Battle Report - Swarm of Personality vs Space Marines



The Great White Hive Tyrant can be sneaky at times.

 So after hearing Fritz blog and blog about the Tyrannofex I finally broke out 'little brother' and began converting him over. I guess he'll be "mini-T'fex". Of course, being Queen of Magnets I'm magnetizing his main gun so that I can swap between rupture cannon and the gun that rolls far too many dice (doesn't have codex handy fleshborer hive). I picked up a lot of devourer guns on ebay recently, and several of them have a date with some green stuff for this conversion.


So I dropped 2 of the Zoeys from the list in order to drop pod the remaining one in, upgrade the lictor to Deathleaper (it IS the Swarm of Personality after all) and add Hive Commander to the Great White Hive Tyrant because it is MUCH needed in this list (switched back to Paroxsym instead of the Horror too, but only out of reflex). I also dropped boneswords from the Shrikes, added a barbed strangler and dropped scything talons from one of the broodlords due to being one point over. This would have made the list completely reserving in, but I swapped the Carnifex (and his newly made Mycetic spore) out for the mini-Tyrannofex who doesn't like to fly (He pities the fool).

We rolled Annihilation for the game and Dawn of War for deployment. Yuck on both since the T-fex has to walk. Marines win and choose table side. Scouts and a rhino show up first. I set up everything in reserve / outflank. T-fex would walk on first turn.

LOTS of tanks roll on. Land raider, a predator with Brother Chronos, another rhino, vindicator and a razorback all show Dreadnought droppods center table. They look around and find nothing to shoot at, maybe intel was bad...

Wait, what's that on the horizon, some kinda new bug. It shoots and the shots go wide. Shoot it and we'll ask what it was later!! Marines inflict 4 wounds on T-fex (thanks to my opponent's ability to roll ones when he needs them the most!), He regens a wound and returns fire on the predator and manages to shake it, which Chronos ignores cause he's a jerk like that. Tyranids 2nd turn has everything except the solo Zoey come down in turn two. Thank you hive commander!! Both stealer squads come in on the left flank, but have nothing to assault yet, but at 20 bugs each, there will be lots left to get into combat. Must be careful those doublestacked (He'stan) flamers are going to be nasty. Doom scatters way wide, fails to suck up any wounds, but this ultimately saves him as he's way outside the killy zone. T-fex knocks the lascannon off the predator, GWHT comes in brainleeches blazing but doesn't kill anything that I remember, Deathleaper sneaks up behind the vindicator and fleshhooks the main gun right out of it! Parasite and the Shrikes go wide too, landing right in front of the Land raider.... not good. I had no on-target drops that turn and normally the GWHT is spot on (which would have put 6 x S6 shots in the back of the dreadnought).

Sternguard jump out of the Lazorback and double double flamer shrikes. He'stan and the terminators hop out of the land raider and he cooks some as well. Wounds fall away like popcorn but the Parasite saves a couple of wounds trying to soak. All is for naught as the termies charge in, hammers at the ready. Not TOO ready as the Parasite tries to make some rippers, though I'm not looking forward to generating new kill points for my opponent. I go for the termies in order to try and reduce all those attacks, but I fail to roll any rends and they make their saves easily. Total bug splatter. They look towards the T-fex next. They spent most of their fire shooting at the shrikes, but someone got a lucky shot on the Doom and he takes a wound as well. Tyrannofex and stealers try to entrap the terminators, but Big guy fails his Instinctive behaviour roll and the stealers rool a really bad run. Great White moves up to line up the Dread and shoots getting 2 pens and 2 glances in the back but thanks to the trees between them the Dread saves ALL FOUR. So much for my opponent's bad luck! Deathleaper fades into the trees and doom moves in and manages to clip 2 squads with the Aura going up to 9 wounds, he blasts a full tac squad and then entagles them in close combat! Doomies's spore immobilizes the pred too! The errant Zoey drops in in the middle of everything in order to take out the Land Raider, but gets a headache when he rolls a 12 on his psy test. Having to Lurk, the T-fex fires on the Term squad and manages to kill one of them and cannot assault. The stealers cannot reach either, so instead assault the Lazorback and barely immobilize it. Deathleaper shows up and wrecks it, but gets shot down almost immediately after. Other stealer squad ran into some cover and decided NOT to assault the land raider for what should be obvious reasons.

At some point around here I look over and realize that it's 5 KP to 2. The 2 being mine. Doom was tied up with a squad and having had them flee originally, was out of range to suck the wounds off of the scout squad. I definintely needed to change my luck.

The Terminators having smushed the T-fex's head and follow up into what's left of the stealers after doing the flamer squeeze on them with the Sternguard. The Dread bears down on the Zoey counting on someone to take out the blocking spore for him, the land raider and snipers wound up taking out the spore AND the zoey, the Dread was so sad. Landraider (via machine spirit) and one side of the predator shoot some of the 2nd stealer squad, but some of them make cover saves. Vindicator and rhino both go back to back to keep their kill point butts covered. Not much left to shoot at. Doomie finishes sucking the life out of the squad he's engaged with and moves off in hunt of more. GWHT lands behind the Dread and shoots off his power fist arm and stun him. Charging in, he does some more damage, but the dread isn't dead yet. The 2nd stealer squad (with the freckles) swarm all over the predator attempting to dislodge Chronos (and his kill point!) but despite wrecking it 3 or 4 times, the little guy gets tangled in the wreckage and never hits the table (and denies me that easy KP).

There are so many stealers left that shooting at them proves inconsequential. The sternguard and Terminators fall back away from the GWHT, Termies forming a shield wall. Doomie lances the land raider, but nothing happens. The stealers engage the scouts and what's left of the vindicator. The Tyrant finally kills the dread, and despite all those stealers, they only manage to wreck the vindicator, but scouts survive.

Lucky for me we go to a turn 6! Land raider shoots and fails to wound the Spore and Doom makes his save. Sternguard and Termies continue falling back, the sternguard making it to cover. GWHT leaps over the wreckage of the lazorback and shoots the termies, killing one or two. Doom forgoes the land raider and uses Cataclysm on the sternguard but they have cover so 2 survive (argh!), catching and killing a terminator as well. The spore continues to lob barbed strangler rounds seemingly at random. The stealers finish of the scouts thankfully, and The Great White Hive tryant splits his attacks and manages to kill off the terminators, but He'Stan survives only to be cut down by Toxic Miasma.

Final tally - 8 KP to 7, Tyranids pull out a squeaky win. It was a very tough game and lots of fun. :)