Round 2 was against Orks. Some really awesome looking Orks at that; check out that scratch built Battle wagon!
Full Disclosure: as the day went on I drank more (obviously) and therefore the details from each game start to get a little fuzzy :) Unless I can piece things back together from the pictures, my plan is to mention the big stuff and less of a turn by turn. You probably only want to see the pretty pictures anyway, so here we go.
I definitely could have done a lot of things differently in this round. The objective was kill points and spearhead deployment. I won the roll off but decided to go second -- probably should have taken first to try and push back the Ork deployment from the rest of my army. I don't have much experience playing against Orks, especially 3 battlewagons. But the first big surprise in this match came from two Deffkopta's and their buzzsaws. These guys scouted up 12" away, then first turn charged my Vindicators, exploding one and knocking the gun off the other. Ouch. I either should have screened my vehicles better or set up as far back on my edge as possible.
I still thought I had a good chance to pull this one out since the mission was kill points and my army doesn't contain as many as my opponents'. But that hope was starting to quickly fade, lol. My opponent, John, played a really smart game. Notice how he kept everything in the middle to mitigate my outflanking squads. He protected his weaker units and armor by keeping everything behind his wall of AV 14 from the battlewagons. And the way he utilized those koptas in the beginning was very effective and took out the two biggest threats my army had on the table.
My command squad and one of the bike squads came in from the left side and move to engage the Ork bikers. I didn't have the range to pull off any assaults the same turn they arrived, and to turboboost them would have put them in range of being charged the next turn, so I tried to soften things up a bit with my bolters. But on my next turn, I was about to learn another lesson with my bikes and the art of screening.
My front bike squad had taken a couple casualties from Lootas and the warbikes return fire, but on my turn, I should have place them in such a way as to completely block the passage in front of my command squad. Had I spaced them out in a line from the top terrain to the middle ruins, I would have cut off his warbikers from moving through that little space which set him up for a multicharge, engaging both my front bike squad and my command squad. Sure, he still could have risked the dangerous terrain test if he really wanted to, but I think if I had positioned my front squad better that would have discouraged his next move.
Both of my squads weathered the charge, but then I failed my Hit & Run initiative test by rolling a 6... Khan and company eventually moonfanged the Warboss and Nob bikers, but the rest of my army had been decimated.
Meanwhile, on the right side of the table my other bike squads came in and put some meltas on his battlewagons, but I couldn't get past his custom force field bubble. By the time the 15 minute warning was called, I was already trailing by a few kill points, and had we continued I'm sure he would have tabled me. Overall, I had a fun time and learned a lot from this game. My opponent was great and played a flawless game. He also had one of the most impressively painted / converted armies in attendance!
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