Nidzilla @ The Bay Area Open 2012, part 3

And now for the epic conclusion of the tale of Nidzilla at the Bay Area Open 2012!

Game 6 - Daniel Katz, Necrons

The Stormlord One Destroyer Lord with Mindshackle Scarabs One royal court - mainly lance crypteks split off into warrior and immortal units with one chronometron in the Stormlord’s unit 3 units of 6 Wraiths 2 units of Immortals 3 units of Warriors 1 monolith

This was a fairly straightforward game with spearhead deployment. The Stormlord’s one contribution was to shut down all Necron shooting over the first two turns, so this game really came down to a horde of Tyranids versus three large units of Wraiths. In the first turn the Destroyer lord and his unit of wraiths moved around my right flank to my table quarter where I baited them into a combat with the Swarmlord, which Dan was eager to use mindshackle scarabs on. I made a gap in my lines and positioned the Swarmlord’s unit to receive a charge so the Destroyer lord would meet my Tyrant Guard and shackle it and the Swarmlord would be free to punch at wraiths for one turn... it could have worked brilliantly, but after all his hard work in earlier games my ultimate tyrant decided to roll a handful of twos. All was not lost though, as the other reason he was bait came into play... even though he was vulnerable to the mindshackle scarabs he had pulled that unit of wraiths into my lines where everything could shoot and assault them if the Swarmlord couldn’t stop them.

At this point, my reserves trap sprung in the enemy table quarter and an outflanking tervigon and two trygons popped into the Stormlord’s corner killing a unit of Necron warriors on the way in. This took the pressure off my remaining hive tyrant and tyrant guard who had several turns to shoot, Paroxysm and club down the Destroyer Lord and his Wraiths while a huge brawl between the other two units of wraiths and my monstrous creatures decided the game. It was a slow business, with invulnerable saves blocking monstrous creature attacks and my Toughness 6 stopping the wraiths from wounding, but when the dust settled I was well ahead on kill points and had all but one of the objectives on the table.

Game 7 - Chris Smith, Deathwing

Terminator command squad with Belial, Apothecary, Cyclone and thunder hammers / storm shield. Librarian Ezekial and another squad of Cyclone + TH/SS termies 3x TH/SS and wound allocation termies with a Cyclone missile launcher in each. 3x single land speeders, with Missile launchers.

The final mission of the tournament was a pitched battle game on a table with a large line of sight blocking chemical plant in the table center. Chris chose to deploy first on the back table edge with all his terminators on one flank and three speeders on the other. I set up my deployment so I could advance towards the three speeders with my hive guard, keep most of my starting force in cover and spawn a lot of gaunts to slow down any incoming terminators. This game I decided not to outflank my tervigon, deciding the chances of tearing an objective away from twenty angry terminators weren’t in my favour. Instead, I deployed both tervigons in my lines and started spawning gaunts like crazy from the start of the game... there’s nothing else like a few hundred S4 shots to take down terminators.

On turn one, the terminator command squad deep struck on my left flank, and all the enemy units were on the table. I advanced my hive guard up my right flank towards the speeders behind a screen of gaunts and spawned more gaunts to build up layers of bubble wrap around my home objective. I took some wounds on the swarmlord, but on my turn I could hide him behind the central terrain so he wouldn’t take any more fire.

On turn two, I popped up a tervigon and closed range on the speeders with the hive guard, destroying two of them down and stunning the other one. This meant that one flank was completely protected from shooting, so I could wheel my forces around the chemical factory away from the incoming command squad and shoot it at with my hive tyrant from an 18” range, whatever happened I would avoiding a charge for one more turn. At this point, I got my luckiest roll of the weekend... having failed to inoculate himself against brain eating worms the apothecary rolled snake eyes for his saves against my torrent of devourer shots and he hit the dirt downgrading the normally unkillable command squad into a regular terminator squad. On my turn three I was able to drown Belial and his buddies in a sea of fleshborer grubs and toxic gaunt claws, wiping them out.

The game ended on turn five with two terminator squads brawling with gaunts and a trygon to contest the two central seize ground objectives, where they would certainly have died in another turn against the sea of gaunts - neither of my tervigons stopped spawning all game and with only three cyclone launchers preoccupied with killing my monstrous creatures my side of the table was covered with critters. I was ahead on kill points, but Chris’s contesting terminators won him the seize ground mission and with a tie on the capture and control mission the game was a draw. Had the game gone on to turn six I’m fairly certain I’d have taken one of the central objectives for a win, so this game was really down to the last dice roll.

Final results...

At the end of the tournament I looked back and was surprised to see that I’d had seven great games of 40k against some really varied armies and some really fun generals, with no vanilla power armoured marines in sight. What’s more, I didn’t come up against any of the armies I was really expecting - no Grey Knights, no Space Wolves, no Dark Eldar and no Blood Angels. Instead of fighting a “Win at all Costs” slug fest, I’d seen some of the variety and breadth of the 40k universe and fought a lot of close games against clever, friendly opponents with some really pretty models.

My results were a respectable middle of the pack score of 3 wins, 3 losses and 1 draw putting me 47th out of 92 players. Looking back at my losses, they were all extremely close games against great generals and could have gone differently if I’d avoided making pretty minor mistakes or freakish dice rolling hadn’t thrown things out.... I still can’t believe how Mike’s wretched fire dragons ran away from my Trygon, but I guess that could finally teach me to pass on shooting when a combat should be in the bag. What doesn’t kill me will only make me stronger, so I’m excited to find another good tournament in the next month or two - let me know if you’re heading to any good events and watch out for my nids if you see them across the table from you.

Thanks again to Reece, Will and Frankie from Frontline Gaming for running the tournament - I’ll be coming along again next year!