Smacked Upside the Head

I had game of Epic last night with Andy H and his Orks. With 3000 pts per side, I fielded:

Ravager Titan
Feral Titan
Platoon with havocs in rhinos
2 x Platoon in rhinos
Raptors (4) with 4 lesser daemons in daemon pool
2 x Forlorn Hope in rhinos
Terminators (6)

Orks:
Big Mob in battlewagons
2 x Mobs on foot
2 x tank formation
Stormboyz
Speed Freakz
Fightabombers (6)

I was slightly cocky with my massive marines so advanced them on the left flank to forward positions. The orks responded with lots of doubling and shooting and murdered several rhino transports before breaking my big platoon! Ouch! I underestimated his firepower. On the other side I took a quick lesson in Titan Killer weapons as the Feral titan took a Supa Zzap gun and lost two out of three damage points.

On turn two I withdrew from the killing field on the left flank hoping the orks would follow but Andy didn't bite and instead redeployed to the right flank where the Battle Titan and terminators were making an advance. The terminators broke under the fire of the Big Motorized Mob. Turn three the hustle for objectives began with both sides mostly maneuvuring and little damage being done (althought the fightabombers finished off the broken feral titan). Neither side had any goals accomplished so we went into turn 4.

The Terminators were assaulted by the big mob but their armoured held out leading to an even roll off... which I lost by 1. Drat! The Orks won the initiative for the first time this game and quickly choose to sustain fire their tank formation on the ravager. Since the Battle Titan only had one void shield the Supa Zzap guns and regular firepower took him down five damage points and got a critical. Broken, I tried to get away to survive and keep that one Objective out of his hands but the fightabombers swooped in for that last point of damage.

Still, after four turns we were tied 1 -1 . He had the Break Their Spirit objective with the downing of the Titan, while I had the They Shall Not Pass objective since Andy wisely protected his Blitz instead of mad-dashing into my half of the table. Darn orks are getting smarter!

We added up victory points and saw the Orks had an unsurprising and commanding lead: ~1700 to ~900.

Analysis:

Andy played a very strategic game with his orks this time and his timidity almost cost him. He had to pass a -1 init test for the speed freaks to just barely get back in time to prevent me from getting the blitz objective. Still, in the end his army was mostly intact while mine was not so happy.

For my part, I got overconfident with the power of my marines and rushed them into a killing zone in turn 1. Who knew orks could shoot? Although I still had the majority of my marines, their rhinos were mostly gone and the centre of the board belonged to orks. This allowed Andy to wisely re-deploy to take on the Ravager titan and Terminators and prevent my easy Blitz victory.

In the end, I seriously think taking a large titan when your opponent has none is a handicap. While the Ravager was fun, it was too many points in something fairly easy to take down. Turth be told, I didn't help my case by putting the darn thing off on a flank alone but I didn't expect the Feral titan to die so easily nor the terminators to break. Ah well, lesson learned.

Great game and I'll get my revenge on Andy next time!