Battle Report - Orks vs Black Templars

Hello!

Last weekend I had a cheeky visit to Warhammer World as part of a meet up with the Old Wolves discord group. I brought my Orks, and some Death Guard for Cris, who gave me money for them and came all the way from the USA for the meet up! She also brought a 1250 point force of Black Templars, so we had a classic Armageddon battle, on one of the awesome Warhammer World themed boards.

My 1250 points was a bit of a take on my Green Tide style Snakebite lists. I had Warboss Redtoof (Brutal but Kunnin' and Super Cybork Body), Weirdboy Durrork, three units of 15 Boyz, 15 Beast Snagga Boyz, 15 Kommandos, 3 Deffkoptas, 3 Meganobz and 11 Grots.

Cris took a couple of Crusade squads, some Assault Intercessors, Bladeguard Veterans in an Impulsor, a couple of Redemptor dreads, a Techmarine and all lead by a beefy Primaris Chaplain on bike. As you can see, they were watched over by a purple squig!

In fact, both armies were accompanied by crocheted squigs made by my wife. So far the mascot has been doing pretty well for me and my Orks!

We used the Open War cards to generate a scenario, and here it is. A very aggressive deployment, three objectives, one of which will be worth two points, and a spooky twist to make morale more punishing.

Deployment - a classic for the Orks, lining up on the edge of the zone, while the Marines held back a little behind the defensive line. Kommandos held up in a ruin next to an objective and the Koptas stayed in the sky.

Orks got turn one, and we rolled for the priority objective - it was the single one on the right flank, by the Kommandos. My turn was pretty much just advancing forward and covering all the objectives. Come at me!

Templars turn one, and the Crusaders made their move, charging into my forward unit of Boyz. The rest moved up and poured some fire down - the Redemptors made a mess out of most of the Kommandos, leaving only a couple left after morale. The Crusaders and Boyz exchanged some blows, both losing some but sticking around with a few models.

Orks picked up a bunch of points, and were ready to WAAAGH!

WAAAGH! Called on turn two, lots of units advancing up for some charges. Grots stayed back to hold an objective, while the remaining Kommandos abandoned theirs, leaving it in the hands of Beast Snagga boyz and Deffkoptas. A unit of boyz decided to ignore the third objective in favour of charging Assault Intercessors.

Shooting was basically just Deffkoptas and was underwhelming. Time to get stuck in! Both the characters did good work to clear up Crusaders, the Boyz cut down the Intercessors and the remaining Kommandos chipped a few wounds off a Redemptor before being pounded into the ground like a tent peg.

Going into Templars turn two, the Orks held most of the objectives and had pushed forward, but were ripe for a counter attack.

Here come the Templars! Bladeguard disembarked and lined up a charge on the purple boyz. The Redemptors marched forward and hosed down the Beast Snaggas with plasma, melting them into burning green goo. The Chaplain gunned his engine and swept round the flank to claim an objective and spray the Gretchin with bolter fire. The Bladeguard set themselves a pretty low bar by making a very low charge roll and only killing a few Orks, leaving most of the mob out of melee and free to charge in next turn.

After turn two the Templars got a score on the board, but were trailing 6-1.

Right, time to get rid of one of those Redemptors. Between Rokkits, smite and Hitting 'em 'Harder Meganobz we did bring it down. 

Elsewhere, the blue mob aided by the Wierdboy knocked out the Impulsor (Durrork was having a pretty good game) and the purple mob charged the Bladeguard, accompanied by the remaining pink Nob, who somehow survived all the return attacks.

Time for some real aggressive moves from the Templars. The Redemptor marched forward, cutting down two of the Koptas with plasma, before charging in to take the last one off the priority objective! The Chaplain decided those grots had to be purged, and left his objective to try and claim theirs. He reduced them down to a few models, but even with the twist, grot rules and below half strength combing to mean the grots were running from attrition on 1-4, they stuck around! Another point for the Orks but two for the Templars. 

So that other Redemptor had to be moved off the objective! In addition the blue mob was going to join in against the Bladeguard to make sure they couldn't go onto the objectives. The Chaplain would just have to be left alone to do what he wanted. The purple boyz eventually died but the Bladeguard were having a bit of a nightmare and were unable to clear their way through the mob, and really struggled to finish off that one pink Nob!

Over the course of turn four the dread cleared it's way through the Meganobz and the Weirdboy, finally turning to smash down Warboss Redtoof. With the Chaplain controlling one objective and the other ignored, it all came down to who controlled the priority. With Redtoof fallen, I played 'Orks is Never Beaten' to strike at the damaged Redemptor...

Thanks to it's 5+ invulnerable due to it's vow, the Redemptor survived on one wound, after passing one last key save off the Brutal but Kunnin 'reroll' attacks. And with that it collected the priority objective points at the end of the game leaving it tied at 7 all!

Amazing, brutal game! Both sides ground down to one or two units and a stalemate on the objectives. Of course it's always fun to have a big melee mash up, so this was always going to be a bloody one! Regardless of result, I'm always a fan of a game being close enough that it's decided by a final dice roll.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed, because there will be a fair amount more Ork battles coming soon! Thanks for reading, stay safe!

