Battle Report: Emerald Eye vs Ernie's Orks

This past Sunday saw the Emerald Eye's first game in 40K using 5th edition rules. It also was my first game using the new rules, so this was going to be a learning experience for me. Since this was the first 40k game for the Emerald Eye, it was only right that the honor goes to my friend Ernie and his infamous orks.


We are both attending the N.I.M.G.C. tournament in April, so we thought it would be a good idea to use the scenarios for the tournament as practice for the event. Upon arrival to Ernie's place, we decided to randomly select one of the three scenarios by rolling a d6. I rolled a 5, which meant that we were going to play the third scenario in the list, Only One of Us is Leaving Here Alive.

"We have them now, prioritize your targets and annihilate the enemy"
Deployment: Dawn of War
Objectives: Modified Kill Points

HQ Units are worth 3 kill points (Characters plus retinues must all be killed to get these points. Only killing retinues gets you nothing!)
Elites/Heavy Support/Fast Attack are worth 2 Kill Points
Troops are worth 1 kill point.



Bonus Battle Points:
+2 Your Supreme Commander kills enemy Supreme Commander
+1 Your Supreme Commander Survives
-1 Your Supreme Commander Dies

Before the game, we had decided to play a 1000 points per side. For this game, I decided to play the following list:
The Masque 100 pts
Skulltaker on Juggernaught 175 pts
Fiend of Slaanesh 40 pts
10 Bloodletters w/ std & musician 190 pts
10 Horrors w/ std 195 pts
6 Daemonettes w/ std 109 pts
Daemon Prince w/ flight, daemonic gaze 160 pts

Ernie had brought the horde, which kind of surprised me. (Note: I am summarizing, as I don't have his exact list available at the moment.)

Big Mek w/ Custom Force Field
20 Hard Boyz
20 Freebootaz
20 Stormboyz
10 Grots w/ Herder
10 Grots w/ Herder
3 Zzap Guns w/ extra grots

With the mission decided, we rolled for table edges. I won the roll and elected the table edge closes to my carrying cases. The reality for me was that the table was set-up perfectly symetrical with a forest in each quarter, a cliff edge at the center of each long side, and a series of craters in the middle. This meant that picking a side didn't matter as nothing of mine would deploy at this point in the process. Having reached this conclusion, I defaulted to Ernie and allowed him to set-up on his side of the board.

As Ernie placed his orks, I divided my army into two forces. The first force was the Skulltaker, bloodletters, and horrors. The second force was the Masque, daemonettes, fiend, and daemon prince. In the case of both characters, they were made part of their respective troop choices while deciding my groups.

Turn One

With Ernie's ork deployed, we started the game with me rolling to determine which group would arrive in the first turn. Chaos must have approved of my choice, as Skulltaker's group was selected for battle. Treating Ernie's side of the table as north, I deployed the horrors to the east of his army and the bloodletters to the west. Both units scattered as they arrived, with the horrors moving primarily south of the original landing site, and the bloodletters drifting a hard southeast from their original position. In the case of the bloodletters, with Skulltaker, the scatter resulted in the unit materializing into difficult terrain. This meant I was making some dangerous terrain checks. On a roll of 11 dice, 3 came back as ones. Out of those three, all of them failed their invulnerable saves. Khorne was not happy.

Tzeentch on the otherhand, saw fit to move the horrors into a nice position for the purpose of killing orks. The rolling of 30 dice resulted in the death of 8 freebootaz. A nice start to the game for me.

In Ernie's first turn, he brought the remainder of his army onto the board. His stormboyz moved on directly across from the bloodletters, while his hard boyzs and other unit of grot arrived just to the east of the stormboyz. At the center of his deployment zone, the zzap games rolled out, the grots cheering wildly for their arrival.

The favor that Tzeentch had given the horrors had turned into a curse as the freebootaz responded. The sound of slugga fire filled the battlefield as the horrors came under fire from both the orks and their accompanying grots. The illusions of Tzeentch could not hold. Three horrors were violently returned to the warp.

