Rearguard action at Malcador Bridge

 Our epic 40k campaign goes on, in the legio Metallica turn 2 the titans moved south to secure the mining complex and the water processing plant.

In the tyranid turn the primus swarm and the tertius joined together near hive primus to replenish the losses that primus had suffered in the previous battle with fresh biotitans from tertius.

In the third turn, princeps Goplin led his titan maniple to challenge the secundus swarm near Malcador bridge. We rolled for the battle and the result was "attack at dawn": the defender (the tyranids) has to deploy the detachments in reserve rolling a 1-2 for them, the defender places two objective counters, while the attacker places four, all objectives must be in the defender's half of the board.

The setup was the next: a mine dominated the right with the attackers's objectives placed close to it,  an ash dune gave cover in the tyranid deployment zone, while an ash waste was placed in the left with the defender's objectives in a remote corner of the table. The objeectives were marked with smooth black stones. The tyranids rolled badly in the deployment and just one hierodule appeared, while the legio deployed all the maniple's strenghth of three warlords and an imperator.

 Metallica got the initiative and advanced to get in range. In the second turn, the tyranids rolled spectacularly in the reserve table and all but one of their biotitans appeared.

 A lone hierodule sprints ahead of his brethen towards the objectives.

 While another two take the defender's objectives

 The concentrated fire of two hierodules and two dominatrices brings down the warlord Imperius Necator (in the centre)

 The engines of Metallica rumble forward intent on vengeance

 The forward hierodule is killed by two vortex missiles from Imperius Defensor

 And another one by the imperator Last light

 The dominatrices advance and open fire, but the titan's void shields absorb all damage

 The titans maintain positon and keep on with the bombardment, the dominatrices energy shield takes the brunt of some damage

 A dominatrix engages Imperius Ferratus in close combat to prevent it from reaching the objectives in the left flank

 The imperator and Imperius Defensor capture an objective each in the last turn, while a last chance charge by the latecomer biotitan fails to destroy the imperator

With two objectives captured by each side, the battle becomes a draw.
In the campaign phase, all the Metallica titans got upgrades: the imperator will ignore the first critical, Imperius Defensor got scape pods for his crew, wich means that despite being destroyed, their experience can be used by another engine with a 2+, and Imperius Ferratus got overwatch for its melta cannon.
The tyranids also got some advances, two hierodules will ignore the first critical. and another one became a psyker, the dominatrix got zero advances for negative modifiers in the experience table due to being below half damage.

Since the battle is a draw, the attacker deploys to an adjaçent tile decided by the defender. The legio keeps on moving advancing the Mannheim maniple north.

In the tyranid third turn, the secundus swarm moves into cover behind the Malcador bridge, and the primus swarm attacks the Mannheim maniple. In the next battle, the two warlords of the maniple will have to face no less than seven biotitans! will they held on against supperior odds or will they be destroyed leaving wide open the water plant? discover it in our next report.