Result of Librarimania vs Tyranid All-Stars

I have to say this was one of the most entertaining battles we have fought in some time. The armies were:

Librarimania (1850pt Blood Angels)
2 Librarians with Jump Packs
1 Sanguinary Priest with Jump Pack, Power weapon
1 Sanguinary Priest with Bike, Power weapon, Infernus Pistol
2 Furioso Librarian Dreadnoughts
1 10-man Assault Squad with Jump Packs, 2 meltaguns, Sergeant with power weapon (JP libby and Sang Priest joined these guys)
1 5-man Assault Squad with Jump Packs, Meltagun, Sergeant with power weapon
1 10-man Tactical Squad, Missile launcher, meltagun, Sergeant with power weapon
1 5-man Scout squad, Sniper rifles, Heavy bolter
1 Landspeeder, Double Multimelta

Tyranid All-Stars
Swarmlord + 2 Tyrant Guards
Parasite with Mortrex
Deathleaper
Doom of Malan'tai with Mycetic Spore
2 Zooanthropes with Mycetic Spore
2 Tervigons with TS, AG and Catalyst
2 10-bug broods of Termagants
Old One-Eye
10 Gargoyles with TS and AG

An annihilation match with Spearhead deployment was rolled, and the Tyranids won the roll to start.
Turn 1 saw the infiltrated scouts who deployed too far forward get eaten by a Termagant brood pooped out of a Tervigon (the 6" deployment, move, shoot, 6" charge caught them). In return the large assault squad multicharged a termagant unit and the Swarmlords brood. The Termagants lost 7 out of 10 out along with 3 marines, resulting in 2 fearless wounds on the Swarmlords unit.

Turn 2, Doom of Malan'tai shows up and manages to kill a biker and a couple of marine, A termagant charge on the bike squad killed off the attack bike (the fearsome pink termagant in action). The Doom's kill of the biker prevented Old One-Eye making a charge on them.
The Parasite and his gargoyles charge into the back of the assault squad attacking the Swarmlord
Another Termagant brood of 10 charges the combat squad of tacticals after shooting one of them. Poor rolls result in all 4 marines surviving and only 2 Termagants.
A couple more marines die to the Swarmlord, and the Parasite and the gargoyles combined kill one more. The marine beat on the gargoyles and kill 3, tying the combat.
Marine turn 2 brings the dreadnoughts into action - one uses his force weapon to instakill a Tervigon, the other crushes the Parasite with his DCCW.
Doom of Malan'tai survives heavy shooting and an assault from the assault squad and librarian. he loses a couple of wounds to the squad, but makes both force weapon saves from the librarian.
The bike squad kills a few more of the brood of termagants, and the tac combat squad finishes off the one it is engaged with.
The librarian with the big squad drops to the Swarmlord.

Turn 3 sees Deathleaper and the Zoanthropes appearing. Deathleaper pops up in cover an inch from the missile launcher combat squad in the far corner and kills one marine with his fleshhooks. The Zoanthrope's pod scatters, but is still near enough to the Dreadnought libby that just instagibbed the tervigon to lance it twice for a measly stun result.
The remaining Tervigon does itself an aneurysm trying to FnP the Swarmlord, then charges the combat squad, killing 3, leaving one survivor. On the other side of the battle, Doom again makes his invuln save against the librarian's force weapon, and takes 2 out of 5 wounds from the squad, leaving him with 2 wounds left. Old-One-Eye charges into the back of the combat, getting 7 attacks on the charge (4+ to hit, rerolling 1's) hitting ONCE!!!!!! And then fails his to-wound roll (2+). The swarmlord finishes digesting the assault squad and piles in on the dreadnought.
The marines turn 3 sees the remaining 4 men in the tac squad shoot at Deathleaper and wound with a missile and 2 bolter shots. Deathleaper then flubs his 3+ cover saves with a 1, a 1, and a 2 and drops dead on the spot.
The landspeeder arrives behind the Zoanthropes and fires two multi-melta shots into them - failing to hit with either. The stunned dreadnought pops smoke.
The dreadnought and the swarmlord trade punches, with the swarmlord immobilising the dreadnought and tearing off the force weapon arm. The dread swings back with the DCCW, and kills off the last of the gargoyles, tying combat. The tervigon eats the last marine in the tac combat squad.
Doom of Malan'tai gets a lucky wound in (at S2) and kills the librarian, Old-One-Eye uses his bucketload of attacks to finish off the squad. The squad had hammered everything at the Doom, and only inflicted one wound, leaving Doom back down to 2 wounds again.

