The Savage Batrep #1
Assault on Black Reach!
Welcome to the first episode of The Savage Batrep! I’m new to the game, so what we have to begin with is my Assault on Black Reach set.
AOBR minis are everywhere, but how many of you have actually played the matchup that comes in the box?
For this game, I borrowed a friend of mine who has everything you need to play
40k except an actual army of his own, and met up at our local
FLGS. I’m playing as the Ultramarines while he is fielding my Orks. I’ll be building up the Ork army, and I wanted to give the marines a shot before I concentrate on orks.
This is actually a rematch, although the first game gets a big asterisk, as I was playing Orks that game and had misinterpreted Furious Charge to grant +1 A instead of +1 S. In my defense, the S and A are right next to each other on a keyboard, so this is a completely understandable mistake. That game my friend also made a tactical blunder by deploying his marines in some ruins to grant them a fairly useless cover save and gave himself terrible
LOS issues on turn 1 and the Orks blew up the dread with their very first shot and then proceeded to overrun the
SM in short order with their extra cheatin’ attacks. So we’re looking to have a more rules-compliant and tactical game this time.
Deployment
Like our first game, we rolled annihilation/pitched battle, giving us the most vanilla game type with the vanilla boxed set.
I won the roll and picked the side that I thought would give my tactical marines better fire lanes and deployed on the hill. We decided that it would be difficult terrain but would grant no cover save, so I was hoping to take advantage of stikkbom-less ork boys if it came to that. I placed the dreadnought out in the open to take advantage of the fire lane on my left side, but I probably should have taken advantage of the patch of dead trees to give me cover against the inevitable twin-linked rokkits that would be heading my way.
I placed my termies in reserve, for the sole reason that I wanted to deep dtrike bcuz deap strking iz kewl.
The boys deploy on the far right lane and the nobs deploy on the left. The deffkoptas deploy on the left in preparation for dread-hunting. I offered to houserule them as one kill points opponent said he was okay fielding the extra kill points. He decides not to make a scout move and doesn’t steal initiative.
Ultramarines 1
The Marines, as king of the hill, stay put as long as possible to lay down some fire.
They send a frag missile into the heart of the horde and pick off a few boys. Meanwhile, the dreadnought opens up on the nobs, wounding one with its stormbolter and vaporizing another with it multimelta.
Orks 1
Two koptas move up front and one moves along the left flank and shoot at the dreadnought.
Me: Okay, three rokkits at
AV 12.
Master Strategist: Ah! But one is shooting at it’s side armor. What’s the
AV of that!
Me, impressed by takktiks: Ooh, you’re right. (Eagerly looks it up.) Oh. Twelve. Only its rear armor is lower.
Master Strategist: Oh.
Me: You probably should have made a scout move.
Master Strategist: Yeah, I probably should have.
Regardless, the rokkits score a penetrating hit and get a crew stunned result.
The boys and nobs all run forward.
Here’s the board at the end of round 1.
SCORE: 0-0
Ultramarines 2
I roll a 3 and the terminators don’t come in from reserve, leaving the
tac squad and their captain to hold down the fort. They do so in style, letting loose with another frag grenade. However, I roll boxcars and it harmlessly scatters 8 inches away.
Undeterred, the rest of the battle-brothers level their bolters and squeeze off single shots into the horde, picking off one more boy.
They’re supposed to be dying faster than this, thought Captain Vanilla as the green tide clamored towards his entrenched position. And where the hell are my terminators?
Meanwhile, the dreadnought holding down the left flank casually disregards the difference between a 1 and a 2 and scoots back 6 inches.
Orks 2
The orks second turn goes by pretty quick. The infantry runs up again and the rokkits all miss.
Had the dreadnought stayed still, the nobs might have been able to assault. However, they can’t beat AV12 with their un-‘uge choppas, so tying up with the dread in close combat would probably not have been a wise idea, so I don’t feel too bad for my mistake.
Here’s the board at the end of turn 2.
SCORE: 0-0
Ultramarines 3
I roll a 5 and the terminators enter the board. I was hoping the could so some cool pincer move or come in behind enemy lines, but when I took a minute to look at the board I decided that I would bring them in on the left to challenge the multi-wound nobs with 4 power fists. I didn’t come in behind the orks so that they could the marines if necessary. I aim them near the dread but they scatter back 6 inches.
Still plenty of room to shoot at the nobs, and they deal four wounds, killing two and causing a morale check, which they fail.
The dreadnought then charges them and the nobs fail to regroup and are cleaned up.
I made a slight rules flub, interpreting that an assaulting unit doesn’t actually move when it kills a falling back unit that fails to regroup. I thought it was a weird rule at the time, and it was, because I was wrong; the no-move rule is only when models catch falling back units in multi-assaults. But it didn’t affect the game at all.
