The Green Tide: Orks vs. Chaos Battle Report

Without having actually read the new Ork Codex myself, I can at least attest to the fact that the Green Tide is still quite effective...  The only change I noticed on the receiving end of this fight was the new Mob Rule, which I still don't quite understand, but I kind of like the mechanic of it.  Basically, if the orks fail a morale check they roll on a table.  I do know that it prevented my faster units from performing a sweeping advance a couple times.

J and I played a 1750 point game of 40K on Sunday, and that's a lot of orks!  I wanted to try out a Typhus/zombies combo, plus my usual Slaaneshi theme, so I played a list I dubbed "Love in the Time of Typhus: Zombie Eidtion."  It looked something like this:

-- Typhus (warlord) with plague marine cadre
-- Selene (my Lucius stand-in, pictured above) and her sirens (noise marines)
-- zombie horde (20), cultists with autoguns
-- mutilators, helbrute
-- havoc squad (MLx2 with flakk, HBolter), Predator (autocannon and HBolters)
-- Daemon allies: Keeper of Secrets, daemonettes, seekers of Slaanesh

The Ork horde was two complete detachments and in total looked something like this:

-- Two warbosses, each running with a pain boy and 18 boyz and riding in battlewagons
-- big lootas unit shooting from the back
-- two foot-sloggin boyz units
-- stormboyz, deffkoptas
-- dakkajet
-- deffdread

As is the goal of the greenskins, once they got close enough to swarm the forces of chaos, it became a war of attrition, which was in their favor.  Though it was a good match and a close game!  It also took FOREVER.  In SIX hours we only got through four complete turns before calling the game ended.  This was in large part due to a lot of activity and distractions at the game shop (busy day there with lots of friendly folks coming by to chat) and having so many models to move and so many complex combats going on. 

The orks seized the initiative in turn one and came on strong, barreling forward in their battlewagons and firing at range with their lootas.  I lost a couple zombies straight away and my greater daemon took 3 wounds from loota fire and deffkopta rokkets, which spooked me right off.  But by the end of my turn one I felt pretty good!  I cashed in all three of my objective cards and got First Blood: I took objectives 1 and 4 and my Keeper wiped out the deffkoptas in close combat.  I also scored a few kills with ranged attacks from my noise marines and havoc squads.  So at the end of turn one, I had a significant lead.  But the first turn, I'm afraid, was end of that.  That's when the Green Tide swept in...

J played the greenskins to great effect.  His armor 14 battlewagons drove up and spilled forth their warbosses with feel no pain and a swarm of angry boys.  Much of the game was one combat to the next with me picking off a few nodels here and their with ranged attacks, though most I couldn't shoot at because they were all locked up in combat.  Turn two started with the WAAGGHH!, giving all the orks the ability to both run and charge, which got many of them "stuck in."  It also gave the newly arrived dakkajet a bit of extra firing, which it used to glance my helbrute to death, peppering it with heavy supashoota machinegun rounds.  Orks spilled into my mutilators, who were tough to kill but had too few attacks to do significant damage to such a horde.  Another band of orks and the deffdread attacked my zombies, while the the second warboss (the warlord) and his crew charged Typhus and his plague marines.  The board was instantly drawn down into thick combats that took multiple turns to finish out.

On one side, the mutilitors and greater daemon did battle, later joined by Selene (my female Lucius).  My measley five models held up a long time against 20 orks though.  The last mutilator finally died just as Selene joined the fight and the Keeper was killed by the weight of puny boy numbers.  Selene actually routed the last handful of orks, who were then shot up by the noise marines, who were firing from nearby ruins.  Then Selene caught up and finished them off with her sword and lash.  (This was about the high-point for me, finally seeing her and her Sirens prove effective in battle.)

On the other side, the ork warlord charged Typhus and his six plague marines.  I deployed the Destroyer Hive that first round, which might not have been the best move, but I figured the large blast would be good.  It hit nine orks and three of my own, killing one plague marine and only three orks.  Fortunately the ork warboss rolled poorly and so next round we were all still there.  This time Typhus tried to use the daemonic Man Reaper... and rolled a 1.  The possessed weapon rebelled against him and so he got virtually no attacks and had WS1 that turn.  We were both sucking on the rolls, but eventually the orks won out.  The warboss powerklawed Typhus with a S10 instant death crush (doubled out his toughness), then went on to charge my outflanking seekers, followed immediately by moving upstairs to attack my havoc squad.

In the middle of the board, my cultists and zombies died slowly but were eventually done in by boyz and the deffdread.  The ork dreadnought then lumbered off to find new prey and was shot in the back with two krak missiles and a heavy bolter from the Havocs.  The remaining boys moved to attack my deep-struck daemonettes, and I think that combat was still going on when the game ended.  In turn three my predator made an all-out charge to claim an extra objective point before being wrecked by loota heavy weapons.

We decided turn four would be the end.  The score ended very close--6 to 5--and the orks declared victory.  I only had three units left on the board, one of them likely dead the next turn.  Had we gone on it might have tied up the game due to the objectives I needed to snag being close to Selene and her sirens, but the orks definitely dominated this game.  The Green Tide drowns all!  Good game, J.