LVO Game 3: Nick and his Scouts

Game 3 I ended up against a buddy of mine Nick Rose.  We had been joking before and during the event how awesome it would be for our funny lists to make it to the finals together.  So we were a little bummed to be playing round 3 instead.  Nick was running a sentinels of Terra CAD with Flesh Tearers special detachment.  Lysander, Mephiston, Librarian, Command squad with melta in pod, 3 Centurians with grav in pod, 10 scouts in pod, 28 outflanking scouts.  

We played Relic.  Hammer and anvil deployment.

Nick won the roll and chose to go first.  Deployed his two lascannon teams, thunderfire cannon.  Outflanked a bunch of scouts and had some in drop pods along with his drop cents with mephiston and command squad with lysander and the librarian.  I deployed loads of spore mines.

Turn one nick drops Lysander on the relic and picks it up.  Scouts drop into terrain.  Some shooting at spore mines occurs but minimal.

 Turn 2 his reserves fail to show up... really good for him.  he moves back with the relic.

 My turn and I get 2 lictors in and all three mawlocs and flyrants... I roll to keep lots of lictors off... but decide not to try to keep the mawlocs off for whatever reason... Tyrant guard move on from board edge.  Flyrants fly up and kill some scouts for first blood.  One lictor and some mucolids enter the terrain with the scouts at the top of the board, other does near the thunderfire cannon.  Mawloc lands and kills the techmarine and a devastator or two.  Other mawloc kills 5 devastators.  Third mawloc tries to kill the apothecary but scatters wildly.

Mephiston and all most of the scouts show up this turn.  Mephiston and the cents kill 2 mawlocs... with a little help from the scouts on one.  Lysander and company drop the relic and charge 10" to smash the third mawloc... well thats not good.

One more lictor comes in this turn... lands on relic picks it up, moves it behind itself and then drops it 1" away and runs.  Flyrants fly up and shoot stuff... not the right stuff either, do one wound to a centurian. Kill 5 scouts, kill one devastator, just really wishy washy choices after losing all the mawlocs.  Lictor on the board assaults and kills the other 5 scouts from the drop pod.

Nicks other scouts come on deep in my zone to get linebreaker.  Cents move up, cast prescience, cast perfect timing... kill 2 flyrants.  Lysander and company try to start slogging back twards relic.

Land lictor in base to base with relic, land lictor in base to base with that lictor... pick up relic, pass relic, drop relic 1" away and run.... you can move the relic pretty far if you know what you are doing.  Tyrant guard are getting some maelstroms still, and also start moving towards those scouts in the rear.  Rippers land near linebreaking scouts as well.  Mobile lictors assault drop pod and kill it near top of screen.  Surviving flyrant lands and switches directions and runs to hide behind center terrain... out of range of cents.

Its turn 5 and the relic is about 15" away from anything in his army.  Lysander and company move forward and then roll a 10 again to charge reaching and killing a lictor and spreading out around relic... cant block me out as I already had another lictor within 3" of it and he cant pick it up in the assault phase.  Cents kill another lictor.

Sooo... if the game will end this turn I can win.  Im going to be able to tie maelstrom this turn and tie relic.  I move a lictor and run to get linebreaker.  If my flrant can kill his scouts, or I can make a 9" charge with rippers, or 1 of 2 10" charges with each of my tyrant guard than I can take away linebreaker from him.  Then I would win 2-1(firstblood and linebreaker to warlord).  But the scouts live and none of my charges make it... straight tie if it ends now... but it doesnt.

We roll up malestroms for turn 6 and both mine are easy and both his are not possible so I win maelstrom.  He gets the relic however and so wins 6 (relic(4), warlord, linebreaker) to 5 (malestrom(3), first blood, linebreaker).

Was a great game.  Centurions with perfect timing do horrible horrible things to tyranids.  Also was done in with some poor decisions and over aggressiveness.   I should have tried to keep the mawlocs off the board until the centurions arrived.  I also should have flown away with the flyrants after things went bad to keep them alive and kicking for the endgame.  Could have probably blown Lysander and company off the relic late if all 3 were alive.

But all said and done getting 5 in a loss was a best case scenario for losing a game.  Meant I still had a chance heading into day 2.