Battle Report - Orks vs Space Marines

Hello!

More 40k, and more Orks! One day I might have to go back to sometimes playing other armies, but today is not that day! This is another matched play game in my attempts to run a proper Green Tide style Ork list with the new book - it seems to be very much not the meta choice, which just makes me stubbornly want to make it work more. So far it's been fairly successful against Space Wolves, melee focused Sisters of Battle and Custodes, but this game would be a much different challenge - a very shooty Iron Hands list.

I was playing over at Grim Dice against Nick, who had recently taken this list to the LGT and gone 4-1, so he knew what he was doing - though he did say he hadn't played a proper horde army with the list yet, so I would be an interesting learning experience for both of us. We rolled up the mission Overrun, which was thankfully a long table edge deployment with 6 objectives, hold two, three and more than your opponent for points. 

My list was almost identical to the one I took against the Custards, with only a minor change to make the grot mobs 'Orrible Gits for objective secured, and taking the specialist mob off the Deffkoptas so they could benefit from Snakebite rules and the Warboss aura.

Snakebite Battalion and Patrol

HQ: 

Warboss (attack squig, kombi-skorcha, powerklaw, Brutal but Kunnin, Super Cybork Body), Warboss (big choppa, kustom shoota, 'Ard as Nails, Headwoppa's Killchoppa), Weirdboy (Da Jump, Warpath), Weirdboy (Fists of Gork, Jabbin' Fingerz)

Troops: 4x 15 Boyz (powerklaw), 2x 15 Boyz (powerklaw, shootas), 2x 11 Gretchin ('Orrible Gits), 18 Beast Snagga Boyz

Elites: 15 Kommandos (powerklaw, bomb squig, distraction grot)

Fast Attack: 5 Stormboyz (powerklaw), 5 Deffkoptas

For this one I broke from the usual secondary choice of Green Tide, reasoning that there was a good chance my units would be reduced below 11 pretty swiftly, instead taking Engage On All Fronts, Raise the Banners High and Stomp 'Em Good (which is essentially Grind Them Down but you only could units killed in melee and there's an extra point on offer if you double your opponent's number).

Nick's Iron Hands were obviously built for the alpha strike with a bunch of very killy dreads, lots of Devastators in a drop pod and some Vanguard Vets for counter attack. It was very scary.

Iron Hands Battalion

HQ: Phobos Captain (Lord of Deceit, The Tempered Helm), Techmarine (storm bolter)

Troops: 3x 5 Incursors

Elites: 2 Company Veterans (storm shields), 2x Leviathan Dreadnought (2 Grav flux bombards, heavy flamers), Relic Contemptor (2 twin volkite culverins), Relic Contemptor (2 twin volkite culverins, Cyclone missile launcher, March of the Ancients stratagem, Merciless Logic), 2x 5 Vanguard Veterans (storm shields and lightning claws)

Heavy Support: 2x 5 Devastators (3 multi-meltas, grav cannon, armorium cherub)

Transport: Drop Pod

Nick took Oaths of Moment, Raise the Banners High and Assassination as secondaries. I was a little surprised he didn't go for No Prisoners, but I do have four characters that eventually want to get into fights so it was a good bet on getting a decent chunk of points.

Deployment looked like this - I held the 'koptas and Stormboyz off the board, while Nick kept the Vanguard Veterans in the skies. He also set up the Incursors in the middle of the board, using his Master of Deceit ability to redeploy them onto objectives, keeping one squad back in strategic reserve. I made a bit of a mistake not deploying the Kommandos immediately and getting them into a ruin, instead the Incursors forced them onto a flank in the open - they would obviously die if the Iron Hands got turn one, but if not they could be a right pain on the left objective. In hindsight Nick probably would have been better deploying at least one unit of the Vets for a counter charge.

We rolled off, and first turn went to the Iron Hands. Here comes the dakka!

One shooting phase and some morale later, here's a dead pile with 44 Orks in it! Ouch! There wasn't much in the way of movement, apart from the drop pod arriving on my right flank to shoot some otherwise hidden boyz. As you might imagine this left some big holes in my mobs, but there were still quite a lot of Orks left.

I knew that I couldn't just sit there and take all that firepower every turn, so I'd have to make some charges. I declared the WAAAGH! and started advancing up. Shooting was of course ineffectual, but there were some banners raised and Warpath was cast on the purple mob.

I got a little lucky here in that two of my 9+ inch charges went off, and I think if they hadn't it might just have been game over in turn two. As it was I denied some Leviathan firepower (those grav flux weapons are blast) and tied up both Dev squads. The luck came round a bit in that the purple mob, going in with Warpath and WAAAGH! for five attacks each, only managed to kill a couple of marines, and got pretty badly beaten up in response. Combined with overwatch I had to spend 2 CP to auto pass morale in my own turn to make sure the Devs weren't firing.

