Following the last battle against my friend (which ended early), we decided to give the Orks another run, this time against his EUK Tyranids.

Again, this was a test of several different proposed rules changes:

* Ork Battlefortress gains the Oddboy power field upgrade from the EUK list
* Ork Skorcha save reduced to 6+

Here are the lists we used:

Oddboyz on Parade, 2990 POINTS
Ghazgkhull Thraka's War Horde (NetEA Tournament Pack 2013)
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FIGHTA SKWADRON [150]
3 Fighta Bomba

FIGHTA SKWADRON [150]
3 Fighta Bomba

LANDA [200]

MEKBOY STOMPAMOB [500]
3 Stompa, Supa Stompa

KULT OF SPEED [200]
2 Warbuggy, 3 Skorcha, 3 Warbike

WARBAND [470]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz, Battlefortress, Oddboy, Flakwagon, 2 Gunwagon

BLITZ BRIGADE (BIG) [350]
2 Flakwagon, 6 Gunwagon, 2 Oddboy

MEKBOY GUNZMOB [195]
5 Big Gunz, Nobz, Flakwagon

WARBAND [200]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz

WARBAND [375]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz, 4 Battlewagon, Flakwagon

BLITZ BRIGADE [200]
Oddboy, 3 Gunwagon, Flakwagon

BUGS BUGS BUGS, 3000 POINTS
Tyranids (100815)
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DOMINATRIX SWARM [675]
1 Dominatrix, 2 Dactylis, 5 Termagant

GENESTEALER SWARM [150]
6 Genestealer

HARASSMENT SWARM [300]
1 Harridan and 2 Gargoyles, 4 Gargoyles

HEIROPHANT BIO-TITAN [300]
1 Heirophant

SUBTERRANEAN SWARM [320]
1 Trygon and 2 Raveners, 2 Ravener

NORMAL ASSAULT SWARM [350]
2 Tyranid Warrior, 4 Termagant, 4 Hormaguant, Carnifex, Zoanthrope, 2 Gargoyle

NORMAL ASSAULT SWARM [350]
2 Tyranid Warrior, 4 Termagant, Zoanthrope, 2 Gargoyle, Carnifex, 4 Hormaguant

BRUTE SWARM [285]
1 Hive Tyrant, Zoanthrope, 3 Haruspex, Carnifex

BRUTE SWARM [270]
1 Hive Tyrant, 3 Exocrines, Zoanthrope, Malefactor

Setup
Unfortunately this battle was not as well documented as the previous Orks vs IG battle, but I'll do my best to recreate it. Here was the starting setup, same terrain as the previous fight but we switched sides:



Both Blitz objectives ended up near the center of the back edges. The Orks attempted to be clever by placing their objectives deep in the Nid territory, hoping the Nids would overreach and leave them open to taking by Landa assault or some other sneaky means. Tyranids responded with fairly conventional placement near the Ork objectives, making the Ork plan seem rather foolish.

The Orks deployed along a broad front - Zzap battlewagon and a garrisoned foot mob anchoring the right, Stompas and Battlefortress with the Warlord (BTS) in the center, gunwagons and battlewagons on the left ready for a sweeping flank attack. The guns mob ended up garrisoned perilously in the very center of the table. The Supa-Stompa rolled 4 power fields (again!) while the Battlefortress rolled 2 (again...)

With no enemy artillery to worry about, the Nids clumped up tightly, ready to press directly forward for the objectives. Zoanthropes and Gargoyles spread liberally through the army ensured at least some AA cover for every formation.


Turn 1
The Nids chose to hold back all their teleporting units.

Orks won the roll off and started to put pressure on the Tyranid flank by doubling their Battlewagon formation up to support the Gunz mob.

Tyranids responded by advancing their ranged Brute Swarm into cover and shooting at the wagons, placing a blast marker.

Orks returned the favor by doubling their Gunwagons up on the left, preparing for their left hook into the Nid backfield (wishful thinking) and firing at the Brute Swarm for a dead Exocrine.

The Nids committed their Hierophant bio-titan to the firefight, advancing into the same cover and hammering the Gunwagons for a few dead wagons.

Orks doubled their Supa-stompa formation up to hit the bio-titan but caused no damage.

