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This thread is the placeholder for an event that will take place in a week. We will be doing a dry run on Saturday Aug 10th to work out any kinks in the rules and I will be posting pictures of the dry run so people can get an idea of how massive that this battle will be.



On Saturday, August 17th at 10 a.m., James P., Alex P., Stacy S. and myself will be playing a special scenario based on the movie 300 at Sci Fi City in Orlando, Florida.

In a narrow pass, 300 terminators from the Dark Angels and Ash Dragons Chapters of the Space Marines will hold the line against the numberless hordes of Hive Fleet Scorpio Maurus and Hive Fleet Vesuvius.

We will be playing on a special, four section board with cliff terrain. The objective of the scenario is to see how long the Marines can hold out against the Tyranid horde. We will be playing until all the Marines are dead, or we drop from exhaustion.



We will be playing with a number of special rules for this scenario, among them:
1) Never Ending Swarm!: To represent the truly numberless nature of a Tyranid invasion, all Tyranid Troop and Fast Attack units will constantly return from the board edge when they have been destroyed. (All other Tyranids will stay dead when killed.)
2) Walls Of Thermopylae!: The cliff terrain is considered impassible, Terminators must start their deployment within 12" of the mouth of the pass, and within the pass. Swooping FMC's may fly over the cliffs, but if they are knocked out of swoop mode by enemy fire, they will die instantly.
3) Brothers In Arms!: Terminators do not grant a cover save to their target from shooting through another terminator unit. Tyranid units will still provide cover saves for models behind them.
4) No Retreat, No Surrender!: Though terminator units may fall back out of combat or due to heavy fire, they will not retreat from their last stand. Any fall back move that would take a terminator unit over the table edge, instead stops at the edge of the board.
5) We Stand as One!: All terminator units must start the game deployed on the table, none may be kept in reserve. It is possible for squads to re-deploy using deep strike, as per the psychic power Gate of Infinity.
6) The Hive Minds Will!: All Tyranids act as fearless, as per 5th edition. Thus taking wounds as per loss of combat results. (Lose combat by 4 = 4 wounds taken.)
7) Ephialtes Betrayal!: After turn three, the Tyranid players each roll a dice and add the turn number, if the combined result is 14 or higher, Ephialtes (A Tyranid Hybrid, living on the planet.) reveals the goat path. The Hybrid plus any small or medium based infantry units or Lictors may be deployed as arriving from reserves through the path in the wall. Note that though the squads have the Never Ending Swarm! rules, Ephialtes does not.

If you have ever wanted to see what a REAL Tyranid invasion would look like, bring your cameras and watch as we attempt to play out an amazing story based game. All the models will be painted for this event, so it should be a great Kodak moment. (For all you youngsters, that means it will be worth taking a lot of pictures. )

The starting forces:
Space Marines:
Ash Dragons (Alex) 180 Terminators
1st Company Captain Drak'sjal (Lysander)
Terminator Command squad x10, (Chapter Champion, Apothecary, Chapter Banner, 2x assault cannon, 5x powerfist/storm bolter Terminators)
Lord of Claw, (Captain, twin lightningclaws)
Lord of Fist, (Captain, storm bolter, power fist)
Chaplain, (Terminator armour, combi-flamer)
Chaplain, (Terminator armour, thunder hammer)
Librarian , (Terminator armour, force staff, storm shield)
Librarian , (Terminator armour, force axe, combi-melta)
Librarian , (Terminator armour, force sword, storm shield)
Librarian , (Terminator armour, force axe, storm bolter)
Librarian , (Terminator armour, force hammer, storm shield)
Vulkans Shield (10 Assault Terminators, Thunder hammer, storm shield)
10 Terminators (2x assault cannon)
10 Terminators (2x assault cannon)
10 Terminators (2x assault cannon)
10 Terminators (2x Cyclone Launcher)
10 Terminators (2x Cyclone Launcher)
10 Terminators (2x Heavy Flamer)
10 Assault Terminators (Lightning claws x10)
10 Assault Terminators (Lightning claws x10)
10 Assault Terminators (Lightning claws x10)
10 Assault Terminators (Lightning claws x10)
10 Assault Terminators (Thunder hammer, Storm shield x10)
10 Assault Terminators (Thunder hammer, Storm shield x10)
10 Assault Terminators (Thunder hammer, Storm shield x10)
10 Assault Terminators (Thunder hammer, Storm shield x10)
10 Tech Cult Terminators (Thunder hammer, Storm shield x10)

