Saturday 10 December 2016

Wave Assault - Abraxes

Planet: Abraxes.
Region: Ceres Sector.
919.M41

Death Guard vs Tyranids.

Mission: Wave Assault.
Deployment: Special.
Points: 1750.

Weeks of fighting have led to a brief stalemate. Even the supernatural toughness of the Death Guard has failed to prevent them slowly being pushed back and the Hive Mind has been working overtime to combat the multitude of diseases released by Nurgle's chosen. Now the Tyranids have begun to close in around the Death Guard.


Typhus ordered his men to hold the line no matter the cost. Bludhaven would rot under Nurgle's gaze rather than be devoured by the Hive Mind. Surrounded by a swarm of alien horrors, the Death Guard prepared to give their lives dearly.


This was a continuation of Joel and I's game from a couple weeks ago. We chose the next Tyranid mission from the Battle Missions book and prepared for that. I decided to be a little non-thematic this time and build a list around the Black Crusade detachment for no reason other than I wanted to give it a second go. It is much better against Imperial opponents but this was just going to be a fun game.

Joel's list was a little tougher than before. He had to split his into three waves which would randomly come from a random table edge that had been used before. Wave 1 was his thematic remnant from the last game (carnifex and two small units of genestealers). Wave 2 was two flying hive tyrants and a large unit of gargoyles. The third wave was hordes and hordes of gaunts, supported by two zoanthropes, a tervigon, and a toxicrene.

I set up a unit plague marines holding the central objective, two CSM units in rhinos holding two others, a unit of raptors held back to engage where needed, a helbrute to the left defending the final objective, and finally Typhus and lightning claw terminators in a land raider to speed to where they were needed.

The first three rounds went really quickly as Joel's tyranids came in in wave order. I managed to take out a few but he had hidden most of his wisely in cover. Once everything was in it surged forth. The helbrute was dropped quickly by the hive tyrants and so I gave up on that objective to focus on the other three. The raptors did nothing really. Despite being close to a huge units of gaunts they failed to get into combat and when they did on the following turn, they were shredded by sheer number of dice. Disappointing as I had taken the time to build those models just for this mission. Typhus and his terminators likewise did nothing. The land raider was dropped by the zoanthropes and the only possible target for them was the toxicrene which proceeded to kill all of them rather too quickly for my tastes.

The chaos marines were also soon cut down by either gaunts or the two hive tyrants. Only the plague marines actually put up much of a fight. But come turn 5 even they dropped and Joel won by wiping me out across the table.

It was a good game and I know that I had chosen the wrong detachment but sometimes you need to try things out. Joel was extremely certain that i would win simply because of the mark of Nurgle on everything but I was certain he would win simply by numbers of dice. My army is just too expensive to compensate but next time I'll give some more thought to what I need to bring them down.

Black Crusade detachment.
*Typhus.
* One unit of four terminators with pairs of lightning claws. Land raider as dedicated transport.
* Two units of chaos space marines. Mark of Nurgle. Champion with plasma pistol and power weapon. Flamer and heavy bolter. Both with Rhinos with extra combi-bolters.
* One unit of raptors. Mark of Nurgle. Champion with twin lightning claws. Two flamers.
* Helbrute with multi-melta.
* One plague marine unit. Champion with plasma pistol and power weapon. Two melta guns.

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