Spanked!

Another outing for the vailant guard last night, this time at 1500 points. Same tragic outcome! The scenario wasn't in our favour (we had to set up in the centre of the board and went second) and I made a few mistakes. My first mistake was that I didn't design a list with the scenario in mind, the second was that a couple of my units were in charge range from turn one (not that I had much choice), the third was that I didn't know the rules about disembarking from destroyed vehicles and one of my units had to miss a turn as a result (and then died). As a result I was on the back foot from turn one. I did manage to kill a fair bit of stuff and had a couple of vehicles left at the end but it was never going to go my way.

Highlight of the match: Sly Marbo appears from reserve and throws a demolition charge (Large blast, S8, AP2) at a unit of tyranid warriors. The odds say that three should die. Instead it moves onto him (quite unlikely as he has BS5 and can shift the scatter by that much) and kills him instead (he had a 3-up save). Then, the Vendetta that was poised to finish off the remains of the unit fails to score a single would with three twin-linked lascannons. That same Vendetta would then fail two 4 up saves in a later turn and be taken down! All I can say is that while I probably deserved to lose moments like this really sealed my fate.

Lessons learned (the hard way):

1) Sometimes it's better to be wiped out in combat than to survive the initial assault (in order to be able shoot at the attacker).
2) Learn the rules (of the armies and the book in general).
3) Remember that lots of Tyranid stuff can assault 18".
4) I think I need a better army list.