Alameda Sector, Fremont System: August 2013

This is an old battle report I had misplaced, when the website I originally posted it on lost a bunch of data.  I duly forgot about the report, but ran across it recently so I thought I would give it a new home here, even though I’ve gotten away from posting long-winded battle reports.  Anyway, reporting on a four year old game seems apt somehow, given the state of archives in the 41st Millennium.

We played 6th edition, which was current at the time.  One thousand points of Orks versus Nurgle Chaos Space Marines.  The mission was the Eternal War mission Big Guns Never Tire with Vanguard Strike deployment.

My forces were led by Warboss Hungry and his band of cybork nobz in a battlewagon.  They were backed up by two squads of boyz in trukks, a handful of gretchin, and a dakkajet.

The opposition was led by the self-style Sluglord Scabidemius with the mighty Typhus as his trusty lieutenant.  The rank and file were two squads of plague marines, though they could apparently only scrape up a single rhino between them, a bunch of zombie cultists, and three obliterators.

TURN ONE: Hungry’s plan was to run his battlewagon up the middle while sweeping both trukks on the left flank to obliterate the obliterators. They were scoring in this scenario, as well as being a prime target, and camped on a back objective, obviously poised to deliver turn after turn of heavy long range fire.

First order of business was snake eyes on the dangerous terrain test for the shoota boyz trukk. (I had reinforced rams on all my vehicles allowing re-rolls.) So the trukk moved maybe 6″ and threw an axle trying to motor through a crater. Not a good start for the master plan but nevermind. The choppa boyz’ trukk was more durable and roared up within striking distance of the marines’ sole heavy support.

The battlewagon skirted the edge of the forest at cruising speed. The driver then pivoted with the idea of presenting the vehicle’s heavy front armor to the enemy. This brought the back end of the half track into the forest. No problem. Another dangerous terrain test and another set of snakes eyes. Two ork vehicles immobilized before the marines had fired a shot.  Nice!

The obliterators fired their mutated lascannons at the battlewagon to no effect.  Plague marines led by Typhus legged it toward the ruin containing objective B, while the other squad, in their rhino, headed north of the ruin apparently toward objective C. Zombies staggered up the middle toward the now stricken battlewagon.

TURN TWO: Gretchin reinforcements skulked in from the south-east. Their plan was to avoid fighting, use the ruin with the nearby immobilized trukk for cover and make a mad dash for objective D if needed. Otherwise they would hunker down and hope they didn’t draw unwanted any attention.

Hungry’s last working trukk careened over several boulders and knocked over a tree, while choppa boyz piled out dodging lascannon overwatch fire, each other.  They mostly succeeded in not getting run over by their own slightly insane (by ork standards) driver. Luck was with them and all 12 got stuck in. The marines won the first round taking out several boyz though the klaw-armed nob did get a piece of one marine. Being nurgle obliterators they were of course dead tough.

The shoota boyz piled out of their immobilized trukk. The nob sergeant led his troops in and near the south-east ruin. His idea was to support the choppa boyz if necessary or take objectives later in the battle. Hungry and his nobz stayed put in their wagon, which bounced a kannon shell off the side of the plague rhino.

Typhus and his marines lumbered up middle of the battlefield. It appeared their plan was to use zombies as a screen and take out the battlewagon. The plague marines got close enough to discover that objective B was a skyfire nexus. Uh oh.

Meanwhile the chaos rhino hooked to the south and drove up right next to objective C. The obliterators won the fight for objective A again, reducing ork numbers just below fearless at the cost of losing one of their trio to a well-timed axe between the eyes.

TURN THREE: Hungry called in air support in the form of an up-gunned MIG-15. The plane came in low out of the twin suns and in a hail of lead murdered several of Typhus’ plague marines. The marines responded with accurate bolter and meltagun fire, courtesy of the skyfire nexus. The ork pilot jinked away from a melta shot that would have ended any hope of making ace.

Hungry radioed an order to his shoota boyz. The shoota sergeant barked a command and his boyz hustled through the ruin toward objective D. The plan was now to hold this objective and skirmish with the marines holding objective C. If necessary, the orks would advance and try to contest C with the gretchin coming out of their defensive positions to secure D.

