Batrep: Orks vs. Hive Fleet Proteus (1888 pts)

I was hoping to be selling my Orks this week, but something came up that prevented me from being able to sit at the computer for long periods of time.  So, instead, I’m dusting off an older Batrep that I didn’t get around to posting earlier.  Keep in mind, this is still 7th edition, so it’s not like it’s *that* old…

Brandon always used to be a regular in my Friday night games, but after he had a kid and work schedules changed, he’s been sadly absent as of late.  Luckily, he was able to show up this week (and, it sounds like he’s going to be able to start attending on a more regular basis as well).  I also had the day off, so we started the game early (which was good, because it took rather long).

For point values, we opted for 1888 because our last game was at 1777.

Brandon’s Orks

• HQ:
  • Warboss w/ Da Finkin’ Kap, Powerklaw, ‘Eavy Armor, Attack Squig, & Bosspole
  • Painboy
  • Weirdboy (Da’ Krunch & Frazzle)
• Elites:
  • 6x Burnaz inc. 2x Mekz
  • 6x Nobz in ‘Eavy Armor inc. 3x Big Choppa & 1x Power klaw
• Troops:
  • 20x Shoota Boyz w/ 2x Big Shootaz & Nob w/ Klaw & Pole
  • 20x Shoota Boyz w/ 2x Big Shootaz & Nob w/ Klaw & Pole
  • 30x Choppa Boyz inc. Nob w/ Klaw & Pole
• Fast Attack:
  • 15x Stormboyz inc. Nob w/ Klaw & Pole
  • 4x Deffkoptaz w/ twin-linked Rokkits
  • 6x Warbikers inc. Nob w/ Big Choppa & Pole
• Heavy:
  • Morkanaut w/ Kustom Force Field
  • Battlewagon w/ Killcannon, 4x Big Shoota & Reinforced Ram
  • Deff Dread w/ 2x Big Shoota & 2x Klaws

This was Brandon’s first game with Orks in quite a while, and mine too.  Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve played against them in  10+ years (can that actually be right?  A quick search on the blog leads to believe there’s some truth to that–as the only result seems to be an Apoc game I played in, which doesn’t really count).

No wait, belay that, I played a game against Cole’s Orks in 2012–which I coincidentally own now.  But that’s for another post…

The list included a lot of models (I’m really not used to being outnumbered), and included a bunch of the old standards that I knew what to expect from, but it also included some new twists, including the Morkanaut.  I didn’t know how I was going to handle a 13/13/12 vehicle with 5 hull points, a 5+ invulnerable bubble, carrying a couple of meks that would repair it as it walked across the table.  It also had a fair number of nasty weapons.

I also found myself jealous that he had so many low point options for his HQ.  Seriously, what I wouldn’t do for an HQ option that runs 35 points.  Heck, I don’t even care what it does at that point value.

The other interesting thing about his list was that he didn’t use the traditional detachment option.  Instead, he wound up using the new Ork FoC which replaced the Objective Secure rule with the ability to get Hammer of Wrath for Ork units that charge at least 10″.  That worked out nicely because we began the game debating whether Objective Secure was really all that good, so this would be a chance to find out.

Hive Fleet Proteus

• HQ:
  • Flyrant w/ Twin-linked Devourers (The Horror & Paroxysm)
  • Deathleaper
• Elites:
  • 2x Hive Guard
  • 2x Hive Guard
  • 1x Zoanthrope (Warp Blast & Catalyst)
  • 1x Zoanthrope (Warp Blast & Onslaught)
  • 1x Zoanthrope (Warp Blast & Onslaught)
  • 1x Venomthrope
• Troops:
  • 5x Genestealers + Broodlord
  • 5x Genestealers + Broodlord
  • 18x Hormagaunts
  • 18x Hormagaunts
• Fast Attack:
  • Harpy w/ Stranglethorn & Clusterspines
• Heavy Support:
  • Mawloc
  • Mawloc
  • 2x Biovores
  • 2x Biovores
  • 1x Biovore
  • 1x Biovore

As usual, I started the list with the HQ, but I didn’t want to always run a Flyrant, and everything else seemed so bad, so I went to the opposite end and started with heavies.  My first addition was a couple of Mawlocs (because I never use them), and then I added the ‘stealers as troops and then the Hive guard.  At that point, I realized I was going to have an issue with synapse so I decided to go with another FoC–thereby adding the ‘gaunts and a bunch of zoanthropes.

