Open Air

Nico arrived in Vienna April 15th. Yesterday he came to my house for a little game-testing of Gorkamorka. Here's a report of how things went during our "Open Air" event. Enjoy :)

Nico reads the scenario rules, measures distances, places scenery, defines zones, reads the rules again, shifts terrain, measures again, reads the rules, hops around the table, measures some more... "Done! Table is set up!"

Here's the situation. There is a fort in the middle of the table, occupied by Nico's team. My own team is trying to storm that fort (the ork way of laying siege) to get it's hands on the precious scrap lying around inside. Nico has to hold out until his reinforcements arrive.

Nico's team occupies the fort. I believe this pictures deserves a little explanation: Nico, finding the 40K ork models ugly, brought his space marines. We treated them as orcs for the purpose of the game, which worked really well actually.

My boyz have to storm the fort and get the loot.

The gate.

"If only i could get that marshmallow onto the stick..."

I manoeuvre my pick-up truck towards the gate.

The driver puts the pedal to the metal, slams in the thrusters, and crashes the vehicle into the gate, which bursts open. The vehicle is imobilized for the rest of the game... But who cares? It did it's job!

(I think we spent half and hour undestanding the rules for crashing/ramming damage... who organized the chapters in this rulebook?!)

Nico's ... marines (!?) try to fend off the orks that I sent to scale the back walls of the fort, thus giving Nico two fronts to defend. The problem is that aparently none of his guys did pack enough ammo... :)

"Get up those walls you maggots!"

My boyz and their boss are in.

Nico measures the shooting distance of his last warrior capable of shooting. He fires, misses, runs out of ammo (again!)...

... and scrams!

One of my orks approaches a marine (?!?!) from behind to take him out in a so-called "stealth kill". Only that orks tend to be the opposite of stealthy.

Ever wanted to see how orks cook? Here you can see 2 orks making mincemeat of Nico's captain (background).

My boyz are beginning to tire a little bit, but everything's going rather well for me... for the moment.

But then Nico's reinforcements arrive. Lacking a proper "Truck" we used one of my old 40K Ravenwing Speeders, which lends itself admirably to the task, having 2 crewmen and a heavy weapon. We ignored the fact that it hovers... and after all, it looks cool, doesn't it?

Meanwhile the situation has changed. I managed to push Nico's troops out of the fort, and am now facing a reinforced space-marine force (?!?!?!?) that is determined to get back what is her's. I desperately manage to kill another marine, before Nico mowes down my battle weary mob.

Admire the proud winner (right) and the not so pround loser (left). It was a very tight game though.

As for the result of the test: Nico, thought the game was nice, while not as good as Mordheim. He had most trouble coping with the "design" of the ork miniatures, saying that he couldn't really relate to the green-skins.

I thought the game was fun and I really want to play another one. For my part, I believe orks are precisely what makes the game so funny, since they are utterly unpredictable but tough. I particularily liked the rules for vehicles, for grenades, the fact that ammo can (and DOES) run out, that warriors get more and more tired/wounded with every hit they take and the combat system where players roll dice simultaneously and then compare results. Nevertheless I agree with Nico that Mordheim is - all in all - better, insofar as it offers a richer universe and more diversity.

I'd give it an overall score of 6/10. Worth playing again.