You can read my other battle reports for this tournament here:
Pictures of some of the armies in attendance
Round One
Round Three
Hey folks! This is the second battle report for the second Atlanta Circuit Event. They are
GT in scale, although not on the official circuit this year; the organizer says that he's thinking about making one or more official
GTs next year.
Mission: Annihilation (the point structure requires killing DOUBLE the killpoints that your enemy kills for a 17 point massacre, with 3 bonus points available for most expensive unit killed, troops in enemy deployment etc.)
Deployment: Dawn of War
Purple People Eaters
HQ: Lelith Hesperax
Troop1: 5x Wyches, Succubus+Agonzier, Haywire Grenades, Wych Weapons, Blasters x2 // Raider+Dark Lance+Horrorfex
Troop2: 5x Wyches, Succubus+Agonzier, Haywire Grenades, Wych Weapons, Blasters x2 // Raider+Dark Lance+Horrorfex
Troop3: 5x Wyches, Succubus+Agonzier, Haywire Grenades, Wych Weapons // Raider+Dark Lance+Horrorfex
Troop4: 5x Wyches, Succubus+Agonzier, Haywire Grenades, Wych Weapons // Raider+Dark Lance+Horrorfex
Troop5: 5x Wyches, Succubus+Agonzier, Haywire Grenades, Wych Weapons // Raider+Dark Lance+Horrorfex
Troop6: 5x Wyches, Succubus+Agonzier, Haywire Grenades, Wych Weapons // Raider+Dark Lance+Horrorfex
Elite1: 5x Raiders, Dark Lance // Raider+Dark Lance
Elite2: 5x Raiders, Dark Lance, Sybarite+Crucible of Malediction // Raider+Trophy Rack
Heavy1: Ravager + 3x Disintegrators
Heavy2: Ravager + 3x Disintegrators
Heavy3: Ravager + 3x Disintegrators
A note on my list: This is my 2k list that I won a Golden Ticket with last month; I scaled it back to 1750 by removing an elite and Lelith's retinue. There's also no Nightmare Doll - their rules don't allow it. I added a Trophy Rack to the raider with the Crucible on the chance that an opportunity would present itself to flat out into an enemy deployment zone, survive, and cause their psychers -2 leadership tests. With the spare points from losing the Nightmare Doll, I added Horrorfexes as a last minute expense. In hindsight, wish I had spent them on something else, but 25 points to spare in a
DE list....I would have bought more blaster wyches, but I don't HAVE enough wych models toting blasters to kit out my units
WYSIWYG. Horrorfexes seem like a great idea, but you can't fire a lance and the 'fex at the same time....and in a wych cult I already have few lances. If I did it again, I think I'd look for a way to get in a squad of warp beasts, or a unit of reaver jetbikes.
Also worth noting is that Lelith is by herself. She can be targeted now, but she *is* WS7 with a 2+ invulnerable save. My plan is to stick her with whatever squad has the wych powers I want her to have (typically a 12" assault). I'm hedging that statistically I should get one per turn. Its a risk, but its a new idea and I decide to run with it.
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My opponent's list:
Primarch's Mechanized Orks!
HQ1: Ghazghkull Thraka
HQ2: Big Mek + Kustom Force Field
Troop1: 12 Boyz (Nob, Powerklaw, Bosspole) // Trukk+Grot Riggers+Boarding Plank+
RPJ+Reinforced Ram
Troop2: 12 Boyz (Nob, Powerklaw, Bosspole) // Trukk+Grot Riggers+Boarding Plank+
RPJ+Reinforced Ram
Troop3: 18 Boyz (Nob, Powerklaw, Bosspole)
Troop4: 18 Boyz (Nob, Powerklaw, Bosspole)
Troop5: 5x Meganobs // Battlewagon+Deffrolla+2x Big Shootas+Boarding Plank+Grot Rigger+Red Paint Job
Fast1: 1x Deffkopta + Twin-linked rokkits + Buzzsaw
Fast2: 1x Deffkopta + Twin-linked rokkits + Buzzsaw
Fast3: 1x Deffkopta + Twin-linked rokkits + Buzzsaw
Heavy1: Battlewagon+Deffrolla+2x Big Shootas+Boarding Plank+Grot Rigger+Red Paint Job
Heavy2: Battlewagon+Deffrolla+2x Big Shootas+Boarding Plank+Grot Rigger+Red Paint Job
Pre-Game tactical assessment:
1. Orks. My favorite army in existence, mostly because I play them. Primarch and I faced off at the top table of the Atlanta Circuit Opener - my mechanized orks massacred his kan-wall. Several months later, I face up against him now and I see...my list! Well, mostly. I prefer nobs instead of meganobs, and I take
MSUs of Lootas.
