"You wanna live forever?!"
-Unofficial traditional pre-jump battle cry of the Xhoirk 87th Firebirds
Background:
The Ork invasion of Xhorik Prime has unwittingly awoken a dormant Tyranid exploratory tendril that had remained in the stasis of interplanetary travel while buried in the polar icecap of Xhorik Prime. The heat and movement of the arriving and mobilizing Orks caused the Lictors to reanimate. As they found prey and released pheromones, more and more of the frozen Tyranids emerged from their long hibernation and joined in the hunt.
Campaign Summary M32: The War of the Beast - The Third Xhorik War
Scenario:
We played a simple Take and Hold mission from the Fourth Edition rulebook. There was a single central objective and whichever side had more scoring units within 12" at the end of the game wins. We rolled for Night Fighting and determined it would kick in for turn 6.
Both sides would be fighting for control of a signal beacon in an abandoned Imperial outpost. The beacon could be used by the Imperial forces to bring in air support in the form of targeted bombing runs on Tyranid positions. The Xhorik D-87th Company was given this task due to the expertise they had developed in fighting this new xenos threat. Compiling countless individual pieces of information observed by a multitude of Tyranid life forms spread across the area, the Hive Mind concluded the humans were converging on this point and determined that whatever your enemy is trying to do should be stopped. A collection of quick-moving broods was assembled along with a few synapse nodes in the form of towering Warriors and psychic zoanthropes, all under the overall command of a cunning Broodlord.
With night coming early at these northern latitudes, each army had only limited time to take control of the critical objective.
Pre-Game:
"Into Hell We Go"
Phil: I started this army with the first test model way back in 2015 and have worked on it in small bursts of energy over the last decade. (It's been a labor of love!) And for all of that time, I have been wanting to play some games against Tyranids. Imperial Guard vs Tyranids is one of the most classic matchups of the 40k universe and has a special place in my heart. It draws on themes from countless classic sci-fi books and movies. And The Anphelion Project was the first Imperial Armor book that my brothers and I ever owned or read. In all these years, the closest we have come is a game of Kill Team where The Lucky Bastards of the Xhorik 87th took on a brood of genestealers of Hive Fleet Tarasque. (Drop Troops against Space Marines? Less fun. Drop Troops are like Space Marines Lite, with an emphasis on the LITE: anything they are supposed to do, marines just do twice as well.)
First, a word on which rule set to use. IA3: The Taros Campaign would have been best for 4th Edition WH40K, but I only had the 2nd edition of that book, which was updated during WH40K 6th Edition. IA4: The Amphelion Project has the rules for the D-99 "special forces" drop troops, but it has unique bespoke rules for flyers that would add complexity to the game. IA:8 Raid on Kastorel-Novem came out during 5th Edition so is mostly very compatible with 4th Edition and it just treats flyers as fast skimmers. I decided to use the IA4 army rules but the simplified flyer rules from IA8 since flyers did not exist in the core WH40k game until 6th edition. The IA4 D-99 list is very thematic and flavorful and makes it easier to field a smallish army like mine because you take individual veteran squads instead of platoons. Every trooper is more skilled than normal, but you have a distinct lack of bodies for an Imperial Guard force - quite a concern when going up against a horde of gribblies!
For the rule of cool, I decided to limit myself to my converted Elysians and not take any of my storm troopers, grenadiers, "Ogryn" battle suits, bikers, etc. This gave me a reasonably balanced force with 53 infantry, split into eight squads, two batteries of sentry guns, two walkers, a Tauros, and two fliers (the Avenger counting as a Vulture, the closest equivalent gunship in the list). The weapon composition is not ideal for Tyranids (7 meltaguns and no flamers??) since my historical foe was always space marines. But the missile launchers and fliers gave me some versatility, and I figured all the lascannons, meltaguns, and multi-meltas, combined with my fast skimmers and deep striking infantry, should allow me to slag the big bugs, thus depriving his hordes of synapse control.
The mission was simple: hold the center objective at the end of the game. After watching the Tyranids wreck a static gun line Imperial Guard army in the first battle of our 4th Edition campaign, I knew I could not afford to sit back in my deployment zone and let the Tyranids control the entire table or I would never reach the objective. I used a standard deployment of infantry and artillery aimed at the center objective and placing my mobile fliers / skimmers positioned on the flanks to fend off the speedy genestealers and hormagaunts before swinging into the center. I elected to keep a few units in reserve to deep strike via grav chute combat drop: the special weapons squads (melta stick A and B) to take out choice targets with their short-range weapons and some infantry squads to drop in close to the objective and fight their way to it. I mounted one unit in the Valkyrie as another way to keep them safe until I was ready to grab the objective late. (I knew trying to sit on the objective and hold out against a Tyranid assault for multiple turns was a losing proposition!) I wanted all of my missile launchers on the table from the start in order to maximize my early shooting.
