A Short Battle Report (that is in fact quite long).

The Orks of Waargh Gitsmasha were moving inexorably towards Scargill but one smaller group (sub)Waargh Tonkwappa and it's ramshackle fleet lost its way due to 'Cheep Navigshunal Gubbinz' and arrived in an unremarkable system with a single habitable planet. Without pause a couple of shuttles were crash landed on the planet's surface to start resupplying the fleet. After shooting up the forest and burning a few trees down, the main Ork force advanced on a large seemingly abandoned human settlement. As the first bikes roared in, seemingly from nowhere, a large force of Aeldari appeared in full battle array. Warboss Tonkwappa bellowed his orders "Roight ladz! Da pansies want a scrap, lets give it to 'em!". 

A Fighter Bommer, Grotz, Stormboyz, Deff Dread, Big Mek and Lootas are in sight, as well as some boyz and bikers. My Guardians, D Cannon and Wave Serpent filled with Asurmen, a Warlock and Dire Avengers lurk in plain view. The Fighter Bommer is a loverly model, nicely painted but I failed to take any more pictures of it for some reason. Next game......

Greetings. Once more I have collated a series of pictures and attempted to add prose to them to give the impression I have a wonderfully complete hobby life. Anyways a brief summary of Orks vs Eldar will follow.

Within the context of the meandering Scargill Cleansing, shortly before reaching their destination, a splinter group of Waargh Gitsmasha; (sub)Waargh Tonkwappa's navigational equipment diverted them to an imperial planet in a sparsely populated area of the Scargill Sector, a system called Last Chance. The only habitable planet, Skorlax drew the Orks like mothbears to wounded Grox. As Waargh Tonkwappa troops started landing they were attacked by a force from Craftworld Ulthwe. The machinations of the Seer council of Ulthwe were coming to fruition. The runes, once cast had indicated that Waarrgh Tonkwappa were a large potent weapon that needed to be redirected. Rather than allow Tonkwappa to continue on towards Scargill, several small groups of rangers infiltrated the hulks and set ultra low frequency devices to steer the primitive spacecraft to Last chance where a large force of Orks were needed. Skorlax's populace had been neutralised months before by an unfortunate event, a large poisonous comet had inexplicably rained toxic dust upon the populated area killing 93% of the population and horribly maiming the remainder. With the humans out of the way Ulthwe needed to entice the Orks to enact a large scale ground invasion. The easiest way to do this is to make the planet seem like it has plenty of enemies to fight upon it. So with this intention, the Seer Council of Ulthwe needed to inflict mass casualties on the Ork initial force to encourage a larger invasion. The reason for the need for Orks remains unclear......

The Game

Due to this game being played 2 or so months ago, the report will be brief and possibly full of errors. Dylan brought a different type of Ork army consisting of a Fighter Bommer, 2 units of 30 grotz, 5 Warbikes and a Boss on a Warbike, Big Mek, unit of Lootas, unit of Stormboyz, 30 Ork boyz and a Weirdboy to move them about with Da Jump. A Deff Dread too. This is as far as I can remember all he brought. My Ulthwe force had Asurmen, Farseer Gelladrill, Warlock Kethamaine, 20 guardians with 2 aeldari missile launchers, 10 Dire Avengers, 5 Rangers, 6 Windriders, 10 Howling Banshees, 8 Dark Reapers, a Wave Serpent  and two Weapons platforms (D Cannons). Same as last time the game was Cleanse & Capture from Maelstrom of War. I will try to summarise the goings on as I am far too lazy to have written notes. Anyway on with the report......

Ulthwe won first turn, I disembarked the Dire Avengers, Asurmen and Warlock who all jogged into the Bastion model that we weren't counting as a Bastion. The Rangers were deployed 9.1" away from the Grotz of the right as one of the objective cards told me to go and get it. The Windriders zoomed over to add shuriken flavoured support. On the left the guardians missile launchers dented the Bommer a wee bit and the Dark Reapers shot up and killed the Deff Dread. I totally forgot to shot my Dire Avenger group at anything so wasted 20 or possible 40 shots on some fortunate Stormboyz. The Rangers rolled a 10 in the assault phase allowing them to get into combat with the Grotz. One rather one-sided combat evicted them from objective three netting me some VP's.  End of Aeldari turn one.

Jetbikes, Banshees and Dark Reapers ready to mess up some ork stuff pronto!

My mission objectives first turn.

A large unruly bunch of Orks wait patiently for psychic redeployment.

