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| Da Green Tide |
Usually in these reviews, people follow the FOC. With Orks, there is an old adage that leads me to move directly to the troops section.
Boys before toys.
Usually what this means, is boys, boys, and lotsa boys.
Listen to the intarwebs, they will tell you a horde of boys cant win.
Yeah, about that. Don't count your dead pile before you start rolling shots.
*Cue Messanger of Death quoting and snowmobiling me...
Righto.
Ork BoyzRating: Depends on your beliefs
Fun Factor: Zero. They are Troops. Troops ain't fun
Fail Factor: Depends on your beliefs
I don't think I could have been less committal with this description.
Lets break this down. Point for point, an Ork Boy is hand down (klaws down?) the best basic troop in any codex. For the princely sum of 6 points you get, WS4, S3 T4 2 attacks and for all intents and purposes fearless. Oh, and Furious Charge too. Once again, we have a t-shirt save, which is ironic as most Orks don't even have a shirt.
You can make them either a Slugga Boy (Pistol/Choppa) or Shoota boy (S4 18" Assault 2). They come in squads up to 30.
When a large mob of Orks equipped with sluggas and choppas charge the foe, the mess they make of their enemies is quite terrifying. P 40.
This is amazing value. Lets get 180 of the suckers. Nobody will kill them all! Correct. You probably wont kill anything either, as you walk sloooooowwlllllyyy across the field eating small arms fire from a refused flank and blocking any field of approach for the rest of your army. Do you enjoy removing 10-30 models per turn, for basically no return fire?
You don't? Why are you playing Orks!
You do? Buy Grots then. They are half the price (see below).
So options?
Well there is one "no brainer" option, and a few other options to think about.
No brainer: Nob Upgrade. This is our Orks Sargent. +1 wound, +1 Str. Thats right, my green Sarge has 2 wounds. The nob always, and I mean ALWAYS takes a PowerKlaw (PowerKlaw = Powerfist. ), and Bosspole. Based on this fact, a Nob upgrade costs 46 points (Base boy, Upgrade, PK, Bosspole). No more, no less. Don't try and skimp on points and take a Big Choppa or less, you NEED a power weapon on the Boyz Squads, and the PK is the only readily-available power weapon you will find.
You know how everyone goes on about how fail PowerFists are? Well Orks are an exception.
We have I2 base, I3 on the charge, so I will never, ever, ever, hit first against MEQ. So why not make the Nob, who just can't be torrented to death (2 wounds, remember), guaranteed to kill something. S9 on the charge (Furious Charge, remember) means that you are penetrating most vehicles on a 2+. Awesome! So they tell me Orks have no Anti-Tank. fester, you just told me there you Pen on a 2+, with a model you cant torrent down. Sure did. How do you intend to catch the vehicle hey? Your mob of 30 walks towards those 3 Predator's eating autocannon fire. That will end well for someone, and it's probably not you.
More options.
Per 10 boyz you can take 1 of: Big Shoota (36", S5 AP5 Assault 3) or Rokkit launcha (S8 AP3).
Also, for one squad in your army, you can add 4 points a boy, and they can get something resembling armor (4+). 'Ard Boyz are Orks with enough armour to stride though incoming fire, laughing contemptuously as their poorly-armoured cousins are cut down around them.
Hang on, what? The CODEX recognizes that boys mobs get shot to pieces?
Crap.
C'mon fester, there has to be something you are hiding...
And sure enough, there is...
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| I looked on the internet for a Trukk picture, and this is as close as I could come... |
The much maligned, Trukk.
Rating: Sigh.
Fun Factor: Karreeeeeeen!
Fail Factor: Yup. Its all fail.
Our "Rhino" equivalent... except Rhinos have a reasonable AV, don't have a roll chart, and also have a BS worth writing about. Most everyone who can get a Dedicated Transport can take a Trukk.
The Trukk. 10/10/10 Fast, Open Topped, capacity 12. 35 Points.
So lets analyse this.
Trukks are build for speed and speed alone, and often have little in the way or armour plating. A direct hit upon a Trukk can cause it to come apart in a clattering, cartwheeling pile of burning wreckage. P41
Paper. Box. Of. Death.
Orks work with numbers. 12, isn't a number. Ok, it is, maths boy. It is just a very small number.
In fact, lets cut to the chase.
Trukks are crap. Why? A transport needs to do one thing. Get you from A to B (B usually involving waving Choppas very close to people's faces or beaks or whatever you happen to have on the top of your body).
The Trukk does this, as long as its not shot at by anything worse than a lasgun. Chances of that happening? Zip. Zero. Nada. Small rain periods will wreck Trukks, let alone anything with a rate of fire above 0 and a Strength above 3. See, Open Topped AV10 means you fall over to concentrated bolter fire.