At this point the Nids committed to their attack plan - the first Assault Swarm triple moved directly into the face of the Battlewagon formation, ready for an assault in Turn 2. The Gunz mob used their overwatch fire but only killed a few Termagants.

The Orks moved their Battlefortress up to just behind the Supa-Stompa, keeping the infantry inside to prepare for an engage action next turn and trusting to their power fields:


The Nids moved the Dominatrix Swarm up to the second large piece of cover in front of their deployment zone. The Dominatrix and Dactylis were not in range this turn, but hunkering the Dominatrix and artillery here and leaving the Hierophant to squat on the second Ork objective proved to be a solid base of fire throughout the game that the Orks never shifted:


Now the Orks saw the Nid AA thinning out in the back field. The Nids were holding their Harrassment swarm as a reaction force to move to put maximum AA fire in the exit path of any Ork aircraft - so the Ork player hit them with his Fighta-Bombas, losing two Fighta-Bombas but killing a Gargoyle and suppressing another one.

Nids doubled (or tripled?) the second Brute swarm up to get closer to the center.

The Orks hit the Harrassment Swarm again - this time the AA was lighter, and two more Gargoyles died, leaving a single unsuppressed Gargoyle.

The Nid player ignored this and triple moved his last Assault Swarm up to threaten the center objectives.

With the back field almost entirely clear, the Ork player went for a big gamble and brought in the Landa + Kult of Speed to Air Assault the Harrassment Swarm. The lone Gargoyle failed to scratch the Landa, and the KoS killed the Garg and put two DC on the Harridan for the loss of three bikes, winning the combat in the roll-off:


At this point the Orks moved up their Zzap wagon to hit the Dominatrix - and missed! - and then doubled their infantry from the back right up toward the nearest Tyranid objective.

Mediocre rallying all around left a few blast markers on a number of formations on both sides, with the only broken formation (the Harridan) failing to rally, and a mostly intact KoS with no blast markers hugging the Nid Blitz.

The board at the end of Turn 1:




Turn 2
This time the Nids chose to deploy their teleporting units. The Genestealers appeared next to the Ork footsloggers in the open on the right, while the Subterranean Swarm of a Trygon and four Raveners (or as we call them for you Futurama fans, Slurms MacKenzie and his backup dancers) appeared on the right behind the Zzap gunwagon formation:


This put a lot of pressure on the Orks on that flank, in addition to the two Assault Swarms that were in position to make assaults in the center of the board.

The Ork player won the roll-off and chose to start by launching a massive Engage in the center of the board, using the Warlord to bring the Battlefortress, Stompas, and footslogging Warband into an engagement with the Assault Swarm in between the buildings. The Assault Swarm was wiped out for almost no Ork losses, but this may have been an over-commitment and left the Ork player with few formations left to activate this round. However, it made use of the footsloggers before the Genestealers had a chance to nom them.

The Nids got their revenge, activating the Brute Swarm on the far flank to move up into firefight range and lay blast markers on the Gunwagons, then retaining the initiative to launch an Engage action with their Assault Swarm against both the Battlewagon and Gunwagon formations. The Ork formations were cut in half and fled, broken.

The Ork player decided to sustain fire with the Zzap wagon to get off another shot at the Dominatrix before the Trygon doomed them. This did two damage to the Dominatrix.

The Tyranids chose to activate Slurms McKenzie next, who made short work of the Zzap wagon (notice the conspicuous hole in this image where gunwagons once stood):


From here, the Ork player had very little left to activate (and my memory is also hazy on the order of the next few activations).

The Ork player hit the leftmost Brute Swarm with the Gunz mob, breaking them. He also called in a Landa strafing run that broke the Trygon, and foolishly sustained fire with the Kult of Speed to put a BM on the Hierophant (should have run away!)

The Heirophant and Dominatrix formations hammered the Battlefortress and the surviving infantry into oblivion, killing the entire formation.

The Genestealers were just in range for an engage on the Ork footsloggers, killing half and breaking them.

End of turn, everything rallied except the Gunwagon mob.


Turn 3
I have no more notes here to work from, but both sides were severely depleted. However, the Nids still had two essentially unkillable (at this point) formations to hold their Blitz and their own objectives, an Assault Swarm in midfield to take or contest the Ork forward objectives, and three small units to harrass in the backfield and threaten the Blitz (Genestealers, Trygon, Harridan).

