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In an attempt to give jy2 homage, I’m going to attempt to write a battle report in his format, because it seems to keep me interested, so I’d like other readers to also enjoy this style battle report. As I started this, however, my newborn was not into the idea of letting me do jy2 the justice and so you might notice that my report is a bit rushed and confusing. If you have any questions please ask! I did my best to recall the results of each turn, and might be off by a gant or 2, but for the most part I should be pretty accurate. Either way, it's my first Battle report done with Vassal so be gentle!

Tyranids vs. Blood Angels: 1850 point Nova variant mission (vanguard deployment)
5 Objectives with secondary objectives of Line breaker and Slay the warlord

Warlord powers were:
Nids: -1 to enemy reserves
BA: I don’t remember, but I don’t think it did anything
Tyranids list

HQ
Flyrant w/ Old Adversary and dual TL Devourers¬ (rolled for life leech and warp speed)
Swarmlord w/ 1 vanilla guard (warlord) (rolled for Iron arm, hemorrhage, endurance, and life leech)
Troops
20 Termagants
20 Termagants
16 Devilgants in mycetic spore
16 Devilgants in mycetic spore
Tervigon w/ all three psychic powers, toxin sacs, stinger salvo (rolled for Iron arm, endurance, and warp speed)
Tervigon w/ all three psychic powers, toxin sacs, stinger salvo (rolled for Iron arm, endurance, and life leech)
Fast attack
15 Gargoyles
Heavy support
3 Biovores

Blood Angels list

HQ - 150
Librarian (150) (rolled on divination, got precognition and used default for the other)
Epistolary; Blood Boil; Fear of the Darkness; bolt pistol.
Elites - 50
1 Sanguinary Priests (50)
• Sanguinary Priest: bolt pistol; chainsword.
Troops - 990
5 Assault Marines (135)
Space Marine Sergeant (power fist); meltagun.
5 Assault Marines (135)
Space Marine Sergeant (power fist); meltagun.
• Drop Pod
5 Assault Marines (135)
Space Marine Sergeant (power fist); meltagun.
• Drop Pod
10 Tactical Marines (225)
Space Marine Sergeant (power weapon); meltagun; heavy bolter.
• Drop Pod
10 Tactical Marines (225)
Space Marine Sergeant (power weapon); meltagun; heavy bolter.
• Drop Pod
5 Assault Marines (135)
Space Marine Sergeant (power fist); meltagun.
• Drop Pod
Heavy Support - 655
5 Devastators (195)
2× missile launcher; 2× lascannon.
• Drop Pod
Stormraven Gunship (230)
side-sponson hurricane bolters.
Stormraven Gunship (230)
twin-linked multi-melta; twin-linked lascannon; side-sponson hurricane bolters.

Board + Objectives:
Roll off determined he was to determine side, deploy first, and have first turn (I won roll of and thought it was advantageous to go second)



Deployment/BA First turn:


First turn saw 6 termagants go down from combined shooting between devastator squad and tactical squad. Both units had rerolls to hit granted by libby so I was lucky between cover saves and that his nearest tactical unit scattered on arrival to outside of his rapid fire range.

Nids Turn 1:

Everyone moves up, each right Tervigon gets +1 S/T, left Tervigon Perils and loses a wound but gets +1 S/T, Swarmlord grants Flyrant endurance and gains +2 S/T. Flyrant goes right for his warlord at 24” zoom. Every other unit moves up. Left Tervigon spawns 11, but rolls doubles, right Tervigon spawns 12 but can spawn another turn. I lose 1 gargoyle to a dangerous terrain test. Left termagants get 6” movement, right termagants get 5”. Runs were average, so nothing to note here. Flyrant takes out 5 tact marines including seargant but they pass morale, biovores take out 1 missile launcher in devastator squad, but they pass pinning test. No assaults.

BA turn 2:

(ignore the mycetic spores, I added them too early and I’m too lazy to remove them :-P) Both Stormravens arrive from reserves and just 1 more assault squad that scatters badly, due to my warlord trait. Most marine squads shuffle, but leave all heavy weapons in place so they don’t have to snap fire. Uppermost assault squad claims middle objective. Shooting sees all but 2 termagants from right unit slayed by combined fire from damaged tac squad and devastator squad (who would have fired at Flyrant if grounded) and only 8 termagants from the left unit survive. The kitted out stormraven takes aim at the flyrant only scoring a single wound after jink saves or FNP. All said and done, Nids do pretty well after weathering another turn of shooting.

