2024 league - guard vs orks

 So I played another game in the league, the fourth of five games and another victory, just! This was a very close game with the final score being 69 to the guard and 65 to the orks. There were a few mistakes made in the game but I'll come to them later. 

My opponents list was quite scary to look at, as it had a lot of combat punch and his previous game had been against the World Eaters, and had been a resounding victory 78 to 33, so I was really worried. His list included; a beast boss, two beast bosses on Squigosaurs and three warboss' leading two units of beast snagga boyz in kill rigs, two units of squighog boyz and three units of nobz in trukks, plus a unit of Gretchen at the rear.

So lots of mobility and close combat punch, which meant that my plan was to stay back as much as possible and force him to come at me piece meal. 

Take and hold, search and destroy, chilling rain

Mission and terrain layout were rolled for randomly.

Terrain layout 3 

Deployment 

Ork deployment

I didn't get any pictures early game, but during this time.my opponent made, what I think, was his biggest mistake, he held back, worried about my deep striking units. He pushed up with his kill rigs but bottle necked himself in the central terrain pieces. He did manage however to remove my DKoK squad that I had sent up the middle and a cadian squad on the left flank, which had claimed objectives for VP, plus my rough riders that had pushed up the right flank. However, this was over two turns and so the DKoK and Rough Riders returned as Reinforcements. 

By the start of turn 3, the game was still very close, with orls now in my lines, with the majority of my units pinned in my deployment zone. I had forced my opponent to move back by bringing the DKoK in behind him but that was it. My scions were still off the table, along side the rough riders. My knight finally did something this turn and chopped up a squad of Squighog boyz, although he failed to take out the Boss. This also saw the start of the battle between Tank commander and beast Snagga boyz. I lost the other tank to kill rig shooting which was unfortunate.

Looking a bit grim for the guard

Nobz out of position after taking on the flanking DKoK.

At the beginning of turn 4 we were still only separated by a few points and I was struggling to score primary points but doing well on secondary points, my opponent had the opposite problem. The scions had dropped in previously but some poor positioning from me and dropped me some easy primary points this turn. The rough riders also reappeared this turn in the far corner to charge down some trukks but failed the charge, twice. The knight however had no trouble dealing with the kill rig that had charged my infantry squad sitting on my home objective. The scions on the top objective were less lucky and were splattered all over the place, luckily for me another (identical) unit was waiting ready to redeploy! 

Rough riders pinned in by trukks

Turn 5 saw the knight move up and take on the last kill rig and the rough riders hit both the trukks. With both charges successful and the resultant damage enough to destroy all three units, the rest of the firepower from the two squads of scions was directed at the remaining orks and was enough to destroy all by one lone ork warboss. 

There was very little for the orks to do in there turn, having only one model left. They were however able to score a few points. The end result of 65 to 69 for the guard was a pretty fair score for the game, even though I had significantly more units left at the end, although most of these did come from reinforcements.

There are a couple of notes to make though. There were a couple of mistakes made during the game, not just in terms of decisions but also rules wise. 

For the orks, the main mistakes were tactical, with pushing both kill rigs in to the ruins turn 1 bottlenecked himself meaning one has to move back to allow the other to move forward. The second mistake was charging the squidosaurs unit into the knight rather than the squad on my home objective. They did some damage but not enough to take.out the knight, although the knight did fail to take them out in return. The last mistake I think was holding on to bring it down for so long. I think that after the second turn it should have been dropped. However, there is a caveat to this, one that is my mistake. 

I think I only really made two mistakes, one minor one was holding my knight back so much. I think I should have pushed it up further turn 2 but ultimately it worked out as it was. The second mistake was with "big guns never tire". When my tank was charged I checked the rules as I had a feeling there were restrictions about blast weapons. Having a look through the main rule there was no mention about it, just pistols, so I checked a few.other bits but found nothing, even though I was sure that there was something. Anyway we played on and I shot the plasma guns in combat even thought they were blast. I later found the bit I was looking for and confirmed that blast can't shoot in combat (in the rules commentary). Why they can't just add the restriction to the main rules I don't know, they have stuff about pistols after all. Anyway, this would have meant that I would have pulled the Russ out of combat and fired all the infantry in to the unit and probably done more damage, as they didn't shoot that turn anyway. I don't think this would have affected the game either way however, as even if they had scored the points it was only worth 3 points. There are also a couple of points in the game where I missed out on scoring points. The first was when I dropped in my scions. I dropped them in close to the enemy but if I had dropped just a few inches back, I could have claimed an objective during my next turn or two, without having to move, potentially scoring myself up to 10 extra VP. I also had cleanse for one of my cards in the last turn but got carried away with shooting. If I had done cleanse I could have picked up 3 points myself, for one objective and possibly the full 5 if I had dropped the above squad on the objective.