The Orks relied entirely on their Supa Stompa and Gunz Mob to hold the center while the survivors of the footslogging Warband or the Battlewagon Warband protected the Blitz and the Kult of Speed kept the Nids from scoring They Shall Not Pass and contested their Blitz. Air power would be key if it could break any of the small units.

Long story short, the Genestealers and Trygon pushed the Orks off their Blitz. The Stompa mob and Gunz mob engaged the Nid Assault Swarm and repelled them from the center, but it didn't matter - the Hierophant and Dominatrix made short work of the Kult of Speed, giving the Nids "They Shall Not Pass", "Blitzkrieg" and "Take And Hold".

If I remember it all right, the final result was a 3-0 Tyranid victory.

Post-Battle Remarks
I think the EUK Tyranid list is fun to play against, and my opponent seems to like using it. He feels like it's a bit single-minded (run forward and devour) but that seems appropriate to me. Plus it does have enough interesting little tools and tricks, like various deadly teleporting units, that you can keep your opponent guessing.

The EUK grot rule for little bugs gives you plenty of chaff in most formations that make aggressive plays possible without breaking immediately, and the Tyranid player was appropriately aggressive with his formations. He put pressure on me from Turn 1 to set up four potential assaults in Turn 2.

I also did not expect him to use his big bugs as back-field artillery pieces. They could have been supporting assaults, but instead they sat outside my engagement range, laid down moderately effective fire, and made the objectives on his side impossible to capture, which I think worked well. It was a good response to my gambit to put objectives deeper on his side hoping he would rush forward and abandon them.

The only critique I would probably offer is that he neglected to protect his Harrassment swarm, which included his most concentrated block of AA fire as well as a decent long range WE. Once I started hitting them with Fighta-Bombas the smartest thing would be to Marshal them and move back within the AA umbrella of several other formations, preferably helping to cover wherever he thought he was weakest to a Landa assault.

As for the Orks, I know I made a few key mistakes. I was too eager to deploy forward, too eager to get into close combat, I over-committed to the combats I started, and I believe I missed a crucial opportunity to retain the initiative in Turn 2 that would have blunted his Engage action. I also kept my Kult of Speed in a precarious position near his Blitz instead of hiding them and tripling in for a last-second contest or capture.

The experimental Ork rules worked well in my opinion and I see no reason not to accept them:

- the Skorcha armor save change made me glad I had a mix of units in the KoS - the Warbikes were great in CC and soaked a few hits with their superior save, the Skorchas did the heavy lifting in the Engagement, and I was even glad to have a few Buggies so I could lay a BM at 30cm.

- the Battlefortress did its job acceptably well this time. I think the power fields are only good for buying you one round of not dying to enemy shooting, and only as long as they don't concentrate fire on you. This works fine if the formation is not your BTS formation, and if it doesn't contain your Warlord (otherwise you better believe a competent enemy will focus that Battlefortress down in no time). But if all you want to do is hold a vanilla Warband inside at the end of Turn 1 to prepare for an Engage action in Turn 2, it might do the trick and be worth 50 points.

Nice photos and a nice write up, thank you!

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Ben Sibbald

Personal & Wargaming Blog: http://www.theancienttrack.blogspot.co.uk

EPIC WIP: Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Eldar

Thanks for the report.

One thing thought the EUK Nids have teleporting Lictors not Genestealer.

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www.epic-uk.co.uk - home of the UK Epic tournament scene
NetEA NetERC Xenos Lists Chair
NetEA Ork + Feral Ork + Speed Freak Champion

Great report

2 unrelated modeling items to make

1. Love seeing the use of the ad mech factory of yours. I've got one myself - I love it (see my hobby thread)
2. Like those buildings. Where from?

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He's a lawyer and a super-villian. That's like having a shark with a bazooka!

-I HAVE NO POINT
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-Help me make Whitescars not suck!

Tiny-Tim, good catch. Somehow we've been making that mistake since we started playing the list.

Jimmyzimms, thank you about the factory (and thanks for buying one!) It's one of my favorite pieces.

The other non-GW buildings were laser cut MDF kits from a guy on ebay in the UK in 2015 who doesn't seem to make them anymore. I've tried to track him down to get more with no success.