Our first game was Purge the Alien with Dawn of War deployment, and our opponents were Necrons and Chaos Daemons. As far as I can tell, their lists were:
Necrons
Overlord
5 Warriors w/ Nightscythe
5 Warriors w/ Nightscythe
5 Warriors w/ Nightscythe
Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge
Bastion w/ Icarus Lascannon
Chaos Daemons
3 Heralds of Tzeentch
10+ Horrors of Tzeentch
10+ Horrors of Tzeentch
Soul Grinder
Soul Grinder
We won the roll-off for first turn and chose to deploy first so that Chris could use his psychic powers to put Feel No Pain on his Tyrants and get them into the air. I deployed mostly on the right with my Devastators poised to shoot the enemy bastions, while the Nids were on the left, along with my Rhino, containing the Tacticals and Librarian. The Genestealers infiltrated on the right.
Our opponents didn’t deploy much. The Horrors and Heralds held up in the bastions, with the Soul Grinders hiding behind them. The 3 Annihilation Barges set up on our left, facing the Tyranids.
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| The Soul Grinders brought their own cover. |
The first turn was Night Fighting, so our shooting didn’t do much. I concentrated on the bastion on the right, but only dropped its armor by 1 point. Chris went all out with his Tyrants, intending to use Onslaught to get one of his Tyrants between the Bastions so that he could shoot one of the Soul Grinders in the rear. Unfortunately, he only rolled 4 on his run roll and couldn’t make it (always buy Adrenal Glands for flying Tyrants).
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| The Hive Tyrants swoop into the enemy deployment zone, but fall a few inches short of taking out a Soul Grinder. |
Our opponents reciprocated by blasting the Tyrants, killing the one that tried to take out the Soul Grinder and wounding the other. A Soul Grinder blasted the Genestealers but didn’t do much thanks to night fighting and cover.
In our turn 2, the Tyranids continued to advance. The remaining Hive Tyrant flew to the left and blasted apart an Annihilation Barge, while the Zoanthropes attempted to warp blast the bastion on the left but were prevented by a lucky Deny the Witch. My Devastators were able to destroy the rightmost bastion, killing all of the occupants except the Herald and 2 Horrors. The Biovores and Thunderfire finished off the Horrors, leaving the Herald alone. My Stormtalon came on, but was immediately shot down by one of the Icarus Lascannons.
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| The first Bastion is destroyed, killing most of the Horrors inside. |
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| The surviving Hive Tyrant strafes the Necrons. |
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| The Herald stands alone after an artillery barrage. |
The enemy turn started with 2 Nightscythes showing up, but my Quadgun was only able to do 1 hull point of damage. The Necron firepower killed the last Hive Tyrant and the Zoanthropes, while the Soul Grinder on the right and remaining Horrors blasted the Genestealers, killing all of them but the Brood Lord. My Rhino was also destroyed, with the Marines inside bailing out toward the cover of my firebase. The Soul Grinder on the left killed one of my Scouts and one of my lascannon Devastators.
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| The Broodlord roars his defiance after the Soul Grinder guns down his brood. |
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| Nightscythes strafe my Marines. |
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| My firebase holds position as the Soul Grinders bombard it. |
Things weren’t looking good for us. The Termagants ran off the table while my Tactical Marines and Librarian ran into cover to try and survive the Necron firepower. My missile launcher Devastators killed the exposed Soul Grinder, while the lascannons fired at a Nightscythe but couldn’t hit the fast moving flyer.
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| The Devastators blow the torso off the exposed Soul Grinder. |
The rest of the game was pretty straightforward, with my Marines trying to survive the now overwhelming Necron firepower. There was a high point when my Scout Sergeant destroyed one of the Nightscythes with a krak grenade.
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| The Nightscythes demolish my lascannon Devastators. |
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| But the Scouts destroy the lead flyer with a luck krak grenade. |
I still had a few units when the game ended, and the Broodlord was miraculously still alive. It turned out to be a 9-5 loss for us. Our opponents ended up winning the tournament, so we weren’t to sad about the loss at the end of the day.
Lessons Learned
1) Bastions are surprisingly tough. I assumed my Siege Master Devastators could take them out, but I couldn’t re-roll my penetration rolls against them since they aren’t vehicles. When one did finally go down, most of the squad inside died, but it didn’t happen fast enough for us to win the game.
2) I should have spread my Devastators out to control more of the board. As it was, the Annihilation Barges were able to stay out of their range until the Tyranids were mostly dead and they could concentrate on me. I would have been much better off shooting at the Barges early, as they did way more damage than the Bastions and my Devastators would have been far more efficient at killing them.
3) I’ll put this one in for Chris: Always take Adrenal Glands on flying Hive Tyrants. The potential for sneaky rear-shots when combined with Onslaught is just too good to ignore.