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So my buddy (and occasional Dakka poster) TheL1st and I spent yesterday painting and flocking my new Realm of Battle gameboard. After waiting overnight for it to dry, we got a game in this morning!

2000 points
Him:
Hive Tyrand with Old Adversary, Hive Commander, Lash whip, bonesword, and heavy venom cannon, 2x Tyrand Guard with talons
Tyranid Prime
5 Warriors with deathspitters
16 gaunts with devourers
3 Raveners with devourers
Trygon Prime, regenerate
2 Carnifexes with heavy venom cannons, regenerate
8 Genestealers, scything talons
Zoanthrope
Deathleaper

Me:
Company command with banner, fist, melta gun, vox, in command car (Chimera) with heavy flamer, heavy stubber
Platoon command with power weapon, 4x plasma
- 30 man blob with power weapon, Commissar with power wewapon
- Missile launcher squad
Platoon command with 3x Grenade launchers, power weapon, vox
- 30 man blob with lascannons, grenade launchers, one vox
Platoon command with 3x flamer, power weapon, in Valkyrie with rocket pods
- 10 men with flamer, vox
- 10 men with plasma gun, vox
- AUtocannon squad
Vets with 3x melta, Chimera
3x Scout sentinel with CS Gotolasers
Leman Russ Demolisher with heavy bolters
Leman Russ squadron (2 tanks) with bolters, one stubber

Mission type was capture and control, spearhead. I'm a huge fan of Ailaros' battle reports, so this is pretty much a wholesale rip off of his style. What can I say!

My men made landfall on the planet Bolo of the Santosi sector. Setting up a rigid defence, we braced for the vanguard Tyranid force.

I got first turn and he failed to seize. Deployment looked like this:

My Valkyrie with flamer platoon command and Sentinels were outflanking. The Deathleaper, Trygon, Stealers and Trygon were doing their thing in reserves.

TURN 1
First turn sees my men moving forward, the blob taking the forefront. They get a paltry 1" run after a failed Move Move Move! My heavy weapon teams are ordered to Bring it Down! on the Carnifexes, and their firepower combined with my Russes sees the grisly death of one big bug. One Gaunt also got caught in the fire, but good cover saves keep much of my fire from hitting home. End of my turn looked like this:


The carnifex, angry at the loss of its brood-brother, shoots my veteran Chimera. He stuns it and the Tyrant fires his own cannon at my Demolisher, missing it. The Zoanthrope makes up for his shortcoming and explodes it, causing a minor 1" explosion. Gaunts open fire and kill 5 Catachans from the flamer squad, and Warriors shoot 4 Steel Legion men dead. End of his turn looked like this:


"Acceptable casualties" thought Commissar Kain to himself. The vox networks echoed with Colonel Plisskin's voice, booming from his command Chimera, signaling the charge. Kain steeled himself for the assault, and readied himself for hand to hand combat:


TURN 2
It seems Plisskin was too busy telling the forward men to charge to divert his attention to the heavy weapons squads. Bring it Down! fails on both of them. The Steel Legion blob trips over itself and hobbles a scant few inches through the wrecked shuttle, ensuring they'll be out of assault range. Lieutenant Drang of the Steel Legion orders his men to FRFSRF on the Gaunts, but the order is failed. Bought him a plasma gun instead of a vox caster. Welp. The Catachans make their own advance, the flamer squad heading towards the Gaunts and the plasma squad hunting for a brainbug. They wound the Zoanthrope once. The men of the Steel Legion, caught on the wrong foot by their difficult terrain rolls, attempt shooting the Gaunts. They kill 4, the command Chimera kills 1, and Leman Russes kiill 5 more, along with wounding the Fex and Prime. This turn didn't wind up so good, since my main assault force got hobbled and couldn't make it close enough to do their job. End of the turn looked like this:


The Deathleaper arrives, but even with its pheromone trail and the Tyrant's Hive Commander abilities, no more reserves arrive. The Carnifex actually regenerates a wound before shooting and killing a Steel Legion Guardsman. The Warriors kill 4 as well. After this came an enormous charge as the Tyranids caught my front line off-guard:

The Tyrant and his buddies kill three of my Catachan plasma gunners (the Tyrant whiffing and my opponent forgetting he had Ancient Enemy) but my morale failed and the squad was overrun. The three remaining Gaunts charge the 5 remaining Catachans, and one from each squad dies. Meanwhile, 7 men from the blob are killed, and one wound is caused to the Carnifex in return. Morale holds. End of the turn looked like this:


With his entire platoon caught off-guard, Kain tried his damnedest to remedy the situation. He witnessed one of the sergeants dig his power sword into the Carnifex, making a mental note to shoot him last should discipline became an issue.

