M32 Battle Report 3: Blood Angels Raid on Ork Fuel Depot

 "Surprise insertion. Eliminate all six targets. Rapid extraction before the enemy can respond."

-Captain Garo, Blood Angels Second Company

Background:

The Ork invasion of Xhorik Prime is well underway. Battles rage across northern Bhorivor and northeastern Kozar. After a number of early defeats, including the loss of Vayya and its mines, the planetary defenses are stiffening as reserve regiments are mobilized to the front lines to stall the ork advances. But with Imperial garrisons under pressure along the entire front, and no effective reserves arriving from Unimund, any hopes of an effective counterattack by the humans are still far from realistic. The priority for the Imperial forces is to slow the Orks and buy time for reinforcements to arrive. 

Scenario:

We played the Raven Guard First Strike scenario from IA8: Raid on Kastorel-Novem. The space marines would be arriving Deep Strike and had to destroy at least four of the six ork fuel tanks. The fuel tanks count as immobile vehicles with AV12 and any Vehicle Destroyed or Explodes! result would destroy it. Alternatively, all attacker units are assumed to be equipped with demo charges which can be attached by assaulting the fuel tank, causing them to automatically explode at the end of the assaulting player's next turn. Night Fighting would be in effect for the entire batttle. 

Belligerents:

Blood Angels Space Marines

• Captain
• Terminator Squad
• Assault Squad
• Assault Squad
• Tactical Squad
• Tactical Squad
• Tactical Squad
• Dreadnought

Orks

• Warboss
• Meganobz with trukk
• Tankbustas
• 'Ard Boyz
• Slugga Boyz
• Slugga Boyz
• Shoota Boyz
• Warbikers

Battle:

Ork tankbustas in the industrial center guard one of the fuel tanks.

Ork warbikers and the mega-trukk form a rapid response force on the bridge.

Evil Sunz slugga boyz mill around the refinery.

Deathskull slugga boyz guard the industrial center.

Suddenly, drop pods carrying Blood Angel space marines streak from the night sky, disgorging their deadly cargo in the midst of the ork-infested refinery.

The tactical squads immediately take up firing positions and target the vital fuel tanks.

A terminator squad and dreadnought are sent in to engage and destroy the orks to clear a path for the units assigned to destroying the objectives.

The ork warbikers race toward the attackers, but are too far away to stop the marines from destroying the first fuel tank with lascannon fire.

The terminators' firepower whittle down the incoming mob of slugga boyz, but the survivors charge into melee and bring down the terminators.

Captain Garo and his assault squad finally arrive.

They are quickly caught in a pincer attack between ork units.

The marines kill many greenskins but the power klaws of the meganobz are overwhelming.

The warbikers use their mobility to strike the tactical squads before they can blow another fuel tank.

The orks have swept this area clear of attackers.

Another tactical squad arrives via drop pod in the midst of the ork position and decimates the shoota boyz with bolter and plasma fire.

The second assault squad tries to fight their way through the Deathskulls to reach their objective.

The assault marines slay numerous orks, but more and more boyz pour into the melee.

The warbikers clean up the isolated tactical squads.

The meganobz re-embark on their mega-trukk to chase down any more marines.

The surviving shoota boyz attack the tactical squad to prevent them from reaching the fuel tanks.

Result: Ork Victory!

Post-Battle:

I cannot find my notes from this battle but the pictures pretty well tell the tale. I believe the marines only destroyed one of the fuel tank objectives. The orks used their numbers to prevent the marines from landing near many of the fuel tanks. They also had a very mobile response force in the center of the table with the warbikers and mega-trukk that could quickly respond to wherever the marines arrived. 

The marines put too much faith in shooting the tanks. They managed to destroy one quickly with a lascannon shot, but the rest of their firing was ineffective. Using the 4th edition vehicle rules, even if you penetrate the armor, you still need to roll high enough to destroy your target, which makes shooting vehicles a bit less predictable compared to the hull point rules. They are more likely to be destroyed in one shot but cannot be whittled down by multiple glancing and penetrating hits. Also, the night fighting rules in this scenario make shooting less reliable. 

I think Pete spread his forces out too much and landed too far from the tanks. And he spent too much time killing orks instead of destroying fuel tanks. In hindsight, assaulting the fuel tanks and using the demo charges is the way to win this mission as they are automatically destroyed the turn after engaging them in melee. To be fair, he did not have the ideal army for this scenario and was trying to scrounge 40k units together out of his Horus Heresy units. 

When we decided to try this scenario, I whipped up the fuel tanks in a couple of hours to have some appropriate objectives. Not bad for building them in one evening and painting them the next morning!

This was a fun little scenario to try something different.