It's Kill Team time! Tyranids vs Imperial Guard, 250 points

Before we dive into some ratty goodness of "End Times: Thanquol", let's take a small brake and explore the wonderful world of Kill Team, courtesy of always excellent Heralds of Ruin.

This is my third Kill Team game and the second one that I was playing against Tyranids. My friend Chris, who got his baptism by fire while fighting against Orks, was up for the challenge and so we prepared our lists and got to work.

The game was played at 250 points, standard for Kill Team. We've rolled for the sabotage scenarion, and Chris decided to attack my well entrenched Guardsemn, who were defending a couple of field-stricken Chimeras. Obviously Chris is new to this game, as not only he was attacking me, but also provided my forces with some homemeade (and totaly awesome!) Aegis Defence Line fortifications, which he made himself! How cool is that?

Bitchin! I really need to finally paint it tough...
As for our lists there were some changes from the last game. Last time I took Tempestus Scions, the elite Strom Troopers of the Imperial Guard. This time I've decided to go with standard troops, equipped with Vostroyan doctrine while my opponent just went for a good, old fashioned swarm.

Here are our forces:

Stand to Men!
My IG was lead by a Force Commander with Plasma gun, Bolt pistol, Anthax Pattern Carapace Armour and a Rosarius and some grenades. I had a Heavy Weapons Team with Mortar, two veteran squads, one with a flamer and another with a sniper rifle, both sporting stylish Carapace Armour jackets and some nades and finally a vanilla Guardsmen squad with Flamer and (surprise, surprise) a few grenades. Everyone, except HWT, had Vox Casters. This was a first time I was going to use Mortar, a weapon which to me always seemed all too situational...

Chris brought up some heavy duty hitters in his bug army. Lead by a Zoanthrope, it also consisted of two Warriors (one with Devourer and one with a nasty Spinefist), a Ravener and a couple of Gaunt broods, specifically two Termagant and two Hormagant. It was a perfect balance between assault and shooting that can make a Guardsmen's life a living hell.

Omnomnomnom!
Turns 1 and 2:

We've deployed our forces on the battlefield. Chris started behind a small hill, while I've camped like a noob behind the Aegis Defense Line and hoped that my awe inspiring firepower will be enough to stop the mad xenos horrors from harvesting my biomass.

Meanwhile the Cog-boys were working hard on bringing up those damn transports to life
I couldn't do jack so it was Chris's turn to advance against my entrenched red shirts. He did so with a tactical accumen of the Swarmlord, utilising cover and splitting his forces so as not give my guns easy targets. It didn't really matter, since even my Sniper and Mortar were out of reach for the first, two turns of play. This was going to be fun...

The horde advances...
Turn 3:

After some deep striking shenanigans (including a mishap and a return to reserves) his Ravener burrowed right next to my Force Commander and a Vet Squad, happily camping in a bunker and taking pot shots at advancing Gants. Together with HWT, my Veteran Sniper managed to kill a couple of advancing critters. Meanwhile my FC fired his Plasma Gun and managed to wound the monster once, however one of his shots resulted in an overheat, which cooked one of the troopers inside the bunker. Damn!

Surprise!
Meanwhile my rightmost unit of Veterans peppered the onrushing horde of Gants with some las fire and managed to bring down a couple of them. Good shooting, but the looming threat of a Tyranid Warrior and some more Gants, was getting ever closer...

Pew! Pew! Pew!
Here's another pic, this time from the Nids perspective.

Damn, this looks epic. The dead Gant squad on the left was carrying one of the acid bombs, which could really hurt my grounded tanks a lot. However there were still two left...
On Chris's turn the Tyranids finally attacked, with some help from Zoanthrope's mind magic, swarming my positions and killing my Commander. His men were suspiciously slow in reacting to their leader's cries for help. Probably because of that unfortunate plasma incident. In my next turn I had to bring up the Guardsmen squad from the left flank, as support, or else the middle faced the danger of being breached, especially since the shooty 

The guard dies, but never surrenders!
Turn 4:

Retaliation time! My Vets regrouped, fell back and shot the Ravener and Gants to shit, while also throwing a grenade that blew a couple monsters to bits, but unfortunately didn't manage to even scrape the carapace of the big Nid. However my vanilla Guardsmen finished the job, rushing from the left flank and burning both the Ravener and a single Hormagant to death with their Flamer. Good job lads!

The beasts lie dead, but there are still more to come
In Chris's turn he once again managed to fire up the Zoanthrope's power of rushing other Tyranids organisms towards their prey (forgot it's name, sorry) but suffered Perils of the Warp in return! He rolled the dice and consulted the table... and managed to get his Zoanthrope +3 attacks, Armourbane and Fleshbane until the end of next turn. Since Zoanthropes can't attack in CC at all, we've both had a good laugh at this.

However the power worked, and that meant his warrior bumrushed my Veteran Guardsmen on the right flank, firing his Devourer and and then assaulting me, despite being peppered with Lasgun fire and burning Promethium fuel. Unfortunately he survived and killed a single Guardsmen, while taking a wound from his colleague's bayonets and combat knives.

Unfortunately the middle Vet squad didn't managed as well, as their right flank allies. A salvo from the Warrior's Spinefist claimed another two of them and forced the rest to flee. Fortunately for me they've stopped just before the edge of the table. Said Warrior was blown to hell by the inexperienced Guardsmen, who came to their "elite" fellows aid. Desperate, his depleted Hormagants assaulted my middle Guardsmen squad, but were killed by the Emperor's soldiers in grim close combat. So far the most successful unit in my army was the least experienced one!

Needless to say, they've recieved their promotion that day
During turns 4 and 5, Mortar continued to fire, blowing up a big chunkg of his second Termagant squad, which resulted in a single xenos horror assaulting the HWT and... doing nothing to it, and in return also recieving zero wounds.

Finally we came to turn 6 and the game ended. The swarm failed in their task of destroying IG's tanks and the surviving Guardsmen were able to board their Chimeras and race to their base, before more Tyranids arrived. I've lost my Force Commander, and 4 Veterans, while he only had his Zoanthrope, a wounded Warrior and a single Termagant by the end of the game.

It was a great game, and while Chris ultimately lost it, it should be noted that he had a very disadvantegous position, not to mention that it was his army that was storming a well entrenched, Astra Militarum gunline. Nex time I won't be so lucky, since we've already agreed that our next game won't be about attacking/defending, since that is pretty boring. I envision a great slaughter of hapless Guardsmen by the foul Tyranids, but as always, the Emperor protects, so who knows? Maybe I'll be able to defeat the vile Xenos.

Once again I'm posting a link to the Heralds of Ruin website, where you'll find all the rules nescessary to play the game: http://heralds-of-ruin.blogspot.com/ If you want to immerse yourselves in the fantastic world of Kill Team, then you should definetly visit their website. It's really worth it.

Next week is Thanquol week. Bring some cheese or the Skaven will get you. Squeek, squeek.

Until next time

Xathrodox86

Comments

  1. I will just add that yesterday the same Tyranid hive fleet was destroyed by Emperor's Angels of Death in Purge the Alien scenario. Seeing so many powerful units now I do realize why bugs represent greatest threat to galaxy ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. A feat worthy of the Emperor himself. I can't wait for another glorious battle. :)

    ReplyDelete

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