Avatars causing woe

I got a game in this tuesday. It was against an eldar army that had it's similarities with the one I faced at Ard boyz, but with a much more instructive frontal force. His friends had asked me to play him once they found out I was a Tyranid player. He had a list already made, but didn't know I played Nids. I didn't know he played eldar until halfway through making my list. I kept it very all comers, but I may have added toxin sacs to my Alpha after he mentioned his wraithlord ;P



My list came to
Alpha warrior; dual boneswords, rending claws, regen, toxin sacs

Hive guard x2
Hive guard x2

Termagants x10
Termagants x10
Tervigon; catalyst, Stinger salvo, tox sacs, adrenal glands
Tervigon; catalyst, Stinger salvo, tox sacs and adrenal glands
Warriors x6, deathspitters and scything talons, +barbed strangler
Hormagaunts x15, toxin sacs

Tyrannofex; desicator larvae swarm, cluster spines, rupture cannon
Biovores x2

That comes to 1495, a very basic balanced list for me. The only non standard thing in that list is the toxin sacs on the alpha, and I might keep them because it is awesome. I really wanted to use my other Alpha warrior (nicknamed Beta) but I forgot him at home. He has whip/sword and scything talons. The lashwhips would have made a huge difference later on, but I did fine without him.

My opponents list looked something like this

Avatar
Avatar
Wraithguard x10
+warlock
Wraithguard x10
+warlock
Wraith lord; starcannon
Wraith lord; bright lance, flamers?
Fire prism

It goes to 5 objectives, they end up in an X shape, standard five dots on a dice pattern. We then roll and get spear head. Now I hate spear head deployment. I feel it slightly screwed me over at ard boyz, and in general it is not a fun game for Nids. The furthest possible distance in deployment, diagonal on the board, and I have an army of short range and close combat units that are honestly not that mobile nor survivable.
Now I win the roll and I deploy first. I take the bottom left corner (all from my point of view). Sadly I don't have any pictures, I forgot some of the necessities, such as camera, blast templates, and tape measure. Maybe I'll make a MS Paint diagram later.
Turn one I run everything forwards. Rupture cannon shoots the prism, gets a 1 on results. it's not shooting, I'm not worried. Hive guard force wounds on the wraithlords, one fails a save.
His phase, he moves his guys forwards, and for some reason shoots his lances, star cannons and all of his other shots into my gaunts in the front lines. Kills about 5 total. I'm not sure the range, but they were all AP 2 and could have put some serious hurt on the Tyrannofex. Me not paying attention and trying to keep my cool looking models on the board for the new guy watching leads to my hormagaunts being assaulted by one of the Avatars. I could have pulled the front guys and denied the assault but eh.
Turn two, I take the cannon off of the fire prism with another rupture cannon shot. My hive guard roll all 1s, no joke. Biovores scatter off horribly, and with everything T6+ I don't even bother firing them again. I move up my gaunts some more, produce more on one side to handle the MCs coming at me.
On his turn I have my Alpha and warriors, two squads of gaunts, a tervigon, and a tryannofex all center board. He has an avatar, and both wraithlords, preventing me from grabbing the center objective. Off to the left more towards the top left objective, I have his other Avatar tied up with hormgaunts for two turns, as I run termagants and my other Tervigon up towards them to help.
He makes a bold move and assaults my warriors with his Avatar. My Alpha attacks, deals two wounds, but he makes both invul saves. My other warriors fail to do anything. He then attacks back and deals 4 wounds to my warriors. No Retreat is a B. Two more wounds to the warrior squad and a second wound to my Alpha. A side note, the entire game he has take two wounds, has one left, and I never successfully roll a regeneration.
The game keeps going on, without pictures it is far harder to make this accurate. His avatar dies to my warriors. His one wraith lord dies to gaunts. His other Avatar has one wound after turn two, yet will not die for three turns being constantly locked in combat with gaunts, who I give FNP to save from No retreat. Finally I assault with my tervigon and kill him. That is the same as I did in Ard Boyz. His weaponless prism turbo boosts and lands to contest my back objective, with allows my hive guard to hit them in the back point blank and wrecks it.
He held his back objective with a squad of wraithguard the entire time, the second squad managed to reach my bottom right objective. I make my last squad of gaunts, and run them towards my back objective. They roll a 1 on run and are 6 inches away from the objective. (3 inches from scoring). My tervigon gets his massacre move for killing the avatar, and goes towards my top left objective. He is something like 8 inches away. My warriors and prime are sitting on the center objective, but so is the last wraithlord. They are both in area cover so neither really wants to assault through cover (here is where lash whips would have helped). I have a tyrannofex, a full gaunt squad, and a tervigon all about to assault the bottom right objective.
Unfortunate luck has the game end after Turn 5. so He has 2, I have 0. Victory Eldar. If the game had gone to turn 6, I would have claimed both left hand objectives, had a chance to kill his wraithlord and get the middle objective. I would have contested his bottom right one, no way he could have killed all of what I had over there in one turn of close combat. So turn 6 and on it would have changed to a 3 to 1 in my favor.
This has reminded me that for a supposed to be fast moving assault army, the Tyranids really are not. That is how they are perceived, which is a huge misconception and based off of old rules and editions. Tyranids are not mobile at all in a game of faster and faster moving tanks and objective based missions. I feel that is why we have troop MCs.
Battle wise I was kicking his butt, I killed a Fire prism, two Avatars, and a wraithlord. He killed 15 hormagaunts, 20 termagaunts, and 2 warriors.
I think I'm going to try for a faster moving assault army next game. Bring in the trygon and raveners. Mwahaha!

Happy hunting