A Combat Patrol Battle Report 14 August 2026

Sanguinary Spearhead (Blood Angels) v The Vardenghast Swarm. (Tyranids)

A bloodbath.

My mate @Peck and I have only played a few games of 10th edition ComPat and usually The Vardenghast Swarm v the slow, plodding Captain Octavius.  Tyranids usually always won with a big melee presence, some decent abilities and the tanky Psychophage.

We want to move on before we get too used to the rules of 10th, even though we still struggle with the rules.

We used map layout B and although I don’t have the ComPat terrain we replicated it with Volkus ruins and some pieces from the Fronteris kit (vox antenae, walls, auspex shrine).  In future I will cut up some of the enclosed Volkus ruins.

On setup The Tyranids look quite daunting, they are great in number and have lots of fast slashy units.

I was commanding the Blood Angels and neither of us had used them before.  I attached my Captain to my 10 Assault Ints which left me with 2 x 3man Sang guard units.

My Mission was to take and hold the centre of the map and gain expansion objectives.  We weren’t really sure what that meant either take and move on or take any obj that isn’t home.  We chose the latter.

Tyranids were to get to the opps deployment zone and hold one or two or more objectives.

I’m not going to go blow by blow but it seemed a poorly matched fight.  The Ints took the nearest obj and camped.  A Sang guard units took the centre.  The Psychophage tried to shift the Ints but was killed quite quickly.  The central Sang guards were confronted by the Leapers who didn’t seem to be a match for them.  The flying Tyranid Prime took the furthest wing obj but was soon torn to shreds by my other Sang guard units.  The Barbgaunts were pretty good at shooting at distance (as always) but the Termagents were a waste of space.  The Sanguinary guard were just unstoppable with 2+ saves and 3 wounds and in melee their heavy bladed attacks with -2/-3 AP often making saving throws impossible.

The Tyranids main units were taken out very quickly leaving the cannon fodder.  Tyranids are very different  now.  You cannot attach a leader to any unit.  Leapers have lost the ability to infiltrate (more on those later).  The Psychophage is faster.  Unfortunately the app showed her BS for Psychoclastic torrent to be 3+.  It wasn’t until the post match debrief we noticed the keyword Torrent.  Previously the sheet for The PsyP said BS N/A because it’s a torrent weapon.

We noticed that the regeneration of Termagents has gone but we also noticed that there is a core stratagem for “Rapid Ingress” which means that you can hold ANY unit in reserve and pay 1CP to plonk them on the battlefield anywhere (i.e. into the enemies deployment zone 6” from the edge and not within however many inches of an enemy unit).

We played Tyranids like the old ComPat.  They were nasty slashy things.  I think now they are gun and run units (Termagents having the ability to advance and shoot, always advance 6 with 1CP if needed).  Or you keep them as a massive multi unit melee weapon.

Conclusion…never take on Sanguinary guard toe to toe.

We are still slightly confused by a few terrain rules where cover is concerned and the wording of counteroffensive makes no sense to us at all.  But I shall post for advice with pics elsewhere.