Battle Report: Nids vs Daemons w/ the Nurgle Deathstar!

Alright, since we recently had the usermail concerning tyranids vs Daemons, I figured it would be appropriate to post a battle report from my battle against Big Poppa Nurgle's (BPN) Plague Host!
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The battle was 1850 and it went back and forth to the bitter end. Here are the details. Since my Nid army is just starting and BPN was using some stuff he'd never tried before, we have a bit of bare metal and primer on the table, but I am sure you all can stomach it.

W rolled Dawn of War with 2 objectives. I won the dice roll, but let him go first. I elected to just stay off the table in order to come in from my edge in one giant wave. The photo above is his group one fully deployed nearly in my deployment zone. His group involved a Daemon Prince of Nurgle, A herald with plague bearers, a soul grinder and Epidemus in a squad of 7 Beasts of Nurgle, which made my jaw drop when I saw it and took me by total suprise. If the web has not named this yet, then I shall call it the Nurgle Deathstar!

I then deployed my full army minus the Doom in drop pod. I realized that I would not make the charge even with fleet so I hung back and hoped for the best. His grinder put a wound on a trygon prime and killed a couple stealers but then ...

his plague bearers with the herald were not so slow, but were totally purposeful and managed to move 6, pop three gaunts with the wind of Chaos and then roll a 6 to charge me - killing the whole squad and giving the tallyman his full tally of 20 kills, making his FNP a 3+, his weapons powered and wounding on a 2+ ... this mistake almost was enough to scare me into conceding and was a good move on his part capitalizing on my stupidity! He then ran his Nurgle Deathstar into cover to make my life even more miserable!

Though Nids have no grenades, I do have a borrowed Tyrant with Lash whip and Bone Sword (and Paroxysm). I flew him into base to base with as many of his beasts as I could, then chargd in with a Trygon, Trygon Prime and 2 squads of stealers. He put the hurt on the 1st squad of stealers, a wound on the trygon prime and two wounds on the tyrant, but took a fair number of wounds as well. Over the course of the next three turn, I whittled him down, managing to kill the death star, a nurgle daemon prince and the soul grinder. I was down some wounds on the big bugs, but I still had them all. I had most of a squad of stealers and a 2 man squad left. I ran the 2 man squad and a squad of spawned guants toward his objective, while everything else moved to secure mine.

Now his Great Unclean One (played by Mammon here) has to face off with the big snakes and a tyrant ... with no help from the Tallyman! Honestly at this point in the game I wasn't completely scared of losing for the first time since turn 1 (this game honestly had me sweating due to the crazy Tallyman boost!) I still had to free my objective and also deal with the fact that he deep struck near his objective with a squad of Plague bearers. I figured on a draw at this point.

My idea here was to shoot the crap out of the GUO and then charge him with a gang of MCs and charge the plague bearers nearest my units with a trygon and a squad of genestealers. Before any of that could happen though, he killed on of my trygon primes ... just more biomass for the hordes! He also managed to deepstrike another squad onto my objective and I was chalking this game up to a loss.

The charge against the GUO was successful, though it cost me the Tyrant. The wave of Gaunts here and the trygon prime, along with the Trygon from the other assault and the genestealers (also successful in killing their marks) moved in to close the noose on the remaining plague bearers. Turn five was upon us and the eyes of both the Hive Mind and the Dark Gods were upon us, each hungry for victory!

In the end, the mass assault from the genestealers and big snakes carried a turn five assault victory against his remaining plague bearers on my objective, securing it for the Nids. The two genestealers managed to pull up on the objective to contest it on BPN's side of the board. They crossed their rending claws praying to the Bug Gods that there would be no turn 6 ... and there was not and the Nids carried a minor victory from a very tough Nurgle army!

Here is a photo of the Nurgle Death Star which is still pretty much just being tested. I am sure now that BPN has seen what it can do, it will find a home amounst his thousands of painted miniatures in his twisted demi-plane (or apartment).

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The best thing about this game was the big drama. I really almost scooped in the beginning because I thought there would be no way to win, but I stuck to my guns and played it out. It really came down to dice, though because if there would have been a turn 6, we would have had a tie. if I would have rolled less than a 6 in turn 5 for the 2 stealers, it would have been a tie.

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I also have to say that if my army wasn't so heavily invested in assault, I wouldn't have been able to do what I did to the deathstar and would have probably lost due to the sheer volume of powered, poisoned attacks coming from it ... SM beware the tallyman and his hounds!

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My VIP was a tie between my big snakes and my Tyrant. The tyrant saved a lot of lives by helping to even the field with Lash Whips and to give me the advantage with his use of paroxysm. He was a very good support unit and would have never been able to do it without wings. My flyrant stays in this list! The snakes were great due to their high WS and the Scything talons. It just really helped to have that reliable volume of damage every turn and also to have fleet to help get me from combat to combat each turn.

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Once again, it was a great and fun game as always against BPN! I had a lot of fun and if BPN is reading this, I'd love for you to add your side of this battle to the comments. Everyone else, feedback a always is welcome!