"Did you hear that?"

"Yeah, I heard that."

"Sir, I think I see movement amongst those rock spires."

"Oh feth."

"Orks are amassing at the city border. Do you copy? DO YOU COPY?"

"Copy! We are mobilizing behind your position. We will make our stand along the In the Emperor's Service Pedestrian Bridge."
"Spread out along the full length of the bridge Varrian's. Shortly a wave of green will be crashing beneath us."

This past Monday I was off from work and used the extra moments before Nerd Night to piece together a themed table representing the edge of a city and the industrial work area just within its borders. I get carried away with trying to compose shots that involve fully painted models in dramatic action so I totally failed to get an overview shot of the board we played on. My apologies for not capturing that essential bit.

I had asked who would be coming that night and what they wanted to play, so I knew that Eric would be bringing 1500 points of Crimson Fists and that Chad would be bringing 1000 points of Imperial Guard (in their final showing with the old Codex, haha.) I only have one true rival army to face off with against the Imperium, so I took 1500 points of Orks. As you can easily figure out with the math, I was down 1000 points from my enemies. To compensate I took 4 Strategic Assets from the Apocalypse book to help balance me out. Next I poured through missions in the 4th Edition 40K Rulebook and the Cities of Death book until I found a mission that seemed to work. I selected the mission BLITZ out of the 4th Edition 40K Rulebook as it worked really well with the table I had devised.

For those that don't know the BLITZ mission. A 4'x6' table is divided into thirds the long way. The Defender sets up in the middle third and I set up everything within 6" of a short board edge and then have to battle through a wall of defended terrain to get to the farthest third of the board. Its a really fun mission and I did my best. I completely forgot about or failed to use 3 of my 4 Strategic Assets and my Orks pushed heavily along the softest flank and was making slow headway. My Ork army includes 2 Warpheads and they both managed to, on the same turn, teleport with their respective squads and Deep Strike into the back third of the board forcing the Fists and the Varrians to maneuver their entire forces to deal with my forces on their flank and rear. It was a dramatic game and I made a great showing despite the odds being stacked against me. Here's some final photos: