SPOILER ALERT

DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU PLAN ON PLAYING FROZEN REACHES

I'm having a hard time understanding how the Orks in the Frozen Reaches actually have any chance at all? If you gain Dante's favor alone, you get 8 units of 16 strength infantry, 2 units of 20 strength tanks (+10 offensive), and 2 units of 10 strength artillery (+10 when accompanied by non-artillery). The first week has the ork horde at a total strength of 93. The 2nd is at 138. The third is 197.

How in the world can the orks stand a chance? If the PCs gain the favor of any more of the NPCs, they'll have several hundred strength at their disposal.

I ask because my PCs are about to enter Act 2 of the Frozen Reaches adventure.

Yes toe to toe the mechanics favour the imperial player. But then you have to remember these forces are spread across all the defensive zones. So your infantry units are spread out covering the perimiter, meaning less troops available to support the armour on counter attacks. Casualties will start to mount up even when your winning, reducing effectveness so as you get weaker the orks get stronger. If your covering the key objectives and leave some of the outer perimeter unguarded, the orks will penetrate, meaning next round your flanked by greenskins and have your back to the wall.

Obviously it needs to account for the players and thier assets. My crew of players have a stargalleon which is huge, but its only armed with two sets of weaker macrobatteries (but boy can it trade!) and has no barracks full of soldiers, muder servitors or other military technology aboard. Therefore the best they can give would be some armsmen and conscript units with a small help in the space battles. However say your group have a frigate or light cruiser with lances, barracks, regiments of well equipped household troops your giving alot more and a fully kitted out cruiser means your going to be kicking some serious ass without the need for extra help.

If in doubt, try running the battle through yourself a few times and see (with your knoweldge of events) how easily you do. Then think how easily the players will do it with thier assessts.

Good Luck

I really enjoyed your feedback, Mutant, thanks. But the only problem is I have run the battle myself at strengths for each week. The first week, every Outer emplacement has at LEAST 41 strength. One or two others have 50+. Offensive Operations is at 100 strength and Space is at 110 (They have a Lunar with Crack (40) crew). They also have a barracks full of troops purchased via the BFK rules.

Bottom line: I'm really afraid they're just going to absolutely blow through the war with next to no casualties.

Have Ork Kommandos sneak under the wall they're defending, and bring down the whole section while they're on it. By the time they dig themselves out they'll be knee-deep in Orks.

bear inmind that any ship that helps with orbital bombardments cannot help in space. Further, run the scenarios presented inbetween each week that should able to stripaway some of the system ships, damage the bulwark etc. The key to the scenario is that the payers cannot hoold out for ever, so they should feel their resources diminishing with each week.

Space combat is key, because that directly affects the numbers of Roks on the planet which directly affects ork strength. while the imperials have the upper hand to begin with, the grind to each unit caused, especially those outside the walls, can really deplete their effectiveness, add in the hull damage that the players and NPC ships will be taking, wich will make them somewhat more cautious in the space scenarios then they would be in a one off combat and you can make a decent challenge.

If you want to, you could also simply add +5 to all ork strengths in the first week, +10 in the second and +15 in the third…

But that only spreads out the problem, it doesn't solve it. The ork strength is still outnumbered literally two-to-one on the third week. It's even worse in weeks 1 and 2.

Even without their barracks troops, they outnumber the orks 1.5-to-1.

Plus, I try to avoid the "punishing players because the adventure is broken" and "punishing players because they're doing a really good job" tropes. Not saying you do! In fact it's obvious you don't =P

Still reading your game and having a hoot!

Edited for new post in the process of typing this one out
They don't really need to do orbital bombardments. They've got the ground war covered quite well.

I am (going to) run the scenarios. But having a 100 STR offensive Operations will get rid of all Roks on the planet every week.

If they're wise with their unit placement (and they are, the Arch-Militant rolled SIX degrees of success on the Tactica Imperialis Test to help determine unit placement and estimation of ork attack strength), it's possible to almost completely negate strength losses.

If I were to increase their strength, I'd also increase the achievement points simply because harder should always equal more PF.

I am right now playing the Frozen reaches as well. I tweaked the numbers a bit and used the ploy for an orc tunneling machine to attack some random location in the inner defense ring. I also gave them more troops to attack the levy bunkers.

However, the Orks get more and more resources every week with the adding of even more Roks to te surface. And remember, that the player forces will diminish every week even if they succesfully defend their positions.

The players almost wiped out the orks in week 1, in week 2 they were holding their positions nicely but in week 3, all the defending were so much weakened that the orcs broke through two walls, destroyed the reactor, destroyed all the outer infrastructures and wiped the floor with the players offense. If there had been a week 4, the city would have fallen completely.

my players did a pretty good job with the ground troops like you said. As long as they place them in the right spot there should be no real problem. On the other hand they were almost wiped out in space combat, and were almost too scared to even do part three with the fear of crippling their ship

Don't be afraid to just increase the size of the ork attack if the PCs are doing too well.

A nice kick in the pants is usually good too; tely-porta mega nobz anyone?