Warpcon Report - Game 1 Vs Orks

I'm planning on doing reports for all of the battles I fought this weekend at Warpcon, hopefully should have them all done within a week or two, the second game report may take al ittle longer as I was playing against TKE and we might do a battle report written either together, explaining turn by turn what we were doing or might just each do our own. Anyway, on with the report...



My opponent for this game was Dwayne Higgins. We got off to a good start when I had a quick look over his list and told him it wasn't right. I noticed he'd taken 2 units of 20 boys but charged himself for 2 units of 30 boys. It actually transpired that that he had overcharged himself by around 125 points. Because the game hadn't started yet the judges allowed him to throw a few upgrades on his units to use up the points. I joked with him about claiming the 20-0 for an illegal list, but we got on with the game once the list had been sorted with a minimum of fuss.

The first mission was spearhead deployment with five objectives, one in the centre of the table, which turned out to be behind a ruin, outside of my view from where I was sitting, and one in the centre of each table quarter.

Dwayne's army consisted of...
Warboss, Eavy Armour, Klaw
Big Mek, KFF, Klaw
10 Burna Boyz
10 Nobz
20 Shoota Boyz, including Nob with Klaw
20 Slugga Boyz, including Nob with Klaw
10 Gretchin and 1 Runtherd
5 Deffkoptas with twin-linked Rokkits
4 Battlewagons each with Deathrolla, grot riggers, armour plates, big shoota

and a few upgrades I missed/have forgotten

My army consisted of...
Company Command Squad with 4 melta guns, Commander has power weapon.
Sly Marbo
Chimera with multi-laser and heavy flamer
2 Platoon Command Squads with 4 melta guns
2 Chimera with multi-laser and heavy flamer
4 Infantry Squads with Autocannons
4 Chimera with multi-laser and heavy bolter
Manticore with heavy flamer
2 Leman Russ battle tanks with hull lascannons
2 Leman Russ battle tanks with hull lascannons

Dwayne rolled the highest and picked the top left hand corner (from my perspective) to deploy in. Dwayne deployed 4 battlewagons with deathrollas side by side along the line denoting 12" from the centre, containing from left to right (again my perspective) 20 Slugga Boyz, Warboss and Nobz, Big Mek and Burnas, 20 Shoota Boyz, the deffkoptas were outflanking and the gretchin were held in reserve.

My deployment consisted of the two squadrons of russes directly opposite the battlewagons as far forward in my deployment zone as possible with the manticore about 6-8 inches behind them, my infantry squad chimeras deployed about 6 inches in from the short table edge in a line facing his deployment zone, the command squads in front ready to rush forwards and melta some battlewagons, or at least that was the plan...

I roll to seize the initiative and fail.

Turn 1 - Orks

Dwayne moves his battlewagons forwards 12 inches, smashing through terrain with ease as he does so. No reserves yet and no shooting as everything has moved at max speed.

Turn 1 - Imperial Guard

My first turn began with me throwing the Leman Russ squadrons into reverse, moving 6" or less means I can still fire to full effect, Dwayne has taken the bait and gone for the Leman Russ squadrons in front of him while my command squads hit the flank of his battlewagons. The command squads move up 12", both of the platoon command squads disembark, one (red platoon) has 4 melta guns within 6" and the other (green platoon) only manages to get one within the magic 6" range bracket. The Company Command Squad stays embarked as they will just be issuing orders this turn.

My shooting phase begins with the Company command squad issuing Bring It Down! orders to the two dismounted command squads, Red Platoon destroy their target despite the effects of the Big Mek's Kustom Force Field, getting an explodes result and killing a large number of the orks inside. Green Platoon are not so lucky as their shots either miss, fail to penetrate or are saved by the KFF. The manticore and Russes concentrate fire upon the Battlewagon transporting the Warboss and destroy it and the Nobs accompanying the Warboss who is finished off by the multi-laser of a handy chimera.

Turn 2 - Orks

Dwayne starts Turn 2 by getting on all of his reserves, the deffkoptas come on from my right behind my lines, the gretchin unit moves on from his own table edge near the objective in his deployment zone. The remaining two battlewagons push forwards another 12" and are at this point about 4" from my line of russes. The dismounted Shoota Boyz move out of the cover of their wreck and are now in a position to assault both of my platoon command squads.

