Warlord ‘Urghnould’s Waaagh!! faces the Tyranid tendril fleet Antaeus. The Tyranids face the boss’ ire, but will Blakkangur’s anger take the better of him?
A splinter fleet full of Tyranids is a worthy enough foe and ‘Urghnould directs his rokks towards a blasted planet, where the Imperium has being swallowed whole by the swarm. Rolling out the trukks, stomping out the dreads and Waaagh!!ing out the boys, ‘Urghnould fills the air with the smell of gunpowder, petrol and orkoid transpiration.
“Leave da big flappa fer me!”, the Warlord bellows and charges into the fray as fast as the mega armour’s pistons carries him.
Me and Mr. Easter decided to pick up a game of 40k at 1500 points last weekend. Semi-randomising the mission (i.e. rolling dice to randomly determine what to play, but then ending up adjusting blindly and/or wildly). In the end Emperor’s Will was on the menu (=one objective each). Those oldie but goodie scenarios are nicely straight-forward without too much book-keeping, something that seemed to fit us rather well on a Friday night.
I went for a spontaneous Great Waaagh!! band detachment with a Goff Killmob, an extra painboy and some lootas. Dreads are fun, and I was a bit interested in showing Mr. Easter that his Nids could face a few ork walkers without too much problem. I also wanted to try out the formation detachment, but the games so far have been too small to fit the detachment properly.
Mr. Easter had his usual core of Nids, with a Hive Tyrant HQ and a few monsters, with an allied Patriarch with Neophytes and a subterranean uprising. Usually facing more competitive armies he wanted to try them out against something less… polished. Orks aren’t polished, are they?
Rolling for initiative, the Tyranids got the first turn.
↑ After deployment. Genesneakers are already charging the orks. What a party, when you don’t have to run all the way over the battlefield to parteh!, the orks think.
↑ Nids 1. Gene sneaker hybrids and neophytes hoot two Lootas with their autopistols, but cannot reach up to assault through the ruins. Lootas’ overwatch kill one of them. The Hive Tyrant blows up a trukk.
↑ Orks 1. ‘Urghnould sends the remnants of the trukkboys to take care of the acolytes (with a primus) and a Dread to take care of the hybrids assaulting the lootas. That didn’t go too well. The dreads failed the charge, and the trukkboys got their asses handed to them. Surprisingly many attacks there and a very fighty human leading them…
“‘Urghnould does not like flying flappy things, and dis un ‘ere looks like a gud trophy.” So ‘Urghnould orders the rest of the army to shoot that thing down. Unfortunately its carapace is hard as steel and the shots do no damage. “That’s not too gud, argh!”
↑ Nids 2. The rest of the Tyranids are carefully moving forward while the Hive Tyrant circles around the orks. The Patriarch ambushes his crew and try to pop a trukk (mid top). The Hive tyrant manages to destroy a killa kan. The hybrids don’t manage to reach the lootas, but autopistol takes another one down.
↑ Orks 2. The Dread stomps the hybrids, while a trukkmob charges the Neophytes with the primarch. A sole hybrid is soon facing the dread alone, while the trukkboys kills many of the acolytes and take punishment in return. The Patriarch is bogged down by the humans around him and cannot reach the combat.
‘Urghnould charges out of his ride with his kru’. His impact sees him sinking into the rock underneath, slowing him down and leaving the gaunts out of reach. The rest of the army still follows his orders and puts some dakka into the tyrant. A few shots hits it in a sore place, but it is still flying high.
↑ Nids 3. A mawloc hears the clank of ‘Urghnould’s impact and follows the vibration as a fish follows a lure. The Gorkanaut stomping behind is distracting enough to have the tunneler barely miss its target. The neophytes and the patriarch cut down the last of the trukkboys; the tyrant shoots the remaining dread to smithereens and the hybrid is slain by the dreadnought, but his rending claws takes 2 HP from it with its last breath. (Rending attacks on a S4 base is not too shabby at all.)
↑ Orks 3. ‘Urghnould charges and the shootaboys assault the Mawloc which is torn down. The dread is destroyed by the remaining acolytes. A few wounds are bleeding on a carnifex. More useless shooting at the Hive Tyrants (if it wasn’t personal before, its now!)
↑ Nids 4. All of the Tyranids effort is put into killing ‘Urghnould. It doesn’t work at all. Shootas takes a few ricochets. Lootas could not be reached by the charging acolytes, but one dies by an autogun shot. While in cover. Again. -_-
↑ Orks 4. It might be getting near the end, and the ork army is getting depleted. Now there is actually some strategy to OPEN FIRE AT THE TYRANT!! (i.e. not only a vendetta, no moah). It has one wound left at the end of Ork turn 4.
(The tyrant was the one with best chance of taking the ork home objective. Seriously.)
↑ Nids 5. The Hive Tyrant is the one pulling the real weight here, shooting away the shootaboys from the objective. A few are left alive.
↑ Orks 5. Two options are left, either to have the Gorkanaut charge the gaunts and try to have them pile in from the Tyranid home objective. Here is a Zoanthrope, too so the plan needs the game to proceed. If the Hive Tyrant (at one last wound) falls, the Ork objective might just be safe for another turn. (Yeah, you know the drill.) Every gunna in the army fires at the Tyrant. And you know what? This time it did not fall either.
And the game ended happily ever after with a 5-3 win to the Tyranids (objective, first blood and line breaker).
So what did we learn?
Poisontail: I have a personal vendetta against that flying hive tyrant. It always ends up being a personal minigame to get it down, and usually I can’t. Pushing forward would have been much more effective here, but I was fooled by the Genestealer Cultists ambushing me. They hit hard too!
Mr. Easter: I still have a lot to learn about using Genestealer Cults with my Tyranids. ‘Urghnould with his rerollable save from the Lucky Stikk is a pain. Some low AP shooting would again have proven useful.Luckily my Hive Tyrant was lucky as well.
Poisontail: Yeah, ‘Urghnould is ridiculous in that mega armour and those re-rolls. I like having a survivable character that lives from game to game (more or less) and keeps the legend alive so to say. But I think this character set-up has come to the end of the road. ‘Urghnould of course will live on…
But, what was your plan? Did it work out?
Mr. Easter: I hoped to distract you with the Cultists and the Tyrant. When the Lootas were unreachable turn after turn that plan went amiss… Luckily the Tyrant survived all that.
Poisontail: Yeah, then you got me good with those sneakers. I though I could take them on piecemeal and move on with plenty of time.
Mr. Easter: I was planning to shoot at the trukks to slow the orks down, too. But the Tyrant shot at the wrong thing…
Poisontail: And charging genestealers is painful. They can fight, they really can…!
Poison Tail's project work-things 