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So I'm a bit strapped for time and I'll try to get this done in a reasonable fashion with some pics. First up, I apologize for so many unpainted figs. In my batreps I really prefer more painted stuff but I've had a few people actually ask me to do some of my DG games up as batreps. Secondly a shot from the heat of the moment.... bodies are flying, and Genestealers are turning into Poxwalkers, while Poxwalkers are being consumed for Genestealers... it's a bloody mess, yet one particularly stinky champion stands out amongst the carnage.... +++ Typhus stands amongst the carnage. The smell would kill a horse... or make a plaguebearer smile. Take your pick. The Nids have poured their chaff into the fire, but now Old One Eye enters the fold, backed by a Hive Tyrant and a Dakka-Fex. Can the Poxwalkers hold? Will Typhus cut the Nids down? All to answer the question: Which stinky force is more desperately in need of some Old Spice? +++ The Game: - 2,000 pts Maelstrom. It's a new one where you MUST complete your 3 cards by the beginning of your turn as all cards are discarded. This feels like a disadvantage to such a slow moving army such as mine. - Deployment is in opposing quarters with a no man's land in the middle (18" bubble) - My Army: Typhus 20 Poxwalkers Lord in termie armour with Combi Plasma (Warlord - re-roll Plague weapon aura) 5 Blightlord Termies 1 combi plasma, one flail, one Blightlauncher 2 squads of Plague Marines 10 Cultists Plaguecaster 1 Plague Crawler 1 squad of 3 Myphitic Blight Drones 1 Foul Blightspawn 1 Tallyman 1 Plague Surgeon 1 Blightbringer. Nids: Flyrant 2 x Dakka fex Broodlord 2 x 14 genestealers 4 Zoanthropes + the character Zoanthrope dude 3 Hive Guard 3 shooty warriors Old One Eye Drop Pod w/ a big bug with a mega flamer 3 Venomthropes... can't get enough of these guys! First turns: - This is the first time I have the +1 to my roll, and I actually have a tie/win on the roll off. I don't think first turn is too particularly important for me in this one aside from moving to objectives. - He's clumped up, I'm clumped up.... there's not a lot I can do with some line of sight blocking terrain, it looks like I have to stay away from his Hive Guard since they ignore cover (negating Blight drones), and have indirect fire. I keep my Plagueburst Crawler out of his range though in case I need to do some damage. +++ Deployment. Stinky clump of dudes vs stinky clump of bugs. +++ - with first turn I chuck out some Melta/Krak missiles from the Blight Haulers. They do very little because they are hitting pretty much everything on 4's. About the only thing that really goes off is my psychic phase. I buff the Poxwalkers with toughness, and get Miasma off on the Poxwalkers. I blow a CP on Walking Dead, and push up the Cultists of course. The Plague Crawler gives some good indirect shots to a dakka fex to start working him over...Everything pushes up, and I get only one point for an objective I happen to be sitting on. - The Nid turn is far more dyanmic.... everyting rushes forward with the venomthropes super cloud. - A Pod drops in on an objective with the super flamer Nid rolling out of it. Genestealers ultimately push forward hard and some of the Dakka Fexes make themselves visible. - To my surprise the Nids hold back the Zoanthropes, the Hive Guard and the Warriors. Everything else is making a break for the edges of the ruins in the center of the board: +++ Genestealers come crashing in.... the plague marines are waiting for it.. Typhus relishes it. The poxwalkers fill their pants. +++ - The buffed Poxwalkers do attract firepower. A good volume of it is wasted on them which I kind of hoped for. I think the Nids realized this wasted potential and started throwing shots on the Cultists... which turned into Poxwalkers... all according to plan! - His psychics were limited to buffing running/shooting units. He had a mix of two different rules so he could reroll charges on his shooty units.... then something really goes against me.... I'm hoping this will be a game I get some real use out of the Foul Blightspawn but no...He gets off a psychic power that says my units must fight after his are done. Brutal. So it negates Foul Blightspawn entirely. - The good news is the Cultists die rapidly, and he doesn't know what to do with my growing numbers of Poxwalkers... does he engage them? does he ignore them? - He does some good damage, gets first blood, and an Objective. Nids are up 2 to 1. Turn 2: - Somewhat a repeat of T1, except the Poxwalkers with Tallyman in effect absolutely tear into the Genestealers. It's shocking really. Even the Broodlord is overtaken. All of these absorb into Poxwalkers. Hey they were once humans, turned into Genestealers... now turned into Zombies. Works for me! - I hold my Lord and Blightlord termies in reserve still. They just don't have great targets without sacrificing themselves, and I have no objectives in my opponent's zone worth getting. (I also don't want to deepstrike them too deep near all those Zoanthropes and Hive Guard.) - I think the assaults surprised him.. .they surprised me. - His heavy flamer bug in the pod was trying to snag 2 points for a 'Defend'. That plus the fact it was an infantry muncher kind of scared me, so I poured the Blight Haulers, the Plague Burst crawler and some desperate last shots to get the thing to die... it took a LOT of firepower, but it went down. - Our Assaults continued like T1 I came out ahead, now he was surprised. - In his turn he draws an objective on my Right Flank. He can't get to it on the ground so he deepstrikes the Flyrant and although he subjects himself to quite a range of firepower, it's a resilient bug. - He puts a lot into my Blight Haulers and one goes down. This greatly impedes their shooting. I have no re-roll aura around. T3 is looking to be a big one.... Turn 3: And here we are, back to the first shot of the game.... +++ Young Two Eyes wasn't available... so they sent in Old One Eye. Typhus cares not, but