Duking for York: Chaos Space Marines vs Tyranids

 

A long time ago, a young teenager read a complicated hardback book...

Not exactly the gripping yarn that the best war stories start with, really. True though! I was either twelve or thirteen when I read Rogue Trader back in the late eighties. There's a chapter at the back that gives you one hundred suggestions for a narrative to base your game around. One of them stuck with me all this time - number 91-00 on the Locate and Capture table:

Cutting a long story short, it's thirty years later and I've finally got the painted scenery and models to play the game. Worth every moment of time, I'm sure. 

Pootle and I are playing out a game based on the death of poor York, our annual tradition of playing a pre-Christmas narrative match. Some of the previous ones have been rippers, close fought games resting on the razor's edge. Can we manage another?

Pootle here: I too loved the crazy stories in the mission hooks back in the RT rulebook (I particularly loved one that clearly featured Doctor Who). Just putting this idea onto the tabletop feels like a win right off the bat.

Santa's Little Helpagaunts

Jungle full of carnivorous horrors? Guess I'm bringing the Tyranids, then!

Just a thousand points, for speed. This is a Synaptic Nexus list, which gives it a suite of three abilities to evolve for a round. Tougher, faster or hittier, which are all handy. They represent Hive Fleet Afanc investigating whatever it is that the CSM are mucking about with, perhaps drawn by the psychic tang of their leader. 

It's a fairly all-rounder kind of mustering, with reasonable mid-range firepower, a bit of anti-tank, some melee monsters and a fair number of bodies on the field. Nothing totally off the charts, but certainly not to be sniffed at. 

On top of that, it has some tasty enhancements for the leaders. The Neurotyrant which is leading can scream even louder than usual (+1S, extra AP) and the Broodlord shaves a point off incoming damage. Here's the list:

• Neurotyrant with Power of the Hive Mind 
• Broodlord with Synaptic Control
• 5 Genestealers
• 10 Termagaunts with Devourers
• 3 Tyranid Warriors with ranged bioweapons, 2 Deathspitters and a Barbed Strangler
• 3 Von Ryan's Leapers
• 2 Lictors
• 11 Neurogaunts
• 3 Zoanthropes
• 1 Psychophage
• 1 Trygon

Particularly hard to kill will be the two Frying Pans (T20 with a 2+ save and 150 wounds)

Adeste Infideles

Pootle is packing the Alpha Legion tonight. I might think that this is a long-awaited narrative game, but he sees it more as a chance to sharpen his sword on me before wielding a larger version against Winters next month. Tomato, tomahto. 

Don't worry, this is all about the narrative, though playing the CSM for the first time in well over a year is also good practice for my upcoming game against the man in the hat.

A smattering of everything that makes Chaos tick - legionaries, cultists, daemon engines and psychotic leadership. I'm particularly looking forwards to seeing the Venomcrawler go up against the Psychophage, mostly because they look so alike. 

• Gormenghastly the Garrotter (Sorcerer in Terminator Armour): Warlord with Orbs of Unlife; Mark of Nurgle
• Lord Discordant:; Mark of Khorne
• Dark Apostle: Talisman of Burning Blood; Mark of Khorne; leading
• 10 Legionaries: Chainswords galore, 2 Heavy Melee Weapons, 1 Flamer; Mark of Khorne
• 10 Cultists: Heavy Stubber, Grenade Launcher, Flamer; Mark of Nurgle
• 2 Obliterators: Mark of Nurgle
• Helbrute: Multimelta, Helbrute Fist with Comb-bolters; Mark of Nurgle
• Venomcrawler: Mark of Nurgle

Nukorona 

It's a jungle out there! 

The original narrative of finding the teleport homer before the warp storms eat the planet was a good jumping off point. Pootle is bringing Gormenghastly, though, who is probably quite fond of a warp storm. Instead, tonight he's looking for a sample of a potent virion, hoping to grab a live one before the Tyranids consume all the nearby biomass. 

