Today, I met Big Green at our local
GW. He gave me a chance at redemption after the drubbing I received at the hands of his orks last time (
battle report found here). Last game, I told him I would probably bring my more competitive army - my mechanized Grey Knights - the next time we meet, so he was ready for me this time. He also brought his more competitive list - battlewagon orks.
Grey Knights 2K (My list)
Castellan Crowe
Venerable Dreadnought - 2x
TL-Autocannons, Psybolt Ammo
Venerable Dreadnought - 2x
TL-Autocannons, Psybolt Ammo
Vindicare
6x Purifier Grey Knights - 2x Psycannons, 3x Halberds, 1x Warding Stave, Rhino
6x Purifier Grey Knights - 2x Psycannons, 3x Halberds, 1x Warding Stave, Rhino
6x Purifier Grey Knights - 2x Psycannons, 3x Halberds, 1x Warding Stave, Rhino
6x Purifier Grey Knights - 2x Psycannons, 3x Halberds, 1x Warding Stave, Rhino
Dreadknight - Heavy Incinerator, Personal Teleporter
Dreadnought - 2x
TL-Autocannons, Psybolt Ammo
Orks 2K
This is an approximation as he modified his original list after I gave him some suggestions. I may be a little off.
Big Mek - Kustom Force Field, Power Klaw
Ghazghkull Thraka
15x Burna Boyz (in Battlewagon)
7x Lootas
6x Lootas
7x Diversified Nobs -
- 1x Painboy
- 1x Nobz Cybork Body; Waaagh! Banner; Big Choppa; Shoota/Skorcha Kombi-weapon
- 1x Nobz Cybork Body; Big Choppa; Shoota/Skorcha Kombi-weapon
- 1x Nobz 'Eavy Armour; Bosspole; Cybork Body; Power Klaw; Shoota/Skorcha Kombi-weapon
- 1x Nobz Cybork Body; Power Klaw; Shoota/Skorcha Kombi-weapon
- 1x Nobz 'Eavy Armour; Cybork Body; Power Klaw; Shoota/Skorcha Kombi-weapon
- 1x Nobz Ammo Runt; Cybork Body; Power Klaw; Shoota/Skorcha Kombi-weapon
Battlewagon - Armour Plates, 2x Big Shootas, Deff'rolla, Red Paint Job
19x Ork Boyz - Nob w/Boss Pole & Power Klaw
18x Ork Boyz - Nob w/Boss Pole & Power Klaw
20x Gretchins - 1x Runtherd
Battlewagon - Armour Plates, 2x Big Shootas, Deff'rolla, Red Paint Job
Battlewagon - Armour Plates, 2x Big Shootas, Deff'rolla, Red Paint Job
Battlewagon - Armour Plates, 2x Big Shootas, Deff'rolla, Red Paint Job
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PRE-GAME ANALYSIS:
Grey Knights:
I don't think this will be an easy battle for me. I will try to set up side shots on his battlewagons in Pitched Battle or Dawn of War deployment, but in Spearhead, I'm basically shooting at the AV14 front armor of his battle wagons in cover. He should be able to assault me on turn 2. The key for me may well be my Shooting phase. If I can disable his vehicles early (and I mean early as in turn 1), I have a really good chance to beat him. If not, I may be in trouble.
Big Green's orks have all the elements of a very competitive ork army. He's got Ghazzy who is just a monster in combat. He's get a
KFF Big Mek to protect all his vehicles. He's got a nasty nob unit. He's got 4 deff-rolla battlewagons. He's got a nasty unit of burnas in battlewagon to pile on the templates on enemy deathstars (though I think 15 is overkill). He's got 2 smallish units of lootas for support fire. And finally, he's got a unit of gretchins just to sit in cover on the home objective. Many inexperienced ork players don't realize how important gretchins are to a finely-tuned ork army, but they allow the rest of the ork army to advance without having to concern themselves with objectives. The name of the game is Maximum Threat Overlord and this is what gretchins are for. Overall, this army is a very nasty piece of work! This will be a true test for my knights.
