Here is an announcement! (And an 'In the Emperor's name' battle report).

Dark end of the street's agony aunt, uncle truth would like to apologise profusely and in the most unconditional terms for the quality of his last column, as it was pish.

Unfortunately, he can't as he's busy being better at 40K than you. As some small recompense, here is a battle report for my first game of 'In the Emperor's Name!'

In order to get into the rules, Andy and I decided to run an assassination mission using whatever we had available at the time. This resulted in a rather one-sided, but fun engagement between an Orc arms-dealer and an Arbites patrol, (Unfortunately Uncle Truth, we were unable to justify the inclusion of Vulkan of the Salamanders due to thematic sensibilities on our part).

Andy took a selection of right horrible bastards including:

Judge with laspistol and riot shotgun
Abites with grenade launcher
3 with shotguns
2 with power mauls and riot shields
1 with bolter and bolt pistol
1 cyber mastiff

The polis

The Orks were a different kettle of fish altogether:

Boss Klanky: Warboss with mega armour, klaw, shoota and Terrifying
Skarga da Broot: Nob with big choppa, eavy armour, stikkbommz and Combat master
Stinky Zugg: Weirdboy with Ork hide, Warpfire and Dominatus
Sneekur: Kommando with big shoota and Ork Hide
Slinkur: Kommando with Burna, flamethrower and Ork Hide
Bitzboss: Mekboy with eavy armour and kustom mega blasta
5 Boyz with slugga, shoota and Ork Hide
3 Ard' Boyz with shoota and eavy armour

Ork Neds

Upon closer inspection of the forces arrayed on either side of the table, I began to experience a mounting sense of dread. As it happened, Andy hadn't noticed the special abilities section and so had failed to equip his wimpy umies with anything other than their poncy shotguns and suppression weapons.

Git.

Boss Klanky surveyed his assembled boyz with pride. The umie' gits weren't even in sight yet, but one of his ard' boyz, Grog was getting his eye in already by taking pot-shots at a grot slave. He was enjoying himself so much that Klanky didn't have the heart to tell him the Grot was already dead. The shoota's harsh report ceased abruptly as Grog poked at the headless, bullet ridden corpse with an exploratory toe. He sniffed, shot it a few more times for good measure, then wandered off in search of more target practice.


The 2 bloodaxe Kommandoes were eyeing the rest of the group disdainfully from a ruin nearby. One of them was even taking his shoota to bits and 'cleaning' it. 'Weirdos' thought Klanky in disgust. Skarga, Klanky's favoured lieutenant approached with a deferential scowl. 'It must be an intelligence report from me scouts.' thought Klanky.
"Boss, dem stoopid umie' gitz is comin'. Dat umie' grot wot we sent's comin' back wif em now!"
Klanky smiled. The umie' judge had been snooping around like some kind of bloodaxe weirdo, asking questions and using 'tactics'. He grimaced in revulsion. Still, that had been a particularly cunnin' bit of thinking on Stinky Zugg's part, sending the umie' ganger as an informant to the Arbites. It was even more impressive given the fact that Zugg was as mad as a bag of squigs on his best day.
"Oi Zugg! Dat was a right cunnin' plan dat woz!" bellowed Klanky. Zugg stared at him wildly through the bars of his cage. Green corposant limned his eyes and a dribble of saliva ran from between his clenched teeth. He screeched out a high-pitched laugh that made the nearby boyz shuffle away almost timidly.
"Hur hur hur, ya mental git!" laughed Klanky, slapping a nearby boy on the back; forgetting that was his power klaw hand. He frowned in annoyance. Now he was one boy down and the fight hadn't even started. He felt the need for an inspirational speech in order to redress the balance.
"Right ya bunch a gitz! Let's give dem stinkin' umies a right good kickin."


The boyz roared their approval. The green tide surged forward through the ruins in search of blood.

Nothing of particular note occurred in the first turn. My Kommandoes moved forward into the ruins with their Move through cover ability. Sneekur nestled down in a high vantage point and trained his big shoota on the distant arbites while his partner while Slinkur snuck into the ruins behind him, gleefully igniting his burna. He was followed by an Ard' boy and a slugga for support.

