Close, Too Close

Walk away, in silence

Having been completely in charge of that game, it was a bit of a shock to come within two inches of drawing it. In the end, it was a couple of silly mistakes on turn 2 that nearly cost me the game. Let's see where it nearly went so wrong...

Distance between waves

I was really aggressive with the deep strike of my first Trygon. I thought that he'd be able to weather a storm of fire and then charge in on my turn three. What it actually meant was that he got charged in Dave's turn 2 by a Captain with Relic Blade, a combat squad with a Power Weapon and most importantly a Venerable Dreadnought. The only support I then had for him was a Tervigon and in the end, we went into a different combat because he didn't want to be anywhere near the Dread. Due to it being Dawn of War, my real beatstick unit, the Fexes and Prime, were never going to get anywhere near these combats unit after they were finished. Had I been a bit more conservative with my DS, I could have tried to make sure that the waves arrived at more or less the same time.
 

Attack Allocation

I have a mantra - "Play the mission" that I repeat to myself all through the game. The thing is, sometimes to play the mission, you have plan a bit better than I do. For example, my Trygon was in combat with a Venerable Dreadnought, a Captain with a Relic Blade and a combat squad of Tactical Marines. I say my mantra and allocate all of my attacks against the Tactical Marines, hoping to destroy a scoring unit. Of course, what I should have done is allocated my attacks against the Ven Dread, since that was the biggest threat to me with its Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon. I would probably have destroyed him in one turn, then I could have taken on the Captain and then finished off the Tactical Marines at my leisure. This would also have stopped the Dread killing my Tervigon and of course almost contesting an objective.
 

New Army, New Rules; Old Memory

There were a lot of things I kept forgetting to do, especially with my Tervigons. A couple of times I forgot to spawn Gaunts and more importantly, I kept forgetting to cast Catalyst when I had some nearby units that really needed Feel No Pain. I'm not going to beat myself up about this too much as it was my first time ever playing with Tyranids but they were silly little mistake none the less.


The biggest mistake was definitely the second one, and it nearly cost me the game. In the end, the resilience of so many T6 bugs kept me in it and I just about managed to eke out the win.