Battle Report: Biel-Tan vs. Tyranids (1337pts)

This is what happens when you let Blaine choose the points.  His uber internet skillz and peculiar sense of humor invariably comes up with a suitably l33t point total.  For those of you who are over the age of 14, or have never played world of warcraft, go here for an explanation of what I’m talking about.

That said, this is what happens when you let Blaine’s wife set up the terrain for you:

They’re a great couple of friends.  Every time you go over to their place, you’re destined to have fun.  Granted, it might not always be the conventional sort, but fun will be had… trust me. 

Deployment:

When I pulled my army out of my case, Blaine flat out congratulated me on my victory.  Figuring that he was being a little hasty, and considering that we’d gone through the trouble to make armies and setup a board, we might as well roll a few dice… 

For mission, we rolled up Annihilation again, and the setup being table halves.  When dicing off for first turn, we rolled odds, and so Blaine nobly let me go first. (Drat). 

When I say that we rolled “odds,” most of the time, when it comes to even roll-offs, I prefer to just have one person roll a die and the other person read through the rulebook.  That said, Blaine rolled a 6, a 5, then declared odds and rolled another 5, giving us a 6 for objectives, 5 for setup, and 5 for first turn.  I find it helps speed the process up just a tiny little bit, and (in most cases) it doesn’t change things.  Granted, with an Autarch, or Grey Knights, you’d have to roll two dice…

I’d considered deploying far forward with tanks to try to force his infiltrators to go somewhere far away, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to put my vehicles where I could prevent him from being 12” away.  Though it would’ve been unlikely, I didn’t want to risk the chance of him charging me through cover and hitting my hover-tanks automatically, so I opted to keep everything in reserve.  Blaine, being the foremost copycat in the room, opted to do the same.

 

Eldar Turn 1:

I think I made a crude comment about the giant pirate hat on the table.  Come to find out, his wife had made a secret rule that if anyone knocked one of the swords over in the middle of the table, their models died outright.  Of course, I was never told of this until after the game… Cheaters!

So yeah, I had no models on the board, so it was a quick turn. 

Kill Point Total: 0 to 0

Tyranids Turn 1:

Even quicker.

Kill Point Total: 0 to 0

Eldar Turn 2:

In rolling for reserves, only the tank carrying my dire avengers came on the board.  Not wanting to give him anything to charge, I plopped it down on the center of my table edge and waited for some victims to scurry on the board.

Kill Point Total: 0 to 0

Tyranids Turn 2:

Blaine army consisted of four squads of stealers (one lead by a Broodlord) and three Lictors.  Typically he doesn’t play with Lictors, but since I keep insisting they’re viable, and they would let his army of outflankers come on quicker, he gave ‘em another shot. 

As a result, he rolled two squads of stealers in for reserves along with one Lictor.  He then used two re-rolls to bring the Broodlord & retinue on.  When rolling for sides, he got one left, one right, and one “player’s choice” which wound up going on my left  flank.  The stealers on my right flank were supported by the Lictor, deep-striking into a cozy Halloween box nearby.

Without a single gun in his army, I could see why Blaine congratulated me before we’d even deployed.  If I could just stay away from him with a very mobile force, the game would be a massacre.

Kill Point Total: 0 to 0

Eldar Turn 3:

My reserve rolls were equally horrid this turn, and only the wave serpent showed up:  filled with Eldrad, a Warlock, & four wraithguard.  In all fairness, I didn’t want my reserves to show up until later, so I was happy to get only one squad.  60% of my models could move 24” in a single turn, and of the other two units, one could move 18”, while the other was a snail (the wraithlord).  I was hoping that he’d deploy heavily to one side, or otherwise leave a gap, and I could shoot through it with my tanks to the open side of the board and then just shoot him from afar. 

In the end, I did a little shimmy with my two tanks and blew my wad at the Broodlord’s squad, killing a mere three models.  Nothing crazy eventful, but I did manage to keep them out of charge range.

Kill Point Total: 0 to 0

Tyranids Turn 3:

Blaine rolled off of his units onto the board, and again split them up.  By this time, he had two units of stealers on either side of me, each with a Lictor for support, and the third Lictor dropped into the terrain in the middle of the board. 

That brought up a particular question:  Lictors enter play by deep-striking into a piece of area terrain; however, the new rules for deep-striking into difficult terrain say that you have to take a dangerous terrain test (ie. Die on a 1).  Does that mean that most of the time a Lictor deploys, he has to take this test?  Granted, not all difficult terrain is area  terrain (eg. For hills, we consider going up or down them as difficult terrain, but the tops are clear footing), but if he was to deep-strike into woods or ruins, does he have to take the test?  Since the fluff behind the unit is that they use their chameleonic powers to hide in terrain and then spring forth when something walks by, I didn’t make Blaine roll.  It would be stupid for him to spring up and bump his head on a tree-limb—taking himself out of the game.  However, I wonder if any rules-lawyer types force people to make those checks in tourneys… or if it’s been erratad somewhere… 

Anywho, back on topic:  Bugs move forward in zombie-like fashion.  Running where possible…

Kill Point Total: 0 to 0

Eldar Turn 4:

The rest of my reserves come on.  Oh poo—time to make a stand.

