Competitive Battle Report : Adeptus Mechanicus Vs. Orks

Welcome to a Prot Quickie Batrep. Recently I’ve been trying hard to take a very different approach to my competitive AdMech and the last 10 or so games I’ve been juggling a list that is based on the following core:

Cawl (Because I’m Mars… all Mars all the time.)

Daedelosus (because he plugs a problem all AdMech have)

3 x 5 Rangers

3 x Skorpius Disintegrators (with indirect fire)

2 x Skorpius Dunerider (because I’ve found them to be the true saving grace of the army)

Corpuscarii Priests + Fulgurite Priests

Knight Detachment: Preceptor (because it’s cheap and had a role ) + a Helverin and Warglaive.

Inquisitor: Greyfax ? Why? She doesn’t disrupt tactics, and has +1 to Deny the Witch, and can do it twice. I think she’s kind of essential. I don’t see her much on other tables but AdMech know as much about Psychics as I do about Rocket Surgery.

Mars, the worst place in the galaxy to build metallic robots prone to rust.

That’s the core of the 2000 point list with some minor variables. As you can see the controversy here is… I’ve dropped all pretense of what makes Mechanicus good. That is to say: No Onagers. No Kataphrons. No Kastellans. No Destroyers. No Chicken Walkers. Before you call me crazy, let’s see how this battle turns out and I’ll explain my thinking….

The Orks (I contend this is still one of the strongest -anti-meta- armies in 40K) consist largely of the following:

2 Shokk attack guns (one of them a relic)

3 x 30 man blobs of boys + another smattering of (I’m guessing) 3 x 20 Grots. It felt like I was playing against a dual batallion and Orks are very Command Point heavy.

Bomber + Dakka Jet (I think he’s experimenting with these)

3 Smasha Guns

Weirdboy with Da Jump (because to take anything else would be Da Dumb.)

Big squad of Lootas

5~ Kopters (these just came in CA19 and are very competitively priced per wound imo.)

Warboss on Bike… and I’ve probably missed something here.

The Game: Early Turns

Everything went according to plan. We played another new CA19 Maelstrom (I still highly recommend these. They are highly dynamic while retaining some controllable, random elements that both players can manipulate through the new Maelstrom rule set.)

I get first turn, and we are on a lovely Gamemat (Gamemat.eu) Mars Battle Mat. The map type is Dawn of War. I Deploy first, since I am the Defender.

I may have screwed up a bit in this deployment, but I ran out of room in a corner. So my Orky opponent counter deployed me taking the shortest distance possible. Now the interesting thing here is I don’t consider this particular Ork list to be extremely assaulty (I’ve seen worse). But my Knight(s) were left a little too close to the center. They would have to swing in to protect the oncoming Ork Hordes!

Cawl instructs the mechanic masses to prepare for impact.

Summary of Early Turns:

The Orks fail to Seize the Initiative. The AdMech do what AdMech do and put a pile of hurt on the greatest threats I can see. Basically the Ork Bomber, and about 27 of an Ork Boy Mob got deleted. I can’t interact with the Lootas, all I can do is force him to use a CP for “Grot Shields” to protect them.

I know my first turn got me a few points but it felt terrible. I knew darn well that killing 3 dudes short of an Ork Boy Mob means he will recycle them…. and that’s what he did.

I forgot to mention my much despised Transuronic Arquebus guns managed to do what they do for me every game… ZERO. Two of them failed to hit and/or wound his 2 Shokk Attack Guns! D’oh. Why are we using wooden guns in the 41st millennium? The good news is with the Bomber down, this freed my Knight Detachment to blow up 1.5 Smasha Guns which was important.

The Orks retaliate, and I make a boo-boo. When I started to shift my army to the left (to close the gap with my Knights) I left the smallest of gaps at over 9″ away on my right. I honestly didn’t think he could fit the recycled Mob in there, but he did. He strung them out along my right side and now I literally felt like I killed nothing.

The Orks of course infiltrated off my side and came in hard. Blowing up one of my Transports. This left me with big problems, and is an AdMech issue in the bigger picture: How to gain board control when you’re so outnumbered.

Oops! The Orks infiltrate off the edge of the world, and I’m in big trouble.

So at the end of Turn 1 the Orks destroyed a Transport, killed the Fulgurite Priests inside (there goes my close combat option) and the other Transport is largely tied up and over half dead. Ouch.

The end of turn 1 Sees the Ork have a massive turn and goes up 7 points to my 2.

AdMech Strike Back: Mid Game

With that many Orks recycled it really stressed to me how I had to kill that entire squad to prevent such goofiness, but I literally fired everything I had. It felt like this might be a game ending move.

