Orks from the Sky (Arena 2012, Orks' Point of View)

Couple months ago, my boss asked me if I would join him in a team-tournament of 40k. I'm not the biggest 40k fan out there but I do have a sizable ork army and the prospect of playing a tournament with an all-ork team and my boss seemed fun so I said yes.

Preparation: The Rise of an all Flying Waaagh!!!

The Arena 2012 tournament organizers announced the categories in which you could win a prize: Best General (most victories), Best Sportsmanship (getting the highest sportsmanship grade), Best Painted (the best painted armies), Best Theme (best army theme/fluff) and Best Overall (''jack of all trade, master of none'').
Right away my boss and I looked at each other and thought the same thing: we had no chance to win 'Best General', might as well go for the ''Best Theme''.

At first I thought of an ''all flying ork army'' but that would mean I'd need to scratch-build these 'flying trukks' I always dreamed of. When I got some orks from a friend I almost decided to eschew the ''all flying'' for a regular theme and go try to paint them to high standard to instead win ''Best Painted''.
But then I don't know why, I ended up starting to build 3 Flying Battlewagons, I'm somebody impulsive.

My Boss followed-up with a diorama of an Drop-Rok (a carved out asteroid orks use to land on planets) and we started building our lists with as many Deffkoptas in it as we could fit.
I'll post our lists in the comments of this article as it's going to be long enough already.

Then my exams happened, I got distracted into painting couple of MERCS models (I regret nothing!), painting some Warmachine...and then 2 weeks before the tournament went back to preparing my army despite diablo 3 coming out.
I really thought I could have it fully painted but the sneaky battlewagons proved more challenging to finish assembling than I expected...I then spent the last week before the tournament with an average of 5 hours of sleep and the night before the tournament I went to bed for a big 35minutes of sleep as I had been painting from 5pm to 6:16am and the tournament started at 9 but I needed to meet my boss for final details.

Despite being super tired, I was quite excited as I was confident in the strenght of our theme: we had Team T-shirts, fluff written and an all-flying ork army!!

The Tournament: Dark Clouds of Orks to be Expected

Game 1: Red Gets You Killed Fasta!! (Blood Angels + Grey Knights)

When I saw our first opponents' army lists I thought to myself:<<well here comes our first (of many) loss!>> as they were playing Blood Angels with Grey Knights and were fielding some of the strongest combos in the codexes (ie: 2xDreadnought double twin-linked psyforce auto-canons). On the bright side, their army was fully painted and quite nice to the eye.
The primary objective was control of 3 objective markers. Secondary was to kill the most expensive unit in the opponent's army.
We won to go first.
The scenario also had 'Dawn of War' so we deployed only Warboss Alces-Alces (Boss on bike) and the Nobz bikers.

Our first turn on that beautiful table. All three Blorkade Runners swooping in to shoot da oomies.

Turn 3: An insane amount of tanks wiped our koptas and destroyed 2 out of the three Blorkade Runners, only ''Da MoonBusta'' survives the firepower unleashed against it.

Mephiston vs Gretchins: this fight lasted 2-3 rounds despite a desperate intervention from the remnants of a nearby boyz squad. Most gretchins were killed by the Runtherd's squighound devouring them to keep morale high against such a mighty opponent.

By turn 5-6 we had nothing left on the table and had not killed or destroyed a single model from them. Crushing Defeat!

We rolled A LOT of ''1'' when we were wounding on ''2+'' for Powerklaw attacks, Mephiston should have been dead but the Boyz Nob's Powerklaw malfunction ruined a ''kill by gretchins'' from happening.

Our opponents, despite playing a uber-competitive list (some go to tournaments to win ;)) were very friendly, patient and made for a very enjoyable game even despite the one-way annihilation. 

Lunch: Da Boyz need more squig-fuel fer da Blorkade Runners!

I think this is something to point out: through the entirety of the tournament, snacks, drinks and lunch were provided. In my gaming experience, this was THE BEST service I got. I mean: you come in in the morning and there's donuts for you.

This attention to their gamers really puts that event one cut above.

Game 2: A Shiny New Helmet For Kaptin Zugnut's Collection (Taus + Necrons)

Well I never faced the new Necrons but had a lot of experience against Taus. When I saw their list had even less stuff than ours I was certain this would be an easy victory. I couldn't be more wrong.

Primary Objective: control table quarter (in order to do so, both team members need to have a scoring unit in the same table quarter) Secondary Objective: kill points?

We did not go first and failed to seize initiative.

The scenario had a diagonal deployment.

Our Koptas on their scout move...Needless to say these fire warriors are about to disappear quickly.

