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Hey folks!

You can find my other battle reports for this tournament here:
Round One
Round Three


With a 30 point massacre under my belt, the tournament took a break for lunch. Turns out that there were 4-5 other people that also got 30 point massacres, so I ended up on Table 2 - the exact same table I had just been on, and fighting against the ONE list that scared me more than any others - 6 vendettas with triple threat twin-linked lascannons each, the ability to alpha strike meltas wherever he wanted...I expected this to be an ugly round mostly involving me dying. However, my opponent has the famous IG list themed after Blackhawk Down and I was impressed to playing someone with a famous army!

Dashofpepper's Pink Waaaugh!

HQ1: Ghazghkull Thraka
HQ2: Big Mek with Kustom Force Field, Powerklaw, Grot Oiler

Troop1: 7 diversified nobs (cybork bodies, painboy, 3 kombi-rokkits) in Battlewagon
Troop2: 16 Boyz + Nob/PK
Troop3: 11 Boyz + Nob/PK/Bosspole
Troop4: 10 Gretchin+Runtherder

Elite1: 15 Burnas Boyz (in battlewagon with Burnas)
Elite2: 5 Lootas
Elite3: 5 Lootas

Fast Attack1: Deffkopta with TL Rokkits + Buzzsaw
Fast Attack2: Deffkopta with TL Rokkits + Buzzsaw
Fast Attack3: 3x Warbuggies with TL Rokkits

Heavy1: Battlewagon, DeffRolla, Big Shoota, Grabbin' Klaw, Boarding Plank, Armor Plates
Heavy2: Battlewagon, DeffRolla, Big Shoota, Grabbin' Klaw, Boarding Plank, Armor Plates

Black Hawk Down IG list - I just went and found pictures of his army, and posted them here: Awesome IG Paint Scheme

HQ1: Company Command Squad (4), medi-pack, regimental standard, Straken, Bodyguard

Elite: Inquisitor (Emperor's Tarot), Mystic, Mystic
Elite: Storm Trooper Squad (4), 2x Melta, Sergeant
Elite: Storm Trooper Squad (4), 2x Melta, Sergeant

Troop1: Vet squad(9)+Sergeant(Melta Bomb), 3x Melta guns, demo charge
Troop2: Vet squad(9)+Sergeant(Melta Bomb), 3x Melta guns, demo charge
Troop3: Vet squad(9)+Sergeant(Melta Bomb), 3x Plasma guns, demo charge
Troop4: Vet squad(9)+Sergeant(Melta Bomb), 3x Plasma guns, demo charge
Troop5: Vet squad(9)+Sergeant(Melta Bomb), 3x Plasma guns, demo charge

Fast Attack1: 2x Vendettas, TL Lascannons, 2x Heavy Bolter Sponsons
Fast Attack2: 2x Vendettas, TL Lascannons, 2x Heavy Bolter Sponsons
Fast Attack3: 2x Vendettas, TL Lascannons, 2x Heavy Bolter Sponsons

Mission/Deployment
The game is Dawn of War deployment, modified Annihilation.

15 points: Annihilation - get more killpoints
10 points: Control more terrain features than your opponent. A scoring unit needs to be completely inside the terrain feature with no part out, and if embarked, the vehicle hull must be completely within the boundaries of the terrain feature.
5 points: Eliminate all enemy troop choices and dedicated transports.

My opponent rolled off with me for his Emperor's Tarot and we both rolled a 5. He gets -1 to his roll for first turn/side, and I get +1. He rolls a 4 and I roll a 5, and I choose to deploy and go first.

My deployment: I put nothing on the table. I want my HQs and troops together so that everyone is benefiting from the KFF. In return, my opponent also deploys nothing on the table. I can say that his list *really* scared me, but DoW offset some of that nastiness - I'd get at least a full turn of movement and then a turn of nightfight to protect me. He fails to seize the initiative, and the game gets started.


