Battle Report - Tyranids vs Space Marines

This grey autumn saturday saw a well-rested Hive Fleet Askepios take on the Space Marines of the Screaming Eagles Chapter on their home turf! A fun day spent at the operational HQ of Da Klub's Big Boss (aka Steve), this also served as a much needed practice game for the upcoming Rapid Fire! Tourney in Stirling. Since we both had the day free we decided on 2000 points a side, and a straightforward Annihilation Mission. The only random aspect was the deployment, which we rolled up as 'Dawn of War'. Steve drew his forces from his almost complete ENTIRE COMPANY of proper, no-nonense Codex marines, pictured below:

Yup, I was impressed too! Steve's actual army list went a little something like this:

Company Captain with Relic Blade

Command Squad with 4 Meltaguns & Company Standard

Dreadnought with Assault Cannon

Dreadnought with Multi-melta

5 x Full Tactical Squads with an assortment of Assault and Heavy Weapons (a couple with Power fisted Sergeants)

2 x Landspeeders

2 x 5 Man Devastator Squads, 1 with 4 Missile Launchers & 1 with 4 Heavy Bolters

Predator Tank with Autocannon and Heavy Bolter Sponsons

Whirlwind Tank

With over 60 marines on the table, the Tyranids were going to have to earn their meal-tickets today! The list I'd chosen was my best effort to recreate the sort of army I'll be taking to Rapid-Fire, scaled up to 2000 points (and without the Doom of Malantai - who just doesn't belong in friendly games!).

Hive Tyrant with with Old Adversary and Hive Commander, Paroxysm & Leach Essence, Heavy Venom Cannon & Toxin Sacs

3 Tyrant Guard

3 Zoanthropes in a Mycetic Spore

2 x 3 Hive Guard

2 x Tervigons (Toxin Sacs, Adrenaline, Catalyst and Cluster Spines)

2 x 10 Gaunts

2 x Trygons (Adrenaline)

3 Biovores

I won the roll-off and chose to go first, setting up the Tervigons provocatively on the half-way line. With plenty of cover for my inevitable march across the table, I reasoned that it was best to take the opportunity to push Steve's initial deployment forces back out of the city ruins to cling to his board edge, out of LOS of my army which would be largely coming on from my own edge on Turn 1. The Trygons and Spore went into Deep Strike, whilst the 2 Gaunt Broods were held in reserve. Steve deployed 2 Tactical Squads centrally, one atop a large terrain piece to my left, the other behind that terrain piece, covering the corridor between it and the adjacent building. He didn't manage to seize the initiative, so it was game on!

Turn 1 was rather uneventful. My forces moved and ran as far forward as they could; whilst Steve's were left either withouth targets due to intervening terrain, or unable to fire due to having to move to enter play from his board edge. Turn 2 kicked off to an earthshaking start as the Trygons burst through the concrete into play. As they wouldn't be assaulting anyone this turn I maneouvered them both behind a large building, whilst the Tervigons did what they do best! Each spawning a respectable-sized brood of gaunts as back up, they hurled themselves forward to meet the Space Marines. The Tervigon to the left and her Gaunts got the charge on a Tactical squad, as did the freshly spawned Gaunts to the right of the table. Regrettably neither assault was very decisive for me, resulting in no kill points. In Steve's turn he managed to take out the Tervigon to the right, the whose psychic death-throws reaked havoc with the nearby embattled gaunts! A similair fate awaited the Tervigon to the left, resulting in a very unusual scene:

