Christmas Apocalypse 2008

Our Third Apocalypse; We were playing on two tables: Space Marines (3x 2000) vs Tyranids and Tau (3000 each).  This year, we played on two tables; On the other table, Eldar and Necrons faced 2x Space Marines plus a Daemonhunter army.

I was playing Tyranids.

I deploy on the left, as close to the enemy and our own objectives as possible. My endless swarm is, sorry to say, still incomplete, but since they are assembled and halfway painted, I swallowed my pride and brought them anyway  - 140 gaunts, all told. To keep the little ones under control, I brought a Tyrant with full guards retinue, three Zoanthropes with Synapse, and three Warrior broods.  That left points for my full collection of Carnifexes (most with very minimal loadouts), including  Old One Eye (using this model, though). Full list here, for the curious.

A total of 164 models, 140 of these recycling.  Never a dull moment, I'm sure.

The plan as usual was to charge everything into CC, keeping the Synapse web intact long enough to let the recycling gaunts reach enemies a little way into the table, and let the Tau go for the objectives that were more than a single gaunt-move from the board edge.

With the Hold at All Costs gimmick, the swarms would be onboard and scoring constantly.

The Endless Swarm.  I do so like filling an entire panoramic shot with chitinous aliens :)

A few of my Tau allies, including their "borrowed" Baneblade.

Morten, photographed while the Marines were still at the "oh no we're gonna die" stage - ie, before the "oh no we died" stage...

A shell from our Baneblade hits the top floor where the Ultramarines Missile Launcher devastators  were preparing to fire on the approaching Assault Carnifexes.

Turn 2; The first twenty recycled Hormagaunts coming back.  They assaulted the 10 Terminators behind the Dreads, and died.  In turn 3, twenty recycled hormagaunts more repeated the stunt (now facing 7 terminators), and in turn 4, twenty more recycled hormagaunts finished off the last four Terminators...

"Quantity has a quality all its own" -- Joseph Stalin

Marneus Calgar being mobbed by a bunch of Spinegaunts.  He killed them all, of course, but as long as he was killing Gaunts he wasn't doing anything that actually hurt us...

At the end of the game (we went to turn six, a new record), there were almost no space Marines left on the table.  Five objectives were in our hands and one was (barely) enemy-controlled after their Baneblade detonated spectacularly right next to the holding unit. It went from "fully functional" to "Apocalyptic detonation" from one round of fire from three Broadsides situated a full tablelength away!

Victory!

Splinter Fleet Black Tide, played by Stephan