Let's hope there is a special rule that will make this worth taking. As I peruse further down the page... I see what? Another table to roll on? Goddamit. I do like tables to roll on, just not on "important" codex entries, like your PRIMARY DEDICATED TRANSPORT.
OK, this is a review, let's go through the motions... If a trukk suffers a Vehicle Destroyed or Vehicle Explodes (wrecked) result... roll on the table. If you get really nailed, and get blown up multiple times, roll multiple times, and take the lowest roll. This overrules rulebook blowy-uppy rules with its own "Orkier" version.
1-2. Kaboom.
Trukk blows up (and is removed). All passengers and anyone with D6" take a S3 hit. Surviving passengers (yeah, that 6+ will save you) take a pinning test, on now a whole lot less than fearless. You can however, now, charge on (as the vehicle is Open Topped) presuming you managed to blow yourself up in your turn.
3-4. Kareen.
The trukk rolls... 3D6 in a random direction. Pray you roll a hit on the scatter dice, because you then get to choose where it goes. Now, apply the Kaboom result above. Oh, and before you marine players start thinking you can bounce trukks off the table, they stop for impassible terrain, board edges and enemy/friendly models
5-6 Kerrunch.
The trukk breaks. Everyone bails out, and the paper box is stuffed. The boys suffer no ill effects (but somehow still look a little green).
Each time you roll under a 4, the trukk is removed from the table, so you dont even get terrain to hide behind... Not that you should, you are an Ork and Orks are stupid fearless.
Upgrades: Who cares. Red paint for +1 inch movement. Reinforced Rams to let you Tank shock and Ram vehicles... anything else is probably irrelevant. You can take a single shot Rokkit too, for that BS2 loving.
Right, back to the Troops.
Gretchin / Grots
Rating: Cheap
Fun Factor: Mines? What mines?
Fail Factor: Well, they don't kill anything
Grots and gretchin, the same beast. These guys are the lowest form of 40k playable Orks you can get. They are kicked, ridiculed, stomped, chomped and ordered around.
Orks use the tribe's Gertchin for all manner of dangerous and unsavoury battlefield roles. P50
They are also, ironically, the only things in the codex with BS3 (yay!). If you see anything with BS3, its Grot-powered.
Great, so these are the troops to take!
Well, no.
They aren't.
These are the 3-points-per-model home objective holders. WS/S/T/I 2, Ld 5, no save.
Need to be led by an ork to keep them in line. He is called a Runtherder (1 for every 10 grots).
Oh, they are short, so will confer cover saves to you, but not to them. Sweet. Hang on, don't have a HQ that does that?
Upgrades ...
Uhhh..
Yeah. Nothing worth wasting pixels on.
Special Rules...
Uhh...
The runtherder has L7 and a Squighound, which will eat D3 grots to let you reroll a failed Morale test.
Oh, the Gretchin have "It's a Grot's Life". This lets us sacrifice 3D6 to clear a minefield. Funny, yeah. Useful in game? Maybe in Apocolypse with the uber-minefields... but unless you see LOTS of scout bikers, maybe not.
So why do people rave about Grots?
40 points for 11 wounds gone-to-ground in cover for a 3+ save and objective holder.
40 points for 11 wounds stuck in a vehicle driving around (Green DAVU!)
You do the maths.
Other
Well, using our HQ selections we can bring in the following to our Troops Slots:
A Deff Dread (see Heavy Support, soon)
A Nobs Squad (See Elites, soon)
Warbiker Squads (See Fast Attack, soon)
Overview
So why do we need Boys and Grots?
Well, you probably dont, but unless you build your army to avoid them, they really are good choices for their points. See, regardless of what anyone says, having 20 boys (I run 20 boys squads as they are tough, 160 points without guns and still big enough to weather some shooting and CC action) charge with 4 attacks each is lots of dice. My rough mathhammer says I don't kill much on a normal marine squad on the charge (only about 8-9 of the squad). Against proper Assault Troops, I have enough bodies to let them eat before I get to swing with the Fist, kill a couple, and get run down (I2 is really bad for that).
However, I am 160 pts and cheap-as-chips... so I can handle using boys in the meatgrinder. That is what they are for. Versus average CC units, or those that have power weapons to make the killing work, I can usually pull a draw at worse. Power weapons dont worry 6+ saves.
Don't listen to the naysayers down below in the comments section (which I am sure you will find). For my money (and in my armies, it IS my money), I like to see 80 boys on the table, or 4x20 squads. Why?
You will have at least 75% of those boys killed by Turn 5. Guaranteed. (If not, you have probably won).
