Friday, April 23, 2010

Battle Summary: Daemons vs. Orks (1000 points)

I tend to enjoy lower points value games more than higher ones. They can be played faster, and concentration loss is not a significant factor. Plus it forces you to make very tough choice about what to include (or not) in the army.

This is a game that happened last year that I am only just getting around to writing up. The army lists are below, but I will point out that I do not know the precise make-up of my opponent's army list, so please treat it as a good approximation rather than the exact truth.

Daemons (my list):
HQ: Herald of Khorne on Juggernaut, blessings of the blood god (110)
Troops: 7 Bloodletters; deployed with the Herald (112)
Troops: 8 Bloodletters (128)
Troops: 7 Plaguebearers, icon, instrument (135)
Troops: 10 Horrors, icon, Changeling, instrument (205)
Fast Attack: 3 Screamers (48)
Heavy Support: Daemon Prince, daemonic gaze, iron hide (130)
Heavy Support: Daemon Prince, daemonic gaze, iron hide (130)

Orks (opponent):
HQ: Warboss with Power Klaw, Attack Squigs, Cybork, Boss Pole (115)
Elites: 8 Ork Nobz, 1 x Power Klaw, Cybork bodies, 1 x Painboy, Waaaaaaaagh Banner (270)
Troops: 20 Boyz with Choppas and Sluggas, 2 Big Shootas, Nob with Power Klaw and a Boss Pole (165)
Troops: 20 Boyz with Choppas and Sluggas, 2 Big Shootas, Nob with Power Klaw and a Boss Pole (165)
Troops: 20 Boyz with Choppas and Sluggas, 2 Big Shootas, Nob with Power Klaw and a Boss Pole (165)
Battlewagon: Reinforced ram, Stikkbomb chukka, Red paint, Kannon, Grot riggers (120)

Set-up.
The mission is annihilate. The board is a 4'x4' one. The terrain consists of scattered craters on a red planet and there are two manufactorum ruins as well - one in both deployment zones. Naturally, I do not set anything up since I'm playing daemons. My opponent spreads his forces out along his deployment zone and places one of the boyz mob inside his manufactorum ruins.

The die is cast and it appears that I'm going to go first. In a competitive game, I would have tried to "seize the initiative" so that I can go second, but this is not a tournament game.

Early Turns.
I manage to get my preferred half of the army down on the board. This consists of the Herald (together with his "retinue" of 7 bloodletters), Horrors, Screamers, and one of the Daemon Princes. I deep-strike the horrors first. My intent is to place them infront of one of the ork boyz squad that is out in the open. They proceed to scatter to near to the edge of the board. The screamers scatter on top of the Battlewagon. We roll to see what has happened to them and they get placed on the board by my opponent. He places them on my manufactorum. They get hurt and two die. Ouch! The bloodletters and the daemon prince do not scatter though. They land near to my opponent's manufactorum. The prince shoots up some boyz. Three immediately die. My horrors of Tzeentch let rip on the boyz in front of them. Over half of them perish!

But then, my luck starts to run out. The boyz that were in front of the horrors shoot and charge them. All but one dies. I manage to retain the horror who has the icon. In exchange, only a few boyz die. The nobz get out of the building, and start at the daemon prince. After charging in to combat with him, he only has 1 wound left already!

The bloodletters get shot up pretty badly too. I lose several of them and a wound on the herald as well.

In my second turn, the plaguebearers arrive. The deepstrike next to the horrors.
The bloodletters then charge in to the nobz. With help from the daemon prince, they slaughter them all in a single turn! One kill point to me. The boyz terminate the last horror readily though. One kill point each. Although the plaguebearers get shot at, none of them die.

The warboss along with a mob of boyz then proceeds to shoot and charge my bloodletters. All of the bloodletters die, apart from the herald. Kill points are now 1-2 (against me).

Middle Turns.
Sneakily, my screamers move up the field of play. They're not in range of anything just yet though.
My second daemon prince joins the party, deep-striking off the plaguebearer's icon. I only have the second squad of bloodletters held in reserve at this point in time.

The daemon prince succumbs to the warboss, but the warboss' skull belongs to the blood god thanks to the herald. 2-3 in kill points (against me).

The boyz who killed the horrors now got locked, or should I say tar-pitted, with the charging plaguebearers. Along with the second daemon prince, the boyz succumb. 3-3.

The newly arrived daemon prince is made short work of by the wagon though. 3-4.

Late Turns.
The other squad of bloodletters arrive and survive the boyz shooting at them. In turn, they kill of the boyz. 4-4.

The rest of the game soon becomes a game of cat-and-mouse. I move forward with one unit. The boyz move backwards and shoot. I try to move out of range or behind some scenery and the waaaaagggh follows me.

There's only one way to settle this. I'm going to use my few surviving screamers to try to eliminate the wagon. They can move fast (like jet bikes) and the wagon is caught un-aware. Despite scoring some palpable hits, the wagon is only immobilised in the end. In retaliation, the screamers promptly die.

The game ends and I have lost 4-5.

Aftermath.
It was a fun game mostly due to the screamers. They started extremely badly and got hit from a hard landing on scenery. After spending most of the game dashing here and there, they finally made it to the wagon but were not effective enough! At least they tried.

Also of note were the plaguebearers: not a single one of them died. Well done Nurgle!
I also liked the warboss - my opponent really got in to his characterisation with a few vocalized "waaaaaah"s! How many other ork players do that? I think there's lots of you out there as I've heard many of you do this before! It brings the game alive more (as long as its not done too annoyingly and too frequently!).

3 comments:

Tigerstyle said...

Sounds like this was a pretty close game and could have gone either way.

suneokun said...

Nice of your opponent to play it Orky. Turned into a real bloodbath. What Orks lack in accuracy or power weapons, they really make up for in rate of fire and attacks.

Smaller games are a joy to play.

jabberjabber said...

Chants of "Blood for the blood ....." were completely out drowned out by "Waaaaaa!"

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