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Hey all,

I normally take a suicide deffkopta in my 1,000 point list, but when I took part in a 6-player, 5,250 point monster game last weekend (Orks + Orks + Orks vs IG, SoB and SM) I took an additional unit of 5, with TL-Rokkits. This came to a princely 225 points, and although it took part in a massed Deffkopta charge on turn one, it only achieved the destruction of one hydra and a weapon destroyed on another - both in a squadron. Now, obviously such a madcap game is not the best testing venue, but I was wondering what people feel on this unit. They look great, and they are all kinds of cool when they fly around the place (complete with 'whooooosh' sounds), but I'm not sure that they will ever achieve their points value back. Especially as the twin land-raider bunker dominated the centre and they could not do anything to them. What are your opinions, Dakkadakka? Should I drop such a unit, or does it have a place? If so, is it best used as an outflanker? 20 strength 4 attacks from a unit with T5 would be reasonable in melee, even without the buzzsaw, but only against things like guardians, tacticals, other objective holders, which leads me to suspect that it would be worth trying them again.

Personally, if Im taking a deffkopta, it HAS to have buzzsaw w/rokkits. If not, then I dont take them. And I usually dont, because those things are only str7 on the chanrge anyways, and in my mind, lootas are FAR more effective str7 platform then the koptas. Sure you can then default to tying up and whatnot, but if thats all your using them for, then take rokkit buggies, they are cheaper and far more versatile then a suicide kopta. The only cool thing about them in my book, would be to have a gak load of them in a build, and thats only for cool factor.

rokkti buggies are cheaper points wise, last longer usually due to AV10 and vehicle squadron so no leadership roles... deffkoptas and rokkit buggies serve very different purposes

Agreed, one is for disrupting and alpha striking (Koptas)
The other is pretty much for everything else. Area denial, mass rokkits (though the other can do that as well, but at a cost increase) can be a wall w/KFF like the kans, and being a nuisance to other units

I seen the best use for the choppa's is to run a squad of 1, and have it charge forward on turn one to attack vehicles. Now you have a 60 point unit that can easily destroy a 150+ heavy support on turn 1. Also your opponent must now deal with a 60 pt unit in its face, or risk losing another vehicle on the next turn.

In all fairness, I have to say that buggies are not really an option for me. I have a limited budget, and the buggy models are garbage; meanwhile I already own 6 deffkoptas. Hence my question about them. I've found that tanks, especially tau skimmers and the like, are a huge problem for my list.

They are called koptaz - choppas are for krumpin' stuff.

Myself, I often find 70 points too much of a commitment for a model that might simply miss and die. More often I find myself either fielding rokkit koptaz without buzz saws or trios of rokkit koptaz with a single buzz saw. I often find that shaking a vehicle or even forcing them to move (ordnance barrage) is enough to disturb the enemy. So what if I can only glance on a 6? I save 50/75 points for some other unit that will hurt that vehicle. The trios pretty much guarantee that the target vehicle is useless afterwards, and require some dedicated shooting to remove. More often than not one or two of them stay around to keep shooting their rokkit at something or the other.

For a tournament my buddies and I had, I ran a unit of 5 Koptas for grins and giggles. It under-performed in every game. The leadership was it's downfall. In each game, they were either swept in close combat or failed morale after suffering heavy fire and fled.

I stick to 1 man squads when I bring them. I scout move them forwards and keep them in front of my enemy. It helped me prevent the DA player from scout moving his bikes with locator beacons forwards. It is a great distraction. And if they choose to ignore it, it can (though unlikely) wreck a transport or other light vehicle.

I take it/them with rockets.

