Battle Report: My 13th Company versus CJs Nids

So I wandered up to the store intent on just watching CJ and Chad duke it out but Chad convinced me to step in and play CJ. Chad had a mission worked out called "archaeological dig" or something like that, where there were 6 objectives on the board, any one of which might be the target. We deployed fairly evenly, from left to right on my side, 8 man grey hunters with meltas, rune priest, wolf lord, 6 man grey hunter squad with plasmas, storm claws, 8 man grey hunter squad with meltas, the long fangs on a hill with a fence, and the puppies on the other side of the hill. (the wolf priest was embedded with the storm claws) CJ set up as such from my left to right. Hive tyrant, unit of warriors, gaunts, carnifex (C1), warriors carnifex (C2), gaunts, carnifex (C3) and infiltrated the stealers a few inches in front of his hive tyrant and warriors. I then initated a shift to the right, moving all of my units to the right, with the puppies moving forward and the long fangs sitting tight to refuse the flank occupied by the hive tyrant, stealers and a group of warriors.

CJ won first turn and generally advanced his army forward with some ineffectual shooting from his gaunts, fexes, warriors and hive tyrant. On my turn I gated my rune priest and left-most grey hunter squad into the area terrain where C3 was camped down. The other units scuttled around a bit more toward the right and center. During my shooting phase I was able to put a hurting on many of the gaunts with bolter fire. The long fangs put some wounds on C3 as did the meltas from the teleported squad. In CJs turn the main army advanced more, shot at me without killing many models, and the carnifex charge the squad that had teleported. The fex took the squad down to 3 guys, but the powerfist armed squad leader did it in.

On my turn my forces mainly held their position, with the melta squads moving towards an objective on a hill in the center currently held by a carnifex. The long fangs, learning from last turn that the AP3 of the missile launchers didn't do much to carnifexes with extended carapace elected to split fire, taking one wound off the center fex (C2) and dropping fraq missiles into the further gaunt squad, reducing it to 2 models. The storm claws finished off the other gaunt squad with bolt pistol fire. The plasma gun toting squad took aim at the rapidly approaching stealers and broodlord, taking a few stealers out with bolter and plasma fire.

On CJs next turn the stealers advanced toward the waiting plasma squad with a 6" fleet roll, however a poor difficult terrain roll during assault kept the grey hunter squad alive for another round. Another round of mediocre shooting failed to strike much fear into my troops. Although CJ did peel off a few fenrisian wolves, who, with three fleet rolls of 1, apparently were more in the mood for belly rubs than fighting that day. The fex near the objective elected to dig for the treasure and sure enough found it!

The next turn saw me inch deeper into cover away from the approaching stealer and rapid fire with bolters and plasma, reducing the squad to 5 stealers and the lord. The rest of my forces hosed down the fex C2, killing it with a mass of plasma pistol, lascannon and melta fire. The missile launchers took a wound off the hive tyrant. The remnants of the teleporting grey hunter squad fired at the last fex C1, who had been lumbering their direction, taking a wound off with a melta gun.

The stealers charged, as did the remaining carnifex after taking out a squaddie with a venom cannon shot. The stealers had to swing last, since they had no flesh hooks, and the squad was able to kill only two stealers and take a wound off the broodlord before being massacred, however a massacre roll of 1 kept the unit from consolidating into my wolf lord in the corner of the area terrain!, a key roll. The fex had 4 attacks, missed two and rolled a 1 on the wound rolls, allowing the powerfist armed pack leader to survive! needless to say with 7 PF attacks he killed the carnifex.
Lets reposition the troops, the broodlord with 5 stealers are in area terrain near the center of the board in my deployment zone, there are two gaunts being useless near the center, a unit of 4 warriors has moved near the objective, an the hive tyrant is near the center of the board near the middle. Apparently I've also killed 3 warriors from shooting at some point that I don't remember.

I rapid fire with pistols at the stealers, killing all stealers. Storm bolters take care of the gaunts and a wound is taken off a warrior. The hive tyrant succumbs is weakened by lascannon and missile fire. On his turn the warriors assault into my melta squad (now down to 6 guys) and kill two, while losing a warrior in return. The broodlord loses a wound to my wolf lord and does no damage in return. On turn the warriors are finished off by the counter charge or my rune priest and the carnie killing powerfist guy. The storm claws charge in to make sure the broodlord will die, and the long fangs take out the hive tyrant. I had to run so we stopped rolling, but needless to say all of CJs guys would have perished, although it had been a fun and tense game. I would have surrendered around 500 VP to CJ while totalling 2050 myself.
Notes from the match.

I rolled about average, maybe a bit better than average, CJ rolled low, but not ridiculously so. Again, buy your assault troops flesh hooks. CJ ran all of his biggies shooty, but didn't buy enhanced senses for them or the warriors. This was really key, as many threes were rolled that could have changed from misses to hits. Extended carapace on the stealers was key, seeing as that they not only shrugged off bolter fire, but it meant that I would select the gaunts more readily since I knew I would kill them.

A solid read. Thanks for posting John.

I think the 13th is a force to be feared. They're becoming quite adapt at squashing bugs.

My hero for the match has to be the melta squad leader with powerfist and mark of the wulfen. He killed two carnifexes, one pretty much by himself, and just wouldn't die, keeping his 108 pts from CJ. He was even involved in three total assaults, 4 warriors couldn't kill him either. Also, healing potions and balms cost 25 pts, and saved 84 pts throughout the match. Solid. The storm claws never really moved the whole game, which was strange, the just kept being a fire magnet, and spraying pistol fire and guants, carnies, stealers etc.

Thanks for the vote of confidence Marc, although against your force they managed to get eaten instead of squished. I'm pretty happy so far, I just wanted my list to be competitive amongst our group.

Have you played with the idea of bikes any more John? Seems to me, while you move around with your army that a shooty or mecha army would out maneuver you pretty easily. Bikes might give you the edge to get stuck in.

Plus that 2" turbo boost is priceless for last turn catching of objectives.

Good batrep John. Thanks for posting!

Thanks, I really like writing up batreps. Some time I'll have to do one with pictures. Can you upload powerpoint files to this sight? I know if I take pictures I'll want illustrations.

As for the Bikes, I've thought about it, but only a little. They're pricey, so it would take a little bit of work to fit them in. The other issue is if it is better to have my lord be mounted and then have a biker retinue, or have a separate unit of bikers. Retinues don't count as scoring units correct? So perhaps separate would be better.

They do count as scoring.

And what is this talk of powerpoint and illustrations! Blasphemy.

Powerpoint files wouldn't upload anyway, unless you output it as a jpg or some other file format that would upload.

But you would do the illustrations in powerpoint?

I'm just too used to doing everything in powerpoint because that is the language of the engineer these days. All our reports and presentations pretty much.

Anyways, I was thinking I'd upload the pics into powerpoint slides and then add arrows and text boxes and such.

Cool, pretty sure you can export a jpeg out of power point. Then upload it.

Make sure to check out the batrep structure sticky too. So we can keep these bad boys unified (let me know of any feedback on it too).