Sitrep; Gaelcon 2010

Game one: Vs Dave O’Leary (Aka Farseer Dave) Blood Angels

Spearhead Deployment. 5 objectives to be captured. One objective is placed in the centre of each table quarter and one in the centre.

Dave's army consisted of

Mesphsion

1 terminator (thunderhammer/storm sheild)

3 squads of bikes

3 10 squads of assualt marines or vets

Dave's blood angels, now in white, 

Three dice in a line what stage of the game was this at?

Dave got the first turn and used combat squads his marines to maximise the number of scoring units while terminators opted to go in reserve. The blood angels advance behind a screen of two bike squads while the third bike squad tried to out flank. The Orks responded by running over the bike screen before deploying a mob of orks to finish them off. A couple of rocket buggies tagged some bikes before the mob finished them and redeployed to screen the rest of the orks from a marine counter attack. The terminator reinforcements joined the out flank bike squad while mesphison and two squads when after some buggies that were trying to outflank to get a marine scoring unit. The rest of the blood angels charged into the screening Orc mob which predictably was wiped out. With all the marine units in play it was Waaagh time.  The burna boyz, an Ork mob and two battle wagons went after the out flankers, destroying them easily. Ghaz and the mega nobs took out the marine units that had destroyed the first mob. While the buggies made "phew phew" noises at Mesphsion battle group whittling down the numbers. By turn three/four it was pretty much over with the Orcs holding several objectives with all the marines bar Mesphison dead. Mesphison clawed some pride back killing Ghaz and destroying a battle wagon.

Centre objective just after the bike squads had gone to meet Sanguinius.

Game two: Vs Micheal Tangley's (aka eldritchstormer or nuts, its Mike) Eldar

Dawn of war deployment.. Annihilation (actually it was a modified annilation mission with two kill points need for a win)

Mike's army consisted of,

Panzies, lots of them

Eldard

Seer council

2 Fire prisms

2 Fire dragon squads

1 Falcon

1 wave seprent

1 bike squad

2 gaurdian squads

1 harle squad

Space Wolf thunder wolves.

Mike deployed two guardian squads in buildings while the orks all opted to roll on at turn one (except the grots which were told to stay in reserve for as long as possible then find a corner and hide in it). The Orks rumbled on trying to keep as much of their front Av14 armour between them and the Eldar. The Eldar unsportingly started using tactics to try to snipe the buggies and worked around to the sides of the wagons. A turn two assault bagged a guardian squad while the rest of the orks worked on herding the Eldar into a table corner. Eldar reinforcements arrived and were funnelled into one flank. The rest of the game was mostly manoeuvring with both sides trying to set up good match the Orc lost a couple of squads while the Eldar did the same. The highlight was probably one of the buggy squadron being reducing to a single weapon less immobilised buggy which took fire for several turns and did not die. While Ghaz battlewagon pulled off a long bomb deff rolling a fire prism to deff and destroying a guardian squad in the following assault to bag the win.

Game three: Vs Osisin Mac Cormick Daemon

Pitched Battle deployment, Seize Ground (3 objectives)

Peter Scott's landraider starts taking damage, lots of damage

Osisin;s Army consisted of,

Bloodthirster

Great unclean one

2 Soul grinders

Blood crushers

2 squads of Seekers

3 squads of plague bearers

Orks and Daemons don't get on, the Daemons can do what the Orks can do but are better at it while the best defence against daemons is shooting not exactly an ork strength. The plan was to kill all the scoring units while trying to keep one of the Ork ones alive.  Alas it was not to be. The assaults went in and killed all bar one of the plague bearers while in response the orks were pretty eaten alive. Towards the end there were only five buggies left against a sh*t load of daemons the buggies went after the last plague bearer for a losing draw three of them crashed while the other two missed before being eaten by blood crusher. With the army wiped out the orks had their first set back.

The last sight for many of the boyz :(

Game four: Vs the Usurper (aka Richard flood :) )

Pitched Battle deployment, Capture and Control

Floody's army consisted of

Fate weaver

2 Daemon princes

1 Bloodthirster (I hate that guy)

Blood crushers

2 squads of Seekers

3 squads of plague bearers

Daemon again

Great, daemons again. This time the Orks won the initiative and let them go first. The game started grim the Orks arrived okay but two battle wagons was lost to long bomb shots. With half the mobility of the army gone it was time for some slick manoeuvring, everything charged forward hoping to shoot or punch something in combat. The result did not go well against the blood crushers or daemons. However, the turn counter was ticking down. A sneaky Waaagh put a single mek boy is contest range of the daemon objective while the mega nobs stomped on to the Ork objective. With the Mek boy in need of a new pair pants the game end. Sometimes it is better to be luck then good :)

Guard with necron heads, not bad at all.

Game Five: Vs Jan's Ork

Dawn of War deployment, Seize Ground (5 objectives)

Jan's army consisted of

Orcs, lots of them

Killa kans, lots of them

DEff dread

Big mek

Weirdboyz

2 buggies

From a distance Jan's orks looked like grots :)

Jan opted to deploy two mobs in buildings with the rest of the mobs rolling on. In reply the real Orks rolled on in battlewagons.  The battlewagons moved forwards screened by buggies while the fake orks skulked in buildings and generally acted like grots. On turn three there was the first real clash with the battlewagons running over the killa kans while the real orks dismounted and started to beat-up the fake orks. Because there were a lot of them this took a while by the end of the game most of the fake orcs were dead or fleeing

Game six: Vs Merv's space wolves

Spearhead deployment, Annihilation

Merv's list consisted of,

3 long fang packs

2 rune priests

2 thunder wolf dudes

3 grey hunter packs

1 squadron of speeeders

1 pack of scouts.

Merv deployed his long fangs in his cover with the rune priests and a thunder wolf dude everything else went into reserve.  In respond the Orks packed their deploy zone with battle wagons and buggies.  Turn one saw the buggies and battle wagons advance into a torrent of fire destroying several buggies. The speeders and scouts showed up only to be deff rolla'd or assaulted.  The battle wagons took damage and could not get into assault range of the long fangs.  The game ended in a stalemate with Merv popping a battle wagon at the end just to annoy the Orks.

Overall the Orks came ninth with four wins, one draw and one loss. The event itself was great but I'm not keen on the annihilation modification it adds more pain than gain to the event and defeats the purposes of the annihilation mission. It should be a win loss result changing the margin need for a win means a draw is more likely which is not what is wanted for a final round of an event. Plus players tend to forget slight in-game event changes like victory conditions or unique deployments when they do forget and win/lose as a result in can be a bone of contention.