My group played this mega battle on our game night on June 01, 2025. I had a feeling we were being overly opptomistic making the battle consist of four 1,500 point armies with a total of five players and I was right as we only got two out of the four turns completed. Still, the armies look great, the table is awesome, and I want to show some pictures off. I’m thinking next time we start a little earlier (I’m at least partially responsible for the late start, this is the first time I’ve ever had to use more than one command squad for my guard list and it got confusing for me) and maybe we play a few less points. But seriously, is there anything more 2nd Edition than being over confident about how much time you have to play?

The Orks got Take and Hold for their objective and needed to seize the center bunker to earn 5 VP’s while the Allied forces had High Ground. Each squad within 3″ of any of the 3 highest points on the board got 1 bonus VP, plus an additional if they had a working heavy weapon. I discussed with my opponents swapping my objective as we already had a high point in our deployment zone but they decided we should keep with what we randomly selected.

3,000 points of glorious 2nd Edition Orks!

Eldar and Imperial Guard take to the field, shoulder to shoulder!

The Cult of Speed revs up their engines!

Da Kommandos using their sneaky cunnin’!

Thanks to the Eldar Strategy Rating and a decent roll the Allies were able to overcome the Orks bonus and won the first turn. The preliminary bombardment was fairly lackluster and only killed a few gretchin. The Imperial Guard elements on the far left flank moved up to take cover and hopefully buy some time for the rest of the flank with their lives while in the middle the guard moved up to defend the promethium tanks which was going to be their very dangerous high ground! The Allied commanders clearly wanted to reduce the fast elements of the Ork force as fast as possible so the heavy elements opened fire. The Leman Russ’ Battle Cannon killed two of the Ork bikes but with a roll of a 1 missed every other shot. Back to gunnery school for those lads, although if you read my last battle report you know they were probably very hastily trained to get them back in the fight! The Eldar weren’t going to let the humans show them up and promptly deployed the War Walkers scatter laser into the fight which killed another three bike riders! Things were going to get hectic next turn!

A whopping 18 grots were killed by the combined fire of the Imperial Guard with a template landing directly on Zodgrod’s head, but with a 1 to wound he laughed it off! The Splatta Kannon also had one crew grot killed off.

When the rules say you need to use something to prop up your skimmers we take that very seriously around here. How’s that stand for a 40k 2nd Edition Challenge game?

The spirt of Gork and Mork must have been with the surviving Ork bikers because the out of control bikes didn’t mess with their plans much. One went towards the table edge away from the Ork lines and the others went straight forward! Sure one hit the turret in front of it and exploded but that was one less problem for the Boar Boyz to have to worry about later!

The Orks began a general advance across the board. Yes I said we killed 18 grots. Yes there are still about a million more to go!

The Orks shooting wasn’t much to talk about. After what felt like thirty minutes of reading the rules for the Splatta Kannon and having it bounce around all over the board and not stopping for at least five bounces it had managed to kill a guardsman and a Wraithguard. The Dreadnaught hit the Basilisk but failed to penetrate. The Deathskullz killed two mortar crew but again the Basilisk crew must have up armored after seeing what happened to their buddies last game because the Deathskullz failed to penetrate it’s armor! The Ork mage cast ‘Eadbutt on the Eldar Warlock and in an embarrassing turn of events the ancient Eldar seer lost the battle of the warp and was killed!

Zodgrod but have been feeling invincible after last turn but believing his own press cost him his life as the Imperial Guard artillery crew responsible for this sector woke up and landed a barrage directly on his head killing him outright! The Falcon conducted another pop up attack and finished off the Splatta Kannon.

A unit of guard jumped in the central bunker. They knew they were a forlorn hope but they knew they needed to stall the Orks from getting their objective! The Leman Russ opened fire on the bikes again and blew up the Skorcha. The explosion didn’t have any effect on the few surviving Ork bikes in the area but the massive blast hit the Guardian piloting it and overwhelmed the War Walkers defensive field (the Eldar player rolled a 1 on the 2+ invulnerable save) causing the war machine to collapse to the ground! That poor Guardian would be the only Eldar casualty of the game!

On the Ork turn the Eldar gods were watching out for the Eldar like the Ork gods watched out for the Orks with regards to the out of control bikes. One bike smashed into a pipe rack while the other just narrowly avoided hitting the Eldar Guardians due to some quick on their feet space elves!

The Shokk attack guns were able to open fire on the heavy vehicles of the Imperial Guard. The Basilisk found a swarm of angry snotlings in it’s steering mechanism which probably wouldn’t end up causing too much of a problem as it planned on staying stationary in the first place. The Leman Russ however was in for a rude surprise as the furious tiny green skins got in the engine. Every turn the Imperial Guard player would have to roll a D6 to see if the tank could act normally or explode. Considering it’s position on the battle field it was likely to cause some damage if it blew up the next turn. Best case scenario it would cause some issues to that part of the line as the lightly armored Eldar would need to spend valuable shooting time moving away from the deathtrap! The Ork Pulsa Rocket was also going to cause some problems for the Imperial Guard as it landed right behind the mortar teams with the potential to disrupt all the elements on and around the promethium storage. Meanwhile the Orks let their grenades fly against the guardsmen in the Ork objective causing mass casualties!

With that we had to call the game halfway through. The Ork players were certain the game was going to end in an Allied victory but I think it was too early in the game to tell. We still had a lot of silliness that could happen. The Leman Russ had a two-thirds chance of exploding, even if it was never hit again and if it did there would be a lot of dead Eldar around it. The pulsa rocket would have caused some damage, but while not a lot probably enough to cause some problems in that area. Everyone knows how swingy 2nd Edition could be, if you read my last battle report it looked like the Imperial Guard were cruising to an easy victory up until turn 3!

Looking at the overall situation I would probably end up agreeing with the Ork assessment of the situation. With the amount of guard resources at the center of the table it would be hard for the Ork’s to fully control their objective while the Allies firmly controlled their objective. With three vehicles, three squads with heavy weapons, and a command squad as of the begining of Turn 3 they had thirteen victory points. While that number could certainly drop it would take a lot of effort for the Orks to work through that sort of points differential to win the game.

It was a great time had by all and we hope to get to do it again soon!

-Wachtmeister

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