Da Orks are coming! Rather a lot of infantry are going to make their way towards the Eldar shortly.

As this game was pre The Big FAQ, the scouts were allowed to start here in the open a 9" charge away from the grots.

How many shuriken weapons can you fit in a Bastion? Well 13 actually. It's a real pity I forgot to shoot up the Stormboyz in my first turn. 😡

At the end of my turn, I furiously photograph the unscathed Stormboyz. So furiously, the picture is slightly blurred!

End of my first turns score.

The Orks turn was next, very inconveniently. As this game was pre The Big FAQ 2018 Dylan's Deffcopters arrived on my right flank ready to impinge on my Craftword's right to express itself and to generally be a big killjoy. He zoomed his Fighter Bommer over the Dire Avengers in the not Bastion and killed a few with a big bomb. The Bikerz raced over to the scouts to 'ave a word wiv dem. The totally unharmed Stormboyz that should have been at the very least 75% fighting capacity flew over to the Guardians, getting within a long charge range. The rest of the Orks shooting phase was a bit uneventful. In combat the Bikerz assaulted the Rangers and the Stormboyz assaulted the Guardians. To keep casualties down I played the Lightning Reflexes strategem on the Guardians giving them a -1 to hit in the fight phase and probably saving quite a few. The resulting return attacks and subsequent morale phase saw the few remaining Stormboyz vacate the battlefield. The Bikerz stuck the boot into the Rangers, unsurprisingly wiping them out. End of Ork turn one...

No sooner than my jetbikes go off into the distance, than a squad of sneaky Deffcopters violate my flank! The biker Boyz seem to have killed all my Rangers, the gitz!

A D Cannon skulks behind a staircase and my Guardians hang around covering an objective all through the game.

In my next turn I ran the Banshees over to cover an objective, but close enough to the Deffcopters to assault them too. The Dire Avengers and Asurmen moved towards the Ork Big Mek, leaving the Warlock to mind the objective. I moved the Windriders into Dylan's deployment zone to shoot up some Lootas. I then concentrated my heavy weapons on the Fighter Bommer, shooting it down with the help of the Aeldari Missile Launchers. The Dark Reapers also shot down a Deffcopter and damaged a second. In the assault phase the Banshees attacked the remaining Deffcopters dismantling them.

Banshees grab an objective.

Then destroy some Deffcopters.

The black undercoated blurry jetbikes shoot up some Orks.

Dylan needed to make up some VPs and he had to grab objective 5 which I had carelessly vacated to kill some Deffcopters. The Grotz over on my left sat on their objective hoping that the objective they were sitting on would suddenly become important enough for them to get 'participant' badges in the post battle after party. The Bikerz then zoomed over to beat up the Windriders and the large mob of Boyz just lurked where they were. The reason for this was the Weirdboy Da Jumped them over to the objective 5. They then shot up and killed at least 4 Banshees by sheer weight of numbers. Some of the Dire Avengers were perforated by Loota bullets and then came the assault phase. It was only the Bikerz who could and they killed three Windriders. At the end of turn 2 I had totally forgotten to take a picture of the VP marker so you will have to remain suspenseful waiting for the next turn.........

Who then Da Jump their way to the other side of the battlefield.

The black undercoated previously blurry jetbikes are now being attacked by black undercoated Ork warbikes.

As is customary in my battle reports, excitement tends to outweigh the taking of adequate pictures and this game is no different. I was ahead in VPs so all I really needed to do was take out the large group of Orks in the centre and the it would be a uphill struggle for the Orks. I had to make sure no more VPs were gained from the large mob on objective 5. I moved the Banshees and Farseer close enough to them so that Doom and a successful charge should see them off. The Guardians sat where they were. They killed a couple of Grotz but they surely didn't win any awards for outstanding contribution. The D Cannon on the right killed a couple of Boyz as did the Reapers and Banshees in the shooting phase. The Wave Serpent that hasn't been mentioned yet this game moved forward and shot a couple of Lootas. Asurmen and the Avengers first shot the Big Mek. then the Phoenix Lord told his little helpers to hold his beer as 'he had this' and assaulted the Ork, I was pretty confident as I reckon Asurmen is one of the better close combat space elfs. This was to prove unfounded in the close combat phase as neither model really did that much. The Banshees were far more effective as they charged in and chopped up the remianing Boyz (well for the sake of accuracy Dylan had 6 or 7 boyz who had to roll a -7 to remain - they didn't). So at the end of my turn I had evicted some Boyz from my table edge and killed a good few Orks without losing too many of my own, 👍 .

