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Game 3
The Farseer watched the battle unfold on the world below. He could taste the taint of the enemy in the air saturating him with a coppery brilliance. The warp was bulging here causing reality to crack like old paint. It was no longer a question of if the warp would spill forth onto this world, merely a question of when.
He sighed. It had taken him too long to manipulate the mindless insect creatures to this world and all he could hope for was containment. He signaled to the Eldar around him to rouse the Avatar. If anyone could stem the tide of blood, it was a god of war.
George and Leo - Tyranids and Eldar
Eldar
Avatar
8 Dire Avengers
10 Guardians with Bright Lance
10 Guardians with Missile Launcher
2x Fire Prisms (1 with holofields)
Tyranids
Winged hive tyrant
Dakkafex
3x8(?) Genestealers
10 termagants
Setup and early game
The termagants hid out behind a wood to the extreme northwest of the table, the rest of the army was pretty well packed in on the northeast with the avatar and carnifex striding out towards the center of the table. The fire prisms also ended up on the extreme northwest and northeast corners.
I made a couple of pretty big tactical errors in this game. First and foremost, since it was a kill points mission I played a bit more conservatively than I had been. The bloodthirster appeared on the west flank and the bloodcrushers appeared center of the table. The terminators played way back out of a healthy respect for the genestealers but not out of range of the fire prisms (as if that is even possible) and a couple of the mighty veterans fell.
The termagants hung out, tempting the bloodthirster over and shooting at him (ineffectually). The genestealers moved over through the ruins. The bloodthirster took the bait and slammed into the termagants, killing a couple and scattering them off the board. He consolidated back a bit into the woods and the next turn he charged the fire prism and ripped off its giant weapon.
The soulgrinder appeared but drifted into the lake near the forest on the west. Fortunately he maintained his mobility. The hive tyrant took his time in showing up. The terminators shot at the genestealers and almost wiped them out.
Mid-game to end game
The dire avengers showed up and I came to realize just exactly how shooty this list actually was. Between the dire avengers, the guardians platforms and the dakkafex my bloodcrushers were greatly reduced. The hive tyrant finally decided to show up but the bloodthirster was out of charge range. The avatar moved towards the monstrous creatures wanting to replay the ancient battles of Khaine and Khorne but as he was out of range he fired the wailing doom at the daemonic walker but its sorcerous wards protected it.
The bloodthirster charged into the flyrant (I was curious as to how this battle would go) and won to combat but did not wipe the tyrant out. The tank of the Emperor's Judgment finally showed up and started to do some shooting. The bloodletters also showed up around center of the table and spread out to keep themselves alive. I made the second large error here by firing my template first at the dire avengers and killed enough to take them out of shooting range of the terminators so they basically lost a turn of firing. They eventually killed a couple of units of the genestealers and I think that they finished off the dire avengers.
Towards the end of the game, the avatar moved forward and had a long range shot at the soulgrinder but didn't like the odds on penetrating the armor and instead charged the Bloodthirster. He wounded the greater daemon but failed to kill him. The bloodthirster killed the tyrant, but the great beasts thrashing death throes took the bloodthirster with it. Both armies were quite a bit smaller than when the battle had begun and with the setting sun the battle ended.
After action review
Whew. This was a really close game and the only one of the team tourney in which we failed to get a massacre (minor win by one unit). The Eldar were at a bit of a disadvantage in that they had many more kill points than we did, but it was a very close game besides. The bloodthirster vs the hive tyrant was a really great cinematic battle and then the avatar charging in to finish off the thirster was a really cool thing. Annihilation missions are always a delicate dance of keeping your army alive while also killing your opponents. I know that there are a lot of kill points haters out there, but in my playing experience - yes there is a disadvantage to having a ton more kill points, but it is not the be all end all of who wins.
Eternal Praise
The bloodthirster did a great job this game - he dealt with the termaganst (no biggie, but worth a kill point), knocked the weapon off of one of the fire prisms and took down the flyrant.
Prized Skull
The flyrant.
Eternal Damnation
Again, everyone did their jobs.
Dacius looked at the carnage surrounding him. The blood of two different xenotypes soaked the ground and the Captain couldn't help but smile. Like with the other battles on this world, his memory of the event was quickly fading into a red fog of blood and war. He couldn't even remember if the two aliens had been battling each other when he arrived or if they had been in some unholy alliance against him.
He decided it didn't really matter, as long as the xenos' blood flowed.
Overall tourney thoughts
I loved the inclusion of a team tourney on the day before the tourney proper started. It was nice to get in some practice games in what was really not a terribly competitive environment (what I mean to say here is that the games were really more in fun for most people as opposed to top notch competition - there were no easy games.) It was also just a really fun way to spend the day and get into the GT mindset. I was also 3-0 which meant that I only had to win 1 game out of the next 5 to meet my goal of winning 50% of my games with a mono god army! That let me relax quite a bit going into the tourney.
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