Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines VS Orks

Apologies for the lack of updates recently, I've been really busy with work and stuff. In fact, I've only managed 30 minutes of painting in the last ten days. I did get a couple of games of Last Night on Earth with my brother-in-law which was fun, and last night was regular club night.

I got a 1500 point game in against an Ork player. My list was my current Nurgle Chaos list. My opponent was running an Ork horde list, which isn't a particularly good match up for a small elite all Nurgle force. His list was something along the lines of:

Warboss with big choppa, with 5 Nobz in a trukk
Weirdboy
10 Tankbustas with a couple of bomb squigs
5 Burnas
10 including a Nob with a power klaw Sluggas in a trukk
20 including a Nob with a power klaw Shoota boyz
20 including a Nob with a power klaw Slugga boyz
15 including a Nob with a power klaw Slugga boyz
3 Deffkoptas
3 Warbikes
Squiggoth which was carrying the tankbustas. This could have been a baby Squiggoth.
2 Deff Dreds

As you can see, he was running a squiggoth (just a little one) using Forge World rules which was fun, and it was only a friendly game so I was happy to let him (the squiggoth isn't on the picture below, there wasn't an icon for it in Vassal).

The mission was a straightforward annihilation with the spearhead deployment. I opted to go second. At deployment, things looked something like this:

I figured that to deal with this many Orks I was going to have to use the two large blast templates from the Defiler and the Vindicator to take out as many as could before they close to me, as well as denying as many kill points as possible. I also wanted to concentrate on some of the smaller units which would be easy to take down (like the bikes, the burnas, the Deff Dreads) rather than trying to wear down the big units of Boyz. As usual, I held my Chosen in reserve to outflank.

I setup well back in my table quarter to make the Orks cross the table in front of my big guns. My opponent setup as close a possible to me ready to get to grips with me.

Early Turns: The Orks rushed towards my lines, and one of the trukks sped into the top right corner of the map. My first round of shooting saw shots from the Vindicator and Defiler scatter, and killed 14 Orks from two of the mobs. The rest of ones of those squads thought better of the battle and legged it off the table. My Daemon Prince saw the chance of a kill point and crushed the trukk, forcing the boyz out and killing a couple in the wreckage. The Orks responded by rushing the Daemon with boyz from the trukk, the Warboss and his nobz, killing him. Everyone else advanced, with the warbikes charging the vindicator and destroying it.
My Chosen arrived from the flanks, close to the Warboss and blew up a trukk from the safety of the rhino. My Chaos dreadnought killed the warbikes, avenging the death of the Vindicator. Things looked pretty evenly balanced in these early turned.

Mid-game: The Warboss and Nobz saw the chance of a kill point and destroyed the Chosen Rhino, killing two of the occupants in the resulting explosion. The Chosen responded by repositioning themselves to maximize their three flamers, fired on the Nobz and Warboss, killing all of them. At the bottom centre of the board, one of the Deff Dread got into combat with the Defiler, a combat which lasted three turns and saw the Defiler just limp out the winner.
My dreadnought managed to stay sane through the whole game, and spent a couple of turns killing first the tank bustas, and then the deffkoptas who charged it in close combat.

Late turns: The shootas, the remains of a slugga squad, a deff dread and the wierdboy got into assault with a Plague Marine squad which they took two turns to finish off. Once this was done, the remaining half dozen sluggas boyz got shot to pieces by the Plague Marines in the rhino. This gave me enough time to kill the squiggoth with a Plague Marine squad and the Dreadnought. The dreadnought rounded off a storming game for him by killing the remaining burna boyz. Up in the top corner, the Chosen were defeated in combat and broke towards my table edge.

The game ended on turn 5 with a win for me. I'd scored 9 kill points to me opponents 5.

Overall, it was a fun game. My HQ, elites and heavy support saw most of the action, scoring 7 of my 9 kill points. They really blunted my opponents attack, so that by the time he got to my troop choices (which are tough in themselves), I'd taked the sting out of his attack. My Chosen proved their value yet again, taking 3 kill points themselves. The dreadnought worked well in this game as well, as he stayed sane for the whole game making him a cheap and versatile unit.

Against a big horde like this, target selection was important as there were a number of units which were softer and easier to take out. Had he been running a large scary unit (like Nob bikerz, or he'd beefed up his Nob squad a bit more), this would have been much more of a distraction to me, as I know I'd have been tempted to pump shots into a unit like that which was tough to kill.