1500 Point Armies
Mission: The Scouring (fast attack is scoring)
Deployment: Dawn of War (long table edges)
Night Fighting on Turn One

Army Composition 

Ann’s Orks:  HQs: Warboss “Hungry” and big mek with shokk attack gun.  Troops: two trukk-loads of boyz, ten nobz in a battle wagon, deff dread, ten gretchin.  Heavy Support: lobbas, kannon, zap guns.  Fast Attack: Dakka Jet.  (Jet and gretchin in reserve.)

We concentrated our heavy support, nine field pieces plus an attached big mek with shokk attack gun in the center of the board.  Usually the artillery is spread out.  This yielded excellent firing lanes and the ability to concentrate fire at the cost of a certain vulnerability to assault.  The jet and gretchin were in reserve.

Mike’s Speed Freak Orks: HQ: Mega armor warboss in trukk.  Troops: Five squads of boyz in trukks, ten nob bikers.  Heavy Support: Looted Wagon, zap guns.  Fast Attack: Deffkoptas, warbuggies.

Warboss Mike lined up his trukks and pointed them at my artillery.  His bikers with the koptas, and buggies on his right and left flanks respectively.

Turn One

General Hungry opened up the game with an artillery barrage, which did some minor damage, but a stray cannon shell did destroy one of Mike’s trukks for First Blood.  Our battlewagon advanced forward guarding the right flank.  The deff dread and both trukks guarded the left flank.  The walker’s job was mainly to protect the artillery park.

All five of Mike’s trukks and his looted wagon roared forward down the center at flat out speed.  His three warbuggies skirted the hill on our right flank.  They threatened both the big guns and also possibly a rear shot on the battle wagon.  Bikers and koptas took us under their machine guns on the left flank.  They wrecked one of the trucks but didn’t do much to the choppa boy squad, who ran for a nearby crater.

Turn Two

Our dakkajet came in on an attack vector and killed a couple of the nob bikers.  Mortar and shokk attack gun fire peppered the mob with a few more wounds.  The rest of our artillery managed to destroy another of his trukks and damaged one of the warbuggies.  Artillery fire brought down one of Mike’s deffkoptas and forced the other two back into the ruin where they spent the rest of the game scoring the four point objective and taking random pot shots with their big shootas.

Our currently non-mechanized choppa boyz assaulted a shoota squad about a foot in front of the zap guns.  We had the better of that fight, but insane courage allowed Mike’s orks to hang about for another turn before we mopped them up.

Another of Mike’s trukks bit the dust when the deff dread ripped it in half between its claws.  The choppa boy passengers must have seen this coming because they jumped out and legged it into the ruin.  This brought them around the sides of walker, and close to the cannon battery.

There was a looted wagon right in front of Hungry’s mobile command post — the battlewagon.  He had a hard time deciding where to take his battle wagon.  By moving forward he was exposing his rear armor to the warbuggies big shootas, but Mike’s wagon had a wrecking ball, which he had to respect.  While Hungry and I were conferring over the radio about options, the driver roared forward and squashed the looted wagon with his deff rolla and trundled another eight or so inches forward.  (We had declared the Waaagh! after all as is traditional when air power arrives.)

The early stages left us with an interesting situation.  Mike had put good pressure down the center of the board with his trukks.  He also threatened both flanks with his bikers and buggies.  We worried more about the buggies on our right because the walker was doing a good job guarding against the bikers, who lacked heavy weapons.  Each side had good chances and I agreed with Warboss Hungry, who said he was “cautiously optimistic,” in that pompously erudite way he talked (for an ork).

Turn Three

Our supporting aircraft banked hard right and blew up one of the warbuggies, which were taking the zap guns under fire now.  The mobile command post continued straight forward into and over Mike’s trukk.  Warboss Mike jumped out and waddled as fast as one can in mega armor toward a nearby objective in a ruin.

Mike’s zap guns scored hits against our battle wagon’s side armor and inflicted a hull point.  One of his choppa boy squads and another shoota squad charged our cannons.  The grot crew all ran for it, leaving the big mek alone.  The engineer won the one-on-one fight by  challenge by siccing his accompanying supply of living ammunition on his nob opponent.  Unfortunately the snotlings, once unleashed turned on their former tormentor and consumed him bones and all.  So much for the big mek.  Mike’s victorious axe boyz had a good laugh as they picked their way through the smoking ruins toward our mortars.  All that stood between them and my big guns was a nob wildly gesticulating his power claw at two remaining terrified ork boy underlings.

The bikers opted to turn left toward the center of the battle.  They clearly did not want to risk getting into an assault with the deff dread or perhaps they were reacting to the pressure from our mobile units.  Our shoota trukk supporting the command post went up in a hail of biker dakka.  The commissar nob had the presence to herd his men toward Mike’s zap guns while putting the orange river between him and the bikers.

The battle is still hot but Hungry feels things have swung our way.  (I’m still not sure.)  Mike’s infantry was running riot through our artillery, but we had contained both flanks and the bulk of our mobile forces were doing good work on among Mike’s objectives.

Turn Four

Our gretchin (or as they prefer to be called “objective commandos”) skulked on from the far left and quietly camped around the two point objective for the remainder of the game.

It was “Broken Teef” (or perhaps ‘broken arrow’) for the lobbas.  They laid extremely accurate mortar fire dangerously close to their own position.  Both threatening ork squads took losses and were pinned.  This allowed the deff dread to catch and eliminate Mike’s shoota boy squad, though not before then managed to gun down our three remaining boyz, who were guarding the artillery.

The zap guns finished off the warbuggy squad, eliminating any threat on our right.  Our shoota boyz overran Mike’s zap gun unit but were then themselves gunned down by advancing nob bikers.

Hungry turned the nose of his command post to face the nobz.  He and his men piled out the back and laid into the enemy warboss.  Gunfire ricocheted harmlessly off his mega armor.  Warboss Mike laughed and said, “Come on!”  Mike scissored the heads off two charging nobz but was surrounded and went down in a thicket of axes, claws, gun barrel butts, and a giant poison syringe to the face.  Hungry as usual stood aloof from the fighting, concentrating on the overall battle on his lap top, but did lead his remaining nobz onto the now vacant objective.

Turn Five

Hungry and I hurried through our turn shooting at dwindling targets of opportunity because Hungry wanted to beat rush hour traffic.  Mike said, “Well, let’s see if I can at least kill some stuff,” and he ordered his nobz across the river.  They lost two of their number due to mishaps in the swirling, deceptively treacherous waters.  Bad luck!  The half-track’s armor was too thick for their guns, but they did manage to immobilize the vehicle by ripping one of the treads off with their bare hands.  We shook hands and called the game at the end of the turn and counted up victory points.

General Hungry & Ann: First Blood + Line Breaker + Warlord + Two Fast Attack + Objectives (5) = 10 VP’s

Warboss Mike: Objectives (6) = 6 VP’s