1000pt game: Tyranids vs Space Marines

I never know how these battles are going to pan out. My younger son can play a very canny & cunning game indeed... or he can bunch up his army and charge down a kill zone. With predictable results.

We rolled for mission type and deployment and ended up with seize ground & spearhead. Gabe had set up a fair amount of terrain (which suits him). His army consisted of a couple of zoanthropes, a shooty Carnifex, a broodlord with genestealers... and a fair number of gaunts/hgaunts.

I brought along 2 ten man tacticals with rhinos, a bike squad (with MM attack bike), a whirlwind (first time I have used one), a dev squad and a captain.

The objectives were placed with one being on top of a large hill more or less central on the board. I thought this would be the critical point to fight over. The other two objectives were close to the deployment areas and we would capture these on the first turn.

I swept the bikers around his left flank, hoping to take out the zoanthrope there, and then beat up the broodlord. My dev squad had a nice line of fire on the carnifex and started up a dual with that beast.

One tactical squad captured the right most objective and my other tactical unit, with rhino, captured the central objective. The capt rode with this squad.

Gabe wrecked this rhino and I lost two of my dev squad. In fact I started to lose causulties all over the place from his shooting. But my dev squad ultimately won the dual with the carnifex and the Bike squad took care of the zoanthrope. But although I had damaged his advancing troops & broodlord, he was still able to assault the central objective.

Predictably, the broodlord & genestealers finished off the captain and the remaining squad members - capturing the central objective.

This meant that he could benefit from the full fury of my other units, including the whirlwind. In one turn of heavy firing, the hill was cleared. But I couldnt capture the hill - I only had one troop left.

Gabe though decided to call it a day. He believed that he couldnt win. I tried to explain my problem but he was convinced. I think he was wrong. He had three surviving troops and he could have gotten within 3" of the central objective forcing me to move to get LOS. Arguably my bikes might have been able to clear the troops or at least contest the objective. It would have been hard for him, but he did have one surviving zoanthrope which could have done some serious damage to my bike squad.

In all I don't think he should have given up.

As for myself. I was wishing I had split one of the squads into combat squads. Oh well.

It was a good game. And its been a while.