Game 2: Hive Fleet Typhon Tyranid' vs King's Own Chimeras Catachan Guard

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2k with special characters, matched play rules

From the "GT 2020 - Strike Force" mission pack, the Tyranid player chooses which of two scenarios we will play:

"Retrieval Mission" or "Battle Lines"

As Hive Fleet Typhon's capital elements enter the Astheneia system, they are irresistibly drawn to the rich and seemingly undefended biomass of the DeathWorld Jungle. They aim to set up a base of operations around this rich source of poorly-controlled biomass, and then move on the central battle around Astheneia Prmius.

Leading scout and infiltration elements have moved to Astheneia Primus, to help tip the balance of the Genestealer Cultist rebellion in favor of their controlling the Hive and Exterminating the Imperium elements in the Spire.

At some point before the Big Stalingrad Battle, perhaps before the King's Own Chimeras and the periphery forces are brought into the Primus Hive to bolster the faltering dwindling Imperium forces, and definitely before the Lamenters arrive,

The System Governor's Castellan, the Callidus Assassin, travels to the DeathWorld Jungle, and raises the forces of the Periphery and The Jungle King, and personally leads them againsth the Tyranid invasion. Best case, perhaps we and the Jungle King will retain control over the DeathWorld Jungle....and Worst Case, the Tyranids end with control of the Jungle and start to consume all it's biomass...while the Castellan flees on the last transport ships with the Jungle King.

Narrative Result and Imperium Battle Report
Scydriel the undercover Callidus Assassin's last trip to the inner Jungle deathworld planet, some months before the coming Big MalcorGrad Battle had been a huge success!

By stalking and disrupting the Eater of History, she had been able not only to ensure that Jungle remained under Imperium garrison by the less powerful remaining, mostly non-mechanized, warriors and trainees of it's the King and it's feral Jungle people, but also that the the rapidly-mutating Eater of History hive tyrant would be slow to join the fighting shaping up in and around the Primus Hive, owing to the grievous wounds she dealt it with her Relic Phase Sword.

The Eater kited Scydriel around the battlefield: First it smashed open the King's Own Chimera carrying the King himself, at just the same moment that the Barbed Hierodule smashed the adjacent chimera carrying Scydriel herself! For a horrible moment, things looked grim, and the giant bugs rampaged through the armor of her front line, and the tank commanders seemed to always be shooting where the gigantic tyranid bugs had-just-been, rather than where they would-next-be. It was maddening to watch such seemingly-skilled tank teams be out-maneuvered, and about to be destroyed by the horrible monsters from beyond the stars.

The Castellan had expected the monstrous claws of the giant horrible monsters to tear the chimeras open like tinfoil, but as she danced out of the chimera that it had opened up like a ripe seed pod full of soft scared jungle men, she expected to pounce and drive her phasing relic void blade into the dragon-like scales of the Easter of History!

But to her surprise and horror, the Eater did not engage the Jungle King as he staggered out of his wrecked chimera below it, and instead the monster jumped up into the air, flapping it's wings and leaving her behind, leaving her stuck on the front line, while it Overran the nearby tank commander and the mess of emergency-disembarking junglefighter infantry!

The rapidly-adapting winged hive tyrant Easter of History landed far away from her, back from the front line, as if it were going to crash into Sergeant Harker and his Hellraiser Basilsks! She began her high-speed Acrobatics to dance after it, but it jumped again, now as if it were going to tear into and knock over the other tank commander!

As Scydriel flew through the air after it, over the techpriest engineers below her who were busily engaged in fixing the armored vehicles of the King's Own Chimeras, she was surprised to see the Eater then turn again at the last moment, maybe distracted by Harker and the Basilisks that were shooting at it's wings! She had blasted it with her neural shredder....and the Hive Mind had seemed to shrug it off easily due to the strength of the Hive Mind Neural Synapse Network, but perhaps she had confused it?!

The tank commander which the Eater of History had been about to wreck finally got it's multi-meltas into alignment at one of the fast moving gigantic tryanid bugs, and it vaporized the Maleceptor in a gigantic explosion of carapace and steam, doing 14 close range multi-melta damage to it's far fewer full remaining wounds!

Scydriel heard the rallying cry of "To the King!" carry across the battlefield, and wondered how the Jungle King was faring back among the mess of junglefigthers that she had hastily abandoned to pursue the Eater. She aligned her body for her final-approach fencing double-advance dance move, towards what she hoped would be the vital internal organs inside the Eater's thickly-carapace-armored, fast-moving, and fast-adapting upper thorax.

The relic phase sword, stolen long ago from one of her early Necron assassination victims, passed right through the mutating and adapting armored flesh of the Eater of History, cutting apart the very spacetime fabric of The Materium, and bisecting the tyrant's most important internal systems and organs from each other.

Ichor sprayed out all over her, soaking the ridiculous fighting outfit of her Facilitatrix Castellan costume. She would have preferred to fight in her still-unrevealed synth-skin body suit, but she still didn't want to tip her hand to any of the Corrupt Governor's vassals or fighting men....and so her outfit relied entirely too much on her divine protection and lightning fast reflexes for her taste, but it and she inspired both the Jungle King and his oath bondsmen who served the two of them, with her seeming fearless audacity to wear such a slutty exposing outfit while leading and protecting the Jungle King and his King's Own Chimeras.

Spilling more hot ichor down over her as it fled, seemingly mortally wounded, but still somehow able to flap it's monstrously wide wings, the Eater of History jumped high up into the air...as it did so, Scydriel turned and jumped sideways off of it, twisting her phase sword out through it one more time, and severing one of it's giant clawed legs with the down stroke, as she kicked and pushed off it's thick hide, almost bouncing, to quickly regain her footing on the ground behind and beneath the huge hive tyrant.

She thought about jumping up after it: to try to take it down as it flew away, but decided that such relentless unstoppable pursuit would be out of character for the deep-cover merely-human castellan she was pretending to be. It sounded to her like the Jungle King had triumphed over whatever was going on on the far side of the battlefield....so she sheathed her phase sword, and moved quickly ahead to protect the regiment she had been "ordered" by the Governor to fetch back to the system seat at the Primus Hive on Astheneia, and to pursue the suddenly-retreating surviving Tyranids, who apparently had been stunned and forced to fall back, by the near-death of the central node of their neural synapse network!

Before she had arrived on the Jungle Deathworld, Scydriel's spies had told her that the soon-arriving Tyranid and Chaos Marine void fleets would likely make all Imperium interstellar void travel impossible in the near future, and so her journey back home to the Primus Hive inside the the last of the Forgeworld Caldus Mechanicus void transports, transporting the Jungle King and his Own Chimeras, was likely to be the last void trip possible for the foreseeable future...

Later that night at the celebratory party inside the cavernous cargo hold of the Forgeworld Caldus transport voidship, Scydriel allowed the Ichor of the Eater of History to dry on all her exposed skin and skimpy facilitatrix battle outfit costume, so that she smelled like dead bugs and Victory all night! She had shown the King's Own Chimeras that these monsters from beyond the stars were not invincible, and Scydriel was confident that they would provide great service when they joined the main battle effort, back in the Mechanicus levels of the Primus Hive...which ominously sounded like it had become mostly a fighting&losing-retreat by the Imperium Alliance.

The soon to be arriving Astartes voidships had advised over the wireless that they could provide void-cover to her transport during their arrival into the siege of the Primus Hive, and she thought maybe things were finally looking up! The Emperor had Protected and guided her again, just like He always had!