So, last Monday I was up against 'Da Kan Man,' an ork player at the club who's nigh on undefeated. I was playing with my Imperial Guard army that I used on the clubs tournament day, which had also done very well. It was an interesting battle to say the least, which hung in the balance right up until the last couple of turns. If you don't know the end of the game, I won't spoil it for you.
(Any way to use HTML on forum posts? It'd make battle reports MUCH easier....)
So, we went for a pitched battle 'Capture and Control' game. One of the basic, traditional types of scenarios that wouldn't been too surprising. There were 2 objectives, one, the Imperial Guard pilot behind the building in the foreground. And the other, an astropath underneath the 'Imperial Sector' ruins behind the ork trukk that's facing the camera. The objective was to capture and control one, or both of these with your troops units.
The Orks ended up deploying (and going first - I forgot to try to seize the initiative). This wasn't as bad as I used to fear against orks. Sure, it brought him closer to me earlier but it meant I could line dudes up to shoot the right guys.
Of course, I forgot the skorcha track in the map image.
So, The game begins. All of the Orks charge forward pretty much. The only exceptions being the Trukk mob guarding the objective and the 2 Big Meks. The first mek starts off well, managing to blow up my Command Chimera, the explosion and some big shootas from the trukks killing off the Colonels full detail and leaving him with 2 wounds. Amazingly, he managed to survive on his own again, he's getting pretty good at getting out of these tight jams. Not as lucky as my manticore however, where the other meks shokk attack gun managed to bounce off completely.
Time to return fire! And it doesn't start too well. All my Vulture and Vendetta manages to accomplish is a smattering of shaken and weapon destroyed results on the kans. NOT what I was hoping for.
Then... The manticore fires. The result? One exploded truck. One wrecked trukk and one immobilised trukk. Then comes the Valkyries rocket pods and a lot of dead orks! My melta gunners then cap it off by blowing up one of the 2 dreadz.
Onto turn 2. Surprisingly no 'waaagh' but then again, it wasn't needed as a whole load of orks rush my Valkyrie and melta gunners. The melta gunners fared.... badly. The Valkyrie surprisingly better, only being immobilised with a rocket pod destroyed. I really need to rethink this 'Valkyrie Rush' tactic against fighty armies. With the combined total being 230, I'm not sure it was worth it to kill a 100 pointish dread. Though, they weren't a bad speed bump.
In saying that though, the Valkyrie swiftly got its revenge when the one function rocket pod opened up - at the orks 2 inches in front of it! Personally, I love the thought of a load of orks walking up to it, wondering, "what does this fing do?" Then 20 frag missiles fly out of it, mixing with the heavy flamer from my plasma veteran chimera. The vets themselves killed a kan and the Skorcha got melta gunned by my command squad. Aside from this, my shooting was pretty crappy again this turn, the only things of note being my Vendetta managing to constantly shake the kan mob in front of it again, Vulture took a wound off the big mek and the Manticore missed. AND, I even forgot to try to bring Marbo in from reserves!
By turn 3, the game was very much in the balance though I was getting particularly nervous as my vehicles were getting taken out literally left, right and center! The Valkyrie was finally finished off with the damaged kan squad and the remaining ork boys taking down my Plasma Chimera, which exploding killing over half the squad inside and pinning the rest! The big meks failed to kill the Manticore for the third time running but the big shoots from the killa kan squad managed to kill a load of guardsmen from the Mortar squad, who had already taken some casualties beforehand by the skorcha on turn 2, however, their nerve held.
A waaaagh was declared, resulting in my Infantry Command Squads Chimera getting taken out. I had, however, planned for this, with the command squad inside being armed with 2 melta guns and 2 flamers. I managed to convince myself that this was 'all according to plan.' - A little self delusion never hurt anybody, right?
Remembering to roll for reserves, Marbo arrived in front of the orks objectives. - I immediately felt more relieved with Mr Stallone now on the field. The Command Squad advancing and some slight shuffling of vehicles pretty much summed up my movement phase.
The Colonel completely failed his orders, which ultimately signed the death sentence for the poor plasma vets as they became unable to 'get back in the fight.' The vendetta, not wanting to break with tradition for the 3rd time in a row did nothing but shake the kans. The Russ cheered me up a little though, killing one of the new plastic kans in front of it. The Vulture, having lost its autocannon last turn was now a flying heavy bolter, which did much better than expected, killing off the Big Mek.
