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Yep. Have finally got around to fitting a game into my busy social schedule (well, work schedule. 5:30am alarms and week night gaming don't mix that well).

1850 tournament practice (London Grand Tournament). My mixed Mechanicus, against Orks.

I'm taking on Ricky, another relative noob, so he can experience a range of forces in the run up to his first tournament. So far, he's had great success with his Greentide, as his usual opponents go for 'meta' lists (which is silly, if you ask me) - and he's simply steam rollered them.

My challenge came up from beer inspired thinking, and evolved into a pretty killer, if rather beardy battle plan. In short, there's a pretty good chance I'll be able to wipe out his Greentide in a single round of combat...

Oh, and he's facing a nightmare mission - Purge the Xenos*. If I pull off my little trick (which relies heavily on St Curia's Autopurger* doing significant damage....which may necessitate slaying his Painboy...) that's 11 victory points in one fell swoop, just for taking out the Greentide (oh, and the Skitarii maniple that's engaging, has Crusader and Scout, so good chance of it all being on my terms), with a potential two more for Slay the Warlord (he may have a second Warboss - I'm not sure) and First Blood. If that comes off, I've barely got 11 units in my army, so he'll be facing an uphill struggle.

All in all, really looking forward to this! Key to victory? Deployment, and remembering what I need and where when charging (Autopurger for instance goes into an extreme flank, forcing the casualties to ripple away from the bearer's unit - everything else engages the other flank, so they've stuff left to hit)

*St Curia's Autopurger is filth. Filth on a stick. In short? Triggers at the I10 Combat Step. Entire enemy unit takes an I test (and I'll have two units of Sicarian Infiltrators in that combat, to reduce a swathe of the Boyz to I1). For each failed test, the unit takes a wound, with saves allowed......If I can get half decent coverage from the Sicarian bubble, I should stand to wipe out most of the unit. 25 points. 25. That's all it costs!


*One of the pre-announced missions, and one he's not tried yet. His choice, not mine!

My army list can be found here. Outside of my cunning plan, I've pretty much just taken what appeals from my existing collection. And for once, I'm leaving the Kastellan at home. They're rock hard right enough, but too points intensive against Orks I feel.

Hope your plan works, I like risky, audacious strategies, when they work they do may do wonders if well-thought !

When they work, though.

I don't have the rules of the Autopurger but on 1d4chan they say the unit must make a Toughness test and not an Initiative test, sorry to break your dream :/ You can mitigate this by charging with a squad of Vanguard, it will drop the whole unit down of 1T, effectively making all the Orks T3 if I remember well. I'll be using Vanguards in a trick like this soon in an audacious plan to ID some Dreadknights.

If you want to stay in the Init debuff, you may still equip the Phaser Taser to one of your Infiltrator Princeps, on failed Init tests it removes the model from play. No saves allowed, like at all. Might be a nice help against tough Orks if he have some. for 15 pts !

Yeah pretty sure it is Toughness test not Initiative test. so maybe 1/2 the unit fails. then they get their saves followed by FnP.

so for 100

its 50 failed maybe 40 wounds 27 killed as an average

It is indeed Toughness....

Well, it worked, after a fashion.

I made a massive blunder - as I'd quite forgotten/didn't know you can't assault following a Scout move.

But, I did take out his Killbursta in the first round of shooting (plinked it to death with Arc related Haywire), and took out all its transportees into the bargain, scoring me two VPs.

Fortune then smiled on me, clearly recognising my Scout slip up as the honest mistake of a relative noob - this saw his Deff Dredds fail to charge the Sicarian Infiltrators with the Autopurger, and his Kans whiff their charge roll against my Dragoons.

Somehow, I held his Greentide in combat, with only one unit breaking (how I managed that I don't know!).

That allowed me to bring the Autopurger in on Turn Two. At that point he had a meagre 70 Boyz left.......I promptly took out 37 with the Autopurger, and bagged something like another 10 with my combat rolling.

Sadly at that point we ran out of time. I had 7 VPs, he had 4. I would've been happy to call it a draw, as there was still lots to play for - but given his Greentide was on the ropes, leaving me well within sniffing distance of it's precious 11 VPs, Ricky conceded.

Game could've gone smoother, and there was lots of 'how does this work again?', but we both had a thoroughly enjoyable time.

Moment of the match for me has to be taking out the Killbursta so quickly. Poor thing only squeezed off a single shot, and even that merely knobbled a single 45 point Dragoon :p

I'm going to try attending the club more often - but due to commute, gonna see if I can get a coterie of weekend gamers.

Oh damn 37 guys killed with a single use of the Autopurger ? That's awesome Must be pretty neat against Eldars.

Even funnier against Eldar if I get some Vanguard involved in the punch up....T2, weedy ones!

If we'd had a third turn, it's possible he'd have squelched my Sicarian carrying it - I was down to three in that unit, and I'm fairly sure the Deff Dredds would make short work of me...

Personnally I'm still not sure about continuing using my Sicarian at all. In my meta there's S6 everywhere even at 1000 pts games and so they either get shot or get shot in overwatch. The aura is really nice to have when I remember it but 185 pts for that is really too much.

I've found them surprisingly resilient, but haven't had a great deal of experience.

I always give them Taser Goads and Flechette Pistols - loads of attacks, and possibility of bonus hits

I just need to give them more chances I think, especially against BALANCED lists. They would wreck it were I to face regular SMs or just not full Scatterbikes Eldars.

Must say I'm impressed at how brutal Mechanicus can be.

Sure, you need to wield your force as a unified whole, but that's very fitting!

Indeed they require a lot of thinking to play well, and a really good deployment. When they get to unleash their firepower they're as they should be: unstoppable. When your dice rolls nicely, that is.