Welcome my friends! Now that I had some time to recoup from the wonderful time at Nova, I can start working on my battle reports and great times I had there! First off, I'm going to put all the bat reps in a single post. I didn't go nuts taking photos of the games this year, (and some were short!), So I'll just combine them all into one mega post. Second...once again the Narrative did not disappoint. It was a wonderful time! I am also proud to say that I actually placed this year in the army painting competition...and not only placed, but took first!
The second place went to Dave's amazing freehand painted inquisition army.
With a tie for second (or third) going to Christopher Stover and his amazing Tau army! (Including a Manta!!!)
Photo courtesy of joesavestheday.com
Chris's army is missing some of its components, as I didn't get a snap of it all setup. Supposedly the judging was really close, I'm glad to have competed against such beautiful painters! (These were not all the competing armies, just the top 3) Now onto the battle reports I'm sure you are all curious about. Spoiler alert, I went 4-3 for the event, and ended up 6th out of 72!
Note: I did not write down every ones name on the battle reports. If I mixed up names, or got yours wrong, please don't be offended, just comment and I'll correct right away!!
Game 1: 2000 points Tau Suits vs Ork Dread Mob (battlefield)
My first opponent was Chris with his Tau Suit army. He was running a Rvarna, three broadsides, six crisis suits with flamers and fusions, a riptide, and a commander. I was running two gorks, a meka dread, waagh banner, weirdboy, zhardsnark, two kff meks on bikes, and nine killa kans.
Chris got first turn. Immediately proceeded to blow up a gorkanaut, and wipe out a slew of killa kans with smart missiles. Oh oh, this game is gonna be quick.
Dreads move up as fast as they can. Gotta get those broadsides in CC asap. I activate the mega charger on the meka dread, and he goes super saiyan and shoots 16" forward, then makes an 11 inch charge and engages the broadsides. Not pictured, crisis suits drop down in the backfield, and the killa kans push into them to remove them from existence. (rokkit's are nasty!).
Tau falls back and shoots, taking out more kans and putting wounds on all the dreads. But its not enough. After the big mek and gork join in to smash the broadsides, the meka dread engages the broadside, and zhardsnark does his bullet move (21 inch + reroll charge) to engage the big FW suit (which doesn't have fly!). Killa kans on the left engage the flamer crisis suits, which due to str 4 flamers, dont' do as much damage as I appear. (waagh banner buffs killa kans so they hit on 4+).
After all the suits are engaged, game ends quickly. Orks table the tau player. What a difference in this edition from last! I mentioned to chris that keeping the suits back further (and all together) would have made it much harder for me to engage them. He also spent an enormous amount of points on upgrades, vs more suits.
After all the suits are engaged, game ends quickly. Orks table the tau player. What a difference in this edition from last! I mentioned to chris that keeping the suits back further (and all together) would have made it much harder for me to engage them. He also spent an enormous amount of points on upgrades, vs more suits.
Game 2: Ork Wagons/Boyz vs Necrons (1000 Points) Comms Relay
This game was vs Nicholas! Another great fellow. I ran two battle wagons with choppa boyz, gretchin, mad doc, waagh banner, zhardsnsark and a big mek kff. He ran warrior blobs, illuminor, triarch, three deathmark units, and an annihilation barge. (and scarabs)
Fastest turn I ever played. I just advanced everyone and my turn was over. On Nicholas turn, he blasted the heck outta everything (putting wounds on the wagons, and taking the big mek down to 1 wound with the deathmarks). He also engaged one battlewagon, and learned what a deff rolla does.
As you can imagine the next two turns did not go well for the necrons. With the battlewagons undamaged, all 40 choopa boyz were able to get out, and charge the entirety of the necron army. With only one item with the fly keyword, Nicholas's force was pretty much locked down from shooting, which mean the orks were free to do what they do best, krump away! Orks win! (tabled opponent). At this point I'm worried and waiting for the hammer to fall on me.
Game 3: Orks /Inquisition vs Chaos/Blood Angels (1k+1k vs 1k+1k)
This game was a team game. I played with Dave (tau last year, 2nd place painting this year), vs Craig (CSM) and Dom (Very pretty Blood Angels). This game was shuttle crash, which we felt we'd have an advantage with due to our mobility...
We also thought it would be fun to bring all the tanks. He brought two land raiders, and I brought the two battlewagons from my list vs Nicholas.
They took a slew of devestators, oblits, horrors, sang guard, dante, the changling, and scouts. (A much more balanced force!)
So as an ork player, I threw everything forward. The main objective was trying to hold a crashed shuttle as an objective. However you don't know which direction the shuttle is going to crash from, so we tried to setup mid board control so we could go in any direction. One of the battlewagons was blown up pretty early, which allowed the boyz to be slaughtered rapidly down (boyz on their own die to a stiff breeze). After that we got some charges off, including an epic fight vs dante.
