8/18 RTT Game 1: 1850 vs. Necrons

Drove up through a nice healthy rain on saturday, only to discover that there'd be a relatively small crowd for the RTT. There turned out to be 6 players, probably due to the aforementioned weather. Aside from me, (and my obvious Tyranids) we had a second Tyranid Player, who was running a psyker spam (2 Tervis 4 Broodlords 8 Zoanthropes) and an Ork, Space Wolf, Necrons, and GK/IG player.

My list for the day is as follows:

Tyrant with 2x Devourers, Old Adversary, Armored Shell and one guard
Flyrant with two Devourers
2x3 Hive Guard
2x Venomthropes
2x (20 and 17 man) Super Hormagaunt broods
2x10 gants
2x Tervigons with 3 powers

I ended up drawing first round against the Necron player. He was a very friendly guy, who had had to cut down his 2500 list last-second due to a points confusion, and so wasn't playing very competitively on the day. To the best of my memory, his list was as follows:

Special Character (Zandrek I believe, the one who takes and gives special abilities)
3 orb lords, each in a warrior squad
3 10 man warrior squads
8 ish Immortals with Gauss (Nemesor here)
2 Doomsday Arks
2 tooled out C'tan shards

Warlord traits were both useless.

Mission was one point per table quarter controlled at the end of each turn, starting turn 2. Secondary was warlord and linebreaker. Deployment is Vanguard Strike (always fun to set up...) 6 turns, turn 7 on a 4+.

My psychic powers:

Tyrant: Life Leech and Warp Speed
Flyrant: Life Leech and Warp Speed
Tervigon 1: Endurance, Smite, and one other (I wrote them down on the score sheet, which got turned in)
Tervigon 2: Iron Arm, Smite and one other (see Tervigon 1)

The board: I go first, and make my opponent deploy in a half with a massive LoS blocking building. I figure that if he wants to shoot me, he'll have to stay at the very front of his Deployment zone to do so! I'm using the impassable terrain as an Anvil to hammer his army with.

My Deployment: I deploy my three MCs very centrally, with Hive Guard and the Venoms right behind, both Hormagaunt broods on a flank each. gants hide in the back and are in two table quarters to start the game. My Flyrant is on the board, and hiding behind a LoS blocking soda can-turned-terrain.

His deployment: Arcs are on my left, with one warrior squad and the immortals in front, and the C'tan shards nearby. Two warior squads are on the right, and completely isolated from the rest of his army by the building.

Tyranids 1: Everything runs forward. Hive Guard down a few Warriors and blow up an Arc. However, I realise in my brief army rundown (He had never played Tyranids) that I forgot to explain the rules of Hive Guard ignoring cover. To this end, I give him his save for intervening terrain and he passes 3 of 4 5+ saves! his arc was glanced once, and is now very angry. The Flyrant swoops up and blasts his warriors, downing several who stand back up.

Necrons turn 1: He advances his C'tan, nothing else moves. Shooting wounds a Tervigon once, kills a few gants and does no real damage.

Bugs turn 2: I through the right side of my Hormagaunts up into a C'tan shard. Only a few make it, but I wound him twice with wonderful poison, he kills two back for a push. On the left my Hormagaunts are out of range to charge due to some inconvenient terrain I was slogging through. Hive Guard fire does very little sadly. The walking Tyrant downs an Orblord in the warrior squad. The Flyrant glides, dakkas and assaults the warriors. He loses his lord and a few Warriors but holds. I hold my own quarter, while the warriors with the tyrant contest the bottom right. His unlocked C'tan contests the top left, and his (top right) quarter I contest with the few gants I assaulted his C'tan with.

Tyranids: 1 Necrons: 0

Necrons turn 2: Little moving, more shooting. My tervigon loses another wound despite T9, and I lose a Hive Guard on the left. In assault my Flyrant whiffs and the Hormagaunts finish the C'tan. His other C'tan charges my wounded t9 tervi and wounds once, I fail to hurt him though. Table quarter status is the same.

Tyranids: 2 Necrons: 0

Tyranids turn 3: Left side Hormagaunts assault and kill his C'tan hitting my Tervigon, it explodes and kills 10!!!!!!! My other Hormagaunts run right under his Doomsday Ark (hoping he wont shoot me for fear of scatter) My Tyrant assaults the Immortals and kill a few, but he holds and they stand back up. (nemesor declined my challenge) The Flyrant kills a few warriors, they hold and get back up. (He has really good Reanimation rolls this game, but not quite the same luck with shooting.)

Tyranids: 3 Necrons: 0

Necrons turn 3: He has very few units with Targets that aren't locked. His Arks and warriors kill all but three Hormagaunts in the left squad, and he gets a dead hit on the right and vapes all but a few. In assault both Tyrants, walking and flying, kill a few guys who hold and then get up... annoying.

Tyranids: 4 Necrons: 0

Tyranids turn 4: I kill an ark, and assault the warrirors with Tervigons, who fall back off the board. In assault I finally kill the Immortals, but the Flyrant continues to stay locked with a measly 6 warriors!

Tyranids: 5 Necrons: 0

At this point my opponent forfeits. He has one Ark and one warrior squad not locked or dead, and the warriors have no target since the Tyrant is locked. We roll for the Tyrant/Nemesor combat (kill the Warlord purposes) and I kill him, collecting that point plus linebreaker. We looked at what would happen over the next few turns, and decided by turn 6 I would have had 12 total points, assuming the Flyrant continued to be held up and that his lone warrior squad would hide to contest his table quarter.

Final result: Victory Tyranids!

Thoughts: A very good matchup and a good mission for me, my list hard-countered everything he had through luck. My 12 points were the most this round. The GK/IG player got 10, and the other Nid player somehow got 2 points yet beat the Space Wolves, who only had one! I was really confused, until I realised that they had somehow gotten two turns in to a two hour period... Wow! I knew my next round pairing just by asking scores, I'd be playing against Henchmen spam, the same player who beat me in the final round of my last tournament. Stay tuned for updates, tomorrow brings a new Batrep!