Equinox 40k - Round 3

Hi All,

I'm back again with another report; the third round from Equinox 2011 and the last of the first day. I'll try to make this one slightly more brief, but would really appreciate any feedback you have on making reports that you find more interesting :)

After a fairly difficult first two games, I was well tired, and then found that I had drawn my good friend Damien Avery, who I was staying with and has regularly been a most splendorous host to me each time I travel to Auckland for an event. It's always disappointing in some ways to play a good friend when you have a low comp army, you want them to do as well as they can, and would love to see them on the podium, but with a low comp army you have to harvest as many points as you can, and can afford to cut them no breaks.

Round 3:

Mission: Thunderhawk Down*

Secondary Mission: Capture the Thunderhawk Pilot**

Deployment: Dawn of War

Opponent: Damien Avery (Tyranids)

* Thunderhawk Down involves a single template coming on via reserve, 12d6 along the centre line as per outflankers. It causes a bit of damage when it lands, but other than that, is an objective to be claimed by the person with the most scoring units within 6.

** The thunderhawk pilot was another objective 6d6 from the primary.

Damien had:

Hive Tyrant - 2 guard

10 Ymgarl Genestealers

3 Hive Guard

2 Hive Guard

10 Gaunts

10 Gaunts

Tervigon - Catalyst, Onslaught, Adrenal and Poison

Tervigon - Catalyst, Onslaught, Adrenal and Poison

3 Shrikes - 2 Boneswords

Trygon

Trygon

As you can see, Damien's Tyranids are quite pretty indeed!

I won the roll for first turn, and as our table had a giant road down the middle, wanted to make the most of the night fight protection and extra movement, so elected to go first. I set up my 30 man squads in buildings to limit where his Ymargles could go, and Damien left everything off the board.

Turn 1: Everything just went straight up the guts, I pulled my battle wagon back just enough to be safe from an onslaught hive guard flank attack, with everything in support.

His Turn 1: Damien brought everything on opposite with a fairly comprehensive gaunt screen protecting it all. The hive guard shot the trukk but failed to do anything meaningful.

Turn 2: The turn started with the objective coming down, and landing right infront of my army, meaning I could sit here and Damien would have to come to me. The secondary went even further my way, making things difficult for him.

Some repositioning on my end saw me able to reduce the shrikes to just 1 left, and wounded at that, but even on his own he could do some damage. A gaunt squad was removed and everything else just shuffled to get ready for some action next turn. Lootas took 2 wounds off his trygon on my left.

His Turn 2: Damien made some good moves here, and some crucial mistakes. The wounded shrike went and assaulted the deffkoptas, impressively killing 3 of them, but dying in the process. He positioned his hive guard well, onslaughting them (he added onslaught after I recommended it earlier, so I have no one to blame for this but myself!) which allowed them to get side shots on the battle wagon, blowing it sky high. His Ymargles showed up, and with a good fleet were able to hit my other boyz squad, who were in cover.

The Ymargles caused a handful of casulties, taking few in return due to increasing their toughness. The trygon on the other hand was not so lucky and died to the boyz squad and their nob, who then got a big consolidate to threaten a backfield that was previously safe, some of these boyz had just been given ~12 inches of free movement.

Turn 3: The trukk boyz went and killed the unit of 3 hive guard to my right. The remaining deffkopta went and dealt to the other 2 Hive guard, tying them up before finishing them eventually. My boyz squad that had killed off the trygon now went and killed a Tervigon with some help from the lootas, while some bad rolling on Damien's end and good rolling on mine saw the Ymgarls being wiped out before the killer kan bail out squad I sent in to help out even got to strike.

Damien and I talked out where the game could go from here, with one trygon too far from the action, no real ranged shooting left, and meganobs who could delete the hive tyrant any time they felt, the mistakes made were too heavy to recover from. Unfortunately for Damien, with the placement of where he landed, he couldn't even play for the secondary objective, which would have been harder to claim than the primary. We called the game and had a bit of a pow wow about different things he could do to improve in the future.

Damien's the kind of player who always takes these comments on board, so he really is only going to get better and better.

After the game we gathered a few people up and headed to a rather nice pub, where I got to combine 2 of my other favorite hobbies; drinking Mojito's and watching my local rugby team get smashed because they're a bunch of useless losers. Woohey go the hurricanes!