Stinky Spore
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2,000 Points Grey Knights vs Orks. (Waaagh!) Batrep.
Sorry about the lack of pics, my camera wasn’t working, hopefully I’ll get it fixed later. I’d appreciate your thoughts on the battle, enjoy. For those interested only in the tactical overview, feel free to skip the prologue and epilogue.
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Priority message Sigma Delta: Intercepted over Open Comms
Source of Message: Astropath Transmission from the Vanu Power Station, south of Praxis Hive on planet Armoury World Cerberus, Golgotha Sector.
Message Priority: Urgent
“This is Astropath Mannius Kelton, servant of Planetary Governor Lord Macintosh of planet Cerberus, requesting aid to anyone in range. An ork Waagh! under an ork named Bludskar has invaded the planet and is currently pressing us hard. The majority of imperial forces have been relocated to the 3rd war on Armageddon and we have few troops to defend ourselves. We’ve managed to keep the Hive city out of their hands but they have taken the starport and the municipal warehouse districts. A large detachment of orks are headed towards the Vanu Power Station located north of the Hive. If the orks capture that hive they’ll be able to shutdown power to the Hive and the automated defences with it. Should anyone be within range of this transmission we need assistan-!!!”
In the warp a scarred naval captain turned from the monitor in the bridge of the ship The Emperors Rebuke, looking towards the raised dais in the center. “I’m afraid that’s all we were able to recover from the message my lord. Our communications were two heavily damaged in the last engagement.” Upon the dais three individuals sat around a hololith projector, observing planet Cerberus in question. One was a purifier who sat with his blade drawn, the point of it just hovering above his shoulder. The second represented a terminator standing over the table, watching the details scrawl across the planet’s surface. The final was sitting in his robes, leaning back in the white throne above the other two, shuffling a deck of emperor tarot cards in his hand.
“Do not apologize for that which you cannot control, that area belongs to the will of the emperor. Still it is odd that we even came across this message. Perhaps it is a sign.” The terminator said, his servos whining as he stepped away from the hololith, shutting the image down. The purifier across from him snorted, resheathing the blade he’d been performing his ritual rites on. “I believe it is a sign of the ineptitude of this particular backwaters governor. How else do you explain leaving such an important facility unguarded?” The terminator nodded, retaking his own seat at the table.
“Be that as it may Lukan, I believe we should engage this call for help. The sector is already weak enough with the predation of the orks in the Armaggedon sector, Cerberus is one of the few Armoury worlds able to resupply the war effort there. Losing it to the orks could have consequences for the sector. Besides from what it says here the Violet Shields chapter is deploying a company to the planet within the week, we would only have to hold the station long enough for them to arrive.”
The purifier, who was the younger of the two space marines simply nodded at this, lips pulled in a grimace. “I suppose, though I don’t like playing clean up for the imperial guard. Still an enemy of the imperium is one that should be slaughtered. What info do we have on this Bludskar anyway?”[b] At this the captain turned away, quickly typing into his computer, bringing up the image of a large mega armoured warboss. The captain then began reading off the dossier.
“Warlord Bludskar first came to Imperium attention upon his attack of the Agri-world of Batrosen in subsector Kairas. One of his lieutenants Kaptin Nugbitz was able to defeat a Lonewolves company of space wolves before sacking the nearby hive. Imperial forces were deployed to engage him, but he left the subsector before they arrived. His intent seems to be not to conquer, but to loot then move on to the next warzone. Since then he has been spotted in a number of engagements in the Golgotha and Badab sectors, to name a few. He travels the sector in a personal space hulk, dubbed Morks Teef, which serves both as a vessel as well as a mobile base for his fleet.”
The terminator sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Anything else we should know?” The captain scrolled through his dataslate quickly, eyes widening considerably at one particular text. “It seems the Vindicare Temple has received orders to assassinate both Bludskar and one of his lieutenants, a Mad Dok named Bloodstitch. Apparently the latter’s experiments have been deemed dangerous enough to warrant extermination, and an assassin is already on the ground. Should I set a course for Cerberus my lords?” The two spoken grey knights turned to the silent librarian Kristoff, who had been watching the three men talk. Lifting a card he turned it over, revealing the Emperor’s Champion.
“Set the course captain. It’s time we met with an old friend.”