The all-new OG Firebase is out to play for this, acting as the centrepiece (and another of the increasing motives we had to play this match). Here are the rules we came up with:

• Each of the four objective tokens are placed in No-Man's Land, at least 12" from any other and at least 9" from the Firebase. Players alternate in placing them.
• CSM units can perform a full-round action (as usual, as long as they haven’t advanced or fallen back) at the start of the shooting phase to search an objective for York's remains. It completes at the end of a turn.
• When the Search action completes, roll a dice and subtract one, then +1 for each objective already searched. On a 6+, you've found the deliciously fragrant virion sample and it attaches to the squad who found it. Either way, the objective token is then removed from play. If this was the last objective token to be removed, it is automatically the virion, no dice need be rolled.
• If the squad carrying the virion gets destroyed in melee, the unit destroying it now has it. If the unit gets destroyed by shooting or other means, replace the last model to be removed with a token representing the virion. It can be picked up by any unit moving into contact with it during any kind of movement (including being placed from deep strike, etc). 
• The central Firebase is the CSM deployment zone. All units must deploy either on it or with their base touching it; the whole army sets up first.
• The Tyranids deploy within 6" of the short edges after that. 
• The CSM win by getting the homer to the landing pad back on the firebase. The Tyranids win by preventing this from happening. 

After a bit of rolling and thinking, we end up two objectives quite close to the firebase (one to the North, one by a wrecked Rhino to the South-East) and two way off in the jungle (on a hill and behind a building in the bottom corners of the map). Bet you can't guess which player put what where!

Deployment

The Alphas keep Ghormenghastly in deep strike. The Obliterators man the central bridge, with the Legionaries and the Dark Apostle ready to sprint west and a trio of fast daemon engines ready to go east. 

The Cultists are heading to the north, to check out the objective in the middle of a big, empty field. Enjoy your trip, chaps!

The Broodlord is lurking behind the hill, backed by the Zooanthropes and Psychophage. 

To the north of them, the Warriors and Termagaunts are ready for Cultist burgers. 

On the opposite side of the jungle, the Neurotyrant and its minions are hidden behind the abandoned buildings, hoping to flank anyone heading for the objective to the south...

...while the site itself is guarded by the Leapers. The Lictors and the Trygon are all sneaking about, ready to pounce later!

Which gives us this overall picture.

CSM: turn one

Chaos has the first turn! Pootle's apostates promptly run in all directions, as shown above. The cultists split north, the Legionaries run west and the trio of heavy walkers scuttle towards the west. 

The cultists have to advance to reach their objective, so there's no actioning there, and the Legionaries have a way to run yet. I'm fully expecting the nippy Disco Lord to start sucking protoplasm out of the Rhino wreck, so it's a surprise when he starts lighting up my back yard instead! 

I like to keep my opponent guessing.

Dark pacts are being sworn with abandon (not Abaddon, he's not here) and with the Helbrute in tow, there's a lot of airborne lead coming at me. The Venomcrawler is a lot shootier than I remember and easily pares away all my Genestealers with enough to scratch the Broodlord, and I lose a Zooanthrope as well. Nasty! 

Tyranids: turn one

There's not a lot I can do from the range I'm at, really - only the Zooanthropes have a hope, and there's only two of them already. My plan is really to lurk round the objectives until the enemy get close enough to pounce on, but I also want to stop them performing their actions if I can. 

With that in mind, the Warriors and Termagants head for the Cultists, but they're either out of range or too poor at shooting right now to do anything to them at all. The Psychophage moves to back the Broodlord, the Venomthropes manage to hurt the Disco Lord mildly, and my eastern troops have failed to impress. 

The western front makes up for it! Scooting the Neurotyrant forwards, I manage a pretty good swipe at the Legionaries, screaming half of them down with its shouty torrent. The Von Ryan's probably won't manage to do more than hurt the rest, but there is a chance I can survive a round of combat against the damaged squad and tie them up for a turn. 

Which they manage! Pootle's armour fails him rather, and only three of the Khorne-marked troopers survive. I just about cling on, a single Leaper with a single wound left, but that's all I needed. Excellent!

I thought about bringing a Rhino for those guys; probably would've been a good idea...

CSM: turn two

Now the CSM start getting their syringes out, searching for viral samples on as many objectives as they can. Which is quite a few - the Disco Lord has leapt on to the one at the far east, undaunted by my lurking horrors. The Cultists shuffle away from the Termagaunts, the Legionaries fall back from combat to let the Obliterators hose down the last Leaper and Gormenghastly himself arrives, dropping out of the warp just by the fourth objective in the western jungle. 

As the boss arrives, a Lictor decloaks on the midline, pulling a free Rapid Ingress to appear behind the central tower (where the Obliterators can't see it). 

Shooting commences. The Zooanthropes bite down on an enormous package of bullets and die, along with that last lone Lictor. That's kind of it, though - I've been careful to lurk deep in the vegetation, and most of the chaos guns are out of range. There's no charging, everyone is too busy rooting about in rotting corpses. 

