500 pt Battle: Daemonhunters Vs Tyranids...

[Tauren]

The Lists:

 

The Bugs:

1 hive tyrant with wings wielding dual twin-linked devourers. (some bonuses to stats)

32 hormagaunts with +1 WS I believe

15 genestealers with stat bonuses

The Hunters:

Brother Captain Taurenus wielding his Psycannon

Squad Prism lead by Justicar Laurence and 6 of his battle Brothers. Brother Justar wields a psycannon.

Two Squads of Inquisitorial Troopers, eight man units, One team issued a grenade launcher the other a plasma gun.

The Situation:

Opening Communication Link... Pending... Checking Authentication... Welcome Outpost Commander...

Confirmation of Transmission Complete...

Request for Aid Confirmed... Primary Threat: Unknown... Alternative Threat: Way-line of unknown origin, research pending...

Troops Dispatched to location... ETA 5 hours...

 

The brother Captain walked across the deck of the ship... he was called upon to escort a relatively new group of knights to a location that was under threat from unknown entities. The location was a known location of psyonic resonance. It was retained by a research group and a small out-post held by 4 units of inquisitorial troopers. The Report had said that their astropath had collapsed due to unknown reasons, their communication had been sent out by the systems after a unit of troopers did not return from patrol. Early morning was coming to this world and a communication from the planets surface from the outpost indicated immediate threat... The threat was identified as the foul xenos creatures known as tyranids, obviously some sort of splinter group that found themselves through out the sector.

 

The Brother Captain and his team's transport left their main ship and took them at high speed down to the world. Arriving above the out-post the troopers exited the out-post, the commanding officer of the out-post stepped forward.

 

"The bugs are coming from the north, we have destroyed a few vanguard units of the smaller ones but our scouts are showing the larger force is heading our way now... We lost contact with a few of them."

 

Taurenus turned his helmed head towards the wood, he sub-vocalized some commands to his knights to take up their position in the compound. He looked back at the commander.

 

"We shall hold the compound here... tell you men to man the far-side of the compound... the insects are close."

 

Turning back to the north side of the compound the captain approached his men as they were on their needs in prayer. He quietly joined them. As they stood up they all faced the north... just at the edge of the woods the leaping pests ran full-speed out of the woods towards the compound. They took aim.

 

The Setup:

 

He deployed first, genestealers on the left side of the table. The huge unit of hormagaunts on the right. The tyrant deployed centrally.

 

I deployed my knights on the left side to counter the genestealers. The two units of troopers deployed on the right.

 

Turn 1:

His Turn: He moved forward with all of his units, his fleet took him a surprising 6 with both his hormagaunts and genestealers. His Tyrant flew forward and opened up on my right side troopers, causing 4 wounds. I was down to 4 left.

 

My turn: I backed up 6 inches. I opened up with my psycannons and storm-bolters. Only 2 stealers fell. My 4 man unit of troopers opened up felling 3 hormagaunts. My second unit backed up and fired a krak grenade at his tyrant to no effect.

 

Turn 2:

His Turn: He continued to move up, his genestealers rolled a 1 for fleet. His hormagaunts a 4. His tyrant took out the rest of my trooper unit with his devourers.

 

My Turn: I backed up 6 inches to the board edge with my knights. My troopers opened fire on the gaunts felling 4 of them between the helguns and frag grenade. My knights open up killing 2 more genestealers, dropping the unit to 10.

 

Turn 3:

His Turn: He continued forward with his genestealers, rolling a 4 for fleet. They charged me this turn only having 6 in range to swing. His tyrant opened up on my unit of troopers, 2 fall. The hormagaunts leap the final distance and get most of their numbers into combat. They are good as dead. Combat sees 2 of my knights fall, brother Justar with the psycannon gets cut down along with brother Alaron. In their fury the knights strike back taking down 7 of the beasts. They flee under the divine assault. The troopers did not far so well... get cut to pieces in a frenzy of claws and teeth under the attacks of 18 or so gaunts.

 

My turn: I proceed forward after the stealers, mowing them down with gun-fire.

 

Turn 4:

His Turn: His Gaunts run through the forest between them and my knights on the left side of the table. His tyrant took flight over the forest and landed within the sights of my knights. Opening up on them sees 2 of the brothers fall to the rabid living ammunition.

