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40k battle Report Game: Carpe Ranam (Seize the Frog) 1500pts each 3-way game between Chaos Undivided (Khorne Berzerkers, Daemonettes, 3 Obliterators, Defiler, Raptors, Dread, Havocs) and Necrons (2 large units of Warriors, Lord w/Orb and Lightning Field and Staff, Large squad of Immortals, Monolith, 3 Destroyers, Tomb Spider, 1 Heavy Destroyer) and Tyranids (Winged Tyrant, 3x Lictor, 2x Twin Venom Cannon Carnifex and 44 Genestealers) Objective : Be the closest one to the "Frog" (in this case, we used one of my old gaunts with 6 Scything Talons for legs as the target model) at the end of a random turn-length game. Oh, if anyone moves or shoots or assaults within 6" of the "Frog" it rolls 2d6 and the scatter die to see if it moves. It cannot be captured or killed, but the side with the closest model at the end of the game wins. Deployment : Chaos sets up Berzerkers and Dread very close to me, with Obliterators and Raptors and Havocs facing off against the Necrons, and the Defiler behind terrain at the back. Necrons set up with the Warriors and Lord in the middle of the board, with the Monolith somewhat near the Tyranids, while all the Destroyers and the Tomb Spider face off against Chaos and the Immortals set up behind the Warriors. Tyranids set up with Carnifexes behind cover on either side and most of the Genestealers on the Chaos side, while a squad or two are near the Necrons and the Tyrant starts out behind a building near the Necrons. Chaos takes first turn. Turn 1 : Chaos: The Berzerkers charge towards my Genestealers (Wow, Delivery!) but shoot their pistols on the way in, leaving them just outside range, while the Obliterators kill off some Genestealers further back. Most Chaos shooting goes into the Necrons, but has little effect. The Necrons go second and shoot back a little at Chaos and a little at the Tyranids, including the Flux arc projectors of the Monolith (though the main gun goes after the Raptors, to little effect in a ruined building. Tyranids in their turn fire into the Monolith, Destroying it. Then the Hive Tyrant flies over the building and charges into the Warriors who got too close, while the nearby Genestealers move toward them as well and the far side Genestealers charge into the Berzerkers, avoiding the Dreadnaught. Although the Tyrant does little to the Necron Warriors, the Genestealers and Berzerkers nearly wipe each other out, leaving 2 Genestealers against an Aspiring Champion and a tooled up Lieutenant.The "frog" hops behind the first group of Genestealers. Turn 2 : Chaos: The Obliterators and Havocs seriously damage the Destroyers, while the Raptors stay where they are. The Lieutenant finishes off the Genestealers after watching them take down the Champion and consolidates, while the Daemonettes are summoned near the Raptors and move toward the Tyranids. The Dreadnaught fires into some Genestealers but doesn't do much, while the Defiler tries to drop it's pie plate onto a bunch of Genestealers, but only manages to make a crater nearby. The Necron Warriors fire into the near side Carnifex and Wound it, while the Immortals come around the combat and eradicate the Genestealers trying to help out the Tyrant. The remaining Destroyers do quite a bit of damage to the Raptors, leaving the Champion on his own. The Tomb Spider and the attending Scarabs move toward the combat with the Tyrant. Tyranids: Genestealers continue to move up toward the Chaos lines, while the Carnifexes shoot at the Destroyer, taking off the plasma cannon and shaking it. The Tyrant continues to roll poorly and only takes down a few Necron Warriors, but a nearby Lictor jumps out of a building and ambushes the Necron Lord at the back of the combat, giving him a couple of Wounds. The "frog" jumps further behind Tyranid lines, hiding behind a Carnifex. Turn 3 : Chaos: The Raptor Champion and the Obliterators move toward the Tyranids and the Dreadnaught regrows it's plasma cannon (due to Parasitic Infestation, I believe.) The Defiler targets the second Warrior squad again, but has little effect. The Daemonettes continue forward, but aren't close enough to effect anything. The Necron Tomb Spider joins the swirling Melee around the Tyrant. The Tyrant kills a few more Warriors, but the Lord kills off the Lictor and everybody surrounds the Tyrant. The 2nd Warrior squad and Immortals don't have much in the way of targets now, so they adjust position. The rest of the Genestealers move up, with the lead group and a Carnifex engaging the Obliterators, but only killing one and Wounding another, which leads to the Carnifex being Wounded again. The "frog" continues hopping toward the board edge. It being a random-length game, and me having to leave, we rolled for a next turn and the game ended. With the frog in my deployment zone and a Carnifex being the closest model by at least a foot, I won! While I will admit that I got a bit of luck with the frog hopping toward me, I did hedge my bets by expanding out into the rest of the board. In addition to the general propensity for consuming everything, I wanted my Tyranids to make a land grab to get a big chunk of the table under my control, so I quickly expanded into my two opponents. I had models covering about half the table fairly quickly, meaning that I had a good chance of being the nearest to the frog even if it didn't go my way. You'll notice that we only managed to get in 3 full turns in a bit over 2 hours of gaming. That is one of the drawbacks to multiplayer games, they take longer. Not only are there more people moving and making decisions, the complexity of the game means those decisions tend to take longer. (For example: "I should move here to vaporize those Genestealers with my Destroyers, but that will put me directly in front of the Havocs and Obliterators and probably lose me the unit...") This can be slightly modified by adjusting deployment rules (such as, "Everybody just deploy your whole army at the same time," or the more incentive-laden, "Whoever finishes deploying first gets to go first.") Another way to do this is to do turn time limits. I have seen this done in a Fantasy game between two veteran players that played each other frequently. They decided to play "SpeedHammer" and limited themselves to 10 minute turns, if they didn't get everything done in their 10 minutes, including close combat, it didn't happen. It really helps a lot to have all the players be familiar with the rules and very familiar with their own army for this, however, as looking up information eats up a lot of time. If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know |