Last Man Standing, Game #2

For game 2 of this event, the top players from each of the four tables during round 1 were put together on this table.  I was facing two other nid armies and space wolves and some of the best players in our area.

Chris C: 2 primes + poison/boneswords, 2x 19 genestealers, 2x 30 hormagaunts + poison, venomthrope

Ben: 3 tervigons (2 HQ, 1 troop), 10 gants, 2 trygons, mawloc

Reece: 2 rune priests, 4x grey hunters (fully decked out with frost, power, wulfen, standard, guard), 4x rhinos, lone wolf

The pre-game:  Well, I'm dying to farm some big kills from Ben since I have 2 ways to instakill his monsters.  I'm worried about Reece because he has chooser to block my infiltration, JoTWW, and 4 boxed up units to take the center.  Chris is one of the best players in our area hands-down and I've seen him work miracles in the past so I'm not counting him out for anything.

Chooser goes in the middle on the objective to stop all the stealers.  Ben deploys first and as far as possible away from me (doh!).  I deploy away from the wolves.  Chris' swarm just about fills up his dz and he outflanks 19 genestealers.  Reece lines up all 4 rhinos with the lone wolf in front.

I infiltrate my genestealers to within 18" of the chooser.  I also draw first turn so they run up and wrap around the forest to my right in case Ben comes for me. 

My tfex swings around and explodes the most exposed rhino, killing one grey hunter.

Chris goes next and gets off first turn assaults on Ben as they had deployed as close as possible to each other.  He puts both primes with boneswords on the trygon (headless), and hormagaunts on a tervigon.

His other hormagaunts go for the objective and genestealers sweep around a forest.  In combat, the primes actually fail to bonesword the trygon and Chris loses one.

Ben spawns an ungodly amount of gants and begins to turn the tide on Chris.  The prime whiffs again and gets smeared by the trygon. The hormagaunts lose combat to all the newly spawned gants and run off the board without any synapse left.

Reece gets to go last, then first for turn 2 so he gets his lone wolf onto the objective (any non-transport can score in this format).  Chris goes next and swamps the lone wolf in hormagaunts.

Chris kills the lone wolf and ends up raking in a dozen points by holding the objective as nobody can pull him off.  Without synapse, his hormagaunts will rage and I decide to let the wolves deal with that.  I send my genestealers into a brutal multi-assault on Ben.  He left a large gap in his gaunt screen so I hit the screen and tervigon, easily winning combat and getting some points.  Just past me, Chris's genestealers kill one trygon.

I send my deathstar to the left to get SiTW on the priests.  Somewhere in this mess, I lost a tyrant guard to JoTWW, wrecked another rhino, and Ben's mawloc came up in the middle of the hunters.  My rippers and tfex are approaching the objective.

All of our posturing comes to a dramatic climax battle.  I immobilize the last rhino so I'm forced to flip it with my tyrant.  The hormagaunts assault grey hunters and the mawloc.

Reece pops a wolf standard or two and crushed the gaunts.  He sends two units into my deathstar and gets crushed.  After the dust settles, the hormagaunts are fleeing as are some grey hunters.  My deathstar is still locked with another unit of hunters.

Reece has broken off a rune priest who runs onto the objective.  Ben continues to fight off Chris's 19 genestealers, my 20 genestealers, and the other 19 that were outflanking arrive and continue to disrupt the right flank.  He continues to spawn gants and I think he's gotten over 50 by now.  I finish off the grey hunter squad and swarm the objective and the rune priest.

I end up killing the priest with rippers and hold the objective for a few player turns, bringing in a bunch of points.  The game ends and we tally up.

Me: 25 (6 from rhinos, 2 from hunters, 2 from priest, 4 from Ben's nids, the rest from objective and survivor points)
Chris: 21 (mostly from the hormagaunts holding the objective for many player turns)
Ben: 15 (or close, I forgot.  Only killpoints and survivor points)
Reece: 15 (or close, I forgot.  Held the objective, killed mawloc, and a had few survivors)

The post-game:  So I won again which was amazing.  I'm the only one at this point to take #1 on two tables.  The bad news is Crispy ran away on his table somehow managing to score 67 points (OMG), so I'm not near the top of battlepoints (Ben scored like 35 his first game also).  Again, I feel like I was denied points when Chris and Ben basically pounded on each other all game.  I didn't want to deploy close to the JoTWW priest, so I didn't see much action until late game.  My tfex and hive guard did great, fully de-meching the wolves and I used my deathstar and genestealers to take out targets of opportunity.