Longtime Dakkanaut
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Lists:
Orks:
Warboss on Bike w/Powerklaw, Cybork body, attack squig
Big Mek w/KFF
30 Slugga Boys, 3 rokkits, bosspole, Nob w/PK
30 Slugga Boys, 3 rokkits, bosspole, Nob w/PK
30 Shoota Boys, 3 rokkits, bosspole, Nob w/PK
30 Shoota Boys, 3 rokkits, bosspole, Nob w/PK
15 Lootas
15 Lootas
2 Killa Kans w/rokkit, CCW
2 Killa Kans w/rokkit, CCW
2 Killa Kans w/rokkit, CCW
Daemons:
Herald of Khorne w/chariot, unholy strength, Icon of Chaos
Herald of Khorne w/chariot, unholy strength, Icon of Chaos
Herald of Khorne w/chariot, unholy strength, Icon of Chaos
Herald of Khorne w/chariot, unholy strength, Icon of Chaos
4 Bloodcrushers w/Fury of Khorne
4 Bloodcrushers w/Fury of Khorne
4 Bloodcrushers
5 Bloodletters
5 Bloodletters
5 Bloodletters
5 Pink Horrors w/Bolt
5 Pink Horrors w/Bolt, changling
5 Pink Horrors w/Bolt
Soul Grinder w/Tongue
Soul Grinder w/Tongue
Soul Grinder w/Tongue
Roll for Mission gives 5 objectives
(Good for fighting orks, force them to capture with troops, that's troops not in the mix. Definitely much better than KP, given my MSU army. 2 Objectives would just lead to a draw fest, unless one of us slaughtered the other)
We put out the objectives, there ends up being 2 sort of in the middle, and 3 in the middle of 3 of the quadrants. I'm once again surprised at an opponent who doesn't seem to understand their army's objective profile. Orks like the objectives close together and in the center. He's actually the one who put down 2 of the corner ones. Sheesh.
Roll for Deployment Zone gives Spearhead That's pretty good, as it means his lootas will be back in a corner, and that there might be a section of the board that they can't reach. It's better than Pitched Battle, and much worse than Dawn of War (gotta love Dawn of War with Daemons vs. Orks)
Roll to go first/select deployment zone, I win.
Ordinarily, I'd wish to make my opponent go first, they lose a shooting phase, contest at end of game, etc, but I want to keep him bottled up in his quarter, so I elect to go first. I select as my deployment zone the corner opposite the corner with no objective, so he's penned up with no flag.
He sets up fairly conventionally along his frontier, with the shootas on the ends of his half-moon, and the sluggas in the middle. He's got the 3 Killa Kan pairs front & center, within range of the KFF. His warboss is also front and center. He's got his Lootas hiding out in the back, in cover.
He elects not to Seize the initiative, and I get ready to take my first turn.
I select 3 Grinders, 3 Crusher squads and 2 Heralds, and roll a 6, so I've got my A-team.
Examining his fortress, my first thought is that he has some serious firepower. 2 Loota units, 2 shoota units, and all those rokkits. I want to be fighting as fast as possible. Also, when 2 Furious Charge armies face off, the loser is the one who gets charged, so I need to do the charging. Finally, with the Waargh he is faster than me when it counts.
This presents a difficult problem, as I need to get fairly close to him, but he'll win if he charges me. I think about it, then decide to put the Soul Grinders up front. Since I've got him penned in he needs to come to me (if the Grinders charge into where he's standing he'll have some serious trouble leaving his zone, given that the Grinders will hang around a while, and then explode, and leave behind difficult terrain.), but the vast majority of his boys can't hurt the Grinders. The all-powerful slugga boy charge can be held by grinders, and will then evaporate in the face of a khornate counter-charge.
So I drop the 3 Grinders roughly evenly spaced along his line. I put my chariots and Crushers behind the line, though one unit of crushers scatters up into the line, while another scatters way back. Runnign lets me even out my formation somewhat, end up with 3 Grinders and a crusher unit in front, a crusher unit and 2 chariots in back, and a crusher unit WAY back.
I fire the Soul Grinder's Tongue attacks at the Killa Kans, but the cover save makes them shrug the 2 pens off. Phooey.
On his first turn he moves up on me, with the exception of one Shoota boy squad who goes towards the primarily unoccupied corner. His Biker moves up between one of my grinders and a Herald, and all his Killa Kans move up on my line. His shooting is mostly uneventful, one loota squad gets 3 shots and guns down the Herald near his Warboss, and the other gets 2 shots and kills a Crusher and wounds another.
