Victory Pointless

Tok advanced cautiously through the crowd of Orks, cringing at every sudden movement. He was known to be the Boss’s grot and should therefore be immune to being randomly killed or eaten, but old habits died hard and besides, if there was one thing Orks detested it was a gretchin with ideas above his station.

“Boss! Boss!” he yelled once he was near enough to – potentially – be heard over the din. “Message from da Prof!” Sez ‘e’s found where we can get da last bitz we need for makin’ big bombz, Boss!”

Warboss Uzblitz Gogbusta turned around, wiping his hand on a nearby Boy’s tunic. He grinned. “Gud! Let’s go get ’em!”

“‘E also sez it looks like dere’s some pointy-ears ‘eaded the same way!”

Uzblitz’s grin grew ever wider. “Faantastic! Come on den ladz, ‘oos up fer a proppa scrap?”

This was a 2000 point crusade game vs Aeldari playing the Scattered Supplies mission.

I deployed agressively, hoping to get first turn (which I did) and to sieze as many objectives as possible quickly (which I also did). The more elite Aeldari army managed to deploy entirely out of sight and I didn’t get really any opportunities for shooting in turn 1.

I did however manage to Da Jump and get a turn 1 charge off against some Striking Scorpions hidden on one flank, wiping the unit.

The downside to rushing forwards is that it left a lot of my army exposed and consequently a lot died when the Eldar came out of hiding and struck back. Jain Zar and her banshee buddies took out Uzblitz and his Boyz, albeit at the cost of almost the entire unit thanks to a Fights on Death strat.

The Avatar and Fire Dragons destroyed my Battlewagon in shooting, with the Beast Snaggas that emerged also being brought down by shooting.  Yet more Eldar shooting brought down a Loota squad, both Gretchin mobs and one of my Trukks.  The Avatar then charged the Kommandos and killed all but one of them.

At the end of turn 1 I retained all but one of the objectives but it had cost me nearly half my army to do so, having only destroyedd one Aeldari unit in exchange.  Fortunately the half I had left was the shooty half and they managed to do a lot of damage.

Operation Fight Fire with Fire: My Burna Boyz hopped out and barbequed the Fire Dragons and half the Jetbikes, then charged into the Avatar.  They didn’t do much damage (turns out blowtorches don’t do much to a creature altready made of molten metal) but they did the job of tying him up and drawing attention away from the sole remaining Kommando holding the objective.

Meinwhile, fire from Lootas, Flash Gitz, Mek Gunz and Deffkoptas took out the remaining Jetbikes, Swooping Hawks and Warlocks.  My Breaka Boyz and Nobz both took overwatch fire (some Eldar relic), the Nobz being wiped completely and the Breaka Boyz being reduced to half strength, but still managing to charge the Dire Avengers and take a few out before being brought down.

The surviving eldar retaliated.  One squad of Flash Gitz were killed by the surviving Banshees but not before they managed to eliminate the remaining Dire Avengers and Asurman in overwatch.

However there were not many Eldar remaining and so my opponent graciously conceded at the end of the round.  Taking the end-state at that point I had picked up three objectives to his two, with two of mine brought back to my deployment zone for bonus points.

Result: Ork victory, 55 to 30

Post-mortem

• This was my first time playing against Aeldari (since 2nd edition, when they weren’t called Aeldari) so it was interesting to see how they play.  The answer is, not entirely dissimilarly to Orks since they are also an army of glass cannons.  Neither particularly like being out in the open, which is why this game was pretty bloody.
• I’ve played this mission before and its one of my favourite crusade missions because it actually changes the basic rules of the game in an interesting way instead of just being ‘sit on these objectives with some extra annoying but basically irrelevant bullshit’.  More Of This Sort Of Thing, please.
• That said, it’s still ludicrously unbalanced.  I bet a lot on getting first turn because I knew grabbing up all the objectives first gives you a big advantage.  Fortunately it paid off, if it hadn’t I probably would have lost a lot for no real benefit and the end result could’ve been very different.
• I put my Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun in a trukk, hoping to let him shoot out from it in relative safety.  A masterful plan… except I forgot he was in there and didn’t shoot anything with him the whole game.  Narf.