The marines are aware that the orks are within charging distance on their next turn and have a few options: hold their ground to get a missile off, fall back towards the terminators, or charge forward and engage the enemy straight on. So, like a proper wargamer, I reached for my flamer template and put down as many bolts as my itchy trigger finger can handle.
Altogether 6 boys bite it, leaving 11 and the warboss (a trukkful!) for the inevitable charge.
Orks 3
The orks make their slow march up the battlefield. The warboss begins to salivate at the thought of krumpin’ some ‘umies. He digs in his boots for the long run and readies a deep bellow. “WA—“
“Oi!” a boy says, cutting off the boss as he feeds his ammo belt into his big shoota. “I can’t ‘ear mah dakka wif you ‘ollerin like dat!!”
So it turns out the orks didn’t need to use their WAAGH and take a few pot shots instead of running. Between the sluggas, shootas, and big shootas, this was a very patriotic dice roll.
And here is the result of all that dakka: the first marine casualty! I like to think he is being punished for lending his backpack to the flamer marine in a blatant violation of standard Astartes operating procedure. What would the Primarch say if he saw such a sorry state of affairs? After the game I finally got the exacto knife out and switched the packs.
Meanwhile, the koptaz manage three penetrating rokkit hitz and roll a 1, 3, and 5 against the dread, wrecking it. Sweet vengunz for their fallen nobs!
I thought the model looked pretty cool with its army scattering the battlefield like that.
‘Ere we go, ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go!
Finally, the orks get to assault! Even at half strength the boys are still rolling 25 regular attacks plus 5 klaw attacks, pretty satisfying after getting shot at for three straight turns.
When the dust settles, the orks smash in 6 ‘umie ‘elmuts and only lose 2 boys, winning combat by 4. We take a good 20 minutes to re-read the rules for falling back, sweeping advances, regrouping, Combat Tactics,
ATSKNF, and No Retreat and I ultimately decide to use Combat Tactics to withdraw to get the chance to use more glorious, glorious templates in the name of the Emperor.
The orks fail to win the initiative test to make a sweeping advance and force No Retreat on the marines. Dice in hand, I start to eye the table to the left to pick my route when my opponent says, “Uh, aren’t you supposed to fall back to your table edge?”
I look wide-eyed at my table edge and realize I forgot all about the possibility of running off the table. I have t run 9” but I am still on the table, just, and with a juicy template-shaped blob of orks sitting right in front of me for my turn.
Here’s the board at the end of turn 3.
SCORE: 1-1
Ultramarines 4
More rules wrangling as I get ready to regroup when I realize my units, having to fall back straight to the table edge, are not in coherency. We spend another ten minutes re-re-looking up the rules for regrouping and
ATSKNF and I realize this is another blunder. I ask for takesies backsies and I am allowed to fall back to stay in coherency.
Then as I am moving into position to unload a stream of flaming death, I realize that I won’t get to score 8 hits with my flamer, as I forgot to remind my opponent to consolidate. So we spend another five minutes looking up the rules for consolidate to see if he can consolidate back into combat with me (he can’t) and
ATSKNF (for a third time) to see if being within 6” of marines prevents them from regrouping (it doesn’t).
Except it does! Writing the batrep I realize this rules boo-boo and that the orks consolidating should have driven the marines and the captain off the table. (Can someone confirm this, as my brain is fried.) So I guess another asterisk goes on this game.
After all that rules lawyering and still getting it wrong, here’s what the fight looks like:
So instead of running off the table because they have enemies within 6” and therefore can’t regroup, I move up and shoot the orks a whole bunch, taking out just one more boy.
The terminators move up, fire their storm bolters at the nearest kopta, and get one wound.
Entering the assault phase, the marines see the writing on the wall and bravely charge in despite having used rapid fire. But since they’re outnumbered, I’ll leave the number of asterisks on the official record at just one.
In combat, the rest of the marines are wiped out and fail to take many orks with them. They lose combat by 3 and the Captain would likely run off the table or die from No Retreat if he used Combat Tactics, so he makes a leadership test against a 7 and rolls… a 7! It’s gonna be a long night, Captain Vanilla!
Another slight rules flub, the warboss should be in base to base contact with the captain, as
ICs can only attack units they are in base to base contact with and vice versa, and aren’t allowed to sit in the back like some cowardly grot as the boss currently is. I spent 5 more minutes working that out in the rulebook.
On the left flank, the terminators charge in and instagib the deffkopta four times over, then consolidate 6” to rescue the captain, even though the terminators are from the 1st company and the captain is from the 2nd captain, so he’s not actually technically
their captain.
Here’s the board at the end of turn 4.
SCORE 2-2*
Orks 5
The deffkoptas shoot a couple of rokkits at the terminators but they make their saves. In combat, the captain goes first and takes out a couple boys. The orks tie things up by putting two wounds on the captain, leaving him with one wound. The warboss readies his klaw and then proceeds to roll all 1s, 2s, and 3s!
