Victory Pointless

“Looks like dere’s a big scrap about to kick off, boss!” Tok balanced precariously on top of Uzblitz’s boss-pole, battered telescope clamped to one eye.

Uzblitz grunted.  “Gud!  Who izzit?”

The gretchin adjusted focus.  “Uh, it’s humies, boss.  Da ones wot have got too many arms made of metal fightin’ the ones wot have got too many arms made of bug.  Wot ones do ya wanna fight first?”

Before the Warboss could reply a sudden gleam of gold caught Tok’s beady eye.  “Angabout!  I sees something else – its da big shiny ladz!  Da onez wot krumped yoo – uh, I mean, da onez wot we krumped da uvva day!”

Uzblitz spun around.   There was a shriek as the carefully-balanced gretchin on his back received a direct lesson in centripetal force.

“Gather up, Ladz!  We’z got some more krumpin’ to do!  Startin’ wiv woteva side dem big shiny gitz is on!”

This was a 2v2 game, Orks & Genestealer Cults vs Custodes & Adeptus Mechanicus.  Total points were 3,000 a side but as we didn’t have a big enough table we were playing a Strike Force mission instead – The Gathering Shroud.

The Imperials got first turn.  My Burna Boyz managed to kill a squad of electropriests but were themselves gunned down shortly afterwards.  A grechin screening unit also died but took quite a lot of firepower to bring down.  Kataphron Destroyers flamered a few kommandos and blew up my trukk.

In response on our turn I waaaghed and charged forwards with Boyz, Breaka Boyz, Beast Snagga Boyz and Nobz.  This was quite devastating – they all killed their assigned targets and allowed us to hold more objectives than our opponents and get ahead on points.

However this also left a lot of my elite troops in the open and on the next turn the slaughter began.  Turn 2 all of our opponents’ charges succeeded while all of ours failed, including a key one to allow us to retake the swing objective and keep ourscoring.

An inexorable wave of gold and red slowly rolled across the board and with most of our heavy-hitters gone there was little we could do but try to stall them and focus down important targets.

Uzblitz scanned the battlefield as he lead the horde forwards.  His brain whirred with Taktiks.  If they could get up this hill and retake the ground that Da Fing and his minders had just lost then they’d be in a good position to keep momentum going.

He pointed the blade of his Rokkit Choppa in the direction of a squad of red-coated cyborgs dug in behind the ridge and broke into a run.  “Come on Ladz!  Let’s go get dere-“.

Something shiny caught in the corner of his eye.  Custodes.  In fact… there.  That custodes.  The one that had stabbed him through the chest.  He’d had to get a whole new heart put in again.

He skidded to a halt, ignoring the boyz who weren’t able to stop in time and thudded into his back.

“Oi!  Come ‘ere you shiny git! I’m gunna-“

He looked down.  There was a spear protruding from his chest.  In a flash the custodes captain had closed the gap between them and impaled the warboss while its companions slaughtered the Orks around him with ease.

“Oh, no again you zoggin-“

Uzblitz slumped to the ground.

We managed to just about hold onto our home objective against a deep-striking robot assault thanks to the combined firepower of both armies and a mass of genestealers, and we maintained our points lead until turn 4, but we were losing the war of attrition quite badly and eventually, with only a unit of gretchin a sole Loota and a Lictor left on the board for us we finally lost control of another objective and the Imperials were able to catch up and take the lead in turn 5.

Result: Imperial victory, 70 to 65

Post-Mortem

• We got off to a relatively good turn 1 – I lost a lot to the initial round of shooting but it was mostly stuff I didn’t mind losing and we managed to get an early lead.  It was all downhill from there, though.  The points ended up a lot closer than it felt as we were gradually steamrollered.
• As is so often the case in 40k it all came down to a failed charge.  If we’d managed to get back on an extra objective we wouldn’t have been able to hold it but we would’ve scored an extra 5 points which would’ve made it at least a draw.
• My main mistake was over-committing and leaving all my elites exposed to the inevitable clap-back.  I should’ve held back the Nobz as a bit of extra punch for round two and just tagged the skitarii unit they went into with the Breaker Boyz to get in the way.  The Waaagh can be a bit of a trap mechanic since you naturally want to get the most out of that one turn by putting as much stuff forwards as you can, but in doing so it’s still important to make sure the trade is going to be worth it and to have a follow-up plan for the rest of the game.
• Waaaghing turn 1 never seems to work out well for me.  Most of the stuff I went into was overkilled anyway, so perhaps I didn’t need it.  Still, there wasn’t really enough cover on the table for me to play cagey and hold back a turn without everything dying.
• Minor dumb mistake that had big implications: I forgot to pile the Beast Snagga Boyz into the AdMech transport they charged.  This didn’t affect the combat itself – the Beastboss easily took the vehicle out, but then the troops inside managed to disembark on the other side of the vehicle, outside of pile-in range.  I should’ve taken advantage of the pile-in move to wrap around a little more and potentially prevent this.
• Custodes & AdMech are a tough combination to beat because they cover each other’s weaknesses.  Admech you want to rush early and tie up their shooting in melee.  But if you do that custodes will slap you into oblivion.  Custodes you want to outmaneuver, focus down and beat on board control, but Admech have the numbers and the firepower to lock down huge parts of the board and make them very bad places to be.  Conversely, Orks & GSC have pretty much the same weaknesses – namely fragility and a lack of decent anti-tank, which made this a tough match-up for us.
• GSC were especially disadvantaged by playing 3,000 points on a 2,000 point table size, since they need the space to uppy-downy.
• I don’t normally comment on venue (maybe I should, more?), but on this occasion we were playing at Kingdom Wargames London.  I’ve played there before and had a good time and the staff are always great and very helpful.  But.  This time around we were playing stuck in a corner at the end of a row with our backs right up against the wall.  The table was too small and there was no extra space to put anything.  It was cramped, uncomfortable, hot, poorly lit and altogether a really unpleasant environment to play in, especially a 2v2 that took a while to play.  I ended up damaging a few models trying to clumsily stuff them back into my carry case under the table because it was the only place to put it and I couldn’t even bend over enough to be able to see what I was doing properly.  It’s not a bad venue overall but they maybe need to take out one table to give the others some breathing room.