Went down to Gaming Underground today, and got a non-league game in with Vinny. He was debating which of the Trygon/Trygon Prime/Mawloc to use, so we set up for a test game with the Trygon Prime, his Nids vs. the Merkan IG, 1250pts.
I brought Company commander, two platoons of two squads each, lascannon, missile launcher, and mortar squads, 5-man stormtroopers, Marbo, Russ and Manticore, plus Aegis line and quadgun.
He brought a flying tyrant, two squads of termagants with devourers, two tervigons, trygon prime, Doom in mycetic spore.
The battle is set along a ruined city street, IG on the left, Nids on the right. Extra barricades have been thrown up to try to slow the hive fleet.
The bugs line up and start to charge across to the Merkan positions.
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| View of Merkan line |
The hive tyrant swoops over in front of the Merkan right flank, threatening to unleash havoc the following turn. I found myself in a quandy - the quad gun, with its skyfire, was obviously best suited to getting a chance to ground the flying monstrous creature. But if I wanted to use orders on my heavy weapons teams, I had to do that first. Eventually I realized that I could use one of my orders on the squad using the quad gun, letting it fire first and saving the company commander's other order for the lascannons. Hurrah for brain cells! The quad gun hit a few times, took a wound off and did indeed ground the tyrant, costing it another wound. After the lascannons and krak missiles were done, it was just a steaming pile of biomass. Huzzah! First blood, slay the warlord and a kill point all at once!
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| Other fire takes out the generated termagants that had been screening the tervigon. |
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| On the other side, some casualties to the bugs but they keep on coming... |
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| Fire at will! |
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| Tervigon generates more bugs and the monsters get closer and closer to the line. The oncoming horde is too much for one squad manning the wall, who breaks after taking several casualties and hightails it to the rear. |
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| The Doom of Malantai and his transport spore land in the convenient open space and begin sucking out Imperial minds. The quad gun tracks them on the way down and gets a few hits, but fail to kill the monster before it could do its work. |
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| Strom Troopers come in from the flank, destroying a termagant squad but drawing the attention of their "mother", who soon slaughters them. |
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| The guard get whittled down as the bugs start to swarm over their positions. |
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| Up from the depths! The Trygon tunnels up in front of the Russ and unleashes 18 shots at the stunned guardsmen, killing four and causing the rest to flee. |
My platoon command squad on the right had their tinfoil hats on under their helmets, repeatedly passing the Doom's Spirit Leech tests with flying colors. Trying to tie it up for a turn, they charge in but end up being killed. In the meantime, heavy weapon squads finish off the tervigon and destroy the spore pod. Doom consolidates over towards the weapon teams, and next turn the gunners' brains turn to jelly. Doom also earlier lobbed a blast towards the company commander, missing but scattering onto the Manticore, exploding it! Oog. It had missed with the two shots it got off, but I was still sad to see it go, especially accidentally!
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| Back to the spaceport men! |
The left flank collapsed too, as the two squads over there got clipped with cluster spines and decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
Marbo had arrived and blew up a few termagants and took a wound himself. At that point I had Marbo, the mortars and the Russ left and we called it a day. As often happens while an army crosses the board to a gunline, I got an early lead but once the bugs started hitting the line the IG folded and gave up handfuls of KP. My main regret from the game though is that the Trygon showed up so late! We were trying it out, and it didn't really get too involved. Looking back, we probably should have just said that it shows up turn two. Oh well. I had a good time and a pleasant afternoon down at the store and got to use my recently-painted stormtroopers and Marbo/Moe Berg. That's a win in my book, even if the game itself was lost!
We also talked with Corbin(sp?), a Magic player who has recently moved up from Alabama and was interested in getting started with miniatures. Seemed like a good guy, hope to continue to see him around the shop!
While I was out, sonofsonsoftaurus and my wife were hard at work on some terrain!
A building AND woods! Excellent! Lots of fire points on the building and should be big enough to hold a large unit, but I imagine that gingerbread would be AV10 at best. Maybe 11 if it gets really stale.
While I was out, sonofsonsoftaurus and my wife were hard at work on some terrain!
A building AND woods! Excellent! Lots of fire points on the building and should be big enough to hold a large unit, but I imagine that gingerbread would be AV10 at best. Maybe 11 if it gets really stale.
The Gingerbread house can have some kind of "sweet tooth lure" special rules -- anyone within 12" has to make a leadership test or wander D6 inches toward the yummy structure, able to do nothing else that turn but drool and be shot down by whoever is inside! But those inside have to make a Ld roll at -2 or spend their turn feasting on the furniture!
ReplyDeleteThose tyranids looks great! And BIG. Don't feel too bad losing to that horde of monstrosities.
Interesting rules ideas. Perhaps I can visit my friend who has a bunch of Christmas village buildings and develop a whole system.
ReplyDeleteThe Nids look even better without the flash washing them out. It's a scheme I never would have considered myself, but looks very alien.
If I felt bad about losing, I wouldn't play a game like this! As long as I had fun and got to see some spectacle, I'm good. While my preferred outcome is a brutal see-sawing game ending with a turn 7 tie or everything coming down to one 4+ roll at the end, a loss doesn't bother me as long as I wasn't too much of a pushover.
Looks like it was a really fun game! Can't go wrong with Gingerbread terrain - starting off as intact buildings, once they get blown up into ruins you can eat the delicious rubble! :)
ReplyDeleteMmm, rubble...
ReplyDelete