Welcome to game 15. To view this series' other battle reports, click
here.
This monday, the team league continued, but my partner failed to materialize. Luckily for me, some random person strolled on in looking for a game. After giving my partner ample time to show up, it was decided to just go ahead and do our own thing.
THE CHALLENGER: WAAAAAAAAAAAA-
1500 pts.
Boss
Friggin' huge pile of nobz with doc
25 slugga boyz
25 more slugga boyz
25 MOAR SLUGGA!
Lootas
THE DEFENDER: -aaaaaaugh!
1500 pts.
Melta
CCS, astropath
3x priests
Melta
PCS, al'rahem
Melta
PCS
Flamer
PCS
20-man power blobs, flamer, 2x meltabombs
20-man power blobs, flamer, 2x meltabombs
20-man power blobs, flamer, 2x meltabombs
Hydra
Hydra
Manticore
Hoard armies! Huzzah!
We rolled dawn of war, annihilation. He rolled for first turn, I failed to seize. At deployment, the field looked like this:
So, we're both big, angry, choppy throngs of soldiers. Of course, only one of us can to gain any particular advantage by charging, and with him starting out with field position and having the ability to fleet once per game, that person is not going to be me. There will be close combat, but I don't really have any choice but to hide in a corner and play a game of reaction to his mobs. Rhamael is going to sit off field and hope to surprise a mob.
TURN 1
Report concerning the action on: Ocheian 23
Daxos Line
Rain, rain! Can anything stop this accursed rain!?
For weeks my men have been hampered in their positions due to the endless torrents. All attempts to continue our outflanking have meet with monsoonic disaster. An endless sea of mud has been churned up by fighting, causing what I have begun to fear will be an endless stalemate as my troops spend more time bailing out their trenches with canteens than extending their lines.
More protests to my superiors have been made with great urgency to no avail. I now no longer own a single dry garment. All 24 of my spare uniforms have been soaked, and have been thus ordered summarily destroyed. Even supplies have been difficult in the acquisition thereof. My men are now down to soggy fixtures of various cereals, and my brandy supply is nearly exhausted. Only the sweet embrace of this dark, luscious mistress can ward off the endless moisture gripping my men in a torture of a type most slow, and voraciously soggy.
After yet another day of downpour, adjunct commissar Raust informed me that he could make out shapes of a possibly encroaching enemy. I searched desperately for my micro vox and my brandy. With both the weather and the enemy upon me, I required all the reinforcement I could receive.
The game begins with the rest of my opponent's stuff showing up. Wave after wave of boyz proceed to charge across the field:
In shooting, he rolls pretty poorly with his run rolls on the closest units.
After this point, the field looked like this:
In short time, I heard the outbreak of a great commotion on the other side of my positions. Being unable to make out a target (the mist and rain kept visibility down to a very short span), I ordered my forces to collect around me to prepare for whatever may come.
I reply by bringing most of my stuff onto the field.
I was actually hoping that my partner would roll better for his running. As it is, I need to keep my troops either just outside of 18" from his boyz, or within 12" so that I can get a charge off. That 6" hole is basically the murderzone where I get waaaaughed by slugga boyz and made to dissappear. As my opponent didn't manage to make it to within 12" due to bad difficult terrain/run rolls, I'm now forced to gently nudge my power blob outside of 18" again.
In shooting, night fighting keeps casualties down to zero ( I even managed to clean out like half of his nobz with a manticore shot before we remembered night fight. Alas.).
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 2
My troops thus assembled and the great heavenly barrage of interminable droplets slightly abated, the target became visible. Orks! Bloothirsty florae of lacerateous mangling and chopping of many a stalwart defender of goodness and truth. Our men faced off boldly against them. They but awaited the order to fire.
In his turn, everything continues to charge forward except the lootas, who ping a guardsmen through cover.
Once again, my opponent rolls TERRIBLY for his run rolls. Tragically, this once again leaves me just outside of 12" right in the murderhole. This time, though, there's no where for my troops to fall back towards.
After this point, the field looked like this:
Now I'm stuck. At probably over 12" away (just barely), there's no way I'm going to be able to get the charge in, and at just over 12", my opponent is going to waugh my face. I have no choice but to advance and fire. I try and scoot my guys in such a way to keep out of 18" of the nobz.
Then the orders come. First rank.... FIRE! two power blobs open up, one at 12" and the other at 24". A light flamer hit and some pistol fire joins 85 lasgun shots. Then the hydras chime in with 8
TL autocannon shots and 6 heavy bolter shots. Thanks to some pretty good rolling, the squad is wiped down to the nob and one boy. The squad fails morale, and the nob finishes off the last boy with a bosspole for the morale check passed.
My army now faces down the field that was just so recently brimming with orks...
>
The turn ends with my manticore shooting his nobs. Unfortunately, I only get one shot, which scatters far enough away to only knick a single nob, who passes his invul save.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 3
Now bereft of one boy squad, he continues to charge forward.
His lone nob left from the boy squad was out of 12" (barely), instead of instigating his waaaugh just to get a single nob into a combat that he would very likely be killed in before he had a chance to strike with his klaw, he decided just to shoot at my blob, but missed.
After this point, the field looked like this:
As the lasfire died down, I could only look on in awe of the damage my troops had done. Were the orkish foe made of meat, I would call it carnage. As is, it was more like a wet, mildewy, death lichen chopped salad sans vinaigrette.
