We got the maelstrom mission where we have an ever decreasing amount of objectives, which is a good mission for my ork army as it means I can score while I have plenty of units and then as my army inevitably withers away I am expected to achieve less with limited resources.
We deployed. We were sat on obj 1, 2, 4 and obj 5 was in easy reach. obj 3 and 6 were deep in enemy territory.
Once we had finished deployment, our opponent got their armies out of the box... I hadn't particularly paid attention, I'd seen him rolling psychic powers and warlord traits and making notes on his list (which was on his phone, I'm not the first to find this irritating...), but I hadn't examined it, this is a friendly club game, not a tournament...
So he deploys. A stompa. Plus a few psykers hiding behind it. My teammate asks where the rest of the army is, but I already know it's nothing but MEKs in the stompa to be a repair battery (and a KFF no doubt) The other opponent deploys a herald of nurgle and the slaanesh thing. I don't know how many points the forge world creature was, but it was a GC T7 with 6W (to begin with, it gains more when it kills stuff, up to 10) and a 3++ save that may even have been rerollable... damn near everything on that thing was rerollable, I can't remember if the saves were too. Right, so we have a few psykers, a GC and a Super Heavy in 2500. Against a balanced CAD Ork force and a Space Wolves bunch of thunderwolves, wulfen and Leman Russ. Right.
So I think "We won't kill either of those things, let's just try to outscore them and then not die"
So we go first, and draw our objectives:
Secure Obj 3
Secure Obj 3
Secure Obj 6 (The Stompa was sat between 3 and 6)
Kill a vehicle or Monstrous Creature (So the Stompa or the Slaanesh GC)
Kill something in Assault (Turn 1?)
Kill the enemy warlord (Hiding IN the Stompa)
Right.
So over the course of the next few turns we were ditching one of these each turn but it is the ever decreasing objectives game, so we pretty much always had enough obj and our hand was stagnant. The Ork psykers had all taken daemonology and we ended up with a couple of summoned Great Unclean Ones, but on the bright side killing one of those got us the "Kill an MC" obj. So we scored that point and drew... "Secure Obj 6"
Over the course of the game we took 24 hull points off the Stompa. It ended the game on full health. The GC ended on 10W but I didn't even try to do anything against that. It just walked around with impunity killing units. We couldn't kill practically anything in their army. We couldn't ignore the problem and hunt obj. There was nothing for us to do but roll dice in futility, then watch on their turn as all our work was undone, and we removed more units.
It wasn't even THAT effective for our opponents either. I have been playing the Deffskulls for a while now and I have NEVER had so many models alive at the end of turn 7, and normally that's starting with 2000 of Orks, not 1250.
The final kicker was that the GC killed the grots that had been on Obj 1 all game, we rolled, there would be a turn 7, so I drew a fresh maelstrom card... "Secure Obj 1"
Oh how fate mocked me that day.
So, with us having killed two (summoned) Great Unclean Ones, 6 (summoned) plaguebearers 1 (summoned) daemonette and I think 3 wierdboyz and 3 meks, we had killed a grand total of maybe 200 points from their 2500 list. So they must have trounced us right? Nope. They won 5 points to 3. We had first blood, kill an MC and linebreaker. They had Linebreaker, and had accrued 4 points (one for obj 3, one for obj 6, another for killing units and another for killing stuff in assault if I recall correctly) If we hadn't been stiffed by such a bad draw, we'd have run away with that game. We could have ignored their forces, scored objectives, and it still would have been a boring game. I don't know if they enjoyed the game, I know that I certainly didn't.
Now normally people don't bring that sort of stuff to the club, we do have one member who likes his tournaments and has been running that sort of thing, and I think these two have been playing him a lot recently. I told them after the game, that next time, warn people. If they want a tournament test, I can bring that... I don't enjoy those games, I feel like there is no flavour to them, but have done it on occasion to help someone out with a practice game (running a warcon against a warcon to give a friend a test game was probably the second least enjoyable game I've ever had) But dropping that list on someone unexpectedly is NOT ON. And even more so after they've bloody deployed! I don't know if I'd have deployed much differently if I'd known what we were facing, I suppose I'd have known that he wouldn't have mobility and I could have exploited that a little but still, even if I'd stood by the deployment, I feel suddenly revealing the Stompa like "surprise" was a little unpleasant.
Ah the irony. I go to a tournament, play a list with 3 riptides, and it's when I come home to my "casual" games club, that I have a truly unpleasant game. Hopefully this will not be repeated often.
Sorry this post is a bit wordy, wanted to get stuff off my chest, will hopefully have something a bit more interesting next time, but by all means do drop your thoughts in the comments.