TURN 3
My reserves come in! Both my Valkyrie and Sentinels come in on the right flank. The Valkyrie swoops in onto the Tyranid objective, the men inside capturing it. The Sentinels come in around the center of the edge, the Zoanthrope in their sights. The command car leaves Colonel Plisskin at the line while it drives off to take care of the Deathleaper. This turn sees my orders actually going off, with Bring it Down! getting the autocannons to kill a Tyrant Guard. The same order is given to Lieutenant Drang's plasma gunners, who vaporize the Hive Tyrant and his wounded buddy, with a little help from the lascannon blob. The Deathleaper is shot and burned to death by Plisskin's ride. The Sentinels catch the Zoanthrope from behind, blasting it to death with their multilasers. Considering just about everything's in melee, there's not much shooting this round. Hand to hand sees the Gaunts and Catachans making one wound and one save each. Meanwhile, the fex and warriors kill 10 more Steel Legion, leaving Kain and two sergeants alive, scoring one more power weapon wound on the fex:

"Cowards!" shouted Kain through his gas mask. "You will die when I say you die!" he bellowed, pumping bolt rounds into his former platoon.
The end of the turn looked like this:


Welp. The blob won't last much longer. Rolls come up for the Trygon, Raveners, and Stealers this turn. The Trygon spearheads the subterranean assault, only to pop up off board. He mishaps and is destroyed. I like to think he took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. The raveners pop up further back than anticipated, but still at an angle where my gunline blob won't get cover. The Genestealers arrive right next to my Sentinels, determined to eat the squishy drivers inside each tin can. The raveners open fire, killing 4 Guardsmen. Assault sees the Genestealers assaulting my Sentinels and whiffing it completely. One bug gets squashed, and they roll boxcars for morale. My sentinels fail to overrun, but pursue them regardless. The prime kills the two sergeants, and Commissar Kain takes 6 wounds from the warriors, failing 3 of them and laying him low. The warriors consolidate to block the Carnifex, who couldn't get very far. Finally, the Catachans and Gaunts kill one of each, leaving me with three musclemen punching one remaining Gaunt. End of the turn looked like this:

Colonel Plisskin looked over at the handful of Catachans fighting in the front through his magnoculars, seeing the lone Tyranid they were so desperately trying to punch. Inspired by its tenacity, he ordered it captured. The regiment needed themselves a new mascot.

TURN 4
Plisskin ordered Lieutenant Drang's gunners to Fire on my Target!, focusing on the Carnifex. The beast is perforated and brought down, even as one plasma gunner overheats and cooks himself. Rookie. The gunline blob opens fire, given a FRFSRF by their platoon commander. They bring down two of the Raveners, as all three lascannons miss. The Steel Legion missile launcher teams pulp the other two. The Russes and meltavets wipe out the Warriors, leaving just the prime with a single wound remaining. The sentinels, meanwhile, go for a turkey shoot and chase down the stealers, killing 4. Assault saw the Catachans and Gaunt locked in a stalemate. Thrilling stuff. End of the turn:

That was the last picture I took, so the rest is text:

The Prime screams with alien fury and fires at Drang's squad. Two of his gunners are killed by alien whatchyamahoosits. He charges in and brings down Drang. The Gaunt and Catachans arm wrestle with no wounds caused. The men of the Catachan 9th, "The Reapers", were understanding the appeal of the Colonel's pet.
Plisskin was getting tired of losing officers, and engaged the Prime himself, rescuing the wounded body of Drang from being devoured by the hive mind.

TURN 5
The Sentinels chase the stealers and kill two more. The veterans jump out of their Chimera and assault the Gaunt. The Colonel's melta gunner drops the Prime dead. The Catachans finally defeat the Gaunt, and with the Genestealers running off table next turn, the Guard win by tabling and two objectives.

With the help of some of the veteran Cadians, the guardsmen were able to shuttle the lone Gaunt into the Chimera, ready to ship it back to HQ for "domestication" and and the newsreels. The men of the Catachan 9th, The Reapers, had finally attained their new mascot. As Colonel Plisskin lit his cigar with the burning wreckage of a Leman Russ Demolisher, he thought to himself "It was worth it." Little did he know the Gaunt's psychic screams were going out into space for all the Tyranids to hear...

