Here's some teaser pics from the Ork vs Imperial Guard battle against Ortron yesterday.  They are just from my phone so are fairly poor.  We thought it'd be interesting for Ortron to throw up the report given it's his first NetEpic experience.

The Battlefield:



The Snakebites and their Steam Gargant roll forward:



A Marauder making a bombing run:



The Imperials SHTs smoking.....but not destroyed:



I think there were 4 Imperial SHTs damaged during the game, but not one destroyed

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Fire bad, tree pretty - Buffy

Greetings all,

What follows is a brief report on my first game of NetEpic, played in Brisbane, QLD against Zap123.
The game was 3000pts a side and played on a 6'x 4'table. I have limited epic terrain so Zap was kind enough to bring some of his.

Now for the army lists, Zap wanted to trial some of his "B Team" Ork units in this game and also give the steam gargant a trial.

Ork Army List:

Snakebites
-Stompas
-Steam Gargant

Deathskulls
-Braincrushas
-Skullhammer
-Doomdiver Magna Cannon
-Freebootas

Kult of Speed
-Gobsmashers
-Wartracks
-Bowelburners
-Fighter-Bombas

For the guard I wanted to trial my newly (half) painted mechanised force, roughly based on a steel legion scheme. Most of the NE guard armies i have seen rely on heaps of infantry, this list had only 5 stands and would have to rely on the firepower of the guard tanks to kill the orks before they could reach them in CC.

Guard Mechanised force:
Stormblade Coy
-Whirlwinds
-Hydra
-Robots
-Destroyers
-Marauders

Stormhammer Coy
-Demolishers
-Heavy Inf Pl

I didn't include any specials for the simple fact i still haven't painted any and was trying to use only painted models.

Deployment:

I wrote down my deployment in a note book and then let zap setup his orks on the table. I placed the majority of the army ready to move into the urban area (my LHS) and left the more open RHS of the board to the destroyers, stomblades and robots. I kept my Marauders central so they could easily move to help out either force. I now realise at this point I should have made more of a plan to capture ground/objectives. Instead I deployed with only defence in mind, and realised in the first turn i had little chance of capturing objectives.

Deployment of IG forces


Kult of speed ready to attack...

1st Turn

I managed to win the initiative and let Zap move first, the majority of his army surged forwards on charge orders, I left a number of units on first fire, advanced with the stormhammers and destroyers and charged out with the hvy inf and demolishers. Being used to EA I for some reason didn't think many units would be in range on turn 1. Of course as soon as the skullcrushers knocked off the two destroyers, I quickly realised i could have made better use of my units on turn 1.

Appart from the skullcrushers the ork shooting was minimal. On my RHS my forces were concerned with destroying the kult of speed before it got into CC. The fire from 2 stormblades, a destroyer, whirlwinds and robots only killed about 4 buggies.. this had me very worried,fortunately the marauders came through and obliterated a large chunck of buggies, bowelburnas and even some nobs bikers.

In the centre the Hydra took out a fighter-bommer whilst the others made lucky saves. They then strafed the Hvy Inf running towards the building. 2 stands died to the attack.

On the LHS the demolishers had charged out behind a building and the stormhammers were still out of range, the steam gargant fired off a bell-gun shot and damaged the stormhammer CHQ.

Shot showing end of turn 1.

Turn 2

I figured I only had this turn before i was in serious trouble as i had captured few objectives and some of the ork units were about half way across the board already, I also had 3 skullhammers lining up my remaining tanks on the RHS.

To counter this the marauders went head first towards the deathskull orks on the hill with the intent of taking out the ork AA and hvy tanks. Snap fire took down one of the bombers and a lucky shot from boys on the ground sent a second into the ground in the FF phase.

My tanks on the RHS all stayed put ready to kill of the remaining kult of speed before they reached my line. On the LHS the demolishers went onto FF while the stormhammers moved forward in support. The hydras managed to take down the remaing ork fliers with some accurate AA fire before they could do anymore damage and the hvy infantry setup their weapons in theit tall building. The snakebites advanced this turn with the exception of the boarboys who charged into the demolishers.

