The Great Devourer at 4000pts
I played a huge 4000pt double force org battle against an imperial team of Marco (ilikebmxbikes on warseer) and Adam (7150 on warseer, not Adam B) over the weekend. This was the biggest and probably prettiest game I've played to date and in my opinion the pictures Marco took look incredible. Marco just finished building the table and scenery and I have to say it's one of the best I've ever seen, and certainly the best I've played on. My only regret is that I took along my work in progress Flying Tyrant and Gargoyles to show off my greenstuffing skills and they turned out to be the only grey plastic on the table. I won't make the same mistake next time!
For me, a game at this size is an excuse to bring along all the fun models that struggle to fit in my tournament size lists at 1850 pts. All three of my tyrants were on the table along with a horde of 20 genestealers led by their broodlord. My hierodule came along as an acid spray Tyrannofex and even my old Tyranid warriors decided to help try and hold some backfield objectives. It was pretty far from an optimal Tyranid list (only 4 hive guard at 4000 pts!), but it included several large squads of fast moving little bugs and a solid wave of hard hitting monstrous creatures following up behind them. As always, a couple of Trygons and the Doom of Malantai were plotting to get into the enemy lines fast and tear apart something valuable and my winged Tyrant jumped forward as an early threat in turn one and managed to soak up a lot of enemy fire with the Invisibility telepathically granted to him by the Swarmlord.
With night fight on turn one and the disruption caused by my deep strikers and flyrant, the marines struggled to hold me off the right flank, and as well as the objectives in my own deployment zone I was able to secure two objectives there that ultimately would win a victory for the hive mind. The game was hugely bloody and went the full distance to seven turns, with the marines slowly clearing termagants off some valuable objectives in my deployment zone in the late game with whirlwind fire. Fortunately by the closing turns the marines didn't have enough scoring units left to claim them for their own...
With things already looking grim in turn 3, the Death Company decided to try and take down my wounded Swarmlord for the glory of Sanguinius. The tyrant had only two wounds remaining and was surrounded by an aura of psychic lightning with endurance, iron arm and warp speed giving him a brutal stat line and 7 attacks. The chaplain refused to risk single combat and exhorted his comrades towards the flickering blades, which killed five of their number... including two directed hits which neatly decapitated the squad's Power Fist and Thunderhammer bearers. Most of the squad's remaining attacks struggled to wound, but four power sword attacks rolled high... leaving me with some pretty high stakes saving throws. The swarmlord parried two, and then used Feel No Pain to shrug off the effects of one more, leaving him on one wound.
He wasn't safe yet. Though the few Death Company remaining couldn't hurt his iron armed hide without the momentum of their furious charge and were cut down to one man, in the marines next turn the Death Company dreadnaught joined the fray. Without breaking a sweat the Swarmlord span around at lightning speed and tore it apart with his swords.
It's easy to knock Games Workshop for all their talk of Forging Narratives, but the lasting memory of that game for me will be the Death Company charging from a Storm Raven to meet their end in combat with something far worse than their darkest dreams. It was an honourable ending and let's face it... they needed to be insane to try it. There's a lot of talk from tournament gamers about playing at the highest levels of the game... but here's a thought - maybe you're not doing that until your games look this awesome.
You can check out more pictures of the battle in page 71 of Marco's painting log and you can also flick through the full painting logs from Marco (ilikebmxbikes) and Adam (7150 on warseer, again, not Adam B from TDA).