Nids turn 2:

Both devilgant units arrive, landing right where I want them to. Leftmost gants run for ruins, the gant unit with just 2 left runs for center ruins, gargoyles set up to assault the squad holding the center objective and Flyrant again moves 24” towards the libby. Iron arm sees SL at S/T 9, the rightmost Tervigon at S/T 9, but the left Tervigon AGAIN perils, and doesn’t pass the test this time so is down to 4 wounds. SL also casts endurance on biovores in case anyone goes for them. Gargoyles gain furious charge from SL. Tervigon on the right spawns 7 but then ceases for the rest of the game so those gants take cover by the hill to hold the objective. Shooting from the rightmost devilgant unit kills all but libby and does 1 wound to him. Left devilgant unit kills an assault squad. Flyrant attempts to leech a wound back but fails psychic test but manages to wound libby with snapfire enough to kill him. Biovores attempt to do something to uppermost tac squad and manage to kill the sergeant with sniper barrage and a standard marine. The only assault sees 5 more gargoyles dead but they remain in assault due to SL’s long synapse range.

BA turn 3:

His last 2 assault squads arrive. Realizing he needed to try to take the upper left objective, his upper tac squad moves to take it turn 4 killing 3 gants in the process. From all combined shooting, he manages to take only 1 wound from a mycetic spore and kills just 2 of the remaining devilgants. The kitted Stormraven strips another wound from the Flyrant (due to Jink again). The left stormraven easily kills off the leftmost spawned gant squad. Lowermost tac squad kills a few more of the gants from the lowest spawned unit.

Nids turn 3:

Left tervigon casts endurance on himself to attempt to regain a wound at the end of the turn and miraculously doesn’t fail or perils. The right tervigon against 9 S/T again from Iron arm, and Swarmlord casts Endurance and Iron arm on himself getting 9 S/T again. Hive tyrant swoops down to assault the nearby tac squad and attempts to cast Life Leech again, but it gets denied. And snapfires his remaining shots at the tac squad doing 3 wounds, but killing none. Shooting sees the devilgants wipe out an assault squad, and a hull point is removed from a drop pod from mycetic spore. In assault, Hive tyrant wins but doesn’t really consolidate and gargoyles are finally killed off in that ongoing assault.

BA turn 4: Pretty inconsequential because Tyranids have lots of troops left and BA very few so we call it after this turn, but BA does wipe out the gants by lower left most objective with left Stormraven, right Stormraven kills off what’s left of lowermost gant unit. He shoots and attempts to assault my devilgants with his assault squad in the upper part of the board, but they get wiped out before they get there from overwatch.


VICTORY FOR THE TYRANIDS!


Afterthoughts: Tyranids had the advantage going second. Not only did it remove BA’s effectiveness by bubblewrapping, but it also allowed the reserve nids to have things to shoot at when they arrived. The BA list wasn’t necessarily built the best to combat nids (melta’s where plasmas would have been more useful) but it’s definitely a good list. After reflection, both my opponent and I are going to tweak our lists a bit as he will not be seeing many “horde” lists (as the Tyranids list was) and I am likely going to remove the biovores (who didn’t do much) and possibly the swarmlord (for another Flyrant and Hive guard OR Venomthropes). My opponent and I are continuing to learn lots about 6E and it’s changes.

Conclusion:
The bubblewrap method I used definitely mitigates alpha strike potential that I’ll see in the upcoming tournament in March, but after this match taking just about 4 hours (due to indecisiveness and sheer number of models to use) I definitely need to come up with a way to speed things up. I think my opponent learned that while his list is a little geared to battle Meq, it’s definitely a good list and this match isn’t really a good sampling of that. His reserves arrived later that normal (due to my warlord trait) AND I completely ignored his Stormravens because I just didn’t have a way to deal with them whereas I can imagine most other armies would attempt to deal with them before the rest…
C&C appreciated everyone! Happy New Year!

None of what I assume to be your pictures, work buddy,

Sorry, Fixed!

Nicely done. I like the Batrep. Is that a computer program you used for the images? Thought it was very helpful!

It's a program called Vassal, using a module called Vassal 40K.

If you google it, there's tons of info about it....hard to use though, so I'd suggest reading/watching several tutorials before you use it.

Congrats on the win. Tyranids will dominate these type of matches where marines need to get close to deal damage....because close is where tyranids want to be (unless you're dropping sternguards). In this case, marines are losing the benefits of the drop pod army because they are forced to deepstrike far away from your army.

First turn saw 6 termagants go down from combined shooting between devastator squad and tactical squad. Both units had rerolls to hit granted by libby so I was lucky between cover saves and that his nearest tactical unit scattered on arrival to outside of his rapid fire range.

Don't exactly have my book with me, but I believe you can't cast the same power twice unless you have some type of special rule that allows you do so.

First turn saw 6 termagants go down from combined shooting between devastator squad and tactical squad. Both units had rerolls to hit granted by libby so I was lucky between cover saves and that his nearest tactical unit scattered on arrival to outside of his rapid fire range.

And blessings/maledictions are used before reserve come in (at the beginning of the movement phase) so the libby couldn't actually buff them on the turn he arrived

jy2 wrote:Congrats on the win. Tyranids will dominate these type of matches where marines need to get close to deal damage....because close is where tyranids want to be (unless you're dropping sternguards). In this case, marines are losing the benefits of the drop pod army because they are forced to deepstrike far away from your army.

First turn saw 6 termagants go down from combined shooting between devastator squad and tactical squad. Both units had rerolls to hit granted by libby so I was lucky between cover saves and that his nearest tactical unit scattered on arrival to outside of his rapid fire range.

Don't exactly have my book with me, but I believe you can't cast the same power twice unless you have some type of special rule that allows you do so.

I think what happened, was his warlord got the "reroll hits if within 3" of an objective" and since he was next to one right away, he got that, the blessed the tac squad

sn0zcumb3r wrote:

First turn saw 6 termagants go down from combined shooting between devastator squad and tactical squad. Both units had rerolls to hit granted by libby so I was lucky between cover saves and that his nearest tactical unit scattered on arrival to outside of his rapid fire range.

And blessings/maledictions are used before reserve come in (at the beginning of the movement phase) so the libby couldn't actually buff them on the turn he arrived

I wasn't aware of this, I read the rules on blessings and he did do this correctly...in the BRB it states that a blessing is to be used at the "beginning of the psyker's movement phase" which would be after reserves arrive, unless of course he decides to move the psyker's unit THEN try to cast the power.

roxor08 wrote:

jy2 wrote:Congrats on the win. Tyranids will dominate these type of matches where marines need to get close to deal damage....because close is where tyranids want to be (unless you're dropping sternguards). In this case, marines are losing the benefits of the drop pod army because they are forced to deepstrike far away from your army.

First turn saw 6 termagants go down from combined shooting between devastator squad and tactical squad. Both units had rerolls to hit granted by libby so I was lucky between cover saves and that his nearest tactical unit scattered on arrival to outside of his rapid fire range.

Don't exactly have my book with me, but I believe you can't cast the same power twice unless you have some type of special rule that allows you do so.

I think what happened, was his warlord got the "reroll hits if within 3" of an objective" and since he was next to one right away, he got that, the blessed the tac squad

sn0zcumb3r wrote:

First turn saw 6 termagants go down from combined shooting between devastator squad and tactical squad. Both units had rerolls to hit granted by libby so I was lucky between cover saves and that his nearest tactical unit scattered on arrival to outside of his rapid fire range.

And blessings/maledictions are used before reserve come in (at the beginning of the movement phase) so the libby couldn't actually buff them on the turn he arrived

I wasn't aware of this, I read the rules on blessings and he did do this correctly...in the BRB it states that a blessing is to be used at the "beginning of the psyker's movement phase" which would be after reserves arrive, unless of course he decides to move the psyker's unit THEN try to cast the power.

You missed the important part. Coming in from reserves counts as your movement as you either DS which counts as moving, or you walk on to the board which counts as moving and you have to be on the board to use powers.

Also you really did not shoot the Biovores as often as you should have, you got to fire them off every turn or they don't get the chance to earn points back.

O I see. Another point of learning that I need to do. Thanks for pointing that out.

Even though I might have forgotten to mention it, the biovores did shoot each turn, but when I didn't mention them their shooting did nothing...so I apologize for the misrepresentation.

I do, however, have some sort of agreement with others who have given me critique on my lists is that I don't have any elites and with a little sacrifice, I could afford some zoans or hive guard by dropping the biovores....

As you can also tell from the report, the swarmlord was pretty much a non factor. While not a factor in this match, I might put more consideration into replacing it with another Flyrant.

Thanks again for the comments!