Last week Hive Fleet Nocturne traversed the galactic void between Aberdeen to Doncaster, in a bio-ship that bore a striking resemblance to a train, in order to do battle once more with driverbob25's Ultramarines and our friend Neil's Imperial Guard (sadly despite much peer presure Neil has yet to join Dakka Dakka). After sucessfully surviving encounters with dangers far worse than themselves (drunk football fans for the first 3 hours of the journey
) the Tyranids arrived to begin the story campaign that driverbob25 and I had thought up for the few days we were to spend gaming. Apologises but there will be no full army lists posted on these battle reports as we don't have a full record of each other's lits, but the main details will be there.
This is the first battle of four that we played between the three of us and the rest will soon follow, driverbob25 and I taking it in turns to post a report each. So read on if you will, to find out the fate of Argent IV.
In the days before the Horus Hereasy the fledgling Imperium despatched many unmanned vessels into the far depths of space on millemia long missions to travel far beyond the borders of the galaxy. They were operated by relatively simple programming and had one task, to travel outward into the void for several thousand years scanning and gathering as much data as they could, before eventually turning back and returning to the Imperium with whatever information they had. Of all the ships sent out in this fashion none have ever returned, understandable really, given the length of time they were to operate in space any number of things could have interfered with their mission, preventing them from returning. In fact the Adeptus Ministorum had officially closed the file on these 'drone' explorator ships as it was generally considered that none would ever be seen again.
This was the accepted view of the Imperium until the day an interesting communication was recieved from the distant world of Argent IV. It transpired that one of these forgotten ships had completed it's milenia long journey and had returned to Imperial space. As per its programing it had picked up the nearest Imperial signal and made it's way to the planet of origin to in order that the information it contained might be retrieved. The communication from Argent IV stated that upon approach to the planet the vessel had made manouvers to enter orbit. However, after such a prolonged period in deep space it must have suffered some form of damage as the ships orbit rapidly decayed until it crashed into the main continent, not too far from one of the main Imperial cities and the local Imperial Guard regiment had already begun salvage operations.
Upon recieving the communication the Adeptus Ministorum became very excited, as the trajectory of the vessal indicated that it had come from an area of the void where a previous invasion of the foul xenos known as Tyranids had originated. After so long travelling, could the ship have reached some distant planet populated by the hated xenos? Perhaps even what might be considered a Tyranid homeworld? The information the ship contained could prove to be a valuable insight into the Hive Mind. The salvage mission was classed as high priority by the Ministorum and a message was sent ordering all other planetary concerns secondary to the safe retrevial of the ships data core.
Sooner then expected the Minstorum recieved a message via astropath from Argent IV, but it was not the news they were hoping for. As if to confirm that the ship had indeed traversed Tyranid space a splinter fleet of what has been classified as Hive Fleet Nocturne had been spotted entering the Argent system and was making it's way towards Argent IV. The Ministorum tried to respond to the message, but the psychic blackout of the Hive Mind had already made communication all but impossible. It was decided to send reinforcements to the Argent system with all haste in order to drive back the Tyranids and retrieve the data from the crashed explorator ship. An Ultramarine strike force, under the command of the legendary Captain Sicarius no less, was relatively close to the Argent system after successfully crushing the rising Waaargh of Warlord Gobsmack 'Edsmasha in the Tartarus cluster. With their new orders the Ultramarines made best speed for Argent IV, hopefully before it was too late.
Okay, so that's the set up for the campaign, Marines and Guard trying to fend off the advances of Hive Fleet Nocturne. This first battle represents the Nids initial invasion before the Ultramarines arrived and the Imperial Guard's attempts to hold them off (or perhaps even defeat them - hey, even Guard win sometimes
). This battle was between my Tyranids and my freind Neil's Imperial Guard who were lead by Usarker Creed.
The mission was rolled for and it was Annihalation with the table quarters set up. The Imperial Guard won the roll and chose to set up first in order to get the first turn. However the Nid invasion was happening so fast that the Guard had no time to properly prepare themselves for battle as I rolled a 6 before the game began to steal the initiative and go first (I wanted as few rounds of shooting at me as possible!)