I was faced with a bit of a decision for the mortar squad as well. There were only a handful left with a full squad of kans bearing down on them. Retreat or shoot? Being guardsmen, I decided to shoot and it went spectacularly well. The mortar managed to kill the last remaining ork in the center squad, wounded the nob causing a leadership test for him, which he failed. Now, here's the thing, orks have a 'boss' pole which allows them to reroll leadership tests but has a chance to cause a wound. The ork, therefore managed to swiftly punch himself in the head to try to rally himself, yet sadly had left his powerclaw turned on.... Very messy.
Then came my 'gambles' for the turn. The manticore fired at the truck defending the Orks objective, unsurprisingly annihilating it and taking a couple of orks out in the explosion too. Then, as soon as the orks piled out, Marbo through his demo charge and scattered... My heart sank, this had been a pretty big gamble. Both Marbo and the Manticore may very well have been pretty important elsewhere on the field. With some worry, I rolled for the distance, it wasn't far! Still more than half the squad was covered and subsequently blown up into several tiny little orkish chunks. This resulted in yet another failed leadership test and the orks promptly legging it off the board. - The one time when rolling high is very bad indeed. This promptly left Marbo standing all alone on a cleared objective, again.
My second gamble was based around that command squad and their 2 flamers. They advanced on the ork squads who had destroyed their transport and opened fire. 16 automatic hits on the orks and a couple of melta gun and bolt pistol shots resulted in an awful lot of dead orks, leaving a handful of survivors. I was almost ready to call an end to the turn, then I had a thought....
"Flamers and melta guns are ASSAULT weapons. I'm declaring a charge."
Me, who hasn't played any army except Imperial Guard for years, just declared an assault against orks, one of the toughest close combat armies out there. - Apparently, my opponent had hoped I wouldn't think of it as I'm sure I remember hearing a 'dammit' come from him. The 5 guardsmen, striking first, managed to kill the survivors of the squad, in return nob, the only guy left power clawing one guardsman and getting run down. By Imperial Guard Infantry.
Their victory was short lived however when the remaining dreadnaught decided that turn about was fair play and flamed them from the edge of its templates range. The kans charged the plasma gunners, killing them. Knowing time was beginning to run out, along with the manticores ammo the Big mek switched targets to the vendetta managing to shake it. Ironically a good thing for me as it persuaded me to make a decision on an alternate plan, especially since knowing now that there were no ork troops left alive.
My Turn 4 was where everything started falling into place for me. Since the Vendetta couldn't shoot, it made the decision for me as I loaded up an autocannon squad inside it and got prepared for a mad dash to an objective. Just a couple of slight problems, in front of one was a dread and a kanz squad. And the other would take 2 turns to reach, especially since I couldn't move more than flat out on the turn I picked up the squaddies.
The shooting phase made everything better though. The manticore fired its last shots, taking out 2 out of 3 kans around my objective while the Russ, guard infantry squad and even the Vulture firing at the rear of the middle kan squad managed to wipe them out.
Turn 5, potentially the last turn and the game hung in the balance between a draw or victory for the Guard with every roll and every decision becoming vitally important. The orks poured all the fire they could into the Vendetta, it just wasn't enough, just managing to stun it. If it was any other vehicle, that would have spelled the end for me but thankfully, Valkyries and Vendetta come with extra armour by default meaning I could still move!
But that's the question, where to move? I could take a gamble on it in fact being the last turn and move to take 'my' objective or, I could go for the second. Reasoning that the farther away from the kans I could get the safer I'd be, I decided to sprint for the last. For the shooting phase, all I needed to do I felt, was kill that last kan which was nearby, so I fired everything I had at it, which didn't include the manticore anymore as it was out of rockets. It was to no avail however as the kan stubbornly refused to die.
The dice rolled for the end of the game and... It decided it would continue! A sigh of relief from me, I could still win!
Again, the orks fired everything they could at the vendetta, though it was moving too fast for them to damage, then... Disaster struck. I had angled the Vendetta badly and it was in charge range of the kan by less than half an inch! Then, sadly... it was gone. But there was still hope! The Valk was only wrecked, as the troops clambered out, I had one last trick up my sleeve.
The Guard clambered out and... Ran for the objective. This is what it all came down to, a single 'run' roll if I could get just enough, get close enough I could win it.
They made it! But the game wasn't over yet, I could still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I fired everything I could at the kan, big mistake! If I had moved the Vulture between the kan and my troops I would have created another roadblock between it and a potential turn 7 charge. Instead I caused no damage at all.
It all hung on the last dice roll. Would there be a turn 7?
A sigh of relief... The game was over.
With one objective to the Ork's none, the Imperial Guard were victorious and 'The Kan Man' was finally defeated. Glory to The Emperor!
1225 70% painted
40% painted 