Dark Angels Deathwing (James) 120 Terminators
Grand Master Belial
Company Master
2 Chaplains
11 Librarians
CMD squad w/ (2) TH/SS, (1) TH/SS/Standard of Fortitude, (1) TH/SS/Cyclone, (1) apothecary
CMD squad w/ (1) company champion, (1) Apothecary, (1) TH/SS/Cyclone, (1) SB/PF, (1) TH/SS/Death Wing Company Banner
10 Cataphractii w/ (4) lightning claws, (2) Heavy Flamers, (4) Combi-melta, (2) combi-bolter
10 Terminators w/ (2) Assault Cannons, (8) SB/PF
10 Terminators w/ (2) Plasma Cannons, (8) SB/PF
10 Terminators w/ (2) Cyclones/SB/PF, (6) SB/PF, (2) SB/CF
10 Terminators w/ (2) TH/SS/Cyclones, (8) TH/SS
10 Terminators w/ (2) Heavy Flamers, (8) Lightning claws
10 Death Wing Knights w/ relic
5 Terminators w/ (1) Sgt/HF/PF, (1) Lightning claw, (1) SB/CF, (2) SB/PF
5 Terminators w/ (1) Sgt/AC/PW, (1) Lightning claw, (1) SB/CF, (2) SB/PF
5 Terminators w/ (1) Sgt/Cyclone/TH/SS, (1) Lightning claw, (1) SB/CF, (2) SB/PF
5 Terminators w/ (1) Sgt/Cyclone/TH/SS, (1) Lightning claw, (1) SB/CF, (2) SB/PF
5 Terminators w/ (1) Sgt/Cyclone/TH/SS, (1) Lightning claw, (1) SB/CF, (2) SB/PF

Tyranids: (Dan and Stacy's combined forces)
Swarmlord
4 x Hive Tyrants
5 x Tyrant Guard
1 x Parasite of Mortrex
1 x Tervigon
2 x Tyranid Primes
9 Tyranid Warriors (Our Immortals)
100 x Termagaunts
60 x Hormagaunts
100+ x Genestealers w 7 x Broodlords
27 x Ripper Swarms
6 x Hive Guard
4 x Zoanthropes
1 x Doom of Malanti
4 x Lictors
1 x Deathleaper
3 x Venomthropes
28 x Gargoyles
8 x Flying Ripper Swarms
3 x Shrikes
3 x Raveners
1 x Old One Eye
6 x Carnifex
1x Trygon
1 x Mawloc
3 x Biovores
The units in bold will have the Never Ending Swarm! rules.

Come by and see how many Tyranids the Emperor's finest can kill before they become biomass for the Swarm!

Too bad they only have one Tervigon, Neverending Swarm Tervigons would be great.

If I were the tyranid player, I'm taking 10 mawlocs and 20 biovores. Lol.

BTW, synapse may be a problem for the bugs, as well as recycled units having to cross 4-ft across the board from their deployment zones. If you're planning on a 5-6 turn game, don't expect very many, if at all any, respawning gribblies to make a difference. My money is on the Imperials.

Due to the planetwide invasion, ALL bugs will be considered to be in Synapse at all times. We will not be having any problems in the instinctive behavior department. This game will be played until the last Marine falls, or until they kick us out of the store.

We will also be keeping a running tally of total bugs killed so we can see how many Tyranids it take to kill that many Terminators.

 jy2 wrote:
If I were the tyranid player, I'm taking 10 mawlocs and 20 biovores. Lol.

BTW, synapse may be a problem for the bugs, as well as recycled units having to cross 4-ft across the board from their deployment zones. If you're planning on a 5-6 turn game, don't expect very many, if at all any, respawning gribblies to make a difference. My money is on the Imperials.