2. I didn't take my orks to this event because it was 1750. My 2k orks are awesome, my 1850 orks are pretty awesome, and they're pretty good at 2500 too. At 1500-1750 (and below) some sacrifices have to be made. You start thinking "Man...Ghazghkull is 225 points" and "can I really afford 3 battlewagons?"
3. No Lootas. That was the first question I asked. "Do you have any Lootas?" I cheered in my head.
4. Deffkoptas are absolutely nasty, very potent, and their ability to alphastrike and destroy vehicles if the ork player gets first turn is unquestionable. During 'Ard Boyz, I went first against a
DE list and I wrecked all three of his ravagers on the top of the first turn. Unfortunately for Primarch, Dawn of War doesn't allow deployment of fast attacks, so their ability to alpha-strike / auto-hit with a buzzsaw is neutered. Now they can only really outflank and try causing problems.
5. In fact, Dawn of War makes this an incredibly dangerous matchup for Clay. He doesn't get to start on the board and have a turn1 move up 12" to the halfway point....which is part of what makes mech orks so dangerous. Instead, he's got to start the whole army in reserve and trundle on 12" at a time.
6. No Lootas, no deffkopta alpha-strike regardless of who goes first, and I have superior mobility against him having to start out at the rear of the table....this is perhaps the worst possible scenario / matchup for him, compounded by the fact that I know and play his army very well. On the flip side, the mission sucks for me. Killpoints, and I have to kill double killpoints to get a massacre. He's got 15 killpoints, mostly protected by a
KFF, and I have 20, all much easier to kill than his.
I've said this before in my Ork batreps and I'll repeat it here again: My mechanized orks quake in terror at Dark Eldar. My orks have a healthy respect for drop pod armies, mechanized
IG, mechanized Eldar, missile spam space wolves....but they don't quake in fear to any of them. Against a precise Dark Eldar list, they are terrified. I know why I fear Dark Eldar as orks (better in assault, just as good of an assault range potential, ability to ignore AV14, lethal anti-tank, good anti-horde). I'm hoping to demonstrate here why
DE are the paper to the Mechanized Orks rock.
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We roll for deployment and I win the roll. I elect to deploy and go first. I choose to keep my entire army in
DoW reserve and pass it over to Primarch to deploy. He chooses to keep his army in
DoW reserve, with his deffkoptas outflanking. Here's a picture of him and I. Yes, I'm wearing a shirt with a picture of my avatar on it. I got out of the army three years ago at 186 lbs; I can't look at a picture of myself without shuddering.
And yes, Primarch is throwing a gang sign. He's thuggish like that.
Dark Eldar Turn1: My army moves 12-24" onto the table. Orks have no psykers (or at least don't take them often) so I'm not worried about my crucible. Both of my warrior raiders dump their troops at the 12" mark.
Here's a wide shot of my move. I'm not sure where he'll come onto the table, so I'm trying to have angles to fire anywhere on the table.
Ork Turn1:
Primarch picks his right flank and rolls onto the table. That building thing is a ruins, and while his battlewagons are on top, that's just a representation of their position inside the ruins. Since it *is* ruins, you can travel through it...I think neither of us are sure if you can put models where they can't actually fit, but neither of us bring it up; I'd probably play it the same way; ruins are not impassible. Maybe we should have defined terrain better. *shrugs* Three battlewagons make a wall, with two trukks hiding behind.
Dark Eldar Turn Two:
I move my army 12" backwards and move an empty warrior raider flat out, dropping it 1" in front of his battlewagons to keep him from moving 12" towards me. He can attempt to ram me, but I'll dodge on a 3+, and he didn't bring grabbin' klaws.
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We have a disagreement here during my movement phase. I *know* the assault range of orks on the Waaaugh! 13" move, 2" deployment with meganobs/Ghaz having 2" bases, 6" fleet, 6" possible assault...29" range. I want to be 30" away from him. I picked my lead vehicle, which has the ability to move 0-24", and stuck it 24" out towards his battlewagons. He was 19" away....telling me that if I move 12" backwards, my nearest vehicle will be 31" away from him. Primarch tells me that while what I'm doing is legal, I'm breaking the spirit of the rules since I have no intention of moving forwards. I'll be honest, I hadn't thought about it before and had not used this tactic before - I employed it because I am well aware of the lethality of orks on the charge and their range on turn2+.
It ended with Primarch telling me that I'm a dirty bastard and that was illegal in 4th edition....and me telling him that I didn't start
40k until 5th edition and have no frame of reference for how he used to have to walk uphill to school both ways. Since it was legal he had nothing else to say on the matter except to tell me that "its going to be like that" and that our games weren't going to be friendly any more....which alarmed me greatly because I value him as a friend.....it was a bit upsetting. Comments from spectators welcome. My opinion on the matter is that I'm not from Atlanta, and while I recognize that every region has its own house rules, I play everywhere and can't but adhere to the rules as closely as I can without picking any region's particular flavor on certain issues. I'm not saying I'm right, just that it was legal and I hadn't thought about the intent before. Comments welcome.
