And now to the Fighting!

It was still dark as the forces became aware of each other. Reacting to the presence, both deployed into their battle lines

 

 Setting their lines predawn, the armies began their movements.

As dawn broke, the Tyranids had suffered very light casualties, the horde continuing to roll forward. The Eldar had suffered no wounds as of yet.

On their left flank, the Tyranid force ran into a heavy weight of fire and were vastly reduced, but the did manage to pin the jet bikes and remove one of them, a strange organism growing into the engine, causing it to explode underneath it's pilot.

Although the Guardians were successful in shooting all of the Hormagaunts, the Genestealers rolled into them and destroyed almost the whole unit. The casualties were too much for them and they fled, only to be cut down by the scything talons of the Genestealers.

The remaining Eldar destroyed the few remaining Tyranids, although the last several Genestealers ran and hid amongst the terrain.

Well, the first battle is was played yesterday. The Eldar came away with a win, although they did lose more than half their force in doing so. The table did not have enough terrain, so I will have to add in more for the next game. The size of the battle did show the quality of the Eldar troops, as they were very effective with their shooting. The Genestealers wiping out the whole guardian squad was the height of the game for the Tyranids, as they had quite an uphill battle running into the guns. Overall I am quite happy with the miniatures and they did do well. I was hoping that the forces were going to be a little more balanced, but it seems that I managed to pick a fairly strong Eldar force and only a moderate Tyranid force.

Another battle will be fought where the sides will be swapped while I paint up some more miniatures for both sides.

Overall the game went reasonably slowly as both my opponent were basically learning the game as we played. My experience with 7th edition is quite limited and it was their first game. It did feel a little like a return to 2nd edition though, as the Tyranids were a psyker-less force in a world of stomping psykers. I will have to do something about that when I increase them to 1000pts.

Cheers.