Although I don't consider my dreadknight a very competitive unit, I am bringing him because he provides something my army is sorely lacking....speed and a credible threat. As the enemy will always be advancing, I really don't have a good way to get to his home objective to contest. I also need a way to take out lootas, long fangs, devastators, broadsides, exorcists, ravagers and other units that stay far back. Well, there's nothing quite like shunting to reach those hard-to-reach places. I'm finding units like dreadknights with personal teleporters and interceptors as almost a necessity in balanced
GK armies. Moreover, his resilience, his assault and his heavy incinerator makes him a credible threat that enemies just cannot ignore.
In annihilation, we are about even with a medium amount of kill points each. I think we will both able to take out each other's transports fairly evenly. While my transports are weaker than his, he also has less
AT shooting than me. And eventually, he will expose his side armor to me. My main concern is how well can I take out Ghazzy's unit and his nobs.
In seize ground, I think we are both about even. We both have 4 troop choices and, while he has the advantage of advancing, I have dreads to help tie up his units in assault if needed. He's going to find my vendreads to be a lot more resilient than my regular dreads that he faced last game.
In capture and control, I think he has the advantage. His whole army will be advancing whereas his gretchins will be on his home objective. I will have my hands full, and if I send my dreadknight towards his objective, that would be 1 less unit I have to help out against his entire army.
As for deployment, I don't mind Pitched Battle or Dawn of War, but I
don't want Spearhead. That will be where orks are strongest as I don't have an angle to his side armor. Instead, I will be facing his wall of AV14 armor in cover.
Last time, I made the mistake of giving him 1st turn. This time, I want to go first. Stopping him in his own deployment zone is crucial to my chances for victory.
Orks:
What should orks watch out for? Can we say, Purifiers? Yes, my purifiers will make a mess of his normal orks in assault, assuming I get Cleansing Flame off. However, I do need to be careful of his nobs. I need to gang up on them with multiple squads or they will wipe out my purifiers. Crowe is a real threat to him. Last game, Crowe wiped out 28 boys all by himself and then took out his Big Mek. This game, I am looking to do the same thing, only I'm going after Ghazzy with Crowe.
Although my infantry shooting is not as good as in the last game, he needs to beware of my
AT. It is a lot more dangerous. If I can get side shots with my dreads, I guarantee I will do damage to his battlewagons....even with
KFF protection. Although the vindicare failed me last game, I am hoping he can show his real worth this game. Lastly, I am going to make sure he doesn't ignore my dreadknight, because he will be sorry if he does.
So my strategy will be to shoot and then counter-assault. Dreadknight will go after any units in his backfield and prey on any disembarked boys with my heavy incinerator. How successful this will be will depend on how well my shooting does.
Oh, and it wouldn't hurt if I could go first.
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Mission: Seize Ground - 3 objectives
Deployment: Spearhead (Yikes.....)
Initiative: Orks (Double yikes....)
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Deployment:
Ork deployment. The land raiders are proxied as battlewagons. The shoota boyz are proxied gretchins.
In the battlewagons, from left to right, are Ghazzy + ork boys (the land raider redeemer), burna boys (red BW),
KFF Mek + ork boys (regular
LR) and nobs (unpainted BW).
Grey Knights deployment. Dreadknight and vendread try to provide cover to the units behind them. One of the purifier rhinos are empty. Castallen Crowe will be stealing their ride, but for now, he is deployed just outside and behind it.
Vindicare infiltrates 18"+ away from his gretchins to go for battlewagon side shots. We use the square bases as objectives.
I fail to seize the initiative and awwaaayyyyyy we go.....
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Orks 1
Full speed ahead.
Gretchins also advance.
His unit of 7-lootas get 3 shots a piece and blow up my right vendread. Didn't think lootas had it in them to wreck one of my vendreads.
The 6-lootas only get 1 shot each, but they still manage to take off 1 gun from my other vendread. 3 gretchins are in range and fire at my vindicare but do nothing.
Wow...for an army with hardly any shooting, his lootas did a lot of damage! Now let's see if I can repay in kind.
Grey Knights 1
This is a little trick I learned from SabrX. My 2 rhinos move at cruising speed and then form a wall. Purifiers disembark. Now I can shoot at his battlewagon's side armor but cannot get assaulted due to the 2 rhinos.
