Battle reports! Better late than never.
Chaos and Dark Angels vs. Orks and Tyranids
We played a crazy 2v2 match on cawshis’ awesome 4×4 city table. Each player contributed 500 points of units, so it was basically a 1000pt game. Emukt and I suggested we skip the random mission selection and just see who could kill the most stuff in six rounds. This proved to be a mistake, which I’ll explain later.
Viper’s chaos army hunkers down in some ruins:
My orks are ready to rumble:
Emukt’s ‘nids look hungry:
Cawshis’ traitorous Dark Angels prepare for battle:
The first round was not good for the xenos team. Chaos and the angels settled into cover, ready to open fire when enemies got in range. The chaos defiler was already in range and emukt’s starting position left him right in the line of fire, so the defiler WIPED OUT an entire unit of ‘nids. It was ugly. Nonetheless, we knew we had to march on the enemy, so march we did:
But the defiler was ready for us and started picking us off as we moved forward. Ork rockets were fired at it, but orks can’t aim to save their lives (and they were, in this case, trying to save their lives, and they failed). Here’s an ork’s eye view down the firing lane:
Ork and tyranid casualties piled up. My shoota boyz took so much fire that they had to make a morale check, which they failed, which means they got to make their mob rule test (basically a second morale check using the number of ork boyz in the mob as the leadership score) and failed that too. So I fell back. Fortunately my slugga boyz were right behind, so I got to check to see if they mobbed up (another ork special rule that allows falling back orks to join other units), but they failed that too!!! Thank god I had a nob with a boss pole in the slugga unit, which allows re-rolling of mobbing up checks. Finally I made a roll, and my 2 units united into one big mob.
The ultra-fast tyranids got out in front, but unfortunately, this meant they were now in firing range of the defiler, the chaos marines and the dark angels:
The second unit of nids went down. Emukt was now down to his three HQ bugs. My warboss headed for the defiler but was gunned down. My mob engaged the chaos marines. Finally, close combat:
On the other side of the board, emukt’s super-tough HQ bugs took on some dark angels:
Things were looking up for the xenos! I finished off the chaos marines and surrounded the chaos lord. The defiler approached the battle, which was pretty scary:
But Emukt polished off the marines and headed for the defiler, and took it out! Then I took out the chaos lord! Chaos was out of the fight! But then the angels engaged the last of emukt’s nids and took them out. It was down to marines and orks. On the last round, my killer kans, who had been lurking behind the mob (which is dumb, more on that later) were taken out by angel rocket launchers. The Dark Angels were almost entirely intact, while the orks consisted only of a rather diminished mob. So victory went to the marines:
I learned a few lessons in this match. First of all, different mission types are my friend. In a simple Search and Destroy mission, close combat armies are at a disadvantage because their shooty enemies can just take cover and wait. So even though a straight-up killing game might seem orky, it’s not good for the orks. I also realized I was using my kans wrong. Because they are so precious to me, I’ve been marching them behind my boyz to keep them out of danger. But I think the place for a kan is out front. It draws fire from the boyz and can start shooting and assaulting sooner. Marching kans in the back renders them useless. Finally, I re-learned my lesson that ICs (like my warboss) should be kept close to the boyz so the enemy can’t target them.
Orks vs. Tyranids
Emukt and I played a 500pt game on the same table. It was a recon game, meaning we had to get scoring units to the other side of the table. Here’s the set-up:
Here’s a shot of the ork deployment zone:
I decided to try to take out Emukt’s infiltrating HQ unit with my kans while the rest of my boyz and my warboss marched forward. Emukt marched his bugs forward accompanied by his creepy Zoanthropes. My shoota boyz opened fire on one of emukt’s units:
Meanwhile my kans marched towards the infiltrators. I figured it would be an even battle, but the kans were utterly ripped apart! That HQ unit was tougher than I thought:
My slugga boyz marched towards the center of the field. I tried to get close enough to charge, but failed. That meant that emukt would get the charge with both his regular bugs and his HQ. Very bad:
My shoota boyz charged and took out the unit of ‘nids they were facing. My warboss even took out a zoanthrope. But the shootas were too weak so they were no longer a scoring unit. Meanwhile, my sluggas in the center of the field finished off some bugs but that evil HQ unit ripped us up:
As far as winning goes, almost all our units were weakened or destroyed, so nobody could score. In retrospect, it might have been possible for emukt to seperate his HQ unit from the accompanying retinue and the retinue could have scored.
This game made me question the usefulness of my warboss’ power armour. It looks cool, but it slows him down and it’s only helped me once in five games. I might use those points for something else. I also find myself questioning the usefulness of my shoota boyz. They can’t hit anything with their guns, they’re not as effective in CC as the sluggas, and yet they cost almost the same number of points as the sluggas. Also, when they mob up with the sluggas it makes CC really complicated because I have to roll them seperately and they have different numbers of attacks. I’m thinking about replacing my shoota boyz with a big mob of gretchin.