Meanwhile On Cerberus
“For the last time ya git, quit waving dat damn syringe around!” Big Mek Tintooth yelled as he drove his battlewagon through a building, the ram pulverizing the building into kindling. Dok Bloodstitchsimply grinned at him, downing fungus beer before throwing it out the window. “Bah if ya new how to drive ya drunken idiot maybe we’d already be at dis dumb power node and back to da fighting. Why’ze we taking so many boyz anywayz? All da oomies are back in da ive city.”
The Big Mek groaned as the convoy drove forward, they’d been having this conversation for three hours, and if all was likely they’d still be having it after they left the damn place. “Look, we go in, we smash da big generator, we go back and smash some oomies. Maybe we’ll even get some loot from dis little trip.”
Bloodstitch simply growled at this, crossing his arms across his chest as the two drove. Behind them dozens of trucks sped up and even past them, filled to the brim with boyz as deffkopta’s and stormboyz flew overhead. One of the stormboyz jetpacks began to fizzle, sending him careening off before smashing into the ground, exploding in a fiery ball. Stitchtooth snorted at this, but otherwise showed no other humor. “What do I give a grot’s loincloth about some scrap, I can’t experiment on metal bits and pieces, I need me some test subjects.”
At those last two words he got a big grin on his face, something that made Tintooth suddenly nervous. Bloodstitch’s “experiments” were creepy even by ork standards, and Tintooth had learned the hard way it was better to just tear off a limb and replace it himself then ever go to the crazed ork for “fixin”. Still the boss liked him so he had to put up with him. For now at least.
“Well who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and find some oomies sneakin around da node.”
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Mission: This battle was done between another player and myself at Quarterstaff Games on 12/24/2012 in Burlington, VT. I came with my orks and he brought his grey knight list with him. We decided to play out of the battle mission book instead of the rule book, ending up drawing all out defense from the Space Marines missions. One objective is placed in the middle of the board while Grey Knights deploy within twelve inches of it, and orks have to set up at least six inches away from that cirlce. In order to win the game one side must either be wiped out or one army has to control the objective. The board was desert terrain, with three large stone pillars in the middle to force the orks to bottle neck. Grey knight Grand Strategy makes the Dreadknight a scoring unit. We roll for initiative and he wins first turn. Here are the army lists to the best of my memory, mine was written before I got to the store his was written at the store.
Ork Freebooters: Warlord Bludskar’s Armada
Color Scheme: Deffskull blue with lich purple armor plating, and gold and silver weapons
HQ
• Grotsnik aka “BloodStitch”
• Big Mek “Tin Tooth”: KF, Burna, Cybork, Bosspole
• Warphead
Elites
• 10 lootas, two with Mega-Blastas
Fast Attack
• Twenty Stormboyz, ones a nob with eavy armor, bosspole and PK
• 3 Deffkoptas with TL Rokkitt’s
Heavy Support
• Battle Wagon with Killkannon, 4 Big Shootas, Ram
• Boomgun, 2 Big Shoota’s, Ram
Troops
• Deff Dread with Rokkit and Skorcha
• 2 Squads of Choppa Truck Boyz with Nob, Bosspole, PK
• 11 Shoota Truck Boyz, with Nob and Bosspole. 12th spot filled by weirdboy.
• 18 Shoota boyz with Cybork bodies courtesy of Grotsnik, Inside battlewagon
Grey Knights
Color Scheme: Grey with red and black shoulders.
HQ
• Kaldor Draigo, with Paladin bodyguard equipped with force sword and psybolt ammo
• Terminator Librarian “Kraiser”, level 4 psychic with warding stave
Troops
• Ten Man Tactical Squad, 4 with Psybolters the rest with stormbolters and power weapons.
• 5 Man Terminator Squad, Justicar with master crafted sword
• 5 Purifiers with halberds, pair of swords and hammer
Elites
• Vindicare Assassin
• Venerable Dreadnought with Lascannon and Rocket launcher
•
Heavy Support
• Landraider
• Dreadknight with Thunder Hammer and Psy-Cannon
Deployment
Alternating we each place one unit on the field at a time, until all available units not in reserve are on the board. His troops are inside the circle of pillars while vehicles and Dreadknight are deployed on the edge to close the gap inside the stones, giving some protection to the troops. On his side of the circle he has placed his venerable Dreadnought, while nearby I’ve place an ork choppa trukk behind a stone pillar, hoping for an early charge. I place the loota’s in the far right corner of my board, only to have this (Mostly) foiled by him placing the landraider with terminators on the flank. Finally in the left part of the circle on my side he placed his Dreadknight, with the Deff-Dread, Koptas and other choppa boy trukk facing him. All other forces are in reserve
Reserves
In the game I am forced to leave all HQ and Heavy support choices in reserve until turn two. This is bad for me as it means not only will I have no special character abilities or heavy support on turn one, but also I’ll have to leave thirty boyz on the side of the field. I also forget to deploy my stormboyz, forgetting about them until turn three. My opponent meanwhile chooses to only leave Draigo and his body guard in reserve, planning to deepstrike and cause some horrific damage as the ork vehicles are hopefully taken down.
Pre-game Thoughts
From the beginning we both realized the Grey Knights would be at a disadvantage in terms of number of wounds and attack capability. The specific deployment and terrain ensures that I might be able to begin assaults on turn one, while keeping him from hurting me to badly. To counteract this he puts his infantry in the center while planting his vehicles on the outside in an attempt to make my orks bottle neck and protect the troops. In the case of the land raider he does this very well (although an understandable mistake will end up costing him) blocking the shooting of my lootas. For him his strategy is simple, cause enough destruction to my troops before the rest of my orks arrive and overwhelm him. I’ve never played with grotsnik or regular cybork boyz before so it’ll be interesting to see. We roll for night fighting which does not come and the game is on.
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Grey Knights Turn 1
Movement:
Dreadknight moves over to engage the Deff Dread. Dreadnought pivots to try and kill the deffkoptas, knowing they have the best chance of blowing him up. Landraider rotates it’s lascannon towards the loota squad. Vindicare stands in a split between the landraider and rock formation to do the same.
Shooting:
Vindicare and landraider both shoot and miss the lootas, even with the assassins re-roll. Dreadnought wounds twice but I make both jinx saves on the deffkoptas. Dreadknight psycannon blast scatters off and doesn’t hurt anything.
Assault:
Dreadknight runs in and smashes the deff-dread to pieces, leaving nothing but shattered bits in it’s wake.
Orks Turn 1
Movement:
Everything moves up, boyz in both squads get out of the trukks to engage both the dreadknight and dreadnought. Deffkopta’s move up to shoot at the dreadnought while some of the lootas shift over to take mass snap shots at the vindicare.
Shooting:
Deffkopta’s only manage to take off a hullpoint of the dreadknight, while the boyz are unable to inflict any wounds on the dreadknight. The loota’s however roll a three for number of shot’s and manage to get eight wounds, of which the assassin fails two both in invulnerable saves and feel no pain. Ouch.
Assault:
Boyz assault the dreadknight and Dreadnought respectively, the later combat losing one boy to overwatch. The dreadknight only kills one boy while the nob causes a wound with the power klaw, tying combat. The Dreadnought manages to kill a boy but loses a hullpoint in exchange, boyz make their leadership with an 8.
Turn Analysis:
This turn was disappointing for the greyknight. He lost his vindicare and two hull points on his dreadknight, this will weaken his ability to destroy my vehicles and HQ’s. Still for myself my loota’s wont have any targets for the rest of the game and the Dread is dead, costing me one of the few units that can take out the landraider.
Grey Knights Turn 2
Movement:
Draigo and his paladin fail to come in. Purifiers move to get out of loota firing lane, besides this nothing else happens.
Shooting:
Tactical squad and librarian open up on the deffkopta’s, but due to bad shooting and jinx/armor saves manage to only lose one wound. Landraider tries to shoot the lootas again but misses again.
Assault:
Dreadnought and ork squad 1 fail to cause each other any damage, while the dreadknight causes another 2 wounds on the boyz and the orks fail to wound him. Boyz on dreadknight fail initial leadership, but make both the bosspole save as well as the armor save on the hit boy.
Orks Turn 2
Movement:
The battlewagon and trukk come in from reserves, while stormboyz and looted wagon do not. The trukk moves in and deploys the shooota boyz and warphead that head forward to shoot at the tactical marine squad. The battlewagon meanwhile drops of Bloodstitch and his 18 cybork shootas, hoping to charge the landraider. The battlewagon has shifted to fire at the clustered marine squads.
Shooting:
Shooting from all firing squads and vehicles manages to kill five tac marines. They pass leadership without problem.