Charles Rampant wrote:Hey all,

I normally take a suicide deffkopta in my 1,000 point list, but when I took part in a 6-player, 5,250 point monster game last weekend (Orks + Orks + Orks vs IG, SoB and SM) I took an additional unit of 5, with TL-Rokkits. This came to a princely 225 points, and although it took part in a massed Deffkopta charge on turn one, it only achieved the destruction of one hydra and a weapon destroyed on another - both in a squadron. Now, obviously such a madcap game is not the best testing venue, but I was wondering what people feel on this unit. They look great, and they are all kinds of cool when they fly around the place (complete with 'whooooosh' sounds), but I'm not sure that they will ever achieve their points value back. Especially as the twin land-raider bunker dominated the centre and they could not do anything to them. What are your opinions, Dakkadakka? Should I drop such a unit, or does it have a place? If so, is it best used as an outflanker? 20 strength 4 attacks from a unit with T5 would be reasonable in melee, even without the buzzsaw, but only against things like guardians, tacticals, other objective holders, which leads me to suspect that it would be worth trying them again.

The Deff Kopta is indeed an element of Surprise I use them in one of 2 fashions and it almost ALWAYS relies on whether or not i had choice of first set up or not. If I get first set up I decide to deploy my kopta/s ideally in the forward most middle position I can. If I manage to secure the first round (I.e. no stealing init) Then before the match starts i scout move, but turboboost as close as possible. Then my round begins move up 12 and close the extra 6 for round 1 rokkits and saw to the face. This has made Tyranid players spamming Terrvogons give pause to me as i've wiped all their poopers early.

The Other option is to hold off and start in reserves for an out-flank, I love doing this because most 40k players are reactionary meaning they can only see the game from round to round thus they take immediately advantageous angels like castling up in corners or running along flanks to limit the number of orks who can hit them. I won't like This tactic... doesn't work sometimes because of how random the outflank rules can be. But even if it doesn't work I simply turbo-boost where I want and know I should probably be there next round unless the enemy focuses way more firepower on them they they should. I do like outflank though cause when it works... man it works well!

The comparison of uses for deffkopta and rocket buggies are correct though friend, Deff koptas should ideally be designed for a quick and crippling stab, if you get more than that it's just luck. Deff koptas can serve a very useful function in my opinion though which is ideally fighting nids! Not a single army out there i feel like I struggle more to kill than them and their trygons! strength 8 ap 3 means 2+ to wound with no armor saves. Yeah, you won't be accurate but the re-roll really helps. Ideallly you should use the buggies to weaken down the trygons then use the speed of the fast little buggers to get out of combat range of anything the next round. This gives your horde the ability to not have to worry about fearless saves if they haven't killed things like those monsters

The last thing to note, BUZZSAW WORTH IT EVERYTIME! This is mainly due to the fact in close combat against vehicles you hit rear armor and no one save Land raiders & Monoliths laugh at strength 7 knocking on the back door you should wreck it easily unless it moved (again if you get first turn ... this won't happen so instead you auto hit!) Not to mention the chance to auto kill low toughness like eldar and guard is funny, but the main power i use it for is also to screw up units like Long fangs or Small man squads since the only resistance they really offer in assualt is luck and their armor saves So why not pit a strength 7 assualter on them with 2 wounds and a 4+ armor he shoudl ideally live and tie up big guns if nothing else but more likely kill them all

I play speed freeks, and so deffkoptas fit pretty naturally into my 1500-2000pt lists.
I usually have 2 squadrons of 3 rokkit koptas. I mostly use them as a suicide screen, but shaking a tank is incredibly helpful, and every so often they actually take out a vehicle! I also find that 3 is just enough to draw fire away from my trukks (and enough rokkits to actually hit something once in a while), but is is few enough that I'm not wasting too many points.
I've never actually put klaws on them, as they don't often get into combat the way I use them. I rely more on squad klaws and boarding planks.

