Topic: 8e Orks vs Chaos 2,000 pts

[Blazinghand]

Played my first 8e game today against a friend at the game store, 2,000 pts, my Orkz vs his Heretic Astartes/Chaos.

My list: 1x BATTALION Detachment of Orks
++HQ++
Warboss on Warbike with Power Klaw
Big Mek on Warbike with KFF, Killsaw
Weirdboy
++TROOPS++
30 Slugga Boyz, 1 is Nob with Power Klaw
10 Shoota Boyz, 1 is Nob with Power Klaw
10 Shoota Boyz, 1 is Nob with Power Klaw
10 Shoota Boyz, 1 is Nob with Power Klaw
10 Shoota boyz, 1 is Nob with Power Klaw
++FAST ATTACK++
2 Deffkoptas with Spinnin Blades and Kopta Rokkits
12 Warbikers
++HEAVY SUPPORT++
3 Big Gunz: Kannons
3 Killa Kanz, 2 with Rokkit Launcha, 1 with Big Shoota
++DEDICATED TRANSPORT++
4x Trukk with no frills

Nomad's list, 1x BATTALION Detachment of Heretic Astartes
Typhus
Sorcerer
6 Terminators. 1 with claws, 1 with combi-melta + power first, 1 with combi-bolter + power fist (??), 2 with Reaper Autocannon + power fist
7 Plague Marines with Plague knifes, 2 with Plasma Guns
7 Plague Marines with Plague knifes, 2 with Plasma Guns
7 Plague Marines with Plague knifes, 2 with Plasma Guns
7 Plague Marines with Plague knifes, 2 with Plasma Guns
7 Havoc Marines with 4 Meltaguns
7 Havoc Marines with 4 Meltaguns
4x Rhino with a plasma combi gun



We rolled for modes and got Retrieval Mission. Nomad placed the first objective token on the centerline about 18" from short edge of the table, and I placed the second token just over 12" from the first one across clear ground so that I could potentially contest both of them; i suspected two objectives being close together would give my swarmy orkz a better chance. Nomad then placed the third token as far as he could towards the other short edge of the table, and I had a choice: place the fourth and final objective near the two that are close? or place it near the one that is far? I put it about 18" away from the lone objective towards the center, in the hopes that some of my fast units (i noted that Nomad didn't have any bikers or flyers) would be able to get to or contest an objective.

As the final objective-placer, I could pick deployment zones. I went for Search and Destroy, because each group of two objectives was basically in one quadrant. Since one objective was pretty close to the center, I could basically start on that objective and push towards the other two in my opponent's deployment area. I figured the diagonal attack with a short distance between deployment zones would help me, too.

We begin alternating deploying units. My opponent deploys in relatively few turns, since 4 of his squads are in rhinos. I am deploying 4 squads in Trukks, as well as my Kanz, Gunz, Warbikers, 3 HQs, foot Boyz, and defffkoptas (in reserve) so I get to make a couple deployments after he is locked in. We both deploy to the front. I put my Kans in front, followed by my Trukks, then a the bikers and the foot unit of Boyz. I plan to teleport the foot unit of Boyz so having them in the back won't be a problem. My Gunz are in the back on the back objective, far away from anything except the back end of the Boyz mob. Nomad keeps his terminators and terminator armour HQ in reserve and deploys his marines and rhinos all to the front, with one to the side to get a better angle on a point. I didn't get a photograph of pre-turn 1, but I do take a photo of part-way through which is below.


Top of Turn 1 (Chaos):

Nomad goes first and I fail to seize the initiative. He deepstrikes in his termies and HQ behind my Big Gunz. He unloads his guys out of his Rhinos, then puts the Rhinos in front to make it hard for me to charge. He fires some shots and does some light damage to various things but fails to put a serious dent in anything but my (proxied boyz for them) grot gunners on the Big Gunz.

After the top of Turn 1:





Bottom of Turn 1 (Orks):

The Big Gunz stay still. I figure they're dead anyways once the Termies get to them, so they might as well shoot accurately in the meantime. The Boyz and Weirdboy advance. Although I plan to use Da Jump, it might fail so I want the Boyz in good position. I hope that the Gunz shoot accurately at the Termies and maybe take one down.



I advance my Kans, Trukks, and Bikers. Weirdboy targeting the mob of 30 Boyz successfully uses Da Jump. The Boyz reappear behind the enemies, able to charge without interference of Rhinos.



