Death to the Bugs!

On Saturday, I was hanging out at Ninja Pirate with "THE ANGER SHARKS!" hoping to get a game in. Around 8pm, in walks Mike. We decided to go ahead and have a 2000 point game. Mike is an excellent player; he has won first place at every tournament I've seen him play at. He is also a nice guy. I'd played against him twice before and both times I had been killed off of the table by round 3 (here and here). Needless to say, I was expecting a similar showing. He fielded his Tyranid Force which was a version similar to the 1500 point version I'd fought before. I made a quick tweak to throw in a 3rd Baal Pred instead of the Vindicator (a change I'm likely going to permanently make). And so, the battle began.

The Baals performed wonderfully, wiping out a squad of genestealers every round. This meant I didn't have to engage them in close combat where they would have eaten my troops for lunch (literally, since genestealers do that). They each managed to hang on until round 6 when all 3 were finally destroyed. The speeders also did well, managing to wear the shooty bugs down to less than half strength. Also, as in our last battle, Death Company came in and ate a couple of big bugs. Sadly, the Chaplain didn't make it past the first round of close combat. I'll let Mike record the details of the battle, as he will no doubt do it far more eloquently than I.

I did make a couple mistakes in on my side though. It turns out that there were two cases where I forgot to shoot before my squads assaulted the big bugs. This was a major failure in my tactics as it meant that I didn't get plasma pistol and meltagun shots off which would have nicely finished a couple of the big bugs a round quicker.

The short of it is we managed to have a more or less equal amount of points on the table by the end of the battle. We each had about 200 points or so left of the table. The DIFFERENCE was that I managed to truck my speeder deep into his deployment zone in the last round of the game (we were playing cleanse). This thousand point boost was just enough to eek me into the "Crushing Victory" range.

Yes, a "Crushing Victory" against one of the best players I know. O_O