"Don't implant me bro!"

Following up from last night's preamble for this battle report, we shall now proceed with the recounting of last night's battle. Screech and I agreed to field 1000pts with the notion that we would have a quick game.

The Genestealer cult strike force, led by a Hive Tyrant (after they ate all the hybrids and brood-boys!).

The invasion force. 
1,000 points got me four ten-man thing units of stealers, two of which had Broodlords leading them and a loaded up Hive Tyrant with wings, Heavy Venom Cannon, Acid Blood, and Regeneration*.

Straken's Veteran Defence force

The Defenders
Actually, I'm sure Screech has a name for them, but I'll be damned if I know it!
What you see is what you get: A Leman Russ Exterminator ( "The Envy of Sven Axegrinder" it might have been called) which had Knight Commander Pask, two veteran squads with chimeras, and a command squad let by Col. Straken. Yup, two special characters. Not cheesy at all. Nope! LOL

Seriously, neither one of us had any idea what the other was bringing, heck not many people know I even have these models! ...well, until now I guess!

So we rolled for the mission, and got Crusade with the horizontal deployment zones. Screech deployed 1st, with me leaving half my army in Reserve along with the Tyrant who would deep strike in.
I don't recall what Screech's Warlord power was, but I think it is what allowed him to redeploy a tank, but mine was Master of Cities...yeah. that's right. The perfect thing to roll to play on THIS table:



The Master of Cities deploys

Imperial Guard deployment

 My psychic powers were interesting: The Hive Tyrant got Iron Arm and Crush. Patriarch (a broodlord, but I will call him that for this report to tell the two broodlords apart easier, and 'cause that's what the model originally was!) Puppet Master and Iron Arm, while the Broodlord got Endurance and Assail.

...calm before the storm...

Turn One

 Turn One.
Night Fight rules are in effect, and with the Master of Cities in effect too, I got some sweet saves, but still lost 4 genestealers from one unit and 1 from the unit in cover. The imperial guard lost nothing by ammo...

Turn 2, the Patriach Broodloard arrives!

Turn Two
Withering away from more Imperial Guard fire the stealers press on, subtly drawing the Imperial Tanks out from their cover. My Patriach Broodloard arrives, and we find ourselves in a weird rules conundrum:
Can a BS0 psyker use a witch fire power? Particulary a Focused Witchfire like Puppet Master? After pouring through the rules, we decided to allow it as the power wasn't a beam or a damaging power. But then we ran into another issue: could this be used on a tank? The FAQs were no help (Huh! -guess this question isn't asked frequently enough!) so we dediced that it would effect a weapon on the Leman Russ, and since I rolled high on the psychic test (over 5 per the focused witchfire rules) we randomized which gun would fire. The heavy bolter on the side failed to hit the tank that was an inch away from it. Amazingly bad shooting! LOL. With all that debate on this, I would choose not to use any more witchfire powers with my broodlords for the remainder of the game an use their other, and actually better, powers to protect their units.

The genestearls charge and blow up a chimera! First Blood goes to the Genestealers!

 The genestealers blew up a chimera in the assault phase exposing the veterans for the next round...

Turn Three.

The Genestealers move up

Those genestealers that blew up the chimera? They got shot to ribbons by the IG army! No surprise there, and the unit on the other side of the table was getting slowly chewed down as well...

My other stealer brood arrives on the same table edge, and take cover against the other building. Meanwhile the Hive Tyrant arrives take s hull point from the chimera and immobilizes. He put on iron arm on (what a sweat power by the way!). The patriarch does the same power but takes a wound from Perils of the Warp (whoops!)




The genestealers charge...through cover...so much for high initiative! LOL

 Turn Four
The entire Imperial Guard unloads on the genestealers in the ruins, who are still feeding and implant and violating those vets they just killed, and lose very few genestealers. My genestealer, a sole survivor of the 1st two units deployed, assaults the vets in a building who promptly slaughter it (genestealers need some sort of assault gernade! LOL)

My Hive Tyrant tries to tear up the Leman Russ Exterminator but doesn't succeed at doing much to it. The command section got out their tank last turn and shot at the onward moving genestealers, taking a few out. Things get hilarious when those genestealers charge the command section and the overwatch shooting and flamer counter attack reduces the Stealer unit down to 2 models. They charge and roll....a two. LOL. Failed charge!

Turn Five
Unseen in these pics, the other veteran squad is shooting at the other Genestealer unit slowly creeping up at them, however, endurance and Master of Cities is helping them stay alive! Meanwhile the Command section shoots up the hive tyrant leaving it with one wound. In turn, the hive tyrant blasts away with his Heavy Venom cannon and wipes out Straken and some guard, but at the last second we remember "Look out Sir" and another troop takes the hit!

Realizing that we're in risk of the game ending, I had moved the Patriarch and the lone stealer over to the objective, and I have the Hive Tyrant charge the command squad. Only to have the Hive Tyrant take an overwatch plasma pistol shot to the maw and it DIES!!!* LOL! It was a heroic and epic show by Straken and we both loved the over-the-top heroics of it all!



"You seize the objective while I seize the dayyyARGGH!!!"

 Good call on my part to move those two models to the objective, as sure enough, the game randomly ended!

Game Over man!

Genestealers: 5vp (1 objective, 1st blood, linebreaker)
Imperial Guard: 1vp (warlord).

An amazingly fun game. So totally different from any army I usually play.

I learned, by just playing with these two unit types, why this army is so challenging to play in this edition, as certain things have nerfed it bad!

• Fleet. That change, combined with the rules that you can't assault if you run, was a total WTF moment for me, as I had no idea about that rule.  
• Infiltrators not able to assault on the round they appear. I've known about this of course, but playing with Tyranids you really get to know this rule!

I still had fun, especially having no clue what I was facing. The night fight rule at the start of the game helped a lot, and this had to be the first game I've played in which a Warlord power had such a huge impact on the game. I honestly thought I was doomed, destined to be gunned down. Heck, I knew that when I made the list and knowing that I had a single ballistic attack in the whole army! But where my dice rolling started bad (they were SO cold) Screech's die abandoned him on the later turns.
Accept for Straken: that shot was AWESOME!

Good game Screech! Let me know when you want Game two...;)


*P.S. Next time I'll remember that I have Regeneraton and maybe my Hive Tyrant will still around a bit longer...