However, I fail the charge roll and reroll for the Boyz; even 'Ere We Go will not help you if you roll a 2,1 and a 2,2 and need to go 9+ inches. I'm also not able to pop any of the rhinos with my shooting, . I do pick off a couple of marines with shooting. So I have my Kanz go in on it in melee, hoping to break it down so I can get to the marines behind. In my hubris, I thought to use a trukk full of Boyz to initiate assault with a group of marines, thinking "well, this way they'll be in melee and won't be able to Overwatch my Boyz" but in fact this just gets the Trukk stuck in assault




Top of Turn 2 (Chaos):

Nomad sees the group of Boyz behind him and proceeds to focus a lot of shooting on it, causing some serious damage. His marines in assault with my Trukk hurt it significantly, but in the assault between my Kans and his Rhino, his Rhino finally goes down. His highly out-of-position Termies take some potshots at my Big Gunz but fail to destroy them. My trukk that is in assault with some marines is destroyed, and there is nowhere for the models to go; only two models make it out due to placement rules, and they end up dying.



Bottom of Turn 2 (Orkz):



With about 15-18 Boyz of my Boyz behind Nomad, and his Rhino wall falling, I'm feeling in a good position for some assault. Over the course of this turn I move a bunch of units forward and charge with a bunch of units. I also bring my deffkoptas in from the table edge (forgot to do this during Turn 1). I send a couple of empty Trukks towards my own backfield, hoping to hide them and run them onto objectives later.




Thus begins the "entire game-wide close combat circus" that plays out over the course of the next 2.5 turns. Nobody can shoot, nobody can move (or wants to fall back), and so Nomad and i become well-acquainted with 8e assault rules. Except for one squad of tac marines, some dedicated transports, and the terminators, everything is just assaulting.





After a couple of turns, things start to thin out. The Orks are coming out on top, mostly, and eventually his terminators wipe out my Big Gunz in the back.



--

Final Turns (4-6)

Photographs stop here, since we were getting pretty tired and wanted to play quickly without stopping for them. Once it was clear the assaults were going to go in my favor, I used Fall Back with my remaining 5 War Bikes. My Psyker was still alive at this point in time, so he  teleported them into the Nomad's backlines, where they got onto an objective despite attempts by his Rhino to tie them up in melee or block them off; warbikes are pretty fast. At some point, I lost a lot of boyz, as well as the deffkoptas. I had a group of 5 boyz stick on the other objective on Nomad's side, and turned my army around.

Nomad had taken "my" rear objective but one of the objectives on my side was towards the middle. Aside from his Rhinos, his only active units were the (now 4 left) Terminators and his HQ, Typhus. Unfortunately, it looked like I wouldn't be able to actually kill them. However, I had two objectives and he had barely enough units to cover two. I took down one Rhino with some melee attacks from some Boyz, and the other one wasn't in a position where it could contest the objectives I held (since I had many models on both and it didn't have the guns or melee strength to kill them).

Instead of trying to kill his Termies on the closer objective on my side of the board, I just ran a bunch of boyz, my warboss, and my big mek all into melee with the Terminators. Although my Boyz couldn't kill the Terminators, the Terminators couldn't kill them quickly enough, and this put more than 5 of my models within 3" of the objective, claiming it for me in the bottom of the 6th turn. Then, the game ended.


Final points tally for Nomad:
1 Point for first Blood
1 Point for having a unit in Blazinghand's deployment zone
3 Points for  being near objective (back of Blazinghand's deployment Zone)

TOTAL: 5 points


Final points tally for Blazinghand:
1 point for having a unit in Nomad's deployment Zone
3 points for being near objective (middle of Nomad's deployment zone)
3 points for being near objective (middle-left of Nomad's deployment zone)
3 points for having more models with in 3" of objective than Nomad (front of Blazinghand's deployment zone)


TOTAL: 10 points


--




Some key learnings:

1. Rhinos can be tough to crack. I got tarpitted for a turn and a half at least on a rhino that i needed to get around.
2. Ork Boyz, if they actually make it to combat, are quite decent for the cost
3. Power Klaw / Power Fist hidden in squad is very good. My Boss Nobz always made it to close combat as long as Ork boyz were available to die for them.
4. Morale can be huge. Definitely took down a lot of marines via morale, and definitely the felt strong in situations like "this mob of Boyz has 10+ models in it and can take a couple wounds no problem / this mob of boyz has 20+ models in it and basically doesn't care about morale" and felt weak in situations like "this mob of boyz is 6, 3 of them just died, now it's time to make a morale check." Boyz can use unit size as Ld for morale, this is very valuable.
5. Don't deep strike valuable units far away from the fight. I mean, this is obvious, but Nomad put 500 points of assaulty shooty powerful Terminators that were hard to kill way behind my lines, and I just ran forward away from them. During the final turns, they held objectives, but I could just swarm guys onto those objectives and let numbers make the difference.
6. It seems like the ability to fall back and move around could be really strong. Being able to fall back out of combat with my bikers, get really far away, then teleport, was good. I'm sure other groups like eldar with fast units will like this.
7. Psykers counter Psykers decently. While my weirdboy was on the field (he died in the second-to-last turn or so) he was able to occasionally stop a Psyker power if he was in the right place.
8. Assault can be huge. Maybe this is just an ork thing. Although his marines were very tough (some had T5 or FNP 5+) it seems like they died in assault just like anything else.
9. Command Points are game changers. Avoid Perils, reroll a crucial Power Klaw attack, that last Invuln save you need to make, etc. In 2k points if I could somehow get 9 instead of 6 I would.

