6th Ed Batrep - 1500pts Marines vs Tyranids

Played Andy today in a full 6th ed game with all the new stuff except allies.  This will be long, but I'll take you through all the steps.  We started with a blank board marked off with 2x2' squares.  I took the near side Andy took the far side.

Here's the terrain we had to choose from.  I wanted some area, some ruins, and some impassible.  Nothing mysterious for this game.

Oh yeah, armies.  My list:
Tyrant + wings, tl devourers, hive commander, old adversary
Tyranid Prime + sword/whip, poison, regen
Deathleaper
Ymgarl Genestealers x6
Hive Guard x3
Genestealers x9 + broodlord w/scytals
Termagants x20 + devourers (prime here usually)
Tervigon + crushing claws, poison, furious charge, 2 powers to trade for biomancy
Aegis Defense Line (no gun)

Andy's List:
Lysander
Sternguard x10 + 2 combi-melta, 2 combi-flamer
Tac Squad x10 + plasma, hvy bolter, power axe
Tac Squad x10 + plasma, hvy bolter, power fist
Typhoons x2 w/ flamers
Attack Bikes x2 + multi-meltas

We rolled "The Scouring" for a mission (6 objectives ranked 1,2,2,3,3,4 for scoring points).

Deployment was Dawn of War (the new pitched battle).

Lysander gets the commander ability of counterattack with his unit while in their DZ.

My tyrant gets to redeploy one unit 3d6" or 3 units 1d6".

I swap everything for biomancy.  Tyrant gets Iron Arm and Endurance.  Tervigon gets Iron Arm and Hemorrhage.  Broodlord gets Enfeeble and Spirit Leech (ugh).

I place my aegis defense line and then we roll for terrain and take turns placing.  I get to deploy first so most everything goes in the middle.  The prime is with gaunts.  Genestealers infiltrated onto the left flank.  Deathleaper and ymgarls are hiding.

Andy deploys his sternguard with lysander in the middle.  With the new rules, they can now move 6" and fire their special ammo 24" with rerolled misses!  Tacs in the middle and left.  Devestators behind.  Thunderfire in the corner, which also got very good with the new artillery rules.  The gun is t7 and all shooting is allocated to closest.  His typhoons are way off in the right corner.  Both large pieces of area terrain have been bosltered as the ability isn't restricted to ruins anymore.  Attack bikes are reserved.

 We flip objectives and Andy has the 4pt one, 3pt, and 2pt.  I have 3,2,1.  Andy fails to seize.  I cast Iron Arm on both MC's and Enfeeble on a tac squad. I explore mysterious objectives (mission special rule).  From left to right, I get gravity field generator (1/2 charge range if you assault a scoring unit holding this), nothing, and shatterfield (+1 cover to scoring unit).  Everything moves up.

The tyrant swoops up to the marines.

He shoots down 3 or so and they pass morale.  Everything else moves and runs.


Andy rolls his mysterious objectives and from left to right gets Skyfire Nexus (F ME), Targeting relay (ugh), and the third I forget but no scoring unit was using it.  The tac squads move except for their heavy weapons.  Since movement is on a model basis now instead of unit, heavy weapons can stand and fire while their unit shuffles around them.

Lysander leads the sternguard forward ready to play "eat every shot".

Typhoons come up my flank and line up some shots.

Predictably, the marines buffed by the objectives shoot down the tyrant.  Luckily for the rest of my army, it literally takes every single unit except the skimmers which were out of range to finish the tyrant thanks to crash landing in his bolstered area terrain.  The skimmers put a wound on the tervigon.

Both of my reserves show up turn 2 despite losing the tyrant.  The deathleaper shows up 1" from a plasma gunner.  Gotta love the new "closest model out" rule for shooting.

Ymgarls woke up when Lysander walked by.

The rest of the swarm moves up.  Man, I'm going to have to model some suitable defense lines for my bugs.

