I just finished a 1000 point game with my Night Hawks Space Marine Biker Army (well what I made of it today). On the left you can see what I took. It consisted of 2x 5man bike squads with no upgrades, a captain with relic blade, storm shield and artificer armour, 2 speeder storms with 5 CCW scouts per and 2 land speeder typhoons. My opponent played his girlfriend's tyranids which had 3 squads of gene stealers, two gaunt squads, a warrior brood, a carnifex and a hive tyrant. We rolled bases and whatever the 12" deployment is.
He deployed first but I stole the initiative. That's why you can see that my deployment was all in the centre of the board as he was spread out a bit.
Turn 1
After stealing the initiative I lined up my typhoons on the carnifex and took half of his wounds. The rest of my army sped forward toward his because I really wanted to get the warriors out of the bunker. you can see below. On his turn as everything was primarily close combat oriented, he simply moved toward me and my lure.
Turn 2
On my turn 2 after pulling him toward me I hastily retreated all of my units back to about 20" or so and just launched single fire bolters into the gaunts to wittle them down. This is also where I inadvertantly cheated (I noticed on turn 4 and proptly destroyed a typhoon). I split them up. Since I never play this army I forgot that the stupid storms are fast attack and not dedicated. I was basically running with 4 heavy support choices for 3 turns. Oh well. On this turn I managed two wounds on the hive tyrand with a typhoon and took another off the carnifex. My goal here was to weaken the big guys so that my bikes if they were caught didn't have to strip 4 wounds off of them.
With little option his gaunts moved forward toward my bikes and I managed to not lose the warrior assault! They hit a lot and get many rerolls but against T5 bikes and no power weapons they can't do much. I also rolled pretty well. That combat went on for a further 2 rounds. |
| The daemonprince is a sneaky tyrant |
Turn 4
On turn 4 after regrouping from my loss to the warriors, I sped my remaining 2 bikes back to the bastion along with a storm and 5 scouts which disembarked. They all unloaded on the warriors and finished them off.
The tyrant had crushed me on his turn and wiped out a bike squad. My captain used his tactics to fail his leadership and he managed to win the initiative check and fall back. The tyrand followed me to within 6 inches but was wide open for a typhoon shot.
Turn 5
By now it really wasn't too hard to see how bad it was going for the nid player. It was still a draw until turn 5 though and I sped in with a storm and assaulted the lictor. He failed. The genestealers which were making their way slowly were plagued with terrible terrain rolls. A few tripple 1s, 2 and similar rolls for his entire army were common throughout the game. In the far right you can see where the scouts/bike and storm shot into a squad of genestealers sneaking around. On turn six those scouts ran into the building to claim it for good.
Turn 6
My captain had regrouped and slaughtered a genestealer squad (with the help of scout pistols and a heavy bolter or two). On turn six the genestealers were contesting but my other squad held the bastion. This is probably the first bases game I've seen not draw but I'd definately chalk it up to a heavily mobile army vs a close combat one on a huge board (for the points). Everything in my army being able to boost 24" was a huge boon. Anyway it was fun to learn what certain units can do. I was actually quite impressed with the storms. I'll admit though that it was likely only due to the lack of autocannons/missiles or really anything that kept them alive.
Victor Night Hawks
Glad to see your Storms played out well. I agree with your speed vs. CC thoughts. Also too bad those Genestealers didn't show where they were needed.
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