The game began rather fighteningly for me as the Imperial Guard began to take a tremendous toll on the Nid battle lines with massed heavy weapons fire and almost supernaturally good shots from indirect fire from the basalisk and morters (surely they were guided by the Emperor's hand), in fact these two units, coupled with the Leman Russ Punisher became the bane of my forces during this game. While the Guard made good use of their first two turns by laying down a withering hail of fire (seriously it wasn't funny, Guard aren't meant to be good!!!
), my Nids marched on as best they could trying to close the gap. By the end of turn two the Imperial Guard had chalked up an impressive 3 kill points to 0, however in their bid to concentrate as much fire as possible on the encroaching xenos the Guard had made a fatal mistake. By concentrating on firing and getting as many units in range as possible right from the start the Guard deployed a large portion of their forces too far forward and owing to constant firing they made no attempts to move back and keep their distance from the alien horrors baring down on them. While the tanks made some attempts to manouver and fire owing to the 'lumbering behemoth' rule, most of the infantry maintained their position, meaning that in turn three the battle swung in the Nids favour.
Turn three saw the Leman Russ Demolisher loose its turret to a lucky glancing hit from a venom cannon (we use a house rule glancing hit table at driverbob's), a horde of Nid reinforcements turned up and the hellhound that was anchoring the Guard's right flank from the large swarms of gribblies was ripped apart by a carnifex. While the Guard continued to pour on the fire, making some truely excellent shots (see the pic with the insanely accurate basalisk shot onto the last gaunts of a brood, netting Neil another kill point), their right flank had been reached and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the nid force closed around them like the maw of a great predator.
But as I said the Guard were not going down without a fight. Whilst I had finally begun to dish out the hurt I was also still taking a lot of losses. As mentioned earlier, in turn 4 the basalisk uncannily hit the last four gaunts of a brood at extreme range and a Leman Russ on the left flank dispatched a carnifex (damn the 'bring it down' order). The Punisher also made it's mark in the game by damn near wiping out a brood of 32 hormagaunts in a single round of shooting, leaving me with a fraction of the brood left. However, despite this valiant attempt the Nids had drawn level in kill points by the end of turn four and turn five saw them pull ahead, thanks to the remaining carnifex and the Hive Tyrant slaughtering the stormtroopers, heavy weapon and infanty squads which had taken cover in the central building on the table.
At the end of turn 5 turn 6 was successfully rolled for and the the Imperial commander brightened at the prospect of a final chance to redress the balance. Sadly these was not to be as the Nids made further slaughter of the Guardsmen. While few in number the remaining hormagaunts still prooved too much for a full heavy weapons squad and dragged them down before the troopers could even make a single hit back in defence. The final deathknell for the Imperial guard came when the carnifex assaulted Creed's command squad in the tower of the main building and managed to get in base to base with Creed himself. However Kell was ever at his master's side and owing to the carnifex's low initiative it struck Creed at the same time as Kell's power fist struck it. In the resultant melee Kell managed to slay the beast, but not before it impaled Creed upon a monstrous talon and took him with it as it fell from the ruined heights to land below in a broken heap of alian ichor and heroic Imperial blood.
The exact final result escapes me (hey it's been a week), however it was a distinct victory for the Tyranids with a lead over the Guard of three kill points. I have to say that this was one of the most enjoyable games I've played in a long time and Neil sure as hell made me work hard for every kill point I won. Below are a selection of photos from the game, I hope they get across how fun it was. Keep your eyes out for driverbob25's report which will detail the second battle in the campaign, a planet strike mission where the arriving Ultramarines attempt to assault the Tyranid forces that have overrun a fortified outpost, in an attempt to create a landing zone and staging point for an Imperial counter attack. But will the bugs have a trick or two up their sleeve?
Suffused with the dying memories of Sanguinus, the warriors of the Death Company seek only one thing: death in battle fighting against the enemies of the Emperor. 