Once put down, I could hear the sound of slogging by foot from my left. Delayed but not unduly diminished, reinforcements from a nearby group arrived to bolster my position. Our killing field was now well established.
My turn begins with Rhamael showing up from reserves. I throw the power blob in towards the boyz while everyone else spreads out to help prevent outflanking by the koptaz getting to my vehicles. Rhamael throws down fleet on the blob. This time, it's my turn to get the charge in.
Before the bloodbath begins, my manticore shoots at his nobz, but once again only lands one shot and once again scatters and once again my opponent makes some invuls. The tragedy is offset by hydras throwing down a can of whoopass, but
FNP keeps casualties down as well. Oh, and I aced the lone nob with something.
In the charge, my power blob flies into combat. I start by throwing down a reasonable 9 kills on the boy. The remaining 16 boyz turn around and kill an astonishing 16 guardsmen! My eviscerator then horribly flubs it with two 1's to wound, killing only 1, while the power klaw kills another couple of my guys.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 4
In my opponent's turn, he gets his koptaz in. I've left him no place to go to harrass my vehicles, though, so he decides to go for Rhamael.
Everything else piles in.
In shooting, lootas ping a couple more guardsmen who once again get cover saves thanks to terrain and the boyz everywhere. The koptaz then shoot Rhamael. I decide for some reason to go to ground, but I get no cover saves. The koptaz then charge in and shred the rest of the squad.
In the big scrum on the left, my remaining dudes put down an appropriate 4 boyz. The remaining 11 boyz put down 21 wounds! Needless to say, the blob is wiped.
After this point, the field looked like this:
Well, that sucked. Instead of winning the combat with a few models to spare, my opponent's dice have decided to turn his 25 boy mob into a 40 boy mob for him and wiped me away. Most unfortunately, he got 2
KP for that because of the priest. This means at this point he's technically ahead of me 3:1.
All I can do now is hope to reclaim some
KP from his stuff on the left. As such, I move everything forward towards his koptaz and boyz. Daxos rolled a measly 1 for difficult terrain, but everyone else made it in range. Meanwhile, on the right, I prepare to play the murder-hole game with his nobz and last boy squad.
Shooting starts with 3 meltaguns putting down 2 koptaz and a laspistol putting one wound on the last one. At this point I'm stuck. I really would rather not shoot the 3x plasma barrage at the one remaining kopta wound when there are boyz I desperately need to handle. I start instead, then, by lobbing my manticore at the boyz in such a way so as to also wing the kopta.
Karma decides to pay me back for the boyz rolling and my terrible manticore shooting from previous rounds. This time, the ranging shot hits dead on and I get 3 blasts. The other two roll one scatter towards his stuff and one hit. The end result against his kopta and 11 remaining boyz is something like 2 hits on the kopta and something ridiculous like 15-20 hits on the boyz. Needless to say, nothing survived.
The rest of the shooting involved hydra fire and 24" lasgun fire against his nobs (the squad failed FRF, though), but he passed basically all of his
FNP checks.
After this point, the field looked like this:
At this point, my opponent signals that he's going to have to go very soon. As it stands, we've both taken 3
KP from each other. The odds of either of us gaining a
KP next turn are nil, and the odds of either of us gaining one in the next two turns are rather small. For good measure, I roll for continuation of the game after turn 5 and roll a 2.
FINAL RESULTS
With time in the crunch due to the late start and both of our choppy forces rather far away from each other, both players agree, this game is a draw.
- It was nice to finally get to play against another proper horde army. Casualties for everyone!
- Playing my basic kind of list at this higher points level has revealed a flaw in my list. While before, at 750 points, I was way undercutting most people's number of potential
KP brought to the field, this time I brought nearly as many as a mechanized list. True, my opponent brought rudely few, but that doesn't change the fact that this type of
CC list is one that I'm going to have a hard time winning
KP games against with both SWSs AND priests in the same army. It's not all that likely that I'm going to be having this problem in the future, but it's still something to think about...
- Needless to say, it was a little odd ranking up and FRFing. Like the ability to non-blob, I sort of see shooting as a strange card in the back pocket that can be played occasionally. Most of the time, shooting has not been helpful, but in this case...
MVP: the manticore. Even though it sucked it up to begin with, it claimed 2/3ds of my
KP this game.
Hero of the Game: The valiant men of the right side power blob who withstood a vicious ork charge by sheer guts and lasfire. Their bravery thus gave them the chance to then run over and hide behind the palisade like a bunch of little girls.
With the approach of evening and a renewed tidal wave of rain, the field became an inky quagmire. The sudden outburst of lightning in our very near vicinity caused the nearby orks to panic. From what we could tell, they took their opportunity to escape into the darkness, but perhaps the darkness had simply taken the opportunity to conceal the menace still very near our lines.
We waited on a knife's edge through the night for an attack which never came. Needless to say, any advance on our part was right out.
I set my men to attempt to dig trenchworks in the event of sudden peril. I then took the chance to relieve myself to a slightly rearward position. I had taken the liberty of postponing an ammunition shipment so as I could fill my portable bathtub with silica salt pellets in a desperate attempt to dehydrate myself. If only the rain would cease...
In grateful service,
Sir Daxos P. Clinton III - KAP, EKS, ICM - Foleran Armies in his Majesty's Royal Dictate.
Blood Conquers All
I hope you enjoyed game 15. Look for the conclusion of the team league next week!
Innocence Proves Nothing 
2000 pts.
5000 pts.
4000 pts.