by Plasma Man » Tue Mar 24, 2009 7:04 pm UTC
My brother and I played another game of 40k on Sunday and things went a lot better than last time. He'd picked an Ork army that was a mix of Boarboyz and Kustom Kombi-Weapon-armed troops, with two dreadnoughts, a weirdboy warphead, some madboyz and a screen of gretchin. I'd picked a terminator army where everyone was armed with thunder hammers and storm shields and everyone who could was teleporting into battle, so I only deployed my captain and my chief librarian. This meant I had an army of 17 models against his (approximately) 50. For missions, I drew The Assassins, so had to try to kill his commander, while my brother drew Engage & Destroy, so was just trying to kill me.
Turn 1
He wins the roll for the first turn and puts his entire army into overwatch, except for his weirdboy who moves forward to get into range with his psychic powers. This turns out to be very bad for me as he manages to kill my chief librarian with a brain bursta before he got to do anything. At this point I was thinking "Oh no, here we go again, time for another drubbing due to hideous luck". Fortunately my turn went a bit better. My terminator captain was equipped with a warp jump and managed to teleport fairly close to the enemy warboss, but sadly not close enough to land in hand-to-hand combat with anything. My three squads of terminators all failed to lock on to his teleport homer, but managed to land in fairly useful places. One squad landed on the right flank and was able to get some of its members landing in close combat with a dreadnought. One landed at the rear amongst the boarboyz and was able to engage some of them, with one member being able to land in close combat with the warboss. The final squad landed in the centre, in combat with the kustom kombi-weapon troops. Predictably enough, my terminators cut a swathe through everything they fight, destroying the dreadnought, half the kombi-weapon squad and some of the boarboyz. Sadly the warboss manages to kill the terminator that was fighting him, largely thanks to the strategy card "special issue" having given him an Executioner (Strength 10, D3 damage, -6 saving throw modifier).
Turn 2
A massive counter-attack gets under way by the Orks. Their warboss charges my captain, along with some boarboyz that were free. The madboyz charge my central squad, the remaining boarboyz charge the terminators that were fighting them, and on the right flank some optimistic gretchin form a firing line to target the terminators over there. My captain fights bravely, taking out three boarboyz, but suffers a wound from the warboss. The rest of the terminators hold out well, though a couple fall to weight of numbers. My turn is spent fighting in close combat as well, slaughtering my way through a wall of green flesh.
Turn 3
Similar to turn 2. Everyone is engaged in close combat, my terminators finish off the squad of boarboyz they were fighting and manage to break the madboyz. One squad manage to get into close combat with the warboss and aid my captain in beating the warboss easily in hand-to-hand, but the cunning ork is kept alive by his medi-squig, with just one wound remaining. The remaining ork dreadnought fires on my terminators who were fighting the madboyz, killing two of them. Sadly the madboyz rally at the end of my turn.
Turn 4
The final turn. Everyone goes nuts. The ork dreadnought and the remaining squad of boarboyz charge my captain and the terminators with him. The terminators are wiped out, but my captain fights off three boarboyz, the dreadnought and the warboss without suffering a single wound. The only enemy to survive the fight is the warboss, while the rest are destroyed. Meanwhile my other two squads of terminators wipe out the remainder of the kustom kombi-weapon orks, though one squad is reduced to a single model by more psychic attacks. This lone terminator charges into the melee of boarboyz surrounding the warboss, but fails to kill any of them (I was hoping to kill a couple to force a break test). The other terminators are out of charge range, but manage to charge and kill some gretchin who sadly don't break either. My captain again beats the warboss in hand-to-hand, a single wound would be enough to kill him, but the damn medi-squig saves him again. I use the barrage strategy card, but it fails to hit anything and the game is over.
At first, we weren't sure who'd won, but when we counted up the victory points I'd managed to win simply on the amount of his orks I'd killed. The final score was 18 points to 12 in my favour. More importantly, it had been a good, closely fought game that could have gone either way. My brother admitted afterwards that he'd forgotten to add the charge bonuses onto some of his boarboyz combat scores, so that might have allowed him to wipe out another squad of terminators. Man of the match has to go to my captain, who was fighting against superior odds from the second turn onwards, but managed to survive and take out a large number of orks at the same time.
I wasn't sure how well the teleporting terminators would work in practice, but though none of them landed exactly where I wanted them, they were fighting orks so had plenty of targets wherever they landed. I think it was worth it - sure, I could have put them in land raiders, but tanks would probably have got blown up and taken the terminators with them before getting close enough to drop them off in close combat range. I'd also forgotten just how much punishment terminators can soak up. They were fighting an entire army, but only took 11 casualties, three of which were from psychic powers they couldn't save against.
My brother's army would probably have worked fairly well against a conventional force, but it didn't do too badly here. The main disadvantage for him was that I managed to neutralise a lot of his shooty stuff by getting very close, very quickly. It probably wasn't helped by his forgetting to add charge bonuses when he counter-attacked my force either. I might consider taking a boarboy army myself in the future, but not for our next match. I'm thinking I might try an Imperial Guard force for that, with as many tanks as I can fit in.
Those Anry Marines have honestly made my weekend, as well as plunged me back into 40k! Thank you all.#
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