40k Battle Report: Grey Knights vs. Orks 2k

What up?  Got a game in this weekend against a buddy's Ork army.  It was a pretty hard fought game, and all I have to say is: thank God for Cleansing Flame!

I played my Crowe 2.0 list that you are probably familiar with by now. 

The Ork list was approximately...

Warboss on Bike

8x Nob Bikers kitted out with Pain Boy

Big Mek with the gun that has a 2d6 strength large blast thing  (You might say "WTF?!" but as you'll see this was really strong for him.  My Ork buddy has a nasty habit of playing "bad" units and getting insanely good mileage out of them)

3x12 Truck Boyz

12x Burna Boyz in a Looted Wagon (Another "bad" unit he gets insane mileage out of.  Most people ignore it, until he does a drive by and hits your unit with 12 flame templates and does 30ish wounds)

2x Deff Copta

Zagstruk? with a sizable unit of Storm Boyz

We rolled Seize Ground with Dawn of War.  He won the roll off and elected to go second.  

I deployed a unit of Purifiers in the midfield, put Crowe in Reserve and elected to have everything roll on turn 1.  He deployed nothing electing to have his stuff roll on turn 1.  He kept the Koptas and Zagstruk in reserve.

Grey Knights Turn 1

I rolled on and popped smoke on most of my tanks.  I knew he wouldn't have much shooting, but I also knew he would be into my lines by turn 2, so there was no sense in saving the smoke launchers.  There was nothing to shoot at, so my turn was over.

End Grey Knights Turn 1

Orks Turn 1

He rolled on with his stuff.  The Nob bike deathstar turbo boosted on towards my left flank.  He sent two units of Truck Boyz and the Burnas up the middle, and a unit of boyz on the right.  He walked on the Big Mek and ran him during the shooting phase behind a rock facing my left flank.  Nothing for him to do in his shooting so he passed the turn.

End Orks Turn 1

GK 2

With the Nobs bearing down on me, I focused some fire on them.  My Psyflemen all fired on the Nobz, killing 3 or 4 of them.  Three of my Purifier units fired Psycannons at them out of the hatch but did nothing.  Actually, I think one of them did a wound to the Warboss.  My Razorbacks blew up the Truck on the right flank and the other popped a Truck in the center.  The Nobz passed their leadership test, and I passed the turn.

All in all, I was happy to have thinned out the Nobs as well as I did.  I figured with their numbers thinned out a bit that even if they demeched those Purifiers my shooting following by a Hammerhand charge would be enough to kill the rest of them.

End GK 2

Orks Turn 2

This was a bad turn for me.  I took serious heat and thought the game was slipping away from me.

He called a Waagh! which allowed his Orks in the center to completely surround my center Rhino.  On of his Koptas came on behind my Razorbacks on the right.  On the plus side, Zagstruk deep struck on the left behind my two Dreads, but scattered off the table and were lost in the mishap.  That was a huge threat taken care of.  Whew.

In the shooting phase, his Shock attack Gun failed to open a Rhino.  His Kopta fired missiles in the rear of a Razorback, exploding it, and killing 3 Purifiers.  I believe he exploded the other Razor with the missiles from the Boyz squad, which killed one of the Purifiers.

In the assault phase, his Warboss charged a Rhino.  Since it didn't move and he was Str 10 he auto-penetrated.  Nice.  The Rhino exploded, but none of the Purifiers died.  The two Boyz squads in the center assaulted the Rhino and wrecked it without exploding it.  Auto-dead Purifiers.  Sad face.  That more or less made up for him losing Zagstruk and the Stormboyz.  He charged his Boyz on the right into my unit of 2 Purifiers.  The Purifiers cast Cleansing Flame, killing 4 or 5.  Then they killed one or two with their halberd attacks.  His attacks back killed one Purifier.  I ran the unit down and consolidated.

End Orks Turn 2

Grey Knights Turn 3

I rallied a bit this turn.

I disembarked my Rhino on the left so I had two full squads of Purifiers ready to take care of the Nobs and Warboss.

In the shooting phase I dropped some damage on the Nobs and all he had left was the Warboss.  I wrecked the looted wagon forcing out the Burnas.

In assault, I charged his Kopta on the right and charged 20 Purifiers into his Warboss.  I cut down the Warboss about as easily as you'd expect 40 Str 5 power weapon attacks to do.  On the other side, I failed to kill the damn Kopta and he somehow made the hit and run roll and jumped out.

