Duel Club, Wh 10th ed. Order of Blazing Horizon vs Gazzkul Horde.
The wagon shakes and convulses, so just in case I will start by duplicating my strange content. Who knows, it might be interesting for someone, and then we will sort it out. Plus, I will remember how to write posts on Gamer as well)
A report on the game in Warhammer 40k. The photos aren't necessarily scattered throughout the text, as they should be; they might just be: how it turned out.
AAR is experimentally half pseudo-artistic.
You can't just pop over to Commissar Yarrick's place without preparation. So on the way to Armageddon, Gazzkul took a detour in search of a good fight.
As is known, better than a fight in a men's monastery can only be a fight in a women's one. Therefore, the sisters of the Order of the Blazing Horizon had to hastily prepare for battle. Calling it an unlucky day, an unhappy day, or a black day was strictly forbidden by the canoness, because despite all her holiness, she is also a big fan of swinging swords such that hands fly around. Nevertheless, even she understood that a quarter of her army was essentially undergoing baptism by fire.
The orks rolled in with a wagon, personally piloted by Gazzkul-Thrakka. With his mega-name and mega-nobs, and some other orks, on the right flank there was another transport with orks inside, a bunch of minor gretchins, and somewhere in the deep flank maneuvering was a squad of mega-nobs and an army of squig cavalry.
Against the horde, the Order deployed literally everyone who was ready. Zephyrim squads with the canoness and seraphim were preparing to position themselves in the rear, Battle Sisters with the head of the order and the imagifer-standards bearer were defending the sanctuary, while a vindicare sister found a position in the bell tower. The left flank was much stronger. A castigator tank, a rhino with two squads of heavy weaponry inside, a phalanx of celestines, another rhino in which repentia were waiting for redemption in battle, and a squad of vanguard units. Everything, so the enemy wouldn't get any further.
The initiative belonged to the orks, and they moved forward. Not very quickly, which you wouldn’t expect, but because of that, they didn't expose themselves unnecessarily. But the Order began to suffer its first losses. They bent the radiator on the castigator, and one of the sisters defending the sanctuary was hit by shrapnel during a bombardment... with nails (???). The canoness prudently did not question what exactly the green-skinned ones were loading into their guns.
When the sisters finally managed to return fire, it turned out to be slightly successful, but not by much. On one side, the castigator knocked off several unnecessary parts from the wagon, while the seraphim abruptly, upon flying into the center, found an undocumented ork there and enthusiastically burned him. But the brave and bold missile fire at the truck and wagon went to waste. Any veteran of the Imperium’s wars is used to this. Hunter Killer Missile is aptly named after the word miss. If it hits, it doesn't breach armor.
As is known, if you want to attract an ork’s attention - shoot at him. And so it happened. The heated xenos drivers immediately turned their vehicles toward the source of the gunfire. Moreover, the Order of the Blazing Flame is not known for its camouflage pattern.
A horde of squig riders came from the flank, and the wagon surged forward at full speed, firing from all guns to the sides. The squigoleers did not support it, having gotten a bit lost among the sacred ruins and failed to arrive at the fight in time.
The sisters suffered their first losses, but by the Emperor's will, both the seraphim and the castigator survived both the gunfire and the ork vehicles' charges. As always, the orks more often shot at the sky than at the enemy. Barbarians.
It was impossible to leave such a response unanswered, and the whole flank of the Order went into motion, advancing forward. There was some mistake in this, but for now, the sisters were not aware of it.
The seraphim who heroically withstood the gunfire and the charge of the ork truck eventually lost heart and attempted to retreat, only to meet their dishonorable end from shots in the back. The Emperor helps only those who help themselves, and cowardice is reproached, which the dead showed by their example.
At the same time, on the left flank, the wagon finally burst open, and out poured Gazzkul and his entire green-skinned horde. They spilled out right under the concentrated fire of the entire Order. They even tossed in grenades to make sure no one got away.
In the end, here, in these holy places, the repentia squad redeemed their sins with ork blood and by having their eviscerators shred Gazzkul into pieces. They managed to carry him off the field and would surely reassemble him, but that would take time, which the Imperium could use to rest easy.
The wagon and its contents ceased to exist, as did the squad of gretchins, which got caught up in looting buildings and failed to notice the punishing blade descending upon them from the sky.