 

My turn: The Knights steel themselves as they move toward the tyrant. Opening up with all their weapons sees the beast take a single wound. They charged into combat. Many of their blows are shrugged off but Justicar Laurence finds his mark cutting a large chunk of carapace and flesh from the creatures leg. The Captain sees similar affect as he strikes his halberd true into the creatures abdomen, gore and foul smelling liquid pours forth. (Was kinda hoping that between 6 power weapon attacks and 4 normal ones I would drop this beast... but oh well)

 

Turn 5: Time to finish this...

 

His turn: His Gaunts Charge out of the woods leaping to reach my knights in their entirety. The tyrants attacks miss the sure-spirited knights... This beast must fall. The knights surge forth, their strikes are blocked by the frenzied hormagaunts... but Brother Captain Taurunus and Justicar Laurance are not caught soon enough. Slicing into the beast as it stumbles backwards through the advancing gaunts in an attempt to survive, its eyes glint with malice as the knights are held-back by the horde. In the final moments and with a loud roar a glinting spear is sent forth from the mass of flesh... It strikes true sinking itself into the skull of the tyrant. It falls over dead...

 

 

Summary: The rabid bugs roared in fear, their overlord had stopped commanding them, they continued to claw and lash at the fallen knights as they dispersed. Overhead the roar of the engine can be heard as the transport flies low. Coming out of the transport at a sprint more troopers open up on the left over insects, they fall under their sure fire without the leadership of their master. Rising to his feet the brother-captain shakes himself off... Rising to his feet he finds his weapon sunk into the tyrants skull and withdraws it. He decapitates the beast and drags the head back to the ship. Several of the fallen knights limp and drag themselves back to the ship. Taurenus tosses the head aboard the ship and returns 3 more times carrying a knight over his shoulder each time. The ship leaves the surface, its compliment of troopers re-maning the out-post and incinerating the remains of the creatures as well as the troopers after their equipment had been stripped.

My Thoughts: This was my very first game. I felt it was a moral victory though... I should have deployed more to the left, forcing his right side forces to take far longer to get to mine and allowing me to concentrate all my fire-power on the advancing gene-stealer and then the hive tyrant. I felt for my first game I did pretty well though and was very happy to see my knights scything down his creatures. I was kinda sad when in my first round of combat 6 power weapon attacks didn't fell his hive tyrant. This was game-breaking. In the end I fell his tyrant but on the simultaneous strike his gaunts ripped my knights to pieces... each failing their saves. My captain rolling a 1 out of 3 saves. The player was kinda a jerk though and the game was not the finest... I don't plan to play this particular player again thanks to his general commentary and "winning" attitude towards a brand-new player of the game.

 

Couple of questions: Do hormagaunts leap 12 inches into assault? Additionally when rolling for wounds in close combat... if say 2 knights 1 justicar and the captain get hit and take 14 wounds... I assign 3 to the justicar and brother captain and 4 to the remaining knights. Do I roll all the dice at the same time? Do I roll each Separately? Do I roll the 8 for the normal knights, the 3 for the justicar and 3 for the captain seperately? Do extra wounds carry over? IE if I fail 3 armor saves with my regular knights my justicar takes an extra wound? How does that work?

[Doomaflatchi]

Great game, and good report! I'm glad you had fun! Tyranids can be a really hard army for us to beat.

 

First off, you're right, you probably should have deployed more to one side. When he splits up his forces like that, he gives you the opportunity of engaging only a fraction of his force with your entire army. Proper application of force like this can pull victory from even the most galling of situations. The ability to deploy reactively is the advantage that counter-balances going first. Don't worry -- it's something you'll get more used to with time. Still, very well done with the deployment you had. The ordered falling back of the Knights to get more shots in on the Genestealers was a wise move.

 

As for your questions...

 

As it's laid out in the core rule book, when you have wounds applied to different models in a squad, then you roll separately for each separate type of unit hit. So, in your example, you could roll for all the Knights at once, then the Justicar, then the Captain. However, extra wounds do NOT carry over -- once you assign the wounds to a model, that's where the wound stays. Pummeling the gory remains of a Knight into the pavement does not make the Justicar fall over with a sudden heart attack.

 

For this reason, if you have to allocate multiple wounds to each member of a squad, roll for each member's saves separately. For example, if nine wounds get assigned to three Knights (three on each), roll for each separately. If you roll all together, you might fail three, killing the whole squad! However, if you roll separately, you might get three fails on one model - he's certainly dead, but those extra wounds just rend his corpse, instead of killing his buddies. This also means that one Knight might escape the killing frenzy directed his way. Just remember to assign wounds properly as per the rule book -- everyone has to get one before anyone can get a second, etc.