Overall I don't think any of these rules mistakes would have made a difference to the overall result even though it was a close run thing. Some of the tactical decisions would have had a bigger impact on the game overall and could well have changed the overall result. 

Last Ork Standing

Overall this was probably the best game of the league for me so far, not just due to the win but in overall fun and enjoyment and the ork army was very nicely painted as well. I have one last game to try and play but I'm not sure when or even if I will get around to playing it. 

Station forge

So alongside the Grognards I brought and built the other day, I also decided to grab some other models from Station Forge, through a 3rd party of EBay. I have been looking at various models from Station Forge for a while but none had really taken my fancy enough to put down my money. The other thing that has held me back is that the model are all printed by third parties, so quality could vary quite a bit. 

In the end I decided to plumb for two different units. First up are the Royal Guard Elites. These are ten models in a variety of poses, with no real clear theme to the models. There are several models that could be used as Inquisitors or as psychics or even as Regimental Advisers for the guard.

The ten models

I will be using a couple of these models as Inquisitor models for my Imperial Knight force, which I will explain in a later post but I will need two inquisitors for the force.

Psychic Inquisitor and something else?

The model on the right is one of the few models that I really don’t have any idea what I’m going to use him for. There are literally no units that I think I can or want to use this model for.

Astropath and Priest

Master of Ordnance and Inquisitor

Psychic Inquisitor and Office of the Fleet

Inquisitor and Ratling

The small fellow here is most likely going to be a ratling to go with the 9 other ratlings that I own to enable me to field two squads, not that I ever actually field one unit.

These models were a bit of an impulse purchase when I was getting the other unit below, the extra cost was worth it I think. When I get them built, I will post them up here and give my views on them, from first glance there are a couple of imperfections in there but nothing really to cause problems.

The main unit that I wanted to buy was the Royal Guard Templars. I really like the aesthetic of these models, although the weapon load out needs some adjustment, as I need these guys with shields and mauls to make them in to proxy Arbites Subductor Squad. The base models really fit in well with the idea of an Imperial Knight household force.  

All 12 models

There are actually twelve models in the squad and I have brought two squads worth of models. I don’t know yet how they are going to work with the arbites shield and mauls but hopefully they will be alright.

Priest, maybe? Plus Sergeant.

Initially I thought I would use this model as an Inquisitor but then I saw the other models above and so now I’m not sure what I will use this as. One option is to use this as the Proctor-Subductor or sergeant, due to his extra bits and pieces and use the staff as a Nuncio Aquila. 

An example of some of the troop options. There are a couple of two handed poses that I will need to try and figure out but hopefully I should be able to mix and match arms to get a decent pose. 

Standard and trooper

I am also going to keep the standard, even though it doesn’t actually do anything or even exist in the game, I think it just looks really good and why wouldn’t they be carrying the house banner in to combat with them!

One other alteration i am going to make is to give them a head swap. At present I a thinking of using the heads from the Navy Breachers, as its the one part of the models I don’t like. I may go for a different head type once I have a couple built and tested the various heads I have. 

There are a couple of other models that I quite like the look of, the first one is the Grim Guard Armoured Transport. This is basically a Taurox but looks a lot better. Their trouble is that they are not significantly cheaper than the actual Taurox to make it a must buy. I would be after at least of four of them, maybe even 6 but that still a hundred to 150 pounds, which i more that i can really justify right now. They will however stay on my eBay wish list for the monent.

The last models are the Grim Guard Battle weapons set. The issue with this set is that i only need the two bigger guns / artillery pieces and not the three smaller heavy weapon teams. For the cost of the set, it’s cheaper to just buy the GW Field Ordnance battery sets. If I could get just the big guns, then it might make sense to get them but at the moment it’s just not worth it. 

I will look at building the models soon and get a review posted up and also dive in to my plans for the Imperial Knight household guard. 

DKoK reinforcements

So I’ve finally bitten the bullet and got some reinforcement for my Death Korps of Kreig. I’ve been planning this for quite a while but have been holding off until I got well down the list of painting. After spending quite a while painting and not building anything, I’ve got a bit tired of painting and lost some enthusiasm to continue, so i thought hat it was time to do something different, hence the DKoK reinforcements.

There are 21 regular DKoK soldiers plus two DKoK Marshals built.

