40K Friday - The Tranicos Campaign Battle 1 - Supply Drop!

The campaign begins! Thundwerhawk gunships drop units of Crimson Fist marines in locations all over the planet to assess the magnitude of the Ork problem. For one force things get complicated early as their follow-up supply drop is knocked off course by unexpected heavy fire from a hidden ork force. Annoyed but unafraid, Captain Banderas leads a team to locate and secure the supplies for his men...

Lining up before the battle

This was the kickoff for our year-long 40K campaign and it was a lot of fun.  This is an escalation campaign to give us all a reason to paint a little more and to ensure we play regular games.

We started with 500 points which is really really small for a 40K battle though it's not far off from what our Rogue Trader fights used to look like - well, mine anyway. The Apprentices weren't around back then. Anyway 500 points gave me this:


1 Captain Banderas (Space Marine Captain) @ 128 Pts
     #Iron Halo; Power Armour; Storm Bolter; Power Fist (x1); Frag Grenades;
     Krak Grenades; Warlord

9 Tac Squad Alpha (Tactical Squad) @ 175 Pts
     Combat Squads; Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x9); Bolter (x7); Missile
     Launcher; Flamer; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Space Marine Sergeant @ [31] Pts
          Power Armour; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs

9 Tac Squad Beta (Tactical Squad) @ 195 Pts
     Combat Squads; Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x9); Bolter (x7); Missile
     Launcher; Flamer; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Space Marine Sergeant @ [51] Pts
          Power Armour; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades; Power Fist

Models in Army: 21
Total Army Cost: 498


That's not a lot to work with, but with combat squadding it gives me two 5-man flamer/sgt squads for close up stuff and a pair of 5-man squads with a missile launcher to stay back and shoot things. Plus Captain Banderas of course. My Warlord trait was "Dust of a Thousand Worlds" which gave my captain and all friendlies within 12" the Move Thru Cover rule - very nice.

Starting positions

Apprentice Red's Evil Sunz mob consisted of a Big Mek and some boyz mounted in a battlewagon (that rusty vehicle in the upper part of the pic), two individual Big Gunz (Kannons) in the center of the board, and a dreadnought (which counted as Troops because of the Mek, which is a handy way to get nastier stuff into a low point game). The 'wagon had a kannon and a deffrolla, the dread had 2 DCCW's and 2 big shootas.

We played "Crusade" and ended up with 5 objectives. The red barrels in the pictures are the objectives, tying in nicely with the supply drop theme. They ended up roughly 2 on his side, 2 on my side, and one in the middle. I opted to set up second/move second and the fight was on!

Bottom of Turn 1 - Orks have moved, Marines have not

Turn 1 - The Orks move up, the wagon turns sideways for some reason, and there is a bunch of shooting that mostly misses (Orks!) and that which hits bounces off of the always reliable power armor. The marines close-squads advanced, one missile squad bounced a shot off the side of the wagon and the other missed the kannon battery completely.

Top of Turn 2

Dreadnought 11 o'clock!

Turn 2 - Ork shooting manages to kill the first marine - on turns 1 & 2 5 out of 6 blasts land on target over the marines and it finally catches up with them. The marine close-combat squad on the right moves up and then charges the battlewagon, smashing it with krak grenades and the sergeant's power fist! The explosion kills a few boyz but the marines are unscathed. First Blood to the marines!

Death of a Battlewagon

End of Turn 2

Ork Turn 3 - The boyz charge the Alpha close combat squad and Captain Banderas challenges the Big Mek to personal combat, which he accepts. The boyz wipe out the tac squad completely, while Banderas utterly destroys the Mek. Slay the Warlord! Leaping from the fray, the Captain moves away from the raging orks and prepares to gun them down with his brother marines.

This roll resulted in the deaths of 5 marines. Sometimes the armor just doesn't work.
(6 wounds from orks, armor saves are a 3+ ...)

Bottom of Turn 3

Marine Turn 3 - After the mixed results of the hand to hand assault above the marines descide to do what they are good at and blast the boyz into oblivion with rapid firing bolt guns and frag missiles. Feeling somewhat redeemed, the marines are in a strong position as the orks have no more scoring units.

Captain Banderas leads the firing to finish off the boyz

Turn 4 - The gretchin kannon battery realizes that the marine boss is standing out in the open all by himself, and they nail him with kannon fire, slaying him! To follow up the deff dredd charges into melee with missile squad Alpha (the last place they want to be) and pulps two of them. The marines do pretty much nothing this turn, stunned by the fall of Captain Banderas!

End of Turn 4

Turn 5 - The Orks manage to kill one more tac marine with a krak round and the dredd charges forward to try and push missile squad Beta off of the objective. close combat squad Beta continues to advance on the grot battery but the main action is elsewhere. The marine missile squads, knowing it's a close fight, manage to score two glancing hits on the dreadnought. With a roll the game continues to Turn 6 and the Orks still have a chance!

End of Turn 5

Turn 6 - The orks kill one more marine but the dredd fails his charge. In response, missile squad Alpha nails the lumbering xenos machine in the back with a krak missile, destroying it and the game is over.

The Ork dredd falls and the grots are about to die flaming death, bringing the fight to an end.

In the end the Crimson Fists held two objectives plus Slay the Warlord, First Blood, and Linebreaker. The orks had only Slay the Warlord, giving the Fists a 9-1 victory in this first battle.

Battle Notes: Red realized pretty quickly that he only had one scoring unit and that he had made a mistake with that choice. His only real chance was to steamroller me off of the objectives and losing the battlewagon, the boyz, and the mek in about one turn decided things right there. Low point battles can be very swingy and this one certainly was - exhibit A being my failed armor rolls in the Turn 3 assault. I also think that for the next low-point battle like this we may go with a 4X4 playing space instead of 6X4. This would also compress the terrain somewhat too.

Force Review:
Marines: Tac marines are stellar at this point level, being very customizable and having the option to split into 5-man units. Don't leave your Captain exposed!

Orks: Big meks are a nice cheap HQ choice but they are not that great at taking on other characters. Kannons are great, and Dredds are fine but it probably should have been in the middle where the big fight was going to happen instead of way off to the side. The ork shooting ended up divided among several targets  and he took 4 turns to get into hand to hand.

We had a lot of fun and at this size the fights do not take as long so we worked in a second battle the same day where I took the Ork side. More on that in Battle 2, coming soon.