Since the flanks were almost identical, except the left flank also had a broodlord and some upgraded stealers to fight—I opted to push hard to the right side.  Every model came on (or moved to) the side to help in the shooting. 

My order of operations was lacking though.  Though my wraithlord was in flamer range (barely) and the Dire Avengers were within 18” of the squad, the order in which I shot with prevented either from firing.  As a result, it took everything I had to kill the 12 stealers in the squad nearby—leaving me nothing to shoot the far squad or the Lictor with (as if I’d bother to shoot at the model with a 2+ cover save when there are stealers nearby!).

Kill Point Total: 1 to 0

Tyranids Turn 4:

The bugs went for a mad dash.  Everything came at me full-force, and it came down to a fleet roll as to whether they’d crash into my lines.  The Eastern ‘stealer squad rolled a 2, and upon first inspection Blaine thought they’d made the charge to my wraithlord. 

The way we play is that you basically declare your charge if you *know* that you’re charging after the run—that way you can avoid discrepancies caused by two different moves.  Within our gaming group, it isn’t an issue anyway, as any of us will give the opponent the benefit of the doubt any time they ask; however, it just seems like a good practice. 

It wasn’t a clear charge to me because of the way the tape measure worked.  He had a crazy industrial tape measure that was roughly 8” long, and that prevented him from putting the tape measure fully on the table.  I asked for it to be measured again from the other direction (between the wraithlord’s legs), and the ruler came up at 8.5”—half an inch too short.

Then began my taunting… but Blaine doubted I could kill them all, and knew that even if one or two stealers hit my line it could ruin my day.

Kill Point Total: 1 to 0

Eldar Turn 5:

Of course, he wasn’t familiar with Doom (Eldrad had been off the board or in a tank at the beginning of each turn prior, so this was the first available option for many of his psychic abilities), or the Dire Avenger ability: Bladestorm.  Between the two of them, there was nothing left of the stealer squad, and that left the Fire Dragons, Falcon, Wraithguard, Wraithlord & Jetbikes to dispatch the lonely Lictor.

The other tanks fried the other Lictor, and would be out of charge range yet again.  At this point, Blaine threw in the towel, figuring I could hop back in my tanks and fly off, dictating the pace of the game until it ended…

Another flawless victory for the Biel-Tan mechanized army!

Kill Point Total: 4 to 0

What I Learned:

1. Completely one-sided armies are bad.  There are two reasons why I dominated in this game: the first is simple: Blaine had no ability to hurt my tanks.  He had zero guns in his entire army.  Yes, if he ever got to hand to had a chance to hurt my tanks, but he’d have to roll a 6 to hit, then a 6 to penetrate, then beat my holo-fields & spirit stones…  I’ve learned this with my Daemons of Nurgle army in an earlier battle report.
2. Which brings me to my 2^nd point.  That’s *if* he ever got to me.  The maneuverability of Eldar is insane.  12” move and still shooting heavy weapons is great, but the ability to control the battle completely based upon a 24” move is insane.
3. Psychic abilities.  I’m not sure about this one, but I used Eldritch Storm against his ‘stealers once, and the question came up: do I have to have line of sight?  Since the ability didn’t declare it, I suspected I didn’t.  In hindsight, I would change that opinion, figuring that it would be a psychic shooting attack and you’d have to have LoS to shoot something normally… but I’m not sure…  Anyone out there know the real ruling?
4. I’d say I learned that Blaine is a fun opponent, but I knew that a long time ago.  At the end of the game I also learned that Kurt Warner was the MVP for the Carolina Panthers.  27 for 44 throwing to his team, and 5/44 throwing to the opponent.  20% of the total passes he threw were to the other team.  Roughly 60% of his passes were caught by his team mates, and 11% were caught by the other team… egads.  Blaine, I think you need a new favorite team. (My team had a bi this week, so I can feel free to taunt him a 2nd time).
5. The Eldar apparently watch alot of WWF.  If you’re not old school, you can read that as WWE, or WCW–and if you’re not American, you can read that as really-bad-fake wrestling.  Since most of what they do is get out in the ring, dance around, and look pretty, this seems to fit the bill nicely.  And Biel Tan’s favorite wrestler?  You guessed it: