This was my first game of 8th edition Warhammer 40,000! I'm a returning player - I last played a game of
40k back in 4th edition and I'm starting fresh with a new force. I started with an ork Start Collecting box but things got out of hand very quickly and I've topped it off with a collection of boyz that I found on Craigslist. Hopefully I can get these things painted in my lifetime! I've gotten started painting the boys and stormboys but it's going to take a while.
I played against my friend who is new to the hobby, using his force of Grey Knights and Adeptus Mechanicus for the first time at our local
GW.
We were playing 1,500pts of Secure and Control.
My force:
Biker warboss with a big choppa
Weirdboy running warpath
3x 30-man boy units (each is mostly comprised of slugga boys with shootas and special weapons peppered throughout - I love that I can mix sluggas and shootas in units now)
10-man unit of stormboys
8-man unit of lootas
Trukk with 3 meganobz (waste of a transport, I know!)
2x deff dreads with 4 klaws
My plan was simple as usual for orks: Get up the board and smash heads. As it turns out my boys wouldn't have to go very far.
My friend's force:
Grey Knight warlord on foot (he was a named character but I can't remember what he's called - he had four psyker powers total, able to use three in one turn!)
Dreadknight
HQ (another named character whose name I don't know)
10-man unit of terminators
2x dunecrawlers
2x units of rangers with sniper rifles
He deployed all his Grey Knight units in reserves with the intention of deep striking them.
My friend went first and bravely teleported his Grey Knights 9" out from my right flank. Here's a photo of the board at the end of his 1st turn movement. Not visible is his second unit of rangers - they're hidden in the ruin on the back right. Six objectives are marked with red dice, most of them hidden in ruins.
In the psyker phase he used some buffing powers and failed to smite a boy. The first turn of shooting for the Imperium was BRUTAL. My stormboys were killed to the man by the dunecrawlers (first blood) and my unit of boys on the right (the ones I've started painting
) were disappeared by the Grey Knights. Mercifully, shooting by his rangers was ineffectual. He chose not to make any charges, hoping to score more kills in overwatch on my turn.
On my first turn I moved up my dreads and boys, with the boys advancing. My warboss and boys in the middle went right, toward the Grey Knights, while my leftmost boys went straight forward toward his Admech force. The weirdboy failed to cast warpath on the boys. My shooting was pretty uneventful: My lootas scored some wounds on his dunecrawlers and I killed a terminator with my shootas thanks to lucky rolls - I didn't expect to do anything with the -1 due to advancing. I forgot to fire my meganobz' kustom shootas from the trukk. Next came the charge phase, which was huge for me. I went into his terminators with a deff dread first and it soaked up their stormbolter and flamer shots, taking 3 damage total. Next the warboss went in, and finally the boys. The second deff dread wouldn't have been able to make it so it stayed put. I attacked with my boys first and killed three or four terminators. Here my opponent spent command points to let his terminators attack out of order and he directed most of their attacks against my warboss, who was left with 2 wounds. My dread and warboss together finished all but one of his terminators, which fled from morale.
My friend started his second turn by moving his dreadknight toward my table edge - that was his only notable movement other than minor adjustments. In the psyker phase his warlord attempted to buff himself but my weirdboy managed to deny the witch (the only thing my weirdboy would do all game, actually). His warlord then teleported behind my lootas, hoping to score some opportunistic kills there. Smite from his warlord killed a loota and smite from his dreadknight killed a boy. In his shooting phase he killed boys across the board, brought my damaged deff dread down to 3 wounds, put some damage on my trukk, and attempted to snipe my warboss but overall it was nothing compared to what had happened during his first turn. Finally, his charge phase. He charged his dreadknight into my weirdboy. The big moment came when he attempted to make the 9" charge into my lootas with his warlord. Not only did my lootas bring him down to 2 wounds but the charge failed! His dreadknight stepped on my weirdboy in the fight phase, killing it trivially.
On my second turn I moved all my boys up. My deff dreads, however, swung around to face his dreadknight on my table edge. In the shooting phase my lootas opened up on the sneaky Grey Knight warlord but failed to cause any damage. My warboss and boys on the far right shot at the rangers hiding in the ruins there and killed them all. The rest of my boys and the trukk shot at his remaining rangers but that didn't amount to anything. In the charge phase I went after his dreadknight with my dreads, the undamaged one going in first to eat up overwatch. It only took a single wound, thankfully, and the pair proceeded to kill the dreadknight in close combat. This was a big phase for me and things might have gone very differently had my friend not already spent all his command points - interrupting with the knight probably would have saved it.
By this point we knew it was probably over but decided to play out another turn. My friend only had his warlord, the dunecrawlers, and a unit of rangers left at the start of his third turn. His only movement was to bring the warlord into the ruins where my lootas were hiding, determined not to fail another charge. In the psyker phase he killed a loota and put buffs on himself. In his shooting phase he took aim at my trukk with his dunecrawlers and it went up in smoke immediately, causing 3 mortal wounds to nearby boys - all of its passengers survived, though. His rangers sniped my warboss, killing him. In the charge phase he declared an assault against my lootas with his warlord, clinging to life at 2 wounds... and they shot him to death. My ork machine gunners turned out to be MVPs!
This is a photo of the board at the end of movement on my friend's third turn.
For my third turn I moved everything toward his final remaining Admech forces. Shooting brought his rangers down to a single model and I assaulted both dunecrawlers with boys and meganobz. We called it here.
Post-game thoughts:
As my first game in 11 or 12 years, and my friend's first game EVER, we both sucked pretty bad and made a lot of mistakes throughout the game. At several points I forgot to shoot with certain units and messed up my positioning so that not everyone was able to fight. For my friend's part he probably goofed by deepstriking his Grey Knights so close to my army - another few turns of shooting my force with his Admech troops would have made a big difference. Add to that some unlucky rolls for my opponent at crucial moments and I was able to nab a win.
Warboss: I had been waffling on whether to run him on a bike but in the end I like him this way a lot. His ability to zip around at speed to deliver his aura wherever needed is huge.
Weirdboy: He did nothing all game for me, but I still plan on running a pair of them in the future for the warpath + da jump combo.
Meganobz: These guys did little more than the weirdboy. That's partially because the game was called at the end of turn 3, just as they were getting into combat with the dunecrawlers. As for their trukk, it being more expensive than previous editions hurts but I like that it - like all vehicles - uses wounds now.
Deff Dreads: I ran them without guns which could leave them feeling useless on some turns but hey, they took down a hero of the Imperium in a dreadknight. I'll leave the criticisms for another day!
Lootas: These guys did pretty well, actually. They put a decent number of wounds on the dunecrawlers and single-handedly killed my opponent's warlord.
Boys: I knew going into the game that these guys were going to be my workhorses and they were. They soaked up a lot of damage over the course of the game and managed to kill a bunch of Grey Knights and rangers.
We both had a lot of fun and I like 8th edition so far. The game is quite deadly - by the end of the first turn I had a large tray full of dead orks and by the end of the third turn my opponent was down to three models. Luck and our combined inexperience played a large part in my win and I'm aware that orks aren't in the best spot competitively right now. I hope their codex, which I'm quite looking forward to, makes some of their non-troop units more viable so I can use more than just hordes of infantry.
Thanks for reading!
TillForPie
