Halfway through the third day of fighting, the grenadier veterans on the Imperial left flank were mired in hand-to-hand fighting with the orks in the village of Nenana, and the majority of the 112th Regiment was advancing down the xeno center. To the east, however, ork infantry had seized the village of Karluk, and the ork Deffkoptas had driven back the Imperial’s right flank. The PDF was forced to withdraw.

Continued from Part 1 . . .

Imperial withdrawal

Imperial troops were by no means defeated, but the 112th center—having advanced in the center—found itself outflanked by the Deffkoptas and new reinforcements on the right flank. In addition, the troops had been fighting for three days, and the regimental leadership  feared that exhaustion put the PDF at a severe disadvantage.

“The order was given to withdraw five kilometers to a secondary defensive position,” d’Valos said.

Apparently the greenskins also were having second thoughts about continuing the battle. The ork did not chase the Imperials the next day. Nor the next.

“The strategic assessment was that this was an opportunistic attack by a warlord, rather than a major offensive by the overall ork force,” d’Valos said. “The orks did not have the reserves to continue their attack and, as Imperial reinforcements arrived to bolster the 112nd, the xenos apparently decided to suspend their operations.”

Scenario: Self-made

Victory Points

Imperial: Holding one objective (3 v.p.) = 3 v.p.

Orks: Holding one objective (3 v.p.) + First Blood (1 v.p.) + Linebreaker (1 v.p.) = 5 v.p.

Click here to return to the beginning of this battle report.

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Ork victory!

Several PDF troops reported seeing orks roaring in the distance, raising their weapons in victory as the 138th Regiment withdrew from the fighting.

TheGM: The Gaffer beat me, but I feel good about how I fought this battle.

I too often take a defensive stance, surrendering  the initiative to my opponent. But this time, I was determined to be more aggressive—but only at the appropriate time.

Thus, I deployed in two lines of infantry, anchored on the flanks by armored assets.My plan was to allow the orks to slam into my front line, as orks are wont to do. If I could weather that assault, I would counterattack with my second line and turn the enemy flanks.

Then I would push hard to seize the three objectives, positioned equally along a line that stretched across the center of the table.

As a plan, it worked pretty well. Although I took heavy casualties in the initial assault, I weakened the ork vanguard with long-range fire. I also positioned my surviving front line so that, while I could shoot, it would be difficult for the orks to charge (next turn) anyone but my survivors.

And they did attack the survivors. So I advanced, killed almost all the orks with gunfire, and with one unit, charged the ork remnant and wiped them out. 

Success!

All was good—until a squadron of DeffKoptas infiltrated my right flank and got some lucky shots on my Lemon Russ. It went up in ball of flame.

Crap.

But I didn’t quail. I stuck to the plan. I left one infantry unit to challenge the Deffkoptas and boldyl advanced on the central objective.

On the opposing flank, I used my Sentinel to threaten the Battlewagon (the battle report might exaggerate slightly the size of the opposing armies). Against the advancing orks on the left flank, I sent forward a Veteran squad in a Chimera.

The game ended on Turn 5. I held the central objective. I originally had control of the left objective, but although I wiped out the ork infantry, the Battlewagon survived everything I could throw at it, and it moved to contest control.

On the other flank, an ork squad, which spent the entire battle advancing through difficult terrain, just managed to seize that objective.

So, each army controlled one objective, one was contested, but the orks had killed the first unit in the battle (First Blood in 7th Edition rules) and had a unit in my deployment zone (Linebreaker).

It’s hard to say who would have won if the fight had continued to the death. But that’s not how Warhammer 40K works. The Gaffer won fair and square.

(And the Gaffer is welcome to put his spin on this fight. For example, I forgot to mention my Chimera held a squad of Veteran troops, which might have caused him to stay inside of the Battlewagon rather than disembark and allow me to hit him with a flamer, two heavy flamers, and 14 shotgun blasts.)

Still, I’m just satisfied that I had a plan and stuck to it. I pushed aside my cowardly instincts and actually advanced aggressively. And I didn’t make any huge mistakes this time.

And I tend to write ht the battle reports. So, that means I did great, right?

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our hobby adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop. If the adventures are described with a slight bias in TheGM’s favor, tough luck.