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Back to the game....you can see in the photo above that I have an empty raider to the right and a full wych raider. I'm trying to give Primarch tough choices to make. Either he attempts to move forward and potentially gets no movement, or he moves around and gets little forward traction....and he will either stay as a cohesive whole (which is what makes makes mech orks so powerful) and possibly give my side raiders rear armor shots, or he'll split up to tackle my main and secondary forces. I'm just trying to cause his army problems. I forgot about the deffkoptas, or I would have been more centralized with my vehicles, inside the 18" mark of any board edge.
Here's the bait/diversion/flanking move:
I also sent a lone wych raider up the left side to get a shot at a trukk in the back.
Dark Eldar Turn2 Shooting:
My left side lance pops a shot into the trukk in the rear, which fails its
KFF save and ramshackles itself exploded. Primarch rolls his eyes and asks how many I wound - despite wounding on a 5+, I seem to roll very well only against HIM and when I am rolling to wound for vehicle explosions. I roll 6 of 12 5+ and he fails five. He passes pinning, but fails leadership, executes an ork to try again, fails again...and runs off the board. Ouch.
The rest of my lances do nothing. Typical. ><
Ork Turn 2:
Primarch moves around my raider. I wasn't expecting that. Part of why my orks hate
DE is because they can drop raiders in front of the line to obstruct movement. In theory. I brainstormed it, and maybe even invented the idea as a response to Mech orks....but my plan to use it doesn't quite work according to plan. He moves around and keeps everything within 6" of his
KFF.
He gets one deffkopta from reserve and he comes out on the right side. The only raider inside his assault range is on top of a 3 story building, so he flies up to the raider, which triggers a second argument. The deffkopta couldn't actually fit where he wanted it to go. I didn't take a picture of the building, but imagine a house of cards three levels high; he wanted his deffkopta on the lip of the second building, but it wouldn't fit there. Then he was going to put it on the second floor room, but it wouldn't physically fit in there either. My bone was that you can't put a model where it can't physically go - vehicles can crunch through terrain, but jetbikes don't. We went round a few times, and it got back to the "friendly game" piece, so I let the argument go; I honestly value friendship more than a game of
40k, and my default mode is precise rules adherence....you have to cut through my mindset to take me out of tournament mode and into friendly game mode
I cracked open my bottle of Captain Morgan and the rest of the game actually went very smoothly.
A couple of big shootas open up to no effect, and his turn ends - but at least he's not as close as he could have been if that raider wasn't there. He does attempt to boarding plank it but fails to roll any 6s. I forgot until just now that you can't boarding plank a vehicle that moves more than 12" (and that one went 24"
but it didn't make a difference.
Dark Eldar Turn 3:
My two empty raiders form a physical screen to the bulk of my army and tie into an impassible...monument of some sort. The rest of my army lines up for shooting and optimal lanes of fire. My ravagers are aiming at the left battlewagon; I've disembarked wyches with blasters over there, and I'm *REALLY* going to try punching through it to put those ravagers to work.
Here's a closer picture of the obstruction I'm making. That raider up in the top right has wyches in it; I've got one opportunity for a rear armor shot on the middle battlewagon.
Dark Eldar Turn 3 Shooting:
I whiff against his left battlewagon. However, the
KFF wagon and Ghazghkull's wagon are both wrecked! I got a total of 4 penetrating hits across my army, and he failed three of them with his
KFF. One was a weapon destroyed, the other two were wrecked. The boys spill out the back and Ghazghkull + Meganobs spill out the side of their own wreckage. Three ravagers and nine plasma templates later, four meganobs are missing.
In the invisible building to the right where the raider and deffkopta are, my raider disgorged wyches, then moved down to the floor and ahead a bit - the wyches assaulted into the deffkopta and whiffed; the deffkotpa whiffed in return.
My wyches on the left flank assault into his battlewagon. They have rerolls, so I'm hoping for a six or two. I get none. None on the rerolls either.
Ork Turn Three:
His remaining two deffkopta both come out of reserves on my left side. They move up snug against his battlewagon. He declares a tank shock 12" through me. No extra armor, and my unit is probably going to die anyway......I choose to death or glory. I pass leadership, toss a haywire grenade, get a glance, and....stunned! The battlewagon isn't going anywhere, but I take
2d6 hits in return, and Primarch gets 11 hits! I roll for giggles and HOLY CRAP my Succubus lives! The rest of the squad dies, but the succubus passes leadership.