I agree with Big Mek Wurrzog concerning the buzzsaws. If you get first turn you can scout move, get 12 inches away from best vehicle, next turn fly up to vehicle, shoot side (or if possible back) armour, if that doesn't work assault with auto hit str 7 on back armour which is usually 10ish, that vehicle doesn't stand a chance. If you take 3 (which I do) it won't ever make up for it's points in the first turn, but watch the amount of fire drawn to them because your opponent knows that you can just do the same next turn and take out another vehicle. Even if you don't start first, your opponent has to decide whether to move a vehicle (less fire power, harder to hit in cc) or not (more fire power, auto hit in cc).

I don't think you can underestimate the power these guys have for drawing fire, even though it pains me to see my lovely painted Deffkoptas dying it does make me smile when all my opponents high strenth guns fire at a measly unit of 3 when I have a horde of boyz, nobz in a battle wagon, kill kans and lootas all being ignored.

I used a taktik against a friend of mine who ran a Dark Eldar list. I had three units of five deffcoptas all with TL rokkits and bigbombs. held them in reserve and as luck would have it, all three units come onto the board same turn, same table edge. turboboosted across his main force and dropped every single bomb. two words can describe what happened.

Utter Chaos.

I now call them deff skwadron

So the general opinion is that 5 isn't worth it, the suicide buzzsaw works well, and squads of 3 can be useful for screening and shaking enemy vehicles. Thanks for the feedback, I'll stick with the buzzsaw suicide unit, my 6 warbikers, and see whether my lists can justify another 3 at any given time.

It might be, because Im a big fan of rokkit buggies, but if your just planning on using 3 koptas for screening/shaking, then GO WITH THE BUGGIES. They are cheaper, are armor, and can ALSO screen/shake things. Its really a no brainer there.

What I do with mine, is Ill either move them up 12 inches, and fire TL rokkits at things, and now they have a nice screen against the rest of my army. OR! You move them upto 18 inches right in front of enemy units and block them. They either move around the buggies and ignore them, costing them valuable movement, or they fall for it, and assault the buggies, meaning all their attacks need 6s to hit, and the buggies can continue to move next turn because they dont get tied in combat. Where as a kopta would be stuck in CC, and has a much better chance of dying

In my old Ork list I ran a unit of 3 AoBR 'Koptas in a mainly footslogger army. As has been said, they are usually pretty good at running forward and popping transports. sometimes you get lucky, and can waste an entire shooting phase on reactions to deffkoptas, which gives boyz more time to advance.

Also, How hard would it be to convert 'Koptas to buggies? I know there are a ton of tutorials for turning them into bikes.

The thing about buggies though is that a single lucky bolter round can spell the end of your fun, either by shaking you and making the buggie useless as a weapon for that turn, or by popping the gun or the whole thing. It's the open topped that hurts. At least with the koptas they are 2 wounds with an armor save. Deffkoptas also get the extra movement distance, scout, and the ability to "leap tall buildings", which I find is really helpful in their role as bait. You also have the ability to assault if you really need to, and hit and run helps a but with combat, but I agree, they are gone if your opponent has a power weapon. Still though, I find that all this makes koptas a better choice.
Now, it may just be the pyromania in me, but I prefer using buggies as a heavy flamer delivery system rather than for scaring tanks.

DarkDrgon wrote:In my old Ork list I ran a unit of 3 AoBR 'Koptas in a mainly footslogger army. As has been said, they are usually pretty good at running forward and popping transports. sometimes you get lucky, and can waste an entire shooting phase on reactions to deffkoptas, which gives boyz more time to advance.

Also, How hard would it be to convert 'Koptas to buggies? I know there are a ton of tutorials for turning them into bikes.

dashofpepper has a tutorial on this forum on how to do it. Don't copy his paintjob though

DakkaHammer wrote:The thing about buggies though is that a single lucky bolter round can spell the end of your fun, either by shaking you and making the buggie useless as a weapon for that turn, or by popping the gun or the whole thing. It's the open topped that hurts. At least with the koptas they are 2 wounds with an armor save. Deffkoptas also get the extra movement distance, scout, and the ability to "leap tall buildings", which I find is really helpful in their role as bait. You also have the ability to assault if you really need to, and hit and run helps a but with combat, but I agree, they are gone if your opponent has a power weapon. Still though, I find that all this makes koptas a better choice.
Now, it may just be the pyromania in me, but I prefer using buggies as a heavy flamer delivery system rather than for scaring tanks.

