1850pt League Game (comp)

I had the chance to play Smitty for one of my league games this week!  Smitty is a tough opponent and our games always end up very close.  In fact, I believe we've played to draws in 3 of our 4 matches several of which were killpoint games.

Smitty's Eldar
Farseer + both runes
Avatar
10 wraith guard, warlock w/ conceal
10 dire avengers w/ defend
10 guardians, warlock w/ conceal, shuriken cannon
10 storm guardians, warlock w/ destructor, 2 flamers, wave serpent w/ scatter laser
7 pathfinders
3 jet bikes w/ 1 cannon
Wraithlord w/ scatter laser, sword
Viper w/ scatter laser
2 war walkers w/ scatter lasers

My Nids
Tyranid Prime - lw/bs, scytals, ts
3x hive guard
3x zoanthropes
Tervigon - cat, ts, ag, cs
10x termagants
20x genestealers
3x raveners - rc's
20x gargoyles - ts, ag
Harpy - tlhvc, cs
Tyrannofex - rc
Carnifex - tl dev's

The table

We rolled 2 objectives and pitched battle (same as my last league game hehe).  Smitty won first turn.  This is going to hurt!  He places his objective table center next to ruins.  He fills up the ruins with pathfinders and guardians.  Mc's go next to the ruins with avengers behind wraith guard and attached farseer (banshees are proxying for wraith guard).   He reserves the bikes.

War walkers go on the flank with storm guardians in the serpent (2 lords are proxying for walkers).

I had a hard time with deployment.  Coming out of the GT with my competitive list, I have a hard time choosing placement for a comp list with all these different tools.  I end up putting hive guard, tyrannofex, and raveners with prime on the same side as his armor (I should have attached the prime to the hive guard as he didn't have any str8 shooting to ID the raveners).

Tervigon and gants went into the ruin with my objective.  Zoans front and center screening the dakkafex.  Gargoyles towards my flank.  Harpy went to the far flank.  I didn't know what to do with it really, I should have reserved it.  I didn't want it to get torrented by lasers and I thought the hive guard and tfex could handle all his armor.  Genestealers infiltrated into the center ruin.  This ended up being bad for me also.  I try to seize and fail...

Smitty's turn 1...  Fortune goes on the wraithstar and guide on the lord.  He moves the mc's up and shifts the wraithstar and avenger units away from my genestealers.  Here's where I realized the genestealer placement is actually pushing him towards my weak side.  Guess I need to practice with them more.  I should have put them into the trees by the walkers.  He opens up with tons of lasers and drops a hive guard.  Snipers rend the tfex twice.

My turn 1... Harpy passes instinctive and flies next to the genestealers who jump out of the ruin.  Gargoyles fly up and partially screen the genestealers.  Everything else advances and gargoyles get FnP.  Hive guard drop one walker.  Tfex explodes the wave serpent.  Everything else is out of range or fails to hurt the wraithstar with fortune.  As sad as it is, this was probably the best turn I had hehe. 

Smitty's turn 2...  His bikes arrive and make for the genestealers.  Everything else shifts over more.  Shooting kills 7 genestealers (I'm failing covers left and right) and puts another wound on hive guard.  Not too bad though as the wraithstar haven't fired yet.  Snipers rend the tfex 2 more times.

My turn 2... This is my lynchpin turn.  Harpy fails instinctive behaviour, joy.  Gargoyles jump up in the wraithstar's face and genestealers run towards them.  Gargoyles get FnP again as the only beneficial unit in range.  Zoans move up with dakkafex behind.  Hive guard drop the last walker and tfex blows the laser off the vyper.  Dakkafex puts 2 wounds on the avatar.  Not too bad...

Raveners advancing towards guardians.  The battlefoam shape is the crater from the wave serpent.

Gargoyles assault the wraithstar and genestealers multi avengers and wraith.  This was probably my biggest mistake of the game. 