Ork Turn1 Movement: I roll onto the board 12" with my wagons and trukk, with my rokkit buggies getting 18" of movement and my deffkoptas screaming on 24". I was originally planning on picking a corner and rolling up a flank, and I realized that flanking...nothing...would be a mistake when all those lascannons would eventually get to rip me up from across the table. I rolled onto the table dead center. The hills gave me a bit of trouble - those deffrollas are made out of PVC pipe, with metal plates on the sides and magnetic metal strips attaching to the sides of the battlewagons - I'm going to have to redo them because the rollas are simply too heavy. I'm not sure what to replace them with yet - I haven't seen the GW kit, so I don't know how heavy the plastic ones are.


My Lootas move 6" onto the board, then run up further. I'll end up regretting their placement because they'll spend half the game out of range to shoot at anything.


On the other corner of the board, my other Lootas move 6" onto the table, then only roll 2" for their run - it will barely be enough for them to see over the lip of the hill they're moving onto.



IG Turn1: Rather than deploy on and nightfight against me, my opponent comes on in the middle of the table, then goes flat out into the corner. That seems a little shady in my book, but the only rule I know is start point to end point, and I guess you can do it. He boosts all of his Vendettas into the corner so that he'll get a 4+ against me for turn2.



Ork Turn2: I move 12" forward again - I use my deffkopta and rokkit buggies to help screen my battlewagon. I know that I'm going to take a faceful of lascannons, but I'm worried about grav-chuting guys plopping melta into me, and I was also worried about alpha-striking melta bombs...but I realized just now as I write this that he couldn't deploy out after moving then assault. *shrugs* Prudence.


My Lootas in the back right corner of my table open up on his closest Vendetta and wreck Straken's Vendetta. They pile out behind it.


Here's a picture of my opponent - if you haven't seen his army, check it out in the painting section; the entire army is themed after Black Hawk Down, with his sergeants having names of those lost in combat painted on the bases with rank, and many other cool things. I'm a former army guy too, so I just love this army.


IG Turn2: Both of his stormtrooper squads make their reserve rolls and come in - the first one attempts to drop in front of my battlewagons and mishaps; I get to place it where I want. I decide to put it down back by his vendettas - I can't drop it into an opposite corner where it won't do damage because its a kill-point mission, and I don't want to have to commit Lootas or a separate unit to go deal with them later, so I put them in the path of where I was headed anyway, but out of range to melta me.


He makes a ballsy deep strike attempt and lands right in front of my battlewagons with his Meltas. He's starting to deploy them here.


One of his vet squads gets out of a vendetta and moves 6" towards my wagons.


Meanwhile, he dumps a second vet squad out of the vendetta nearest straken's downed vendetta and puts Straken into it. Those vets move 6" up the field towards me, spreading out to block my access.


He opens fire for the first time this game (turn2) and starts with my Lootas. He kills three, and they fail leadership and break.


Between his lascannons and stormtrooper meltas, he destroys a battlewagon, kills two rokkit buggies, and kills a deffkopta. He weapon destroyed the center battlewagon.


I tank shock into his vets, who take a melta bomb auto-hit on me (or a melta shot) and he explodes a second battlewagon! My nobs pile out, and between the 2d6 deffrolla hits and the ensuing explosion, he takes casualties; three survive. Ghazghkull piles out of the burna wagon to try going to play with the stormtroopers that deep struck mishaped, while my forcibly disembarked boyz move 6" downrange towards one of his vendettas.


Ghazghkull is on the Waaaugh! this turn, so I get a full 6" - my nobs, Ghazghkull, and boys all scream forward 6" trying to close in and hurt things. My KFF moves in to assault the three remaining guardsmen; I'm after killpoints here.


My boyz squad that got blown out of their wagon moves towards his vendetta line, and sets up to also multi-assault into his guard.


Meanwhile, my gretchin have come out of reserve, and I run them into terrain in the far corner away from the IG - free killpoint, and I want them controlling a terrain feature to get the secondary objective.


My boyz pile into his vendettas, andd multi-assault his IG - I stick as many attacks as possible into his vendettas, with 5-6 orks attacking his IG - I roll several glances, and since they're a squadron, immobilization = wreck, and I roll 6s for both! Boom; two vendettas down. The one with troops still in it craps out another veteran squad, who line up for retribution next turn, while the IG I'm in combat with break and run.


