Battle Report: Warhammer 40K, Road to Mechanicon

ROAD TO MECHANICON TOURNAMENT RESULTS.

Well here we are, 2 months away from the Mechanicon convention in West Chester PA and I am working on my Warhammer 40,000 army list for the Grand Tournament.

I am continuing to stay with my Goff Space Ork army: Krogg's Karnage, and will continue to run them until such time as I finally win a GT. Weather this takes 2 months or 10 years, the goal is the same, simply to win a GT with Orks. More importantly, it is to have fun doing it, AND also to stay true to my signature style with my orks.

Many ork players i've noticed, like to use tried and true units like a large mob of Nobs with a paindoc, or perhpas even Nob Bikers, or heavy troops in a battle wagon. I like to think I've gone a bit different in my selections and am trying to make the overall system work. After this last 3-game tournament at the Adventurer's Guild, I have learned that my list still needs a little more work.

That being said, I had a good time and learned quite a bit. One thing I can tell is that I have been a bit out of practice and need to revisit the basics again.

The big part of my list I like to center it around is two large mobs of stormboyz. Some Ork players don't like them. I on the other hand, love to use jump infantry. I especially like the ork Stormboyz as they not only move the 12 inches forward, but gain and additional d6 inches of random movement, and can still assault. This gives an effective strike range of 14 to 24 inches for the Stormboyz to assault. The downside of these units is that they are fragile with a terrible armor save and they are twice as expensive as a normal ork warrior.

Regardless of personal preferrence, this is just my matter of preferrence and something I am working on trying to make work. In a standard mission deployment I have opted to field a unit of warbikers up front as not only do they offer the rest of my army a 4+ cover save, but also gain a cover save themselves. They can also move 12 full inches and still shoot with Twin-Linked Dakka guns, with 3 shots each.

So here was my list going into this event:
HQ1: Warboss with 'eavy armor, cybork body, Power Klaw, Kombi Shoota/Skorcha
HQ2: Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun, 'eavy armor, ammo runt

Troops1: 27 orks with choppas & sluggas, nob with bosspole, Power Klaw, 'eavy armor
Troops2: 20 shoota boyz with 2 x Rokkit Launchas, Nob with Bosspole (to stay and hold objectives and defend them)
Troops3: 15 Gretchin & 1 Runtherder
Troops4: 15 Gretchin & 1 Runtherder
Troops:5 10 shoota boyz, 1 big shoota

Elite: 5 x Tankbustas, 1 tankhammer, 2 bomb squigs

Fast Attack1: 8 Warbikers, Nob with Big Choppa, Bosspole
Fast Attack2: 20 Stormboyz, Nob with Bosspole, 'eavy armor, Power Klaw (White Storm)
Fast Attack3: 20 Stormboyz, Nob with Bosspole, 'eavy armor, Big Choppa (Red Storm)

Heavy Support 1: 3 x Killa kanz armed with: 1 Big Shoota, 1 Grotzooka, 1 Rokkit Launcha
Heavy Support 2: Big Gunz: 3 x Zzap Guns, 2 gretchin each, 1 Runtherder, 1 additional grot gunner

The tournament consisted of 3 rounds of game play at Standard Warhammer 40K GT format at 1850 points. All standard codexes applied. 8 Players showed up to do battle, and the winner of this tournament won a ticket to the Mechanicon GT.

I arrived representing the Berks-PA Gaming Club with my Arch Rival and great friend John T, who was bringing his Star Dragons Space Marines to the tournament.

This will be the first of 3 battle reports, as we played 3 games. I had also tied each game into the Berks 40K campaign: False Hope Crusade, as we were building up to a large Apocolypse style game the following week. So, for all intents and purposes as far as fluff go, my stories count towards the siege of Thrak.

Game 1 vs. Slaneesh Chaos Daemons. My opponent from York, Steve K., came sporting something you don't normally see at a tournament. He was playing Slaneesh Chaos Daemons. Chaos Daemons are a difficult enough army list to play, but to keep it themed to just one of the 4 chaos powers meant that this guy was playing for theme and here to have a good time. I expected a fun game, and got exactly that.

We ended up playing all 3 missions that were "Special" mission from the Cabin Fever Warhammer 40K GT held at the Adventurer's Guild that January. So I had a slight advantage as I have played each scenerio once before.

Mission 1: Hit the Ground Running. Scoring: 500 points for each Table Quarter held by a scoring unit and no enemy units witin that quadrant. An additional 1850 points earned by Victory Points, and an additional 150 points if you have any troop choices left by the end of the game. This gave a maximum of 4000 battle points.