In his charge phase he sends a pair of kans into one of my 3 man Bloodcrusher units (one with rending), and a pair of cans and his warboss into a second soul grinder. His last Kan unit is too far out to charge this round. The bloodcrushers do nothing to the cans, who do nothing right back (3's to hit, 6's to glance meet 5's to hit, 2's to wound and a 5+ invul, combat that will never ever end begins). Warboss and the pair of cans vs. the other grinder is a more exciting fight, as the Grinder snips the warboss's head off and is then blown up by the cans, who massacre a little closer.
At the top of the second, reserves gives me the Changling, a Herald and 2 Bloodletter squads.
I consider the situation. The changling needs to be vaguely close, in order to mess with the Lootas, but there's no real reason for the Bloodletters to be anywhere near this fight. They would just get loota'd, and charging them into battle with the big ork mobs is just a way to lose them. They way to kill those ork mobs is with my Heralds/Crushers. So far we are roughly even, I've lost a grinder and he's lost his warboss. I think I can go for the objectives with the Letters. It's earlier than I like, but with those loota's there's not much "give" in the objective claiming. I don't want to have a draw because I kill his troops and he loota's down the one of my units that's stuck on a random objective. The Herald, of course, needs to be in the center fighting area. A Herald is an Ork-slaughtering machine.
So I drop the changling in on the surviving Herald's icon, alonside the existing Herald. The Bloodletters fall on the two corner objectives he's not near, in some terrain. I move my Bloodcrushers (the unengaged squad) towards his force, and then run them even closer. The close Bloodcrushers move towards the Cans that just killed my Grinder. I move the two unengaged Soul Grinders closer to him. One rolls a 6 to fleet, and is close enough to charge his shoota boy squad. The other charges in on a pair of kans, seeking to free up my soul grinders.
The charging Bloodcrushers do nothing to the kans they charge, who do nothing back. The charging Grinder kills 1 slugga boy, and gets another on the no retreat, and the charging Grinder destroys one of the two cans fighting my Crushers, due to the magic of combat allocation.
On his second turn he calls the Waargh, and moves up in earnest. His lootas, deprived of most targets, focus in on the sole Bloodcrusher unit that isn't engaged in combat, killing half of it. He's moved a shoota squad towards it, but flubs the difficult terrain test + waaargh roll, due to having shot himself out of the charge. He moves a pair of cans towards the Grinder/Crusher/Kan combat.
When he charges in with his pair of kans, the Grinder crushes them both before they can swing. Unfortunately, the standing Kan punches the Grinder and blows it up, as the Crushers beat fruitlessly on it.
On my next turn another Herald and 2 Pink Horror units fall in. I drop them all in the center. All my Pink Horrors shoot at the shoota boy unit, killing like a third of them, and then the surviving 2 crushers charge in there. The 2 Heralds charge into the slugga boys who are still swinging on the Grinder, and start a wholesale massacre. In 2 seperate fights, the 3 Crushers can't do anything to the 2/1 Kans, and vice versa.
He's got 2 free units, and he moves in with both of them. He also shoots his lootas at my free Herald, and does 2 wounds. He rolls badly on difficult terrain, and can't get his shoota boys into my crushers fighting his one can, but his other slugga boy squad charges in to try and thump the grinder that's holding all his slugga boys in place to get masascred by the Heralds. Basically the only thing that happens this round is a lot of slugga boys die.
On my turn I figure this is pretty much wrap-up. If my crushers ever punch out those kans (which they've been whittling down) I'm in the clear, and there's not much more I can do to improve my odds. I get my last units in, and move them towards the scuffles and objectives. The battles grind on, this round he punches out the center grinder (it explodes, and kills more Orks), finally, but vs. 3 Heralds his sluggas are evaporating. The unit that first took the Grinder charge breaks and flees, under half so it can't rally.
On his turn he shoots down a Pink Horror unit and half of a bloodletter squad with his lootas, and finally gets the last slugga unit into the center scrum, just in time to take combat res from the second unit of sluggas being slaughtered by 3 Heralds. Then, in a catastrophic moment for him, my Crushers finally bust the cans, simultaneously.
Basically, at this point, there's ~15 shoota boys fighting one grinder, about to be charged by 3 more, and ~10 shoota boys fighting 3 Heralds on chariots, about to be charged by 3 Crushers. There are also 5 Daemon troop units lurking on the objectives in either x formations or cover. He's got 2 loota units unengaged. Seeing no chance at victory he concedes.
Normally I don't write up battles this one-sided, but I thought that writing up how Khorne Daemons engage a fairly well-played, well-built ork army would help me get a better handle on how to replicate my success.
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