Friday, July 15, 2011

Battle Missions - Tyranid Infestation

Geneguard and I played the "Tyranid Infestation" mission from the Battle Missions book on Wednesday night. First, I would like to say I shake my head when I encounter warhams that haven't bought this book. BUY IT NOW! There is absolutely no reason in the world why you shouldn't play more than the standard 3 deployments / objectives. None! Plus a lot of the missions are made more fluffily and reflect actual "real-world" 40k space dolly battles!

One other note before we start the battle report - a couple comments for me to comment on:
Battle Missions are fun but not balanced.

We (Josh and I) played quite a few Battle Missions, and the conclusion is that they tend to be skewed for whatever army they were written for. Not always, and there were some close ones, but in general I don't think I lost a Chaos mission, and he didn't lose the Eldar ones IIRC. Not sure how the Dark Eldar ones hold up, since that book was released before the redux.
I'd definitely agree they're not always balanced. Most of the time one side automatically or has a great chance of going first. I'd agree that a lot of the time they're skewed, but many of the missions are pretty random. Take for instance the Tyranid missions:


  • Tyranid infestation: tyranids start out anywhere 12" from one table quarter. Enemy starts in that table quarter. Enemy has preferred enemy, tyranids have stealth. This can be tough for the enemy for sure.
  • Random deployment one: I haven't played this one yet just because I think a lot of opponents would rage out. You basically deploy all your units randomly in different table quarters. I don't really see a huge advantage for tyranids in this one.
  • Tyranid wave assault: tyranids must split their army into waves and attack from different table edges. This one is TOUGH unless you play it super WAAC and only have 1 unit in two waves, or something. I dunno. We played this one in the campaign and I regretted it.



I think Geneguard and I have played 4 games of battle missions specific to our armies: one tyranid infestation (tyranid win), one space marine  attack from all sides one and I had to deploy my tyranids 6" from each other (tyranid win), one chaos space marine one where everything is IN FLAMES (Salamanders win) and one Ork one where they have to start in the middle of the board and run off (tyranid win). Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, I guess.


The actual battle report will follow!

2 comments:

  1. I think the takeaway message here is I'm not actually that good at this game. Also as much as I like to run different lists and change things up, I pretty much *have* to take TH/SS terminators against you. They're the only thing I can own that can realistically stand up to your Monstrous Creatures.

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  2. haha, none of us are super pros at the game, and in the end bad dice rolling can kill you in 40k, even if you set it up the best way possible.

    TH/SS are indeed disgusting. Only way to stop them is to swamp 'em with gants / gargoyles.

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