My money is on the bugs... since the game goes on until every Imperial is dead! Though my guess is that it is going to seriously wrack up a bug death toll.

Mawlocs would be nasty.

This is amazing and I can't wait to see pics.

I can't wait to see this.

Looks amazing.... And looks like a full week event lol.

Pics! Pics! Pics!

Sounds like the best thing I've ever heard of! Definitely watching this post with interest.

This looks awesome. i want pics, and even turn-by-turn batrep video if that's possible too. Just re-caps would be plenty.

Bring on the blood!

OOH! Can Swarmlord be the God-King Xerxes?

 tetrisphreak wrote:

OOH! Can Swarmlord be the God-King Xerxes?

Yes, the Swarmlord will be playing the part of the God King of the Persianids. But no one should shoot at him, for he is kind.

Oh god, I want to bring my bugs up for this... The pictures should be absolutely amazing!

This will be EPIC!

I'll have to swing by for this one.

This game may take an obscene amount of time to play.

The endless waves of nids will take forever to come in to play as they are actually significantly outnumbered by the 'spartans' .

The path is too easily blocked off so I would recommend that after the first wave of bugs has hit the front lines that you move the bug deployment up 24" to represent the sea of bugs that is attacking.

Mythantor wrote:
The path is too easily blocked off so I would recommend that after the first wave of bugs has hit the front lines that you move the bug deployment up 24" to represent the sea of bugs that is attacking.

Something like this.

The Devourer of Worlds... we will put their names to the test.

This will be so much win... i hope you will get the time to finish the battle.

We ran a dry run for set up today to see how things fit. It is a fairly impressive site looking at 300 Terminators on the table at one time. Rolled all of our psychic powers today to try and get that out of the way for next week. We will deploy the night before the game so that right at store opening, we can commence with the blood shed!

Any pics of the of the 300?

Yeah, we took a few camera phone pics of set up but we weren't really focusing on that today. Hopefully, that will all be covered next week. I'll see what I can do.

Can't wait to see it!

Good luck, and I wish I lived a little closer so that I could watch this. My only regret is that looking at that list, I don't see a single pyrovore or spore mine in that list. I mean really, the ONE time it would actually be funny to see those things in action.

Thanks to James P (Lazarus above) we got some pictures of the setup. Please keep in mind, my Tyranid ally couldn't show up for the dry run and what you see represents about 3/5ths of the bugs in our list He has more big bugs than I do, so the Tyranid deployment zone will be a lot more crowded.





Here are the Marines guarding the pass... all 300 of them:





To test how long it would take to move that many bugs, we played the Tyranid first turn of movement and run moves and this is where everything ended up. It took 6 minutes.





I think James (Lazarus) caught more pics and hopefully, I can find my camera before Saturday. We have a bunch of people telling us that they will come with their cameras and recording devices so we should have a bunch of pics for the real deal. Hope y'all enjoy it. More to come next Saturday.

Wow, that is just incredible. I am very impressed by the terminator players collections and dedication and the tyranid player's ability to move their models. Are you guys using movement trays for the bugs?

It sounds like you almost need dice assistants for rolling out the shooting results for that many termies.

I will see what other pics I have and send them in. Again, we were not really focusing on that but will do so heavily next week.

Pretty stoked to see this project come to fruition as it has been nearly 6 months in the making.

We did not use movement trays for the bugs, simply cooperative movement with several players and an understanding of the ability to include your run roll with your movement to save time.

We are likely going to have several assistants of one kind or another.

I've just sent Fedral the last of the few pictures that I took.

Wow, that is incredible. I can't wait for the real deal.

A few more close up pictures courtesy of Lazarus.

Dark Angels with Ash Dragons in the background:




Ash Dragons:


Colour scheme of Hive Fleet Vesuvius on 'Big Mama'

Lots of mawlocs would troll those terminators so hard. They're packed so tight the to wound roll wouldn't be necessary - nobody could be placed around the entry marker.

Looks Cool! I can't wait to see the report.