The plan was to use the gun line to soften up the center, the skimmers to blunt the fast flanking attacks, the deep strikers to hit targets of opportunity, and then converge on the objective with some late-arriving deep striking units and the squad in the Valkyrie. All that stood in my way was an absolute mass of scuttling claws and gnashing teeth...
Unleash the Swarm
Bill: My army list has remained utterly unchanged since its inception about 20 years ago, consisting of tons of weak, cheap units that can swarm forward and dominate the table in the style of classic sci-fi monsters, drowning the better equipped but hopelessly outnumbered human defenders. Powerful enemy units like tanks and dreadnoughts would have to ignored or tied up in suicidal 'tar pit' melee attacks since I just didn't have the high strength weapons to destroy them. My only options were two Warp Blast zoanthropes (who still couldn't be relied upon since they had to manifest their good attack,) a carnifex (who was too slow to reliably attack anything,) and genestealers (who only rend on a roll of 6 in melee.) Luckily, the mission chosen was well-suited to a 'horde' style army, rewarding taking many small squads and ignoring VPs gained from kills so I could spread out my termagants into 4 ten-strong squads that would be fearless, giving me an excellent core to hold the center objective.
Adding melee power to the center was the intimidating bulk of the carnifex, while shooting was enhanced by a walking gun line of warriors all equipped with medium-strength blast marker guns, perfect for splattering low armor humans but virtually useless against marines since even my heavy weapon was only AP 5. However, against drop troopers, they'd be given their chance to shine.
I had to spread my army out across the entire width of the table to keep my 7 broods from tripping over each other or blocking movement. The stealers and extremely swift hormagaunts would sweep the flanks, keeping the pressure up on Phil's army and drawing fire from my center, while everything else plunged into the meat grinder. The trick would be to resist overextending myself. It might be tempting to wreck a few tarantulas or dug-in infantry but that would not win the mission!
And so, with no boasts or battle cries, the silent but cunning aliens began calmly slinking forward, eager to seize control of a technological treasure they had no way of understanding. All they knew was that it was important, somehow... The will of the Hive Mind had decreed it.
Belligerents:
Hive Fleet Tarasque - 1453 points
- Broodlord: extended carapace
- Warriors (5): enhanced senses, extended carapace, toxin sacs, 3 x deathspitters, devourer, barbed strangler
- Carnifex: reinforced chitin, extended carapace, regenerate, 2 x adrenal glands, toxin sacs, tusked, toxic miasma, 2 x scything talons
- Zoanthropes (2): 2 x warp blast, 2 x synapse
- Lictor
- Genestealers (10): 4 x scything talons
- Genestealers (9): 4 x scything talons
- Termagants (10): fleshborers
- Termagants (10): fleshborers
- Termagants (10): fleshborers
- Termagants (10): fleshborers
- Hormagaunts (15): extended carapace
Xhorik D-87 Drop Troops (The Anphelion Project D-99 rules) - 1449 or 1364 points?
- Veteran Command HQ (5): Senior Officer, medic, vox, missile launcher
- Veteran Command HQ (5): Officer, medic, grenade launcher (deep strike)
- Special Weapons Squad A: 3 x meltaguns (deep strike)
- Special Weapons Squad B: 3 x meltaguns (deep strike)
- Veteran Squad A (10): demo charge, meltagun, vox (deep strike)
- Veteran Squad B (9): demo charge, vox (in Valkyrie)
- Veteran Squad C (6): missile launcher, grenade launcher, vox
- Veteran Squad D (6): missile launcher, grenade launcher, vox
- Drop Sentinel Squadron (2): 2 x multi-melta
- Sentry Gun Battery (3): 3 x twin-linked heavy bolters
- Sentry Gun Battery (3): 3 x twin-linked lascannons
- Vulture: heavy bolter, twin-linked lascannons, 2 x hellstrike missiles, searchlight, extra armor, infrared targetting (skimmer)
- Valkyrie: rocket pods, multilaser, searchlight, extra armor (skimmer)
- Tauros: grenade launcher
Note: We had agreed on 1450 points and that is what my army list said at the time, but when I go back and add it up a year later, I only get 1364 points. I probably got confused on which rule set to use for the fliers as their costs and rules are quite different between IA4 (special flyer rules) and IA8 (treated as fast skimmers).
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| Xhorik D-87th Special Forces - Tyrannic Veterans |