Assault:
Dreadnought kills two more boyz, but gets blown up by the power klaw, killing two more boyz and a marine. The mad dok and his unit assault the landraider, but only manages to take a hull point off the vehicle. Dreadknight kills three boyz and overruns the boyz without being wounded.
Turn Analysis:
This was rather even for both sides, I’ve managed to finish off the dreadnought and killed a number of marines, but lost a healthy number of boys in return. Also I’ve made a blunder in sending the large boy squad after the landraider, as they are now prime and ready for a combined terminator/purifier charge. Time to see Grotsnik model in action
Grey Knights Turn 3
Movement:
Draigo and the bodyguard deepstrike to the north putting them behind the pillar. While this puts them out of sight for shooting at the boy squad they do get a nice view of the ork trukk to destroy. Terminators disembark and with the purifiers surround Bloodstitch’s horde. Terminator squad moves down a little planning to shoot down the warphead squad. Dreadknight moves over to get back closer to the objective as well as smashs the other empty trukk.
Shooting:
dreadknights cannon blows the trukk to a pulp, negating the need for a charge. This is unfortunate as it would have gotten him closer to the objective. Purifier and terminator shooting does very well, causing eight wounds but with cybork armor and feel no pain they only kill four ork boyz. The terminator librarian and the tactical marines do much better, killing off eight boyz and putting a wound on the nob from stormbolters and psychic smite. Fortunately the warphead allows the squad to roll for a leadership of eight, which they barely pass. Draigo and the body guard destroy the last trukk, but it ramshackles and kareens into the librarians squad, killing one marine!
Assault:
Terminators charge in first, making overwatch pathetically useless despite six wounds being caused. The way in which the terrain and landraider is positioned though means that they can only attack Bloodstitch who was exposed to them after the shooting.The purifiers move in and three of them hit with hammer of wrath attacks, but they don’t cause any wounds from it. While it technically becomes a battle royal it has really become a fight between the dok and the terminators and the cybork boyz vs the purifiers.
The purifiers manage to cause eight wounds with their weapons after casting might of the hammer on themselves. However with both invulnerable saves and feel no pain I only lose two boyz in exchange. The purifiers take no wounds and hold position. The terminator fight goes badly for the grey knigths, while they do cause five wounds on grotsnik between his cybork body and his feel no pain he only takes one wound. He then promptly takes off the head of a terminator in return. Because the grotsnik model makes a unit fearless they stay locked in.
Orks Turn Three
Movement:
The rest of my reinforcements come in, although the stormboy lose a boy when I roll a one for their jump ability. The looted wagon pulled up next to where the trukk next to the dreadknight used to be while while my stormboyz land straight in front of the dreadknight, planning to chop it down. The battlewagon moves over next to the wagon in hopes to mass snap fire it’s big shoota’s and weaken the librarian squad for a double ork assault from the warphead squad and the remaining trukk boy unit.
Shooting:
Warphead rolls for his power twice and on both times rills a five, causing him to deepstrike. Deciding to be risky I place him by the pillar next to Draigo, hoping to distract him next turn. I choose only to shoot the big shoota’s on the vehicles, not wanting to accidently hit my own guys. Combined shooting from the looted wagon, battlewagon and trukk boyz ping off another marine, leaving the librarian with only two marines left, both with psybolt bolters. Stormboy shooting against Dreadknight is useless as is weirdboy unit shooting against Draigo. I forget to shoot with my deffkopta’s this turn. I also declare my waaagh! this turn in order to get my boyz into battle
Assault:
The stormboyz all make it into combat while the trukk boyz assault the librarian squad. The dreadknight crushes three stormboyz, but then comes under a literal torrent of attacks from the boyz, losing a wounds out of 8 caused. The nob then causes another three power klaw wounds and the dreadknight fails it’s invulnerable saves, finishing it off. Stormboyz consolidate two inches towards the center of the table.
For the librarian combat it is both good and bad. The librarian has both a 2+ armor and invulnerable save thanks to the warding save so I position most of the remaining boyz on him while keeping my nob back. He cast three improvement psychic powers on himself to gain an extra strength, attack and initiative. He and the marines then cause me three wounds, of which I save two! All of the normal boyz put their attacks on him, causing twelve wounds of which he saves all of them. The nob feeling slighted then runs over and hits the two normal marines with the klaw, killing both. I lose combat but make my leadership.