Couple of turns into the game: Big Boss Alces-Alces and his nobz bikers find out how nasty the Wraith became in the new codex...But he also shows them that he's more than a match in melee too!

Close to the now-destroyed Blorkade Runner, Kaptin Zugnut shows a Necron Lord the fine art of dismemberment by powerklaw: one shiny new helmet fer da Kaptin!

Koptas are enjoying the 5 thoughness but make us regret we didn't equip them with buzzsaw.

We won because we contested their table-quarter...but also because the Runtherd succeeded his 6+ armor save in the explosion of his Blorkade Runner.

Very close victory for the Orks from the Sky.

Game 3: Enigmork in Action! (Imperial Guard x2)

Two Imperial Guard players with list almost similar, nothing particularly crazy but two Valkyrie 'Vendetta' so we could dogfight with the Blorkade Runners.

''Its gonna be an occasion ta try da Enigmork'' said Kaptin Zugnut as he looked at the impressive machine the big Mek had fitted in his Blorkade Runner, sure, it required grots to change the magnetic bands every three minutes but the occasion to yell abuse in the opponent's com-links was too much to pass for the Kaptin.

This describes perfectly the game as imperial guard will fail their morale check again and again (easily 5 times this game) and Creed will roll a double 6 on the first turn of giving orders.

The Deffkoptas decided to go ''headchoppa'' and wiped a whole squad on our 1st turn. (not shown in this picture: my deffkoptas do the same...Thats what da 'umies get for trying to burn them with flamers)

Guardsmen are a little nervous of the Nobz' proximity.

The Blorkade Runners will finally be able to shoot their Killkanons this game...to cause absolutely no damage.

Warboss Alces-Alces couldn't resist chopping off some 'oomies 'eads while the Nobz have to destroy a Leman Russ

The 'oomies fought back more than we expected and inflicted two wounds of the Boss...They failed their morale (thanks to the Enigmork) and try to run away, the boss slaughtered them.

The guardsmen operating the lascanon must have been thankful to be so high on the pyramid: the boss got shot before he could reach them.

One of our opponent laughing as the ''ugly red'' Deffkoptas enter the battlefield from a flank (these guys came in from the flank we wanted them in EVERY game, ''Ugly Red fer da Win...err or tryin' ta!'').

The valkyrie will finally get shot down (our Blorkade Runners couldn't do the job properly) explode and kill some guardsmen.

Definitely our most enjoyable game of the weekend. Enigmork (or is it Orknigma?) was a beautiful encrypting-abuse-yelling machine but despite it, our opponents seized the day with 5/4 versus 3/3 (points for primary and secondary objectives).

Thanks to them, we had a great game and good laugh!

So 2 losses and 1 win... ''What's our status boss?''

The Prizes: Da Boyz Get a Share uv Da Loot!

Finally, the moment everybody had been waiting for!

After a raffle where I won absolutely nothing (but my friend and contributor to this blog Llew won tons of things) came the awards for Best General, Best Sportsmanship, Best Painted, Best Theme (best army theme/fluff) and Best Overall.

-We did not win Best General...with our mediocre score of two crushing defeat and one minor victory and our 13 deffkoptas list we already knew it.

-We did not win Best Painted, it's without surprise that it went to Vincent Hudon...We did score very high with a 22/30 (Llew will complain that most of my guys had a lot of primer showing up but I'll just say that the Blorkade Runners blinded the judges)

-We did not win Best sportsmanship but tied for second (with a score of 16/18 thanks a lot to our opponents! We had fun too!) (Llew and my friend and co-worker Chris actually won this award)

-We did not win Best Overall.

WE WON BEST THEME!!!!

Orks from the Sky
We come in...Waaagh!!!

WAAAGH Orks from the sky!!!

I dedicate this win to Dan and Audrey, the first for having done such a beautiful diorama, basing my army, made the logo and T-shirt and the second because I cut a lot on the time spent with her in order to finish painting the Blorkade-Runners and Koptas and I strongly believe the Runtherd's miraculous 6+ armor saves were because I painted him instead of going with her to one of her friend's birthday.

Conclusion: Arena 2012 ''Orks are never beaten in battle!''

<<'Cause when we run away, it's ta come back stronger!>> (Codex Orks, GW)

From the beautiful tables (most of them were simply insanely amazing), to our great opponents, to all the little details the tournament organizers took care of, Arena was, as I said earlier, one cut above.
I started this post saying how I'm not the biggest 40k fan and I'll end it by saying that I simply can't wait for the next Arena to happen and I think it says a lot!
Thanks to Angela and Jean-François for the amazing tournament they were able to offer us!