PRE-GAME — We ended up playing a ITC formatted mission, as this the standard in my area and we both knew them really well. We rolled and got Mission 4 which is a five objective game with kill points and a host of secondary points. Adrian was able to “win” the roll to choose to go first or second, he chose to go 1st which was fantastic for me as I would able to react to his entire deployment.

I want to say before I get into the game details that the only reason I had a chance against Adrian’s Orks was because of the terrain. The terrain set up featured tons of boxes and tall L-Shaped ruins for my units to hide in. 

Turn 1 started off with me not choosing to seize the initiative and Adrian having few targets to shoot. His only ploy was to teleport his Lootas into an actual firing lane and move his planes to do the same. He was able to get everything in sight of one unit, my Scout Bikers. He proceeded to shoot everything at them, and with some help from bad rolls I was able to remove enough models so his last Ork plane could couldn’t finish off the unit. This meant, I denied Adrian from a few critical points and 1st Blood. On my turn 1 I played it safe by hugging terrain and popping 1 scout squad out to kill a unit of Gretchin and take an a bonus point objective from Adrian. This meant on turn 1 I was already up 5-1 in points.  

Turn 2 with Adrian’s Planes, Gorkanaut, and Warboss Biker unable to enter buildings I was content with playing a cat and mouse game. I did though make one big mistake, as Adrian smartly teleported his Boyz into the box, once occupied by my Scouts. This meant he would threaten half my army and I couldn’t just hide to keep him away. This had me dropping my Inceptors into position to charge them, as my only hope was to tie them up and prevent them from getting into my backfield. I also dropped my Plasma Inceptors into what I thought was safe position, but I didn’t pay attention to just how tall the Gorkanaut was. I decided to send in two Bike Captains and the Inceptors at the Boyz, thinking that would be enough to at least hold them in place. What ended up happening was only 1 Captain making the charge. Luckily even with my blunder the Captain magically survived thanks to his high toughness. 

Turn 3 saw the back forth commence, as I would come out of hiding to take objectives and killing just enough to deny Adrian equal amount of kills back. I decided, farming Gretchin was the best policy as he had 7 units of them, since Adrian had mostly killed my three high value units (Plasma Inceptors, Bolter Inceptors, and Scout Bikes), leaving me with little in the way of options.

Turn 4 had Adrian with once again not much to kill, but a Captain and finishing off the Scout Bikers. This was a the turn where I felt the game could swing either way. By feeding Adrian Captains to his objectives, I was able to force his Ork Boyz to stay on his side of the table. This turn also had me learn just how fast the White Scars were, I was able to jump a unit of Assault marines to the Ork castle and flame out a Gretchin unit which opened up a gap to a wounded Ork Weirdboy. 

Turn 5 was a continuation of Adrian forced to commit resources to units he really didn’t want to, now my Assault Squad had to be charged by his Warboss since they were locking a unit of Grots in Assault. This is where I got really lucky and Adrian was only able to kill 3 of the Assault Marines. Now I was able to use the White Scar Chapter tactics to its fullest, jumping the Assault Marines out of assault flaming another Weirdboy dead, and re-charged the weakened Gretchin unit. As well, I ran and used the White Scar strat to move a unit of Intercessors to charge the last Weirdboy and shoot down another Grot unit.

Turn 6 Adrian didn’t have many plays left and his dice failed him trying to kill my Warlord and finish off the Intercessor unit in his base. By playing cagey I was able to pull out 4 point win, which happened to be the margin I got from my fantastic turn 1.

I can’t say how much we both underestimated the White Scars, but like I said above without loads of terrain, this game would have been a much different story. By denying Adrian targets gave me my only chance and thankfully I took it. I am curious how the army will do against a dedicated assault army, I should be able to play either my Space Wolves or Blood Angels friends to test this out. Either way the game against Orks was fun and unpredictable; seeing the White Scars move around the table with lightening speed was just a fantastic added bonus.