21 regular DKoK

There is a reason for the 21 models, rather than the standard squad of 20 models. When building these models I was considering how they would fit in to the models I already had, which were originally built with Kill Team in mind. This means that I have two sgt’s but also a bolt gun equipped trooper, something you cant have in game. So I had to do a little reshuffle to get everything to fit. Hence 21 troopers as one of the original sgt’s is now a Marshall and the bolt gun wielding trooper is now a Sgt. 

Two new Sgts

Talking of Sergeants, here are the two new ones. One is armed with a chain sword and one with a las pistol, meaning that there are some options as to how to field them. The one armed with the las pistol has a cybernetic are, curtesy of the AdMech, mainly the Skorpius model. Granted, if I wanted the most optimum load out, then plasma pistol and power sword are the best, but I wanted something a little different. In game I could easily just play them as plasma pistols and swords anyway. 

I have also built a number of special weapons and options. These four are the special options models, with two being medics and one being a vox caster. The third could be used as a vox caster but he’s actually the demo expert from the Kill Team box. 

Medic, Medic, Vox, Demo

The medic are essential for DKoK, as the ability to return models is really useful. You can only use one in a 20 man squad, but I usually run two medic models as I don’t have spare models that I can swap in and out as needed. The Vox caster is also very useful and while it stops you having two plasma guns per squad,  it’s one of best way to regain CP in the Guard list. The demo pack equipped guardsman could be used as a vox caster if I wanted but really I just like the back pack and wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to model a guardsman with it. 

Melta, Sniper, Flamer, Grenade and Plasma

The special weapons were some of the most fun to build as they required some kit bashing. Most of the were pretty easy to do, but a couple needed some more work.

Snipe and Flamer

The sniper and flamer were the easiest to build as they required no work at all. The sniper is pretty useless really, it doesn’t really give any advantage over a standard lasgun but it’s just a cool little thing to have in the squad. The precision can be useful occasionally. The flamer is useful as always, nothing wrong with auto hitting weapons, especially with overwatch.

Grenade, Plasma and Melta

The grenade was the easiest conversion, it basically just required a small cut in the launcher and a bit of trimming to get everything to match up nicely. This was needed as the left hand loading the shell was missing, I’m sure that it’s around somewhere, as I made a few moulds for the scions to use. The plasma was a little harder as I was missing the right arm, however, a little internet searching lead me to other arm options, I cant remember which one but cutting down one of the lasgun arms works very well and doesn’t require much work apart from trimming the pistol grip from the plasma gun. The melta was the hardest as while I could use the same trick as the plasma gun, I had already used the arms I needed for the plasma gun! In the end I managed to sort another set of arms out but the melta gun is not quite as straight as i would have liked. It’s not noticeable on the table top and so I’m not really that worried but it’s still slightly annoying. 

Riflemen

The riflemen were all straight forward, just a simple case of glueing on the arms to the bodies. There were a few that don’t sit quite as straight as they should due to the different torso size but this is not a problem at all. 

More Riflemen

There were also a few other riflemen that were a bit more characterful. These were mostly due to the fact that I was running out of two handed rifle poses. I would have built most of these anyway as I like having some different poses in the mix. 

Reloading and grenade

Pointing and trench club

The pointing arm is again from the Skorpius model again. It adds another little point of interest on the models.

Next up are the Marshalls. These models are Forge World models rather than GW main models, however, there are several hints that we might see these as plastic models when we get our codex release. Either way these are almost a must bring when fielding DKoK in force. They are basically DKoK versions of the Cadian Castellan, with some very good rules. The Cult of Sacrifice rule lets you use the insane bravery stratagem for 0CP, even under the new rules, as it names the stratagem specifically. In addition, as far as i read it, you can also use the stratagem multiple times per battle, as the core one lets you use it once per battle but this ability is a once per battle, per model ability, so 3 Marshall’s means up to 4 uses of the insane bravery stratagem. The only condition is that you can only use it twice per phase. I will need to have a look at this to see if it is the case, but as far as I can tell it is. The second rule is Martial Dedication, which gives the squad a 5+ FNP, better than a command squads medics 6+ ability. Throw in a Psyker and a unit can have a 4+ invulnerable save against shooting, a 5+ armour save, a 5+ FNP save and can bring back D3 models a turn, which should make the unit pretty reliable. 

These two marshals are both equipped with power weapons as standard and one has a bolt pistols.and the other a plasma pistol. The third marshal, the promoted Sgt, will also have a plasma pistol and power weapon. 