 

Make sense? ;)

[Tauren]

Okay, so I did get it right when I rolled it separately for the exact reason you listed. I must say the 72 dice he started rolling... pretty daunting for all those little hormagaunt wounds... jeez luiz. Thanks for the reply! hopefully with some more time I can finish cleaning and preping these grey knight models and actually start painting them.

 

The last combat ended with my knights failing all their saves, at least 1 on each (even the termi T..T) and the tyrant falling to the power weapon attacks. I don't anything else matters as I was completely wiped out. Since I don't think you end the turn or anything happens to the gaunts without a synapse creature at the end of combat, it just ends when the player gets wiped out.

[number6]

For this reason, if you have to allocate multiple wounds to each member of a squad, roll for each member's saves separately. For example, if nine wounds get assigned to three Knights (three on each), roll for each separately. If you roll all together, you might fail three, killing the whole squad! However, if you roll separately, you might get three fails on one model - he's certainly dead, but those extra wounds just rend his corpse, instead of killing his buddies. This also means that one Knight might escape the killing frenzy directed his way. Just remember to assign wounds properly as per the rule book -- everyone has to get one before anyone can get a second, etc.

You are correct about the wound allocation, but not quite right on how to resolve them. You never roll each individual model's armour saves, even if that model has multiple wounds assigned to it. You always roll all the saves for all the models that are exactly identical in gaming terms together. So in your example -- 3 GKs with a total of 9 wounds (3 apiece) -- you must roll all 9 saves at once. (And odds are that you will fail 3 of them, but ... you could get lucky!)

 

Now, in cases where one particular group of "models" happens to consist of just one model (e.g., a Justicar or GK Hero attached to a PAGK squad), then it's possible for "extra wounds [to] just rend his corpse, instead of killing his buddies". But while this may look like a special case, it's actually just the simple application of the existing wound allocation/saving throw rules.

 

@Tauren: Nice batrep! :up: About the only real advice I have is to repeat what Doomaflatchi said. Against fast/horde armies, you want to castle/turtle -- on a flank, if possible -- and focus your entire force on a limited portion of your enemy. That way you overwhelm and destroy pieces of it ... one piece at a time.

[Doomaflatchi]

@number6: You're right; thanks very much for the correction. My apologies for the misinformation, Tauren. :lol:

[infeneris]

My first army was nids and if your description of his army is correct then he was cheating. His troop choices alone, hormagaunts (if they were assulting 12" then they were hormagaunts) and genesteelers WITHOUT any upgrades breaks 500 pts, and the hive tyrant (flying+devourers+whatever) is a really good chunk of points too. He had at least a couple hundred points up on you if there were more upgrades thrown in. I may be mistaken as its been a while since I played but I think my numbers are right. (can anyone else confirm?)

Regardless, great bat rep and at the least it sounds like you learned some good lessons for future games.

[Tauren]

I was told that 15 genestealers at 10 pts

32 hormagaunts at 6 pts

and a winged tyrant with dual devourers and a couple stat upgrades.

[infeneris]

Those numbers are too low for Genesteelers and hormagaunts. Regular gaunts can be really cheap, but they cant assult 12". If you really want to know for sure, ask to see his codex and you can see the costs of his units and the upgrades he had on them. Like I said I could be wrong but I dont think so according to your description.

The best proof is to see for your self.

[Tauren]

Hmmm... Well, I could check army builder... give me a bit...

 

Wow... Holy cow...

 

The tyrant's upgrades alone were broken... he took extended carapace and the + to BS along with another one I believe, I was told something along the lines of 140 or so points, then he said he added the wings (12 inch move correct?) but according to army builder you can't have extended carapace and wings. (he was rolling a 2+ armor save)

 

In total his list, not counting 3 more genestealers, army builder seems to be limiting me to a squad of 12... comes out to about 810 pts.

 

His genestealers had +1 strength and the extended carapace. His hormagaunts had +1 WS which was why they were hitting my marines on a 4+.

 

... Well I guess I will just remember this non-sense in the future, I knew this guy was a jerk but good jeez. Even minus all the upgrades he is still coming in at 600+... pshhh...

