Battle report: Blood Pact vs Tyranids

Ave Dominus Nox!

My Blood Pact regiment continued his training with a fight against some Xenos: a splinter of Hive fleet Kraken. The foul xenos attack one of the planets under the dominion of the Gaur and we had to move swiftly to protect and kill them before they did some irreparable damage.

It was a game at 1700pts. I played the same list as in my first two games, you can find it here. My opponent list was:

Swarmlord
Broodlord
Neurothrope
2*14 Genestealers
1*27 Hormagaunts
1*3 Ripper swarms
1*10 gargoyles
1*3 Hive guards
1*4 Zoanthropes
1*3 venonthropes
1 Tyranofex (big guy with big canon/flamer)


We played using the scenario "Ascension" deployment "Vanguard strike" . I had the first turn, but my opponent took it from me with a beautiful (or horrible depending of the point of view) 6.

Turn 1

Tyranids: As you can imagine, the tyranids decided to advance right at me. They even run to be able to attack me as soon as possible. Psychics phase concentrated on doing a few smite in the conscripts and nothing was able to shoot my troopers. One unit of genestealers charged and annihilated the conscripts.

Blood Pact: Regarding the big wave of tyranids running to my line, I had to be efficient to manage each treats. First, I advance some of my troopers to be able to create some space to move my hellhounds and tanks. Second, I eliminated in order: the genestealers in the middle of my line, then the big guy (tyranofex?) with heavy flamer. I damaged the Hormagaunt with some of my flamers. Just before the end of my turn, I realized that the Broodlord was in a position of been shoot at with my lascanon and Pask. I did not miss the opportunity and destroyed him right away.

Victory points: tyranids= 2 Blood Pact= 1

Turn 2

Tyranids: All the different units continued their advance to my line. The gargoyles arrived from deep strike in my left flank. Psychic phase almost destroyed my sentinel and several of my troopers were affected by smite.
During the assault phase, the lord commissar and two squads of troopers were killed by the genestealers, hormagaunts and Swarmlord. The hormagaunts managed to impact two Hellhounds. Even if they did not any damage, the tanks would have to fall back to allow me to shoot them.

Blood Pact: My turn started with a lot of claws and fangs just near my surviving troopers. I decided to ignore the big guys of my opponent and focus my fire on the smaller xenos. At the end of the shooting phase, the hormagaunts and gargoyles were killed but one lonely genestealer survived against all odds. I decided to let my etogaur to charge and kill him in close combat. He did the job, but I had forgotten the swarmlord that decided to intervene in the combat and he killed the Etogaur. 

Victory points: tyranids= 5 Blood Pact= 1

Turn 3

Tyranids : With less and less troops, the tyranids continued to attack me. The zoanthropes destroyed my sentinel using smite. The Swarmlord charged my Shadowsword who took heavy damage during this attack (he attacked twice using a stratagem). This mighty tank was wounded and won't be able to do a lot of damage for the rest of the game.

Blood Pact: The swarmlord and his bodyguard were two targets of choice for this turn. The shadowsword fell back so Pask, the other tank commander and the lascanon could shoot and kill these guys. In the meantime, the Hellhound advanced and burned one of the zoanthrope. At the end of this turn, even If I was very far in term of victory points, I was sure of my capacity to kill all the remaining xenos.

Victory points: tyranids= 9 Blood Pact= 2

Turn 4

Tyranids: the last of the xenos started to retreat to score the maximum of victory points available for them. Some of them also tried to hide. During the psychic phase the remaining zoanthrope damaged the hellhounds.

Blood Pact: My troops finally started to advance and killed the remaining tyranids on their way: 3 venonthropes, the neurothrope and 3 zoanthropes. The table board was clear of any xenos, victory for Khrone!

Victory points: tyranids= 14 Blood Pact= 3

Conclusion

As I killed every tyranids, I obtained the victory. But again, I need to be careful. I only scored two victory points if one tyranids unit hid on the other side of the table: I would have been unable to go and kill her.

Next games end of June: 3 games in a row during a tournament in Belgium.