For Game number one at the Metagames Tournament, I drew a nice Orc army. He would be fielding:
(2) five man units of lootas
(1) 10 man unit of gretchin
(1) battlewagon with defrolla and single big shot
(2) 3 can units with grotzookas
(3) 20 man ork units with Nob and Powerclaw
(3) single unit def kopta with rocket launch and saw
Snikrot and Kommandos
Big Mech with Kustom Force Field
For the first scenario, we were playing a combination of annihilation (kill points) and 5 objectives. The deployment was pitched battle. I placed both of my objectives near my long board edge, equally spread out about 20 inches from either table edge. There was a river cutting the table in half down the middle and this put my objective on either side. I hoped to use my amphibious chimeras to force him to get slowed down in the difficult terrain that the water would present, chasing after them. He put one of his objectives in the middle of the table and one near the back of his deployment zone, and then one 12” away from one of my objectives on the far right side of the river.
He won the dice roll to go first and deployed his unit of lootas on either end of the table. One unit of lootas was supported by the gretchin. The lootas were almost directly across from both of the objectives I had put down and were going to try to keep me off of those. He put his big mek in the battle wagon in the center of his line and put the ork boys on foot on either side. The killa cans deployed just in front of the boyz to lead the charge toward me. Snikrot of course went into reserve. He deployed his 3 defkoptas on the line of his zone spread equidistant down the board.
I knew he would be hitting 3 of my tanks the first turn with suicide bomber defkoptas, but I wanted the opportunity to shoot him up early on. I just hoped the deff koptas would miss a few of my vehicles. I decided to deploy and use a feigned denied flank to try to draw half of his army across the river to abandon the two objectives on the right hand side. It was also leave those lootas out of range of my tanks and vendettas on the first turn. My hope was to get as much in the water to slow it all down as possible then push across the river onto the other 2 objectives. From the get go I wanted to control both of my objectives, the objective on the other side of the river, and contest the one in the middle. Hopefully one of the vendettas would survive the kamikaze run to be able to fly in and take late game.
I deployed my manticore and hydras with a building blocking LOS to the closest unit of lootas. My vendettas deployed half way down my line. I spread my chimeras out but put the platoon command squad, a unit of veterans, and a psyker squad just to the left of the river at mid field. After the first two turns they would move 6” each turn across the river to take the 2 objectives on the right hand side. I put another veteran squad and a psyker squad to the left to hold my other objective. I put my Command Squad with flamers into reserve, hopefully to come in after snikrot to roast him (doubtful but possible due to astropath and officer of fleet), or to reinforce whichever side of the river was feeling the most heat. I failed to seize the initiative and the game got started. Finally, I deployed my demolisher directly across from his battlewagon obscured by a stand of trees to get cover.
The game began with the defkoptas scouting forward. One jumped the building and landed in front of my manticore, another in the middle landed in front of a psyker squad chimera, and the last flew over the river to target my other psyker squad chimera. The ork mob moved forward, and as I had hoped the mob began fully flowing toward the left hand side of the board. Two full mobs moved leftward, and the mob on the right side of the river also started across the river into difficult terrain. If this precedent continued it would leave only one mob on the other side of the river for me to deal with. The battlewagon in the middle moved forward and fired. Sadly, the orks shooting was very uncharacteristic for orks. Random rockets managed to down both of my vendettas destroying both! The rockets from the central defkopta also destroyed my most central pysker chimera. Finally the defkopta on the left assaulted the manticore, after missing it with is rocket, but only scored a weapon destroyed hit getting rid of one of the four rockets it carried.
Ruh Roh, Shaggy. I was down both of my Vendettas, which meant Target priority was now huge and I couldn’t panic. I really probably should have outflanked with both of those loaded vendettas… Not very smart of me, really. Downing all the Cans would now be tricky and they would have to wait. I wagered that he was going to continue to shoot grotzookas rather than run them toward my line which should give me an extra turn of shooting, so I chose to ignore them for a few turns and only hit them with odd and end multilas fire. Without my vendettas my chimera over the river plan had to be flawless as I would have no swoop in on the last turn backup to rely on. I jocky for position a bit and move my now on foot psyker squad, and regular infantry squad into the trees to offer up a nice target to draw fire from the cans. I really need them to keep shooting and not sprint into my line! The other squad from the downed vendetta moves to my leftmost objective to double my chances of keeping it, also to see if snikrot will try to remove them, rather than a tank. Target priority number one was the defkoptas, as they couldn’t be given another turn to kill tanks. I killed all three of them to take their easy victory points. I also removed the loota squad on the left hand side of the table through shooting and destroyed one can with multilas fire. My demolisher moved out from behind the trees and shelled the wagon, but missed entirely. The manticore fired rockets and landed 3 direct hits on the battlewagon, with none of them deviating onto the closely packed boyz as I had hoped. 3 direct hits netted me an immobilized result. Finally my vendettas fire into the other unit of cans and only remove one of them – sheesh!
