till only 6 remained. Then the heavy weapons took 4 wounds off my Tervigon. I now had to birth babies or risk losing everything.

Turn 2 and 3

Both of my pods came in

I sent one Tyrannocyte up to the forest to threaten the Devastators camping in the ruins and the other Tyrannocyte to my mid table. This would allow me to threaten a few units at the same time. Focusing all my shooting, I managed to kill off the Marines in the centre of the table to gain positional advantage again. I did however ignore the Drop Pod which will come and haunt me in the later stages of the game.

Small advance by the Marines in their Turn 2

I respond by Swooping my Flyrant up in their face. Knowing that I could get Catalyst off meant that I could weather at least one round of shooting from them. Also, Marsh had used up majority of his tactical doctrines by now. He was down to the Assault Doctrine.

Tyranid at the bottom of Turn 3

By the end of my Turn 3, I managed to thin the Warlord's bike unit down to 2 Bikes. I had also managed to destroy the unit of Devastators in the ruins with a charge from my Toxicrene. I had middle ground but did not realise that the Drop Pod in my backline was Obsec! I had 2 Objective Cards 1! It came back to haunt me! This was the mistake of the game for me.

In the Ultramarine turn, Marsh moved his Warlord unit up to take out my Tyrannocyte and the Hormagaunts. He was basically targetting small units to get the objective Supremacy.

Turn 4 and 5

Swooped my Flyrants back to my lines for Synapse and support

I brought my Flyrants back to my lines to take out the remaining Drop Pods and Marines. Also, I wanted to kill off the Ultramarine Warlord to get an extra KP and Slay the Warlord.

Game end

This was one of the most entertaining games I had in a long time. When 2 armies which are about equally matched with a balanced scenario that is loosely based off of the LVO ruleset, 40k becomes entertaining again. That said, we were both playing this in a competitive but friendly type of atmosphere, allowing each other to take back moves or make moves that they missed if it meant a tighter game (e.g. Gants running in the turn they missed it and they were in a corner).

We tallied up the objective cards and KP. Marshall scored 17 for the Ultramarines and I scored 20 for the Tyranids! I actually thought I had lost the game due to the Drop Pod stopping me from scoring 2 Objectives for 2 turns. Really goes to show you that it is important to keep your eyes on the prize and never give up.

I am looking forward to our next game.