A-K-A I-D-I-O-T

Hmm, well that could have gone better. Even though I would have claimed 16 Battle Points to Andy's 14, I still lost the game. The worst thing was I was in a fantastic position to win it but made a couple of really crucial errors right near the end. However, before we get to those, let's look at some smaller errors I made earlier.

Deployment

Actually, this was pretty good. I placed my two Battlewagons opposite the weakest point in Andy's line and I put my Bikes pretty centrally so that they could go either way around the centre ruin depending on what Andy did first turn. The only mistake was probably the big unit of Slugga Boyz who I placed way out to my right and who didn't really have an effect on the game. I should perhaps have placed them between the bikes and the Wagons and moved them forward behind the ruin, giving them options for which quarter to go into. I could then have thought about placing one of the units of Lootas on the left flank giving me more coverage of the board with them. Of course, even there, they would just have been the three unlucky dice rolls away from running off the board.

Slugga Boyz

To be fair, I used this mob really badly all game. I was just going to use them to claim the quarter they were in but then decided to push them forward a turn too late. I then made the mistake of not running them for at least two turns as I was trying to shoot down a Land Speeder. This is fine with Marines who can Rapid Fire at 12" and can actually hit a barn door, not so good for Orks with single shot guns. Turn 5 was the big kicker, if I'd run them then I would have had a really good chance to get them into combat on turn 6 which could have won me the game.

Forgetfulness

I can't remember what I was going to write here (ba-dum-tish) On Turn 3, I Tank Shocked a Combat Squad with the Battlewagon with the intention of gunning down the survivors. However, I forgot to shoot and so missed out on 38 S4 and 3 S5 shots at 4 Space Marines. Of course that squad went on to contest a quarter. D'oh!

Target Priority

On Turn 4, I had a choice with my Lootas - I could either shoot the Dreadnought which they'd damaged in the previous turn (which is what I did) or shoot the Combat Squad that I should have killed with the Shoota Boys previously. I was a bit cocky after my success in Turn 3 but I should have shot the squad. Again another chance gone to kill a squad who contested a quarter. Next time listen to Han, "Don't get cocky kid"

Wound Allocation

I was pretty blase about assigning wounds to my Nob Bikers since I knew that they all had 2, plus with a 4+ cover save and Feel No Pain, I thought they would be alright. I'm sure I lost at least one guy I didn't need to just by going, "oh, I'll take it on him" This is something I'll need to think harder about for when the Thunderwolves come out.

Remember the Mission

Middle of Turn 6, crunch time. All I need to do for the win is move the big unit of Sluggaz back into their starting Quarter and move the Shootaz back into their starting quarter from where they can either assault or shoot the three Space Marines who are there. Final result: Orks 2-1 Space Marines. Simple. What do I do? I try and take control of Andy's quarter. Even if I had succeeded I could only have gotten a 2-2 draw. Plus the other way, I could have multi-charged the Land Raider too. It hadn't moved so I would have had 4 S9 hits giving me the (admittedly slim) possibility of another Kill Point.

Okay, that was the dumb stuff, I also managed to pull off something very clever

Passive-Aggressive Assaulting

Now BOLS is rightly admonished for some of its "tactical articles" however this one was brilliant. The idea is to pull off an assault in such a way that you don't win it in your turn and leave yourself open to lots of shooting in your enemy's turn but instead stay locked in combat and then win it in your opponent's turn. This is exactly what I did in Turn 2. I wanted to charge the Scout Bikers but I knew that if I got all of the Orks in, I'd win easily and then get shot up by the waiting Land Speeder Typhoon. Instead, I made sure that only half a dozen Orks would be in the fight and that the Power Klaw armed Nob was out of the initial combat but would get in when everyone moved in. The whole thing took a bit of thinking through but it worked really well.


So, that was my first game with the Orks and it was pretty fun. I would need to play with them a few more times to get into the proper Orky mindset but I was quite impressed with the way they performed. I've borrowed the Codex off Andy so I'll see what kind of nasty list I can come up with, probably involving 3 Battlewagons or 2 squads of Nob Bikers.