The remaining battlewagon was able to take out the devestators, and zharsnark and dante traded blows...but dante, much like the obliterators were making every single save. I'm not kidding. I did 18 wounds to the obliterators, craig made 17 of them. *shakes claw!*. It's ok though, zhardsnark would make his 6+ FNP over and over again to dante's confusion :). With the lost of nearly 30 orks it wasn't looking good for the boyz. The shuttle crashed on our side (which was great) but then...
The guard showed up to ruin our day!
Dante also took out zhardsnark, and then did a massive power drop onto the waaagh banner nob! In the end, the game came down to a unit of grots trying to kill one nurgling (only obj sec on that side of the board). The nurgling killed the grots and that was that! Ork Loss! BA/CSM Win! Was a fantastically fun game with lots of inefficient and tactically silly combat (done for the sake of being fun n cool). Love playing in narrative team games!
Game 4: Ork Brigade vs Sisters/Knights 2500 points (VIP)
This game was with a fellow humanity player Rad. There wasn't enough opponents to let everyone play, so we played a game where it was impossible for either of us to lose (the losing person just acted like they were on the bad guys side :) ). I wasn't feeling very well this game, so I didn't take very many photos. (nurgle was punching me in the stomach from my lunch).
Photo Courtesy of joesavestheday.com
Rad had a knight and huge sisters force, with celestine, seraphim, exorcists, and what seemed like nearly endless melta and faith. I ran basically a combination of my two lists (dread mob and battlewagons), minus six of the kans and more troops. It was an absolute blood bath. Rad would push forward, blow up some stuff, orks would hit back, giving just as good as given. Celestine zoomed forward and died, then came back and proceeded to start a massive fight vs some grots...where she proceeded to wiff horribly for multiple turns. Eventually the orks were able to knock out all the sisters in my deployment zone and we ended up basically both bloodied and unable to complete our primary objectives. However our secondary objectives (mine was killing troop choices, his was being on my side of the table), meant that the orks had nearly max secondary, where I had denied the sisters their scoring points). Ork win, but just barely!
Game 5: Ork Wagons/Boyz vs GeneStealer Cult (Slaughterfest) 1k
Dan was playing me next in an epic slaughterfest. (Literary) Awesome awesome fun player. He brought 4 units of 12 gene stealers, a brood lord, patriach, and malethrope. I brought my wagon list. I'll just let the photos do the talking.
We both went all in. It came down to the orks not killing enough gene stealers on their initial charge. I did end up wiping two units out, but it ended up that one unit was left at basically full strength, which mean they hit the battlewagons, the wagons crumpled! Amazing amazing game though (and very quick after turn one). Even though the orks ended up losing (geez genestealers are AWESOME) and I forgot to fire my pistols EVERY SINGLE TIME, it was a great game. I ended up getting 10 points out of the 20 possible. (dan got 20). So still held in there pretty good! At this point, orks are 3-2!
Game 6: Ork Mini Dread Mob Vs Eric's Party Bus of Pain (CSM) 1500
This game was awesome. Two gorgeous armies clashing across the field, with tons of ridiculous rolls and non stop laughing and fun. Eric was a great opponent and we were both super excited to play each other!
Erics list centered around two rhinos full of berserkers. He had a heldrake, two rhinos, beserkers + party favors, 30 cultists, and some melta bikers. I had two gorks, a meka dread, zharsnark, two kff meks, and three buggies.
The game was "convoy" where the objective was to protect your little vehicle and move it to the other side of the table. I felt I could use my buggies to take care of erics, so I concentrated my force around protecting mine on the right flank. We traded ranged shots, both being cautious because we knew exactly whoever got the counter charge off was most likely going to win the game.
I suddenly remembered I'm an ork player, and got the red mist and went all in. Charging with the meka dread, and moving aggressively...accidentally overexposing my convoy (super critical mistake there). I held off a unit of raptors which almost took out my warboss through bad positioning (eric is master of taking advantage of your mistakes! great player), but our fights were definitely back and forth. I took out the party bus, which sadded eric, but then his beserkers got to blow up the meka dread, which made him happy :). The buggies and heldrake played an epic game of cat and mouse the entire battle, doing nothing but dodging and flaming away.
The great game turn! Eric capitalized on my over positioning of the convoy. (no idea why I did that! haha). And pushed forward hard. He blew up the convey. The orks, happy to finally have a slew of targets...KILLED EVERYTHING YOU SEE .
Ten beserkers, 30 cultists, and a rhino fell to the two gorkanauts...and the warboss, because the rhino exploded (Khorne rhinos only know how to explode), giving Eric slay the warlord! At this point there was really nothing I could do to reach Erics convoy on the other side of the table before the game ended, so we called it. We did however play out a fun little matchup to see if the other unit of beserkers could take on one of the full str gorkanauts.
