Pre-amble
This was going to be interesting. I had only ever faced Orks before in tournaments at Warhammer World where I was running my Emperor's Feth Astra Militarum army. These battles never ended well for the greenskins as 2 Manticores and a bunch of Leman Russ's tended to take care of them by turn 3! Now however I have a smallish more elite army that is mainly assault based - not a good match up for a dedicated assault army with lots of bodies that will effectively run me over.
Armies
Steve was running:
2 big units of boyz with nobs
1 big unit of gretchin
Warboss
Weirdboy (I think)
Banner bearer
1 truck full of Burna's
1 truck full of Meganobs
2 killa kanz
1 deff dread
I think this is right anyway!!
I was running:
Mephiston
Chaplain
Death Company
Death Company Dread
Assault terminators
Tactical squad
2 Assault squads
Dread with twin lascannon and missile launcher
We rolled 'the relic' as our mission - ouch! If he gets a load of boyz on that I'll have to assault and just get hammered!!
Steve picked short table board edge deployment and went first.
Pre-game tactics
I figured that I would keep the assault troops, terminators and death company in reserve to react to where he moved and deployed and try to hit him on one side of the battlefield so I wouldn't get overwhelmed. If I could take the 2 trucks and 1 of the ork squads out quickly i could then nick the relic and use my assault squad's speed to get away.
The game
Deployment
I deployed my tactical squad in the top of the ruins to fire upon anything taking the relic in the middle, my shooty dread in the backfield ready for the trucks and kans and the death company dread front and centre to take anything coming out of a busted open truck!
My chaplain and Mephiston were also deployed in the ruins behind the death company dread to provide some support, smite and re-rolling of attacks when needed.
Initial stages
My shooting luckily killed both trucks which left my death company dread to mop up the burna' s while my terminators smashed the nobs.
Everything went to plan except for the poor death company who failed their charge...however this meant that Steve had to go to them - away from the relic - could they take an ork charge?
 |
| The view from the ruins |
Meanwhile Mephiston, the terminators and assault squads all closed in around the relic ready to pounce...
As it happens the death company couldn't take a charge! I even interrupted the assaults so that they could hit the boys first to lessen the beating so they might survive. Unfortunately my bad luck with them continued as 5 chainswords, a power fist, power sword and power axe only killed 2 Orks!!!! They then got wiped out taking about a hundred attacks - gah!!! Still they did a job, they took a big group of boys away from the real action...
The end times
In the meantime the main event took place as the warboss strolled out of the ruins calling out Mephiston's mum. Mephiston clearly couldn't let his mother be disrespected and so bent the warboss over his knee and gave him a damn good spanking!
In other news the shooty dread dispatched the two killer kanz from range while the gretchin ran in and took the relic! But not so fast - the remaining assault squad leapt in from behind the ruins swiftly dispatched the puny greenskins and legged it with the relic themselves.
Result
With Mephiston standing in front of the remaining ork boyz, a tactical squad and dread covering his back and an assault squad in flight with the relic the Orks called it a day and slunk back to wherever they crawled out from.
Comments
This was a tough game that swung massively throughout - as all 8th Edition games seemed to have done so far.
My plan absolutely came together as I managed to avoid large combats pretty much throughout the game.
I was pretty lucky at the beginning getting rid of the 2 trucks and their occupants so quickly - when twin lascannons and a missile launcher hit it is certainly lethal! Also the death company dread went on a rampage and just wouldn't die.
These breaks gave me a chance taking out Steve's more mobile units and let me use my mobility to dictate the attacks in the second half of the battle making sure I could gain the advantage.
It turns out that trucks and kanz are pretty brittle and need to get where they are going quickly before they come down to fire.
Orks as predicted, are mean in combat. So many attacks on the charge is crippling, it would be interesting, and terrifying, to fight against a proper horde. However they are slow even though they can move, advance and charge and so in this game my incredibly mobile units could out manoeuvre the Orks and pick off and isolate units at will.
A couple of 8th edition comments:
- Smite is amazing and just lethal!!!
- the game took about 3 hours to play 5 turns. It is speeding up as we learn the new stats and we are still wasting some time looking up stats or rules. I think we'll get it to 2 hours comfortably in the future. Also Steve's army was a lot of models which took time to move.
- Close combat is generally decisive. One side generally wrecks the others face! Getting the charge is important and having buffs from characters nearby is important, although this carries risk as the character can get caught in the open, dragged into combat or be counter charged! In this edition positioning is everything.
- picking the order of combat and interrupting combat with command points is an amazing mechanic! So tactical now when planning a bunch of close combat assaults it becomes a really stressful experience!!
If you play or play against Orks please let me know what you think about them. What are their strengths and weaknesses? Why do you love them? I have luckily been given a load of Orks and am debating whether to paint them or not - what tips do you have for me?
All the best and, by the way, 8th edition is brilliant, I am really enjoying the change to the rules so far so long may it continue!!
James
fourdadsoftheapocalypse.blogspot.co.uk – A blog about Warhammer 40k and the Horus Heresy by four Dads
Love it - I played an ork list last night, with Ghazgkull, two units of killa kans, two dredds, two big blobs of 30 boyz, two units of lootaz and some other stuff.
ReplyDeleteI use a firepower based marine list and my opponent conceded on his turn three with two thirds of a blob of boyz and a deff dredd on a couple of wounds (plus some grots) left.
I think the big issue for orks is still getting into combat. My opponent didn't help himself in terms of deployment map, but without faster moving transports, even being able to advance didn't really help his boyz, I was able to level a lot of firepower at him in the first couple of turns. I'd say if you want to play orks you want bigger boyz squads in battlewagons, backed up by stuff like lootaz and flash gitz. Dunno what their flyers are like, but my opponent had no answer to my stormhawk either.
I may be playing another ork army next week so if anything changes I'll come back to you!
Definitely do. I'm interested to hear what the greenskins are like in this edition.
DeleteI do like me some orks, eventually I will be able to get a full waaagh going.
ReplyDeleteMe too. I guess they're in the list of to do projects hey Rory!?
DeleteYou mentioned that Steve "picked" the Deployment Type. When it says that one Player or the other "determines" the Deployment Type, it just means that that Player makes the roll. It's poorly laid out, but if you actually go to Pg.216 like all the Missions reference, it says it there. It matters because only the Player who rolls for it can spend a CP to re-roll if desired.
ReplyDeleteNope totally didn't spot that!! So far the player has just chosen. We had assumed it was part of the tactical element of the game rather than a random event. Will do this next time though, thanks!
DeleteThank your for taking time to write such a long review. It seems to be interesting. I would try.
ReplyDeleteIt's a great game and well worth trying it out. It can be a little expensive but no more than hobbies such as golf. The painting and modelling aspect is awesome too.
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