Victory Pointless

This was a 1000 point Pariah Nexus crusade game playing the Gheists in the Static mission, and a rematch against the Blood Angels I previously played in phase 1.

Uzblitz held on the side of the juddering trukk as it crested the rim of a crater and crashed down on the other side.  Miraculously, nothing important fell off.  On the other side of the trukk Mek Gobdreg was beaming, though whether through pride in his creations or a more general drunken euphoria was hard to tell.

Uzblitz caught sight of the red-armoured enemy up ahead.  The Blood Angels were back.  He signalled the attack.

There was a sudden cacophony of noise that dwarfed even the throaty roar of the trukk’s engine.

Whup-whup-whup-whup-FWOOOOOSH! – A flight of Deffkoptas passed overhead, unloading a mass of rokkit fire.

Dakkadakkadakkadakka! – A group of Lootas sprang out of hiding on a raised walkway and atomised a squad of marines below.

Zzzzzappp! – A mob of boyz vanished in a flash of psychic energy and rematerialised on the other side of the battlefield, raking another squad of marines.

Blu-blu-bluh-BLORP! – The bubblechukka launched an undulating force field bubble into a black-painted dreadnought.

BOOOOM! – The dreadnought exploded, showering the nearby Blood Angels with debris.

These were followed by the revving of chainswords and cries from nearby ruins as a group of gretchin scouts were cut down.

“Orlright, let’s go!” Uzblitz vaulted from the back of the trukk and sprinted into the ruins, followed by his Nob bodyguard and Krakdakka’s Flash Gitz.  He hit the Blood Angels like a living missile.  Klaw and Choppa bit deep into power armour until only the Blood Angels lieutenant still stood, surrounded by his fallen brethren.  His sword lashed out and found its mark, but struck only metal.

“You will die one day, savage beast,” the marine spat.  “And I will see that day soon.” The Flash Gitz fell upon him.

Uzblitz shrugged.  “Not today, humie.”  He filled his lungs, ready to proclaim the great warcry that would drive his warband on to even greater feats of violence.

“WAA-” He paused and looked around.  “-ere’s da rest of ‘em?”

“Fink dat’s da last of ‘em, boss,” said Tok.  “Da rest got shot.”

“Oh.” The heretical thought crossed Uzblitz’s mind that perhaps there was such a thing as too much dakka if it didn’t leave enough of the enemy alive to krump.

OK, so… this game was a little one sided.  I wiped out half the opposing force in shooting before they even got a turn, which left the rest of the game a bit of a foregone conclusion and not particularly satisfying for either of us.  There are a few reasons this happened:

• I rolled really well.  The Bubblechukka one-shotting a Death Company Dreadnought is a good example.  I not only rolled the random profile that was good anti-tank, I rolled max shots, everything hit, everything wounded and I ended up doing a total of 22 wounds.  Then it exploded and did more damage to everything around it.  I haven’t calculated the precise odds of this happening, but I’d be prepared to bet it never happens again. My Lootas, Boyz and Deffkoptas rolled similarly well.
• The mission we were playing – Gheists In The Static – is kinda unbalanced if you choose the right strategic footing and have Infiltrators, since you don’t get CP if you’re not on a No-Man’s-Land objective and the attacker (which I was) gets guaranteed first turn.  This meant I could deploy very aggressively and get everything into very good positions to launch a devastating turn 1 attack that my opponent could do nothing about since they didn’t even have any CP for stratagems.
• Ork shooting is balanced around being powerful but inaccurate, mostly only hitting on 5+.  A consequence of this is that getting +1 to hit is far more powerful for Orks than it is for other armies; effectively being a +50% damage boost.  Thanks to various Crusade upgrades I have some means of getting this on three of my best shooting units.  As discussed previously I’ve also taken a lot of units that have a chance of blowing themselves up in some manner, with the intention of this being a fun and fluffy list.  But, of course, that risk is balanced against those units being quite powerful when they don’t blow up, so I’ve boosted the damage of already quite damaging units.  I honestly didn’t set out to powergame this; I was running War Horde rather than More Dakka on the basis that the latter is (or, was) considered very overpowered and I didn’t want to be That Guy; but I may have done it by accident.
• A lot of the shooting I do have consists of Rokkit Launchers, Deffguns and Kustom Mega-Blastas, all being strength 8-9 and 2-3 damage each.  This eats through Marines like nobody’s business.  Again, I didn’t really set out to tailor this list (although the current leaders in the campaign are Marines and Custodes and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a factor in some of my choices), but it was perhaps an unfortunate match-up for the Blood Angels.

This was my first game with this new list, so time will tell whether it’s genuinely quite strong or just very swingy and this was a fluke.