This week’s game was against another Ryan who was my original teammate for our apocalypse game a few weeks back:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/286311.page
One of the reasons we thought we’d do well was that our list were very complimentary. My army’s plan was rush in and assault and his was zip around and Dark Lance from afar. I knew exactly what his list was about and as soon as he challenged me to a game this week, I knew I needed a lot of luck to draw and even more to win.
First things first, we all take care of the campaign business from last week. 2 more guys joined, Jacob the Postman and his friend so now we have 9.
I grabbed a Mountain Terrain hex and built a factory there and built a shield generator on a spot I already occupied. I used the same dealie as last week which allows me to build a free structure.
Eric, the one with the nice Baneblade, chose to deny all my extra production so that extra factory does squat this week but at least I have the 50 points from last week which I used 18 of them hence the 1868 point cost mentioned above.
Dark Eldar Ryan loses one of his buildings by rolling a 1 on a
D6 but still has 1 power generator which adds 1 to see who goes first. He also takes the special ability this week which adds 1 to his roll. He army totes around a “Nightmare Doll” which can force me to reroll for determining who deploys first. So essentially he has
D6+2 and possibly causing me to reroll. He rolls a 6 and I don’t bother rolling. I roll a 4 to steal so he’s going first.
My army is the same I played last week. Biker Boss with 10 bikes. Burnas and
KFF Mek. 3 Battlewagons carrying said Mek flanked by boyz. I deploy in a hyper defensive mode with the bikes completely surrounding the BW’s and Trukks. Ryan fans out his deployment to prevent me from multi-charging and eventually try to envelope my army and/or get side shots in.
The Game
This first pic shows my hyper-defensive deployment. I didn’t know if he had any scouts which could assault my vehicles first turn. Turns out he didn’t need any.
Next is his deployment. He had 5 troop carriers and 2 gun ships. He had to remind me constantly who was rtiding what and what this and that could shoot. He had a lot of patience and I assume he answers a lot of these questions every game.
Top of turn one he rushes his 5 bike Reaver squad straight at my line and one troop carrier comes up. His not-so-bright Lances explode a BW and blow the Kannon off my Mek’s wagon. Boyz and bikes die. My cover saves are terrible at this point. Right away the fact I have little to no long range vehicle killing is going to hurt me.
Mek’s wagon and the other boyz’ wagon move up somewhat shielding the Nobz’ Trukks. I do love the old Trukk models
. They fire and do nothing, Bikes move, shoot, and assault the Reavers. I think the Reavers might have been a distraction unit but I was able to move the bikes behind them, the assault, then consolidate for 6” towards his deployment zone.
The troop carrier he moved first turn moves back to the front of the BW’s and disgorges Freaky, Evil, Spikey women-thingies. You can see them fleeing in this nex pic. due to losing an assault with my Bikes! His shooting destroys the Mek’s BW and everybody and their mothers procedes to shoot up the Mek and Burnas!! He forces them to flee. Not to many cover saves this game and the ones I did get didn’t matter much. Anyways his assault chicks fleet and assault my bikes and flee.
My last functional BW rams and explodes the empty skimmer transport. Orange Mob jumps out shoots one of his squads in cover holding an objective. Then they multi-assault that squad and one of his gunships. The ship goes down and the only Eldink to survive the assault is the one with the Dork Lance. The Mega Nobz (Onyx and Obsidian mobs) head over to help out the bikes. Onyx Mob fires its one-shot skorcha at the women and they go down screaming. Bikes assault through cover (over the wall) and massacre the squad on the other side.
BTW Red Mob has spent the game moving over to the right to claim an objective. The
KFF Mek with Burnas have almost run off the board. Most games he survives to the end, a lot of times they never leave the BW and sometimes they don’t even shoot because everything is already dead. Not the MVP’s this game!
This next pic shows the end of his next turn. His
HQ with a 2+
Inv save jumps out and destroys orange mob, his Lances shoot at the last BW and immobilizes it. His remaining gunship attemps to kill Onyx mob and puts some wounds on. This is when he learns they all (3 of them) have different wargear.
OK, I’d need huge luck to win at this point and the worst is yet to come. His
HQ is a beast and a half. Eveything I have shoots at his squad killing his retinue but leaving him unscratched. In fact the only 2 wounds it takes all game are due to rolling doubles for combat drugs, reminds me of my Biker Boss from a few games ago. I think this is where it dawns on me that even if I can hold any amount of objectives, the number of fast skimmers will allow him to contest all of them.
This next shot is wide to show him dislodging 3 troops into the crates which hold the objectives. His lone
HQ fleets and assaults my bikes leaving only the BikerBoss who cannot get past his 2+
Inv Saves.
Onyx Mob gets back in their trukk and heads for one group, Obsidian assaults another and leaves one alive. His
HQ finishes of my Boss during my assault phase leaving him free to do as he pleases on his turn.
Onyx Mob’s Trukk is blown apart and they are finished off by shooting, they all had one wound prior to this. His
HQ moves about 20” and assaults Obsidian mob. They all wiff and cause NO wounds!!! The are forced to take a morale check and cannot reroll so they try to run and of course his
HQ runs them down!!!
I didn’t bother with another pic since all I had was Red Mob holding an objective. On his next turn that same
HQ which destroyed Orange Mob, My Biker Boss and Nob of the Bike Unit, and Obsidian Mega Nobz mob goes on to wipe me off the board. It’s fleet and has a 12” assault move. I went down swinging but still lost due to my own fundamental list design flaw. That and his first turn Alpha Strike. At least the Mega Nobz look great and I really love the used camera I have.
End Game
The result of this game is not a surprise to me. The Orks in general have 2 main weaknesses: morale and killing vehicles at range. Both were very cleary demonstrated this game.
Morale can be easily fixed with the double edge sword of mobs of 11 or higher, thus possibly generating No Retreat wounds due to being Fearless. I did take a few no retreat wounds in previous games but I like mobs of 20 Boyz. My problem is with the min. sized Mega Nobz. I hate the idea of “wasting” attacks by having too many
PK’s in a mob. I also like being able to all my Wounds out of my Mega Nobz and thus running 3 without repeating equipment. (However I do like the idea of giving them all one-shot Skorchas
) The main problem with them is no bosspole. Although logically, Nobz are naturally “Order-Givers” and second in line to only the Warboss and in fact are constantly competing with each other for the top spot. I can imagine all 3 Nobz thinking “if I can’t be the boss than the hell with you two” and dispersing. Really it does make sense that it takes a
IC like a Warboss, Big Mek, or really strong personality like Mad Doc Grotsnik to overcome the Nobz natural infighting tendencies. OK, I’ll stop whining now.
Although Orks could really benefit from something like Commisars which could attach to any unit. If Weird Boyz were Elite
IC’s and could boost
Ld, they would been seen in many more lists!!!
I have no excuse for not having any long range vehicle killing power. I love Kult of Speed and would (obviously) trade-off losing a game or 2 due to not using Lootas as opposed to not having at least a 95% pure
KoS list. I really liked the Armageddon list and probably might not have gotten into
40K without it. (Or I would have played Necrons or Dark Eldar, probably the latter.) But times change and we must evolve or perish. I’ll be modifying next week’s list to include a mob of Speedy TankBustas. At one point over the weekend a list I built had 30 rokkits! I modified it to a total of 19 including the BW’s Kannon. Wish me luck, I might even challenge Ryan to a rematch.
Anyone have any to spare for cheap?
