I'm a big fan of WH40K Apocalypse. The fact is, when you have a collection as large as mine, it's the only time my army gets to really shine. It's also a great place to experiment, as in a big game the odd ineffective unit makes little difference to the end result. I'll often use Apocalypse to test out particular combinations of units, formations and super heavies.
The last two games I played were examples of what works and what doesn't when running big Ork lists in games with a lot of super heavies and firepower. In the first game I took a list along the following lines (some details may vary)
2 Stompas and 1 Big Mek Stompa in the Stompa Mob formation
3 Fighta Bombas
3 mobs of 19 boyz with Nobz and a Warphead in each mob, transported in each Stompa.
A battlewagon with Deffrolla carrying 15 burna boyz
Now this list was a bit of a departure for me as it was missing two units I almost always deploy - Nob bikers and Lootas, but I figured the Stompas would more than make up for the lack of firepower (they did) and the Stompas would also make up for the lack of close combat assault troops (they didn't).
The list played devastatingly well. The scenario, which I designed, had the Orks and Chaos allies marching across a 48" no-mans land with little cover to assault a fortified base with force field. I'll post the scenario details next time, but sufficve to say a 48" no mans land is a wee bit big when your lucky to get in four turns. That said the Warpheads came into thier own in turn three, deep striking their mobs onto the objective, while the Stompas played havok with the space marines. I took the 'Disruptor Beacon" assett, which worked brilliantly, as most of the enemy was made up of drop podding space wolves, which I was able to scatter very effectively about 18" in front of my Stompas (they were trying to drop behind me) which gave all my short range weapons something to kill. The lifta droppa also really qworked well - I picked up one Vindicator tank in a line breaker formation and dropped it on the other two. I immobilised all three, and destroyed the demolisher cannons on the two front facing tanks, with the third tank pointing off the table at the board edge where it couldn't shoot anything! Suffice to say the marines put a lot of effort into shooting at the Big Mek Stompa the next turn, and ended up popping the lifta-droppa so I didn't get much more fun - but boy was it a blast!
The following game I tried a different 'elite' style list:
Ghazkulls Bully Boyz:
Ghaz and 6 Mega Nobz in a Battle Wagon with Deff rolla and Kannon.
3 mobz of 10 Nobz in trukks with mixed power claws and painboyz, each led by a warboss.
A stompa
A green tide of 100 boyz led by a warboss and a warphead.
The problem with this list was apparant early on - too many eggs in one basket, and not enough targets to spread the incoming fire around. In turn one the green tide and the Stompa took most of the enemy fire, and thus the stompa died before firing a single shot. In my turn 1 I rolled for my warphead power and got a 1, so I re-rolled and got a 5, Ere We go. Now this meant the green tide would end up in a tightly packed circle somewhere, making it a prime target for any templates, so I took a bit of a risk and teleported it into what appeared to be a big cluster of imperial guard units. I scattered well, but then discovered that my opponents had merely placed their reserves on the table as a place to store them, and subsequently when they removed them I was actally out in the open behind imperial lines with nothing nearby to discourage scattering template shots. Suffice to say the whole tide was wiped out to a man in the next round of imperial shooting. That left my reserves, the three trukks and battlewagon, which I could only bring on half. I rolled on the wagon and one Trukk into the right flank using our teams flank march asset, and wiped out a 20 strong squad of Necrons, but then took a massive amount of fire which wiped out everything except the warboss leading my Nobz. At this point I had a sole warboss on the table, and two truks in reserve, and we had hardly made a dent in the enemy forces.
Turn three rolls around, and I decide to bring on my reserves at the opposite end of the table. Taking a closer look at my chaos allies and thier deployments, I see an objective with nothing near it 12" from our table edge, and another objective with only a small necron squad led by a lord. I suggest to one of the chaos generals that he concentrates on killng the Necrons, while my Nobz roll on at flat out speed to sit on the objectives. The last demon prince deep strikes onto one of the objectives held by the space woplves, and the other chaos general tries to blast the Necrons off another objective (unsuccessfully). Midnight rolls around so turn three ends up being the last turn, and given we are playing 5th edition rules for holding objectives, we have two objectives held, the imperial lapdogs hold one, one is contested, and the other two are not held by either side - go US! We win, but the game honestly felt like a thrashing. Go figure. I took away a few lessons:
1 - Boyz are expendable, you can lose a hundred of them in turn one and still win!
2 - Rember the redundancy rule - Orks need to have multiples of each unit to be effective. Don't take one green tide, take two! And for that matter, flank march em!
3 - 2500pts of Nobz in four units is overkill and frankly was a big waste. The free 'Rok Em Boyz strategem is just too random to be useful, and the work done by the Nobz could have been achieved by normal trukk boyz.
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