The Arbites advanced into the trenchworks facing the Ork line, (a squiggly line). The riot shield officers and cyber-mastiff headed for the ruins where Slinkur was lurking.

The Orks did some shooting, but we won't talk about that. It's too embarrassing. They used most of the shooting round to run while they were still outwith line of sight to the enemy. The Arbites fired their grenade launcher which detonated amidst the boys, but caused no casualties, (this being the first game, neither of us realised that the Arbites' launcher inflicts penalties even if no damage is done. D'oh!). An Arbites officer fired his bolter at Bitz boss, blowing a neat hole in his skull. I equalled his grit score with a dice roll and the Mekboy was knocked down for this turn.

There was no close combat.

"Ere we go, ere we go, ere we go!" the Orks advance into battle with their obligatory disregard for subtlety. Also, there is a cake in the background. 

Slinkur waits in the ruins, ready to pounce on the enemy! The Ard' boy, Grog shoots at  'dat weirdo cybork dog fing' but misses. In any case, he thoroughly enjoys the whole experience and happily reloads.

The Arbites advance to meet the Ork Threat.

Turn 2 saw more of the same with regard to movement, the exception being that those pesky riot shield Arbites were outwith true line of sight and so managed to run into the ruins and engage Slinkur! A slugga boy was able to move into the ruins in support, but fell short of the combat by half an inch. Bitz boss failed his grit roll to stand up, so lay down for another turn.

The lone Kommando swept his burna across both assailants and cut them in half, but was simultaneously smashed to green pulp by their flailing power mauls. 'Dat weirdo cybork dog-fing' was fast enough to reach Grog and subsequently tear his throat out!  Stinky Zugg had enough boyz within 6" that he didn't need a grit rool to use his powers. He began to cast Warpfire at the Arbites Judge, but got bored and sat down instead.

The Arbites with the grenade launcher managed to send a frag sailing down the throat of a slugga boy, detonating him in a shower of Orky bits, (Which greatly impressed and amused his surviving comrades).

Klanky roared and opened up with his shoota, killing the nearest Arbites in a hail of slugs.

Conflict in the ruins.

Firefight on the left flank.

"Oi, dat's me only Mekboy!!"
"Don't worry boss, e' got me in de ead!"

Action from turn 1

Death creeps ever closer, (or, more appropriately 'charges loudly' closer)

"Nice dog-fing, good dog-fing, clever d.... oi' dat's me brain dat is!"

Turn 3 was something of a mopping up round. Bitz boss stood up and scopped up some of his brain matter to put back in later on. Stinky Zugg tried to cast Warpfire again, but was distracted by his reflection in a nearby puddle which he subsequently unleashed the building stream of warp energy at instead. The hungry Cyber-mastiff leapt into the ruins to face my slugga boy and Klanky, Skarga and the rest moved forwards at snails pace, (as I forgot to 'Waaaagh'. Like a dick).

Arbites shooting claimed another Ard' boy, but a team effort to take out Sneekur in his heavy cover was met with frustration. Bitz boss evaporated an Arbites taking cover in the tank traps and Klanky fired his shoota just for the sake of making a dead loud noise.

The cyber mastiff ripped the throat out of my slugga boy with no damage to itself, but there was no other combat. The night was rapidly coming to a close and so we decided to move our two retinue leaders into close combat and duke it out. The Judge's laspistol grazed Klanky's mega armour. The mighty warlord's power klaw rose and fell. The Judge lay at his feet, sprawled in a broken heap as the monster's boot descended.

It was at that point that we realised I hadn't made him take a Terrifying test. Cock.

"Weedy umie git!"

'In the Emperor's Name' is just as fun as I expected it to be, which is to say that it's really a lot of fun. In retrospect, our retinues were woefully imbalanced. Andy rather reasonably suggested that one side should always be an Inquisitor, or Chaos cult in order to more comprehensively capture the spirit of the game.

The rules themselves are great, (who can complain about free rules?) but there are a lot of errors, typos and layout issues that make navigating them difficult. All that means for me is more than 1 game in order to get used to it.

I don't foresee any problem with playing more of this. You should try it.