My Choppa is bigger than your Axe!

  We were itching for some gaming over the holiday weekend and decided to get some going.  First, the wife's unbeatable Legion of Nagash destroyed my son's Slaves to Darkness, which led him to revamping his army and challenging me to a game.  The cool part is that I had just finished painting up my Warchanter (only 17 months after I got them- I'm fast!) and I was excited to put down the greenskins to kill some Bloodletters.  We only played 1500 points because, well, I only have 1500 points of Ironjaws.

  We chose to play the Scorched Earth scenario from the GH 2017- there are 6 objective markers, placed in each 'quarter' of the table (there are 6 quarters on a 4'x6' board), each worth 1 point to the player that controls them at the end of their turn.  A player can also destroy an objective in their enemy's deployment zone and gain d3 points, but we didn't take advantage of that in this game.  The battlefield itself was set up as a 'basic' one with trees, hills, and even an Orc fort and Herdstone to mix it up.  I miss the old fantasy setups and figured to go 'old school' with this one...

The battlefield

Blood for the Blood God!

  We each laid out our forces and the Khorne army actually seemed a bit scary.  Including a Mighty Lord of Khorne, a Bloodsecrator, a Bloodstoker, an Aspiring Deathbringer with Impaling Spear, a couple of units of Blood Warriors, some Bloodletters, Bloodcrushers, and Skullcrushers, I realized that this force had a lot of choppiness to it.  Add in a Khorgorath and a Soulgrinder and I knew I was going to have my work cut out for me.  He made the Aspiring Deathbringer the general and gave him the Crimson Plate artifact.

Gork! Mork! Gork! Mork!

  My army consisted of a Megaboss riding the Mawcrusher (which I had just built), a Megaboss, the painted Warchanter, a Warcaster, 2 units of Brutes, a unit of 'Ardboyz, and a unit of Gore Gruntas.  I realized that I was severely outnumbered in both characters and dudes.  But I had a Mawcrusher, so...  He was my general and I gave him the Destroyer artifact so both his axes were damage 2 (I built this model as the big bad character but will use him like this to represent the 'basic' version until I get more greenskins).






  Setup was pretty simple.  He set his forces in a bloodthirsty line across the table and set the two big models right in the middle.  That meant that he was going to be able to challenge me in every direction.  So I went with a bit of a 'refused flank' deployment, placing everything to the left except the Gruntas and Warcaster.  This was to keep him distracted and create a hammer to smash at least half the force up front.  And with no shooting to speak of, I had to make sure that I could have the power once I got there.

Setup.  Notice the objective markers in white and red...

   The Ironjaws won the roll-off for first turn and I easily gave it to the Bloodbound.  Here's where Khorne's mighty plan started to crumble.  The Soulgrinder charged up as fast as it could, followed closely by the Khorgorath.  The rest of the army advanced a bit.  But this was all about that Soulgrinder.  It unleashed its hellish shooting atacks and immediately killed off four of the 'Ardboyz and I knew what my first target had to be.  He finished his turn with 2 points  In my turn, I cunningly (with inspiration from Mork, of course) slid my Gruntas away from the advancing Bloodcrushers while setting a trap.  The Brutes in the middle slowly advanced, waiting to see where they were going to unleash their Gork-driven madness.  Everything else (the other Brutes, the 'chanter, and the 'caster) all stayed and held their objectives.  Then the chopping began.  First, the Mawcrusher charged the Soulgrinder and were supported by the 'Ardboyz.  With all their combined attacks, they took down the Soulgrinder with roars of war while the Mawcrusher took a bit of damage.  When the smoke cleared, the Orks had claimed the fourth objective, giving me 4 points.

Turn 1- Bloodbound 2, Ironjaws 4

   The roll-off for the second turn was won by the Bloodbound and they denied the Orks their back-to-back turns.  They moved the Khorgorath in to fight the 'Ardboyz, a unit of Blood Warriors to try to slow down the Mawcrusher, and the other Blood Warriors down to plug the gap on the other side of the Ork fort.  Meanwhile, the Bloodcrushers moved up to hopefully get in charge range of some casters or boars, but failed to make any charges.  After seeing the Khorgorath get smashed into the ground by the Mawcrusher and losing a couple of Blood Warriors to the 'Ardboyz, the forces of the Blood God saw their hopes disappearing.  Still holding two objectives, they got 2 points.  In return, the Brutes charged around the fort and engaged the Blood Warriors, led by the Megaboss, and killed them off easily.  The Gore Gruntas charged the Bloodcrushers and killed one.  And the 'Ardboyz finished off the Bloodstoker that lost all his support.  Holding 4 objectives, the lead widened for the Ironjaws.

Turn 2- Bloodbound 4, Ironjaws 8

  Still not having lost anything significant, the Ironjaws were emboldened and won the roll-off for the third turn.  Seeing no hope of stopping the beastly boulder-like Mawcrusher and watching as the objectives were taken from them, there was little the Khorne forces could do.  A last hurrah saw some more slaughter in favor of the greenskins and the Bloodbound simply quit the battlefield.  The final score was 11-4 with nothing Khorne could do.

  The lessons learned in this battle- the Soulgrinder should not have jumped out in front so quickly.  All it did was make him a target and he was the one with the ability to hurt the Orks from range.  The deployment wasn't bad, but the forces needed to be a bit more focused on being able to hold objectives.  Most importantly, the Megaboss on Mawcrusher is cheezy!  I mean, seriously!

Hey Mom, I'm a monster!

  Now we did play another game the next day.  I used the same list but my son tweaked his army quite a bit.  We played a different scenario but I took no pictures.  I still won, but only by a score of 12-11.  The main story goes like this- The Mawcrusher charged up and flattened Valkia the Bloody, then charged and took some time to finish off a Lord on Juggernaut and some Blood Warriors.  Having been bogged down, a unit of Wrathmongers wandered over and enticed my Mawcrusher into killing himself in one round!  From that point of the game, a Chaos Giant kicked around the 'Ardboyz but was taken down through poor fighting order and the surviving forces jockeyed around the battlefield trying to get those objective points.  The last turn of the game saw the Ironjaws sneak one out with the Gruntas stealing the point held by Bloodletters now too busy fighting a Megaboss.  It was an awesome game.  However, the Choppa is still mightier than the axe...

  Great games over the weekend and it felt good to both wield the paint brush and the dice again!  Now I'm just waiting patiently for the 2.0 to drop... Until then, Happy Gaming!