To make matters worse, the freebootaz were also within assault range of the horrors. They charged in and swung away at the remaining horrors. The battle was quick, the horrors were simply no match for the orks.

Turn Two

The second turn started with me rolling for reserves. Slaanesh must have known that it was time to strike as all of my remaining units came onto the board. Since the horrors were gone, I used the icon within the bloodletter unit to place the newly arriving units onto the board. I now had all of my forces clumped together on the west side of the board.

My first action in the shooting phase was to use Pavane of Slaanesh to entice the stormboyz to move closer to my bloodletters. I ended up moving them a few inches, which was enough to allow my bloodletters to charge them. Before they could though, I commanded the daemon prince to unleash it's gaze upon them. It was a horrible gaze. The kind which only a daemon could produce. It burned through the tough exterior of the orks and caused two of them to fall.

With blood drawn, the bloodletters could no longer be held back. They charged into the stormboyz, daemonic weapons swinging wildly at green flesh. When the round of combat was over, the boyz had lost 13 models and were overrun.

Witnessing the carnage, the Zzap guns fired upon the daemonettes, killing two of my ladies. The other members of the horde moved to engage my bloodletters.

Turn Three

The bloodletters charged the grots that stood between them and the orks. Green blood covered the battlefield as they swept through them. The other forces of the Emerald Eye moved west towards the Big Mek and his companions.

Ernie's third turn saw the hardboyz charging the Skulltaker and crew. The battle was fierce with the orks dropping 2 bloodletters. In response, the bloodletters killed eight of the orks that dared to challenge them. Above all of this, the skulltaker looked on, rolling all ones and twos for the second consecutive round of combat.

Turn Four

Turn four started with the daemon prince, daemonettes, and fiend moving to assault the forces that had killed the horrors a few rounds back. The Masque seduced the Big Mek and crew to move closer to the daemon prince, allowing him to charge the unit and wipe them out.

While this happened, the fiend attacked the grots, hungry for green flesh. The beautifully painted midgets swarmed my fiend, causing a wound. In response, the fiend devoured a handful of them, resulting in those that remained to run for the hills.

The battle between the hardboyz and skulltaker continued for another round. At the end of it, the orks were broken, but the bloodletters were to focused on collecting skulls, allowing the orks to run instead of being rundown.

Turn Five

Turn five was quick and brutal. The daemon prince and daemonettes moved to address the zzap guns. It was short and quick, as the grots were poorly matched.

Results

With the battle over, Ernie and I figured out the results. In the end, I scored 11 kill points, while Ernie had scored one. Using the tournament rules, this meant that I had earned 7 battle points. I had also killed Ernie's supreme commander, which gave me another battle points. If this would have been the tournament, I would have scored a solid 8 points in the third round.

Reflections

I need to start out by saying that I expected one or both of these amazing models to be battling me this game.

Every time I see this model, I am in awe!

Ernie is very talented when it comes to painting and converting. I find his work to be a constant inspiration. Outside of his hobby skills, he is always fun to play against. His laidback approach and love for orks makes for fun games. This victory was a rare one for me against him. Usually I find myself being chopped to death, but today, the daemons did the chopping.

GREAT GAME ERNIE!!!

This was my first game with the new rules. Some of the changes were a little shocking, but nothing that I felt broke the game or detracted from it. The fact that assaults are even more brutal was a bonus for me and really factored into how quickly my forces were able to move from unit to unit.

With regards to my army, I am really thinking that I am going to focus on bloodletters and daemonettes and not bring in anything else for awhile. Both of these units worked well for me in this game. At 1500 points, I am considering just playing all troops with Skulltaker and the Masque.

The ability to deep strike was extremely helpful and allowed me to control the board. I have read alot about not using icons, but they made such a big difference for me that I cannot agree. (LOL... One game makes me an expert!) The new rules for assaulting vehicles means that even charging bloodletters can deal with anything other than a land raider or monolith, so I don't see a need for the "big" guns like the soul grinder or greater daemons. Hopefully my next game can be against an army containing one of those two units, as I would like to see the actual outcome of such an encounter.

Till next time...