My first run with a Fortification Network

[Threejacks]

 I brought and used a Wall of Martyrs network in last nights PE session and had a great time going against Kyojin`s Dark Eldar army.

 

 My network build was:

 

  1 Imperial Bunker with Quadgun ,Voidshield and Ammo Store

  1 Imperial defence lines

  1 Imperial Defence emplacements

  1 Firestorm Redoubt with Quadgun,Voidshield and Magos Spirit ( used the stock TL dual Lascannons)

  1 Vengence Battery   with Exra gun battery (Both Punishers)

 

 Total cost 720 pts

 

 Battle size 2k points

 

 

 We set up using Vanguard strike I was on defense and the battle was Purge the Alien.

 

 Having the Purge scenario was a definite advantage for me in this case .Though I will be running this in the future as I want to see how it does in scenarios with objectives.

 

 I used 4 Killa Kans,1 Deaf dread 3 squads of Spanna boys, one Junka,2 groups of 6 Lootas and one unit of  6 Cybork slashas.Lead by Dok Klawvorkian and his assistant Painboss.

 

  Now I know its not very Orky to play a defensive game but it sure is nice to have the opponent come to me for a change instead of me having to run across the board dying in droves as I do.Of course in this battle this was only partially the case as Kyojin only advanced to the defence line with his melee dedicated troops but it was still a nice scrap even if the rest of his army stayed at range and needled me 

 

 The Dark Elder wisely chose to approach the line from one flank only this pretty much took my other punisher out of the picture as I had it on the far right flank.Next time I may just go ahead and use the battle cannons on them or place them more in the middle..but I didn't want to block any of the bunkers LOS shots.

 

  His shooting quickly took out one of guns on the Firestorm along with the left flank vengeance punisher and the nearest Quad gun.So by the time I got to shoot I was already down to half my Networks guns gone and I lost a group of 6 Lootas in the firestorm to boot! however after that first shooting session it seemed to have gone cold for his dice as I didn't loose anymore network guns the rest of the game and it probably helped that I had the walkers to draw fire away from them.I`ve been noticing that my Walkers do seem to be a good fire magnet and don't seem to be the easy kills that everyone says they are. that's a whole different topic though,heh.

 

  Between my remaining Quadgun and the Firestorms last battery along with my last group of lootas in the Bunker they managed to knock down several of the enemy skimmers.Then my Big shootas on the walkers and the Mek boys picked away at the grounded troops as they took cover in the rubble.

 

  Having the Painbosses with the  troop units manning the defence lines made them very difficult to clear out even with the high volume DE shooting.Having FNP to backup failed 4+ or 2+ cover saves is very nice  .

 

  Though due to my stupidity I didn't move Klawvorkian out of the line of fire once his position came under fire and he eventually got poked to death from range.We both ended up with Warlord kills  as his guy died in the scrap we had on the left side trench system.I think he lost a group of witches and some base troops(not sure what they are called) and his Warlord while I lost my cybork slashas and my second painboss along with an 11 man group of spanna boys and one killa kan.This opened up the left side trench line from the Firestorm but since there was no objectives behind the line there was no reason to exploit it.

 

 Overall I think the things that worked well for me was the bunkers for the lootas...nice to not have them running off the table after the first turn of shooting.The emplaced weapons on the Firestorm were nice having  Magos spirit as anything that has better than bs2 in the Ork army is a good thing.And once again the Quadgun is always a winner for the Orks even with BS2..4 TL str 7 shots is sweet.And finally having those trench lines is very nice I especially like that with the design of them being more enclosing then the Aegis a Barrage attack pretty much has to hit in the trench itself to ignore the 4+ cover.

  I still want to try it with a mission that would require me to "sally forth" and grab an objective if needed.Not sure how I would go about that..maybe I need to put a call into Zagstruk.

 

 Oh yeah..the final score was Dark Eldar 11 points ,Orks 10 points 

[pretre]

Thanks for the report!

[jollyork]

You forgot to put the part about Kyojin's cheatin' varmint ways! 

 

Good report, and it was an entertaining endgame to watch. 

[Guest]

Very nice, though this and the escalation rules lend me to believe that I need more high AV solutions in my lists. At 720pts, you had 4x AV14 buildings. Not nearly as many as you could take, but a daunting number considering you could still spend the rest of the points on other things. In addition, buildings don't go down on glances, so solutions to AV14 vehicles that rely on glancing the target to death won't function against this sort of enemy.

 

For the sake of argument, this sort of list is also very vulnerable, as these AV14 vehicles effectively all have a single hull point, even if a pen is required to remove it. A DS army with melta guns, in example, would likely be able to remove 2 of the 4 buildings in a single turn, even with the void shields. This has lots of counters, and counter-counters, but it remains an issue with fortification heavy armies.

 

Still, at 720pts, I wonder how viable this sort of thing is. Seems like it could really go both ways.

-Pax

[AbusePuppy]

I find that the best counter to fortifications, rather than blasting at them, is simply to assault them or hit them with template weapons. Grenades thrown in the windows and flamers will both do significant numbers of wounds to the models inside- especially if it's a nasty template like the Heldrake. Even the lowly frag grenade, when tossed by a unit of Tactical Marines or Guardsmen, is 10d6 automatic S3 hits.

[WestRider]

Thank you for the reminder about Grenades. I was trying to figure out how to clear a fortification without blowing it up the other day, and totally forgot that they worked like that.

[fluger]

Or a 50 man blob... 

[generalripphook]

Or a 50 man blob...

 

Oh good lord that'd be crazy

 

Now let me roll 50d6 and lets take 30 minutes to count up all the s3 hits.

[WestRider]

It's only the dudes who manage to get within 2" of a Firing Point who get to chuck grenades in, so I doubt it would be the full 50, but that's still going to be a $#!^load of S3 Hits.

[generalripphook]

But you can still get a lot of guys within 2 of a firing point....as with a 50 man squad you could practically surround the building

[WestRider]

Depends on how the Firing Points are laid out. I just tried it with my FSR, and could only get about 27 or so dudes within 2" of the Firing Point, and that was letting them edge up onto the bodies and rubble at the edge of the wall.

[Guest]

So, how do you get the 50, or so, guys to surround the enemy fortification?

 

Seems like they'll certainly be in their own table half, likely deep in their own table half, and your blob of 50 needs to be able to foot slog into position (as I'm pretty sure no transports exist for the 50-man blob). I do see some potential with outflank or infiltrate, but those are both easily countered by deployment of the army and fortification.

 

Also seems like alternate solutions to the fortification are probably cheaper or more efficient.

-Pax

[AgentP]

Thanks for this report.  I finally got around to really reading both SA and Escalation this snowbound weekend.  I really want to try using both sometime.  I wonder what an imperial guard army with a huge fortification network, a hunkered down bane blade style super heavy, and some artillery would do.  Might not win a bunch, but damn that would be fun to paint.

[fluger]

27D6 S3 hits is a lot of hits...

[AbusePuppy]

I think that army would have about sixteen Infantry models in it, that's what it would do. :P

 

I highly recommend Stronghold Assault- if you discard the Aquilla Strongpoint, the book is very well-balanced and has some truly interesting fortifications in it that really open up new types of armies for play. It also makes several of the existing fortifications more viable for use by offering new options and upgrades and the missions, while far from perfect, can be pretty fun little encounters to play out with a friend. Add in an actually-helpful set of update rules for buildings and you have a very solid, if somewhat short, little book.

 

Escalation... I don't like as much. I won't deny it could be fun as a casual thing, but I think as an inclusion for the general game it's pretty awful.