40k Friday: Tyranids vs. Ultramarines

 

With Boom Gun Brandon back in town last weekend we managed to get in a game of of 40K - first one of 2026! This was 2000 points of my still-being-assembled Tyranids against 2000 points of his still-being-painted Ultramarines with some assists from my Crimson Fists where he doesn't have certain units.

Now we only got in a few turns but it was a lot of fun. The forces:

The Defenders of Ultramar:

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+ FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Adeptus Astartes - Ultramarines

+ DETACHMENT: Blade of Ultramar (Mastered Doctrines)

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 2000pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char2: Roboute Guilliman

+ ENHANCEMENT: 

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 14

+ SECONDARY: - Bring It Down: (3x2) + (1x4) - Assassination: 5 Characters

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Char3: 1x Captain in Gravis Armour (80 pts): Master-crafted Heavy Bolt Rifle, Master-crafted Power Weapon

Char4: 1x Captain in Gravis Armour (80 pts): Master-crafted Heavy Bolt Rifle, Master-crafted Power Weapon

Char5: 1x Captain in Terminator Armour (95 pts): Storm Bolter, Relic Weapon

Char1: 1x Lieutenant Titus (70 pts): Astartes Chainsword, Heavy Bolt Pistol

Char2: 1x Roboute Guilliman (340 pts): Warlord, Hand of Dominion, The Emperor's Sword

10x Assault Intercessor Squad (150 pts)

• 1x Assault Intercessor Sergeant: Heavy Bolt Pistol, Astartes Chainsword

• 9x Assault Intercessors: 9 with Astartes Chainsword, Heavy Bolt Pistol

3x Aggressor Squad (95 pts)

• 1x Aggressor Sergeant: Twin Power Fist, Flamestorm Gauntlets

• 2x Aggressors: 2 with Twin Power Fist, Flamestorm Gauntlets

3x Aggressor Squad (95 pts)

• 1x Aggressor Sergeant: Twin Power Fist, Auto Boltstorm Gauntlets, Fragstorm grenade launcher

• 2x Aggressors: 2 with Twin Power Fist, Auto Boltstorm Gauntlets, Fragstorm grenade launcher

1x Ballistus Dreadnought (150 pts): Armoured Feet, Ballistus Lascannon, Ballistus Missile Launcher, Twin Storm Bolter

3x Bladeguard Veteran Squad (80 pts)

• 1x Bladeguard Veteran Sergeant: Master-crafted Power Weapon, Heavy Bolt Pistol

• 2x Bladeguard Veterans: 2 with Heavy Bolt Pistol, Master-crafted Power Weapon

1x Redemptor Dreadnought (195 pts): Redemptor Fist, Heavy Onslaught Gatling Cannon, Heavy Flamer, Twin Fragstorm Grenade Launcher

1x Repulsor Executioner (220 pts): Armoured Hull, Heavy Onslaught Gatling Cannon, Ironhail Heavy Stubber, Repulsor Executioner Defensive Array, Twin Heavy Bolter, Twin Icarus Ironhail Heavy Stubber, Heavy Laser Destroyer

5x Terminator Assault Squad (180 pts)

• 1x Assault Terminator Sergeant: Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

• 4x Assault Terminator: 4 with Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

5x Terminator Squad (170 pts)

• 1x Terminator Sergeant: Storm Bolter, Power Fist

• 4x Terminator: 4 with Power Fist, Storm Bolter

The main theme here is "things the kid thinks are cool". I say kid but I probably shouldn't since he's an actual U.S. Marine now but he is my best friend's son and all of 18 years old so ... I will probably keep doing it. 

The Terrifying Tyranids:

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+ FACTION KEYWORD: Xenos - Tyranids

+ DETACHMENT: Invasion Fleet (Hyper Adaptions)

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1995pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char2: The Swarmlord

+ ENHANCEMENT: 

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 13

+ SECONDARY: - Bring It Down: (6x2) + (3x4) - Assassination: 4 Characters

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Char3: 1x Broodlord (80 pts): Broodlord Claws and Talons

Char1: 1x Old One Eye (150 pts): Old One Eye’s claws and talons

Char2: 1x The Swarmlord (220 pts): Warlord, Bone Sabres, Synaptic Pulse

Char4: 1x Winged Hive Tyrant (170 pts): Tyrant talons, Monstrous bonesword and lash whip

2x Carnifexes (180 pts)

  1 with Chitinous claws and teeth, Bio-plasma, Carnifex scything talons, Devourers with brainleech worms

  1 with Chitinous claws and teeth, Bio-plasma, Carnifex crushing claws, Heavy venom cannon

10x Genestealers (140 pts): 10 with Genestealers claws and talons

10x Genestealers (140 pts): 10 with Genestealers claws and talons

10x Genestealers (140 pts): 10 with Genestealers claws and talons

1x Haruspex (125 pts): Grasping tongue, Ravenous maw, Shovelling claws

1x Screamer-killer (125 pts): Bio-plasmic scream, Screamer-killer talons

1x Screamer-killer (125 pts): Bio-plasmic scream, Screamer-killer talons

1x Tyrannofex (200 pts): Powerful limbs, Stinger salvoes, Rupture cannon

1x Tyrannofex (200 pts): Powerful limbs, Stinger salvoes, Rupture cannon

The main theme here is "stuff I had close enough to ready to use" which meant none of the new warriors I built, no gargoyles, no neurotyrant ... some of these are built but weren't stuck to the base yet as I wanted to be able to spray their belly/chest. As it turned out I liked the force quite a bit. Fun stuff + some redundancy is a good approach.