The boyz and the meganob go threaten the wych raider blocking them in while Ghazghkull moves to threaten the empty raider blocking their path. He declares a Waaaugh! because there's no reason not to.
Ghazghkull assaults into his raider. Primarch rolls no sixes and snatches up his dice as I say "Wait!! That one only moved 6" you only need 4+!" 3-4 hits later, I'm wrecked, but not exploded. o.O
The boyz and the remaining meganob assault into my wych raider and wreck it. Wyches get out and pass pinning.
Up in the hidden building on the right, we resolve combat and the deffkopta gets bitten by the agonizer and dies.
On the left, one of his deffkoptas assaults into my lone succubus....who pulls two power weapon hits out from nowhere and kills the deffkopta.
Dark Eldar Turn Four:
My wyches from the wrecked raider move a few inches away so that they end up 5" away from his trukk. I want to be able to shoot it, and if I don't kill it assault it while minimizing the impact of an explosion (IE, he rolls 4 or less on the explosion range).
The rest of my army mostly stays still; I've removed his mobility and now I'm going to shoot him at range.
On the left side, my heroic and lonesome wych moves out of cover to threaten the other deffkopta. Lances open up and finally penetrate that last battlewagon; the
KFF is out of range now so I wreck it.
On the other side of the board, a lance pops his trukk, ramshackles on target, and he moves it away from me. Only 4 go down this time.
My ravagers open up on the boyz on the left - despite my close proximity with a single wych, all three ravagers pump in there anyway and kill a chunk. They get pinned by a horrorfex too. My lone wych assaults his remaining deffkopta....and kills it! This single wych has killed two deffkoptas and stopped a battlewagon in its tracks - someone is getting extra souls tonight!
Ork Turn Four:
Apparently I forgot pictures here.
1. Ghazghkull moves across the broken raider closer to my army, rolls a 1 for dangerous terrain, but passes his invulnerable save (now off the Waaaugh!).
2. His other orks converge on my wyches that got caught in the open when his trukk ramshackled away and assault. I think I killed a few and lost a few.
Dark Eldar Turn 5
I move in for the kill.
Not quite sure what happened in this picture; the boyz are haphazard because Primarch put some models back. I think he was rolling 4+ cover instead of 3+ or something, and so I had him reroll them all and less died than otherwise would have. My lone wych comes around to threaten them, and another squad jumps out to support.
Lelith and the squad she is with move out to threaten Ghazghkull. He's not on the Waaaugh! anymore, but he's still a beast. Primarch says, "Oh, you're going to come out and play?" I say, "Yeah, but I have all these dark lances first...."
With no vehicles left to shoot at, I lance all over Ghazghkull. He rolls a bunch of 5+ saves! He still takes two wounds. My disintegrators take huge chunks out of his remaining boyz, and I follow up with assaults.
Lelith swings into Ghazghkull, causes three wounds, and Ghazghkull fails two of them. Poof.
The wyches on the left assault the remnants of the boyz (not many) and finish them off.
The big combat in the middle: I tossed another squad or two into the mix and they finished off the trukk boyz. His meganob dies to a succubus (two rounds of combat, one wound each round).
I should have taken a picture of my 4+ invulnerable saves, but I either made them all or most of them - Primarch shook his head in disbelief. Against him, my dice are mighty! I won combat by 1 or 2, and he failed leadership, failed his reroll and my wyches won the initiative roll off and executed the remainder of the orks.
Game End
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Post Game Assessment:
1. I do treat every game as hardcore match. My pre-tournament warmup / getting into the mindset is an internal steeling and self pep speech about how I'm going to mutilate everyone I play without mercy. I need to lighten up when I play with friends. Not having a
FLGS within traveling distance means that most of my "friendly games" are actually tournament prep against strangers on Vassal; so I need to work on that.
2. The two lists were a mismatch, especially given the scenario. No Lootas, ouch. I only play two armies in
40k, I play them both very well, and my honest assessment is that Orks should fear Dark Eldar.
3. I'm particularly proud of my idea of using empty raiders as roadblocks. I'm sure someone else will tell me that they thought of it first, or that its an old school technique that everyone who knows anything about
40k already uses (like most tactical advice I offer), but I didn't read it anywhere so I get to claim credit for original thought.
Interestingly....Primarch went on to face the OTHER Dark Eldar player in round three, who also tabled him. The other
DE player faced my first and second round opponent one round after me....getting double-teamed by Dark Eldar twice in a row is rough.
I move on from game two with 40/40 points. A brief inquiry finds out that I'm in the lead, and there are two players at 38 points - a solid Mech
IG player and a Space Wolf player I don't know. Mech
IG is the scissor to
DE paper, and I fervently pray that I don't get matched against him. Also worthy of note is that fully 1/2 of the armies in attendance were Blood Angels. I didn't get to face any of them.