Other grey knight movement. Crowe gets into the empty rhino. One thing I like about dreadnoughts compared to long fangs/devastators is that I can move and still fire everything. My dread tries to get into the side arc of his lead BMW (that's battle-moving-wagon
).
Also, I forgot to take this picture, but my dreadknight shunts 30" to his 7-loota unit up in the ruins.
8 psycannon shots by 2 purifier squads into the sides of his nob's BMW blows it up. Unfortunately for me, no nobs (proxied using terminators) get hurt in the explosion thanks to
FNP.
Dreadknight incinerates the whole squad of 7-lootas.
We 4+ rolled for my vendread and it turns out that I am in the side arc of Ghazzy's BMW. My dread proceeds to blow it up, killing a couple of orks in the explosion.
My vindicare then pens his burnas' BMW, but cover saves them from another fiery explosion.
I mull over whether I want to assault Ghazzy's unit with my vendread. I finally decide that it's better to lock up Ghazzy in combat than to let him run rampant. This would also prevent my vendread from getting steamrolled next turn by his BMW's deff'rolla, assuming I survive Ghazzy's S10 power klaws. I kill 1 ork boy but Ghazzy (proxied using Logan's model) takes off my other gun and immobilises my vendread.
Orks 2
My opponent decides that he has to deal with my dreadknight before I burn down everything. Big Mek & friends move back to deal with him.
Burna wagon advances 13" and out disembarks the burnas. Uh, oh....this doesn't look good.
In shooting, his 6-lootas unit shakes one of my purifier rhinos. Also, about 12 gretchins are in range and shoot at my vindicare but fail to hurt him.
And then Ghazzy goes....
WWAAAAUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Burnas try to surround my purifiers.
Big Mek's unit makes it to the very top.
Nobs reach my rhinos. Nobs would then multi-charge both rhinos, blowing up 1 and immobilising/shaking the other. 1 purifier die to the explosion. Again, nobs are unharmed.
Burnas successfully surround my rhino in assault.
Orky Play-of-the-Game: 45 attacks auto-hitting against a stationary vehicle manages to glance it 7 times. He literally glances my rhino to death. Since he has my rhino surrounded, my purifiers cannot get out and so are dead. Very veteran move of my opponent.
In combat, my dreadknight squishes his Big Mek and kill 2 boys. He fails to harm my
DK as I make 2 5+ invulns against his nob's power klaw. He then loses another 4 boys to No Retreat.
Ghazzy blows up my handicapped vendread in combat, killing some more of his boys (and a couple of burnas as well).
Grey Knights 2
Purifiers get ready for some payback.
As does Crowe.
Dread fires at the side armor of his burna wagon and, without cover, easily blows it up. The explosion kills a couple more orks from Ghazzy's squad and maybe a couple of lootas as well.
I apologize, but here I run out of pictures. I need to go back and check my camera, as I took pictures of the entire game. Hopefully they are still there.
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Whew....it turned out that I didn't "lose" the rest of my pics....they were still in my camera. Thank goodness.
My vindicare tries to take out his nob squad's painboy, but his shot is just barely out of range. I forget to fire my purifiers on top of the ruins.
Crowe charges the burna boys.
After Cleansing Flame, parrying power weapons and No Retreat, burnas are down to 4 boys only. Crowe isn't even scratched despite a whole bunch of power weapon attacks directed at him.
Dreadknight kills a couple of boyz and takes 1W from the nob's power klaw.
Both purifiers shoot at his nobs but only cause 1 or 2W's after
FNP. They then assault. First squad uses force weapons. 2nd squad casts hammerhand as all but 1 of the nobs already have 1W at this point. After all is said and done, there are only 4 nobs left, of which 3 has only 1W left. The nobs do manage to take out 5 purifiers from the right squad (leaving only the justicar remaining) and 1 psycannon-knight from the left squad.
Orks 3
Last battlewagon immobilises itself on terrain, rolling '1' and then re-rolling a '1' for his dangerous terrain test.
Ghazzy breaks off from his boys. His boys then head towards Crowe.
In his shooting phase, lootas only get 1 shot each and whiff. Gretchins shoot at my vindicare but fails to get any wounds off my 3+ cover.
