I personally had a great time, Both John and I had no illusions of grandeur, and simply took an army that would be unexpected at an event such as this.
In fact I believe ours was the first Tyranid army to be entered at calneage.
Our Lists were as follows:
Team Name: 75% FEEEED
My forces:
Elites
Zoanthrope - 60pts
Venomthrope - 55pts
Troops
Hormagaunts with adrenal glands x12 - 96
Hormagaunts with adrenal glands x12 - 96
Genestealers with scything talons and adrenal glands x8 - 152
Rippers with tunnel swarm x3 - 36
Total: 495 points
Johns force:
Elites
Zoanthrope - 60
Pyrovore - 45
Troops
Hormagaunts with adrenal glands x30 - 240
Fast Attack
Spore mine cluster of 3 - 30
Heavy Support
Biovore - 45
Genestealers with scything talons x5 - 80
Total: 500 points
Our general plan was to just eat everything. we had a few tricks up our sleeves, such as the contraversial sporemine deployment denial tactics and the deepstriking rippers for objective denial. but as for actual tactics, we had very few. running forwards screeching seemed to be the only one we could muster.
a Quick run down of the 4 games
Game 1
Deployment: Dawn of War (table halves)
Scenario: Sieze Ground (2 objectives)
Enemy: Guard / Guard "The Forgotten Frogs"
An outflanking infantry platoon with a 50 strong conscript squad is a daunting prospect. a contraversial ruling which deemed Al-Raheem to be a "unit upgrade" rather than a special character meant this insane infantry horde could wander onto the table turn 2 from the side of the board. believe me when I say that mobs of gribblies running along the front of massed lasguns will not take more then 3 steps before being shredded limb from limb.
This was an enjoyable game, the opponents were a great laugh, and took it on the chin when me and john managed to score ourselves 5 points for a win without scoring a single victory point in the game. thats right, we were completely shredded to pieces, and hadn't even halved a single squad of guard, but managed to hold 1 objective with a squad of stealers, and deny them the second with a lone biovore. this was partly due toluck, and partly to some dastardly tactics of our own - by deploying johns spore mine cluster on their own objective before they could deploy meant they had to set up over 18" away from it. their otflank roll was good for the kills, but bad for their own objective, and our outflank roll was good for grabbing their objective. a last ditch effort to grab our own objective involved deepstriking the rippers in, praying for the biovore to not fail synapse, and running 2 lone hormagaunts back to the objective to build up the wounds holding it.
Outcome: Win (although a technical one)
Game 2
Deployment: Spearhead (table quarters)
Scenario: Capture and control (4 objectives)
Enemy: Space Wolves / Guard "Bow Wow Winners & The Swagger Stick"
This game looked as tough as it was. 4 Thunder wolves, a squad of grey hunters and a massed guard infantry blob of 35 men, with a hydra.
lessons of the game:
- Genestealers can't kill marines
- space wolves are better than genestealers
- nids can't assault anything in cover
- thunder wolves laugh in the face of danger
- nids can't hold objectives if they're all dead.
Outcome: Lose (we lost every single model...)
Game 3
Deployment: normal (long table edge 12" from centre)
Scenario: Anihilation (Kill points)
Enemy: Eldar / Eldar "Aspect Doom"
our spore mine deployment tactic backfired on us this time, by placing the mines in the centre of the enemy deployment zone, they had the choice of splitting up, or combining together. by choosing the latter, it meant my puny 495 points was directly facing 1000 points of eldar whilst john would have to slog it diagonally across the board.
Outcome: Lose (7 - 3 i think...)
Game 4
Deployment: Spearhead (Table Quarters)
Scenario: Victory points awarded for every unit which moves off of the diagonally opposite short table edge (in the enemy's deployment zone) double victory points if the unit is a scoring unit.
Enemy: Guard / Space Marines "Barn Doors Are Safe" (this was John P and Craig from our gaming group)
The scenario was an odd one. and having a mechanised troops guard enemy meant we were going to find it hard to get past them, and they were going to find it easy to drive past us. which is exactly what happened. we were wiped out to a man, apart from my rippers which deep striked and simply ran off of the table edge to score us 36 victory points.
The controversy was definately on the table behind us though, with the outflanking guard force simply outflanking on the enemy's table edge, and then walking back off gaining them 1000 victory points (due to the whole 500points being scoring units) a few of the other guard units from the other half made it to the table edge and the opposing team simply said they couldn't match that points score and so conceeded.
Outcome: Lose (our measly 36 points were no match for their armoured column and several squads of marines leaving our table edge. there was even a nifty bit of driving from the space marine bikers who lined up and did an "Evil Kineval" bike jump through a stone chaos warp gate only losing 1 from a dangerous terrain test - i have a picture but can't extract them from my phone)
Monster of evry game for us was definately the biovore, a large pie plate raining down on massed guard was handy many a time.
Competiton Summary
As usual Calneage is a great opportunity to meet new gamers and have lots of fast paced quick games with unusual tactics and armies. I personally had a great time, despite coming 2nd from last (for the second year running) I will however be running guard next year, as i could not believe that you can only field half the numbers of nids in 500points than you can of guard. even the mechanised guard could nearly outnumber us.
food for thought indeed.
Apologies for the lack of photos, I will set up a space to take some nice ones of the army as it nears completion (I was up late before calneage painting 15 hormagaunts and some new objective markers I've started) hopefully i can do this over the next few days.
Until then
Cheers
TSINI
