The Thin Red-and-Black Line

I think I am going to make a special poster and nail it into the angle of the ceiling above my bed (if you could see the somewhat peculiar architecture of my attic you would understand what I mean), and leave it there for as long as I stick with my current army. Written on the poster will be ‘Never ever even contemplate teleporting onto the table with a Deathwing army – nay, even with a single squad.’

 

 

 

Following last week’s drawn game between my 1st Company Consecrators and Twiggy’s Orks (name changed to protect the innocent. My opponent’s name, not the name of the Orks, obviously) we decided to play a straightforward conventional game in the hope of resolving the situation. Battle Missions indicated we should play a mission entitled All-Round Defence, in which my army would hold the table centre and Twiggy’s Orks would attack from all sides.

I decided to deploy cautiously (or so it seemed at the time), putting the Dreadnought and a squad in the objective (some ruins, another squad to their north, and the Grand Master and his retinue in a Land Raider Crusader (making its first appearance on the table). I left the other two squads in reserve.

The game started well with the Orks not present in numbers: a medium-sized boyz mob to the north and a super-elite Meganob mob approaching from the south. Their fire pattered off the armour of the Consecrators, while in return storm bolters and assault cannon scythed down many of the regular boys. The Land Raider moved to screen the objective from the Meganobs and opened up on them with everything it was carrying. One of them was wounded by the assault cannon, another was vaporised by the multi-melta, their nerve broke and they fled off the table.

As the Orks started turning up in force the Consecrators became increasingly hard-pressed. With this army you live and die with every save you roll and to begin with I was very lucky, taking very light casualties. On the other hand, I wasn’t able to inflict much damage on the massed Orks (what price a Land Raider Helios? Oh, hang on, about fifty quid) and the Dreadnought was only able to kill one of the six Kans lumbering in from the north (the vast majority of the Orks moved in from the same direction, which I initially thought was a possible error). It was stunned on the turn prior to its assault on a stormboy mob, which prevented me from shooting the heavy flamer at them – this might have made a big difference.

Eventually a tidal wave of green warriors crashed into the thin black line of Consecrator terminators. I’d forgotten just how many dice Orks roll in an assault and sure enough my defence started to crumble. At this point I still had a squad in reserve and decided to teleport them on close enough to hopefully distract and divert part of the Ork advance. Needless to say, they scattered into an Ork biker and were never seen again. This was a (fairly) bitter blow, but you get used to these things with the Deathwing.

By the end of turn five all the Consecrator infantry had been hacked down, mostly by the power claws of Ork bosses, and the Crusader was executing a strategic withdrawal. (If nothing else I had escaped the New Model Blues as it had only been hit once all game, and that had bounced off.) Battling in magnificent isolation was the damaged Dreadnought, which was still contesting the objective and keeping me in the game. One more turn would almost certainly see it destroyed by the three Kans manoeuvering to assault it… but the dice came up a 2 and the game ended at the earliest possible moment – in another draw, with the Ork forces much more in evidence. So very much like the previous week, except with fewer Blood Swords and Grey Knights for target practice.

As we were packing up Twiggy and I agreed that the mishap with the teleporter had definitely influenced the game – but on reflection, I don’t think it would have made much difference. There was no way I was voluntarily going near the Kans with my terminators, and once the Dreadnought was stuck in combat with stormboys I had nothing to threaten them with. I think the Dreadnought being stunned was every bit as important. Throwing five more terminators into the grinder probably wouldn’t have made much difference.

And there was no real benefit to teleporting them on anyway: they were coming on somewhere they could initially have deployed in anyway. If I’d started with all five squads, and the Dreadnought, and the Land Raider on the table, it wouldn’t have made a great deal of difference to my tactical play, and in addition I’d have got many more shots off from the two additional assault cannons. So the conclusion I draw is one I’ve drawn repeatedly in the past, but subsequently forgotten every time: don’t teleport with Deathwing! Quite beyond the risk, it splits and weakens the army. Hopefully this will eventually sink in. But until it does, it’s time to start making a poster.