Ghazzy goes after my last dread....
....and blows him up.
My dreadknight kill another 1-2 orks and takes 2W's from the power klaw.
Boys assault Crowe in combat with burnas. Again, I cast Cleansing Flame and parry all attacks.
Crowe easily breaks both squads, sweeping the boys. Burnas run away.
Finally, my 2 purifier squads wipe out his nobs.
Grey Knights 3
My purifiers move and run towards the objectives. My rhino tank shocks his gretchins. He fails morale, runtherd kills a couple of gretchins and then he passes his re-roll.
Purifiers come down from the top of the ruins. Crowe also moves towards Ghazghkull. Purifiers fail to put a wound on Ghazzy with their shooting.
Vindicare pops his first and last battlewagon (no more BW's).
In assault, ork boys finally kill my dreadknight.
Crowe charges Ghazghkull but opts to parry instead. Ghazzy is not able to squish him to a pulp this turn, so they stay locked in combat.
Orks 4
Turn 4 - beginning of the end.
Last unit of ork boys go after my lone purifier justicar on the right objective (I moved there on my last turn).
Gretchins move towards my vindicare and finally manages to put 1W on him after spending the last 4 turns shooting at him.
Lootas shoot at my unit of 4 purifiers heading towards the middle objective but fail to kill any.
Ork boys assault my lone justicar.
Cleansing Flame kills 4 and my force weapon kills 2....the ork squad is wiped.
Crowe continues to parry and Ghazzy is getting really mad now. Nothing gets through Crowe's re-rollable 4++ invuln. I shouldn't have parried. Should've just let Ghazzy kill me so that Crowe can use Heroic Sacrifice to take out the ork warboss.
At this point, I've got one objective here already that can't be contested.
I'm also on my way to 2 objectives which are easily within reach.
My opponent only has Ghazzy (locked in combat with Crowe), the flamebait...ahem, I meant gretchins, and his 6-loota unit left. There is no way he can get to 2 of my objectives and his gretchins would probably die to my purifiers if he tried to contest the 3rd objective. So with this, he concedes.
Victory to the Grey Knights!!!
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Post-game Anaylsis:
While I thought this would be a tough fight, I really wasn't surprised about the outcome. It really could have gone either way. I had some good rolls, especially on the vehicle damage charts as I was wrecking his battlewagons (come to think of it, I exploded every single one of them). Crowe just wouldn't die, even with all the power weapon and power klaw attacks that went his way (he survived 2 full turns of fighting against burna power weapons, 1 turn against a power klaw nob and 2 full turns against Ghazzy) and my lone justicar wiped out a 6-boy squad in 1 phase!
One of the advantages of the grey knights over their fellow marines is their mobile firepower. Other
MEQ armies (with the exception of mech-Angels) have a really hard time against ork battlewagons in
Spearhead as their firepower is primarily static. Long fangs and heavy weapons cannot reposition themselves so they are stuck firing at front armor. I knew that with my army, I could easily reposition myself to flank his army and get side shots.
Another weakness of BW orks is that they need to stay together, at least initially. I tried to exploit that fact by forcing him to split up. Shunting my dreadknight after his lootas was such a tactic. With my
DK free to roam in his backfield, I essentially forced him to break up his army in order to deal with my
DK. That is basically a necessary tactic against BW orks. Flank them and force them to split up, and when they do, you are set up for side shots without cover for the non-
KFF targets.
One of the strengths of a good army without strong assault (i.e. my army) is that if you cannot out-assault the opponent, then you need to hold them off. That is where my dreads and Crowe comes in.
GK dreads serve 2 purposes. Besides being are the very best gun platform in the game today, they are also a tarpit unit used to protect the more fragile knights against enemy assault units. While my regular dread didn't really stand a chance against Ghazghkull, my vendread held him and his ork boys for 2 assault phases, buying me valuable time to deal with the rest of his army. And then there is Crowe. In the games that I've played, that guy has held up 30 ork boyz, power-weapon toting burna boys or howling banshees and even Ghazghkull himself. And once he does bite the farm, you can bet he's taking his enemy with him. I took out the Nightbringer before. I wanted to take out Ghazzy but the game ended before then.
