Daemons Vs. Orks - or "the warp is a fickle mistress"

Bill and I stopped into Gamers Sanctuary (Flint, MI) and ran the Night Fighting scenario from the Battle Missions book this evening. His Orks, my Daemons; 1,850pts. I brought a diverse collection of units including Fiends, Flamers, Bloodcrushers/letters, Plaguebearers, Daemonettes, and more (including the Masque and scratch-built Khorne Chariot).

Bill brought a lot of green dudes. A lot.

*Fluff: we decided that Orks were messing around some sacred Daemon temples, attempting to do whatever it is Orks do, and ended up drawing the unwelcome(?) attention of the Chaos Gods.

Things did not begin well for the forces of Chaos, starting with a roll of 2 for my deployment and prompting the B-team to go first (see below).




That was followed by my Herald of Khorne on a Chariot mishapping and being placed at Bill's whim. (Can you spot the lone Chaos model in the picture below?)




This is what things looked like. Bill wisely spread his Orks all over the middle of the playfield, forcing me to choose one side or the other if I didn't want to split my forces. Which I didn't.




I probably chose wrong, lining up on the side with all his AV units.




Hindsight tells me I should've focused on the other side with all the troops. (Still see the Khorne Chariot out there? The Blood God must've been chuckling to himself.)




Flamers took out a two-wound model...




...but were then butchered by this badass. (I got him in the next turn though. Yay.)




These guys look cool.




As do all of Bill's models. (Scary forest!)




This is around turn 3. Things were not going well for Chaos. On turn 2, I rolled for 7 units in reserve. One came in. That was when I knew I was definitely screwed.




Orks continued to shuffle themselves into ideal positions and force Daemons into choke-points while tying others in close combat round after round.




The other six Daemon units actually all came in on turn 3, but really... it was too little, too late. By this time, Orks had moved into advantageous positions and proceeded to waste units like these poor Pink Horrors.




See below the Ork Boss eyeing some hapless Plaguebearers in turn 4. We could've easily called it at this point. However, I enjoy seeing Orks in action, so we let the match continue...




Orks were even so bold as to ignore a Soul Grinder. See how they turn their backs! Typical.




Those meks are destroyed. I did actually kill something.




This is what things looked like just before we called it around 10pm. Lotsa Orks left, not so many Daemons.




Outside of Bill doing everything right, the Chaos Gods were just plain screwing with me. It was one of those games that make me want to force the Daemons into the Warp for a while and break the ol' Space Marines back out.

I'm not complaining though. It was a really enjoyable game, I love playing on a table stacked with fully painted models; win or lose. 40k isn't really a competitve game. It should be treated as the goofy space fluff that it's meant to be. Good times; thanks Bill!

On to painting my numerous Menoth models...