My nobs zerg into Straken's new ride and do very bad things to it. Those are ammo runts in the back there; I use those for the kombi-rokkits.


I apparently forgot to take a picture of Ghazghkull's attacking here, but he wiped out the stormtroopers he was after (rolled a 6 for his assault move, needing a 5+). I know he's got demo charges and stuff waiting for me, so I consolidate my boys around, trying for some voodoo magic to keep them all from dying.


IG Turn3: He shifts around a little bit to get better lanes of fire, moves his remaining vendetta 1", and jets straken 6" away from my nobs. He opens up on my orks here, and you can see that my voodoo didn't do me much good.


Straken and the closest vet squad (with plasma) open up on my nobs - several get wounded and one goes down. His remaining vendettas fire on Ghazghkull along with a bunch of other nasties - 17 armor and invulnerable saves later, Ghazghkull emerges untouched. Bwah ha ha.


Ork Turn4: My burnas wagon rolls 12" up and I pile out around it. I configure in such a way that they're going to aim for the further unit as a primary target and between all my differently positioned burnas (only 4-5 of which can fire) they're going to hit three units. In this picture, I think he already picked up the fleeing unit.


Two of his units burn to death, and the third one takes a casualty or two - enough that I feel more comfortable assaulting in my tiny remaining boyz squad.


My boyz clean house, while my nobs pile into straken. He does bodyguard magic, making Straken only take a single PK attack, which he saves - Straken lives, and we're wrapped in combat. Meanwhile, Ghazghkull can't make it in with his remaining troop choice, and sits in cover.

IG turn4: His vendetta fires on Ghazghkull, who makes his saves (armor and cover), his troop choice fires on Ghazghkull (who makes his saves), and straken falls to a withering hail of powerklaw attacks. He actually saves 4/6 of them with his invul save.

At this point, my opponent concedes - he's got one troop choice left stuck between Ghazghkull and my nobs, which will both assault them, and the vendetta can't do anything meaningful to the objectives of the game since I will have killed all troop choices, gotten more killpoints, and have a scoring unit completely within terrain. He concedes, and I pick up a second 30 point victory.

I think a large part of winning was due to the deployment (Dawn of War) in conjunction with me getting to go first. Although....I would have been equally happy with any deployment, as long as I went first; pitched battle would have still had me at 12" on the board with a 12" movement after that before getting shot at. But going first here really, *really* helped.

I've learned to be wary of alpha-strike, and protected my wagons from meltaguns and bombs, and I think having a healthy respect for a list like this helped. I made a mistake at my last GT not playing aggressively enough, so this time was back to full-out speed and closing in as fast as possible. Were I in his shoes, I think I would have actually split my forces up, half on each board edge, and focused all fire on the Lootas, then used mobility to stay away from me. I was worried about not getting to deffrolla his vendettas, but I didn't get to anyway. In fact, the one time I used my deffrolla, I got exploded by a DoG.

I know there's been a lot of whining about the theoretical potential of deffrollas, but in my triple battlewagon threat, in all my practice games and now my tournament, they've done very little. There may come a day when I get to Deffrolla a land raider and kill it, but that stuff hasn't happened yet.

At this point in the tournament, I've got 60/60 battlepoints, and have the only two full massacres - I'm headed to table 1 for round three!

Small side note, the veteran squads had the "demolitions" upgrade, so all models had meltabombs (same upgrade that gave them the demo charges actually)

I considered taking a dodgy approach to this, but trying to outrun Ghaz buffed mech orks seemed like a losing proposition. Threat range is just too high and if I just tried to flat-out away I'd still be subject to loota harassment. Going second meant that by the time I was shooting you were in the middle of the table with an easy reach to anywhere on the board. Seemed like I might be able to get at least a draw KP wise around turn 3 with some good rolling, but the demo charge scattering off the nob squad and Ghazgulls invincibility was a serious problem for that plan. Seriously, the man took 20+ saves and still had 3 wounds by the end. Overall though I can't say I was too displeased, mech orks going first in general is a problem, at least the guard put some vague effort forth before going down.