Cleansing Flame is just brutal against orks, almost as bad as Warp Quake is to daemons. That's why a purifier list presents such a problem to orks. Someone mentioned about shoota boys and I agree that they may be the way to go against the knights. While ork shooting is highly inaccurate, enough of them will hurt
MSU min-sized
MEQ units. But even if 1 purifier survives, he can take out about 10-13 orks (from a 30-boy squad) in assault with Cleansing Flame before dying.
Mistakes-wise, I didn't make many. Probably the most visible mistake I made was in not moving my purifier rhino (the rhino that his burnas assaulted). I under-estimated his assault range and because my rhino had not moved, his burnas auto-hitted. That cost me a squad.
My opponent did make a couple of mistakes. The first was in deployment. He thought he would give me the spearhead corner with the least amount of terrain (just 1 big terrain). While his corner had 2 ruins for him to place his lootas, it also didn't have any objectives for his gretchins to sit on. What he failed to realize, though, is that unlike my foot-
GK list which required terrain for its survival, my mechanized
GK's didn't.
I wouldn't have assaulted the Big Mek into my dreadknight. He's just asking to get squished before he can even do anything. Instead, I would've split him off from the squad and probably have left him in the BW to try to go help out the other units.
His other mistake was charging his ork boys into the Crowe-burna melee. What I would have done was probably let Crowe finish off he burnas and then screen him off with the boys. Why? This would buy time for Ghazzy to kill the dread and then assault my purifiers.
It's ironic that my opponent didn't get to use 2 of his more dangerous weapons in this game - the deff'rolla and the skorchas/combi-skorchas. Though no fault of his own, I just didn't give him the opportunity to use them.
Now, the units....
Crowe: A. Another spectacular performance. I've learned since my last game with him. Footslogging Crowe is just too slow. Better to let him "steal" one of the rhinos so that he can get to where he needs to be faster. In this game, he was my counter-assault unit. He took out the 225pt burnas and finished off the rest of Ghazghkull's ork boys. Then he went and tied up Ghazzy to prevent him from wreaking any more havoc on my army. The cherry on the top would be to take out Ghazzy, but alas, that didn't happen.
Dreadnought: B. Took out 1 battlewagon and then died to Ghazghkull. Not bad.
Vindicare: B. Also took out 1 battlewagon and survived a bunch of gretchin-shooting. That's enough to warrant another try in my future lists.
Purifiers: A. Unlike last game where they kept dying, they were superb this game. Took out his 500pt+ nob squad, 1 battlewagon and some ork boyz. That lone justicar taking out the 6-ork boys was just spectacular, though that was more of a fluke (didn't expect him to take them out until after 2 turns of assault). Putting them in rhinos really makes a big difference.
Dreadknight: B+. He actually did well this game. He killed a squad of lootas, the
KFF Mek and a lot of ork boyz. He also forced my opponent to divert some of his resources to deal with my
DK, thus taking the pressure off the rest of my army.
Venerable Dreadnoughts: B. While one of them died before it got a chance to do anything, the other one did take out 1 battlewagon and then held off Ghazzy for 1 turn, buying my army some valuable time.
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MVP's:
Grey Knights:
Purifiers: I'm giving it to my purifiers this game. Not only did they well in battle, but they would have gone on to grab all 3 objectives had the game probably continued.
Orks:
Ghazghkull: This is a close one between Ghazzy and his burna boys. His burnas wiped out an entire squad of purifiers and 1 rhino. Ghazzy kille 2 dreads, one of which was venerable. I gave it to Ghazzy simply because his Waagh gave all his units the ability to get into assault - his nobs, big Mek unit and the burnas. Otherwise, the burnas probably wouldn't have been about to do what they did to my purifiers.
.....Bay Area Open GT 2013 - Best Tyranids 
.....LVO GT 2014 Team Tournament - Best Generals
5000+ pts. 
2500 pts. All Built, Mostly Painted Pics: 
Complete! Pics: 
Daemons, just starting Pic: 
And if you're drinkin' well, you know that you're my friend and I say "I think I'll have myself a beer" 
2000 pts 
8k points
3k points
