New Tournament
If you have read the first in this series, which you can find here, you know that I have entered a short campaign with my tau. In the first engagement, the Forces of Order beat out the forces of Disorder and managed to find and escape with the Inquisitor. In our second engagement, we played a Killteam mission, with the Forces of Disorder using Killteams to try to kidnap the Inquisitor. What follows is my engagement with Josh's Orks (Hi Josh! Have fun at the 'Ardboyz tournament!) Instead of doing a play-by-play, turn-by-turn report, I decided to tell a story with it instead. I'll be boiling down the game into it's most salient features

The Painboy gathered the best force he could quickly, a group of Flash Gitz with as much Dakka and ladders and grapple squigs as they could carry. They ran in and scaled a building, then craned their weapons over the railing and blasted the squad of drones underneath. 1 Drone went down, the other two reverted to defensive programming and skim off the board.

Since his Killteam was equipped with scaling ladders and grappling hooks, Josh asked if I would allow him to attempt to bridge gaps between buildings in a very Orky fashion: He would make a difficult terrain roll. If they didn't make it across the gap, the squad would take a Wound. That sounded good and characterful to me, so I agreed. The Killteam raced over and took a Leap of Faith--FacePlant! The first Flash Git jumped across the gap, but missed his hold and fell. One of his team-mates fired a grapple squig into his back and reeled him back in. The team gathered themselves and made another attempt. This time they made it, closing in on the Drone squad with the Inquisitor. Barely breaking stride, they unloaded their Shootas into the Drone squad guarding the Inquisitor, wiping them out, then piled across the gap to snatch the Inquisitor.

Just at this critical juncture, the Shas'ui in charge of the base thought something was wrong with the perimeter alarms and went to check them out. (The _only_ roll for control of a brute squad that I lost that turn was for the Boss' squad. Two turns in a row! He went directly away from the Killteam twice.)

The Gitz snagged the Inquisitor and rapelled down to ground level, then ran for the exit. A couple of Drone squads picked them up on their sensors and started in pursuit. The drones got close and fired on them, as they sprinted toward the exit of the refinery. Though the shots failed to give them any real pain, the Gitz couldn't help themselves. Even as the Painboy shouted at them to run faster, they turned as one and unloaded on one set of the Drones, sending shrapnel and over-sprayed bullets flying through the refinery. Another Drone team responded to the fusilade and they and the first responders fired into the Gitz, then charged, their Artificial Intelligence identifying the Inquisitor as being of the highest priority. At this point, they alerted the Shas'ui in charge of the situation and he started to make his way in that direction. The Drones managed to kill one of the Gitz before being pounded to scrap, forced back and shot. At this point, the Painboy's shouting managed to get through to the Flash Gitz and they legged it with the Inquisitor, just ahead of the Shas'ui.

I had a great time playing this game, and Josh was a great player. When he realized his Killteam was going to be totally running away with the Inquisitor, without me getting a chance to do anything, he pulled the very orky maneuver of standing still to shoot instead of running off the board that turn. That was a good gesture and it gave me a chance to do something in the game. Even though The Drone assault didn't do much, having the chance to do something right then made a big difference to me. When I am playing a game and I feel like my army is totally walking away with a win, I'll do things to even it out a bit for my opponents as well.

From a winning-the-game perpective, looking back on it, agreeing to the Leap of Faith idea (allowing them to bridge the gaps between buildings as difficult terrain) probably cost me a couple of turns in the game, which would have allowed my Boss to get into the battle. I'm not sure that would have changed the outcome of the game, but it would have been a lot closer. On the other hand, it was such a characterful idea, I really didn't feel I could refuse it. Remember that, as in 40k, the first rule in Killteam is to have fun, and if you add interesting flare to the game, it's all good.

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