Ode To Cleansing Flame

First to the relevance of the picture, that is what I felt like last night.

Followed by a little primer; Last night I played a game at my local club against a fellow called Pete and his shooty Orks. Pete is an extremely competent player who is held as one of the best players at the club, often coming first in many mini-tournaments we hold and having quite an impressive win ratio.

In fact when I first joined the club after a 4 year hiatus from the hobby, Pete was my first opponent and I was tabled by the end of the game having killed only 4 fire warriors (Tyranids vs Tau). Since then I have never seen anyone win against him and all my efforts had been in vain.

Well now I had a new army and Pete was keen to try his Orks out against them.



The battle was set for 1750 points, and I decided to take the list I wrote out for the friendly tournament I attended in Nottingham earlier in the year.

My list:
Crowe
2xVen Dread w/ MM&HvFlamer
4x5Purifiers (3 Halberds, 1 Hammer, 1 Psycannon) in Rhino
2x Psyflemen Dreads
1xDreadknight w/ teleporter & Hv Incinerator

Pete's rough list:
Warboss w/ claw, inv. save
6 Lootas
6 Lootas
12 Burna Boyz (who use a trukk belonging to a shoota squad)
3x20 Shoota boyz w/ 2 rokkits
12 Shoota boyz w/ 2 rokkits
11 Slugga boyz w/ trukk
2 Skorchas
2 Killa kans w/ rokkits
2x Looted Wagon w/ boom-cannon

So we rolled up the Seize Ground mission with standard deployment. There were three objectives in the game as played by assassin models. I rolled up first turn and Pete failed to seize.

To start off with I'll post up the only photo I took, which was after my turn 1, during the Ork's first movement phase. I got quite caught up in the game and forgot to take any more photos after this one, but it'll give you a better idea of how the game played out.

Grey Knight Turn 1

I started by immediately shunting the Dreadknight 30" up the right flank from his hiding position behind a tall tower. All the rhinos moved up the centre of the board in pairs with the front Rhinos popping smoke, the venerable dreads moved up the middle and made some run moves to keep up with the men. Meanwhile Crowe started running up the left flank looking for a good place to die.

Shooting was generally underwhelming, with most of my army moving too far or running. However I did immobilise the Burna Boyz's trukk with one psyfleman and shook the warboss' Trukk with the other. The dreadknight however performed admirably, burning an entire Loota squad out of their cover on a hill.

Ork Turn 1


First off the Looted wagon on the far right flank rolled a 1 and lurched straight forward, with the dreadknight jumping out the way and letting it pass. Most of the ork infantry surged forwards, with almost every squad keeping to cover. The Burna Boyz started to redeploy towards to centre of the board. The Warboss' wagon headed straight for Crowe, however, knowing what Crowe could to to independant characters the warboss stayed in his wagon while sending the Slugga boyz out to deal with Crowe.

After a round of shooting which left a few of my vehicles stunned and shaken and Crowe shrugging off several shoota and sluga shots, the boyz charged Crowe. Well, here is where the image at the top came in. Crowe let off Cleansing Flame while taking his defensive stance.

He burnt 4 orks alive and then saved all of his invulnerable saves (no re-roll needed!), and losing one wound to the normal attacks. Winning the combat by 3 the orks failed their leadership (twice with their boss pole) and Crowe ran them down easily, consolidating 4 inches towards some orks holding the objective in a crater nearby... confident with my turn coming up next.

Grey Knight Turn 2

First up all the vehicles passed their fortitude rolls, huzzah!

The left Psyfleman moved backwards and popped the warboss' Trukk, while the right Psyfleman ripped the gun off of the far right looted wagon which had careened past the Dreadknight earlier.

The back Rhinos leapfrogged infront of their partners and popped smoke, with both back Rhinos staying still to get 4 shots on their psycannons. One psycannon immobilised and stunned the centre looted wagon, while the other shot at the newly exposed warboss, who saved both wounds on his 5++ save! one dreadnought moved up and cracked open a Killa Kan with its multimelta, while the other ran forward to act as distraction for the oncoming horde of boyz.

Crowe move straight at the 20 strong boyz squad in the left flank crater, while the Dreadnight jumped 12" and burnt away 5 of the Burna Boyz.

All that was left was for Crowe to assault the boyz, rolling a 3 for this difficult terrain test he JUST made it in to combat, using the same defencsive stance + cleansing flame trick as before. This time 11 of the 20 boyz died in Crowe's flame, while not taking any wounds in return, and again the Orks ran and were cut down, with Crowe moving 6 inches towards the second Lootas squad.

Ork Turn 2


Well with his army diminishing there wasn't too much for Pete to do, moving around his remaining 2 remaining vehicles, most of the Ork shooting missed.

However, the last Loota squad got their eye in on Crowe who was running towards them. In a flurry of shots, Crowe failed one of his armour saves which took his last wound off.

The first casualty for the Grey Knights. Lets mourn for a moment...

Then over on the right flank the remaining Burna Boyz charged the Dreadknight, who promptly killed 3 of them, and the boyz failed to wound him in return. They proceeded to fail their leadership test and run off the board.

Grey Knight Turn 3


Not much movement here, with the two venerable dreads moving towards the two main 20-man Ork squads who were massing to the right of the archway in the centre of the Ork deployment zone, and the dreadknight jumping behind them.

Shooting took 2 wounds off the warboss, who was still out of range of charging anything, wrecked the last Skorcha, took the boom-cannon off the last looted wagon and stunned and stripped the weapons off the last Killa Kan.

When it got around to the venerable dreadnoughts and the dreadknight about to flame the two large squads in the centre, Pete conceded.

While it was a shame not to finish, I understood Pete's situation, very shortly he was about to have 2 units left, a 6 man Loota Boyz squad and a 12 man Shoota Boyz squad over on the left flank. I had only lost 1 man (Crowe) and my purifier had never even stepped out of their Rhinos.


A glorious victory for the Grey Knights! My dice rolls were distinctly average, as were my opponents. It came down to how our tactics played out and how much purifiers love hordes and light vehicles.

If only every game could go like that!