Gargoyles kill 1 wraith, genestealers kill 2 avengers (wiff).  I lose combat by 3 (gargoyles failing FnP rolls like crazy).  Gargoyles are fealess from zoanthropes, but genestealers fail leadership and run from dire avengers.  Had I not put 1 genestealer on the wraith, they would have won combat.

Smitty's turn 3...  Here's where it starts sinking in that I may have to play for a draw as all my offensive units are failing me.  He dooms the fleeing genestealers.  Shooting kills another hive guard.  Bikes and avengers unload into the genestealers and kill all but 1 who is out of synapse and I'll just let him run off rather than displace zoans or the tervigon to save him.

He assaults gargoyles with the avatar and with the farseer and wraigh guard, whipe them out.

My turn 3...  Ok now he has several wraith guard with the farseer, avatar, and wraith lord midfield heading for my objective and several turns left.  I'm almost out of heavy hitters to stop them.  I spawn 11 gants (5,5,1) and the tervigon is out.  I give them FnP.  So I need to stop the guard from shooting because they'll 1-shot my remaining mc's.  I decide the gaunts are going to try and tarpit the wraith guard and everything else is going to get in the way and try to stop him from getting to my objective.  Hive guard blow another weapon off the vyper.  Dakkafex unloads on the avatar again, but he makes every save...

Raveners assault the storm guardians and wipe them out.

Gants assault wraith guard.  I placed them to remain within 6" of the tervigon and involve as few eldar as possible to minimize casualties.  They hold.

Smitty's turn 4...  I think I can hold the line, but it's not going to be pretty.  It turns out I consolidated the raveners too far forward.  His guardian shooting is mostly 12" and my assault range is huge so I should have backed off.  He dooms the ravener unit and unloads just about everything, killing 2 raveners and the prime (and my only synapse over there).

He fires the wraith lord at the last hive guard so he won't be assaulting.  The avatar assaults the zoanthropes and my invulns save me and keep us locked.

My turn 4...  Must hold the line!  My lone ravener passes instinctive behaviour, as does my harpy and hive guard.  I see what I think is an oppotunity in a big tarpit in the center.  Dakkafex and tervigon move up.

Dakkafex assaults the wraithstar, tervigon heads for the avatar, and ravener for the guardians.  My thinking here is getting gants back into brood progenitor range for poison, dakkafex should drop a couple, and maybe I can hold the center.  Except nothing works like that.  Avatar puts two wounds on the tervigon.  Wraithstar drop several gants despite FnP.  Dakkafex only hits twice and wounds once.  Smitty allocates onto the warlock and makes his invuln thanks to fortune.  Carnifex takes 2 wounds to no retreat and I'm down to 1 gant.  Tervigon does nothing to the avatar.  Ravener takes down 2 guardians then dies.

Smitty's turn 5...  It's all or nothing now and lot looking good for me.  Doom goes on the carnifex.  He turbo boosts the jetbikes right in front of my objective.  He turbo boosts the weaponless vyper which crashes into a tree.  His guardians run for his objective.  In assault, I lose everything in the center.  At this point, I have 10 gants on my objective and a harpy on the flank and out of position due to failing 2 instincitive rolls (even at ldr10).

My turn 5...  Gants put 6 wounds on the bikes and he fails 3 saves!  Harpy kills 3 avengers.  I roll for the end and it's a 1!  The only way this was not going to be a loss for me...

So another draw to Smitty, but only because the game ended on t5.  I guess that's the breaks sometime.  Fun game either way.

Review:  Well, I made several mistakes including placement of genestealers, multi-assaulting, not having an adequate synapse web, and my ravener consolidation.  I also underestimated the survivability of wraithguard with fortune.  One thing I did well was prevent the wrath cannons from firing even once.  My psychic tests were all solid too despite runes, FnP went off every turn as did 2 lances per turn from the zoans.  I did learn from the experience and I'm still optimistic about the viability of this list in a comp environment.