Usually this means you have about 2 squads remaining, fairly mangled. Now, with 80 boys to shoot, that is a lot of firepower not shooting at other parts of your army. So what? That 80 infantry is 640 points. Thats right, many marine players have about that many points in a SINGLE Landraider full of Termies and Special Characters. You, however, have 80 boys. Is it stoppable? Sure. Same as a Deathstar, same as anything.
Throw in another 60 Grots for the sum total of 240 points, and you have a bigass (slow) anvil of 140 models for about 900 points. Nasty. Killable, SURE. Tell me though, with your 1750/2k all-comers list, that you wouldn't have trouble killing 140 models in cover. That is 900pts vs 2000pts.
Is it scary? Most players I know say that yeah, seeing a horde of boys backed up by another thousand points of Toys is BLOODY scary.
Nobody likes being charged by Orks.
Nobody.
Well, except maybe Chuck Norris.
But until he gets added to the Imperial Guard codex next to Rambo Marbo, us greenskins are safe(ish).
28 pinkments:
One thing regarding Grots.. do not take the full amount, take one short. That way you save points on not taking another runtherder.. for every ten grots, you need to shell out for a spare runtherder.. therefore, instead of taking 30 and paying 30 points for 3 runtherdz, take 29 of them, and only need to pay for 2 runtherdz. That way, when you say 60 grots for 240 points, instead, take 2 x 29-strong units, so it would be 58 grots for 214. 26 points saved for the loss of 2 wounds.. thats almost 2 more lootas!
You've inspired my next blog article about how to use Trukks.
Killing Grots; Now that is what a Vindicator is for! :o)
Boyz being efficient is a myth.
You get a million shots and attacks, yes, but they're almost useless versus armor, which all armies that can compete bring plenty of.
I've played so many games where oceans of green are everywhere, but can do absolutely nothing, since my 'free killpoint' rhinos are immune to their shooting, and almost immune to their attacks.
Fast-forward a turn or two, and all the boyz are gone to flamers and dakka.
Boyz are like tactical marines. People want them to work so hard, but it's just not gonna happen.
Minimize boyz, minimize tacs. Take things that kill the enemy, and are harder for him to kill in return.
sigh...
People don't give boyz rokkits where you come from?
Anyways... just wanted to point out that "for all intensive purposes" is a phrase that does not exist. The correct phrase is "for all intents and purposes."
-willydstyle
Vt2: See, I don't agree with you. I just don't. Never in my experience does what you describe actually occur. Maybe I am just lucky.
Dunno.
Willydstyle -
Well there ya go.
Looks like I created a new phrase!
People can give Rokkits to boys in my area, but I didnt really mention any other upgrades there either, Big Shootas, etc.
Boyz don't tend to have a lot of effect in games against people with 10+ vehicles.
Rokkits are more a 'in case'-thing, than a 'always take.'
In the one game I have played recently against BA Vehicle spam (2 Razors, 2 Rhinos, 2 Dreads, Vindi, 2 Baal Preds, at least from meomory), there was indeed little I could do.
I still pulled a major victory as I killed his ASM Troops and took the objectives 3-0.
"Boyz don't tend to have a lot of effect in games against people with 10+ vehicles."
And what are 10 Razorbacks and rhinos going to do to 100 odd models, shoot them to death with storm bolters and heavy bolters?
Heavy flamer them.
That would be fine, but it doesnt scare me.
Whats left will then charge and wreck the vehicle.
Oh, you moved fast? If you aren't BA then you wont be Heavy Flamering...
I will do a write up on this VT2... do you want to do something co-operatively and debuff some of the "how to killz Orkz" misconceptions?
We can look at it from a Ork player point of view.
Sure thing, but I'll also point out easy ways to destroy massed amounts of boyz =P
"and almost immune to their attacks"...lol...so your rhino scoots 12" (so I need 6's). I charge him with 30 boyz for 120 attacks (three of those are powerklaws). 20 of those will hit on average, and 3 of those will be glancing, 1 penetrating from the powerklaw. Yeah I think something happens to that rhino. If you're not dead, you will probably be at least stunned for an easy kill next round. You won't be shooting or piling out of a surrounded rhino, and if you move, my str 8 PK vs armor 11 will have a good chance of slagging their ride if it tank shocks me. (Another reason to always take at least 1 rokkit in your boyz mobs. Why waste a PK nob if the death or glory fails?)
Of course, that's probably moot since my Lootas will have you walking on turn 1 with the best anti-rhino unit in existance.
Drop me an email with your ideas. Check under author contacts if you don't already have my email.
I don't think 3 squads of lootas are gonna be enough to deal with 11+ vehicles, three of which are armor 13 front.
I do love watching Orks get slaughtered by Flechette Dischargers on my Tau vehicles when they charge, knowing they have to hit on 6s anyways.