Turn two, Iron Hands shuffled around, no sign of Vanguard Vets yet, but the Incursors did come on to the central objective to raise the banner and allow the Leviathan to walk off. Slightly less guns killed slightly less Orks in the shooting phase, leaving me with a whole load of little units of two or three boyz. Importantly the Incursors on the left flank had moved off the objective to get more shots.

Ork turn two, and it was time for the Bosses to get stuck in, making their way up the centre to the three big dreadnoughts. On the right flank I sent in the remnants of another mob to try and clear out the Devs, and on the left a remnant shoota Boy mob set up a charge on the character Contemptor. The Deffkoptas came in to do some shooting and the Stormboyz dropped in the far corner to ensure some Engage points.

One of the Weirdboys powered up Redtoof with an eleven on Fists of Gork, so he was up to nine attacks with the power klaw at strength 15! The shooting phase was less impressive though, the Deffkoptas whiffed and only put a couple of wounds on a Leviathan.

In the charge phase the Devs got surrounded again and we finally killed one unit, and the yellow Boyz made it into the Contemptor - it killed two of them in melee but left the Nob alive to steal the objective and take down a banner!

In the middle though the Warbosses went swinging away into the Dreads. -1 Damage kept them both alive, but both being locked up was a huge bonus for me!

I picked up points for Engage with four quarters, Stomp 'em Good and three banners - and importantly I was denying Nick some primary points. I did make a significant error though and forgot to charge the Deffkoptas. In hindsight I would have targeted the Incursors on the right objective with them, using Ramming Speed to potentially take the objective as well.

Turn three, the Vanguard arrived, and there was some shooting. With two dreadnoughts forced to shoot at T6 Warbosses (the one against the Contemptor with -1 to wound as well) and one having to spend some effort to remove the one Nob in front of it, shooting was not nearly as bad as on the first two turns. The Stormboyz were wiped out, and the Beast Snaggas were reduced below half, but the main blow was the free Leviathan blasting three of the Deffkoptas out of the sky.

Thankfully both Vanguard squads failed their charges, another little slice of luck. In the fight phase the still powered up Redtoof punched out the Leviathan, and Bluetoof dealt four mortal wounds with the Headwoppa's Killchoppa to leave the Contemptor on one.

My turn three, with limited assets I tried to score as much as possible and deny as much as possible. With that in mind Redtoof went charging off to the Incursors on the middle objective, killing them off and tearing down a banner in the process.

A whole bunch of fights happened elsewhere, Vanguard killed off the Deffkoptas (who had managed to do more damage to the Leviathan with their shooting when there was only two of them), but the Beast Snaggas took some out of the other squad and managed to stick around - T5 doing the job for them. The Devs finally all died and so did the 1 wound Contemptor (though would have been funnier if the Warboss had done it with his sluggas) - this racked up the full 4 points for Stomp 'em Good. At this stage I was starting to make a bit of a dent in the Iron Hands, and though I didn't have much left I was actually in the lead.

Iron Hands turn four, with two dreads down the firepower was reduced somewhat, but there were a whole load of exposed characters. Both Warbosses fell as well as a Weirdboy, leaving me with not a lot left. That gave Nick a whole load of Assassination points to even things up.

Turn four was very short for me. The last remaining Weirdboy went and charged the Drop Pod to hide from the guns, and along with my two units of grots I got some Engage points.

Turn five, the Vanguard Vets flew over to deal with the hiding Weirdboy, while the couple remaining on the other side of the board took out a pair of cowering Gretchin. Dreads finished off the last few boyz, leaving me with only a single unit of grots cowering in a corner on an objective (and a huge dead pile) - not enough to score primary points, but a couple of banners left to score at the end.

With the final scores tallied up, it came out as a narrow victory to the Iron Hands, 73-67. Bit of a nail biter in the end!

What a great game! Even though I lost, I'm very pleased with how the army performed in the face of withering firepower, continuing to play the game even after horrific casualties. How very Orky! I think I rode my luck a bit to get so close, but in fairness I could have been luckier and gone first, which might have been quite a different game. I was disappointed to have misused the Deffkoptas, and I probably could have deployed better to ensure I had more units capable of charging out on turn one, but otherwise I don't think I made any huge mistakes. I was also pleased to get the game done in three hours, suggesting that with some practice I could perhaps take this list to a tournament, if I can ever get to one!

Anyway, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and stay safe out there.