Got to get the Landing Pad on the table for the first time too!

We went with Dawn of War deployment and ended up with Purge the Foe for our primary objective. That's fine, we were both looking for a straight-up fight anyway. The marines got first turn so away we went!

Well, after scout moves that is ...

He pretty much just moved up as much as he could and then took shots with his Repulsor Executioner and both dreads and managed to blow up my Haruspex before it could do anything. not bad - that's a dangerous unit.

Part of the Primary on this one beyond "Kill" and "Kill More" is "Hold One" and "Hold More" from Turn 2 onward so there is some positioning to set up future objective control here.

He also managed to gun down most of the 'Stealer unit after running the Repulsor right up on it and disembarking some intercessors. 

Need to get the right colors on that Repulsor Executioner since it keeps getting used

So he had a pretty good turn here. One big unit destroyed, another one gutted, and units in good positions.

I feel like this is a significant view ...

On my turn I attempted to move that surviving genestealer - he did pass battleshock - and he was promptly gunned down by Overwatch from the Repulsor - "defensive array" for the win!

I ran one of the screamer-killers up on the Primarch ...

 and managed to land 6 wounds before Guilliman laid him out.

That was most of the action for Turn 1 though I did manage to wipe out a squad of intercessors over on my left with another squad of genestealers led by a broodlord.

They were absolutely brutal doing something like 30-ish hits and a bunch of wounds before the big one even got involved. Revenge!

Turn 2 still moved pretty quick - objectives were seized and he shot my Tyrannofex with the Executioner's big gun but failed to kill it ...

Yes it does bother me sometimes that I have multiple painted armies and somehow I keep posting up fights with unpainted forces.

The aggressors and a gravis captain charged into my carnifexes and managed to kill one ... then the survivor and Old One Eye just destroyed them - no survivors there!

The main event this turn was that the Primarch got close enough to charge the Swarmlord - general against general! He ran the fight above first and then I interrupted for 2CP to have the Swarmlord go first here ...

The wounded primarch had no chance with the 'nid's sneaky move - the scream-k's earlier sacrifice had set our side up for a win and that's exactly what happened - G-man dropped and did not get up! It was an emotional moment.

On my turn I blew up the Repulsor and started collecting objective VPs. Things continued similarly and victory ended up going to the Tyranids as after that we had both a firepower advantage and a melee advantage. 

Anyway it was a lot of fun to get my swarm on the table for a real fight and also to see his army hit the table again for a second go. 

Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Kickstarter is Up and Running

 

Well it's here and you can see it here if you haven't already. They hit their goal in about 6 hours yesterday so that's good and I'm hoping this is one of those realistic goals for what it would take to actually get it done and not a lowball goal like we see sometimes in this arena. I'm wishing them all the success in the world with this - and yes I did jump in on it - as I'd  like to see Green Ronin get a win right now, particularly with what I would say is the best-supported superhero RPG of the last two decades. If you like superhero roleplaying I hope you will take a look.

I do have a few concerns here. 

Personally I've cut back my crowdfunding participation as publisher after publisher puts everything out as a funding campaign. Some of them are not good at it and that spills over, fair or not, into the whole system. I've only done one other recently and that was for the new version of Apocalypse World as I want to see what the creators of it do with that whole thing. I see things like the Savage Worlds team having something like 5 of them in-flight now at various stages and I wonder how long that kind of thing can continue. 

• Crowdfunding just feels less awesome than it did ten years ago, for whatever reason. I hope that's just a me thing  and doesn't limit or cap off GR's ultimate success here. 
• In the fall of 2022 they ran a Kickstarter to reprint some of the core books of the M&M 3E line and it barely made the goal - less than half of what they've achieved in a day with this effort - and made zero stretch goals. Now that was a reprint of a known game, not a new edition, so it's not exactly the same thing, and they have done much better this time already, but I do still wonder how many of us are there out there ready to jump on a major superhero game line update? They're doing well but as I write this it's less than 1000 backers. Are we so few?

Speaking of stretch goals ... these are weird. Those first four are 4E updates of some 3E adventures that have come out over the last 5 years or so. Then we get to what looks like an update of  Atlas of Earth Prime but I'm going to guess a limited version, not the full book? I think these are good stretch goals in the sense that they are updates of things that already exist (and so easy to make) but I have to say they aren't exactly inspiring ... at least to me. There's not a lot of "new" here. Stretch goals rarely make any difference to me as to whether I'm going to jump on board something but I've seen some cool ones and these just seem kind of routine? Expected? How about a new villain team, or some exotic new location? I know 3E has a ton of supplements so that any general thing has probably already been covered in one of the books we have but that's why I was thinking something new would be good - show us there are frontiers yet to be explored with this system and not just updates or rehashes of things we already have!

How about "The Book of Omega: The Ultimate Guide to the Ultimate Villain"? We have pieces and parts scattered around different books but let's see an updated, comprehensive work on the guy who killed Centurion.

Alright so there's my negativity addressed and some ideas on how to improve it from my point of view. This team has been making it work for over twenty years at this point so they probably don't need my two cents but I've been right there alongside them and I'd like that to continue for a good long time. I'm looking forward to seeing where this new effort takes us.