Boyz are best in mobz of 20 driving in Battlewagons. They're somewhat safer inside, can somehow all shoot from that front edge of vehicle (open topped - Yay!), with deffrolla can ride through lines of vehicles, then mop up their contents with fire from inside or get out (anywhere around - open topped), fire and assault.
10 grotz w/ runtherd and big mek w/ KFF fits nicely in shooty battlewagon sitting in a corner, providing nice firepoint and a scoring unit.
I prefer shoota boyz as they can give lots of dakka and having 3 attacks instead of 4 with slugga/choppa. I'll take the slugga/choppa boyz when they reinstate the choppy choppa rule.
I mean that having 3 attacks instead 4 they still can deal a lot of pain :)
First off, any assumption that you will get all thirty Boyz into combat with something is generally flawed. At least some of your Boyz are almost always excluded because of not being able to reach- if you clump them up more in order to get more stuck in, flamers and blasts will take you apart.
Second, your invincible mob charges and kills a Rhino. G... good job? Enjoy taking casualties from the explosion and/or being stuck in difficult/dangerous terrain. No consolidation since it's a vehicle, remember, and now I drive-by you and unload a bunch of flamers for 10+ hits each on you. How many times can you repeat this? Because it's quite reasonable to have a dozen vehicles, so I can trade 2-1 with you without breaking a sweat.
Lootas are good, but suffer poor morale (small squad sizes in most cases, 3x15 is prohibitively expensive in the majority of games) and can't deal with high-AV units. They're an amazing unit, but they cannot carry the entire weight of AT by themselves.
@lehcyfer
I think Shootas in a BW is probably the best way to go with Boyz, yes. You're giving them the most options for what to do while still maintaining the usefulness of your ride.
This was discussed at length in the Ork threads, so I'm not sure it needs to be gone over here. However, if one of the Orky folks would like to run a demonstration game of Vassal with me at some point, I would be interested in seeing how everything gets laid out.
3x3 Killa Kanz with Rokkits - 450 points
3x3 Warbuggies with TLR - 360 points
3x5 Loota squads - 225 points
Not being able to kill a Land Raider - Priceless.
lol kans kill land raiders just fine, thank you
Turn 1 - run.
Turn 2 - waaagh and charge.
Lots of time to annihilate all those orkz?
S4 on the charge against rear armour is going to get an immobilise.
Immbolised vechicles are auto hit by the S9 klaw. 4A on armour 10. Dead vechicle.
Nice to see peoples opinions here rather than experience of actually fighting against the orkz.
How many times does this have to be said? People do not line their armies up and run at each other. There are layers of defenses, sacrifical units, tanks, moving...wait for it...BACKWARDS, etc. etc. etc.
We say it over and over and over over and over and over but if you are getting significant combat units into combat with significant firepower units of your opponent's they've generally made a mistake. T2 assaults are feasible but not on the main aspects of an army. If you're assaulting Crisis suits of a Tau army on T2, the Tau player fucked it up.
Nice to see 2-dimensional thinking rather than experience with tactics.
Kirby, assaulting crisis suits in first turn with deffkoptas doesn't count, right? :)
I've been playing orks for a few years now, and I've run everything from Ghaz green tide to Dread bash to (currently) kult of speed. With that experience, I'll say this about boyz: they are absolutely fantastic, and if you don't think so, you aren't playing them properly. Why?
They are like a multi-tool in Deus Ex, they open everything. 30 Boyz with a PK Nob is a decent answer to most things your opponent can field. 30 boyz with a PK nob can kill most things in the game. (Not necessarily in a mathhammer vacuums, you need to set them up for success). With Ghaz, they have a single turn threat range of 18' (13-18 without). They get cover easily because they are freaking huge. They lay down excellent, reliable firepower with shootas (10 wounds against MEQ a turn). They are fearless and have 31 wounds and thus really resilient. They are good enough in CC that they have to be dealt with, but due to the previous points, they are tough to deal with. Finally, they're dirt cheap.
Some armies, like leaf blower IG, can pie plate them into oblivion, sure. Most armies can't though, and your boyz will either 1) eat up a ton of fire or 2) put the hurt on things if allowed to run free.
Grots, meanwhile, are an absolute must have in every ork list. Really cheap, can provide ablative wounds for a SAG mek, or just go to ground on an objective. I've never run a grot screen list but I guess that could be decent too. Also, never underestimate the usefulness of a total throw away unit. I've thrown grots into an Avatar or Demon Prince for a turn just to slow them down to great effect.
One final bit, I think to really understand the unit, you need a horde army mindset that you just won't get playing MEQ all the time. Boyz are EXPENDABLE.
Really Good info about auto transport.
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