Battle for Fort Ranick - Bludhaven

Planet: Bludhaven.
Region: Seraphon Sector.
845.M41

Death Guard / Nurgle Daemons / Renegade Knight vs Orks.

Mission: Tactical Escalation (with Night Fight).
Deployment: Vanguard Strike.
Points: 2000.





The battle for Fort Ranick was a minor engagement in the early days of the Bludhaven invasion. The Death Guard had moved to seize an old Imperial supply depot known as Fort Ranick before the approaching ork forces to do likewise. Unfortunately as night began to fall the greenskin hordes reached the walls and lay siege to the plague marines trapped within.

A couple of nights ago I played a game against my friend Jon. I didn't want to know what he was fielding but expected it to either be blood angels or orks, and he turned up with a very interesting ork list. We randomly determined the tactical cards mission and then added the Battlefield: Nightfight rules to make it more interesting.

Most of Jon's army sat in reserve waiting to come in under cover of night. He did have a good number of boyz and a couple units of loota's sitting there waiting for me. I, however,  found the deployment zone very restrictive for what I had but it helped because he couldn't then drop anything in behind me from reserve.

I set up first and decided to let Jon have the first turn. The boyz started up the table and if I remember right one unit of kommando's popped up around the corner from my deployment. Night fight ranges got in the way here so he used a command point to light up one of my plague marine squads. It came down to DR rolls and I lost nine models, leaving just the champion to stand his ground. He also managed to knock a few wounds off my knight as making saves was not something I seem capable for doing for that thing.

My first turn was spent just moving forward to grab a couple potential objectives. The defiler and knight put fire into his fighta aircraft but not enough to bring it down. I then charged the defiler into the kommando's but I couldn't finish the whole unit off.

Jon then just some freaky ork psychic power to jump his weirdboy and a large unit of boyz across the table, followed by two other units of boyz running to keep up. They assaulted the defiler in a huge rabble, tearing it apart. Sadly it did not explode otherwise that would have been very nice.

The game started heating up here as the remaining kommando's started popping up around my deployment area. Some were gunned down but soon combat was joined. One poor band of orks were surrounded by plague marines, cultists and poxwalkers! They didn't last long and I got a couple extra poxwalkers out of the deal.

Unfortunately one of the random objectives Jon claimed gave him the ability to call in an airstrike and he kept dropping mortal wounds on my daemon prince of chaos. Concentrated fire also brought down my knight. Once again it has died far too easily. In retaliation I poured what fire and psychic power I had at his flyer but I could not destroy the damn thing. I believe it was left on 1 wound when the game ended. Bad luck. The game devolved into lots of combat and my daemon prince was slain as that poor surviving plague marine champion.

We called the game end of turn 3. Partly because we were running out of time and also because I had just 1 vp and Jon had about 4. The cards were far more in his favour than mine. Two of the games I drew involved defending two objectives for two turns which wasn't going to happen with the number of boyz against me.

Another good game. One that has made me have to consider what I need to take against orks in future. Night fight didn't impact me too much but to start with it made Jon focus on other targets than what he would have liked. Jon also lost a couple units because the Night Fight rules meant that they had not arrived at the end of turn 3 and so were considered lost. So we both had some bad luck this game.

My list:
Daemon Prince of Chaos (warlord)
Lord of Contagion.
10 Plague marines - meltaguns and icon of despair.
10 Plague marines - meltaguns and icon of despair.
20 Poxwalkers
18 Cultists
Renegade Knight - thermal cannon, heavy stubber and chainsword.
Chaos Predator - twin lascannons, heavy bolters and combi-flamer.
Defiler - battle cannon, autocannon, scourge and combi-flamer.

Death Guard deployment.

Ork deployment.

Orks control the skies.

A defiler stomping the greenskins!

The Children of Sickness, a cult of Nurgle.