Deathleaper misses with his flesh hooks.  Devilgaunts put out a ridiculous amount of shots.  Lysander fails 3 of his first 4 and then starts passing out wounds with "lookout sir".

Ymgarls go after the tac squad.  We forgot overwatch here (and in every assault I guess).

Lysander leads the sternguard forward.  The attack bikes arrive by the ymgarl assault.

Speeders come around for shots.

Combined fire from the bolter drilling sternguard with poison rounds and krak missiles kill 2 hive guard.  The thunderfire cannon kills a few genestealers.  Devestators instagib the deathleaper despite 2+ cover.

Attack bikes assault ymgarls who desperately try to finish the tac squad.

The gaunt swarm pushes forward with the tervigon buffed up to 8/8.

A spawned unit of gaunts (doubles) holds the homefield objective.

The lone hive guard explodes a speeder.The gaunts put out 60 shots, 14 wounds, and Lysander saves every single one of them.  He also soaks 3 wounds from the cluster spines.  I decide to assault in again (forgot overwatch) and issue a challenge with the prime.  He can accept with a pfist sarge or Lysander.

He decides to accept with the sarge and keep Lysander on the tervigon who gets 7 attacks with claws.  The prime murders the sarge, the tervigon takes 3 more wounds and takes Lysander down (he saved 4/5 shield saves too).  The sternguard take out 10 gaunts (forgot the counterattack bonus was in the DZ only) and I kill 1 but now there's no more fearless wounds.  The tac squad and bikes finish the ymgarls.

The last speeder scoots around and takes out the last hive guard.

The marines on he hill move around (except the hvy weapons).  The bikes come up to punch my gaunts.

Combat rages on in the center.  The tervigon finishes off the sternguard but not before they take out several more gaunts.

The devilgaunts consolidate into cover and then move closer to the marines for more shots.  The tervigon heads back to save her gaunts from the bikers.

Genestealers finally make it into assault range.  Pulling models from the front really sucks for assault armies.

My shooting is ineffective.  Genestealers assault in (forgot overwatch again) and the broodlord challenges the power axe sarge.  He takes a wound and then shreds the sarge.  The other 3 genestealers struggle to get any rends.

The 4 survivors from the ymgarl assault move and run onto the back objective (4pts).

The speeder lines up and takes out the tervigon.  The nice thing is you can always pre-measure anything so my gaunts were out of 6".

The devestators and thunderfire kill a bunch of devilgaunts.  In assault, I can only kill 1 marine and lose another genestealer.

I move my 3 surviving models onto the objective.  I'm hoping that last gaunt will survive all the fire.

The marines unload everything ...

Behind that pineapple shaped bush, one gaunt survives on the objective.  But he fails morale haha.

And the game ends on the bottom of 6.  Andy's marines have the primary objective as well as first blood and the commander kill for a 5-1 victory.

Well I learned a lot from this game.  First off, it was tons of fun.  I really think they succeeded in making the game more cinematic.  The random point values for the objectives and the mysterious objectives both favored Andy.  It made me play aggressively to get to his juicy objectives and I made some mistakes on the way.  I could have left the devilgaunts on my objective behind the aegis for 3+ cover (thanks to the mysterious objective).  I probably should have sent the ymgarls into the devestators and brought the tervigon over to the left with the genestealers.  I also gave up my tyrant early, but he ate 1300pts worth of firepower.  Since he was the only one with FnP, I probably should have kept him back out of bolter range longer.  Basically, I played the whole army wrong hah.  The good news is the new rules are really fun and it was the most fun I've had losing in a long time.

As far as the rules go, I liked setting up the terrain but I'm starting to feel like every game will look the same.  My nids will always need cover and if I continue to use the aegis line, it will probably get deployed the same every time.  I could be wrong as I've only played 3 games so far and I hope I am.  I'm sure the hardcore competitive guys won't like the randomized objective points and effects, but I enjoyed them this game.  With the new assault and shooting rules, it's going to take a long time to re-learn tyranids and figure out what works best.