Some seriously old and disgracefully painted 6mm Orcs take on some slightly newer and infinitely better painted Imperial Guard at Epic Armageddon. The last published set of 6mm Epic rules from Games Workshop. Although officially long out of print the rules are still on-line. The Brumbaer list builder is a useful tool as it not only calculates the points but pulls up the relevant stats and army rules. Most of the Orks in play here are the relatively primitive minis put out at the time of the first Space Marine game. The Guard are the chunkier better detailed minis released much later. Fans will notice that 2 of the buildings are from then original Adeptus Titanicus. The Imperator Titan is not in play but happened to be in the box and makes a nice terrain piece.
We have run Epic at the club before but it must have been around 2016. Before that I played at Britcon 2008 coming resoundingly bottom. My opponent had also not played for a while but had the appearance of knowing what he was doing. The rules are not particularly hard but where our Orks fell down was in a total lack of research into what the various units were good or at least less bad at. Orks work best in large units so the Guard had more units on table giving them greater flexibility. The only Ork unit to do well was the Ork Air Force (the OAFs) who benefited from the complete lack of anti-air in the Guard army. We played 1850 points which seems to cunningly prevent buying any Titans. It would have been better to up the points so Titans could fit in. They look good and because they are a points sink might result in less models on the table.
We all line up neatly. It is not getting to get any better for our Orks.
The stompa mob is the best shooting unit here and it fails its order roll. Spoiler alert it failed every single one of its order rolls during the game. This meant that it hardly ever had anything to shoot at. Imperial Guard skimmers soon took some shots off it (the OAFs did manage to chase them off).
In the centre our main mob gets into good(ish) positions around the buildings but loses close combat to a puny unit of Rough Riders and is shot up by the big Leman Rus unit. Our mob in the woods decides to shoot at the Rough Riders but with only middling results.
Considering our middling shooting and that a Leman Rus hits about the same in melee as your average Ork we try charging into them. Hits are even enough but the Leman Rus have double-save armour. We draw one round of combat and are crushed in the follow on.
The Rough Riders push through to the objective on the Orkish rear line. Our mob by the woods come out to shoot them up and prevent a Guard victory accomplishment. That works out but the Guard have enough other accomplishments to claim a win on turn 3. Looking at the state of the Orks there is not much they could have done to turn it round.
We finished the game in 2 ½ hours with only a few intervals of rules head scratching and searching. Most of the book is fluff and lists which can make tracking down some special rules tricky. The lesson seems to be in knowing what your army is good at but having an air force or some anti-air can’t do any harm (that might cause my Eldar some issues).
Gaming in Blackshaw Head 