When it came down to HQs, I started with Deathleaper (I don’t know that I’ve ever played with him, so how can I say that he’s a bad option–I’m really basing it upon a lack of durability and synapse).  I wound up throwing in a flyrant anyway (because why have two bad HQs?), and towards the end I had 250ish points left over and I was going to throw in 3x vengeance weapon batteries, but I was afraid that those might seem like a crutch, so I wound up using a harpy and a few biovores.

Mission & Deployment:

We opted to play a mission called “Tactical Escalation,” since neither of us had tried it before.  That’s the one where you draw mission cards each turn equal to the turn number.  It defaults to a dawn-of-war deployment (long table edges), and when we diced off, Brandon won and deferred to me.  That let me choose the side and whether to go first or second.

Frankly, I was shocked at that.  Granted, he got to see how I was deployed so he could react to it, but that doesn’t seem sufficient enough a reason to defer, but who am I to judge?

He also setup terrain to make it look sort of like a Tyranid invasion of an Ork homeworld.  Sadly, I don’t own a very diverse set of terrain, so there wasn’t all that much to go on.  Still, I got the vibe without him having to explain it, so I s’pose it worked out alright.

I wound up going first and when Brandon failed to seize the initiative, I started…

Turn 1: Tyranids

On turn one, I moved a squad of genestealers up to take an objective and score one point.  Normally, I wouldn’t have done that, as it meant that I was essentially giving up a squad of ‘stealers (it put them way too close to the Ork horde).   The rest of my line moved forward, including my Flyrant, who swooped up to right in front of the Ork line and started pulling armor off the battle wagon.

The other thing that worked out for me on the first turn was I was able to start raining down spore mines on large squads of infantry.  My total of six biovores all managed to hit some sort of troops, and virtually all of them were able to kill off at least a few greenskins.  With the new Ork rules, forcing pinning tests wound up causing even more wounds.  The fact that they were barrage also let me start targeting his Nobz out of his squads.  While that wasn’t successful, I was able to pop the weirdboy before he was able to shoot back at me, earning another point for First Blood.

VP Totals – Tyranids: 1+1 vs. Orks 0

Turn 1: Orks

And that very thing happened a couple of times.  His shooting phase, as to be expected, wasn’t particularly prolific.  Between his horrible ballistic skill, my venomthrope, and the +1 cover save for night fighting, he wasn’t able to kill much of anything.  He did manage to kill one lone biovore though, which earned him a victory point (for destroying a unit in the shooting phase).

During the assault, he declared three assaults:

• Storm Boyz vs. Genestealers
• Warbikes vs. Horamgaunts & Genestealers
• Slugga Boyz vs. another squad of Genestealers

Of those three, he somehow managed to roll a 10+ for all of the assaults, and earned himself hammer of wrath attacks for each (not that they were particularly effective).  He wound up winning all of the combats, but due to synapse, two of my units stayed locked in combat (though I really would’ve preferred them to be out in the open so I could shoot them).  The Broodlord in combat with the Storm Boyz wound up breaking though, as he was just out of synapse.  He didn’t run out of cover, and wound up forgetting to cast his psychic power next turn.

VP Totals – Tyranids: 1+1 vs. Orks 1

Turn 2: Tyranids

For reserves, only one of my Mawlocs showed up.  When he did arrive, I wasn’t sure where I wanted to put him, well that is until I read the rules for “Terror from the Deep.”  That rule states:

When arriving from Deep Strike Reserve, a Mawloc can choose to Deep Strike onto a point occupied by another model (friend or foe) — roll for scatter as normal…”

The interesting part of that is that it doesn’t count as a shooting attack, and it lets me target my own models.  My first thought was to scratch my head in bewilderment as to why I would want to target my own models, but then, it hit me.

That warboss had proven to be nuts in combat, and I wanted to drop some spore mines on his head to thin out the squad.  Doing so would mean that I’d have to roll a hit on the scatter die and that I’d have to kill off my genestealer (who was ironically going to score an objective thanks to me having Objective Secured and Brandon not), but I thought it was too interesting a rule not to use.