It still seemed like a very intense match and I have to say that the Vendettas look really good. Well done, gentlemen, well done.

very VERY intense battle, I love gutsy deepstrikes, especially when they kill TWO tanks.

awesome batrep, I was expecting a lot more from the IG list. Seemed like you just rolled over him once assaults began. Nice work, nice work.

excellent report, Dash! And what an army to play against, did he end up getting any painting awards/player's choice?

as for how he(Mastershake) played, using a flying wing of Vendettas may look cool but its a very ineffective tactic. I would have had two in the middle and two on each flank. After immediately dealing with such small units of lootas and buggies you'd be left with chasing fast skimmers with 3 battle wagons, not a winning prospect. You would be exposing flank and rear armor to a lot of lascannon shots. By bunching up like he did, he gave you a goal to speed towards and because Vendettas are best moving only 6", they couldn't get away.

off to read #3!

Very good stuff Dash, nice to hear of your success.

My only question is, why the one random unit of trukk boyz? The rest of your army has such nice symmetry, then you have this one random unit of trukk boyz?

How about dropping the grotz, a deffkopta, and some nob upgrades to get another unit of trukkboyz and restore symmetry to the list.

Also, love the warbuggies, do you ultimately plan to include more? My list has 9 buggies, 2 KFF meks, 9 rokkitkanz, about 100 boyz and some lootas, and I find the buggies quite nasty.

Another great report, thanks for posting.

Warboss Gutrip wrote:Very good stuff Dash, nice to hear of your success.

My only question is, why the one random unit of trukk boyz? The rest of your army has such nice symmetry, then you have this one random unit of trukk boyz?

How about dropping the grotz, a deffkopta, and some nob upgrades to get another unit of trukkboyz and restore symmetry to the list.

Also, love the warbuggies, do you ultimately plan to include more? My list has 9 buggies, 2 KFF meks, 9 rokkitkanz, about 100 boyz and some lootas, and I find the buggies quite nasty.

The one random unit of trukk boyz are because I need the troop choices. Other folks have suggested things like paring down the burna boyz to get more trukk boyz....at this point, those trukk boyz seem to be serving as my reserve unit. I roll the battlewagons forward, and the trukk serves as a reactionary "fill-in-the-gap" unit to cover down where I need it. IE, hopping in to assist Ghazghkull against nob bikers, or things like that. At 2500 points for 'Ard Boyz, I may well have another unit of trukk boyz (or two). I haven't given 'Ard Boyz much thought yet, and I've got a GT coming up in a month in California to focus on....and I'm bringing Dark Eldar there, so Orks are shelved until May. My local area doesn't have much in the way of tournaments, so not much chance of me playing them locally for more experience until 'Ard Boyz.

In terms of the gretchin....having a 40 point troop choice consisting of 11 models is awesome. I reserve them most of the time, and they are the reason I don't need to leave a unit of boyz (trukk boyz) behind to hold an objective, or rush back to take an objective late game. I really like them. Stick an objective in cover, have the gretchin sit on it and go to ground, and you've got 3 point models with a 3+ cover save on your back table edge that can only be ranged by 36"+ weaponry - and if my opponent is going to dump fire into my gretchin that can range them instead of dealing with the immediate threat of battlewagons, more power to them.

It never ceases to amaze me how many tournaments and events set up bare tables with hardly any terrain, and what terrain is there is basically flat.

I agree.

GW should change their recommendation to; " AT LEAST 25% terrain that actually have an effect on gameplan. Flat, easily ignored terrain placed in a corner for example does not count towards the final 25% minimum."

Or something less wordy to that effect.

H.B.M.C. wrote:It never ceases to amaze me how many tournaments and events set up bare tables with hardly any terrain, and what terrain is there is basically flat.

On the flip side, its very annoying moving vehicles over hills, which I was having to do here.