'Sponge Nid' Tyranid Project Part One - Little Bugs

Hello!

Another Tyranid commission, this time a bit of a bigger army of a custom hive fleet. The client and I brainstormed a scheme and came up with a fairly bright purple and green, but with a key feature being the use of sponged on highlights for the upper green layer to give a somewhat natural look. I decided the best way to hone the technique would be to paint up all the little bugs first, then move progressively up the Tyranid scale.

So, here's a selection:

As you can see, the green extends over the back carapace down the tail and over much of the head and weapons, but the purple is more visible from the side or a lower angle. I think this should look striking on the more upright creatures, showing more purple and making them stand out more. There's also that spongey mottled effect over the green which I think makes them look a bit more organic - this was done by sponge highlighting first a lighter, yellowish green and then bone.

Termagants were the first stage of the project, a dozen with fleshborers and the same again with devourers. A nice tidy batch of 24 to start with! This also let me experiment a bit with a yellowy spot colour for eyes and stuff, and with the swampy bases.

Next up Genestealers. A couple of interesting bits to paint here - the skull heads, which I decided to paint as if they had sustained horrific flesh melting injuries but the will of the hive mind was compelling them to keep going. There's also one in there who is missing a leg, who got a similar treatment with a splatter of Flesh Tearers contrast.

This was also a bit of a bigger batch. 40 of them! They didn't really all fit in the light box though!

Finally (for now), Hormagaunts. I think they benefitted from the work on the Termagants in that the sponge work is a bit more pronounced, and I left a bit more of the purple visible on the head. I also had to add a fair bit of sprue and green stuff to some of the bases to get some of them to stand up! With green painted over the mud and some static grass on top of the mounds it ended up looking quite nice, so these features might make it onto a few of the bigger bases as well.

That was also a batch of about 40!

So there you have it! Client likes them, so I'm happy, but I hope you like them too! Thanks for checking this out, and stay safe out there.

Narrative Battle Report - Adeptus Mechanicus vs Chaos

Hello!

In this narrative game against Sharpy the forces of Forge World Ryza descend upon a world corrupted by the forces of Chaos, attempting the stop the summoning of an enormous Daemon army that would lead to untold deaths in Imperial space - and the loss of invaluable data! On the twisted, broken surface of this unnamed world, the Adeptus Mechanicus locate a portal directly to the warp, and a host of vile Chaos Space Marines using arcane powers to activate it. They absolutely must be stopped!

So I was told to bring 2000 points for a narrative game, and put my fate in the hands of my host! He rewarded me with a beautiful daemon world board, a 1250 point army of Chaos Marines (Alpha Legion rules) and a large selection of Daemons. In the centre of the board was a portal, through which daemons would be deployed at the start of every turn, based on a random summoning roll. The Chaos forces had four summoning units - a Daemon Prince, a Dark Apostle, and two units of Cultists containing a cult psyker each. There were also two unholy altars in the mid table. For each of these four units still on the board and two objectives not held by Imperial forces, Sharpy rolled one D6, then summoned the combined power level total. Those summoned daemons would deploy within 6 inches of the portal, then act normally for the turn. Victory would be determined based on how active, or not, the portal was at the end of the game.

Supporting the Prince, Apostle and Cultists were a couple of units of Chaos Space Marines, a squad of Terminators, Havocs with lascannon, missile launcher and two chain cannons (and the mark of Slaanesh), an Exalted Champion, a Maulerfiend and a Heldrake. 

My list featured Tech Priests Manipulus and Dominus, 3 Kataphron Breachers, 6 Kataphron Destroyers, two units of 10 each of Rangers and Vanguard (with assorted special weapons and upgrades), 4 Kastelan Robots (gun, gun, fist on all of them), Cybernetica Datasmith (with the Logi holy order) 6 Serberys Sulphurhounds, two units of 5 Pteraxii Sterylizors, and the Archeopter Fusilave.

I had an assortment of relics and Warlord traits on my characters, but mostly ones to improve themselves without too much to buff the rest and confuse me! I have been playing Orks recently so I decided to go light on the command phase buffs.

Deployment. Pteraxii are off the board initially, my forces set up to press forward and the Chaos Marines set up to protect themselves for the most part. We decided that the Chaos forces would get the first turn, so with that they promptly summoned in 20 power level of Daemons!

The Daemons pressed forward, supported by the daemon engines, to give me something to think about, as well as getting into position to contest the altars.

Not much in the way of shooting, but the Havocs did sneak off into the shadows to re-appear next turn somewhere.

In my turn one the AdMech forces trundled forward and unleashed some heavy firepower to clear off almost all the daemons and the Heldrake - though I did lose two of my Destroyers to mortal wounds from overcharging plasma! Still, all of the summoning points were still in play, as the bomber couldn't remove a full cultist unit with it's heavy stubbers.

A fairly meagre force arrived on turn two, but with the AdMech army closer they would have a much bigger effect this time.