We roll to see if the game ends and the game continues to turn 6.
SCORE: 2-2*
*(If I had observed the regroup rules and run off the tactical marines, the orks would have been up 3-2 on their turn and had the boys free to engage the terminators however they wanted knowing it might have been their last turn!)
Ultramarines 6
The captain is locked in combat so it’s all up to the terminators. They press on, ignoring the deffkoptas, and then assault against the warboss. We then start our multi-combat.
Here’s the only macro shot I took all night:
The captain takes his three attacks on the boys and all three wound, leaving just one boy, who returns the favor by not wounding, leaving just one captain. The terminators decide to bring all their might to bear on the warboss, and they all strike each other at initiative 1. Although they can’t insta-kill the boss, the overwhelming number of S8 attacks manage to take him out. One of the terminators fails his saves, though, and gets krumped by da klaw.
The orks lose combat by a whole lot (we counted 4, but the boss has 3 wounds so it was actually 6) and my opponent gets ready to write off his last boy. Miraculously, though, he roll snake-eyes!
Question: If we had taken a -6 to give the boy an effective leadership of 1, does that mean he can never pass a leadership test, or do double-1s count for the “always succeeds” rule?
Although the morale check was all very dramatic, this is actually the worst outcome for the orks, as it leaves the last marine target on the board locked in combat with one stupid model, preventing the koptas from firing on them.
Orks 6
With nothing left to really do, the koptas split up and wait, and the boy promptly dies. The marines consolidate up the board, with the captain now attached to the terminators.
Here’s the board at the end of turn 6.
SCORE: 4-2 Ultramarines
We roll to see if the game ends and we’ll be having a turn 7.
Ultramarines 7
The remaining marines fire at a kopta hiding behind a stand of trees but it actually gets to roll saves against shooting (how un-orky!) and manages to save all the wounds from the storm bolters.
Orks 7
The deffkoptas fire their rokkits and score a couple wounds, and I was surprised to see a 1 appear on the sav dice, and one of the terminators bites it. Going having lost 1 of the 4 terminators remaining, we debate for a while on whether that is 25% losses or 20% losses, and decide that the
IC does increase the model count of the unit, so they won’t have to roll morale.
We acknowledge how funny it would be if one random rokkit forces a failed morale role and tables the last unit, for a “walk-off rokkit”, so for gaks and giggles we roll it out, but they would have made their leadership save.
Here’s the table at the end of the game.
FINAL SCORE: ULTRAMARINES WIN 4-2.*
*(Certain rules and restrictions may not apply to the achievement of this win)
Takktikul Assessment & Lessons Learned:
1. We clarified a ton of rules and are getting better at memorizing the
WS and To Wound tables and our character stats. All that rules stuff took a long time though, it still took use 2 hours to play a ~500 point game.
2. Orks should have scouted the deffkoptas up. A few rokkits at the rear armor of the dreadnought could have killed it earlier than turn 3. They could have then used their AP3 to soften up the
MEQ.
3. Nobs deployed in a useless spot. They should have deployed near the boys to make the dread slog around or shoot at the koptas and given (or taken) some extra cover with the boys.
4. Not sure about this one, but orks probably should have slogged through cover. I think a 4+ cover save granted by the trees smack in the middle would have helped them more than the few inches of diminished movement, and they don’t have enough
AP for the cover save the marines get to matter for shooting through cover.
5. Since I deployed first, I think I deployed the marines in the right spot, since I didn’t know where the boys would have been. The Dread should have sought cover in turn 1, however. I liked the decision to deep strike the terminators, as it meant that I could put away from the biggest threat to them, a bazillion ork boy
CC attacks, and could have made any number of tactical deep strike locations.
6. The flamer and rapid strike attack weas fun as hell, but against such a devastating counter-attack I’m not sure if it was the correct tactical choice, especially since the terminators had just entered. Kiting would probably have been better.
7. The combat tactics was probably unwise so close to my table edge, and considering that the orks could just consolidate right up. Combat tactics seems like it would be much more useful against shooting or possibly in multi-combats, as consolidation puts units within 6” an awful lot of the time. I think by the time the boys closed the gap my tactical marines were pretty much dead no matter what.
So it’s not exactly like I won ‘Ard Boys here. But that’s okay. Because I still get prizes like I won ‘Ard Boys! Look what was waiting for me by my front door!
Attack on Black Reach may not make for the most advanced battle report out there, but hopefully this brought a little back about when you were first learning the game, struggling with rules and tactics and enjoying the complexities and drama than can develop from even the most vanilla setups.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll check out the next episode of The Savage Batrep!
Altansar -7k
Black Legion - 4k
2500+pts
WIP