Long story short, I wound up hitting with the mawloc, but then missing with every biovore, so I was unable to thin out that mob at all, and ultimately couldn’t hold the objective because the squad was contesting… Doh!

VP Totals – Tyranids: 1+1 vs. Orks 1

Turn 2: Orkz

At this point, my left flank wound up collapsing.  The warbikes and Shoota Boyz combined fire and managed to pluck my Harpy out of the air (I’m not sure I even made a single armor save).

In the assault phase, my Broodlord died to the stormboyz and my biovores died to the deffkoptas, leaving only a zoanthrope on that side of the board–and then, only barely.

The Morkanaut wound up moving sluggishly–this turned blocked behind a pinned squad of Nobz, and his large blast was thrown out against models with a cover save, so he wasn’t being terribly effective.  Not that it matters though, anything with a large blast is terrifying enough that it doesn’t have to actually accomplish anything to draw fire from me.

VP Totals – Tyranids: 1+1 vs. Orks 3

Turn 3: Tyranids

During my turn, I wound up trying to play strategically, but the dice just weren’t in my favor.  I had several planned attempts to hold/score three objectives, but kept failing:

• My biovores had to do three wounds, but one missed completely and the other only managed to do two wounds.
• Deathleaper showed, but didn’t do any damage and was unable to charge.
• My sporemine that missed the Orks failed it’s charge (rolling a 2–which was then halved and reduced by 2 because they were going through difficult terrain, for a total of … -1″ ??)
• My Hive guard made a charge into the center building, but were unable to pull those Orks off an objective.

In general, it wasn’t a good turn for my dice.  One thing that I did have going for me was that the Hive Tyrant was able to kill off the squad of Nobz and earned me D3 victory points for killing three or more characters in a turn (though, in hindsight, they weren’t characters, but we didn’t find that out until after he told me they were and I planned out my turn to kill them specifically to earn that objective.

All in all, it wasn’t a terribly successful turn.

VP Totals – Tyranids: 3+1 vs. Orks 3

Aftermath??

This is the turn that didn’t really happen.  Brandon had to leave to go to dinner, so we were forced to call the game.  I was pessimistic about the eventual outcome, knowing that I had a chance to pull it out, but I wasn’t confident about actually being able to do so.

Brandon estimated the chances of me winning at 40:60, which I felt was optimistic, but after talking it over, that might have been reasonable.  Granted, I was technically ahead (though I had another turn that he didn’t), and I was already running low on models–all of which were sequestered in one corner of the board.  Brandon did roll up his objectives, and he didn’t get any that he could actually have scored on his turn, so there was a chance.

Despite being vastly outnumbered and outmaneuvered, it wasn’t that far-fetched to think I could win it.  I only needed to kill a couple of units before he lacked any significant way to deal with the flyrant, and I had a few good shooting units left that I could use to plink him away from afar.

At that point, he packed up his models while we talked how I could’ve played differently to have gotten a better outcome.  For this game, we’re calling it an unfinished/draw.

What I Learned:

1. Mawlocs can target your own units.  Well, according to the rules I read, I don’t see why they couldn’t.  Likewise, I don’t see what precludes you from targeting models in assault either.  It makes for a cute parlor trick, but I think the unit is bad anyway.
2. Deathleaper is bad. Speaking of bad units, deathleaper is right up there with them.  I never thought he was good (hence why I never use him), but this pretty much proved it.  His two rules that really set him apart from normal lictores are that it requires snapshots to hit him (big deal) and he can reduce a single enemy’s leadership for the game.  Since characters can largely use the leadership of the squad they’re in, and psychic powers really don’t require leadership checks anymore, there’s very little value to this rule.  In short, he’s a 130 point tax that I wouldn’t bother with again.
3. Orks have a ton of attacks.  After thinning out large swathes of models, he was still rolling fistfuls of dice in combat.  It seems that virtually every ork has 4 attacks on the charge…
4. Flyrants are pretty good.  I still don’t think she’s particularly good at 260ish points, but she does provide some good shooting with durability.  She might be–hands down–the best HQ choice in the codex.

VP Totals – Tyranids: 3+1 vs. Orks 3?