The nobz decided the zombies were close enough now so they jumped out of their half track and charged with a Waaagh! (Declared that earlier to get the eighteen shots for the MIG-15.) They ended up massacring 12 or 14 of the zombies with barely a scratch in return. Ouch. Naturally Hungry opted to let his painboy take on the zombie champion while he “kept an eye on the bigger picture.”

Meanwhile it was a tie back at the hand-to-hand (or choppa to horribly mutating power fist) fighting between the orks and obliterators.

TURN FOUR: The ork pilot pitched his MIG sideways, dipping a wing low to the ground in an effort to decapitate the meltagun-wielding plague marine, not to mention navigate between two ruins without losing too many vital bits of his airplane. Once through, he hit the afterburner, rocketed between the two ruins and bugged out. He’d had enough of skyfire nexuses and meltaguns for one day. The nobz finished off the few remaining zombies and moved toward Typhus and the remnants of his squad. It isn’t every day one gets First Blood killing for 21 zombies in close combat!

The choppa boy nob finally managed to wade his way to the front and “showed dem how itz be dun” and finished off the obliterators. A bit of luck in winning that fight. The boyz consolidated around their trukk.

Typhus cast weapon virus on the nobz, which made all of their weapons have the “get’s hot” rule. The squad then moved up and charged. Despite going through difficult terrain and losing their front marine to an overwatch combi-skorcha (talk about get’s hot!) the marine charge was successful.

Hungry answered the inevitable challenge from Typhus by bodily picking up his hapless painboy and hurling him at the hulking terminator, who duly crushed the painboy as one would a gnat. The marines won the combat but not by much. The chaos gods decided to give mighty Typhus a boon such that all of his attacks were now poisoned. Wait, what?!

Marines on objective C continued to skirmish with the shoota orks. Their rhino moved forward in an effort to shield the squad from battlewagon kannon fire and to take bolter shots against the immobilized wagon’s rear armor. Naturally the rhino lost its drive axle trying to move into the forest and was immobilized.  They bailed out of their rhino in practiced advance and assault pattern, Vomitus, taking objective C. One astartes dropped to a knee, took aim and put a bolter round right between the eyes of the lead ork on objective D.  Good shooting, soldier!

TURN FIVE: Choppa boyz danced around objective D, then went about the serious business of decorating their trukk with obliterator body parts. Ignoring all of this, the driver spun his trukk around in place so his gunner could shoot at Typhus. What with the boyz jumping up and down on top of the trukk and rocking it side to side, not to mention the trukk being about five feet up a sentient, chaos-warped tree, instead of doing a 180 in place it did a 90, right over onto its side. Yep, I rolled snake eyes for the dangerous terrain test for the third time in the game!

Gretchin low crawled, with some prompting from a hungry squighound, through holes in the ruin toward objective D, just in case the skirmishing went badly for their larger cousins.

Back to the main event at the center of the battle. With nowhere to run Typhus challenged the warboss once again. This time Hungry ordered his nobz into a phalanx-like formation and stood at the rear ready to power klaw anyone who ran or brought up how challenges worked. One nob was brave (or desperate) enough to cite something on page 64 about Hungry “not getting to use his leadership” and got his head scissored off for his trouble.

Typhus, with nothing to slow him down killed four nobs with his scythe o’ diseased doom. The nobz finally had enough and ran in all directions, figuring Hungry couldn’t have off all their heads while dodging the clumsy but jovially insane nurgle terminator lord. One nob did put the final plague marine escort out of his misery as a sort of courtesy before running for it though.

There the battle ended with Hungry having executed his overall strategic plan, despite malfunctioning vehicles and running screaming into the sunset followed by a tireless yet irate Typhus who was heard to scream, “Where are you going you stupid ork? All I want to do is kill you a little!”

Naturally Hungry had the sole remaining nob murdered after the battle for reasons too obvious to go into here.  Disappointed space marines accounted for the rest.

Orks: Two Objectives + Linebreaker + First Blood + HS Kill = 9
CSM: One Objective + Linebreaker + Warlord (was running at the end of game) = 5
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