A Tryptophan Clouded Trip Through a Trippy Battlereport

Note: This battle report has been sitting in the queue waiting for me to publish it for a week.  I make no apologies for the fact that right now I barely know what day of the week it is, but I do apologize for letting 40K Neophyte sit unattended like I did. 
While most of my Thanksgiving weekend was spent working and trying to avoid death at the hands of my loved ones for working, I fit in a round of 40k.  It was a tight fit considering how long it went, and it was an exhausting fit considering how late it went but it was a fun fit, and that's all that matters.

Pictures and battle report after the jump...

A couple caveats.  First and foremost as the name of my blog indicates and as I like to remind people, I'm new to 40k.  I've been into the tabletop game for about a year now, but I have spent so much time prepping to play (like reading rules, putting together an army, and painting) that this was only the 2nd time I've rolled dice in this game.  So there were rules mistakes.  Two of the players (myself and Jason) are very new, and the other two players have either only a little more experience (Steve) or are used to older editions (Chris).  The other caveat is that the game started at 9:30 at night and finished up between 4:00 and 4:15 am the next morning.  So I was very tired for much of the game so my notes are crap.  Steve took lots of pictures, so they have to fill in the gaps as the night went on and my notes went from "unit such and such assaulted such and such with much death thanks to crappy/awesome (depends on perspective) dice rolls," to  "I'm so tired, why won't my guys just die," to, "Dammit I survived because I needed a 6 and I rolled a stupid 6.  These dice are going in the garbage disposal tomorrow when I wake up," to my personal favorite "3:06 language has become optional...everyone is messing up words."  I don't even remember what words we were messing up.  But apparently we were.


Also, many thanks to Steve for taking pictures of the battle for us.

We started with terrain deployment.  We were using 800 point armies this time, so we laid out a 6'x4' board, and set terrain pieces either from Jason or from Battle of Macrage on the board. This time the terrain didn't feature the big garage type unit in the middle of the board, we actually had a valley of death.  However we were really aggressive in what we labeled as difficult, dangerous, and impassable terrain.  This came into play later when I shifted my army movement because the plateaus didn't become high ground to protect, but easily shot at elevated and level terrain of death.  The drop offs became impassable, the sloped terrain leading to the plateaus was difficult.  Some stuff worked, some stuff was a pain, and some terrain specifications (like the slope leading to the top of the garage being difficult) never got used.

We rolled and lo and behold we got the same exact setup as we did before (annihilation scenario, spearhead deployment).  This was fine, but I hope next time we get something different.

Later in the game we got a good shot of the terrain layout

Teams were fluff based.  Myself and my Orks were teamed with Jason and his Chaos Marines.  We went against Steve's Blood Ravens and Chris' Space Wolves.

 

Armies are lined up and ready to fight

The First Round was quick as we were all stupid and no one ran.  No shooting and no assault because we were too far apart.

The Second Round featured combat.  Chris deep struck his skimmers into the board and shot my Boyz and Nob grouped with the Warboss with Frag Missiles.  He took out all the boyz, but the Nob took no damage and the Warboss saved for no damage.  He also did the same for my unit of Nobz, but missed and hit his own Rhino and Steve's units.  None took damage, but the look Steve gave Chris, you could almost taste the bitterness in the air.  Okay maybe not quite that bad, but Jason and I enjoyed it.  Chris also attacked my Nobz with a flamer but apparently he shot a butterfly flying over my Nobz's heads as the attack failed miserably.  However a pistol attack was devastating as all my Nobz took a wound.

I learned to hate those skimmers fast

 

Where once there were Boyz, now there were only skull templates

I assaulted Chris Space Wolves while Jason's Possessed Marines were locked in a pitched battle with Steve's Vanguard Veterans.  I took out 4 of Chris' Wolves, but lost 5 Nobz.  My Deffkoptas had come in to assist Jason with the Vanguards, but they never got a chance to do anything.

This fight was bloody, but not what I wanted to see happen.

I also made a horrible tactical mistake in Round 2.  Zagstruk and his Vulcha Boyz attacked from reserve, going after the Skimmer and it's devastating missiles.  However I should have gone after Steve's Rhino which I forgot had Tactical Marines inside it.

Look at all those Marines I forgot about

In Round 3 Steve deployed his marines before moving the Rhino so he could assault Zagstruk.  The Skimmer was unable to move or attack.  My Nob left with the Warboss died.  Chris tried to tank shock Jason but failed the difficult terrain roll and was incapacitated.  My massive army of Orks was stuck slogging through difficult terrain because of the choke point in the valley.  Two Stormboyz were taken out during shooting, so I rolled for Morale and failed thus losing another Stormboy to Zagstruk's temper.  Steve assaulted my remaining Stormboyz and Zagstruk.  He took out my remaining two Stormboyz, but lost 4 marines.  Zagstruk lived to fight again.

It's hard to tank shock when you're left a pillbox by the terrain

During our shooting phase I called Waagh! to get my Orks into battle.  I successfully avoided any infighting, but I didn't move very far anyway.  Zagstruk died in our assault phase, and I lost a Deffkopta.

3 Deffkoptas looked nicer than 2

Round 4 is a vague menagerie of dreams and visions.  Jason tank shocked Chris who failed a leadership roll and almost ended up off the board.  I lost another Deffkopta before remembering hit and run.  My warboss continued to live, but my boyz started taking hits and thinning the herd.  I did remember Mob Rule so I saved easily.

They may not have looked like much, but man those

stumpy little Chaos Dudes put  a whooping on people.

"Hit and Run means I can get the blankety blank out?

Hellz yeah, run you little flying whores, run!"

Round 5 saw the end of Steve's Chaplain, Jason's Terminator Lord, and my Warboss.  Chris lost some guys, but by this point I was sore, tired, had an hour drive, and had to work in just a few hours so I wasn't really taking notes.

Die Space Marines!  Die! Die! Die!

In the end we called it after 5 rounds, and based on total unit destruction Chris and Steve won by 1unit.

We tried to use terrain, some to their advantage,

some (me) as a great way to do nothing...but die

 

This was one of my favorite pictures.  It really captured the

mini's eye view of the battlefield. 

I wish I had taken better notes (I tried to use my laptop instead of my blackberry, but I think I just need to handwrite things or do a voice recording or something).  And I wish I had won...but in the end that doesn't matter because I love this game sooo much.  It was a blast and I can't wait to play again.