I'll have to play more and learn more. Overall I am excited about this new edition and the various possibilities.

[Irisado]

Thanks for posting this report.  It was an interesting read.  I'm a bit concerned, based on that game, that it became rather static and sterile pretty quickly, owing to the Rhino wall and so many units getting stuck in an assault.  Is this how it seemed to you?

Orks being able to come out on top in an assault against elites through numbers seems apt to me.  As a result, it seems as though they have definitely become more of a threat in this edition.

[dog_of_war]

Thanks for the battle report. It's nice to see an ork win after so many years. We should be seeing a lot more of those in the future. I used to take my killa kans with grotzookas no questions asked. It will be interesting to see how they perform with the removal of templates.

[Blazinghand]

Thanks for posting this report.  It was an interesting read.  I'm a bit concerned, based on that game, that it became rather static and sterile pretty quickly, owing to the Rhino wall and so many units getting stuck in an assault.  Is this how it seemed to you?

Orks being able to come out on top in an assault against elites through numbers seems apt to me.  As a result, it seems as though they have definitely become more of a threat in this edition.

Regarding the close combat staticness: I did spend one full turn with almost no strategic decision to make other than "should I fall back with some units or not" and one turn with only 3 units outside of assault, not counting two empty trukks. I think this was because some of the marines I was fighting against were very sturdy and had 5+ FNP, but didn't really have enough attacks to take down a lot of Orkz. Each ork boy attack would give like a 20th of a chance to kill a marine. So a bunch of boyz would attack and maybe kill a marine, and the marines would hit back and kill 2 boyz if the squad was still at decent strength. The Power Klaws made the difference.

So I think part of it was just that his units were very durable and didn't have much damage output in assault.

The Rhino wall and rhino-assaults-me surprise attacks were not as bad as the rhino tank shock surprise objective claims in previous editions. Or the "corner of this rhino is in the quadrant, so we're contesting it now hahaha" strats. Part of the problem is that my Orks list just doesn't run much anti-tank outside of power klaws. The Killa Kanz, Deffkoptas, and Kannon Big Gunz all had high strength, but I was never really able to bring them to bear. The Kannons were occupied by the termies, the Kanz ended up in melee after shooting one volley at a rhino, and the Deffkoptas I forgot to Outflank in on Turn 1 and when I did bring them in on Turn 2 I soon mishandled them and lost them to plasma guns.

I think Nomad had actually the opposite problem. He was able to kill or immobilize my Transports quite easily with his many plasma guns and meltaguns. However, a Plasma gun isn't actually that much better than a Bolter is against an Ork Boy who barely has an armor save to speak of, and a Meltagun is actually worse. So I'm not sure how much my difficulty with his rhinos was a factor of the list I was running or a universal issue.

One thing I noticed is that the Damage stat on weapon statlines is really important. Vehicles have many wounds, and small arms fire will do some damage but it was always the Power Klaws (or the Rokkits, when I was still firing them) that did the heavy lifting. My Warbikers felt a lot more effective shooting at marines (3+ to wound) than they did shooting at the rhinos (5+ to wound) because taking a single point of damage off of a rhino rarely did much. However, the third rhino was finished off by a pistol shot, interestingly.

[Wyddr]

Thanks for the informative report!

I think the use of transports as tarpits is pretty damned interesting, myself. Makes Rhinos and Trukks a pretty serious problem for shooting units.

Also: Rhino killed by a pistol shot? Ha! Guess they finally cracked the engine block!

[Irisado]

So I think part of it was just that his units were very durable and didn't have much damage output in assault.

That's reassuring.  I do recall that similar situations have arisen when fighting Plague Marines in the past, simply because they have such high durability and staying power.  Hopefully, against less durable units, close combat will be more decisive.

[Lord of Winter and War]

So I think part of it was just that his units were very durable and didn't have much damage output in assault.

That's reassuring.  I do recall that similar situations have arisen when fighting Plague Marines in the past, simply because they have such high durability and staying power.  Hopefully, against less durable units, close combat will be more decisive.

It is.

Combat is really deadly when combat specialists get into things. My Harlequins chews through units pretty quick (they better for what I'm spending on them), and the bloodthirsters can chew through even a knight in one round of combat (with some good rolls).

[adamscurr]

Good times... I'm also excited to see orks viable again...

You mentioned that your anti-tank capabilities were really just power klaws and a few rokkits. What are you plans for future lists to add some tank krumping power?

Adam