End GK 3

Orks Turn 3

His two units of Boyz in the center moved to attack my left flank.  The intact truck moved backwards and picked up the disembarked Burnaz.  His other Kopter came on from reserve.

In the shooting phase, that Kopster killed one of my Purifiers on the right.  The Shock Attack gun dropped base this turn.  The big template hit my Purifiers and rolled... boxcars.  8 Purifiers sucked into the warp.  

One of his units of Boyz charged the Purifiers that took 5 casualties from the big gun.  His other Boyz charged a Dread.  The Kopter charged my dread on the right.  Cleansing Flame killed 5 of the truck Boyz, and my normal attacks killed like 1.  His attacks were more than enough to kill the 4 or 5 Purifiers they were in combat with.  His Boyz failed to hurt my Dread, which failed to hurt them back and they piled in.  The Kopter immobilized the Dread on my right.

At this point I my casualties were starting to mount up, but I had most of his stuff neutralized except for the Burnaz.

End Orks Turn 3

Grey Knights Turn 4

Crowe came on from reserve right behind my Dreads on the left, intent to rescue the Dread that was locked up with the Boyz.  My Purifiers on the left shot the Boyz on the left off the board.  They braced for another hit from the Mek Boy.  On the right, my Purifiers moved away from the objective because they didn't want to be in charge range of the Burnaz next turn.  They managed to kill the 2nd Deff Kopter with Pyscannon shots.

In Combat my Dread failed to kill the Kopter and again he made his Hit and Run roll and jumped out.  On the left, Crowe cast Cleansing Flame, killing 7 of the 12 Orks, and went into his Defensive Stance, which allowed him to weather the remaining attacks back Matrix style.  Those Boyz lost combat by a lot, and broke.  Crowe did a sweeping advance, caught them, and wiped them out. 

At this point, he had no scoring units left, so he was playing for the draw and/or trying to table me.  It would be a tough road to go as all he had left were the Burnaz and the Big Mek.

End GK 4

Orks Turn 4

He had to do something about my 10 Puriers on the left objective, so he moved the Truk with the Burnas flat out over the terrain in the middle and parked next to it, contesting it.  His hope was that I couldn't explode the Truk and charge the Burnaz.  

The Big Mek's shot exploded one of my Psyflemen.

His Kopta charged the Dread on my right, but failed to hurt it, and I failed to hurt him back.  Another draw.

End Orks 4

Grey Knights 5

In the movement phase I moved my Rhino right up beside his Truk, so if I Wrecked it, he would have to deploy on the side of the Truk next to my Purifiers and I'd be able to shoot/charge them.

My Purifiers opened fire with psy-stormbolters and exploded the Truk.  Nice job Str 5!  My Psyfleman shot and killed that damn Big Mek finally.

My Purifiers charged into the Burnaz and my Purifiers on the right charged into the combat between the Kopter and the Dread.  On the right, they turned on Hammerhand and cut down the annoying Kopter whose Hit and Run shenanigans was a thorn in my side all game.  They only consolidated 1" though, which was not enough to get in distance to claim the objective.

On the left, I cast Cleansing Flame, killing 4 or so Burnaz.  My attacks killed 5 more.  The Burnaz attacks back killed 1 Purifier.  The ran for it, I caught them and killed them.  I consolidated, and claimed the objective.

I was very worried about the objective count only being 1-0, completely forgetting that he was tabled.  In any event, despite only securing one objective I did kill all the Ork models on the table, so it was a pretty solid victory nonetheless.

End GK 5, End Game

All in all, I played pretty well.  My huge mistake was allowing that Rhino to get surrounded.  I wasn't thinking about that possibility at all, and lo and behold it happened.  I'll bet it doesn't happen again anytime soon, though.

MVP of the match for me was Cleansing Flame.  In a match were my regular close combat attacks didn't do much worth mentioning, Cleansing Flame managed to kill about 30-40 Orks by my count.  Pretty damn effective, especially in combats when he charged 12 Boyz into combat with 2 Purifiers.  Those two Purifiers inflicted casualties far in excess of the combat capabilities of 2 marines.  It made even "easy" combats into Pyrrhic victories for the Orks.

Runner up with be the Psybolt stormbolter ammo on my big Purifier squads.  Orks count on T4 to be their primary defense, and having 16 str5 shots from a unit at 24" goes a long way towards mitigating that T4 entirely.