Gaunts - not fighting, not dead, but running away! With my first wave in tatters, it was up to the Trygons to start bringing home the bacon until the Hive Tyrant got close enough to do some damage. Turn 3 saw the arrival of the Zoanthropes, who landed bang on target in front of the Predator. 180 points worth of anti-tank nastiness focussed their psychic energies in preparation to blow the battle tank into smithereens... well not quite. One failed his Psychic Test, the other 2 missed. Zoanthropes eh? Needless to say they suffered a few casulaties in Steve's ensuing shooting phase. Meanwhile the restless Trygons slithered forth from the ruined building and pounced, one on a Tactical Squad, the other on the Command Squad and the Captain. The Tactical Squad suffered a few casualties, whereas the Command Squad and Captain were destroyed. Wary of 2 Dreadnoughts with itchy trigger fingers, I consolidated the freed Trygon into what I thought was a safe position. In fact I'd condemned him to death by placing in the fire corridor of the Missile Launcher-armed Devastators! He went down in Steve's shooting phase - a very careless mistake on my part! By the end of Turn 4 the Hive Tyrant still hadn't hit home, which was beginning to concern me! With a superhuman effort he and his Guard lugged their massive bulk onto the bulding roof to their left, and bellowed before the remnants of 3 Space Marine Squads positioned there. The remaining Zoanthrope redeemed himself by exploding the Predator before being reduced to a gooey mess. The Hive Guard had by this point only taken out a Land Speeder each, and were now left distinctly short of tempting targets, and struggling to stay in synapse range. There was little I could do with them without risking a kill point or two, so they adopted a defensive lurking stance in the central ruined building. The remaining Trygon, having been met by and defeated one of the Dreadnoughts, had developed a taste for armour and charged the remaining Dreadnought to earn a last kill point before giving up his last wounds to massed Heavy Bolter and plasma fire.

My only real player now was the Hive Tyrant and his Guard, who managed to get the charge and chewed through the unit he hit first. He weathered a storm of shooting and managed to get a two-for-one charge, hitting the remnants of a Tactical Squad and the hated Missile-Launcher-armed Devastators. The game went right on Turn 7, which meant the loss of the Tyrant Guard to massed shooting, but also the loss of Steve's Whirlwind to the enraged Tyrant's Bonesword (the old tyrant ended the game on 1 wound!).

Meanwhile, feeling brave, the Hive Guard passed their leadership tests and egded forward to try and claim another kill point for the Hive Mind - But it wasn't to be. Final result: Tyranids 11, Space Marines 7; Tyranid Victory!

I always struggle with Kill points missions. A big part of my army is the Tervigons, who rely on spawning gaunts for their effectiveness. Whilst this is only ever a good thing in objective missions, with Kill points though spawning is seldom a good idea as it offers your opponent some very easy kill points, leaving me with 2 very expensive but rather mediocre Monstrous Creatures in my army! The only thing I might have done differently with the Tervigons might have been to pair them and use their combined clout to attack a single squad, rather than setting them up to take on a squad each. Another option would have been to hold them back until they could benefit from the Hive Tyrant's 'preferred enemy' buff, but they'd have been waiting a while for that! I didn't make great use of the Hive Guard in this game - they each took a kill point but were then left without much of a plan - usually these guys are amongst my star players but I'd starved them of targets. I think the lack of transport tanks in Steve's army worked in his favour in that respect. Star-player award though has to go to the Hive Tyrant with his Guard. They may cost over 400 points but they're hard as nails and can take out just about whatever you throw them at. In many ways he's what every Tyranid needs to be: A close combat monstrosity with the resilience to actually make it there!

Studio McVey's Isabella - Coloured in!

She's been finished for a couple of weeks and was growing impetulant that she wasn't yet strutting her stuff on the blog, so without further ado, here's my effort at painting Isabella from Studio McVey's miniature range.

One of my aims for this project was to try and hold back the colour scheme. Everything I paint seems to be very bright and brash, with bright red or yellow appearing on almost every model I've ever painted! So I tried to limit my palette a little this time (though some red may have crept in there - ahem, check her scarf, ahem).

The jacket and jeans were both shaded and highlighted from a foundation based on Citadel's Space Wolves Grey. Painting denim was a new challenge, I've tried to go for a 'sandblasted' look here, using thin lines of different shades applied with plenty of water in the mix. I then washed them with Gryphonne Sepia, and repeated the process a couple of times to get the highlights. The jacket, obviously, is space wolves grey blended up to skull white, again shaded with Gryphonne Sepia. However I then did several very thin washes of skull white over the whole outer jacket to lighten the general tone, which also unified the various stages of highlighting quite a bit.

