Fall of Night

Last weekend I had the chance to get a game in, and I decided to take one of my "core" armies. It's been awhile since the Orks have had a chance to tangle with anyone, and since rumor has it that they will finally be getting a new codex, I figured I would take them. After all, it could very well be the last time I play them with this codex! And with the new edition approaching fast, it could very well be one of my last 6th edition games.

Being a spur-of-the-moment decision, and spending the bulk of Saturday afternoon working on my World Eater Land Raider, I didn't have a list until I got to Hobbytown. Using Battlescribe on my phone, I whipped up what I thought would be a competitive list that incorporated some things I rarely take. These "finally gonna try 'em" units would be the 'Ard Boyz (which I have seen Bink use to good effect) and an artillery battery of Zzap Guns (It took five years to convince myself that they didn't totally suck, and another one to actually try them).

The rest of this list were the typical 30-ork slugga/choppa unit, a unit of 5 Mega-nobz, a squad of 6 burna boyz, a squad of 8 loota's with 2 mekboyz, a Gobsmasha (i.e. a hardcase battlewagon with killcannon and only 2 bigshootas) with 2 Big Meks in the HQ slots, one with a Kustom Forcefield and the other with a Shokk Attack Gun.

Everyone was paired off a lot quicker than usual, thanks to our MC Patrick who has really stepped with getting people organized and playing as opposed to the what we used to do (stand around and BS for an hour or more). So as I was walking around watching the start of the other games, in walked Matt, with a Tyranid Hivefleet in need of some fresh bio-mass.

 >Ulp<

We only had one table left to choose from, and if you follow this blog you'll notice that I tend to end up playing on this 'desert of despair' a lot! So we rolled the mission (The Scouring) and the table set up (Vanguard Strike), and we rolled for our Warlord Traits. Mine was a lame one that allowed my Reserves to come in quicker ( I wasn't using any!) and Matt rolled one that gave Nightvision to units within a certain distance to his Hive Tyrant. That seemed like a cool power. And since we never -well I have never- used them before, I suggested we should roll on the Warzone Traits table from the back of the hardcover rulebook, since, y'know, a new edition is about to come out and it would be a shame to have never tried them. Sad really, this is a neat table and it really should've been, along with the campaign stuff, in with the main rules so that the people that only have the small Dark Vengeance rulebook would have them too. They look like they could really up the ante on a few games and make the battles less predictable, So we rolled on it and got:

 Warzone Traits. #7. Fall of Night.

Well crap.

How ironic is this? LOL

So here are the highlights, and man did we have some!

Tyranid left flank

Tyranid right flank

The Orks deploy

Seize the initiative? Of course not!

Thanks to the Kustom Force Field, I only lost one guy in first turn of shooting.

The shoota boyz surge forward!

My 1st turn of the shooting, and I roll a Str 9 for the Zzap guns. And I miss with all 3 shots. Remembering ammo runts, I re-rolled and missed all 3 again! Due to the nightfighting rules the bugz were able to take advantage of some awesome cover saves.

Turn 2 and the Hive Tyrants move in to eliminate my Shoota 'Ard Boyz.

...and laugh at their puny snap-shots!

The fearless Orks are able to bog down the 2 HTs until turn 4!

The Mawlocs appeared, one scattered and killed the Kustom Force Field Mek, but couldn't take out the big gun it was touching, so had to roll on the mishap table, and I placed him on the very FAR corner of the board! The other one targeted by Slugga boyz and killed 5 of them.

When my turn came around, the boys surrounded the beastie and opened up with their pistols.



"Every ork in Orkville, the tall an the small, was singing! He HADN'T stopped the Waaagh at all!"

That didn't do anything, but undeterred, they charged! After the Mawloc's attacks failed to do anything, the boyz struck back with 85 attacks, 53 of which hit causing 10 wounds! After that, the Mawloc had 1 wound left which was quickly eliminated by the Powerklaw wielding Nob. After ward the consolidated the full 6"which I took full advantage of and spread them out to full coherency as I knew the bugz were coming with more pain...

The Tyrants continueto wear away the 'ard boyz...

On thebugz turn, the Hive Tyrant was ableto score a precision hit against the power klaw wielding Nob, dashing the ork's best hope of killing them. Speaking of Power Klaws, the Meganobz failed a break test in Turn 2 and ran the full 12"! On Turn 3 they rallied, but they were still too far away to be able to assist the 'ard boyz. Matt was worried about them so had that Mawloc return and kill them all off at the top of Turn 4!

The Zoanthropes lance the Gobsmasha, killing 2 of the occupants, Despite the added protection of the resulting crater, the devourer armed 'gants were able to kill off the burna boyz, who never got to fire a shot this whole game! -Ouch!



"Go to ground? Wha? AAARGH!"

The situation was turning grim fast, as the Tyrants were able to chew up the rest of the 'ard boyz who eventually failed a break test and were killed in the sweeping attack. My slugga boyz were holding on, and having gone to ground near the 4pt objective, were pinned good!

So, at the bottom of Turn 4, and realizing that we have gone to the point of no return, I decided to concentrate my fire on killing the warlord tyrant. The bastard had taken a lot of wounds and kept regenerating enough to keep it alive. It survived the Zzapp guns and Loota's attacks, and then I aimed with the Shokk Attack Gun, targeted and rolled a double 5.

It's rare that my Shokk Attack gun EVER rolls doubles and does anything cool on the chart, so thinking I was about to get a sweet Str 10 attack, we were quite amused to see that I just teleported the Big Mek into Close Combat with the Hive Tyrant! Nothing like a Warlord vs. Warlord fight, which always seems to never happen in our local games, and once the Assault Phase began, it was over, as the HT had the initiative and gutted with Big Mek whose Cybork Body was ill-equipped to save him.

So, after that epic "fight", at the top of Turn 5, we decided to call the game, with the Orks ceding to the the Tyranids. It was a good game, my first with Matt, and I really enjoyed his playing with his painted models and it shames me to have to put down 20 year old unpainted models against just nicely executed pieces. He only seems to show up at Hobbytown once in a blue moon, but I hope I have the opportunity to feed things to his bugz again!

I have no idea what the final tally of VPs was, but I know he won the game on just those alone. Here's a good impression the results however:

What I killed



What he killed