If you haven't paid attention lately- 40k is coming out with a new edition in only a few weeks. The starter box will have Blood Angels (the old and new again poster-boyz!) and Orks and be themed around the continuing third war for Armageddon. I don't want a new edition. But I do want more boyz and my addiction to toy soldiers far outweighs my budgetary discipline.
My son demanded that we play a game finally (life has been 'fun' for both of us recently!) and I had to ask which foe he'd like to vanquish. Dem greenskins wuz his target, so I had to do some digging to pull those old things out. I have SO MUCH and still have WAY MORE to build and paint, but now I worry about the new edition and all those models becoming replaced anyway, so this game needed to happen just to give my collection their 'last run'. My son, being the great defender of the war-planet, decided to bring his Black Templars led by Grimaldus himself, so this last run was going to be a massacre for the xenos. Or so I thought...
We deployed our forces and I saw my tough, unarmoured mob lined up across from his tough, heavily-armoured mob. We rolled off for the first turn and the Emprah's angels won, so they got to jump forward and advanced with everything, their righteous zeal pushing them to cleanse the unclean. The Templars shot with a couple of weapons but caused no significant damage, and then stood to wait for the oncoming charge. Their chainsswords revved with murdurous intent and their voxes spread prayers of hatred and litanies of faith to the Emprah. The only choice for the Orks was to match that energy and charge.
The wall of greenskins surged forward and their mobs were quickly joined by a ramshackle but speedy Battlewagon sneaking from the flank and blocking off the Templars' dreadnought with its massive size and blocking line-of-sight. With that, the cheers erupted and the choppas swung and the Orks gleefully leapt into the Black Templar lines. When the smoke finally cleared, more than half the marines were destroyed and the Orks had lost only a few of their number. Now it was an unarmoured horde versus a couple of armoured defenders.
We finished the next turn, just rolling dice to see if anything neat would happen, and it didn't. The Orks massacred the Black Templars. In game terms, the Orks almost 'tabled' their opponent in two turns. In narrative terms- the greenskins have long taken over Armageddon, scrapping and looting any abandoned Imperial site that they could find. The Templars were dispatched to reclaim a particular area (now a junkyard and less a defensible site) and they ran into overly eager inhabitants. Zeal does not replace Intel...
The problem in this battle (besides a lack of dense terrain- we wanted to fight, not dodge!) is that the Templars went first and ran up too quickly, allowing the Orks first turn to take advantage of the 'Waaagh' rule and get stuck-in very quickly. This gave Orks first strike and the sheer weight of numbers quickly overwhelmed even power armour. But it was fun and we got to see the greenskins do what greenskins do.
Needless to say, I can't wait for the new edition. I want more boyz! They're coming, and soon.
As always, Happy Gaming!