Cawl sat by his Skorpius tanks, oil leaking down his leg, pondering his next Primaris invention when it finally occurs to him that he needs to get these Orks out of his deployment zone….

The Admech hit pretty hard. With the Knights slowly coming back into play, the injured transport is pulled out of close combat, and is repaired (twice) to gain some health. Meanwhile the Daedelosus, the Coruspcarii Priests, and good ol’ Salty Greyfax tumble out of the transport and lace into the Ork Boys. It takes almost every gun I have on the table to kill all 30. Ridiculous.

I save the bigger guns for Lootas (which are Shielded again). My Arquebus’ both fail to hit/wound the Shokk attack guns again! (I kid you not this is about the 5th game in a row. I’m thinking the ‘flint lock’ design of the 18th century is NOT the best technology for a sniper weapon.)

The Knights finish off the Dakka Jet, and the Smasha Guns. I really can’t interact with his heaviest fire power (due to character held Shokk attack guns, and Grot Shields in front of Lootas) so I simply continue to fire medium/heavy weapons at his Kopters. I take half them down.

Orks return fire, but this time the stupid Shokk Attack gun goes Uber on him (rolling an 11 for strength). It takes out a Skorpius Disintegrator simply on Mortal Wounds alone. (so many hits… it was so ugly.)

I’m in trouble now. I’m getting outshot, out assaulted, and I have lost board control. The Ork shooting continues to get rid of my Corpuscarii priests, and nearly kills my last Transport.

Where are those Knights? Greyfax complains about modern cellphone rates while the Admech are put on hold as they call the Knights in for back up.

The End is Near….

The Knights are literally the only thing that can pull this train wreck back on track. They are coming, but it’s only turn 3 and I’m facing my THIRD wave of Ork Boys. The Lootas, thankfully, haven’t done much to the Knight, but they have a line of sight issue to my remaining 2 Skorpius tanks… which are moving hard left to avoid a mob of boys.

The Admech have finally thrown enough bodies in front of Loota bullets, that the Orks have run out of CP from fan favourites like “Showin’ Off” and “More Dakka”.

Here comes the calvary! Are they here in time? Or is it just to dig a mass grave site?

The Knights move in, and the Preceptor (who has been rolling like crap) finally stomps out about 6 boyz in a mob. At least it slows them down. The Helverin is good at finishing off Kopters, while the Warglaive gets stuck in the biggest, closest Mob threat.

The Admech are so far behind in points, that Cawl tries to pull off Priority Orders Received, ordering him to kill a character. Somehow I get so incredibly lucky. The Admech kill off 30+ boyz, and Cawl pops the Solar Atomizer off in the face of the Ork Warboss. Unfortunately no picture, but you get the idea. His face looked like a left over Christmas ham sitting in the dusty fields of Mars. While Cawl picked up a juicy 5 point turn.

Unfortunately this would not be enough. The Admech would kill off the rest of the Lootas (without CP they can’t Grot Shield.) I lose a squad of Infiltrators, but pick up additonal points with them first. And I still can’t touch the bloody Shokk Attack guns in his back field, and they are now getting hot.

At the end of 5 the Admech concede losing 12-15.

Lessons Learned….

I call this competitive because although the Orks could bring a few more tweaks to the table, I’m doing my best to bring a true, all arounder type list.

This particular list is the core that I believe works better than most of the units we believe are ‘strong’ in the codex. I hate to say it but I don’t miss the Onager’s performance. Rolling D3 shots a turn for a weapon like that just feels very… 7th edition.

The competitive game has largely evolved into masses of medium to high strength fie power that deals only 2-3 damage on average. This is to get around the incredible survivability of some units with Invuln saves.

What the principle of massed firepower like I’m describing gets you is Math. The Math is simple; force your opponent to roll enough dice, he’s going to fail even the best of saves, and your damage will trickle trough. Whereas a single kill shot (Onagers, Ballistarii Lascannons, etc) put too much weight into getting passed that Invuln shot, or the plethora of damage control mechanisms that Space Marines now have.

So in my opinion (and this is just me), I think the Admech codex desperately needs an overhaul. For the past several months we have been relying on a steady trickle of Special Characters to “fix” broken Data sheets. GW refuses to rewrite data sheets. Instead they will give you an expensive character aura that is supposed to push a finger into the hole of that leaky boat.

Finally we saw new vehicles. I don’t think they are too cheaply costed, but they do show the age of the codex units.

The Orks, as usual, are a handful. A plethora of bodies, great psychics, a great shooting phase, and protected squads of assets with large Grot Foot prints. It’s a darn good army. Even with first turn I couldn’t crack it. Although to be fair I made a mistake in deployment. It was a fun one though, but I think my Knights might be my biggest problem.

Thanks for checking out the batrep!