Turn two comes around, and officer of fleet just holds snikrot off the table. Whew! The orks continue to advance toward my line with the cans shooting my psyker squad in the trees. Only two of the psykers weather the blast, but I’m actually okay with this! The big mek fixes the battlewagon as I anticipated. A unit of 20 orks remains back in the deployment zone of the opponent to hold his objective and the other flows toward the middle objective. The squad on the other side still hugs the river. The farthest lootas take shots at the other psyker squad and shake the chimera.
On my second turn I get moving and I am fortunate enough to get Marbo but leave my Command Squad out! I don’t want to allow snikrot any easy hits so I move my demolisher 6” and wager that snikrot won’t be able to hit on 4’s and roll 6’s again to glance it. It is the closest tank to my back edge, on purpose. I also move the weakened now on foot squad closer to the edge to offer as another type of bait. I move all the chimeras near the river well into it to slow snikrot and maybe stop his assault if he tries to go through difficult terrain. I shell the wagon with the demolisher and it again imoblizes the thing. I fire manticore shells into the squad in the river, as this is the squad I now want to vaporize to open up the other side of the board. I score about 10 wounds, but only 4 get removed. Marbo pops up behind the other unit of lootas and the demo pack removes 4 of the 5 of the lootas, significantly removing the threat to the other side of the river. Other odd and end fire really has no more of an effect.
On turn three, snikrot does arrive and he pops in behind my demolisher. The cans fire on the central most infantry squad hugging the trees and on the psyker squad. Both units go to ground and the units survive the blasts. The orks near the river began to flow back across the river to move onto the 2nd objective on the other side of the table, after seeing the chimeras starting to move that way. The 2nd horde moves onto the middle most objective. The accursed wagon once again is fixed by the big mek. The grots fire at marbo, but he survives and he’s pissed.
On my turn three the Command squad arrives and through combined flamer fire they and my platoon command squad remove snikrot and company. I fire multilas fire at the cans, but really only shake a couple of them while the chimeras move fully across the river and onto the other objective along my back edge. I dump quite a bit more shooting into mob that will be moving to contest out of the river and get them down to about a size of 12 orks. The hydras fire into the side of the battlewagon and do nothing to it… urg. The demolisher blast scatters fully off as well. I fire my third round of manticore shots into the orks nearest the river and they do absolutely nothing, along with the psyker blast. Not a good round of shooting at all! Marbo assaults the grots and kills them to the man.
On his turn four he moves the cans up as close to my line as he can be, but is just out of assault range. He would have had a multiassault if he had not fired those grotzookas earlier! Those will be target priority number one next turn. The battlewagon moves forward and parks on the central most objective. Fortunately it is not filled with troops. The two ork mobs on the left of the river move forward a bit, but one can’t vacate the rear most objective and the other is needed to score the middle objective. I then respond with just enough shooting to remove the two units of cans. I shoot and immobilize the battlewagon (Again!) and move my demolisher forward to also contest the central most objective. I fire again on the squad to the right of the river removing a few orks and then weaken resolved the unit but the pesky orks held with the boss pole! I move the psyker squad forward and the veteran squad in chimera forward ready to surge forward onto that objective next turn. I have to finish off the squad!
His Turn 5 sees him scrambling for objectives. He currently holds his rearmost objective, is contesting the middle objective, and he has 1/3 a unit of orks that I have been shooting the whole game holding the furthest objective across the river. On my turn I back the chimera full of veterans through the wood and disembark the squad just 3” away from the objective and rapid fire into the orks. I also fire with the psykers to weaken resolve and the squad finally breaks leaving me with 3 objectives to his two. With only about 10 minutes remaining in the game
An extremely fun game and a very close match. He really put the hurt on me early by removing my vendettas before they could fire. I didn’t have the firepower that I wanted to remove odd and end squads and still be able to take down the Kans. I also had a really hard time removing just a single battlewagon. Man, that thing was annoying. I finished the first game with full points, and was looking forward to the next.
Stay Tuned for Game 2!