Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader - 24 May 2003

	Despite the fact that I play one of three armies, I am really an ork player at heart. Just for fun, and to use a couple of models that I don't normally use, I decided to try a Kult of Speed list. Sadly enough, I was the only ork player out of 30 contestants!
This RT was a small point one - just 1500pts. We took only troops and HQ's
For a complete roster, go here. We came in 10th of 30 players - winning two battles, and loosing one. For official results, see the DAKKA DAKKA STAT PAGE.

Ok - now on to the battles.

Battle 1: A crushing victory over the Imperial Guard. We were blessed by Gork and Mork as his shooting was awful, ones and twos, allowing me to get into hand to hand range where it was all over. He was a good sport though, and we had a good time.

	Once again I find myself facing IG in the first battle. This mission was "Head of the Snake", and a while a win was truly victory point based, the purpose of the mission was to kill the otherguy's general. Well there he is, behind that Leman Russ on the right.
	Bobz Kult of Speed lines up for the charge! My opponent went first, and sent two chimeras and his sentinals down one table side to try and flank me, catching me in the rear (not a bad tactic, as the battlewagon with Bob couldn't keep up with the trucks). I sent the two buggies and the rokkit trakk against them, and due to poor damage rolls on his part, they managed not only to slow his advance, but destroyed 2 sentinals in the process! (not to mention gunning down about half a dozen hapless guardsmen).
	On the other side of the table, we were going full speed ahead. Turn two everything moved as fast as possible to get into charging range, here the turbo boosta on the 'eavy chevy shows its strength, as the chevy ends up suddenly all alone...
	The chevy survives a turn of shooting, and moves ahead, now supported by another squad of trukk boyz, and bikers on the far flank. Unloaded and hungry for a fight, this is what a truck boy lives for! Look at all those soft guardsmen!
	Kawumpf. The truck boy mobz quickly eliminate platoon after platoon in a couple of rounds of hand to hand.
	Bottom of turn six - his commander retreated to the table corner, behind this leman russ (stunned 3 times in a row, thankfully). After a single vicious round of hand to hand, he was left standing, but fled right off the table edge! Victory was complete!

Battle 2: We were surprised at our first victory with the list, and we were increasingly hopeful, until we saw the table (urban) and our oppenent - a beautifully painted Chaos force. With the new lists, Chaos is popular again, and they have some really cool, and deadly, models. The new obliterators are particulary nasty, as they can morph their weapons, move, and shoot like terminators. And the defiler, as shown below, is just down right wrong.

My opponent Jamie Hatcher (who won Best Overall) was a fanstastic person to play against, and we had a ton of fun. This was a basic cleanse mission, and it would be table quarters, not victory points that would decide the outcome. I divided my forces into two groups, the first included Bob, the buggies, and the bikes, and the second the trukk boyz and goober on a wide flanking manoever. I did send the rokkittrakk after the defiler, but it got snuffed before it could even shoot, and after that I refused to waste more material chasing it down.

We managed to eek out a victory, as I had two table quarters, and the other two were contested. What made this possible was the fast vehicles, they can hold table quarters, so after dropping off their boyz the 'eavy chevy retreated at 25 inches of movement to hold one, the battle barge backed at full power to hold another, and thanks to a kick in the head of the grot, and a grot rigger roll of 4, goober's wrecka screamed into his table quarter making it contested. Victory points wise (not that they mattered), it was probably pretty even; we had killed three obliterators, two 10 man squads of demented marines, a rhino, and his deamon prince; he took out a squad of trukk boyz, goober's retinue, Bob, the war buggies, the rokkit trakk, and stripped two weapons off the battle wagon. A real nail biter!

	This is a poor table for us, as there are limited ways across the river, meaning our chaos nurgle spawn opponent only had to protect a couple of avenues of fire instead of the whole table. Even worse is the battle barge, as it is just too big to fit in some places! Here Bob and the Barge advances across the table, supported and covered by the buggies and bikes.
	A full speed charge on the other side included all three truck boyz mobz, with the Big Mek Goober providing force field protection and leadership. That's Goober's wreka in the middle
	Apparently the boys at GW felt that the new chaos list wasn't strong enough(!) so they introduced the defiler. Basically, its a basilisk that can fight back in hand to hand, and ignores shaken and stunned damaged rolls, with 13 armor. My best advise to anyone facing one of these is to ignore it. Sure he'll drop templates on you (he took out half a trukk boy mob with on), but it's not worth the effort to try and track it down. If I had a looted vyper though...
	He was concerned about Bob's advance, and so a squad of demon spawn blocked the road with their rhino. Soon to follow was his deamon prince, who proceded to kill two of the bikers in hand to hand, leaving only the power claw blessed nob behind.
	Well the demon prince got his, as Bob and his nobz unloaded and whooped it's ass. Next they blew into this squad, looking for some more 'eads to mount on the battlewagon. Bob unfortunatly took a wound while fighting the prince, and went down in this round of fighting to a powerfist. His nobz gave a little payback, as they hit with 7 out of 8 powerklaw attacks, wiping out the squad. He moved off his rhino to protect it against a hand to hand assault, and while the nobz chased it, they just couldn't destroy it. And yes, that is a bad dok in there! On the otherside of the table, Gooba and the trukk boyz took down two obliterators in hand to hand, as well as another 10 man squad.

Battle 3 : Last September I was playing as eldar, and whining about cheese. This time, I was fighting against cheesy eldar! My opponent and I were both undefeated (after he beat me, he had a 59 out of 60 for combat), and I knew I was in trouble when I saw that he had 2 Wraithlords AND an Avatar in a 1500 point army! This was a straight victory point battle, so we'd have to do it the hard way. What really did me in though was a lack of armor busting weapons - I couldn't even damage his wave serpents. The mission did have one whacky rule, that you could teleport (read deapstrike) one unit per turn anywhere on the table. This also hurt me, as his Wraithlords, instead of walking across tthe table, letting me shoot at them, suddenly were within assault range. Ouch.

The bad news (in addition to loosing) was that once again, Bob went squish as a wraithlord ground him into small bits of vegatable matter. The good news was that again his nobz avenged him, smacking that damn thing back to the warp with no less than 6 powerklaw chopps. Elsewhere on the table, a trukk boy squad stopped and dropped a full fire dragon squad, complete with exarch and farseer, in a single round of hand to hand combat. They climbed back into their trukk, and watched as the Avatar arrived and crunched another squad into little bitz. Joined by a recently walking Goober and a couple of meks, they charged back into the frey, and took the Avatar down. The best part was the final wound was caused by a rock! (supporting attack!)

Again, his list was legal (Iandian), but two Wraithlords and an Avatar in 1500 points! As an Eldar player myself, I doubt seriously that we'd raise our god of war up for what is really nothing more than a small skirmish. Ca la vie, but next time I am taking tankbustaz!

	That doesn't look like too much, does it? Two Wraithlords, an Avatar, two Vypers, three Waveserpents, two squads of Wraithguard, and a full squad of Fire Dragons. As he was as moble if not more moble than myself, I had bad feelings about this one.
	Now that's a sight! The boyz get ready to rumble!
	The bikes and 'eavy chevy head in, hoping to close quick. After both got whalloped, we pulled back and tried to wait for him to close with us. We did at least stun one Waveserpent (in the back), but we just couldn't do any real damage.

Thanks again to DAKKA DAKKA!