So my gaming group has 3 Josh’s… how confusing is that? Josh R, my Xenos brother and fellow soulless ginger primarily plays Tyranids and dabbles in Grey Knights recently set up a sweet game room with a early-build-phase 4′ x 4′ table and was looking to break it’s cherry with a 750pt game. Before Sunday March 2nd, I have only gone up against Space Marine armies so I felt pretty comfortable going up against Josh’s GK army, except he threw me a curve ball and went with his Nids! Now knowing I was going to go up against a horde army, I recalled reading something along the lines of Ork Big Gunz, particularly Lobbas, being pretty awesome against hordes. I had custom built 3 and brought them only because they were in the same foam sheet as my HQ’s.. so win. Also I went with a small unit of Lootas and to keep it Orky, the Shokk Attack Gun. My complete list (approx 745 pts) was as follows:
+ HQ
* Big Mek w/Shokk Attack Gun
+ Elites
* Lootas X 10
+ Troops
* Ork Boyz (22 Shoota Boys, 2 Big Shootas, Nob w/Power Klaw & Boss Pole)
* Ork Boyz (22 Shoota Boys, 2 Big Shootas, Nob w/Power Klaw & Boss Pole)
+ Heavy Support
* Big Gunz (3x Lobba w/extra crew & Runt Herd)
The Tyranid list looked sparse at first glance, but I have zero knowledge of the giant space bugs so who am I to judge. Little did I know that Tervigon would be birthing between 11-14 bugs each turn! His list was as follows:
+ HQ
* Hive Tyrant (Flying!)
+ Troops
* Genestealer Brood x 10
* Tervigon
* 30x Termagant
I need to start keeping better track of how the games go down but still learning, constantly referring to the rule book, codex and dice rolling.. it all gets jumbled together. Here are a few of the highlights:
- The Shokk Attack Gun is a beast when the dice are in your favor. High strength rolls, no mishaps and direct hits really worked the Tyranids over. I wish we would have kept track of the number of his kills.. I would estimate over 50, maybe 60+.
- The Lobbas performed amazing! Again, with the dice on my side, the hits were devastating, wiping out squads like a boss. Gretchin BS 3 is no joke and even when I scattered, I still managed to kill 5+ Termigants. I was on fire to such an extent, that we started to refer to the scatter dice as the loaded dice.
- The Lootas were down to BS1 after the Flyrant cast psychic powers on me but still managed to bring him down by sheer number of shots.
- The Flyrant is frightening. Period. I thought for sure he would sweep the back of my army, but a few bad rolls from a grounding test and perils of the warp made him only a 2 HP threat. I think that was luck on my side, but still, at full strength.. I don’t want to think about it.
- The Tervigon spawning so many Termigants each turn was super annoying but so cool at the same time. This unit alone is why I want a Nid army. Josh did a good job keeping him out of range of the SAG and Lootas. In the future, the Tervigon needs to be a priority target if for nothing else to stop the tide of Termigants being spawned.
- We played for kill points, which we really didn’t keep track of. Seeing as I had all the units I started out with and Josh had only 2 units left.. I’d call that a clear Ork victory. I know, I was shocked too!
Here is a gallery of photos from the game. Note the big yellow die, this was our turn counter… nice point of reference for the stage of battle the pics were snapped in.
