The next day we had a few more people in for a game, so rather than playing Harry and the Angels I ended up fighting Leo and lots of Cadian Imperial Guard (figures provided courtesy of John; all were gorgeously painted.) There were no vehicles, so it was Shank's Pony all round for them. We opted for 1000 PV per side in the hope of going faster (I wanted 750, but Leo said that it'd take him four hours to make a 750 list. I made my 1000 PV list in slightly under five minutes.) The game, however, did not go fast: it was five hours long. Every figure having different weapon options made it tricky on the dice rolls.
I should've done a battle report, especially as everything was well painted. But, in short, we played objectives. I placed a 10 termagant squad out of synapse range, which managed to wheel around and into the first objective - the imperial bastion - where it sat, happily, for the rest of the game. (Lucky rolls on two Instinctive Behaviour tests meant they managed it.) And this was the first of many lessons to me that worrying about synapse range is overrated. Specifically, I learnt the following: I can send a unit forward, massacre someone in an assault and be left in the open (as oft happens with nids) and then, when I get shot at, go to ground. At this point, I get shot up, but save a few extra guys on the save, who then flee after they fail their leadership test. And they flee RIGHT back into synapse range, where they instantly rally, and lose the penalties of going to ground, ready to get back into the melee. It's not as if the getting shot to crap bit is a good thing, but it's better to go to ground than do nothing at all.
The other two objectives were harder fought. One was defended by my Tervigon and three Hive Guard. At the end the Tervigon was shot to crap by everything and the kitchen sink, two Hive Guard were dead and the last one was making his Leadership rolls to stay in there and contest the objective. Good lad. The final objective was Hill 421 in the dead centre of the map. That was where the fight was all fought, with lasgun fire and flamer fire and melta bolts flying through the air. Leo thought he had it all wrapped up, and then the Warriors - six plus the Prime - who, once again, had spent the game trudging at 3" a turn (they kept making crap difficult terrain rolls) ran up and fucked everyone they found there. I broke the Prime off at one point to single handedly mow down a unit in hand to hand before running back to join the main group (which, frankly, bought my warriors just enough time to survive and claim the objective.) That unit ended up with one damaged Prime and one remaining Warrior. The game ended on turn 6. I had two objectives (the bastion and the hill) and contested the third with the Hive Guard. I think one more turn would've caused me problems - that Hive Guard would be unlikely to survive, and that warrior and Prime would've been lucky to contest the hill. I think they'd have died. Then the result would've been 2 to 1 in Leo's favour. But, then, there *was* no Turn 7, so who cares about this counterfactual fact?
Everytime I play now, I reread the rules. This time, I discovered that the things we did wrong were:
* Wound allocation. I realised that we did it slightly wrong for my Tyranids (in Leo's favour) and very wrong in Leo's case. We never did wound allocation for the Imperial Guard, which would have resulted in a lot more special troops lying dead on the field than there were. As it was, we were just removing the lasgun armed soldiers first.
* My stealers, which outflanked on turn two right into the body of the guard army, should've assaulted two units at once. As it was they wiped out the Veteran sqaud and then got shot to shit. If they multi assaulted they'd have done far far better. Dumb ass me. This would also have forced the Guard to spread out a bit more for fear of the multi assault. Not so much that we did it wrong, but that I should've done it better...
* At one point the Hive Guard was hiding behind a ruin. Whilst some guardsman could see him - and had LOS - I reckon others didn't. We should've checked to see how many could shoot him.
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