Email in: Dealing with monstrous creatures

"Kirby:

Hey, been reading your blog through and through for a week or so, due
to boredom at work, and now I figured I'd pose a question. (also,
nice blog by the way. It's a fun read through and through)

So my gaming group isn't what you'd call competitive, but i'd still
like to win on occasion. We generally end up playing four player
1000-point-each games, with SM focusing on landspeeders and shooty,
Eldar focusing on losing every game worse than i do, me playing orks
(I know) footslogging tons of boys (I KNOW) and thus not really doing
that well, and the tyranid player with a half dozen MCs in a thousand
point army.


The tyranids are the crux of the issue here. I can't figure out how
to kill monstrous creatures quickly. Typically he's got two
venomthrops tossing out cover to his tervigon and trygon prime, a
number of warriors and hive guards, and a bunch of little runts to run
around tying up orks in (admittedly short) melees.

What options do orks have for frying lots of monstrous creatures? I
typically run at 1000 points the following:

105 Warboss (PK, Cybork, bosspole)
108 Big Mek (Shokk, Cybork, ammo runt)
175 20x Shoota (PK Nobb + BP, Rokkit, Big Shoota)
116 11x Slugga (joined by warboss, PK Nob + BP, Rokkit)
55 Truck for slugga/warboss (Red, reinforced ram, boarding plank, Rokkit)
240 Nob Squad (6 Nobs, Cybork, Painboy, KombiRokkit, KombiSkorcha, Big
Choppa, PK, BP, Waagh Banner)
40 Truck for Nobs
150 10xLoota (all lootas, no meks)
11 points left for messing around, usually 'eavy armor on the warboss/mek.

Obviously this is sub-par but ork trucks are hardly mech and I don't
own any (finished) battle wagons. I sometimes swap out lootas for
more shootas, or nobs for killa kans. On top of this I've got 12
bikes built, 10 burnas, some meks, a KFF mek, another similar nob
squad, another two trucks, and a ton of various types of
slugga/shootas with associated heavy weapons and PK nobs, as well as 3
killa kans (Big Shoota, Grotzooka, and Skorcha) and an all-DCCW deff
dread.

So I have some options but those MCs seem basically immortal and tend
to slice my warboss and nobs up without blinking. Any ideas?

David"

Orks can struggle against MCs without mass mech (see MVBs Ork list) but one of their biggest issues can simply be Trukk spam - they can't kill them all and you can tank shock those little buggers wherever you want. Battlewagons do the same but with AV14 front as long as you don't expose the side AV12 to Hive Guard, well you're pretty sweet.

With what you have though, well unfortunately you don't really have much. Lootas can be good to put wounds on MCs but are unreliable. Mega-armored Nobz are a huge pain for any MCs not named Hive Tyrant (who can ID them all) but you don't have any of them and aren't always a great balanced army unit (though small units can be included rather well).

If you're able to get your hands on some of those cheaply, they can be a good solution against the Nids as they have trouble breaking W2/2+ armor regularly. Otherwise it's really about tactics - make sure you focus fire on specific units. Look to drop the Venomthropes or Hive Guard early with your Lootas and send as many PKs into one MC as possible - if you get bogged down you'll lose pretty heftly with MCs supported by their little guys.