August Annihilation 25-8-2013 game 1

I entered a Warhammer 40K tournament (1723pts) in Veendam at Kunstkot.

First up, Lee with his Dark Angels. The setting was Crusade with Dawn of war deployment: 5 objectives.
I've played against him before, but I was sure he would've added stuff to his army.
Their enormous output of bullets can be scary.

My list:
2x Flying Hive Tyrant with 2x dual devourers. 1 with hive commander, 1 with poison.
2x Hive guard, 2x zoanthrope, Doom of Malantai in a pod
2x Tervigon with 3 powers and poison, 2x 10 termagants
15 Gargoyles with adrenal glands
1 Trygon (1720pts)

His (as far as I know)
Some commander, a command squad, 3 (?) tactical squads, 5 Terminators,
10 assault marines (in reserve)
Dreadnought with rocketlauncher and assault cannon
2x landspeeder (heavy bolter and assault cannon?)
Razorback tank with some marines, Aegis defence line with quad cannon.

Game on
I got first turn, which is a good thing since the flying tyrants don't want to get caught on the ground.
1 objective was in my far right corner, the others were pretty close to eachother on the left half of the table.
The plan would be to hold the objective in the right corner with a cheap unit and focus everything else on the other 4. That is, capture them and kick the enemy off the others or at least contest them.

You can see my (Tyranid) deployment and Lee standing across the table in white.


My Termagants were hugging the objective on the far right.


The two flying tyrants moved up fast. Everything else moved up equally.


First blood! Well..scrap. It took 1 tyrant and the hive guards.


And a landspeeder got taken out. The Tyrant flew around Iron Armed on S/T9


While the Tyrants were having a field day, the spawned gaunts
got shot up by the dozen. Keeping those objectives was an effort.


The Trygon burst from the ground near the far right objective to, if need be,
defend the objective against the assault marines.


The Tyrants were wreaking havoc shooting and charging.


The assault marines were still sleeping in turn 2 as Lee forgot to call on them.
They did show up on turn 3, but too little too late.


At the end of turn 3 we had to call it a day since time was up.
Because Lee had the objectives concentrated on one flank I could focus one 2/3rds of the table.
The Tyrants killed off the vehicles and quickly after that had a field day in the back lines. Rolling high on Iron Arm helped making one of them véry hard to kill.
They weren't doing the killing all that fast due to imperfect dice throwing in combat, but that wasn't bad since they could get out of close combat at the end of the opponent's turn. The Doom of Malantai did nothing except for putting a scare on Lee for a turn. He passed 3 leadership tests on 3d6 and then killed the Doom off.
The Trygon did nothing much but turn up and roar a bit.
The Tervigons were moving up and securing objectives while keeping Lee occupied with cannonfodder to kill. The Hive Guard did their job, killing armour.

Result
In the end I held 3 objectives, including the one in the right corner and contested the other 2 with the Tyrants.
The majority of the marines were either killed or about to be killed in the 4th turn if we'd had it and the razorback and the 2 landspeeders were wrecked, as was the quad cannon. The HQ choice was dead, 2 of the 5 terminators were gone, there was a dreadnought left and the assault marines who came in late.
It made for a solid win.
Lee's assault marines should've been called on in turn 2, but the best they could've hoped for with their load out was to contest 1 objective.

Learning points:
I didn't need to deepstrike the Trygon. I was lucky Lee forgot his assault marines in turn 2.
The Tyrants were awesome with iron arm and endurance. For the rest, I won the game mostly on tactical experience and a lack of heavy weapons.

Tyranids: Trygon marker

I found out I didn't take any photo's of this one yet.
You may (or may not) remember this post: Trygon

The photo's below are of the marker base for the Trygon after it deepstrikes and the sign it crushed is being replaced. It's an éxact copy of the base for the Trygon (incl. the location of the ruin and the sign). It's a 'Move along people, nothing to see here'-kinda situation where the Imperial Guard just swept some remains of the victims under a cloth and put up a brand new sign. Citizens beware, contact with aliens is a crime punishable by summary execution. Just so you know..you've seen nothing!

*click to enlarge*

Citizens beware!


The remains of the Trygon's victims are mopped under a blanket


A spade to cover up the hole that the Trygon made


A fresh paint on the sign, and it's done :)
The base could be improved somewhat by a thicker cover of mud...

Trygon - Prime - Mawloc photo's

I worked on this model for aprox. 4 months before it was finished. Because I magnetized the heads and put the different tails on a pin you can easily switch between Trygon, Trygon Prime or Mawloc.

Trygon:


Trygon Prime


Mawloc (I found out at the last moment that I had to reposition the talons to make the head fit)


Below is a close up of the base of the model.
I have also made a Trygon marker base where the Imperial Guard have repaired the propaganda add (a poster featured in the 3rd ed codex) that has been shattered here. The markerbase is finished except for the guard models themselves. I'll post it when it's done.




As for size comparison - it stands about 6"(15cm) tall.

A Trygon has been gnawing at my time, really!

So what has been eating up time *pun intended*?
After around 4 months I've finally finished my biggest model yet, the Trygon (Prime)/Mawloc. I realized I didn't take a size comparison, so..it stands around 6" tall. Update, check this for comparison.

The problem with this model is that you can make 3 versions but they kinda want to make you buy 3 models for this. As most people know, these models are expensive enough as (around 39€ retail and 27€ via Maelstromgames.co.uk) is and don't get me started on time, therefore I compromised. They have parts for 2 jaws (mawloc and trygon/prime) and skull tops for all three. I had to get the top skull incl. skull base via e-bay and ordering another trygon where I sold the rest of the trygon. Next to that, the Mawloc has only very small claws and the Trygon/Prime has really big talons. Here I compromised by only using the big talons and leaving the small ones alone. They díd deliver all 3 different tails which I made interchangable with a pin which means the photo's sometimes have a Trygon Prime on it with a Mawloc tail.

Trygon Prime with Trygon tail


Trygon Prime with Prime tail


Trygon Prime from the back (Prime tail)


Mawloc - mawloc tail


Mawloc - mawloc tail


Mawloc tail


The model is done, the base is not. Normally I don't put in too much time in the base, but a large beast needs a decent base. This beast is able to dig underground and come up and I've tried theming the base around this. There's also an almost identical base that I'll use as a marker base. I'll post a decent base post when I'm done with that.