MTT: Round Two!

My second game was interesting and, to be honest, the game where I thought I played the best.  My opponent was running a pretty nasty list:  Battlewagons and Kans.  Three Battlewagons all with small nobz squads in them, nine Kans (mixed armament) and two Deff Dreads, topped off with a couple of Big Meks packing Kustom Force Fields.  Doesn’t leave a lot of room for Troops does it?  Apart from the Dreads, obviously.  But in terms of actual scoring units, he had the typical Ork deckchair unit.  Two minimum strength squads of Grots coming on from reserve.  Nice.

I had put myself forward for this round, and my prospective opponents were this list and a mid-range Monstrous Creature Tyranid list.  I decided to go for the Orks instead of the softer target of the ‘Nids mainly because I wasn’t sure the other lists in my team could take it.  I wasn;’t sure I could take it, but I figured I had a better chance than my captains low model count Daemon list or the mixed Marine list we were fielding.  Also, our last player was packing a similar Ork list, but running 60 Boyz, some Kommandos and Lootas instead of the Battlewagons.  In my experience, Ork vs Ork games can drag a little, as it all comes down to who can get the charge first, and the guy with Battlewagons is the one most likely to be the answer to that question.

So the scene was set: Spearhead setup for 5 objectives.  A pretty good deployment option for the Orks there, anything that allows you to field your wagons close to the enemy is a good deal.  To make matters worse, the jammy goit stole the initiative on me, so I had even less time to deal with approaching wall of pointy death.  Fortunately, I had deployed far enough back that he wasn’t able to do anything catastrophic with that free move.  After that, it was strict target priority for me:  Cut down his mobility, worry about the rest later. 

The Battlewagons had to go, even though I wasn’t too worried the wagons in particular.  Deathrollas are just not a massive threat to my vehicles (skimmers dodge out of the way of everything on 3+).  They are tricky for my Troops, but not impossible to take down with a rear armour value of 10.  The reason they had to go was the Big Meks loitering around inside them with those bloody force fields.  Any area of effect ability in a vehicle turns the vehicle into some strange talent amplifier, projecting the ability far farther than originally intended whilst also providing a nice safe bunker for the character in question.  By removing the wagons, I was able to cut the effectiveness of the Big Meks in half whilst robbing him of reliable 12” movement units to contest objective points.  So with single-minded purpose I flung all my lances at the three wagons.  They had all exploded by turn 2, which was gratifying. 

Devoid of their rides, the small Nobz squads and the Big Meks were easy pickings for the wealth of poisoned weapons I was slinging about and pain tokens were being collected all over the place.  He made the mistake of throwing one of the Nobz squads into assault with a full size squad of Hellions and all of the were killed before they could take a swing.  The main concern now was the tide of Gretchin gubbins waddling towards my lines.  I hate fighting Killa Kans.  I imagine most people who come against them hate fighting them too.  On their own they’re fine, easy even.  But squadroned up, they are relentless bastards.  Fortunately, one thing I’ve learned is that with an army as mobile as mine, they are easy enough to stay away from.  The main thing I had to worry about was the ranged firing from them.  I loathe Grotzookas.  Luckily for me, the Kans were split the usual way (three big shootas in one squad, three rokkits in another and three grotzookas in the last), so I had a decent target priority thing going.

The only thing that really went wrong that game was a gambit I attempted with the Baron.  In order to stop the Kans from wreaking havoc on my Hellion squad with grotzookas I detached the Baron from the squad and barrelled him into assault with the Kans, relying on his high WS (the Kans needed 5+ to hit him) and his Shadowfield (2+ Inv) to keep the Kans bogged down and useless for a turn.  He was called on to make two saves that round and fluffed it.  Not what I’d planned or what I wanted, but at least he took one of them down with him, although that’s scant compensation.  I’d do it again though, the odds of his survival were quite good, but they just didn’t pay off this time.  Shame.

The Rokkit Kans were a pain in my arse throughout the game, totalling a Raider, the Trueborn’s Venom and a Ravager before the game ended.  I wasn’t even able to kill all of them.  Two down, and the last one missing its close combat weapon.  So close!  Anyway, whilst all this business with the Kans and Battlewagons was happening on my side of the board, my opponent’s two squads of Grots stumbled in from reserves and camped down on the two objectives in his board half.  Fortunately, I’ve lost enough games to Grot Objective Campers to have expected this, and one of my large Hellion squads had been skirting round the edge of the board (just out of charge range of the Dreads and Kans) and proceeded to eat both squads in the next couple of turns, claiming an objective and being too far away from the Kan battlelines to be reached in time before game end.  Seeing as he had no other troops aside from the Grot deckchairs the game was mine from that moment.  All that was left was to find out how many Kans and Dreads I could pop and how many Dark Eldar my opponent could squish in the last turn (we rolled game over on turn 5).

I would say one of the key points in my favour for this game was the fact that my opponent wasn’t particularly experienced in the fine art of Dark Eldar killing, underestimating how hard Hellions can punch against poorly armoured foes in an assault and not taking pain tokens into account when throwing away his sacrificial units.  DE leap on pain token opportunities when they can, and he should have retreated his Nobs squads out of poison range of the Hellions instead of trying to get them into assault.  He also left his backfield utterly undefended, not seeming to realise the manoeuvrability of my units to deal with his objective campers.  I think one unit of Kans (probably the big shootas) would have done wonders for his chances of a win. 

Never mind, eh?  Fun game from both sides though!

Next up: more Space Wolves!

Joy.