[Auedawen]

Was this a friend of yours or someone you met at a gaming club? If it was a friend knock him in the head next time for cheating =P If it was a guy at a club who you didn't know take this as a lesson. Until you develop a good grasp of most of the army lists, you'll want to check up to make sure everything is fair game (if you're playing at a gaming store maybe borrow the store copy of that particular codex so you don't have to borrow your opponents for rules questions). It's a shame to say, but cheaters exist, and they're more common than one would like to think. Regardless, I can't imagine how he must have felt losing to an army nearly half its size, haha. Congratulations on the win, it was most impressive.

[Tauren]

No, he was someone I meet at my local gaming store, kind of a young overweight kid with an attitude problem, but he was the only one available for the short game I wanted to run through. I actually lost the game but not before killing his genestealers and his tyrant in combat. At which point all the hormagaunts simultaneously tore my poor ass to pieces. I failed all my saves and he told me the game ended when my marines died.

[Aidoneus]

Sounds like a crappy person in general. I hate it when people like that play Warhammer, because it ruins the experience for the rest of us, and gives us a bad name at the same time. I'm glad you managed to have a good time anyway. Well done on a very solid first game, especially with daemonhunters, which are not an easy army to play!

 

As you said, flanking is beautiful, especially when he sets up first. Generally, you want to respond to a spread-out deployment by concentrating all your forces on the flank where his fastest models are. That means his slower models will take a long time to get to you, giving you more time alone with the one flank. :D In this case, that would've meant deploying near the hormagaunts, due to their 12" charge.

 

Anyway, welcome to the hobby! I look to hear lots more from you in the future.

[Tauren]

I was very much annoyed with the player but it was equally very much a moral victory on my part. Sadly when I asked what happens if my marines cut down your synapse creature at the same time he cuts down my marines, he just replied with "You just lose!". I was curious as to if the turn still comes to a close, if the now synapse-less hormagaunts break and count as fleeing or what... mostly just curious...

 

Other than that I plan to keep a stiff stance on the game and continue to clean and modify my models, which is painstaking. i just finished converting a grenade launcher onto an old imperial guard stormtrooper vet that I will never use to make him a grenade launcher trooper. Converting metal is a paint and takes some real thought.

 

Other than that I have well over a 1000 pts of knights between my 30 or so PAGK and my termies, a chimera, 2 rhinos, enough for a two units with special weapons of inquisitorial storm-troopers. A inquisitor or two, buying up retinue models now for cheap hopefully, and converting some space marine scouts with heavy bolters into my servitors, just need some guitar wire and normal wire. Also bought a devestator squad on the cheap that is choke full of conversion bits including the plasma cannon I need for my cannon servitor. As to what I convert it onto that's questionable. Couple tech-marines for my sages, some imperial guard psykers and I am done. Convert them all up with grey-knightly motif or conversion symbols, give them the knightly jaw-plate and there we have it. Hopefully with some work I can integrate sisters (seraphim couple and a sisters unit or two, mounted) to round out the army and provide tank hunting capability.

[Lungboy]

If he had a 2+ save on a winged Tyrant then it must have had warp field, not extended carapce. I'm not quite sure why he said that you lost though. Losing all of your troops wouldn't necessarily mean an automatic loss, as you could contest an objective with your remaining HQ, and as long as he didn't have any troops on an uncontested objective it would be a draw. If the Hormas wiped out the Knights that they were fighting, it wouldn't matter if they technically lost the round due to taking more wounds. Therefore the death of the Tyrant wouldn't have any effect.

[Tauren]

We were just playing annihilation and I lost everything... my Brother captain was inside my marine squad, they all failed their saves at the end. Hind-sight if he had actually gotten the charge off with his tyrant like he wanted, I would have probably carved him to bits in 2 turns of close combat before his gaunts would have gotten to me. *shrug* Oh well, was very interesting and fun to watch his face drop as genestealers were cut to bits by my knight squad. I took 2 wounds but turned around and did 7, he was outside of synapse range and that spelled their doom.

[Lungboy]

Ah i see. If you were wiped then yes you lost, the synapse dying wouldn't matter. Still, he had almost double your points by the sounds of it so you did well. Just refuse to play him again unless you can vet his list first.

[Tauren]

Ya that's the general idea, in all probability I won't have some nice things to say to the guy if he hassles me next time I visit that shop. It's my first time playing at the new shop since my old one closed down, miss the close knit friends at the old shop but currently school blocks me from visiting them on their gaming day. I know they moved to another shop which I will hopefully be building my schedule around for Thursday gaming next semester.