In the shooting phase the gretchin run forwards onto the objective and the deffkoptas kill one of my russes and destroy the battle cannon of the other. The assault phase is also mercifully quick as the mob of boyz hack apart my command squads for the loss of one ork, before consolidating back into cover

Turn 2 - Imperial Guard

My second turn involved me moving my command squads chimeras in an attempt to line up shots with the heavy flamers. The Leman Russ with just the lascannon remaining moved 6”, tank shocking the deffkoptas to get them away from my manticore and the second squad of battle tanks.
One of my Infantry squad chimeras peeled off from the line and tried to smash through terrain but ended up immobilised. Marbo appeared at the top of a ruin (6” high) above the objective behind held by Dwayne's gretchin

My shooting began with my company command squad firing from the back of the chimera, who promptly wrecked the Big Mek's battlewagon. As the Chimera had only moved 6” I used the heavy flamer against the packed orks to account for 6 burna boyz. The chimera that had been transporting Red platoon's command squad opened fire with its heavy flamer against the shoota boyz in cover, again inflicting a couple of casualties but they passed their leadership test and stayed firm.

The infantry squads and chimeras opened up on the deffkoptas and at the end of all that shooting I had inflicted enough wounds to drop the squad to one whole model and one wounded model. But they too passed their morale test. Marbo dropped his demo charge on the gretchin, killing 4 and forcing a morale check which was passed with the aid of the Runtherd's squig.

My manticore opened fire on the remaining battlewagon and scored two direct hits, both of which were saved thanks to the Big Mek's KFF, with only the Leman Russ squadron left to fire I was not very confident in my ability to stop the battlewagons and thought that the two KFF saves would have effectively decided the game. My ever-reliable Leman Russes had other ideas, one glancing hit from the battle cannon slipped through the KFF save and I rolled a 6 on the damage chart, wrecking the vehicle as it was open-topped, this of course left me with another problem...20 angry boyz on my doorstep.

Turn 3 – Orks

There wasn't really much movement from the orks this turn, everything was already in a position to charge, in the shooting phase the deffkoptas destroyed my infantry squad chimera closest to my objective and the squad bailed out. The Mek and burna boys charged my company command squad chimera and immobilised and stunned it, the shoota boyz charged the chimera that had been transporting green platoon command squad, wrecking it, and the 20 boyz in front of my russes charged them and wrecked one and exploded the other with the nobz power klaw, the resulting 6” explosion took out over half of the orks.

Turn 3 – Imperial Guard

The manticore moved backwards 4” and was now at the table edge, my dismounted infantry squad moved into the cover of a nearby ruin and my infantry squad from the immobilised chimera jumped out and moved towards the objective but were slowed by terrain. My inly mobile command chimera (red platoon) tank shocked the shoota boyz and lined them up for a dose of heavy flamer love. I left the company command squad inside the chimera as I believed this would be the safest thing to do, as if I disembarked them than the squad would be annihilated by the burna boyz. Marbo moved through cover down to the bottom of the ruin in preparation to assault the remaining gretchin

Shooting began with the manticore firing 3 blast templates directly at the orks 7” away and wiping them out in a shower of green limbs, the infantry squad chimeras and mounted infantry squads finished off the deffkoptas, the command chimera opened fire in the shoota boyz killing all but 3, but again they held firm. Marbo ran so as not to have to launch an assault from cover. And the infantry squad from the immobilised chimera did the same but failed to roll high enough to get onto the objective.

Marbo assaulted the gretchin and due to some nice rolling (and the re-rolling of failed to-wound rolls as the gretchin are T2) wiped out everything before they had a chance to strike back, and consolidated back into cover.

At this point one of the judges came over and told us we had to finish up asap so rather than start a new turn we called the game. End result was a draw with the shoota boyz in the centre holding one objective and my dismounted infantry squad holding one. Due to victory point difference the game was scored 13-7 in my favour.

Conclusions
Looking back I would have done a few things differently. The first is that I should have disembarked the infantry squad from the immobilised chimera in the turn it ran itself aground and ran them closer to the objective in the shooting phase. The second would be to keep a better eye on the objectives, had I remembered the objective was behind the ruin I would have tank shocked a little further to contest the objective or even angled my attack so it pushed the orks away from the objective and forced them through the wreck of my chimera and hopefully killing a few with dangerous terrain tests before my company command squad disembarked and melta'd them to death. Ah hindsight, its a wonderful thing.

The only problem I had with this game is that at the end of my turn 3 Dwayne only had a few orks left, had it gone to turn 4 or 5 I reckon I could have tabled him, or at the very least secured a win on objectives, but as I mentioned we were told we needed to finish up asap, the problem is that after totalling everything up handing in our scores and putting our armies away on the trays there were still other people playing and for a good half an hour afterwards.