This week I am proud to present something of a first – a battle report NOT written by me. When I started this site, the idea of contributors certainly was on my radar, but as with all things it is a lot of work getting something like that up and running.

Now with the advent of The Cowabunga 2023 Global Campaign things are about to change. This is the first report I have received for the campaign, while I know there are a couple of more in the works. Marcus, or PygmyHippo as the trve kvlt would have it, is a prolific painter and has been blowing our minds with his entries in the 40k 2nd Edition Army Challenge over the past half a year.

PygmyHippo dove in the deep end and painted up a horde of Space Orks and a complete Genetic Park table to have games at his house. I am of course tremendously delighted about all of this! When you sit down to write something like the Hamelia XI booklet, this is about as big as it gets with regards to what you can hope for.

Here follows the first battle between the Space Orks under the leadership of Kor Sparktoof, as they venture into the remnants of Genetic Park to try their luck.

Warboss Kor Sparktoof is a Blood Axe Ork, through and through. And as a Blood Axe, he’s always keen to acquire Imperial tech to re-use for his own belligerent purposes. If the Imperials were interested in some technology, then that’s as good a recommendation as any that he, too, needed to pursue the same tech.

After intercepting Imperial chatter about archeotech being discovered on Hamelia XI, Kor ordered his battle cruiser, the “Sad Wings of Destiny,” to race to the planet in the hopes of getting at the lost tech before the humans could secure it, or (even better) to have the enjoyment of fighting the humans, and then taking the tech anyway. After a preliminary scan of the planet’s surface, Kor landed an away-team near the entrance of Genetic Park. Since so much of the planet was overgrown with jungle, he was limited to a small team that would be able to negotiate the dense vegetation.

In his zeal to get at the lost tech, he failed to notice the blips on his motion detector. Blips that were rapidly converging on his position…

“Battle at the Gates”

Return to Hamelia XI – Game 01

Fought at the map hex for Genetic Park

500 point battle

ORK ARMY 499 points

Warboss with ‘eavy armour, power fist, and meltagun

Mekaniak with meltagun

Painboy

Dreadnought with lascannon and heavy flamer

Blood Axe Boyz Mob 01: 5 Orks and 1 nob, with heavy plasma gun and plasma gun

Blood Axe Boyz Mob 02: 5 Orks and 1 nob, with heavy plasma gun and plasma gun

TYRANID ARMY 501 points

Hive Tyrant with lash whip, deathspitter, and bonesword

Tyranid Warrior Brood: 3 warriors with boneswords

Hormagaunt brood: 6 Hormagaunts

Termagant brood: 16 Termagants with fleshborers

4 turn game

This was the first 2E game of 40k I had played in 20 years, and my daughter’s first miniatures wargame ever, so I decided to keep this match simple. I designed 2 bare-bones forces based upon what I thought would look visually appealing to a kid and to myself. We didn’t use any psychics, wargear cards, mission cards, etc. Just a basic game using the quick-start sheet of rules that came in the boxed game.

The battlefield was filled with jungle/wood stands, a big hill, spiked cacti, and a ruined gate to the park (Battle at the Gates).  The jungle stands were around 250mm x 250mm, and you can easily fit 10 models in each, so clear lanes of fire would be a problem for the Orks, and a great benefit to the Tyranids. I figured it would be more straightforward for my daughter to command the Tyranids, so she could concentrate most of her attention upon careful movement and close combat.

We deployed our forces behind the cover of trees. Tyranids managed to somehow win the roll, and chose their side of the table, so the Orks went first.

Turns 1, both armies move forward into trees to cover our advances.

Turns 2, the Hormagaunts had sprinted every turn and were already in hand-to-hand with the Orks. The Orks fire and miss every single shot at the Hormagaunts during their advance and charge. The Orks manage to kill 1 Hormagaunt in HtH, but the Hormagaunts kill 2 Orks. The Hive Tyrant and the rest of the Tyranids move around the hill to work toward the Orks, while staying out of line-of-sight.

Turns 3, the Hormagaunts break the first mob of Orks, losing only 1 Hormagaunt, and run down the survivors. The Tyranid Warriors move through cover to attack the dreadnought, destroying an arm, but the dread held strong. The Orks fire every weapon at the advancing Tyranids and either miss or fail to wound a single enemy. I’ve never seen so many misses in one game. At this point, we knew the Orks were doomed.

Turns 4, every Tyranid converges on the remaining mob of troops and Ork characters.

The warboss managed to kill the Hive Tyrant with a meltagun, but otherwise all Ork fire was ineffective, and the Tyranids roll through the remaining Orks, killing them, or breaking the few survivors.

Result: Major Victory for Tyranids

Tyranids 6 VPs

Orks 1 VP

It was slow-going at first, getting reacquainted with the rules. Hand to hand is just as time-consuming as I remembered, but we still had a great time. We are now working on 750 point army lists for the next match, which will likely be Scenario 5: Relic Recovery.

I hope this write-up is useful. Please note, my daughter insists that I let you know that “this battle was a glorious victory for Tyranids!” (ed. Glorious indeed! Let her know that I think it was an AWESOME! victory for the Tyranids!)

mb