So I've played 40k twice this Christmas: both times against Orks. The first involved my, lamentably unpainted but much prided for being newly bought, Grey Knights army. That game went well, and I felt reasonably in control for much of it. I bitched a lot when my vehicles went down in the first two rounds to the ranks of Lootas, but the low number of troop choices I was fending off meant I held objectives quite easily. My deep striking paladins saw off the troop choice on the Ork side, and thus gave me the win.
Far more interesting was using my supposedly more experienced Nid army against Orks. I was playing Harry, with his new Ork army. I was fairly confident of a win from the off. He took the initiative/ first deployment for a three objective game (one was an AV13 bastion.) Laughing to myself, he laid out his figures and then I laid out directly opposite. After all, me setting up second meant I could set up right next to him, right? And that's good, with Tyranids, right? Get nice and close - screw up some orks with my xenodeath melee machines? Right?
Wrong.
First, I sent some termagants against his unit of 30 boyz.
Marmalade. He turned my termagants into frickin' marmalade. But, heh, they're only termagants. I wasn't fussed.
I sent my hormogaunts to finish off some straggling boyz from a nobbled trukk. Alas, they ran through cover.
Maramalade. He turned my hormogaunts into marmalade. 'My bad', I thought, 'Don't assault through cover.'
Fortunately, Harry fell into my ploy of letting my Shrike come close enough to assault on turn 2. Smashing into his unit of boyz, now down to about 25, I thought the power of my Shrike - which thus far had sliced and diced everything they had met into a fine powder - would wipe them out.
Marmalade. He turned my Shrike into marmalade. That power klaw - four attacks, each one instant death - wrecked me.
At this stage I realised three things. (i) Orks could not only go toe to toe with me, they could fuck me up. They could take every close combat troop I had and marmalade it. I already knew that my Nid army was a bunch of melee killing machines with no vehicles or decent anti-armour. I didn't know that Orks were just melee killing machines. (ii) I had no army. My Shrike were dead. My hormies were dead. My Tervigon had spassed out by now and those termies were useless now anyhow. What was I to attack with? (iii) I was demoralised. Not my troops. Me. The Hive Mind Big Daddy itself.
Then the Battlewagon came in. I had decided not to include anti-Land Raider stuff in my army because I figured I could ignore a land raider. What would it do to me? A few las cannon shots? Shit happens. Contest an objective? Sweeping hawks can do that! A Land Raider is something I could just about live with and ignore completely. I took the same tact with the AV14 Battlewagon.
Wrong.
It can't be ignored. That cannon is brutal. That Deffrolla is VERY brutal for a horde army. I eventually took it out on the final rounds when it was making its way to contest the single objective I had by rolling through every unit I had. Harry probably could've monopolised on this a lot sooner and wiped out a lot more figures on my side of the map, and claimed the win. So next time I doubt I'll be so lucky. His enormous Boyz unit, by the way, had survived everything I hurled at them, whittled down to two models, and then contesting the single building objective. I kept having a stab at blowing up the building, but failed. In the end, surrounded by dead bodies and marmalade, we drew.
So I started the game thinking it was a shoo in. Seriously, I thought I'd mow through his two troops units and then win because... well, because he would then have no troop units. But 30 boyz proved far, far harder to kill than I first imagined. I WILL NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE AGAIN. The AV13 building also made a change in the dynamic - if the remaining boyz couldn't run into the building as an objective, I'd have had a damn fine chance of wiping them out.
Orks versus Tyranids are HARD. I don't relish returning to the Waagh killing field anytime soon. (I'm also hoping 6th edition changes the building rules so I don't need anti-armour to take out the terrain features that one can stick on the board that disadvantage me and generally don't disadvantage anyone else. If only I could *assault* the bloody things, I'd be happier...)
Changes to the list are urgently required: either Zoanthropes and a Spod or just walk on Zoanthropes. Either ways, I need some Land Raider killing action. And Spods are actually kinda cool, nor have I properly modelled one yet, so I think it'll be the Spod option. Plus, I think the benefits of an *empty* spod are quite high. They are, after all, basically terrain features that fall from the sky. And Nids always need terrain features, right?
Hive Fleet Vile Ossuary will evolve and learn! WE WILL DECIMATE THE GALAXY! RAGH! MARGH! GRIBBLE!
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