Let the games begin!

Our first game was not a massive affair. The mini rule book says to start our small and I highly recommend that. We agreed to fight just the 20 ork boyz vs. his 10 tactical marines. We would then progress to adding the terminators and the nobz and then vehicles. We figured that we could learn the rules for each of the different parts this way. We also agreed not to worry about points during these games as we still didn’t have the skill to even figure out that part yet. We just went strait from what is in the quick start guide.

The first game was played on our round kitchen table which is 4 feet in diameter. We used our freshly primed figures. The picture below shows the awesome scenery we had (not). This was a good start, we practiced “move, shoot, assault” following along in the quick start guide-which is very good. It lasted about four turns-maybe an hour and a half-primarily looking up rules and reading. Mostly my orks slowly moving across the table as his marines killed them with his rocket launcher. Then I made the mistake of assaulting. His flamer made quick work of my orks.

Not a lot going on, but I highly recommend a newcomer play a few very simmple battles like this to start out.

Ork Newbie Lesson #1: spacing is critical.

Ork Newbie Lesson #2: flamers kill orks-but BBQ ork is good eating.

What we learned was the very basics of the game and more importantly that we enjoyed the game and for the first time in a while spent some quality time together. The boy smiled and said he couldn’t wait to play again.

Over the Christmas holidays we then played two more games on the kitchen table adding the terminators, captain, warboss and Nobz. We decided to wait on the vehicles until we were very comfortable with the infantry. I actually won (barely) the next game, but we then realized that we had missed an important rule…The biggest issue we had was that with the third game we added the Armor Piercing rule and realized that bolters kill orks like a flyswatter does flies. Quick, painful and in large numbers. I quickly learned that between bolters and flamers my orks were ork-burgers. Until we add vehicles, I didn’t have a chance. At this point it was boy 4, dad 1.

Ork Newbie Lesson #3: Terminators have a huge save and ork shooting stinks. Seems obvious but made my orks completely useless.

Ork Newbie Lesson #4: Ork Armor saves are worthless.

Almost done with the back ground. Next we add vehicles, pick armies, start collecting add scenery and get into painting. Then we will be up to date and ready to move forward.