January 22nd Brothers Grim 1850: Game 3

So game 3 pairings were being announced and I heard my name followed by a very large groan from Michael, who's cousin or brother Chris I played in round 1, and who's other relative Rob Ive played before at Grim as well. My friend Eric was rather excited for this matchup as well, he had drawn Mike in the first round and lost slimly to him, and my other friend Brian had been beaten rather badly by Mike's orks at a previous tournament so there was a lot of pressure riding on our match, not to mention a big win for either of us could vault us into the top 3 for the day!

Mike's List:

Big Mek - kustom force field

Big Mek - kustom force field

10 Lootas

10 Lootas

10 Lootas

10 Boyz - plus Nob with power klaw boss pole, Truck

10 Boyz - plus Nob with power klaw boss pole, Truck

10 Boyz - plus Nob with power klaw boss pole, Truck

10 Boyz - plus Nob with power klaw boss pole, Truck

10 Boyz - plus Nob with power klaw boss pole, Truck

10 Gretchin

3 Warbuggies - twin linked rokkit launcher

3 Warbuggies - twin linked rokkit launcher

3 Warbuggies - twin linked rokkit launcher

2 Big Gunz

2 Big Gunz

2 Big Gunz

So an extremely shooty ork list. But with one major problem... no real strong method of dealing with AV 13 Dreadnoughts.

Mission 3 was Dawn of War deployment. The main mission was capture and control, with secondary objective being to kill a specific non vehicle unit chosen by the opponent and tertiary controlling terrain pieces. I won the roll to go first and chose to do so. I decided to bring my thunderfire cannon, and 2 shooty dreads in on turn 1, along with my regular speeders, and have everything else in reserve, with the scouts outflanking. Mike chose for his whole army to come in on dawn of war turn 1, aside from his gretchin which were in regular reserve.

So on my turn 1 I moved my thunderfire cannon into the reenforced ruin on my left edge near my objective and my two shooty dreads nearby. I sped the speeders to just below the midline. Then I drop 3 empty pods right on top of Mike's objective. The first one hit direct and the next two scattered in just the right directions to hit near it and all 3 were in range to contest his objective, meaning if he wanted to claim his he needed to kill 3 AV 12 pods while dealing with the rest of my army.

Mike moved his whole army in on turn 1. 2 groups of lootas on the right with cannons in front of them, and the 3rd squad of both of those set up the same on the left. The big shootas on his trucks managed to range in on one of my speeders and wreck it despite its cover save.
On my turn 2 I got my dual flamer Ironclad in along with my Rhino filled with tactical marines, Vulkan and the master of the forge. The tactical squad was the objective that Mike had to kill for the secondary mission. I landed my Ironclad in front of his line burned out some lootas, killing 9 of them along with destroying a big gunz unit, dual twin linked heavy flamers for the win. My thunderfire cannon then opened up on the right most loota squad and killed 8, along with forcing the big gunz unit to break. My shooty dreads took pot shots at the buggies killing 1 and shaking one more. I sped my remaining speeder up the left flank to behind the pods making sure his lootas there would need to deal with it or face the wrath of its heavy flamer.

Mike got his gretchin in from reserve on his 2nd turn much to his chagrin. He moved his right flank forward while the left flank merely shuffled. He fired big shootas from two trucks at my far flung speeder hoping to not need to waste the loota's shooting at it, but to no avail. The lootas opened up and immobilized it and took off its multimelta leaving it stranded doing nothing in the corner. His remaining shooting was unable to dent the dreadnoughts this turn.

On my 3rd turn I got in one of my reaming Ironclads, apparently my reserves were content to come in piecemeal. I landed it in front of his left truck flank that was attempting to hide the gretchin and poured its shots into a truck, only managing to immobilize it, but caught half the gretchin in a flamer blast but they passed their morale check. My dual flamer Ironclad then moved up to the flanks of his right most trucks and poured missiles and flamers into its side, exploding the nearby truck despite the kustom force field and then in a massive roll getting 6,6 for the heavy flamer against the far truck and since flamers ignore cover exploding that truck as well. The Ironclad then charged the orks in the first crater and after beating them in combat swept them from the board. This turn my shooty dreadnoughts were content to finish off the lootas in the right corner, while the thunderfire cannons blew away the remaining 10 man squad on the left, with the big gunz as well.

Mike moved his buggies up on turn 3 and fired in the rear of my exposed Ironclad and despite cover it blew up. His Big mek and squad on the right charged into the Ironclad hoping the nobz str 9 powerclaw would do the job, it didnt and the orks piled in closer.
On my turn 4 my other Ironclad came in and performed a similar task to the last one, shot at a truck hoping to kill some gretchin with its flamer, this time it killed 3, blew up the trcuk killing some more, and then the thunderfire cannon killed all the orks in the crater and finished off the last gretchin with scatters. My scout speeder came in on the wrong side so I moved it flat out to hope to reach his objective by turn 6. I took careless shots at the buggies which he had carefully interwove for cover... though in hindsight I guess I could have called shennanigans based on GW's faq ruling on interwoven units. But oh well didnt do much there. The Ironclad in combat killed the Big mek and won combat but the orks held.
Again on turn 4 mike's darn buggies shot an Ironclad with cover in the rear and killed it. Combat once again continued with the Ironclad.
On turn 5 I poured shots into the buggies removing the nearby ones from play. My scout speeder flew up the midfield and would only need another turn to reach his objective. The thunderfire cannon fired on the far away buggies and managed to kill one.
At this point Mike mapped out what his likely turn 5 plan would be and we rolled some dice to see if he could crack the rhino with his missiles so that the boyz in that truck near midfield could possibly assault them. The buggies failed so we called the game there, since even if the nob had killed the rhino it wouldnt have gotten the boyz into the tactical squad as the thunderfire cannon and dreadnoughts could have easily cleared the squad even if the marines were pinned down.

The game was fun if one sided. Michael is a great opponent and his blue ork vehicles are wonderfully stunning. And the list has a scary amount of shooting if the lootas dont get killed in two turns only getting to shoot a landspeeder. The thunderfire cannon was worth its weight in gold in this game killing 18 lootas, 12 orks, some gretchin, 2 units of big guns, and a few buggies.

After the game we sat around wondering if the big wins would lead to placing in the event. THought with some luck I was sitting 3rd. Then the top table drew and my friends and I thought maybe second was possible. Ended up amazingly getting 1st place which was exciting, considering the early tie and the deep strong field at Grim. Excited for their March event!