The Orks on the objective are no more.

Asurmen and the Dire Avengers assault the building. The warlock guards the objective. The surviving jetbikes shoot up some Lootas.

The Orks were under pressure and Dylan drew the hold the objective that my Rangers had stolen from his Grotz. As I don't think he had any 'pummel the pansies into the dirt' objective cards the Bikerz executed some impressive doughnutty type maneuvers and raced back that way. The Ork psychic and shooting phases went by as blurs so I think it was a safe bet to assume I didn't lose very many models.The main event was Asurmen vs the unnamed Ork Mek. Some wounds were caused (and saved) so the combat wore on. Well that's not entirely true. The Big Mek duffed up Asurmen to such an extent that he left the battlefield in tears. No, he (or she) was a casualty. That's the last time I trust a 3+ invulnerable save!

Asurmen and the Big Mek are on two wounds each, who will win this epic encounter? The Dire Avengers lurk at the bottom of the building not sure what their orders are.

The remainder of the game involved the Warboss killing my jetbikes, the Dark Reapers killing the Bikerz and the Warlock and Wave Serpent assaulting the Lootas to stop them from shooting any more. The Big Mek died to shuriken (too late to save Asurmen though). The Farseer had started moving to the opponents half of the table but I realised it was unlikely to reach anyone worth killing, except the Warboss who would probably do a good job of killing her instead. Once again Father Time intervened in what was a cracking game and told us to go to bed (for me) and home then bed for Dylan. We totted up the VP's and it was a resounding Aeldari win. 12 - 5.

Sadly, it was the Big Mek.

Farseer Gelladrill starts moving towards the enemy then realises there's not really much point.

The final score after turn 3. We really faff around so much that it's rare for a game to go much further. Either that or forgot to move the turn die round.

Conclusion

The game went well from a Aeldari point of view, the tactical objective cards were favourable for me, but not so much for Dylan. He was trying out a few new things in his list, namely two big mobs of Grots, Deffcopters and a Fighter Bommer. The mobility of the army was high, but I had the right things in the right places to counter his moves, namely the Banshees against the Deffcopters and the Reapers to see off the Bommer. The successfully manifested Doom  on the mob of Boyz really helped me whittle them down to a manageable size and my jetbikes on Dylan's backline kept his Bikerz from rampaging around mine. This game I had used the Lightning Reflexes strategem in a few occasions stopping my Reapers and Guardians taking as many casualties as they could have when they were attacked. The main Aeldari cock up was the large group of Avengers that simply forgot to shoot in the first turn which could have been costly had the Deff Dread survived turn one. Once again the Reapers did excellent work hitting everything on a 3+ and generally having good enough fields of fire to ensure all Dylan's well armoured stuff suffered. All in all an enjoyable game that favoured the pointy eared ones.

As this game is part of the ongoing Scargill Cleansing so narrative is in order I think. Craftworld Ulthwe have succeeded in landing nearly all of Waargh Tonkwappa on Skorlax in time for the real threat (as yet undisclosed) to arrive there. This game will involve Dylan's Orks and whoever wants to battle him. From a fluff perspective one of those world destroying races that seem to be 2 a penny in the grim darkness of the 41st Millenium will suit but which one is currently top secret. 

The Orks (those still alive anyway) were gradually gathering around the Warboss with bemused faces. Tonkwappa saw a Stormboy with no feet. That will cost you a few teef to fix mate, he thought. Mekboy Doglung will make a fortune. The Aeldari had left, after giving Waargh Tonkwappa a bloody nose. This in itself was not unusual, the swift attack and following retreat was typical pansie tactics. As soon as word of the attack had come more and more Ork troop shuttles were ditched on Skorlax looking for a scrap only to find no sign of anyone to lay the boot into. Just as the Warboss Tonkwappa was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of landing nearly his entire force on a now uninhabited planet, a message came through on the squawkbox on his bike, it was Big Mek Burlappa from Tonkwappas personal Kroozer; Froatrippa.

"Boss we got many ships coming into dis system, can't tell oo owns 'em, the gubbinz iz playin' up again!".
"Send out da fightas an let the survivorss come down 'ere for a scrap!". Tonkwappa grinned, da Pansies were gone but some uvver gitz were goin to take their place. With that thought he started laying the boot into his troops getting them organised for the second battle of Skorlax.

To be continued.........