Battle of Lucerne Abbey - Abraxes

Planet: Abraxes.
Region: Ceres Sector.

Death Guard vs Tyranids.
1500pts.
Mission: Only War.
Deployment: Front-Line Assault.

One of the original targets of the Death Guard when they attacked Abraxes was the legendary Lucerne Abbey shrine which housed several relics of the old Imperium from the early days of the Great Crusade. Even with the Tyranid menace Typhus sought to corrupt these relics of the false Emperor. During the search of the ruins, the Death Guard failed to notice the arrival of the xenos vanguard until it was too late.

First 8th edition against Tyranids and for my friend Shadbolt. As Only War is a good training mission it seemed an excellent choice for the game. We rolled for the objectives and each one was worth a victory point at the end of each turn to whoever held them. First turn was mine. I've not enjoyed a game against Tyranids for a while due to how good they were previously so I was not sure how to handle them this time around. My list was fairly basic but I hoped it would do the job.

Due to deployment I was holding two objectives straight away. One with a plague marine squad and one with havocs. I didn't have much shooting but my big weapons did open fire upon Shadbolt's monstrous tyrannofex which seemed to be the biggest threat. Knocked a couple wounds off but it didn't hurt it's abilities too much.

In return Shadbolt surged everything forwards. Again, not a lot of shooting, but we did have the first perils of the warp that I have seen under 8th. One of his zoanthropes exploded which was impressive. But his turn pretty much consisted of getting everything as far forward as he could.

Turn two and combat was joined along the middle of the table. Plaguebringers and poxwalkers fought hard against gaunts, and my daemon prince of chaos started slugging it out with his hive tyrant. This turn of the game was rather poor for me as my dice were not playing ball most of the time. The one time Nurgle was in my favour saw six sixes rolled on a wounding roll. My forces were holding their own but the horde was slowly overrunning them. The plaguebearers didn't have much luck. They lost half their number to the gaunts.

Turn three and Shadbolt's genestealers were in the midst of my poxwalkers, ripping them apart. Typhus strode in and hacked the broodlord down with one mighty sweep of manreaper. Had the game gone much further he would have taken down those remaining genestealers I had no doubt. The second squad of poxwalkers was slowly whittling away but I was pleased to get one new poxwalker added to the unit. That made my evening. Elsewhere, despite being beaten down to 1 remaining wound, my daemon prince of chaos sliced the head from the hive tyrant and held it up for the gods to see!

At this time I had dealt enough damage to the tyrannofex that it was no longer a threat. With everything else in combat my havocs were forced to blast away at gaunts and the defiler strode into another unit of gaunts but was surprisingly unable to wound any of them.

By this time Shadbolt's tyranids were taking control of the objectives I had just by sheer weight of models. I couldn't remove enough of them to retain control of the objectives. Unfortunately by this point we had tio wrap up the game as we were nearing kick out time. Shadbolt had seized a victory 7pts to my 6.

A good game and hopefully a good training exercise for mister Shadbolt. Tyranids are still a good horde army but they seem much more balanced now than they used to be. I think I can enjoy facing them again now.

Back aboard the Terminus Est Typhus raged. The desecration of the ancient relics would not be by his hand. Instead they would trodden into the mud by alien feet. Time to turn his attention back to the war and maybe one day he could return to finish the job.

Battalion Detachment.
6 command points

Typhus
Daemon Prince of Chaos

10 Plague marines
Plasma Pistol and power weapon.
Icon of Despair and two meltaguns

10 Plague marines
Plasma Pistol and power weapon.
Icon of Despair and two meltaguns

10 Poxwalkers
10 Poxwalkers

Defiler
Battle cannon, reaper autocannon, scourge, defiler claws and combi flamer

5 Havocs
powerfist and bolt pistol
Autocannon, missile launcher, lascannon and hvy bolter
chainswords

10 plaguebearers

Plague marines supported by a defiler march into battle.

A monstrous tyrannofex.

The initial battle lines.

Savage hand to hand fighting in the blast craters.

Here come the genestealers!