Thursday, March 11, 2010

Battle Report: Road to Glory Battle 1

My buddy and I started off the Road to Glory campaign this week. You can see the campaign map and chaos army list in the initial post.

The first battle was a hard fought mission with lots of jockeying for position.

First the ork army list:
  • Warboss in mega-armor (100)
  • 4 Mega-Nobz with Battle Wagon (250)
  • 12 Boyz in a trukk with a nob carrying a power-klaw and boss-pole (147)
Setup

We set up a nice looking board with some snowy terrain and forests. The mission was seize ground and we ended up with three objectives. One was placed one near the center and the other two ended up on the left flank. The orks deployed everything in their transports in the center of the table and chaos declined to deploy anything.

Turn 1

The orks advanced full speed into the chaos deployment zone but with the enemy nowhere in sight had nothing else to do. The chaos defiler came in on the right and the rest of the army piled in on the left. The chaos marines on foot opened fire at the trukk, stunning it, and the defiler leveled it's autocannon at the battlewagon, leaving it stunned as well. The picture shows the disposition of forces and objectives at the end of turn two. Not shown is the defiler just out of frame on the right.

Turn 2

The warboss and meganobz abandoned the stunned battlewagon and began a long footslog across the board to the left flank. Similarly, the boyz abandoned their trukk, shout out a mighty waaugh and rush the demon prince and rhino. Having made a full move the previous turn, the rhino was safe, but the demon prince ended up taking some wounds and killing of a couple boyz. In the chaos turn both marine squads joined the demon prince against the hapless ork boyz. Between them they managed to beat the greenskins and catch them in a sweeping advance but not before the nob took the last wound off the demon prince. The picture shows the left flank at the end of turn two.

Turn 3

The warboss and meganobz continued towards the action on the left flank and the trukk moved to try to box in the rhino and keep the left flank objective contested. One of the space marine squads piled into the rhino which high tailed it through a forest. The second squad shifted into cover near the objective and shot up the trukk, destroying it. Over on the right flank the defiler began to chase after the meganobz, shooting at them but missing.

Turn 4

The meganobz continued their slow and purposeful advance. The defiler charged the forgotten and unloved battlewagon, handily destroying it. The rhino and marine squads secured the left flank objective in the ork deployment zone. The other space marine squad poured fire into the meganobz but only managed one wound.

Turn 5

Huffing and puffing from exertion, the meganobz finally reached the left objective and sat down for a rest. Fearing that the game would end in a tie, the chaos marines near them charged, drawing the orks away from the objective. By the end of the assault only one marine was left, but this was enough to force the meganobz to pile in even further away from their objective.

A final die roll decided the game was over on turn five and chaos won, one objective to zero.

Final Thoughts

Meganobz are tough nuts to crack in a low point game. Despite lots of shooting I didn't kill a single one. Instead, I had to use luring and containment to keep them ineffective for most of the game. As for the plan I laid out in the first post, some things worked and some didn't. The rhino with marines grabbed an objective in the back like I had planned, but the demon prince didn't really get to choose his own target. This was my fault for getting him an inch or so too close to the trukk. The defiler didn't end up being a major player, either. His task was to camp an objective and provide fire support but there were very few objectives and not many targets suitable for a battle cannon. If the game had ended up going longer the defiler would have come back into play on turn six or seven by contesting the meganob objective.

The other thing is Dawn of War deployment seems to do a role reversal, putting whoever goes first on the defensive. When you have the second turn there's little incentive to start with anything on the board. Denying your opponent an entire round of shooting, taking away any chance of a turn one assault, and being able to choose your initial deployment after seeing how your opponent is situated are very valuable advantages that I have a hard time giving up.

Stay tuned for the results of mission 2 and an updated campaign map.

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