Battle Report #1 - Tyranids

Well, the Tau fought their first battle against an offshoot of the vast Tyranid swarm, and it was decisive. Seeing as I'm not terribly that good at battle reports yet, I'll try to keep it brief.

My list: as seen below, no changes.

Russell's List: (from what I can remember)

3 Tyranid Warriors, shooty upgrades (but lacking Carapace Armor upgrade)
3 Tyranid Warriors, shooty upgrades
squad of Gaunts
squad of Hormagaunts
squad of Termagaunts
2x squads of Genestealers
Sniper-Carnifex
Devil-Carnifex

Caleb's Tau (1000pts) vs. Russell's Tyranids (1000pts)
Mission: Annihilation
Setup: Dawn of War

Turn 1 - I fail to sieze the iniciative. Russell's main force comes on, but everything is out of range thanks to night-fight rules.

My army rolls onto the board as well, and thanks to some lucky night-fight rolls, I manage to clip a few termagaunts with a smart missile system, and take out a few more with plasma rifles and missile pods before jumping the battlesuits back over a wall and into a nice cozy kroot blanket.

Turn 2 - the Kroot blanket proves essential, as a squad of Genestealers pop up right next to them on the left flank. The Termagaunts make a break for the broadside in the rear-center of my deployment zone, and various shooting sees a bunch of lucky saves from my Tanks. In combat, the Genestealers manage to slaughter the Kroot to a ...man?... but leave my battlesuits unscathed. The warriors and Gaunts in the back-mid-right (it works in my head, dangit!) move up a little and fire on the 'fish, but fail to do much, and proceed to move back and hide there for most of the game, denying me kill points.

Disheartened by this, the 3 Battlesuits + Shield drones decide to take their chances with the Carnifex's in the back left, and jump over the impassable barrier again to peg some Hormagaunts with rapid-fire plasma rifles and missile pods. The devilfish move up from the lower right edge to drop 2 squads of fire warriors almost right in front of the termagaunts, and the fiesty little buggers are finally killed off by ehe combined smart-missile and rapid-fire pulse rifle barrage. Fiesty little buggers. The Gaunts in the back take a pie-plate to the face, but 4 survive and the Hive Mind says 'Stay!'.

Turn 3 - The sniper 'Fex starts pouring fire into the Shas'El command squad, knocking out a shield drone, while the devilfex advances to within horrible-mangled-death-for-tau range. The warriors and hormagaunts in the middle pour fire at one of the fire warrior squads, killing 4, but they make their leadership and stay. The Genestealers pour forward (yiike!), and the other 'stealers fail to come on the board.

Shooting sees a massive amount of combined fire fail to kill the Genestealers - 10 pulse rifles, 12 smart missiles, and the Hammerhead Submunition - while almost the entirety of the Tau army turtles up in the back middle of my deployment zone, save the devilfish, who move in front of the fire warriors to provide some cover. The battlesuits take amost all of the wounds off of one Devilfex, but it lives.

Turn 4 - the 2nd squad of Genestealers comes on, but at almost the same place as the 1st did - they've got a looong run ahead of them. The warriors and hormagaunts in the middle throw caution to the wind and move in on the battlesuits, with the sniperfex steadily moving forward as well. The Devilfex gives them up for dead and moves through the woods, preparing to kill the Tau Turtle formation the next turn. Shooting sees all but the Shas'el Commander die screaming, and he manages to survive unscathed. The Hormagaunts and warriors pile into combat, but only manage one wound, which the Commander happily returns, tieing combat. The back-mid-right warriors and gaunts move forward to salvage some kill points, shooting the smart missiles off of a devilfish and leaving the crew shaken.

Tau shooting proves MUCH more effective, and the Devilfex is laid low by a lucky shot from a lowly fire warrior, while remaining Genestealers from the first batch are killed by the Broadside's smart missile fire. The Hammerhead's submunition scatters off the field, proving ineffectual. The commander remains in combat, nothing particularly intersting happening over there.

Turn 5 - The warriors and gaunts in the back-mid-right move forward and immbobilize the devilfish they'd shot last turn, the genestealers continue charging towards relevance, and the combat with the Commander and the Tyranid Warriors continues a-pace, neither scoring a wound.

Tau shooting fails to do much, and isn't really worth noting. The Commander STILL won't accept defeat, and keeps fighting without taking any wounds.

Russel rolled a 1 on the dawn of war 'continue the fight' thingy, and the game ended. I won by 3 kill points (Genestealers, Termagaunts and Devil-fex) to 1 (Kroot), but it was a tough fight, and 1 more turn would have likely tied it up without much trouble.

A good game - we both made (in hindsight) tactical no-no's, managed both lucky and unlucky dice rolls, and generally had a good time. For my part, I've learned that the Kroot are still essentially useless, and luckly remembered early on that staying near the board edges with Genestealers lurking around was tantamount to suicide. Turtling worked alright, but I chock my win mainly to the fact that Russell wasn't able to bring any sort of mass-rush or combined shooting at me, the 'Fexs being distracted by the Battlesuits and the stealers being too far away when they came on.