Long time, no battle reports. Sadly, there’s been a bit of a global pandemic going around and being a responsible member of the community, I’ve been avoiding big gatherings that might spread the plague. However, your old sarge has been vaccinated, so with the help of likewise protected people, I was able to get a game in. This time, I was able to bring my ork army. Not just orks, but a whole stompa!
The idea was that it was going to be a more casual game where we would bring a bunch of models, play on on oversized board, and just kinda slam minis together with a bit of objective holding as a treat.
I was, of course, playing orks, and bringing 2000 points, plus the stompa. My partner was playing Alpha Legion, and bringing 1000 points. On the other side, we had one person bringing 2000 points of Crimson Fists (Hi Ryolnir!) and another person bringing 1000 points of Grey Knights (Hi, Zuul!) Thanks to Ryolnir for providing several of the pictures used in this batrep.
I brought Ghaz, a warboss on warbike, a weirdboy, five meganobz trukkboyz, a trukk (for carting around said trukkboyz), two mobs of boyz (11 and 14 models in each), a dakka jet, five warbikers, and one of each of the non-HQ buggies, plus an extra scrapjet. Except I’m an idiot and forgot one scrapjet and the dragsta, so I had to borrow a scrapjet from the game club’s cabinet, and a wartrike which stood in for the dragsta. I played as Evil Sunz, though several of the units (the bikeboss and the trukk) were Death Skulls and the dakkajet was painted up as Bad Moonz. I know, I’m terrible, but the rest of my army was wysiwyg.
Warboss Scragkill Gudluk revved his warbike impatiently. Somewhere there was a scrap, and he was anxious to get to it. However, he’d been separated from his mob. And if that wasn’t bad enough, da Boss had shown up, along with a bunch of red-painted gits.
Ghazghkul Mag Uruk Thraka, prophet of da Waaagh, was giving orders. “Awright, we needs t’get into dis fight quick, so I want you an’ yer other evil sunz t’haul yer guts like they was on fire, you got it?”
“Er, beggin’ yer pardon, but I ain’t no Sunz. I’m Death Skulls!” Scragkill slapped the side of his blue bike proudly.
Ghazghkull responded by smacking him on the side of the head so hard he fell off of the bike and skidded several yards.
When Scrag managed to hobble up and lean unsteadily against the side of the bike, Ghaz asked “What was dat?”
“Er, da red ones go fasta?” Scrag said uncertainly.
“Dat’s what I likes t’hear. Now, we’ll send in da big lad first.” Ghaz craned his neck to look up at the stompa, with its grot rigger crew scrabbling atop getting it ready for waaagh. “I gots a good feelin’ about dis.”
Our deployment zone was in one quarter of the table, minus a nine inch radius from the center. I pushed the stompa up as far as I could. Its only real hope was to get to the astraeus before it lost too many wounds. Most of the Alpha Legion units were in Deep Strike, ready to move in at a moment’s notice.
The Emperor Protects! As does this wall! [Credit: Ryolnir]
The knights player put his entire army into deep strike. The fists player, on the other hand was deployed a bit more defensively than my orks. If only I'd been so smart. He ended up going first, and he immediately popped the stompa. Its work done, the astraeus returned with full honors to its cabinet, where it would do me no further harm, since it was obviously going to be a really short game if it had stayed on the table.
However, this caused some follow-on effects for both of us. Because he'd hidden his stuff, he didn't have angle with a lot of his stuff turn one. On the other hand, I couldn't get anything into charge range that turn, and most of my shooting couldn't target his stuff either. I managed to take out an assault intercessor squad, but that was pretty much it. My partner's maulerfiend was stuck in the back of a bad traffic jam with my warbikers. This meant turn one was spent mostly untangling this while his units got into firing position.
He did have a good firing line on one of my units: The trukk I'd hidden to the side of the stompa, sadly only mostly out of line of sight. It was popped, and I lost one of my trukkboy meganobz on the disembark.
Da Real Treasure Was the Dakka We Found Along Da Way. [Credit: Ryolnir]
I was able to get a couple of buggies into line of sight with his melee infantry, however, and I was able to take out one unit of assault intercessors with my snazzwagon and boostablasta. Meanwhile, my two deffdreads were trundling forward to get their claws on something tasty. At the far side of the board you can see my meganobz trying to get into cover until they could make their way to a scrap.