The answer is yes, if you ignore overwatch. (Overwatch killed seven of them!). Also later found out that powerfists are D3 wounds, not D6, which might have made a bit of a difference, but was an awesome game regardless and I had a blast! One of the best players (both in fun and skill) I played at Nova! And his army was beautiful to match! Next up was the longest single game of 40k I have ever played.
Game 7: Guard/Orks vs Tau/Nids (1500+1500 vs 1500+1500)
This was the big game. The battle royale. I was teaming up with my Buddy Dan from https://40kbadcast.com/ who i have played every year at Nova. Finally the steel legion would be playing with, instead of vs the orks. Of course who do we draw up against? Tau and Nids. Nids being played by the awesome dan from Game 5. Mike was playing Tau, who is a local, so he might start showing up on some of our weekend games.
The name of the game was battlefield. We choose to hold objectives, kill 25% of the enemies army, and hold the center objective. Mike brought a stormsurge, (+ suits/firewarriors/broadsides/endless marker lights) so Dan brought his shadow sword. Nid Dan being funny, brought NINETY termagaunts with a malethrope, swarmlord/pod, and genestealers with a patriarch. (doing their ambush move). I brought my 1500 list from the game with Eric. We lost the turn to go first, and failed to seize. Turn one, Stormsurge + tau blow up the shadowsword (#)(&@). Gene stealers assault our lines. Swarmlord gets the drop on one of the gorks and assaults it. All their powers go off. We lose roughly 600+ points of models in the first salvos. At this point I expect the game will be really quick. No way the walkers can stand up to all that tau firepower. The stormsurge alone should easily delete a walker a turn.
Needless to say, we are a bit disheartened. But then the swarmlord completely WIFFS in close combat. The gorkanaut does not, and deals 22 damage to the swarmlord, which he makes a 5+ FNP then a 6+FNP (one is a warlord trait) of all but two. In our turn, the gorkanauts pull back, and wipe out the gene stealers, Meka dread takes out the patriarch. Charge back in, gorkanaut fails to kill the swarmlord (he's down to 2 wounds). a 4++, then a 5+, then a 6+ is pretty nuts!
Buggies pop in through a hole behind the nid line, and unleash hell on the stormsurge. Combined with firepower from the artillery from the guard, it goes kaboom in turn 3. The buggies then engage the nid backfield, forcing them to divide their forces and keep them from concentrating on the guards far flank.
Lots of shooting happens. Wounds keep getting knocked off the walkers. Big Meks keep slapping them back on. Eventually the swarmlord goes down, then the pod, and the nids are removed from the right flank. Walkers pretty hurt at this point, but still dealing out shooting damage to the tau. Zhardsnark goes to the middle and proceeds to kill roughly 22 termagaunts by himself over the course of the game.
Buggies pop in through a hole behind the nid line, and unleash hell on the stormsurge. Combined with firepower from the artillery from the guard, it goes kaboom in turn 3. The buggies then engage the nid backfield, forcing them to divide their forces and keep them from concentrating on the guards far flank.
Lots of shooting happens. Wounds keep getting knocked off the walkers. Big Meks keep slapping them back on. Eventually the swarmlord goes down, then the pod, and the nids are removed from the right flank. Walkers pretty hurt at this point, but still dealing out shooting damage to the tau. Zhardsnark goes to the middle and proceeds to kill roughly 22 termagaunts by himself over the course of the game.
Eventually the buggies start falling, as do the walkers. But something magical has happened. Mike's tau are now out of position and unable to shoot anything without moving. The walkers are gone, but they did their job (kept the tau busy for 5 straight turns). The malethrope goes down, and we concentrate all our remaining forces on wiping out the termagaunts...every last one of them. Points are spent to let them auto pass morale, but you can do that for only one unit!
The nids eventually crumple on the left flank. It's only the tau left. They advance as much as they can. But the game continues, they advance again, and can't get into position. We max out on primary points, and get linebreaker because zhardsnark is a bastard and can move 21 inches :). Final points 18-15. Orks/Guard win with an amazing comeback! What a freaking game (took 5 hours due to the combo of 90 termagaunts + tau endless shooting with rerolls)
I hope you all enjoyed these bat reps as much as I did playing them! Final tally was 4-3, which due to my battle points put me at 6th overall (out of 72!). Was the best I've ever done in a tournament! Until next time my friends! Have a great hobby time!
If you are looking for more photos of the event, check the following links!
I hope you all enjoyed these bat reps as much as I did playing them! Final tally was 4-3, which due to my battle points put me at 6th overall (out of 72!). Was the best I've ever done in a tournament! Until next time my friends! Have a great hobby time!
If you are looking for more photos of the event, check the following links!
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