Battle Report: Ultramarines Vs. Tyranids, 2000 points

This happened a couple days after the last report, I have a better recollection of the events. I was going to play my Tau again but Scott suggested that I use his Tyranids. I agreed and wrote up a 2000 point list. By the way, this was my army at one time. I wanted to sell/trade it off and get another tyranid army. I had this army during 4th edition and had lots of fun playing it. For 5th edition I wanted to try something new, new units, new color scheme. Scott had an entire nid army practically unpainted, so we swapped.
I haven't actually played the Nids in 5th edition until now but I was familiar with the new codex. 
For the is game, I took:
HQ: Hive Tyrant with wings
HQ: Tervigon
Elite: brood of 2 zoanthropes
Elite: brood of 1 zoanthrope
Elite: brood of 2 lictors
Troops: brood of 6 warriors
Troops: brood of 3 warriors
Troops: brood of 20 hormagaunts
Troops: brood of 12 genestealers
Heavy: 1 Trygon (just because he had one)
Scott wanted to change things up a little. He owns some very nice Planet Strike terrain and wanted to create and defend a fortification. He set up with his army in bunkers and defense towers and I deployed normally.
The objective was just simple mutual annihilation. 
I got first turn. I placed the Tyrant, lictors, stealers and trygon in reserve. Everything else I set up right to the edge of my deployment zone. The tervigon was right in the middle. I figured it would be a huge fire magnet, and it was. It lasted 2 turns despite the 6 wounds, 6 toughness and 3+ save. My shooting was nothing spectacular. Every turn I would fire a massive salvo. Scott would calmly make his saves, all but 1 typically.

On turn 2, my winged Hive Tyrant shows up and lands right in front of Scott's dreadnaught armed with a plasma cannon. The tyrant destroys the dread and proceeds to make short work of his Sternguard up in the tower on the next turn.

My mob of genestealers came in on turn 3 and tore through a tactical squad. Scott's terminators showed up on the same turn right in the middle of the battlefield. My broods of warriors and zoanthrope brood turned to deal with this new threat.

The Gold Star award goes to my lone zoanthrope. He withstood fire from a scout squad armed with sniper rifles for the whole game and only failed 1 save. Gotta love the 3+ unvuln save! The zoanthrope whittled down a devastator squad situated in another tower with warp blast templates the whole game.
I love zoanthropes! I love what they do and I love the model!

The losers of my army were the trygon and , not surprisingly, the brood of lictors. The trygon came in on turn 5 (nothing like rolling 1s and 2s for reserves) too late in the game to be effective. Like the zoanthrope, I love the lictor model and I include it in every army list. Unlike the zoanthrope, I don't like what the lictor does on the board. They, like the trygon, came in too late to really do anything. I have mixed results with lictors. I usually take 2. One will end up getting shot to pieces while the other will take out an entire unit of Necron destroyers by themselves. (true story.)

But the end result of the game was a win for me, even though I ended up not using about 1/4 of my army. Better luck next time Scott. :)

Battle Report: Ultramarines vs. Tau, 2000 points

This battle was about 2 weeks ago, I didn't document it at all until now. I will try to recall the events to the best of my questionable ability. This was a smash and grab mission, take and hold objectives.
I always run with the same army:

HQ: Crisis Commander with 2 bodyguards, all have plasma rifles and gun drones
Elite: Crisis suit with fusion blasters and gun drones
Troops: 10 firewarriors in pimped out devilfish X4
Troops: 20 Kroot
Heavy: Hammerhead gunship with rail gun and burst cannon X3

I usually use the same tactic: Keep everything in reserve except for the hammerheads. Concentrate fire on the greatest threat, eliminate, rinse and repeat. 
Scott said that he had some surprises for me. I was hoping for cake. The surprises came in the form of deep striking terminators and assault marines armed with melta bombs. I have been encouraging Scott to play aggressively. Our first couple of games, he had all his troops hiding behind terrain and let me come to him. My Tau army is very tank heavy, I run with 4 Devilfish transports for my troops and 3 Hammerhead gunships. Scott was able to destroy a couple of my tanks with the melta bombs and power fists.
Some other highlights of the game: My Crisis HQ took out an entire squad of terminators. Took a couple turns. Scott's marine commander was taken out in hand to hand with firewarriors. (???) He'll never live that down.
It looked like I had the game pretty well locked up by turn 4. I had 2 units of Firewarriors near objectives and more on the way. Scott was able to destroy all but 1 unit and the game ended up in a tie by turn 5. We decided to go another turn and it still ended up in a tie.
The Tau really don't have anything that can hold objectives all that well. But I had fun. I like to be challenged, I don't like an easy victory.