Deployment: ALL units are Deep Striking. EVERYTHING. Minimum of 3 units had to deploy right away. This was all due to interference and warp storms. All other units are held in reserve, and Outflanking units add +1 to their reserves rolls due to energy disturbances

Game 1: Making their way through the static in the atmosphere, Warboss Atogg, the right hand Ork of the great Ork Warlord Krogg Satogg of Krogg's Karnage had led his troops to the strike zones on Thrak. Success from previous ork missions had increased their load of technology and the Ork Meks and Grot Oilers had finally gotten the "Telly-Porta" machine working. Atogg would be the first to try it out.

As their strike team assembled, they would lead the assault, bringing their troops into the first battle zone. Xox Grotsmasha, the lead Ork Mek, would continue to teleport ork troops in until the power ran out and than reserves

would land and meet the rest of Atogg's forces planetside later.

Coming into the drop zone, Atogg pointed out to his troops to have them start using the Telly-Porta and make their landings. Atogg himself led the drop along side with a large mob of ork boyz. Following them in suit were the Warbikers of the OCC (Ork County Choppers), Zegg Fliggblast the Big Mek along side with his gretchin body guard/assitants. The trio of Killa kanz also made the drop planet side.

The orks could do very little but spread their troops out. Atogg's plan was simple. Get forces on the planet and spread out so that they could cover every quarter where the enemy troops arrive. Their deep striking was dead on, the entire game rolling hits on 75% of the rolls, and the others scattering an average of 4 to 6 inches on those that missed.

Incoming was the Slaneesh Daeomons. They may not have known exactly what they were going to be up against. In bound were a Slaneesh Daemon Prince (excellent covnersion from a C-Tan), a pack of Daemonettes of Slaneesh, Fiends of Slaneesh, and riders of Slaneesh. All they could do was land on the planet, materialzie out of the warp, and spread out. There was very little shooting and what did take place from the Prince of Slannessh missed.

Ork turn 2: More reserves came into play. The five-man Tankbusta Squad teleported right on target, ready to fire rokkits into the Daemon Prince. The Big Gunz crews landed right near the trees and started to run for the woods, bringing their Zzap guns in tow with them. As for the rest of the orks, well they now had plenty of targets and started to go after them.

Zegg Fliggblast, the Big Mek charged up the Shokk Attack Gun, only to have it fail horribly and warp itself into an explosion, taking out himself and about 7 or 8 grots. The surviving members fled the battlefield, looking to live to fight another day.

Remarkably, I get about 1 out of every 3-4 games where my orks seem to really be able to shoot well. It just so happened that this game would be that game. The 30 strong mob of orks made their way towards the Demonettes, who had an Icon with them. After cutting down half of their number with shooting, the orks were able to assault them and bring them down. Sadly this left the Daemon Prince unattended. The Warbikers made their way around lending their fire into the fiends as did the other mob of stormboyz.

Daemons turn 2: Seeing that they were being swarmed quickly by orks, the Daemons of Slannessh were lacking on the reserves, but had another squad of fiends arrive. Unfortunately for the Daemons, by the end of their assault phase, one full squad of Daeomonettes were gone. The Masque of Slaneesh Arrived as well and between it and the Daeomon Prince, they tried to take down some of the orks and shoot the gretchin mob.

The Fiends of Slaneesh did a number on the orks. Getting 4 or 5 attacks at a high initiative and strength, they killed a slew of orks. The problem was that there were just too many orks.

Ork turn 3: Ork shooting continued to be a factor. Warbikers changing gears and moving from one battle to another as foes were killed off, led their dakka guns to the cause as the Stormboyz arrived and lent their guns to the mix as well. At every turn, no matter where the Slaneesh Daemons arrived, there were orks there to greet them. Either through shooting or assaulting. The Masque of Slaneesh tried to do it's thing, but the Orks advanced, in range of an assault. Instead, they dispatched the fiend with their sluggas.

The battle would rage on, Daeomons trying to assault orks, or the orks assaulting the Daemons, losing five or six orks in the charge, only to have over a dozen more fill in their ranks and whittle down the Daemons. This game was looking to be a solid ork victory going into turn 5 when the orks had a chance to cut down one more unit of Daemons and go from claiming 2 table quarters to 3 or 4. So we agreed to play one more turn, which actually saw the Daemons kill off 2 squads of orks and have their last Daemonette unit still alive with only 1 model left.

The victory points gained helped the Daemons, but the game still ended as a Victory for Krogg's Karnage, with the orks holding 2 table quarters to 1 for the Chaos Daemons.

When the smoke cleared from the battlefield Warboss Atogg looked around at his troops, pleased with the carnage they had caused. The fiends of Slaneesh were chased from the field of battle, and this would lead up for the next advance, where more key objectives waited.