Well, first things first; a little housekeeping is in order on this blog. As appears to be a regular excuse, work is thoroughly kicking my posterior at the moment and resulting in a poor posting rate. However, it will be an excuse no more! (Clarification: it could totally continue to be an excuse).
I’ve decided that I’ll starting blogging at home rather than at work, so I should be posting at least once a week, and may finally get round to fully reviewing this year's Adepticon before I go to the next one. However, I’d like to emphasise the use of the word ‘may’ in that previous sentence. It’s a slim get-out clause, but I take what I can. I’ll be writing up my Malifaux tournament experience over the weekend and so should hopefully have some stuff every Monday.
But just to keep my hand in, I have a brief battle report for you fine people. I had a game with one of the club regulars on Tuesday for 1750 points. Orks vs Chaos Marines. Recently I’ve been experimenting with pure Marine lists rather than mixing in my Daemons. It helps keep things interesting and I don’t want people to be able to easily predict what I’m going to bring in each week. This time round, it was pure Khorne. Not one of my usuals, I have to say. I’m normally a Slaanesh player for my Chaos Marines, with the Warpsmith being to only real Khornate presence in the lot most of the time. However, this time around, I went for something different: a legitimately small army (by my standards). I was packing:
Chaos Lord: Mark of Khorne, terminator armour and lightning claws
Dark Apostle: Mark of Khorne
7 Terminators: Lightning claws, a heavy flamer, Mark of Khorne
7 Possessed: Mark of Khorne, Icon of Wrath
3 x 8 Berzerkers: No upgrades
2 x 5 Raptors: 2 x Flamers per squad, all with Mark of Khorne
Land Raider: Dirge Casters, Extra Armour, Havoc Launcher
My opponent brought:
Warboss: squig, power klaw, cybork
10 Nobz: Painboy, 2 x klaws and a lot of big axes
5 Lootas
Dakkajet
30 man squad of ‘Ard Boyz with sluggas
Wyrdboy Warphead
Deathroller Battlewagon
Killkannon Battlewagon
6 Warbikers with squad leader
So, even with my ‘small’ list, I was nearly on par my Ork opponent’s numbers. The game set up as Relic with diagonal deployment. I was lucky enough to get a Master of Deception and infiltrated all my berzerkers as far forward as they would go, all in separate sections of the board to put the pressure on the Orks as quickly as possible. My Raptors languished in reserve and the Possessed with the Apostle in the Landraider and the foot squad of Terminators with my Lord were deployed as aggressively as I could manage. The Orks were deployed slightly more defensively, given my first turn, with the Wyrdboy and Ard Boyz in cover behind a wall and the killkannon in backfield. The only aggressive deployment was the warboss and his squad in the Deathroller wagon.
Unluckily for me, my initiative was stole and the Orks advanced first. Luckily for me, the Warbikers were positioned for the charge on my infiltrating berzerkers… which no-one can do turn one. That charge positioning just left them open for a juicy counter-assault during my following turn. The rest of his turn involved a bit of footslogging, advancing the warboss’ wagon and doing whatever shooting could be managed that early on. My berzerkers took most of the hits and not a single squad escaped casualties, but they were still fairly solid by the end of the turn. The killkannon aimed at my terminators, but accomplished nothing.
My turn was also fairly uneventful for the most part, with me lacking any significant firepower apart from the landraider, which chose to stand its ground in front of the careening battlewagon and fail to achieve anything with the lascannons. Everything else was just in an advance. Thing kicked off a little in the assault phase and two of my berzerkers reached combat: one squad with the Warbikers and one with the battlewagon. The warbiker combat went soundly, but the bikers managed to take it, rolling the 4 they needed to stand their ground. The battlewagon got grenaded to within an inch of its life, but aggravatingly limped by with one hull point remaining.
Things were hotting up for turn two, although the Dakkajet didn’t turn up (bullet dodged there…), there were plenty of options for the discerning Ork player to spread some havoc and run amok. However, here is where things started to go awry for him. The battlewagon (and the guys inside) ignored the berserker remnants that had assaulted them last turn and decided to pile-drive straight into the landraider, hoping for the Deathroller to inflict some serious damage. It didn’t, fortunately, and only one hull point was lost. This move also cost the Boss’s unit any chance to get into assault as they couldn’t leave due to the wagon’s speed. The Dread decided to aim its rockets at terminators rather than the berzerkers standing close by and that also precluded him a charge opportunity as well. The big problem was the warphead however. He power that got used was the teleport, and the entire mob of some 30 boyz suddenly ‘ported about 6” to the left. I understand why that decision was made, as a form of damage limitation, but given the nature of the game and his playstyle so far, I would definitely have moved them elsewhere. It would have positioned them further away from the relic, sure, but it would have stopped what happened next as well… The Berzerkers finished off the warbikers that phase, their victory only marred by the champion mutating into a seething mound of mindless flesh. I’m sure he was thrilled.
That concludes phase one of this report and I'll be here with phase two fairly shortly (geoligically speaking).
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