Thursday 13 December, 2007: Warhammer 40,000

Finally caught up with ourselves this week. Yesterday was the Ork VS Imperial Guard 1500 point 40K game I promised; and my word it was a good one.

As there were only 2 of us we took advantage of the simpler deployment to play one of the missions from the 40k rulebook. We randomly generated the scenario and it turned out to be take and hold. We set up the plastic Warhammer chapel model in the centre of the board as an objective and put a generator next to it. It could be rassionalised as a desperate enclave of pious Imperial refugees holding out until they could be rescued. Would the Imperial Guard whisk them from danger or would they become just more victims of the merciless greenskin tide… Read on to find out.

The armies were, as best as I remember, as follows:
Orks (new codex, don’t ask) – battle wagon, looted wagon, 10 flash gits, big mech with shock attack gun (ouch), 7 bikers, 2 scorchas (as separate units), 19 slugga boys with nob, 11 slugga boys with nob in a truck, ork dreadnought.

Imperial Guard – 3 troop platoons each consisting of 2 infantry squads with grenade launchers and a command squad with flamers, 2 units of 10 rough riders, unit of 3 sentinels with multi-lasers, command platoon with command squad including commissar and psycher (who had a shotgun for a laugh) and 2 mortar squads and an anti-tank squad with missile launchers, 4 ogryns.

I very quickly noticed that I had no tanks. This was both scary and painful but may well have saved the game for me. With no big targets to attract fire the army was quite spread out. I had never met orks from the new codex before either so this was a learning curve for both of us.

Due to deployment restrictions in the mission, most of the Guard set up as normal whereas a lot of the Ork vehicles were compelled to wait and come on in reserve. I sent a platoon of infantry to occupy the Flash Gits and ork boys on one flank, used the sentinels to control the left flank and sent 2 platoons of infantry and the ogryns up the middle to take the objective. The mortars deployed in cover near my board edge and the missile teams followed the assault forces up the middle to get into better positions for when the horrifically fast ork vehicles turned up.

The big mech deployed in a bunker where he remained, causing a stupendous amount of damage, for the rest of the game. The flash gits moved up on one side and the large unit of boys came on between them and the centre of the board.

Both sides did well with early shooting with a few grenades taking a couple of wounds from the Flash Gits while the big mech mashed command squads with his teleporting doomgun. The as yet small ork presence allowed the guard to advance relatively safely to take up positions around the objective.

Then the orks came. The battle wagon came on and picked up the large boys unit. They zoomed up the board ready to disgorge a horde of roaring greenskins on the objective. And got blown up by a missile launcher. The wagon exploded killing 10 of the orks. The rest lay about in the wreckage looking bemused. Similarly, the first scorcha zoomed on to engulf the sentinels in sheets of promethium. It didn’t reach and was torn apart in a hail of multi-laser fire. The second scorcha zoomed up the flank to assist the flash gits by boiling the platoon of guardsmen in their path. My heroic senior officer fired a plasma pistol shot through a window of the little factory on that side of the board and the oily engine of the ramshackle vehicle exploded. In the end, the flash gits did quite well on that flank as they sent one squad running with bolter fire and assaulted the second squad after it had been engulfed in tiny warp-hurled creatures from the big mech’s shock attack gun. The will of Gork and Mork was finally thwarted when the looted wagon rumbled on to the board. It dropped an ordnance template on top of the sentinels which had become hopelessly close together. The gunners were hoeplessly off target however as the shell exploded at the foot of a hill not far in front of the imperial walkers. Once more they opened fire with a salvo of laser fire and a lucky shot hit a shell being hauled to reload the main gun. One side of the vehicle was blown off and it settled to the ground as a smoking wreck. For the rest of the game the sentinels and dreadnought carried out a long ranged firefight on my left flank with neither side doing anything to the other. The sentinels were incredible in both performance and luck in this game. I have never known a squadron of sentinels to remain intact after a game and take so many expensive enemies with them.

The orks soon began making ground however. The truck mob and the bikes screamed on the centre of the board and roared towards the objective. The truck halted behind the church ready to disembark a horde of heavily-muscled orks into the fray. The bikes sent a salvo of big shoota fire at a command squad menacing the truck with a flamer and tore all 5 men apart in a storm of lead. Meanwhile, one of the grenade launchers (probably now one of my favourite guard weapons) succeeded in immobilising and stunning the truck with a penetrating hit. The orks fell into a flailing heap in the noisy passenger compartment and spent the rest of the turn getting to their feet. They couldn’t disembark and assault from their stunned transport next turn and the Guard had a bit of breathing space.

The bikes took this opportunity to charge the front squad of rough riders which had by now reached the centre of the board. The front squad were decimated and left as a pile of man and horse meat but the second squad counter charged and their explosive lances made short work of the now depleted bike squad.

Still the mech hurled indiscriminate shots, the flash gits ground through the flank and the ork infantry hacked their way slowly through the centre but in the end the mortars and flamers did their work and the much smaller ork infantry units were chased away or killed. At the end of turn 6, with night falling (I quite like the dusk till dawn rule) the objective lay in Imperial hands and the refugees were saved. Even so, there were still greenskins in the area so their fate still hung in the balance. There was no turn 7 though so the Guard remained in control of the objective at the end of the game. This, combined with the better than average shooting, gave them a solid victory.

That was probably one of the best guard games I’ve ever played. I remember one great game where my storm troopers did something heroic to a Grey Knights dreadnought which was really good fun and quite a tactical challenge but this game was brilliant. The thing that really made it was the objective. If anybody wants any advice for playing 40K then it must be to use the missions. When you line up and face off against your opponents you haven’t really got a focus apart from pitting the right gun against the most suitable armour. With other objectives your whole game plan changes. Please have a go!

If there is one lesson I have learned from this game it is that you should not be afraid to experiment with your army lists. I originally made a zealous Imperial cult to represent the defenders of a monastery world. The idea and the doctrines I chose were sound but it severely lacked in hard-hitting firepower. I specifically didn’t want tanks because they are so easy to destroy straight away and because I always use them. Instead I chose to make a “things with legs” themed army. It was genuinely fun to get my rough riders out again and the flexibility of movement offered by the incredibly versatile grenade launcher made my infantry squads much more suitable for a mobility-based mission like the one we ended up playing. The army was a complete whim and it worked perfectly – although it is important to remember that the orks did give as good as they got. Don’t be afraid to play, that’s one of the main reasons the choice of units is there.

I was impressed with the ork army as well. Johnny had a surprisingly good mix of long range template death and fast-moving assault units. His Flash Gits with their more dakka guns offered another flexible option. As far as I can see the orks main problem was their unlucky reserves. Their units came on in a straggling group so that the already entrenched Guard could concentrate fire. If they had arrived together they would have won.

So there you have it. A great game thoroughly enjoyed by both participants. The next report will be of our first apocalypse game this week end where 4000 points of my Chaos Space Marines fight a rather background-defying alliance of Tau, Orks, Space Wolves and either Necrons or Dark Angels. This will be both my first apocalypse game and my first large battle using the new CSM codex. I’ll tell you all about it next week.

Commander Portman