To some avail, too! The first three objectives are swiftly eliminated, Pootle cheerfully removing the one under the Cultists first, as they're likely to get eaten fairly soon. The Disco Lord and the Helbrute roll but neither of them show up (phew!), which means Gormenghastly has been saving the real prize for himself - it's down in the western corner. 

I'm sure he knew that all along. To be honest, I was hoping not to discover the target right next to the base as that could have led to an easy win. This way is much more interesting...though right now I've not got a lot of materiel near that objective.

Tyranids: turn two

Now that I know where the money's buried, I pop a Trygon up nearby and bring the Neurotyrant along to back it. The Lictor runs for the Obliterators, the Broodlord and Psychophage tag-team the Lord Discordant and the Warriors and their gaunts move into spitting range with the Cultists. 

Suddenly I have quite a good amount of shooting, and it pays off. The Deathspitters prove well-named, finishing off the Cultists after the Termagaunts soften them up, and the rest of the Legionaries perish to another psychic scream, leaving just the Dark Apostle and one of his pets. 

That's all she wrote, though - Terminator armour is unmoved by the Trygon's static burst, and the Psychophage bounces off the Disco Lord's plates. Melee doesn't quite shift these armoured brutes either. The Lictor manages to claw half an Obliterator away before getting pummelled to bits, and the Broodlord makes reasonable inroads into Lord Disco but can't finish him. At least he survives the counterpunch pretty handily. 

Pootle has the firepower and toughness to finish my troops off piecemeal, I suspect. That's not the mission, though! That last objective is looking a long way from home...

CSM: turn three

Before the Chaos Marines can get going, I call Shadow of the Warp, and let loose with the leadership checks. 

They go very badly! Gormenghastly, the Obliterators and the Helbrute all fail. The Lord Discordant manages his first one, but he's badly hurt enough to need to do a second one, and that he fails. Perfect - I slap a CP down on The Smothering Shadow, a grenades-alike for precisely this scenario. Five mortal wounds is more than enough to drop that disco ball.

Leaving the Lord to his fate, the Helbrute and Venomcrawler sprint to offer support to the two characters challenging the last objective, and the Obliterators shift off their gantry so they're just in range of the Neurotyrant. Gormenghastly lumbers on to the objective, virus scooper at the ready. 

Instead, he eats a psychic scream from overwatch! Quite an effective one - it knocks him right back into whatever swamp he wallowed from. That's not good, it really leaves the Chaos team without anyone who can effectively grab the last objective and extract it in time. 

Clearly frustrated by this, the Dark Apostle decides to go and settle someone's hash. The Neurotyrant fits the bill nicely - all the scrubby gants around it have been cleared away by the Venomthrope and Obliterators, so it's but a moment's work to nip over there and bash the beast's oversized brain in. 

Does it help with the mission? Not at all. It does make him feel a lot better though. 

Tyranids: turn three

The Hive Fleet closes in from all sides. As the Trygon stamps the Dark Apostle to damson jam, the Psychophage manages a nice long charge into the Helbrute. And promptly bounces off, five wounds shorter than it arrived, but it's really not the focus of the game here. 

No, that last objective is completely out of range now. Bellowing triumphantly, the Tyranids have claimed the match!

Locker room

It might not have been the closest of games, but it was still fun! 

Bit of a swingy mission - if the objectives nearer the middle had ended up in play, I'd have been really struggling to contain the match. More objectives to scout? I'd originally planned on six, with a straight dice roll (6+ for the important one, stacking +1s as you searched), but we'd both worried that an early find would make the game too short. 

Neither of us worked out until afterwards that the smart play would have been to eliminate the furthest markers first! No easier to do, perhaps, but it would have made it a lot easier to get them home again once you knew where they were. Having a transport would probably have helped too, or splitting up the fastest units to head to the far points asap. 

Yes, I think you definitely hit upon the right tactic there - running the Disco Lord to the left and the Venomcrawler to the right and uncovering those objectives first would have been a much better plan. I could have sent the Legionaries north (their power armour would've been better protection against Gants and Warriors). Definitely not a walk in the park, but probably would have led to a closer game. What can I say: I didn't prepare a spreadsheet for this game...

Hey ho - hindsight does not give you back your legions, as Varus well knew. A good fun romp all the same!

Absolutely, great fun to try out an OG RT mission and good to play a game of 40k again: it's only my second game since July. Thanks for hosting, see you again here next year.