6 Nations Round 2: Barbarians

That's a lot of Lootas.

They've probably got other names to go by too but I'm not sure what they are. Still dying of a gin-flavoured hangover I was thrown up with the Barbars captain Gareth and his 45 Lootas. Yeah, this was going to be messy.

I had to get stuck in but things didn't go my way when I lost the roll to go first. I was wondering about what and how to deploy when I asked Mike beside if I should reserve everything or deploy everything. 'Seize' was all he had to say.


Rolling 6's: great advice.

Game 2 vs Barbarians
Primary: Multi-objective (in the centre of each empty deployment zone and the middle of the board)
Secondary: Single objective (in our deployment zone)
Deployment: Spearhead

Gareth's list was:
Big Mek with Eavy Armour, KFF
3 x 15 Lootas
20 Orks with Nob, Eavy Armour, Bosspole
3 x 12 Orks with Nob, Eavy Armour, Bosspole in Trukks with Rams, Red Paint Jobs
10 Grots with Runtherd
3 x Deffkoptas with Buzzsaws
Battlewagon with Deffrolla, RPJ, Riggers

Deployment

The reason for the confusing pic on the left is that it is the table that this game was played on. I got the corner where the Land Raider is while Gar got the one where the Dark Eldar Venom is.

The big piece in the middle is crucial - the two walls on the right were solid and so they blocked LOS to my stuff and I had to use them to cut down the Lootas fire arcs. See where the bottle of water is - that's where the Long Fangs went so they 'd be out of range of the Lootas guns while being able to cover 2/3 of the board and punish anything that came toward them. Like squishy Trukks.

This was my deployment: the 4 lads, the ablative wounds...wolves and the Long Fangs packed into the back. I needed them to rush forward and get stuck in before the fecking Lootas gunned them all down. At least when the Wolves died they'd all be seperate targets and would require Lootas to split their fire to gun them down.

I seized and moved first.

Nice.

Turn 1
I moved, rolling poorly and fleeted poorly.

Gar moved a bit, then shot killing off most of the Wolves.

Turn 2
I moved, rolling poorly and fleeted poorly with the lads that all chose to go their seperate ways. The WGBL bolted left and had a choice of either the Wagon that had moved 6" or a Deffkopta. I went for the Wagon but was out. Two of the Rhino squads showed up and I put one on my far right so it could spend the rest of the game going for an objective out there and the other behind a hill so it could get the objective in my half on the left.

Gar had a Trukk show up on my right while the Wagon disgorged the boys to gank the WGBL. Which they didn't, instead they chose to drive past and attack one of the Lords while the newly-arrived squad did the same so there were 3 of the TWC charged. The WGBL and the Claw Lord fell over while the Bear Lord was bogged down and the Warrior Born fella managed to carve his way through a unit and hold out.

Turn 3
A unit of GH show up in the middle and race toward the Wolf Lords stuck in combat while the one on the left advances. I shoot up a Trukk in the middle and dump out a unit of boys on their asses while I also managed to stun the Wagon. The Bear Lord took the Deffkoptas with him and the Warrior Born Lord continued to cleave through a unit by himself.

The Lootas gun down the Bear Lord, although one of them hops into the silenced Wagon to use it as a gunboat next turn and pop the Rhino near the middle. Thankfully the Warrior Born guy manages to see off the last of the Orks in combat but with another pile of them looking at him it doesn't look good.

Turn 4
With all the Lords are dead at this stage its up to the Grey Hunters to carry the can. One does just that: it bags the Battlewagon in the centre, takes out the Lootas in combat (including the Big Mek) and force the lot of them to run away. The Fangs tag another Trukk while the guys on the left hide behind a hill near an objective. The squad that took out the Wagon were hiding behind the central LOS-blocking wall so they couldn't be shot, keeping one of my scoring units on the objective.

Or so I thought. There were 3 guys that could shoot at the unit and it was enough to bag one before they were pulled down by a horde of Orks. Pity.

Turns 5, 6 and 7
If the game ended on Turns 5 or 6 I had it won as I had 2 units on objectives and Gareth none but he managed to get some Orks stuck in on my right although they were demolished by the Grey Hunters behind the hill there. In the end it came down to the Long Fangs shooting at a Trukk for 2 turns. Turn 6 I immobilised it and Turn 7 I tore off its gun.

Thinking back I should have pounded a squad of 8 Orks with Krak rockets and forced morale tests although I figured that it would be easier to destroy the Trukk and the Grots inside than a unit with Ld 7 re-rolled.

The Grots in the Trukk were in the centre while I had the left-hand side one near my board edge. Thankfully there were no Troops in Gar's deployment zone. That fecking trukk almost lost me the game - I moved one of the two units of GH on my left behind the hill out to cock-block any potential cheeky objective grabs by the trukk and I moved 2" and ran 2" but that was enough to keep the Trukk more than 3" away and be outside Tank-shock range. Despite being hammered by the Lootas they passed all of their saves to hang onto the objective and give me a 10-10 draw.

Game 3 was against Scotland.