I tried to downplay the brown waistcoat and leathers so that nothing was jumping out and detracting from the face, again a fresh challenge for a 40K painter to try something very feminine, conveying some expression other than a "Grrr I'm gonna kill you!" grimace. The base colour for the skin was Dheneb Stone, shaded with (yet more) Gryphonne Sepia and then highlighted with Bleached Bone and Skull White being gradually added to the mix. I had a go at alluding to her wearing some make-up and cosmetics too, though not sure if you'll be able to spot them! The mascara's the most obvious, but there's also some light blue eyeshadow and a pinkish lipstick on the face, with (hopefully matching) red nail varnish.

I think if you're going to lavish attention on a single model, you're naturally going to spend a lot of time looking at it. In this respect, she was a nice break from slavering beasties!

Have you painted a model recently that was break from the norm for you? If not I'd throughly recommend giving it a go!

Hive Nodes

Ever-adapting, the spawning vats of Hive Fleet Askepios completed the final touches on these nasty characters today! Tyranid Warriors bolster the swarm by providing synaptic control but are also fearsome adversaries in their own right - especially set up as these guys are with Lash whips and Boneswords. I'd painted up my Warriors years ago, kitted out with Rending claws and deathspitter - not exactly a deadly combo, even under the previous Codex! Unsurprisingly they've sat on the shelf for soem time - but they're such cool models I needed some excuse to start fielding them again. So with a little ingenuity and fishing in the trusty bits box I was able to convert them into real killing machines.


For the bonesword arms I've used deathspitter arms, with the gun cut off. For the blades I've used the 'scythe' from the scything talons Warrior special weapons sprue (which I had loads of left from Hive Guard conversions!), shaved into that sort of rapier shape that seems to work. Some extra caraprace pieces and toxin sacs hide the joins well enough (I hope!).

The lash-whips I think any 'Nid player will recognise as the 'feeder' arm from the Heavy Venom Cannon on the Monstrous Creature sprue. Cut down and shaved to a tapered point, I think they look the part. I cut some of them up to get the whip flailing in different directions, with some overuse of poly cement then filed down to hide the joins. I might go back and slop some PVA glue on the ends to give them a gooey wet-look!


So there they are, ready to go. And what could be more of a head-ache for an opponent than three so-armed Warriors? How about six of them, accompanied by a Tryanid Prime?!
Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Counter-Attack! Edinburgh 2010

Having given good account of themselves at Britcon, the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Askepios turned their gaze north to the Scottish capital! Run by the Edinburgh League of Gamers, I'd heard about this annual one-day tournament from my regular opponent Kenny. He'd emphasised the friendliness of the competitors as well as the quality of players who generally attend, and was offering a lift - how could I resist? All I needed was to trim my list down from 2000 to 1750 points and I'd be set! Here's what I ended up taking:

A Hive Tyrant with Heavy Venom Cannon, Old Adversary, Hive Commander & Acid Blood
2 Tyrant Guard
2 units of 3 Hive Guard
The Doom of Malantai in a Mycetic Spore
2 Tervigons with Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs, Catalyst & Onslaught
2 units of 10 Termegants
2 Trygons with Adrenal Glands

GAME 1 - Capture & Control, Pitched Battle

versus Chaos Space Marines:

Winged Daemon Prince with Lash of Submission

Chaos Sorceror with Lash of Submission

2 units of Khorne Berzerkers in Rhino transports

1 unit of Plague Marines

1 unit of Chosen Marines

1 combat squad of Chaos Marines

3 Terminators with combi-meltas

3 units of one Obliterator each

So my first game would see me facing the dreaded 'Twin-lash' for the first time ever. Knowing the Spiky Marines Codex and having had plenty of experience fighting against the other elements of this sort of army though I was fairly confident about this one. Our objectives placed at opposite corners of the table, he got first turn and set up the core of his troops round his objective. Those Plague Marines were gonna be hard to shift! He kept 2 of the obliterators and the terminators in reserve. I put everything but the Doom on the table, with the Tyrant as close to his objective as I could get him, ready to stride forward, backed up by a Tervigon + gaunts. The Trygons set up shop centrally behind a huge ruin, out of sight of the Chaos guns as much as possible. Tervigon number 2 held the fort on my objective. In the early turns I was mainly reacting to his reserves and the advance on my objective. The Doom put an unprecentedly effective stop to this - destroying an entire unit of Khorne Berzerkers the turn he arrived! This took the wind out of sails to such a degree that the Tervigon guarding my objective really only needed to sit there spawning gaunts to fend of the rest of the Chaos Marines. With my own objective looking safe, the Tryant began his implacable advance to the right hand side of the table, while the Trygons made a bee-line for each of the Lash HQ characters. With close combats and consolidations giving all of these units some much needed extra movement, I was eventually swarming his objective. The plague marines held their ground though, so I couldn't quite claim the objective for the Hive Mind, but as my own was secure that was enough to win me the first game.

Game 2 - Annihilation, Dawn of War

versus Orks

Cybork-Biker-Warboss with Power-klaw

Big Mek with Kustom Force Field

5 or 6 Cybork Nob Bikers with 3 Power-klaws, 2 or 3 Big choppas, Painboy, Waaagh! Banner

10 Cybork Nobs in a Trukk with similar equipment as above (Troops)

12 Boyz with Power klaw Nob in a Trukk

20 Boyz with Power Klaw Nob in a stripped down Battlewagon

30 Boyz with Power Klaw Nob

This mission featured a special rule which meant any non-vehicle units which were destroyed would re-appear from reserve from the owning player's board edge. So pretty much all of the army would be on the table all the time. And it was Orks versus Tyranids. And it was kill points. Both my opponent and I knew from the start we weren't going to get through many turns! Assaults were in full swing from Turn 2, I think we got to Turn 4 before time was up - brutal!

The Heavy Tyrant advances towards the super-tough Nob Bikers.... by this point it was pretty much all over! Some terrible deployment as my army scuttled onto the Table on Turn 1 saw me position my Trygons behind cover on one flank. What were they doing there? What were they hiding from? Who knows what I was thinking. Anyway, this gave my opponent the generous option of simply arriving from the other flank and rolling through my units one by one. As I'd made the mistake of doing in previous kill-point games, I also made life easier for him by using the Tervigons to spawn gaunts. Some very easy kills for him there. Then as my units started recycling from my board edge, he was supremely placed to take them out as they arraived. It was a true and almost utter Annihilation. No points for me then!! But a fun game nonetheless, as is always guaranteed against the Orks!

Game 3 - Seize Ground, Spearhead

versus Space Marines

Lysander - with a full unit of sterguard veterans

4 full units of Tactical marines (no power weapons or fists)

2 5-man Scout squads

A Devastator squad with Missile Launchers

an attack bike and a Whirlwind Tank

Looking at this list the main threats were Lysander and his veterans, and the Devastators. The special rules for the scenario which saw every building either smoking or on fire helped with both of these however, making every scenary piece either Dangerous, blazing ruins or blocking line of sight with plumes of smoke. So Lysander's advance was hindered by the flaming buildings and the Devastators could hardly draw line of sight to a single one of my units. My opponent Joe was a pleasure to play against, a very nice guy, making jokes as the game progressed (i think my Monstrous creatures sort of suited his suggested names of Tricia, Karen, Sharon.... lol!). By turn 4 I'd ploughed through most of this predominantly-infantry army and the game ended with me holding 4 objectives. I really felt for Joe when Lysander, his sternguard bodyguard destroyed, made a heroic last charge towards a Trygon, and was killed before he could lift his great Thunder Hammer to land a blow. But that's the way the dice roll sometimes...

So ended a thoroughly enjoyable tournament. I finished 4th of 14, which I was really pleased with. Kenny finished 2nd which of course he was pleased with - hopefully we did the highlands proud! However no prizes were awarded for winning the event, instead there were some different categories, just for a break in the usual routine. I picked up a prize for the second-greatest margin of victory in a game, with Ian the Ork player (who probably scored those points in Game 2 against me!) taking first place in that category. Best army went to Jamie Farquhar - his Space Wolves can be seen above. Jamie's work is prolific and of an extremely high standard. I faced his Iron Warriors at Rapid-Fire Stirling last year, which also saw him take home the Best Army award. Anyway, here are some pics of other armies from the event!

