As the orks attempted to advance their armor, they found themselves hampered by the increasing number of greenskin wrecks that blocked the battlefield.

“Are the orks really so stupid? Or is their stupidity a kind of genius. Why would anyone attempt to launch an armored attack through a jungle? It’s madness. Yet it worked. It may not have shattered our defenses, but it created a huge salient in our lines . . . and now we’ll have to spread out our troops to defend these extended front lines. How can you defend against a stupid enemy.“—a regimental officer who insisted on anonymity for his defeatist talk

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Continued from Part 1 . . .

Breakthrough

Ork Big Trakk

Although the two Imperial units, supported by heavy artillery, disabled scores of ork vehicles, the unanticipated number of orks eventually began to tell by the end of the fourth day of fighting.

“The battlefield was covered with burning Killa Kans, wrecked Deff Dreads, and fragments from scores of Looted Wagons,” Wythe said. “But the thick armor of the  Battlewagons were incredibly resilient, and they began to push back our forces.”

The 1st Armored attempted a counteroffensive on the fourth day in hopes of crowding the greenskin vehicles—limiting the effectiveness of their greater numbers and creating a “target-rich” environment for Imperial artillery, Wythe said.

“It worked for a time, but as our forces began to thin, Warbuggies and ork infantry with anti-tank weapons began to target our mechanized forces from the flank and rear. This made our defense unsustainable, and our mechanized forces were ordered to withdraw into the hastily built infantry positions.”

This ork War Trakk explodes after being hit by a Vanquisher Cannon.

Unstoppable

The second line of Imperial defense held out for another three days. But as ork infantry caught up with their armor, a brutal, 72-hour-nonstop assault of Imperial lines led to catastrophic losses, Wythe said.

“We killed 20 orks for every one of our soldiers lost,” he said. “We killed five Battlewagons for every tank lost. But the men were exhausted after countless days of fighting, ammunition could not be replenished fast enough, and the greenskins finally began to find gaps in our lines and exploit them.”

The 12th Belliose Depot Regiment, one of the few off-world reinforcements available for the battle, was largely wiped out.

“It was widely understood that this unit suffered from poor morale and inadequate training,” Wythe said. “It was hoped that fighting from a fortified position would compensate for their poor effectiveness.”

“But, once the orks infiltrated their lines, they panicked and fled. The orks gave chase and slaughtered them, as many soldiers simply dropped their lasguns and fled, which left them utterly defenseless once confronted by the enemy.”

On the fourth day of fighting, a sizable force of Battlewagons began to break through the Imperial’s right flank.

Lost Territory

Over the next 10 days, the orks advanced as much as 10 kilometers a day—an impressive feat given the challenges of moving armor in a tropical forest.

“Once the xenos penetrated our lines, they spread out and kept coming. They moved north, east, and west, and it took a week to transport sufficient reserves to the area to stem the tide,” Wythe said.

High-ranking officers say the jungle terrain, despite providing the orks with some protection from Imperial fire, kept the greenskins from making more gains. 

“You cannot underestimate the logistical challenges of moving hundreds of vehicles down narrow and shadowed jungle trails,” one officer pointed out. “You can clear away brush and small trees, but as vehicle after vehicle churns up the soft dirt of the trail, you create a morass of mud in which a Battlewagon can quickly sink to its axles.”

Indeed, some aerial picts show long lines of orks, all pulling on heavy chains attached to the body of stuck vehicles, the officer said. “They were pulling them forward by hand.”

The ork assault was stopped at great cost in human lives and armored assets, but Imperial officials point out that the orks only seized 160,000 square kilometers of worthless jungle.

Stabilized Lines

According to the Iconia HIgh Command, the Hobru sector of the planet’s defense is again stable, Wythe said.

“We’re not understating the dangers that remain,” Wythe insisted. “But the ork advance has stopped, and we’ve got troops arriving every day to build fortifications, tank traps, and other defenses to prevent any further xeno advance.”

That said, he acknowledged that  the orks had managed to seize more than 160,000 square kilometers of Imperial territory. “It’s not good, but it’s not even one percent of the planet’s surface, so people shouldn’t be panicking.”

Other sources, however, report that ork reinforcements are pouring into the region, drawn by word of the intense fighting and the promise of “bashing ‘eads.”

“We fully expect the fighting to break out anew, and what’s to come will be intense,” Wythe concluded.

Click here to return to the beginning of this fight.

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TheGM: The Gaffer and I wanted to do something different, so we pulled out our old 6th Edition Spearhead expansion book and decided to fight an all-vehicle battle.

It was fun. Vehicles were blowing up left and right, and I got to make use of my newly built explosion markers.

It also was nice to actually advance the narrative on Iconia with a real tabletop battle. Except for one battle report four years ago, the fighting on Iconia has been reported in Rumors of the Underhive and a few “historical” updates—but all purposely vague and insignificant because we were just making it up. You know, laying the foundation for a real campaign.

So, finally, we fought a tabletop battle, and the result now has taken the “history” from vague fighting to a tangible shift in the strategic balance. Hey, let’s have a planet’s fate decided (as much as feasible) on the tabletop.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.