Bullets! My only weakness! [Credit: Ryolnir]
The grey knights teleported in, taking the fight to me at the midpoint on the board. Meanwhile, the crimson fists player moved his units forward out of hiding and began taking things down. The buggies folded quickly under some shooting from his speeder and aggressors.
On the other side of the board, the meganobz wilted under the knights' shooting and smites. Ghaz lost four wounds to the psychic onslaught.
Yo yo yo! It’s Grandmaster Dreadknight, and I’m here to rap about how the Emperor saves, novitiates!
However, now it was time for waaaagh! A bit of shooting took out a few of the vanvets, and then the deff dreads ran up and gave the last three a nice hug, turning them into crimson smears.
Where did da humies go, George?
Ghaz, the bikeboss, and the bikers all charged in at the dreadknights. The weirdboy cast fists of gork on the bikeboss, making him right killy.
Hit ‘im in da face! Den hit ‘im in da face harder!
It turns out that seven killa klaw attacks at S14, with extra attacks for each of the originals that doesn't do damage, is a lot. The grandmaster was a deadknight instead of a dreadknight. That robbed the bikers of any attacks, since he was their charge target. But fortunately, Ghaz got full attacks on the other dreadnight. ...Of which two went through, and were both saved against. Some days you get the waaagh, some days the waaagh gets you.
On their turn, the grey knights smote the crap out of the bikeboss and the warbikers, getting them mostly dead and finishing them off in the shooting and fight phases. Ghaz ended up hanging on with a single wound.
The Crimson Fist player wasn't idle during this time. He took out the dakkajet with some long distance shooting, then went ahead and removed the two deff dreads, one scrapjet, my squigbuggy, and several boyz. That left me with a grand total of one scrapjet, twenty-odd boyz in two squads, my weirdboy, and Ghaz holding on by a single wound when my third turn came up.
Orks don’t panic. The sweating and twitching is just anticipation of a good waaagh, is all. No one is fleeing, we’re just looking for a better scrap, is all. [Credit: Ryolnir]
But that was when my allies, the alpha legion, showed up! So secretly, in fact, that no photographic evidence for their arrival can be found. Yeah, none of my pictures from that part of the game came out well. Ultimately, his obliterators and terminators managed to take out the crimson first redemptor. My weirdboy managed to kill the grey knights chaplain, but the surviving justicar of his strike squad was able to deal a fatal wound to Ghaz, finally toppling the Prophet of the Waaagh.
We basically called it there. The grey knights player had to go, so the crimson fist player did his last turn of shooting to see if we'd have even stood a chance. The surviving scrapjet took a surprisingly long time to die, given it started the round with only five wounds left. But when it died, it exploded, and thanks to the careen stratagem, it was able to leave its mark.
Enjoy your mortal wounds, suckers!
Ultimately, it's a little hard for me to analyze the battle too fully. The abortive superheavy duel skewed deployment pretty heavily. It probably saved me a bit of shooting in the first round, but it also meant that I wasn't able to any shooting off my first turn either. Going second definitely hurt me, since it meant the trukkboyz meganobz weren't able to get their full value (though they absorbed a lot of firepower before they died, which probably saved some other units). The maulerfiend never got past the traffic jam until turn three, and the other units he had were too far back to be able to shoot or get into melee.
That left me pretty much high and dry turn two, looking down the barrel at 3000 points without any backup. By the time he popped in on our turn three, I was down to about 650 points, 300 of which belonged to one-wound Ghaz. Even if he’d popped off, it’s unlikely we would have been able to claw our way back out of that deficit. If we’d gone first, waiting until turn three wouldn’t have hurt quite as bad, but as it was, that was two full rounds where I was effectively 1000 points behind the enemy.
In the future, I’ll probably ask that my partners not go quite that crazy on deep strike shenanigans, or at least come in a bit sooner.
All that being said, I had a ton of fun, and it was great finally getting my boyz on the table. I did learn a lot about pitfalls in setting up, how variable some of my units can be, and how to move things fast. I also learned some organization issues, and I'll know how to handle them better. In the future, rather than showing with a stack of double-sided buttscribe sheets, I'll have them singlesided in a binder, so I can flip through them quickly and know where things are.
On the ruined battlefield, the shattered armor of the once-mighty stompa were scattered and blasted. The remains of orks and traitor marines decorated the landscape. The adeptus astartes were the only ones who survived to recover their dead.
And yet, under the hot sun, some of the debris stirred. A massive ceramite plate was thrown aside, and the massive power weapon known as Gork’s Klaw emerged from the wreckage.