Above - Kenny's Chaos Marines, headed up by a summoned Greater Daemon!
Below - I had to get a shot of this ace Eldar Seer Council - on hover-boards!!


Above - Commander Farsight leads his Tau Battlesuits into battle

Below - Part of the Dark Angels force that got my vote for Best Army

Britcon 2010

August 13th this year saw Hive Fleet Askepios attend it's first weekend tournament. Run by the British Historical Gaming Society, Britcon is one of the larger UK events in the wargamer's calendar. With roughly 400 attending over the course of the weekend, and competitions in every game system from the ancient majesty of Field of Glory to the grim future of Warhammer 40,000, it was a bit of a daunting prospect to say the least! Perhaps it was this trepidation that contributed to my crminally forgetting to BRING MY CAMERA to the event.....

So how did it go? There were 16 competitors in the 40K event and I came 6th. Not amazing but not terrible - pretty much where I expected to end up! I posted my army list a few posts back and, having seen some of the other Tyranid armies (there were 5 of us - the infestation is spreading!) there are a few changes I'll be making to my own list. For a start I'm all turned around on the Hive Tyrant - teamed with a unit of at least 2 Hive Guard he's damn near unkillable and really boosts the rest of the army. Still overpriced but, I've concluded, worth taking. Then there's the Doom of Malantai... who I think is set to become as much a mainstay of any competitive Nid army as Vulkan He'stan is to the Space Marines.

As for the individual games I had 2 (non consecutive) games against the same opponent - which it transpired shouldn't have happened (we did raise it at the time with our Unpire only to be told just to go with it so what were we to do?) - a young Chaos Space Marine player who won the Junior Trophy for the whole event. I secured a pretty sound victory both times against him, though he made me work for them more than I'd have liked! For a 14-year old he knew his stuff and in fairness to him I think the 'cheesiness' of my list carried me most of the way toward victory. 2 Tervigons and 2 Trygons PLUS loads of suped-up Hormagaunts PLUS an 'Elites' section crammed with anti-tank: The list was designed to give mechanised marine armies of any description a hard time, which it did with aplomb.

I had 2 games against fellow Tyranid players, both of which I lost 32-0 - the largest margin of loss possible at the tournament! I scored 0 points for both of those games. Funnily enough though, the first of these Nid-v-Nid games was for me the most enjoyable game of the tourney. The mission was 'Home and Away', aka the 'draw' mission. We both deployed defensively and spent the first few turns sizing each other up, advancing cagily. The most tense game of 40K I've ever played, until Turn 3 when I spied an opening in his line and charged. The charge wasn't as effective as it needed to be, which gave him the opening he needed to bulldoze his way to my objective. You can actually see his coverage of the event at: http://maws40k.blogspot.com/2010/08/britcon-2010-aftermath.html
The second Nid v Nid game I found rather demoralising as I'm terrible at 'Kill Points' missions, and through no fault of my opponent I was just getting a bored of the Doom of Malantai killing everything around it! That second gamewas the only time I was wishing for my trusty Orks - they'd have shown those Nids 'how ta fight proppa', or at least had a hoot trying!

Games 3 & 6 were against Space Wolves armies. I LOVE fighting against Space Wolves. As an assault based army with a respectable supporting fire capability, they always present an interesting challenge. Charging them can sometimes be the worst option - what choices does that leave a unit of hormagaunts? Not many! So how did I win both games? Generally by hugging cover and drawing them to me, popping transports to ensure any charge is on my terms as they advance. Meanwhile those of my units who can deploy by deep strike can upset his backline or any outflanking units. Usually the Sons of Russ can be goaded into charging a unit of termegants, which can usuaully hold their own when supported by a Tervigon. Then when my turn comes round my Hormagaunts (or of course some freshly spawned termegants) can dispatch any Blood Claws or Grey hunters that have their sights set on forging their own sagas of valour in battle!

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable event which taught me a lot, and was made all the better by the offer of free tickets next year for all those who attended!

And for anyone who made it this far here's an unrelated picture of one of my tyranid shrikes, who unfortunately had to sit it out at Britcon!