The starting deployment:

The whirlwind is to the left behind the hill at the corner, the assault squad with

chaplain, the dread and a tac squad cannot be seen behind the pyramid. The marine unit in the woods

to the left is a tac squad with the force commander. The reddish models at the left side of the grey

hill are the techmarine and his servitors, on top of the hill there is the dev squad.



My deployment is quite obvious...the warriors are hardly visible behind the winged tyrant in that

wood. My genestealers had infiltrated.



My opponent got the first turn.

Turn one

He moved one tac squad forward, which then would be overtaken by the assault

marines.


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(pic taken between the tac squad an the assault squad being moved)


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(taken after the assault squad moved)



He also moved the tac squad in the woods away, as they were too deep in the forest to see

anything



His shooting killed five gargoyles (techmarine and servitors) and one tyrant guard lost a wound (dev

squad). The whirlwind took out about four gaunts.



In my part of the turn i advanced with pretty much everything i had - all along one side of the

pyramid, so that the tac squad which was about to follow the assault squad would be out of the

action for a while. I rolled miserably for FoC and difficult terrain though, so my warriors couldn't

get out of the assault range of the assault squad, and couldn't assault it themselves either (which

wouldn't have been a good idea anyway, because of the tac squad behind it, including power fist

sarges in both the assault squad and the tac squad).


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My shooting took out some heavy bolter servitors - they are always a juicy target.

Turn two

Unfortunately i don't have a picture of what my opponent did this turn.



The crimson fist squad behind the pyramid climbed onto it. My opponent's shooting killed one tyrant

guard and several gaunts. They also killed off the remaining gargoyles with quite some overkill.
His assault squad leaped forward and shot the warriors. Unfortunately they didn't kill enough of

them so that i could have removed all models in charge range, so they assaulted them. The warriors

killed three assault marines, the assault squad with chaplain took apart all but one warrior. I

rolled exceptionally bad with my rending claws - i didn't roll a single six for the about fifty

rending claw attacks which i got during the whole game!



I now was stuck with a tough decision to make. Now there were about 350-400 points of close combat

goodness at my flank, which would finish off the remaining warrior in my turn. Should i ignore them

and advance, relying on my slower big bugs and genestealers which formed my second wave to deal with

them, or should i direct my full attention (particularly the winged tyrant) to them and crush with

them first?

I chose the first option - the alternative would have given my opponent more opportunities to shoot

me, as i basically would have had to restart my entire approach. Seperating my forces (sending more

gaunts against the enemy line while keeping the winged tyrant back) didn't seem like a good idea

either.

My winged tyrant went after the dread, the gaunts charged the dev squad on the small hill. The other

gaunt squad couldn't reach the opponent.

We resolved the tyrant's close combat first. I achieved a full six hits on the dread, which all

turned into penetrating hits...but with my first four of them i just disarmed and immobilized it, as

well as a stunned result. The fifth one then finally resulted in a six which my opponent didn't ask

me to reroll (venerable dread), as it was unable to fight back in this state anyway and he hoped for

a nice explosion. He would get it...four of his marines and four gaunts were caught by it, but while

the only wounded gaunt passed his armour save, he lost three marines. Hah!


{mosimage}


The dev squad was quickly turned into bug food, and the tyrant consolidated into its pitiful

remainder(one marine) to be safe from shooting in close combat.


{mosimage}

Turn three

My opponent didn't move much. The techmarine prepared himself to charge the hive

tyrant as a desperate measure, the tac squad on the pyramid killed one genestealer. The whirlwind

targetted the stealers and killed one or two. The assault squad with chaplain (one model visible on

the above pic on the first level of the pyramid) moved towards the big bugs and gaunts of my second

wave, shot them (killing a few gaunts with flamers) and charged them.

The gaunts' attacks, being resolved at the same time as the chaplain's, killed all marines but the

power fist sarge and the chaplain, the sarge being in base contact to my carnifex.

The carnifex hit the sarge at initiative two...one hit, wounded, but the sarge deflected the S10 hit

with his puny little parry shield. We compared this situation to gandalf singlehandedly deflecting

that balrog's fiery sword with his staff...

The sarge then hit with all his four power fist attacks, and wounded with all too...poor

carnifex!


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The techmarine charged the tyrant, and subsequently got ripped a new one by his somewhat larger

opponent.



I killed two marines of the tac squad in the above pic with the winged tyrant's warp blast, then i

charged them with the gaunts and the big critter.

The chaplain and the power fist sarge, still in close combat against the gaunts, got charged by the

stealers and the walking tyrant. Again, i failed horribly with the rending claws, but ultimately

both went down.


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(pic taken after resolving the chaplain/sarge close combat including consolidation move but before

performing the charge move with the winged tyrant)

The tyranids made the tac squad pay dearly for their previous losses, killing seven marines while

losing only four gaunts in return. The force commander couldn't do much without base contact.

Turn four

My opponent continued to shoot small stuff with his whirlwind...it seemed to be his

ambition to take out the stealers this way, for whatever reason.

The close combat continued, the tyranids eliminated the tac squad and the force commander with

minimal losses.



That being done, the remaining tac squad and a whirlwind didn't really pose a threat to the

tyranids, and were cleansed off the table in a non-spectacular fashion in the following turns - the

tac squad first, then the whirlwind.



The game ended with four gaunts, two stealers and the two hive tyrants being alive, roughly

450pts