You can't quite see it but the one on the right is holding a watch, I guess he's just waiting for the right time to send the new wave "over the top".

Carrying enough stuff for war.

Spare body

So with 21 troopers and two marshal's, there remains one body left. As yet he has no function but we'll wait and see what happens, maybe the new guard book will give him a role!

Wargames Atlantic Death fields Les Grognards

This box is a great value box, 24 models for around 25 pounds, (20 from my local stockists) and while they are not quite as good quality as the GW ones, for a guard army they work very well and once on the table top you'll never really notice the difference in quality.

Dark Guardians Terminators

 Next up we have the heavy troops, aka the terminators. These form the hammer to the bikers anvil (coming later!). There are quite a few squads of terminators, however there was some problems switching them across to the latest data sheets, even though only one squad, the command squad, is legends.  This was because the rules are a lot more restrictive over which weapon the various units can carry, as current deathwing terminators can't carry combat weapons, unlike the old squads where you could mix and match as you liked. I have managed to sort them in to legal squads and that's how they are marked up but seeing as how these will most likely just be packed away and never played with, it doesn't really matter!

First up we have the command elements.

HQ selection

Company master

This is the captain from the Betrayal of Calth box set, built as is with combi-melta, which is now almost completely useless in 10th edition. 

Strikemaster and Chaplain 

The strikemaster is another unit that went to legends, which is a shame, hopefully they will bring back something similar. This model has a slightly different paint scheme. The model was second hand and pre painted in black templars style when my son painted over the top of it. When he saw I was painting up my terminators he gifted it to me so it could join the others. I decided to give it a bit of an over paint to match the rest of the force but kept as much of his painting as possible, maybe it's some sort of Tyranids ichor or even Tau?

The Chaplain has his crozius arcanum represented by the hammer. I did think about repainting it a bit but decided I like him as he is, his shield and hammer stand him out enough from the rest of the army. 

Librarian 

Lastly we have the librarian, with a custom combi-melta. Even though I known it's a bit useless, I still likes the synergy of the two commanders having combi guns and the easiest one for me to build with the bits I had to hand was the combi-melta. The body is a grey Knights body and head with the relic cataphractii legs and arms. Again this one is complete with full shoulder armour, missing from the rest. I probably should go back and do the Chaplain to match. The sword arm is pre painted as it came off the ancient when his arm got switched to a power fist. This will be painted as soon as I get around to spray priming my next batch of models. 

Next we move into the command squad, the only legends squad. This consists of an ancient, apothecary, champion and two deathwing command terminators. 

Deathwing Command squad

Ancient

The ancient, with the company banner, yet to gain the final details. He come resplendent with his wolf skin, taken from a Space Wolf bested in single combat and worn as a sign of his ability and prowess as a warrior. At least that's the story anyway, it's actually because I had a random pair of space wolf terminator legs that I stuck on a spare cataphractii body. 

Apothecary and champion

The apothecary model is just a standard terminator with chain fist, just painted up with a white fist to denote his stature as apothecary. The Champion on the other hand is a mash up of several different models, with standard terminator legs, a Space Wolf body, a Dark Angels sword arm and a Grey Knight sword arm topped off with a Deathwatch shoulder pad. The model is supposed to have a Halberd of Caliban but the two Grey Knight halberds I have didn’t fit with the spare terminator arms that I have, so I went with twin swords, which I think looks good. 

Again, the champion model is on the list of model to spray up, something I’ll hopefully get around to soon, if the weather is any good! Last up are the two Command terminators, one with heavy flamer and one with power weapon. There are here just to add some close range fire power and some extra combat punch. 

The next squad is technically not a Deathwing Squad but a regular Terminator Assault Squad. This is because the current deathwing squads cant take close combat weapons, something I'm sure will change when the new assault terminators are released. These are currently a mix of old school terminator and Cataphratii terminator bodies with cataphartii lightning claw arms. 

Old School Terminators

Cataphratii terminators

The next squad is the first deathwatch terminator squad, although this one has a heavy flamer compared to the other squads with assault cannons. 

More wolf bits on the squad sergeant 

This squad is a Deathwing terminator squad with assault cannon.

The triplets!

The last deathwing terminator squad contains an assault cannon and a chain fist, just to mix things up a bit!

With so many sculpt the same, I have tried to mix up some of the paint jobs, even if just a little bit. These two with assault cannons show some of the differences between some of the models, just minor changes to the paint scheme. 

I will put the bikes up here soon, when I get around to painting them all up. Most of the are ready primed but some need stripping and reprising, which I will do when I get home from summer holidays.