he is flanked on both sides by Dakkafexes, Old One Eye, and a Flyrant just dropped in. +++ - The Flyrant had good dakka, and I can see both Dakka fexes are going to wreck me. The high volume of firepower combined, is mulching my infantry. I'm VERY lucky I had Vitality running on the poxwalkers to make it harder... but that goes downhill at this point.... the Tyranids deny two of my powers. No more Miasma, no more +1 S and +1 T. Getting Blades off is huge on my Poxwalkers though. - I have to get the Flyrant down first. He's sitting near an objective I need... I also need big game hunter, but my issue is I'm having trouble doing damage to all these Toughness 7 units! The Plasma isn't helping much, and the Blight Launchers are putting little dents in. - I decide to call in the Termie Lord and Blightlord Termies! +++ Termies to the rescue! Overcharge plasma to save the day? Or overcharge plasma to melt my own dudes? +++ - So this is the game I swap out melta for plasma on my termies and I'm starting to regret it. I overcharge everything and roll a lot of 1's. This scares me, but I get lucky and no 1's turn up on the re-rolls. But with the Flyrant's 4 ++ invuln, I'm hard pressed to get a shot through, so the only wounds that do count happen to only cause 2 Damage. I end up pouring a LOT into the Hive Tyrant. and I realize the 4++ save is just making this a wasted effort with plasma. I get off a few Plague Crawler shots and luckily I get a 5 damage wound through thanks to a CP re-roll (he finally failed a 4++). But he had 6 up feel no pain and saved 2 of them. - I put a lot of wounds on his Dakka Fex on that same flank using my remaining Blight Haulers. Believe it or not I had a lot of low AP wounds on him to finish him off... 11 wounds. The Dakkafex saved 10 of them! WOW. He just went down. - Without being able to do much to the Flyrant I had to assault... I made a 10" charge but that 4++ held through. I felt like I was now in big trouble. I also couldn't do anything about Old One Eye and more big bugs were rounding the corner. - All said I did well in points and took a good lead. Going into bottom of Turn 3, my opponent did not feel great about his chances because he was down to his big bugs, but I insisted he had a chance... Turn 3 Nids: - It's about time he moved his Zoanthropes up and sure enough the 'super smite' hurts like hell.... - The Hive Guard finally have some targets, he's mobilizing his reserves but I think it's too late for them. I feel lucky he left them back there so long. - His Hive Tyrant simply flies away from my Termies and starts pelting my Plague Marines. +++ All of the sudden with a Hive Tyrant in my backlines, I can't help but feel a great need for a melta gun right about now. +++ - The Hive tyrant almost blicks a 7 man squad of Plague Marines. - Old One eye starts wrecking face because my Psychic buffs were all denied. - The Venomthropes slink into the ruins so now my shooting is going to be further nerfed. - This turn of events puts the Nids tied with me... crazy stuff. Turn 4: - I have to be very smart this turn. I don't have enough left to make a huge push. I know Old One Eye is his Warlord, - The thing I wish I had a picture of is the Venomthropes in the ruins..... I have an epic moment with the Foul Bligh Spawn. He advances in the ruins, pulls the hose out of the Toilet on his back, and hoses the Venomthropes with true filth.... Strength 10 Filth! Now that's 'venom'..... The 3 Venomthropes take all 3 wounds which are 3 damage a piece.... just killing all 3 of them to finally get rid of the -1 to hit!!!! Huge moment. - I lob some indirect on the Zoanthropes killing one, bringing their numbers to 3 and reducing the super smite ability. +++ A flock of brain bugs... just floating casually in the background (thankfully they stayed too far back to have any real effect until late game). +++ - I've had it with the Flyrant, but he's down to one wound so I throw 11 wounds from various stuff at him in a volley... (not to be confused with the 11 wounds from the previous turn) ... he saves ALL of them. So I overcharge plasma on my Warlord Terminator, roll a 1, re-roll a... 1!!!! I've killed myself, surrendering Slay the Warlord, and give the Nids a 1 point lead! Damn Papa Nurgle is fickle sometimes. - Old One Eye is his warlord, and I also need another large target for a card, he'll do fine...so Typhus runs in and guts him... thankfully buying me some time on that flank. - I get a few points out of all of this and take a good lead, even with the misfortune of my Warlord. - Nids Turn 4 is looking pretty bleak. He can't draw cards that give him anything 'easy' and he doesn't have the model count. We play through the turn but he can't make up the deficit and we call it in turn 5... a Death Guard victory. Conclusion: - I really missed melta in this one. I know everyone is a fan of Plasma on Termies... I just don't know. - I miss having two Plague Crawlers. One is just a little hard to take advantage of. - Poxwalkers probably had their best game here.... they were insane and I think they truly shocked both of us. With Tallyman they were a force to be reckoned with for once (they usually get shot up before they ever have an effect in game.) - Typhus the more I need him, the more trouble I'm in. He only saw action once, but it was brutal. - At first the Foul Blightspawn seemed like he wasn't going to have any effect with that crazy psychic power making me go last.... but then his one toilet spurt event on the Venomthropes was truly epic... that may have changed the game (I cut out all the misses I had firing at stuff in that bloody cloud). - The Nid Flyrant absorbed a ton of plasma. So did the Carnifexes. This caused me to heavily rely on the Blight Haulers and Plague Burst Crawler for heavy duty firepower. - The Blight Haulers had me rolling 2+ on Plague marines. That was nice.... really nice at times. But their shooting stunk once they shrunk down to 2 dudes. I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks for checking it out!