On Friday I went out to JW's place and threw down with him and his buddy Chris. I brought my 2000 point Imperial Guard List and they each brought 1000 points of orks. There were a few things missing that I had hoped to see. There was no heavy armor for my Vanquisher to take apart, so it quickly became obvious that this was going to be a waste of points. I would have been much better off with a standard Leman Russ. They did bring a lot of what I did not want to see, however. The first thing was boyz. It looked like there were three mobs of thirty boys each with three rokkits and a power klaw on the nob. At ninety models I was going to struggle to kill them fast enough. Then there was a trukk with about ten nobs inside that weighed in at over 300 points. Running interference for that flank was a big mob of Gretchin. There was also a mob of Lootas ready to take position in a nice bunker on a hill.
On the other flank there was more nastiness. Along with one of the big mobs, there were six killa kans followed by a Big Mek with Force field, a Deff Dread, a mob of shootas to support the Big Mek, and a trukk with a mob of burna boyz. This was a nasty list.
I set up first down the middle of the board. This was a challenge since I would be presenting the rear armor of my tanks to whichever side of the board I was not shooting at. The orks were allowed to set up 12 inches from my deployment zone, so that meant I needed to stay well back from my edges to give me the most time to shoot. I opted to not put anything in reserve since I needed to start shooting everything in round one.
1. In round one I shot a lot. My best shooting was with the autocannon on the sentinel. It targeted the trukk full of Nobz and scored a penetrating hit. The resulting "careen" result sent the trukk back into his own lines where it promptly blew up. The Nobz inside were unscathed, but now they had to foot slog it with everyone else. I pulled my tanks up elsewhere to try and get some hits on the killa kans. They had wisely deployed where they had maximum protection from my big guns. The chimera with flamer-armed veterans rushed up to the ork lines in order to flame them, but were still a little short. My shooting began to tell a little bit by putting some initial hits on his walkers, but I knew that only one needed to make it through to ruin my day.
In his turn, he fired off a bunch of rokkits and blew up my chimera, killing most of the veterans inside. They were now sitting ducks that would also give him a free charge move if I didn't do something quick. The killa kans shot some grotzookas and my lines started taking casualties.
2. Turn two was much the same as the first. he kept marching and I kept shooting. The kans were getting whittled down, but I was having trouble killing them fast enough. The Lootas immobilized the demolisher by hitting its rear armor. I had turned it around in order to move closer to the advancing killa kans and thought that the woods behind me would offer cover. Unfortunately he rolled for a ton of hits and I failed my cover save. I was left with nothing to shoot at because of the exceedingly short range of the cannon. I did get lucky when he failed a bunch of cover saves of his own and more kans went to the discard pile.
3. Turn three was pretty good for me. Sly Marbo showed up and tossed a demo charge on top of the Nobz a bunch of them died and then failed a leadership roll to stick around. I don't think the orks made a single leadership roll the whole game, even with bosspoles! I had hoped to use Marbo the next turn to assault the Lootas in the bunker, but in retrospect, he would have been better off on the other side throwing his demo charge on the kans. Elsewhere I began to pull back from his advance and try to delay his inevitable Waaagh. The veterans in the Valkyrie dropped out and melta gunned the killa kans. Unfortunately, only one was able to hit, which resulted in one dead kan rather than the two or three I had hoped for. The resulting flamer response killed the whole squad. The Valkyrie also got assaulted and would not be able to shoot in the next round. Sly Marbo went down under a hail of pistol fire.
4. The Leman Russ took a shot at the Big Mek and his unit. A bunch of boyz died, he failed his leadership, and began falling back. This was good for me since the unit would not be able to rally and his kans would no longer get the 4+ save. This helped the rest of my shooting, but unfortunately it looked like two kans were still going to get in. I had opted to stay put and fire rather than pull back. This would turn out badly for me, since my shooting was ineffective. The vanquisher's one job was to kill the Deff Dread, but the one time I got a shot, I missed. As a result, my tank was now vulnerable to an assault in later tunrs.One rule I did check later was that on squadrons- if a member of a squadron is immobilized, it is wrecked immediately. One of the kans remained on the table after this result since we thought that it remained until the unit next moved. As a result, I got one immobilized result with my Leman Russ and a destroyed result from a Lascannon unit. Both hits were applied to the same model. What should have happened was that the immobilized unit should have been removed and the remaining kan destroyed. This left the last kan charging towards my lines unscathed. Bad News.
5. My shooting was growing worse and worse. My plasma toting command squad killed one enemy and one of their own. A far cry from the three or four I had hoped for. The grots had been soaking up a ton of fire the whole game but finally broke and fled this round. He got really close on the left flank and started to assault my middle. A Nob was able to assault and wreck the Vanquisher with his power klaw. The same unit also charged two of my command squads. I thought that one of them was safe, but the charge move was just enough to get his boyz in. This was just about my single biggest mistake in the game. I did not keep my own units far enough apart in order to prevent multiple charges. However, being stuck in the middle, there wasn't really any place to hide anyway. This was typical of the decisions I had to make all game: do I remain forward in rapid fire range, or do I retreat and stay out of assault range? The Sentinel AC killed another Kan this round. He was quickly becoming my MVP. The Deff Dread got blown up by a lucky Lascannon shot and saved the Leman Russ. We rolled for another round and...
6. This was my last chance to pull out a victory. His assault from last round had folded up my lines like a piece of wet toilet paper. The shooting I had left was not nearly enough to make him flee. Most of my tanks were either wrecked or missing guns, so there was no help there. The Kan that had survived from the end turned away from my lines and assaulted the Leman Russ. The big tank finally went down. The boyz in the middle were able to make multiple assaults and completely wiped out most of my remaining troopers. All I had left was one limping tank, the Sentinel, A command squad, and a couple squads from the same platoon. I had dished out a fair amount of damage, but he held the middle.
Result: Each side scored one point for each unit they killed, plus one point for each unit they had remaining. I scored 18 points, the orks scored 19. Boo Hoo. Although, if I had caught that bit about the immobilized result in the Kan squadron, who knows?
Game ended. orks win by one. Much fun was had by all.
Analysis:
- My bubble wrap tactic did not work since I was not careful to prevent multiple charges. I needed to spread out more and offer more cover. If I had done this more effectively, I would have been given several more opportunities to shoot at his mobs.
- Leave the Vanquisher at home unless I know I will be seeing AV 14 tanks
- Put Veteran units in reserve. By leaving them out, they were vulnerable to shooting right away and once their transports went down, they gave a free assault move to the units I was trying to slow down.
- Reduce the amount of equipment on my sergeants. I had a few power fists out there, but everyone who had one was shot before he got to use it. A few Melta Bombs or set of Krak Grenades would have been useful for taking down those killa kans that got in, however.
- Switch out at least one Lascannon for a Rocket Launcher or Autocannon in Platoon A. These weapons were consistently more effective.
- Looking at the pictures, it seems that my units were often technically inside difficult terrain when they were assaulted. this may have given them a chance to survive one turn longer if I had remembered to apply terrain effects properly.
- Put heavy flamers on the tanks. This gives the tank good anti-infantry firepower when the enemy closes and the main gun has been blown off.
- Know the rules!
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