The Rise of Mad Dok Grotsnik part 1

"Trepanning iz good on da brainz!"

Last weekend instead of playing our Friday night roleplaying session, Screech, Da Masta Cheef and I opted to play a 40K game. Cheef only wanted to used a 500 point "ally" wing of Grots from his Eleet Grot Mountin Duvishun while I would field 1500 points of something vs. Screech's 2K points worth of whatever he would show up with. It didn't take long to decide to field my Orks, and with all this focus on painting and building an Orc army for Warhammer Fantasy, the desire to play with my greenskinned madmen has been high regardless of whether it be WHFB or WH40K. I knew I wanted to use the Shokk Attack Gun again, so I took a Big Mek and made him my army general. I opted to leave out my warlord, Ror-Ruk, in favor of trying to improve my army's survivability. Remembering  the fun I had a few years ago using Mad Dok Grotsnik, I decided to give him a go again. He has zero chances of living through a game due to his recklessness so it made sense to not make him the general. I mean, why just give away a Secondary Objective, right? :)

So, I took Mad Dok Grotsnik and attached him to a squad of Burna boys (these models are very old! One day I will show them off to you, probably close to that one day I start painting them. -quiet Cheef) who I stuck in a Gobsmasha (see Battlewagon build in the list area of your Ork Codex for rules). The elites in my army list, the Burna Boyz and Lootas, as well as my Big Mek, all got the discount Cybork bodies upgrade for improved survivability. The Burnas would benefit from the Feel No Pain special rule that Grotsnik would also bestow upon them.

  

Mad Dok Grotsnik and the Burna Boys having killed a Grey Hunter pack, consolidate closer to the next unit...

The details of our battle can be read here in gory detail courtesy of Mr. Cheef.

Aspiring Squigoth.

The take aways from this battle was:

•  that when given the opportunity to shine, Burna Boyz can really do it! Even though we used a house rule (allegedly a rule-change, but I can't find an FAQ to support it) regarding the flame template weapons and Overwatch, they still kicked butt!

• The other take away is that Cybork bodies for just 5pts is too good an upgrade not to take!

"Aye'll take yoo all on I willz!!!"

• Mad Dok Grotsnik can really soak up the incoming fire if the dice let him! He after leading the burna through 2 squads of Grey Hunters and assaulting a tank, he eventually net his demise to a disabled Predator with a lucky Las Cannon shot!

The Wolf Lord and the Nob challenge off. The Nob had a pool of 5 rerolls thanks to his ork mob.

•  This game also was noteworthy of being the battle field debut of 'Ork Pizza' the squad of 30 Shoota Boyz that I have been ignoring for a few years. After finishing a regiment of spear orcs for WHFB I decided I would get these guys out of the way next. They performed very well, killing Screech's Wolf Lord in close combat.

The classic 'Ork Pizza' photo.

• It was cool seeing the Grot Mega Tank finally get to shine in battle! Cheef was thrilled to see it actually destroy another vehicle for a change, and to have it survive a game!

So, yeah we won that battle, but regardless of the results, I was very pleased with Mad Doc Grotsnik. So much so that in what little spare time I had this week I tasked myself toward getting his paint job finished. The next two pics show how far I got with him before it was time to pack him back up for another battle yesterday.

I was thinking the cable that runs from the pump on his back to the syringe on his power klaw was going to be yellow with black stripes in a sort of power-cord look, but I think the colors I chose has a 'pissy' look about it which I find sort of gross and disturbing. So I might leave it as is, and color the syringe a similar color in the hopes of further disturbing those who might face him.

I am sort of stuck on his gun however. Have used the dark metals that I typically use on weapons on his arm, I want to contrast the gun from it but I am a bit stuck on how to do it. I hesitate reverting back to some of the gun colors that my orks that were painted in the late 2nd edition era have...  I shall ponder this further.

Citadel Color just released a new color called Blood for the Blood God that looks like a must have for me, and especially for Grotsnik's medical apron. One of our new players at Hobbytown is Mac (now nick named as Mac'n'cheese -he's accepted now!), and Mac showed me his recently painted Ultramarine with lightning claws where he used this color on the blades. It looks pretty impressive! I can't recall the last time I was this excited about a Citadel color...

As if my blog already isn't a massive free-plug for GW, go here to get it!

This is it for Part One. Part Two will be posted later in the week, as I take the army used in the previous battle and face off against Da Masta Cheef's Red Corsair Centurian and his Murder Sword! Stay tuned for those results! Also I will see how much more I can get done on Grotsnik's paint-job.

Saturday Night Waaagh!

So took the ol' Battle Barge to Planet Hobbytown, in the JC System, where Sven and the Wolves stood valiantly against the combined Waaagh! of Da Long Wayz Dezert Group controlled by the archfiend himself, the Masta Cheef and Waaagh! ...actually I have no idea what he calls his Orks, so for now I'll just call it Waaagh! Murl.

