catalyst2 | Battle #29

Last night was 1000 points against Dave's 'Nids. He's still putting the army together so asked if we could ignore FOC's which I was fine with. The mission was Capture and Control and deployment was Spearhead. I took 4 HB/flamer Tactical squads, two 5-man sniper scout squads and two Whirlwinds whilst he took 4 three-man Warrior squads and eight twenty-man (I think) gaunt squads. Each warrior squad was paired with one hormagaunt and one spinegaunt squad.

I bunkered back as far as possible with the two whirlwinds in the center behind a line of four tactical squads with a scout squad on each end of the line.

Turn one - he went first and moved forward. I fired two whirlwind rounds and two gaunt squads were almost totally eliminated and I also got one of this warriors. The four heavy bolters fired and killed 12 more gaunts - perfect hit/wound rolling. All ten scouts fired and either missed or failed to wound - so much for picking off the warriors with the snipers!

Turn two - he moved forward again, just for a change! Dave configures his warriors to be shooty and shoot they did - one sniper squad was down to one and the other down the three. The tactical squads took no wounds. The forward most gaunts got to the lone sniper and all eight attacked, caused a single wound which he saved. He killed one. Dave's plan had been to get close this round but because of that lone scout that squad got held up. In my turn I fired and what a round of firing it was - both whirlwinds scored direct hits, each taking out 10+ gaunts whilst the HB's again did a perfect round - 12 shots, 12 dead but the single shot bolters were also amazingly effective. Every single one of his forward most gaunts were eliminated meaning it would be another round before he got any significant numbers into CC with me. In the one combat, the lone scout survived again and killed a gaunt too.

Turn three - he again moved forward and got a couple of units in charge range but they were much reduced in size so a little less of a threat to me. His shooting was again effective - two of the three-man sniper squad died as did four marines, two in squad and one in each of two other squads. This was obviously the turn where the game went one way or the other because he could tie up two tactical squads in CC, effectively halving my firepower next turn. My only hope was that his squad in CC were small enough that it might be OK. Of course he charged, and tangled up two tactical squads - and then an extraordinary thing happened - he lost both combats, in fact only inflicting a single casualty on me whilst every one of his gaunts died in CC. If my round of shooting before was amazing, this one was stunning. Both Whirlwinds made direct hits again, both taking enormous chunks out of his rear units and taking second wounds off five of his warriors. He had a whole pile of units in rapid fire range now and they paid the price. The HB's finally lost their perfect record but were still very effective - nine dead - and the rapid-firing bolters were devastating. All he had left were a handful of gaunts and about half of his warriors.

Turn four - he charged everything he could and every gaunt unit got into combat. Because the warriors had been kept back to shoot and to maintain synapse along the line, they were still too far out to get into combat. The gaunts caused four casualties (including the last of the sniper scouts) but two of the four tactical squads managed to kill all of their opponents. In my turn, a combination of the two Whirlwinds and the HB's/bolters killed everything bar his last two or three Warriors and the CC killed the last few straggling gaunts.

Turn five - the warriors fired, charged and did their best but it was too litle too late and they all died.

Result: Victory to me by total annihilation of the enemy army.

Wahat I learned tonight:
1) As scary as Tyranid armies look, if I hold my nerve and carefully select targets, I can do immense amounts of damage, to the extent that the force is near ineffective by the time it gets in contact with me.
2) I'm also not fooled by tonight's result - if that had been 2000 points with carnifexes and a Hive tyrant etc thrown into the equation, it would not have been anything like as easy.

My W-L-D record is now 22-7-0