Battle Report – Orks vs Dark Angels

Warhammer 40k Dark Angel in pre-heresy colours

7th Edition 40k, with the 2015 Dark Angel Codex.

The two armies glared at each other on over the city ruins. The once fabulous city sited at the crossroads of profitable trade routes now lays at the front line of the Ork expansion and the refuge of humanity. Holding this front line The Dark Angels stand alone.

Today I had the chance to face my old nemesis Ork Boss Hogan in his bunker where he had created a splendid 6 x 4 city terrain war gaming table. We came with 2k armies and decided to play the Maelstrom of War scenario. The roll off selected the ‘Contact Lost’ Mission.

Richard had his newly formed speed freak army with a mighty custom built articulated battle wagon. There was a Mad Max theme running through the whole army and this just was the crowning glory. Also in the Orky line up was a second battle wagon, several wartrukks, a Nob Bike mob, and some buggies.

For myself I brought a newly painted Dark Angel army made main from the Dark Vengeance box set painted in pre- heresy colours. To this core force I had added a unit of two Dreadnoughts, two Lascannon welding Predators, two more 5 Marine squads, an extra 3 man bike squad, and a Nephlim jet fighter.

During the placement of the objectives I noticed that they where slightly offset to the Northern long edge of the table. As luck would have it I rolled high for first set-up and choose that side of the board. Splitting my forces in two meant that there where two objectives That I could reach at the end of the first turn, and possibly a third objective that a bike squad could reach.

Richard failed to claim the initiative and I went first.

From then on the battle was pretty much decided. I claimed three objectives at the end of the first turn. Deep Strike Terminators landed on a fourth objective in the 2nd turn thanks to the Ravenwing homer’s, and my General and Librarian climbed a tesseract to claim a fifth undefended fifth objective.

Richards Orks did a valiant job of mauling the Dark Angels and retook an objective of the Ravenwing bikes and holding back supporting Dreadnoughts Preditors and Tactical Marines. However with the overwhelming numbers of objectives held and the stubbornness of the 5 man Dark Angel squads refusing to relinquish the objectives until the last man fell meant that  I racked up points faster than he could.

Over all I was impressed with the Dark Angel stubbornness and the improved BS2 overwatch. I was going to field a Dark Angel Demi Company with a BS3 overwatch but it does not allow for the amount of heavy support choices that I expect that I would have needed.

All in all a good game and a lesson on keeping your eyes on the mission objectives from the start!