The Havocs popped in, as the Terminators popped out with the same stratagem, and split fire between the flyer and the Serberys horse-doggies, shredding them both down to one wound. Flamers of Tzeentch burned a few Vanguard before the Daemons charged in, holding up the front rank of Skitarii and slaying several more - it could have been much worse if the Bloodletters had not rolled a poor charge, a three rerolled from a two!

The last remaining Plague Drone had a go at taking out the Fusilave, but it passed the save it was called on to make, leaving it smoking but functional.

My turn, and the Pteraxii flew into position. One unit was forced to deploy outside of 12 from Alpha Legion units so dropped in by the Plaguebearers, while the other was able to get into a corner and closer to the Dark Apostle than the Chaos Marines. Phosphor torches went phwoosh and the Apostle was burned to death! The lone Sulphurhound also ran up to hold one of the altars and further reduce the next turn's summoning.

Elsewhere shooting and melee cleared the nearer daemons. I tried to get some long range shots at the Havocs from the Rangers but they sneakily concealed themselves. The Kastelans then got their protocols changed to Conqueror and went charging in to dispatch the Maulerfiend with ease. A good turn for the AdMech, but there were still threats on the board, and there would be more Daemons!

This time more Bloodletters and some Flesh Hounds to harass my lines, and a unit of Horrors to try and hold me off the altar.

The Terminators also popped in from the warp, but the Skitarii were ready for this trick, thanks to an infoslave skull, the unit of Rangers that had been enhanced by the Manipulus fired in them and killed two.

Mission accomplished for the Sterylizors who killed the Apostle, but with a Daemon Prince, and Plague Drone, an Exalted Champion and a squad of Chaos Marines staring them down, they were not going home for medals. The other squad got much luckier, the Havoc's chain cannons had a major failure and only managed to kill one of the unit.

Bloodletters got in to the robots and tore one of them down, while the Beast of Nurgle got in their way a bit as well. They suffered casualties in return but stayed locked in to hold the AdMech forces off the altar for another turn.

The plane returned to add some firepower as once more we cleared most of the Daemons (and Terminators) from our lines. The Destroyers whiffed shooting the Havocs, only killing one, but they did redeem themselves by charging the last daemon on the left flank altar, killing it in melee to claim it and reduce the summoning once more. The Pteraxii melted a few marines before thruster boosting up into the sky for next turn. The Kastelans shot and punched their way through the Bloodletters, freeing them up to continue marching toward the altar next turn.

Reduced summoning gave 12 power level, all of which was used for a Soul Grinder!

The big Daemon engine thing, fuelled by Khorne, decided the robots were the most worthy challenge, and charged into them, destroying another. Elsewhere the Chaos forces tried to hide their cultists from my longer range guns that were now in position - especially after the Havocs failed again to do any serious damage to the Kataphrons.

Operation kill cultists! The Sterylizors dropped into a corner while the Fusilave had it's machine spirit boosted to act on it's top profile to fly over and add it's firepower - nuking the Havocs as it flew over them. Between the flamers and the stubbers that unit of Cultists was wiped out.

The Destroyers burned the unholy altar to ensure it would not be used again, while my slowly advancing forced took out the last of the Havocs and removed the Soul Grinder. With the sneaky Pteraxii move the Chaos forces were definitely on the back foot, but they still had three of the six summoning points to use in the last turn.

A little unit of Nurglings popped out of the portal to harass my Breachers.

And a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch arrived to protect the altar and cause some mayhem. It killed several Skitarii and put a body in the way of the robots, while the Chaos Marine Prince and his remaining cultists hid behind a big rock.

However that rock wasn't big enough as the Pteraxii got a 6 inch advance, getting one of the flamers in to torch some cultists, with the assistance of some shooting from the Kastelans. The robots then charged in and punched down the Tzeentch prince to control the altar. At the end of turn five the AdMech had destroyed or controlled five of the summoning points, leaving just the warlord of the Chaos Marines remaining to flee and plan his revenge!

Adeptus Mechanicus Victory!

Well that was an awesome game! It looked amazing to start with, and I really enjoyed the whole random summoning element (it reminded me of a SorcererDave battle report we did a while back). I also think, in spite of the AdMech's overwhelming firepower, it was quite close and a pretty well balanced scenario - without the mobility of the Pteraxii and flyer I'd have really struggled to get at the cultists. The flappy boys were definitely the key units for me in this game!

In hindsight we thought that since it was narrative perhaps we should have given the Chaos Marines their extra wounds, I'm not sure it would have made that much difference in the result but it would have felt better and more impactful - most noticably the Terminators arriving, failing a charge, then getting taken off the board with small arms fire for the most part.

Still, it was a fun experience, and as mentioned, the Daemon Prince got away - that means there's scope for a rematch once the Chaos Marines get a new ancient grimoire of forbidden knowledge (Codex). Next time though the Mechanicus may call upon the holy Ordos of the Inquisition for assistance! I hope you enjoyed reading, and stay safe.