My FF was very effective on the RHS this time, a hail of plasma & HK missiles from the stormblades ripped into the remaining kult of speed and the hvy infantry picked off a few more. One Stormblade also managed to pick off a skullhammer with a helion missile. The demolishers snapfire killed 4 out of 5 boarboys but PD fire from the stormhammers couldn't hit the last one.

in CC the boarboy killed a demolisher but was wiped out in the advance fire phase, unfortunately the stompers killed the remaining demolishers. the gargant wiped out a hydra and failed to damage a stormhammer. The two advance stormhammers managed to kill some boys in the snakebite clan.

finally the remaining marauder attacked and managed to kill another skullhammer and 2 boys stands.

By now the kult of speed were broken and the snakebites were 1 unit away. The fighter bombers were also destroyed. I had lost the demolishers but the orks had 4 objectives to my 2.

Turn 3

I figured i didn't have much chance securing a win by taking objectives so i tried to kill as much as i could this turn.

there was some minor movement on the RHS as the storblades moved to trade shots with the remaining skullhammer and freebooters.

The marauder went after the steam gargant and snakebites.

everything else tried to line up snakebites or the stompas.

The last 2 units of the kult of speed charged a stormblade and the destroyer. The stormblades PD removed its attacker but the destroyer missed its assailant. even the supporting PD fire from a second stormblade wouldn't save it.

In the FF phase the skull hammer damaged a stormblade, the whirlwinds killed some snakebites and the hvy infantry damaged a stompa.

in CC the nob bikers wiped out the remaining destroyer.

In advance fire both the hydras and marauder scored hits on the gargant but only damaged a track. The stormhammers traded shots with stompas but neither could score a kill. The Stormblade CHQ annihilated the last KOS biker with a blastgun at close range and the last stormblade who had been left out of command fired off his helion missile at a single deathskull boy. Sure enough the anti-titan cruise missile sent them off to meet mork and gork..

in the rally phase the snakebites broke and the KOS was no more.

At the end of turn 3, two of the ork mobs were broken but i was still a few points short of victory. Unfortunately for Zap he wouldn't have been able to stop me getting those points next turn as he was short on effective fighting units. Zap kindly awarded me a victory, but i get the feeling he was being generous this game and not pushing me as hard as he could.

Photos end of turn 3.




Ork dead pile


Guard dead

That's the entire Kult...wiped out to a man!  It'd been a while since I dusted off the Orks and I made the classic mistake of trying to use their firepower.  The big templates of the Bowelburners and multiple shots of the Nobz are hard to ignore, but I really should have just kept charging the Kult forward.  

The Steam Gargant worked pretty well.  Killed a few things and soaked up a good deal of return fire emerging basically unscathed.  I'll reserve final judgement until I see it going head to head with an enemy titan though.  

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Fire bad, tree pretty - Buffy

I had a couple of questions from this game & both related to the stormblade.

Firstly is its plasma blastgun restricted like the titan version, eg 1 shot if on advance and 2 on first fire? i hadn't read the titan list in detail before this game and was working off the summary stats.

Secondly does the penetrating +X ability work when rolling on the super heavy damange table? after reading the rules again, I see that it should.

I think I messed up both these rules in the game but i don't believe they would have changed the game much as the penetrating weapons rarely targeted SH or bigger, and the stormblades were on FF most of the game.

Hey guys, sounds like an enjoyable game. I certainly enjoyed reading it. Any date set for the rematch?

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

I'm hoping we can get one sorted tomorrow night, but that will depend on Zap being let out of the house

Might be able to push up the points as well.

4K tonight.  Might try out some Nurgly stuff if I have time to pack them up.

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Fire bad, tree pretty - Buffy

Nice read and good photo's thanks