To arms!

Last night the Valhallans got their first crack at the Tyranids in a 1000 point game of Annihilation (kill points for units destroyed). The Guard had a Vendetta, a chimera full of Veterans with 3 meltas, a merged squad of 20 men with a commissar and a couple of lascannons, a platoon command squad with 4 flamers, an Executioner tank and a company command squad in a chimera with 3 plasma guns. The Tyranids had: a Tyranid Prime, 3 Tyranid Warriors, 3 Tyranid Warriors, 3 Hive Guard (split into two units), 15 Hormagaunts, 15 Hormagaunts, a Biovore, and a Trygon.

On set up the battle looked like this:


The guard had the first turn and managed to shoot about nothing (3 little dudes died). In return, the Nids killed the Vendetta and half of the big troops squad and most of them advanced to the middle of the table.

Turn two, with less shooting than before saw the guard do not much but the Company Command squad did move forward 6 inches! In response the Gaunts smacked up the Guard who were hiding in the wood. The Tyranid Warriors killed the CCS's chimera and they got out (handily running behind it out of combat range). The Trygon arrived in the middle of the battlefield and went RAAAAAAGH!
Turn three was my favourite as the Company Command squad, and the Leman Russ tank, managed to kill the Trygon (it took six re-rollable plasma gun shots and 5 plasma cannon shots to fell the beast). This involved me reading the rules for Monstrous Creatures who, thankfully, don't get cover saves unless they're 50% obscured. Paul wasn't too pleased! My Platoon Command squad ran through the woods and flamed all but one of the little bugs who'd just killed their friends. The survivor, because he was near a synapse creature, was able to rally and would then hide so I didn't get the kill point! In response to my good turn, the Nids massacred the Company command squad and killed the other Chimera with shooting.

The following turns involved the Nids killing everything and losing a little in return to shooting. On the last turn this was all that was left of the valiant Valhallans:

Believe it or not the tank survived!

In the end I had three kill points, Paul had five. Although I was almost wiped out, if I'd had a couple of luckier dice rolls it would have been a draw (he had a couple of units that were close to dead that could easily have died). Looking at the table, a victory for the Nids looked much more sensible, the only reason I could have drawn is that my army (by no intention of mine) had very few kill points to give up while Paul's had loads).

Good fun but scary for the Guard who found themselves out-gunned (a surprise) and out-fought!