Turns 4 and 5 see a slugging match continue between the Swarmlord and the damaged Furioso Librarian Dreadnought. The Swarmlord is unable to roll well on the vehicle damage table, scoring 1's and 2's only, the Dreadnought only manages to score one wound on the Swarmlords group, killing off the injured Tyrant Guard. Eventually at the bottom of turn 5, the dreadnought takes a wrecking hit.
The Landspeeder evades fire from the Zoanthropes and the Mycetic Spore long enough to put the second Tervigon on 5 wounds taken, then gets exploded. The Tervigon dies to a krak missile from the remains of the combat squad that killed Deathleaper.
On the far side of the board the other dreadnought kills off the last termagant squad, but is left exposed to a charge from Old-One-Eye, who has eaten the bike squad.
Doom recovered three more wounds from sucking the life from the remains of the assault squad.

The roll does not end the game and turn 6 sees Old-One-Eye charge the dreadnought and take 3 wounds, one short of killing it. The librarian fails his psychic test thanks to the Shadow in the Warp effect from Doom of Malan'tai. Old-One-Eye crushes the dread beneath his claws in return.
The missile squad continues to prove its worth shooting and killing a Mycetic Spore.

The roll at the end of turn 6 does not end the game, but nothing much happens on turn 7 - one of the 4 remaining marines dies to a psychic attack from the swarmlord, and he uses Paroxysm on them to reduce them to Bs1. This saves the second mycetic spore from being hit with a missile as it goes wide.

Game ends with 10 models on the board - 3 marines, the Swarmlord and one Guard, Doom of Malan'tai, Old-One-Eye, 2 Zoanthropes, and a Mycetic spore.
Killpoints score was 13 to 11 in favor of the Tyranid All-Stars.

Showdown at the OK battletable

Looks like the next battle coming up is going to be more for amusement than serious army testing:

G. fielding: 'Librarimania' - a Blood Angels army featuring 4 librarians (2 HQ, 2 Furioso)
Me, fielding: 'The Tyranid All-Stars' - a Tyranid army with all 5 named Tyranid characters

Both armies are actually workable lists, just very far from optimised or balanced. Still, it should be an interesting game with a boatload of special abilities in use.

In the Future there is only War!

As one of the favourite GW sayings about the WH40K universe goes....

War is definitely upcoming for us too. A one-day 3-game charity tournament on December 4th and a winter league (6 games over 12 weeks) are on the cards.

I've decided to take my Space Wolves out for a spin in both. I've been playing Tyranids for the last few games and tournaments and it would be nice to have a change of pace.

G. will be taking his Blood Angels chapter of marines out for both - although that is more a limitation that he only has the one army to go with!

The Toys-for-Tots tournament will be with a 1750 point army, so we have been concocting different army lists at that point level to see what we can come up with that is both a good army, and one that we have the models to be able to field.

So far we have had two test games, each of us fielding very different armies each time. The first battle was a total destruction of the Space Wolves by turn 4, the second game was payback with the Blood Angels routed or destroyed also by turn 4. Drawing conclusions from the games is a bit hard as the dice gods were definitely playing with us mere mortals in both games, with strings of bad luck turning the battles into massacres.

The enthusiasm levels of both generals remains high and further test conflicts seem inevitable!
We'll get out the camera for the next matches to provide a bit more detail on the result.

Getting started....

Well, since I have some spare time on my hands right now, I'm going to use up some of it blogging about Warhammer 40k - probably my biggest time-sink of a hobby.

If you aren't familiar with it, Warhammer 40k is a tabletop wargame set in the far future in a really dark and unpleasant setting. You can get more information on it from the publisher's website, www.games-workshop.com.

What it really boils down to is an opportunity to be a kid again, stick together plastic model kits, paint up the resulting figures and vehicles and then play toy soldiers with them to a set of rules. Fortunately I have a partner in crime in this hobby in the same house: G. , my son, is also a keen player and is learning fast.