Bat Rep: 1k Nids vs. Eldar

This battle report is the final game of the March tournament (you can find the previous games' Bat Reps here and here). This game's mission was Purge the Alien against Eldar:

 vs.

My opponent's list was:

Farseer w/Runes of Warding, Witnessing, and Spirit Stones, Guide, and Fortune
Avatar
6 Firedragons - Exarch, in Falcon
10 Dire Avengers with Exarch, in Wave Serpent
Wave Serpent w/TL Shuriken Cannon, Shuriken Cannon
12 Guardians w/Shuriken Cannon
Falcon w/Bright Lance, Shuriken Cannon, and TL catapults
Wraithlord w/2 flamers, Wraithsword


Deployment:

The big brown thing in the middle of the map is representing a giant mountain that blocked LOS and was difficult terrain. I won the roll and chose to deploy second, much to my opponent's chagrin. He deployed the Wraithlord, Avatar, Farseer, and guardians in the middle behind the mountain, with the two mounted aspect warrior squads on the flanks. I deployed with the hormagaunts in the middle, the Trygon and Tervigon on the left with the Biovore, and the gargoyles, devilgants, and flyrant on the right. In hindsight, I should have swapped the flanks since I had the MCs facing the firedragons and the gargoyles/devilgants facing the dire avengers.

A note for clarity - at the beginning of each player turn, I will include the score going into that turn.

Turn 1: Eldar 0, Tyranids 0

I failed to steal the initiative back so the Eldar went first. The entire army moved up a bit, with the wraithlord and avatar bearing to the left of the mountain toward the Tervigon and Trygon. Shooting from the two tanks put a couple wounds on my Trygon and killed about half the gargoyles.

Bottom Turn 1: Eldar 0, Tyranids 0

The Tervigon started things off for me by spawning about a dozen gants and pooping out in the first turn for the third game in a row. She also managed to cast Endurance on the Trygon despite the Farseer's Runes of Warding while the Flyrant took a perils wound trying to cast Iron Arm on himself. By and large I moved up as much as possible, with the Hormagaunts sprinting up the mountain. Shooting from the Flyrant took down quite a few guardians and caused a wound on the Farseer, and then at the end of the turn, the Trygon recovered a wound from It Will Not Die.

Turn 2: Eldar 0, Tyranids 0

The tanks moved up slightly and discharged their aspect warrior cargo. In the middle, the Wrathlord and Avatar moved up, with the Farseer, who took a perils wound, and his guardians lagged behind slightly. In the shooting phase the wave serpent and guardians managed to wound the flyrant, but didn't ground him. The dire avengers then wiped out the gargoyles, getting first blood. On the other side, the Fire Dragons showed some relatively poor marksmanship on the Trygon, and combined with the Falcon, did quite a few wounds, but the Trygon made more than his fair share of Feel No Pain rolls and survived with one wound remaining. The wraithlord hit the termagants with two flamers and took them down to four remaining, but put himself out of charge range.

Bottom Turn 2: Eldar 2, Tyranids 0

The flyrant and Tervigon both took perils wounds trying to cast Iron Arm on themselves. The Flyrant then went gliding over to the guardians. The devilgants moved up on my right while the MCs and Hormagaunts made for the left. In the shooting phase, the flyrant gunned down all but one guardian. The devilgants took out 5 dire avengers, much to my opponent's surprise. The trygon killed two fire dragons and the Tervigon managed a wound on the wraithlord. In the assault phase, I tried charging the fire dragons with the few remaining spawned gants to soak overwatch from the Trygon, but he chose not to fire and they didn't make the distance. The trygon then declared and survived the single hit through his continued luck. The tervigon charged the wraithlord while the hormagaunts dove off the mountain onto the Avatar. Behind them, the flyrant made his charge into the farseer and lone guardian.

Beginning with the Warlord combat, they struck simultaneously and the Hive Tyrant killed both the guardian and the farseer at the same time as the farseer cut him down - I failed both 3+ saves. The Avatar managed to only kill a single hormagaunt, and took no wounds in return. Meanwhile, the tervigon and wraithlord wailed away on each other, each doing two wounds. Finally, the Trygon easily wiped out the fire dragons to no wounds in return.

Turn 3: Eldar 4, Tyranids 4

Once again, only a few moments into turn 3, time was called and we were told to finish the current game turn. The dire avengers moved up slightly to all get in range of the devilgants while, on the opposite flank, the falcon swooped away from the trygon and prepared to fire in hopes of taking it down. The dire avengers used their exarch's ability to gun down all but one of the devilgants with the help of their wave serpent. The sole surviving gant made his panic check and heroically stood his ground, denying a victory point. The falcon fared no better, missing with the bright lance and scoring a wound with its shuriken catapults, which was promptly saved by the defiant Trygon. In combat, the Tervigon was knocked down to a single wound before retaliating and killing the wraithlord. Beside them, the avatar once again killed a single hormagaunt, with no wounds in return.

Bottom Turn 3: Eldar 4, Tyranids 5

With it being the final turn, short of doing something stupid, I had won. The lone devilgant on the left failed his instinctive behavior, but was just in range of the dire avengers, and so would fire - though I don't think we even rolled this. The biovore also failed, but could just see the wave serpent, so would fire a harmless spore mine at it (despite the map, it had actually moved up and toward the center, so was well away from the dire avengers). The only real movement was the Tervigon who made a vailiant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get linebreaker, deciding that to challenge the avatar would fall into the above category of something stupid to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Trygon whirled around and followed the Falcon. He then charged it and blew it up easily, thankfully surviving the resulting explosion - which I admit, at that point, I was rooting for him to die in a self-inflicted way. The only thing that was left was for the avatar to cut down a couple more hormagaunts who were still within Synapse range of the Tervigon. With that, the game ended with a Tyranid Victory, 6-4!

Despite my low point totals, I ended the day undefeated. All three games were very close and could have gone either way. If they had gone another turn, I may have lost the first two games, and the final game ended with the tervigon and trygon down to their final wound, and a single gant surviving on the right, denying my opponent 3 points in all.

Let me know what you think of these Bat Reps; I'd love to hear suggestions for how they can be improved. I hope for future write ups to include photos of the board and armies, but besides that, what else would you like to see?