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The troops today fought on a Zerg campaign map.
And Zerg they would.



The forces of Woodie's Ogryns United would take on Lazy King's Wild Boyz Directorate.
The Molemen, having lost control of their home planet, were now apparently hiring themselves out as mercenaries and would man the bolt thrower battery.



But Woodie had to leave almost immediately.
With the departure of one of the team leaders someone needed to take over.
When nobody stepped up, I decided to assume command myself.
This was only meant to be temporary but lasted the entire fight.
And so the ravenous hordes of wild Orks began their rush across the no man's land between the creep.



The Land Raiders' shots lanced over and over across the plain, the powerful beams downing Orks and Fiends left and right.
In 3s and 4s at a time they fell.



The LOS remained uncontested but there were still plenty of greenskins remaining.
I told Lazy he should be grateful I didn't have "proper" Land Raiders with twin-linked Heavy Bolters.
Yet this didn't seem to cheer him up. Like, at all.



Lazy, having sought to close the distance and sacrificing dearly to do so, opened fire.
But he was just out of range.
Five Fiends would die this round alone.



His advance was severely disrupted by this and the fact that the casualties he was taking were causing him to lose further ground.
Moving up to regain control of the situation, Lazy fired a torrent of musket fire at the nearest tank.
This was his first game and it was like he was going down a checklist of harsh lessons new players learn when they start playing.

☑ Wasting a turn due to move and fire weapons
☑ Wasting a turn due to misjudging the range
☑ Wasting a turn due to attacking a target that was effectively immune

Nearly every new player makes this last mistake.
They assume Starcraft mechanics wherein enough Terran Marines can whittle away tanks, battlecruisers, ultralisks, buildings, etc.
It's such a common thing in computer games that it seems like conventional wisdom to think in terms of total damage depleting the enemy's HP.
Even titles with a reputation for being challenging like those made by FromSoft will let you gradually kill a demigod with a broken ladle.
But tabletop games, all the other requisite suspensions of disbelief aside, won't let you destroy a main battle tank with small arms from the Napoleonic era.



My wall of tanks continued to fracture the face of the planet, dropping 6 enemies in a single turn.
Closing the distance on this fortresslike formation, the Wildboyz lobbed a shower of Krak grenades and actually flipped over one of the 'Raiders.
All 4 Ogryns inside got killed instantly.
Lazy'd been having such hard time that I cheered along with him at this point.
However the following turn he launched another volley and failed to even make a dent.



Then my own situation turned dire all at once; seeing that the lesser daemons couldn't harm the vehicles, they instead made a rush for the objective.
At first I thought I'd just have the Ogryns spill out of the tanks and deliver the coup de grace.
But then I checked the statistic profile and saw they only had a Cool rating of 5!
They would almost certainly be too yellow-bellied to charge into melee with the surviving trio of Fear-inducing Slaaneshi pups.

It was either kill them all with the cannons or lose the match.
Two of them went down easily but the last scurried quickly towards the finish line.
In order to rescue my hive from capture I needed anything but a natural 1 on my damage roll.
Which is exactly what I got because 40k.



I asked Lazy King if he'd had any fun.
He said he found the several turns where he was caught out in the open getting dominated with laser cannons, unable to do anything in return, boring.
Which was funny because that was my favorite part.

By now I've realized it may be a mistake to allow first time players to make their own force.
It's just discouraging when they come up against opposition they simply can't counter.
From now on I'll be a bit more proactive in coaching and cautioning them.


Thanks for reading.
Don't forget; anyone can stop by and play the game live.