Battle for Blacksburg - Round 3 - Tyranids vs. Tyranids

Following my Round 2 Loss to Eldar, I was matched up against Ron in the mirror match of all mirror matches. Ron was undefeated and had just missed out on the championship game. Just a forewarning, after a full day of gaming, I didn't take nearly enough pictures, or as close a track as I should have, so this bat rep might be a bit thinner than most.

 vs. 

This game would be a near mirror match, with Ron's list only having 160 points difference between mine:

Ron has:

• Hive Crone:
• 1 Deathspitter for his Warriors

in place of my:

• Zoanthrope
• Bastion
• Regeneration on the Tervigon
• Rending Claws on one Warrior

Other than those, the lists followed what we're nicknaming the FTGT Tyranid Template, using:

• Hive Tyrant: Wings, 2 TL Devourers
• Hive Tyrant: Wings, 2 TL Devourers
• Venomthrope
• Tervigon
• 30 Termagants
• 3 Warriors: Barbed Strangler
• Hive Crone
• Hive Crone
• Exocrine
• Exocrine
• 3 Biovores

As a result, this was a very tactical match. The scenario was the same as the others in terms of objectives, with Dawn of War deployment, and only Troops as scoring. I deployed my bastion to the left of  the large central line of sight blocker, and then deployed to that side and center. Ron deployed second and stayed central, making sure to keep just over 30" from my Exocrines. 

In the top of turn 1 I moved to my right a little, and was careful to prevent vector strikes on my FMCs from Ron's. In shooting, I took down Ron's warlord flyrant with my own, while the biovores killed a few termagants while trying to snipe out the venomthrope. In return, Ron killed my warlord and a couple termagants while moving to my right, away from my Exocrines. 

In the top of two I managed to kill off the venomthrope and started working on some of the synapse. The crones fired ineffectually at the middle crone in Ron's conga line, dealing a wound or two. In the bottom of the turn, Ron managed to ground and swamp my remaining flyrant in his backfield with his spawned gants. 

In the third turn I flew one crone off the board and started working on the exocrines and Tervigon, taking one of the exocrines down and wounding the tervigon. Ron countered with a couple wounds on my exocrine and tervigon, while the crones continued their clockwise sweep around the board. 

In turn four I managed to take down one crone with weight of fire, vector strikes, and mobbing with gants. Also managed to take down the tervigon and exocrine. I made a mistake here in that I forgot to use a Crone flamer on the whittled down termagant mob. In the bottom of the turn, my tervigon was taken down, and one of my warriors, as well as two biovores taken down. 

Turn 5 would be the final turn. I had two crones staring down my warriors holding my Emperor's will objective, while my two crusade holding termagant squads were under threat. I managed to kill one of the crones, but left the other unscathed. I also wiped out the warriors, but the opposing flyrant was holding synapse together from the middle of the board. In the bottom of the turn, the crone killed off the warriors with a vector strike while the flyrant cleared one objective, while the remaining ~6 gants in his blob cleared off my ~2. 

We tallied up the points and amazing came up with a dead draw. I managed to win Purge the Alien, while Ron took Crusade, and we tied Emperor's Will. For the secondaries, I goofed and didn't get linebreaker, so Ron got 2 points from that, I had first blood, and we each claimed warlord for a 15-15 draw. 

The 15 points were enough to get Ron second place, while I wound up in fourth. The game was extremely difficult because Tyranids are generally really good at killing other Tyranids, and having nearly the same list meant we had few advantages over each other. I think we both played a tight game, with one or two small mistakes each which could have swayed the game either way.