ATC Doubles Game #1

I need to start this one off with an apology.  It's been a week since my last report so I apologize for the wait.  We had two local tournaments this week and I've been busy with assembly, painting, and list building.  Incidentally, I took 1st overall out of 13 last week and 3rd out of 26 this week.  Unfortunately, it wasn't with tyranids!  I apologize for that too.  I've been playing nothing but tyranids for the last year in 1-2 tournaments a month and 1-2 casual games a week.  A breath of fresh air with a new army is good for the brain muscle, especially after playing an army with no vehicles.  I'm going to start blogging the other army's progression soon to help promote DaBoyz GT 2011, our city's annual GT that drew 90 players for 40k alone last year.  Anyways, all of that combined with a baby on the way and Father's Day has put me behind on batreps and email responses.   I'm going to get my butt in gear this week and hope to get back to 3 posts a week.  I still have a bunch of reports to write and I'm still planning on tyranids for 'Ard Boyz this year as well.

On to the report!

Dicehead Seige held a doubles event on the Friday before the ATC main event.  Jay was on my ATC team, so we decided to play nids/nids in the doubles event.  The event followed the Adepticon format with 1,000pts per player.

Jay's List:
Tervigon + ag, ts, cat
Zoanthropes x3
Genestealers x20
Genestealers x14
Genestealers x10

My List:
Tervigon + ag, ts, cat
Hive Guard x3
Hive Guard x3
Genestealers x19
Termagants x10
Tervigon + ts, cat

Combined, we have 6+ scoring units, max elite anti-tank shooting, and 63 genestealers to mop up.  Pretty straight forward.



Game #1 saw us paired against Paul Murphy and Rob Baer playing dual blood angels.  Their lists combined to:

Sanguinor
Mephiston
2 Sanguinary Priests
2 Assault Squads with jump packs
4 Assault Squads in rhinos
2 Devestator Squads with missiles

Ugh.  Two really good players with an army and list that does pretty well against tyranids.  Mehpiston can be hard for us to stop if they use him well.  40+ marines with furious charge and FnP are no joke either.  This game was DoW deployment with 4 objectives.  We win the roll and I deploy both tervigons and my 19 genestealers (each player is allowed HQ/2 troops here).  Jay deploys his tervigon, 20 genestealers in front of mine, and 14 behind mine.

They deploy two rino squads with meph behind one and the sanguinor behind the other.  They fail to seize.  The two big squads of genestealers get FnP and move up a bit.  We don't want to over extend so meph has to come to us and get in SiTW range if he wants to assault.  Hive guard, zoans, and gants move on and run.  The unit of 10 genestealers is outflanking.

All the BA zoom on and form a wagon circle.  Everything pops smoke.  The rhinos on the ends with models on top have priests.  The rhino middle-right with the torch has the sanguinor-buffed sarge.  Jay loses 1 genestealer to shooting.

We spawn 2 units of gaunts and move everything up.  The big squads of genestealers bot get FnP again despite the hood.

Jay is going to send in his 19 to draw out the marines so we can counter with the rest of our stealers and gaunts.  In shooting, we wreck the rhino on the right and immobilize the rhino middle-left.  Jay multi-assaults the squad that came out of the wrecked rhino, and gets genestealers on the remaining 3 rhinos.  We draw against the marines as only 3 stealers can hit them, wreck one rhino, and stun another.

This was the top of turn 2 and we're already in assaults.  One unit of jumpers and a unit from a wrecked rhino get ready to join the fray with the sanguinor.  Meph and the other jump squad head for Jay's 14 stealers on the right flank.  The only mobile rhino runs away.

The devestators put a couple wounds on tervigons.  In assault, we lose the big unit in the middle to a ton of marines with FC, FnP, and the sanguinor.  We lose the 14 on the right also, but take down a few marines as well.

At this point, it's the top of 3 and we have like 30 minutes left.  Combats starting early and involving normal, rending, power weapons, FnP, and 4 different initiative levels are taking forever!  We get in our outflanking stealers on the right.  Shooting explodes an immobilized rhino and immobilizes the last rhino.  My 19 genestealers and the 10 outflanking assault meph and the remaining jumpers that were near him.  We wipe out the marines but can't scratch meph without toxin sacs.

That's the last picture unfortunately.  We feel we're at an advantage, but we need 2 more turns to get through 5 and the pace of assaults is putting us behind.  They send up the sanuinor-buffed unit and sanguinor to save mephiston.  They kill some gaunts with frag missiles and put a couple wounds on a tervigon.  We lose several genestealers in assault, but enough survive to hold meph and the sanguinor in combat.

We shoot them a bunch more and send in the spawned gaunts, but don't get within contest range of the 2 objectives they hold with surviving stragglers.  They're holding objectives with 2-3 man units.  We fight out assaults and they fire their shooting, but we run out of time at the bottom of turn 4.

The game ends in a draw with each team holding 2 objectives.  Man, it sucks when time runs out before a game finishes naturally.  They still had the sanguinor, meph, devestators, and a couple scattered troops.  We still had a few stealers, gaunts, tervigons, hive guard, and zoans.  It could have gone either way, but we were feeling good with a lot more scoring units and the ability to shoot their scoring units with hive guard and zoans, then assault them with gaunts.  Either way, it was a good game against really good players.  Both of these guys were on the #1 team for the ATC main event.