Thoughts:
This game was my first time using a powerblob. It served as a tarpit, which I was hoping it would. Unfortunately it couldn't do a hell of a lot of damage and just kept the bugs off my back for a turn or two. However, this let me isolate my targets and keep my guns safe. The whole unit cost about 200 points, and I'll have to use it more to see how much I like it. I think if they got stuck in with something that wasn't a monstrous creature, they could do alright. Failing to get the charge didn't help either. This is also my first time doing a battle report like this, so let me know if it was a good read or I totally cocked it up!

Cool batrep, I want a close up of that command car thing it looks really cool.

The Night Stalker wrote:Cool batrep, I want a close up of that command car thing it looks really cool.

Here ya go:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/351239.page

That is so awesome, at first I thought it was a converted WWII kit, but its a total scratch build. Do people ever give you problems when you field it?

This is actually my first time using it; it's roughly based on a conversion I saw in an old White Dwarf. I don't think they would since it's not that different, size-wise.

Love the paint job on your Steel Legionaires

Poor old Nids :(
Nice board though and report. I'd suggest a bit more BLOS in the middle though, bit harsh on the Nids.
Im not convinced reserving as much as he did was optimal, I've found with Nids, (one dimensional as it may be) the best thing to do is get in fast and early.
As it was you had nearly 2000 points firing against 1500?
Powerblob seemed to work well though as a road bump.

Like all the arrows and crosses added on to the pics.

Nice board and figs, you just need to get that scenery painted now. It really let the table down!

ruminator wrote:Like all the arrows and crosses added on to the pics.

Nice board and figs, you just need to get that scenery painted now. It really let the table down!

Agreed about the good battle report

But i don't think the un-painted terrain made a negative difference to the table to much - it was assembled pretty awesome!

Great battlereport. I liked the whole board shots so that we could see how things were going overall. Could a tripod make the photos clearer; you're army appears to have a nice paintjob worth seeing.

I thought I Trygon can't mishap on Deep Strike? Is there an exception?

Great report though!

SRM, If you're doing power blobs you should bring Straken back out.

Eugee wrote:I thought I Trygon can't mishap on Deep Strike? Is there an exception?

Great report though!

It works like a drop pod - it can't mishap on enemy models. However, his scattered 12" off table!

InquisitorMack wrote:Great battlereport. I liked the whole board shots so that we could see how things were going overall. Could a tripod make the photos clearer; you're army appears to have a nice paintjob worth seeing.

I would like a tripod or something; as is, I'm just standing back as close to my wall as I can get so I can just get everything in the shot! I'll finagle with the camera settings in a hope to get clearer pictures next time.

As for the terrain, I hope to paint it soon! I literally just painted this board the day before the game, so gimme some time! I want my terrain to be painted even more than you folks do

Great report, I loved the lines and boxed - they really helped

Honestly, I'm not too sure how much that Trygon would've helped! You were squashing those bugs quite well. And, I haven't fought IG yet, and looking at the blob rush, I'm in no hurry to fight that

I dunno, that Trygon could really have put the hurt on that blob of infantry. They would hold because of the banner, but it would have given me another big threat to deal with. The blob rush isn't that scary, but having 3-4 seems to do very well for Ailaros. Check his reports out to see them in action!

Certainly a nice battlereport! I like the pictures.
A small word of advice: Try adding what is what in the pictures.
Like this one: http://www.ailarian.com/folera/batreps/blood-conquers-all/blood-conquers-2.html
Keep up the good work!

Considering how much I'm riffing on his style it would do good to label them in the first shot! Thanks

Haha, it's more that I lack Tyranids experience and don't know what is what.
I hope to see more from your reports.

nice addition the CS goto lasers, everyone immediately gets it.

Nice armies, nice field, nice rep! Keep'em coming

Nice battle report, good to see a good one . (You don't get many on DakkaDakka )

Tmonster wrote:nice addition the CS goto lasers, everyone immediately gets it.

I don't see any lasers nor does C.S. Goto write anything here unless I'm wrong...

loner wrote:

Tmonster wrote:nice addition the CS goto lasers, everyone immediately gets it.

I don't see any lasers nor does C.S. Goto write anything here unless I'm wrong...

Check out the scout sentinels

Brother SRM wrote:

loner wrote:

Tmonster wrote:nice addition the CS goto lasers, everyone immediately gets it.

I don't see any lasers nor does C.S. Goto write anything here unless I'm wrong...

Check out the scout sentinels

My mistake, I had red just multilasers

Nice batrep, i to have a mixed force of cadians mordians, and catachans btw i nice work on the command car.