Meanwhile the large battle royale has begun to turn south for the marines. The purifiers only cause two wounds, both of which are saved and then lose two marines in return, including the one with the hammer. As for the terminators they cast Hammer of might but whiff terribly missing their attacks while Bloodstitch kills another terminator. Both units pass morale and staylocked in again.
Turn Analysis:
This turn has been bad for the greyknights, they’ve lost one of their scoring units and the cybork squad is proving surprisingly resilient. The loss of the dreadknight however means that only the paladin and the terminator squad are capable of holding the objective. Still you can’t underestimate Draigo or the destruction he can cause, I’ve seen him wipe out large amount of armies on his own and know I have to be careful.
Grey Knights Turn 4
Movement:
My opponent takes the bait and heads towards the weirdboy. Other than that the only thing that happens is that the landraider turns around to aim at the stormboyc.
Shooting:
The landraider finally shoots well, the combination of bolter fire and lascannon killing off four stormboyz. Fortunately they are still fearless and do not have to take a leadership test. Draigo and his shooting finish off the trukk boyz, leaving the warphead at the chapter masters merciless hands.
Assault:
In the librarian combat the librarian kills a boy, but takes one in return! Fortunately he saves the power klaw hits and thus lives to fight on. Draigo assaults the warphead and as can be expected slaughters him, consolidating 4 inches back towards the objective.
The combat in the southern quadrant of the map turns from bad to worse for the grey knights. The purifiers cause no wounds but gain none in return. The terminators however do horribly, losing one to perils and then only wounding Bloodstitch once, which he saves. The mad dok then proceeds to disembowel the remaining two Templars and consolidate towards the rest of the fight.
Orks Turn 4
Movement:
Stormboyz jump forward, losing another to the jump ability but positioning themselves so that they have the librarian combat blocking sightof the vehicle, keeping them safe from being shot. The looted wagon does touch the button and unfortunately has to go twelve inches forward, slamming into a stone pillar, this also causes me to block the line of sight of my battlewagon, although nothing would have been able to shoot any way. Deffkopta’s meanwhile jump over the librarian combat in an attempt to slow down draigo and keep him from charging the boyz/librarian combat next turn.
Shooting:
The deffkopta’s rokkit’s prove inneficient to terminator armor, failing to even scratch the paint on Draigo’s grieves.
Assault:
Terminator kills three boyz while receiving no wounds in return. Boyz manage to make their low leadership. The purifier squad manages to kill another to boyz, before being crushed by the cybork horde. They consolidate three inches putting them near the objective.
At this point my opponent only has four models left on the field and decides to concede, with an almost full squad of cyborks and jump pack boyz moving up the librarians days are numbered and even with draigo, there’s simply to much firepower to hope for a win.
Victory to the Freebooter Scum.
Post Game Analysis
We knew from the beginning this was going to be tough for the grey knights. The orks had a huge advantage in numbers and fire power with 95 models while the grey knights had less than thirty. Still this was the first time either of us played battle missions so we both had to learn on the fly. In regards to my opponents mistakes he probably shouldn’t have put his vehicles and monstrous creatures on the outskirts of his deployment. While this allowed him to cause some massive damage with the dreadknight it also isolated it from the rest of his army, and made destroying the dreadnought much easier than if he originally pulled them back. For myself, putting the defdread that close was a rookie mistake as well as placing him on the side with the dreadknight. Had I placed him on the loota side of the board he could have destroyed the landraider. Oh well, lesson learned.
Imperium MVP
The Dreadknight without a doubt, that monstrous creature cost me over 350 points in my army and was a beast in close combat.
Imperium WTF
Has to be the Vindicare assassin, killed on turn one by massive fire power by the most innacurate race in the whole game. I’ve played this character before and know he is to be feared, but missing two shots and then getting wiped out has shown me how squishy this unit can be.
Waaagh! MVP
Dok Grotsnik and his cybork bodyguards, despite doing initially bad as an ork kan opener Doc Grotsnik proved his worth as a heavy hitting support HQ, nullifying the advantage of regular power weapons and just getting stuck in. The fact he can hit either with a poisoned weapon or a power klaw is also a bonus. I’m not sure how good he actually is but I plan to use him in future reports.
Waaagh! WTF[b]
Deff Dread, died before it could even move. Enough said.
Thanks For reading, as well as to those who commented. For those interested I’ll be writing up an epilogue to conclude this battle report after Christmas. See ya later.
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