Due to a lack of players (5 of us showed up) I challenged 2k of Space Wolves vs. 1K Each of Orks (the other 2 player had their own game-Space Wolves vs. Necrons). Sounded like a fun challenge. Only I didn't have a 2k list prepped, so I had to modify an older list. Without going all full-blown Battle Report, I will simply discuss the highlights of this challenging and enjoyable game!

The big yellow/orange die is the Turn Counter, this was an Annihilation mission, an after I placed my sniper scouts, da Boyz got the first turn. Here you can see the bulk of Cheef's force which was mostly mechanized completing 1st turn moves with Murl starting on his moves. Yes that is a Forgeworld Grot Megatank! The big tank in the back is a Battlewagon.

My left flank, eyeing Murl's Mob. He took a list I never have tried (I'm always enticed by the Elites, Fast Attack and Heavies to do this): All Boyz Mobz, one Joined by a Warboss, a Nobz Mob with Painboy (Feel No Pain would equal pain for me!). The plan was to pie plate the crap out of the big mobz with my Whirlwind and Vindicator and get my Landspeeder Tornado up there with the Heavy Flamer and do likewise.

Here's my middle ground and some of the right flank. The Epicast Vindicator is eyeing the masses of Murl's Mob, The (truly) Venerable Dreadnought is poised to start popping tanks with his twin-link las cannon. (The rhino has a model on it to help me keep up with what unit is inside of it.)

This next pic shows the rest of the right flank. I believe we're seeing Murl taking his first run moves. Pay particular attention to that far off rhino (stuffed with a full 10-man squad of Grey Hunters) and those two trukks of Da Masta Cheef...

...here my lonely rhino exchanges fire with the trukks, though it escapes me what actually happened...

 Here my Venerable Dreadnought blows the converted Matilda Battlewagon to smithereens, prompting an encouraging response from Cheef (at the moment, he thought I was targeting his precious Grot Megatank! LOL! "No dude, I targeted the Battlewagon!"

And during that 1st turn of mine, Sven Axegrinder shows up in his Drop Pod! (he's the mostly painted guy with no arms! I really should finish that model...hmmm...) The green die on my rhino is to indicate that I had popped smoke.

This is a view looking down the field after the 2nd Ork movement phase... Oh yes, the Rune Priest in the rocks was whittling down the mob that the Murl's Warboss was tied too with both Jaws of the World Wolf and Living Lightning. Those Orks know how to dodge! LOL!

The first two rounds of firing I was able to greatly reduce the Ork numbers... but they were closing fast! Then, disaster struck! The Ork Truckers were able to charge and totally surround the rhino with the marines in it! THey did if in such away that my Grey Hunters were unable to escape the rhino once it was wrecked into a raging firestorm, and, well, they died a blaze of glory!

 The boyz get stuck in! With charges against the Rhino by Murl's Mob, and a charge from a Grot mob and survivors of the mob that was in the Battlewaggon piling into the Wolfguard at the Drop pod. The Sven and the Wolfguard would trimumph and the Ork and Grot units would flee off the board. Meanwhile Murl's mob would immobilize the Rhino, which the Grey Hunters would disembark from (after hearing what happened to the other pack over the com, they weren't about to stay put!)

On my Left flank, the beefy Nob Mob of Murl, smashed through the Blood Claw's rhino! On my turn I shot them, and charged, but the combined toughness of the Nobz and the gifts of the Painboy proved too much for the Blood Claws who were struck down!

In the final throes of the game, you see the Nobz moving to intercept the Runepriest once they had wrecked the Whirlwind. He would take out another nob before they ripped him apart...

In the middle, after taking fire from the boyz in the trukks, the Grey Hunters routed. For the next two rounds the trukk boyz would Sheppard the Grey Hunters right off of the table, who where two close to the foe to not know any fear!

At the top of the blog, you can see the Warboss who engaged the Vindicator in close combat and power clawed it to death! The Venerable Dreadnought dove into close combat with the Warboss, who was down to his last wound, but it was to be as the dread was slowly being dismantled by the Warboss as the game reached it's conclusion...

Here we have Da Masta Cheef's final bombardment of the abandoned bastion in another vain attempt to wipe out the sniper scouts on top of it. Those scouts survived many attacks up there, and although they killed a fair share of orks, they were unable to prevent the green tide from taking the field.

The game went to the Orks!

Orks 10 kps Space Wolves 5 Kps.

Despite blasting a heap of Orks, my inability to eliminate entire units cost me the game, plus getting the Grey Hunters cooked in that Rhino was just a major game changer for me... The Landspeeder managed to survive, it cooked a lot of orks, but once it got their attention and had it's Heavy Flamer ripped off, I moved it very far to make it's KP difficult to grab. Also I grossly overestimated my Terminator's ability to survive and massive ork assault, and should've whittled the unit down more before diving into it like I did. -Whoops! LOL!

Fun game!