Rules

Brett’s Orks vs Kingbreakers, 2500 pts, ‘Ard Boyz 2009 Scenario 2.

The second ‘Ard Boyz scenario is a variation on Dawn of War and on Annihilation. The big difference is that the Kill Points are modified, making Troops one point, HQs two points, and all others two points. To win, a player needs to beat their opponent by at least four points.

I deployed first and put out two troops units, a Lascannon Combat Squad on top of a hill, a Razorback with the second part of the Combat Squad, and another troop hidden within a copse of trees. Brett deployed some sort of ugly lookin’ Orks in the mid-field, and some mega-nobs behind them (allowed as one of his Boss’ made them troops or something like that).

Battle

Turn one I brought the Sternguard and Tac Squad down in the center of the field, hoping to eliminate the leading Orks and Nobs. That mostly worked out, though the Meganobs skulked around for a while until my Terminators could come in and take them out in a brutal close combat. Unfortunately, my Librarian was basically traded for Brett’s Warphead, trading 5 kill points each. A few more units were taken out by collective shooting between the Devastators, Landspeeders, and Tactical Squads. Brett’s thick green line slowly advanced on my units, but their sheer bulk kept many units from deploying in the best positions.

Lessons

There seems to be some confusion about whether or not units can deploy inside dedicated transports at the start of a Dawn of War mission. I’m not sure why there is any confusion about this, as the example within the Dawn of War rules makes it very clear that they can.

The game played out well, but I’m still not totally sure what I’m doing against Orks, and am potentially not using Tactical Squads well. I have to say that I think two of my troops were wasted. One did some damage with its missile launcher, but otherwise didn’t bring enough shots into play. The other took some potshots with its lascannon, but not enough, and the combat squad in the Razorback had no clear role without an objective to contest.

In some ways, Brett made a mistake by deploying his lead units up on the midline. On the one hand that enabled them to get into close combat earlier, but it enabled my forces to concentrate on them and wipe them out before the long wave of his reinforcements hit.

I managed to focus my forces well, and took out a fair number of units. My Terminators were mostly given away though by over-extending them into an assault they could not support. I also failed badly by shooting too hard at a group of Orks such that Brett was able to remove some models and put them just out of reach of an assault that turned a probable close combat win into essentially a loss next round as the Orks in turn got the charge bonus. Finally, I got over zealous with my Dreadnought, dropping it deep in enemy lines to try and assassinate Brett’s remaining HQ model, but instead the HQ destroyed the Dreadnought in close combat.