But the sin of pride is also reproached by the Emperor, and it clearly had its place on this battlefield, so even the best sisters did not notice how a squad of giant armored orks appeared in their rear.
A thunderous WAAAAGH! resonates over the battlefield, and here happens what the canoness was not prepared for. Out of the truck spill two squads of orks, who, with shouting and other disgusting xenos sounds, rush in different directions. One towards the zephyrim, the other straight to the sanctuary.
A squad of mega-nobs bursts into the rear of the vanguard and castigator, flipping over the tank, breaking through the rhino’s hull, and tearing one of the battle sisters apart.
The defending squads engage with the squigoleers, which even a solid wall of fire could not stop. The flamer sisters fall. The unbreakable phalanx of sergeant sisters is waning before their eyes, only the repentia sisters do not suffer incredible losses because the main blow did not fall on them. The bell tower where the vindicare was located is toppled, and the assassin managed to shoot the cavalry leader on the white mega-squig, but the brain was unaffected, and this did not stop him one bit from commanding the remnants of the horde.
The Retributors with multimeltas beat one of the cavalrymen with their stocks. The repentia kill the last boss left from the assault in the wagon, the vanguards carve and chop the nobs, and they literally feel no damage as if it doesn't exist. There have been no reports from the zephyrim squad since the last message about the approaching nob squad.
But the sanctuary is secured and safe. The battle sisters squad sustained losses but did not give up their positions.
The sister hospitaler does not have time to stitch wounds and administer painkillers. The vanguards perish in a fierce fight with mega-nobs. The seraphim burn gretchins in the enemy's rear, while battle sisters, with the canoness at the forefront, defend the sanctuary from intruders, and then... a sudden silence. The green-skinned horde retreats, as if it was meant to be.
Only the corpses on the field remind of what happened here. Victory! Victory?
In reality, we just ran out of time because Alexey had to urgently run home to feed his wife, and overall tomorrow's a workday for him, and not like for me.
We settled on a draw because by points at the moment the battle ended, I was leading, but if we consider the next two turns, he has much more resilient squads in terms of tanking, while my main chance is to take down his home point. This, in general, is not that difficult, but then there's mathematical magic in the depths we didn't delve into. The orks knocked, and they were fine. The sisters protected the monastery, and they too were fine.
I played Bringers of Flame (all firearm assault weapons with +1 strength within 6 inches), Alexey played Bully Boyz (double Waaagh).
For the first time brought out sacrosanct sisters and seraphim, overall pleased with both. The first honestly tanked everything that came at them, and the second as it turned out gave me victory by points at the time of the end of the game. They could have given more, but I'm a clueless commander of a lion army. In the first turn, I could fulfill two missions. Or max one, just maneuver the seraphim correctly. In the end - I failed Engage on all fronts and didn't max Secure No Man's Land because I left the seraphim off the point.
The vindicare girl is once again somehow a trap. Because she couldn't shoot at Gazka, I rightly broke his bodyguards with meltas and bombarded him. She killed a gretchin and, yes, solidly hit the boss on the white squig, but what's the difference if there's no way to get to him through the fat cavalry?
The imagifer generally justified herself again, even though a couple of times I failed a 2+ save purely by random shots.
Also, at the end of the game, I dropped my phone by accident, despite the photo in the end looking pretty good. Alexey doesn't seem to be upset about the nob, but I still apologized twice. I like the detachment, but, probably, under it, I don't need rhinos and repentia; I'd better have a couple of immolators instead. Or a second tank. To ride around and do pew-pew. And the sacrosanct sisters would surely fare way better if I could hand them minus to hit against them. But again, in Bringers there’s a stratagem like "minus AP for the opponent," and in Champions, there isn’t. Without it, the chicks would have been chopped up much harder on the home point.
Reaping Ingress, as always, is an awesome stratagem. I also executed it decently (kind of) because the girls went out and cleared gretchins off two points right away, so the opponent couldn't score them, and Alexey saw that I failed to close the hole in the back (indeed failed; I could have blocked it by pulling the rhino back) and deployed a squad that turned nearly everything over there on its head.
Overwatching with flamers is fun, but not when the cavalry squig comes down from high to hit the flamer :D
I’ll think again about whether I want to play this detachment another time or go back to my usual "Champions of Faith."
Love wargames, play wargames, thanks everyone for reading!