Warhammer 40k: Tyranids vs. Imperial Guard

No real narrative behind this game, we had a few hours between picking our daughter up from deaf school so decided to throw down.

My Imperial Guard list:

A ten-man cadian shock troop squad lead by a cadian command squad. Commander had a power fist, not that I expected it to get used: if your troops get stuck in melee they are basically fucked.
Three armored sentinels, each part of their own unit so I can move them about more freely. All packing plasma guns, chainsaws, and hunter killer missiles.
A trio of bullgryns with mauls and whatever shield gives you a 4+ invul. They were intended to keep the troops safe from melee threats, but as we were placing our units realized that I would need them to tie up the screamer killer.
Two ordnance batteries with heavy lascannons.
A leman russ tank with a lascannon and pair of multi-meltas.

Melissa's tyranid roster:

A winged hive tyrant that she just finished painting last night and was chomping at the bit to use.
Two groups of ten termagants packing fleshborers, because she has yet to paint the remaining 60 that can use other weapons.
Three tyranid warriors with assorted bio-guns.
A screamer killer because of course she is taking it.
Five barbgaunts.
A neurotyrant.

The first round wasn't too eventful. I killed a termagant or two and shaved a Wound off of the screamer killer, but it was mostly everyone moving into position. Melissa managed to knock a Wound off a bullgryn, as well as a few off of the tank.

Second round was more heated. The screamer killer closed in on the bullgryns with a lucky Charge roll, though for all his Strength 10, 3 damage attacks was only able to tear apart a single bullgryn (hooray for their invul save and Feel No Pan rolls).

More termagants got picked off, and Melissa wasted trying to take down an armored sentinel with barbgaunt fire. Even the neurotyrant didn't do so hot, despite making 2d6 auto-hitting attacks. At this point I was 5 Victory Points ahead, which sounds better than it was since each objective was worth 5 points.

Melissa used Shadow of the Warp, so I couldn't have the bullgryns Fall Back (at least not without risking immediate death), meaning I couldn't unload my heavy lascannons on the screamer killer. Yet.

So I instead focused fire on the neurotyrant, but most of the shoots were harmlessly deflected by its own invul save. The leman russ didn't fare much better. In hindsight I really should have just moved the damned thing forward, at least then he would have been able to use his multi-meltas more than a few times.

The troopers and termagants traded a few kills: Melissa hung just 13 inches away to avoid them getting an extra Rapid Fire attack, but I didn't want to move since they could crit on a 5+. Ah, well, I was getting a cover bonus from the pipes, anyway.

Melissa finally brought in her hive tyrant, which failed to do much of anything to the leman russ but was able to pick off most of the infantry stragglers after the barbgaunts got through with 'em (though I respawned them later at the cost of a few command points).

This battle ended 15-20 in Melissa's favor, though one more round would have probably flipped things since my infantry squad was nearly on top of an objective, nothing was going to get the tank off of his, and the hive tyrant only had 1 Wound left.

Good game. I'd heard tyranids are overpowered thanks to the codex release, but nothing during this battle indicated as such. If anything, Melissa was having a hell of a time doing anything to my vehicles. We bought a tervigon, but she might end up assembling it as a tyrannofex just so she has at least one solid anti-vehicle option.

One good thing is that Melissa is having a much easier time with this edition. A lot less fiddly bits than before, though I'm not a fan of the power-level-by-another name army building mechanic, as I can just slap on all the hunter killer missiles I want without any drawback. I greatly prefer how it worked in 3rd or 4th Edition, where there was a cost for different options.