Yes, but your saying "Lucky shot" that doesnt ruin a unit. Ive heard stories of MANY of lucky shots in tactics/battle rep forum. Using luck as a strategy isnt a smart way to play. Besides, like every unit, buggies do have their weaknesses, you can mitigate most of those weaknesses, by sticking them under a KFF bubble. But Ill still argue that their strengths FAR outweigh the weaknesses.

The point I was trying to make is that it is a bit easier to supress buggies, even with small arms fire.
But the main reason that I prefer koptas over buggies in this role is the increased mobility of having scout and being jetbikes. Again though, buggies are great for flamers.

Note that any fire that is able to suppress buggies can just easily wound koptas. S4 glances a buggy on 1 out of 6 times, and wounds a kopta just as often. However, a buggy will still survive four out of six of those glances(five out of six with a KFF), while a kopta will definitely be dead after two wounds.

I normally use 1 or 2 deffkoptas with TLRL and buzzsaw. But you have to understand their purpose since I am not a fan of the math hammer idea that you need to get your points back. The main use of the koptas is to scout and then shoot and charge on turn1. Now it might not even doing anything but if you choose the right target it can easily either destroy a unit or keep it busy for enough time until the rest of your army advances and start crushing stuff. I tend to play again Grey knights and having a pair of deffkoptas means that my opponent has to either suffer a charge from the koptas and risk being halted for several turns or keep its purifier squads close to this to avoid the problem. Now if you manage to tie them for 2 turns that means two less dreads shooting 4 TLAC shoots that could do more harm to the rest of my army then the points I have spent on them. But like everyone else said they are hard to play with and a wrong move might simply throw them away. Also I have found that keeping them in reserve kinda of breaks the advantage they might confer.

I've been totally converted to their Awesomeness, game after game. 3 squads of 1 twin Rokkit Buzzsaw. Scout moves, power weapons, if they survive turn 2 I feel I didn't use them properly. They work great in my Kan Wall list Tying up enemy units while he Horde walks forward.

I've tried the 5 differentiated unit for would allocation with a Bikerboss and they never did as well as 3 squads of 1!

Too many points tied up and the opponent know he needs to kill it. The squads of 1 force the opponent to choose to either shoot assault 70 points or ignore it.

Charles Rampant wrote:In all fairness, I have to say that buggies are not really an option for me. I have a limited budget, and the buggy models are garbage;.

Take a deffkopta, chop off the kopta bits and get some toys. Here's an example:


More in my gallery.

You can get great and cheap bits for converting buggies on ramshackle games, or if you don't care for tournament legality, even entire buggies.

http://shop.ramshacklegames.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=6

Jidmah wrote:Note that any fire that is able to suppress buggies can just easily wound koptas. S4 glances a buggy on 1 out of 6 times, and wounds a kopta just as often. However, a buggy will still survive four out of six of those glances(five out of six with a KFF), while a kopta will definitely be dead after two wounds.

This a million times. I can always tell when someone says "Oh but bolters can kill them, koptas are better" they havnt tried or BARELY tried using buggies. Because you find out after a few games, that yea, they are incredibly survivable. Which is fantastic since they are cheap as hell, so if you lose one or two, its no big deal, but its when you DONT lose one or two, that you feel they are so valuable. Not to mention, TL rokkits is just the tits.

But like I said, I mainly use them to deny area for other units, while pumping rokkits into them.

I have started running buggies with my kanwall. That is 6 TL rokkits from my buggies, 9 rokkits from my kans, and 15 deffguns from my lootas... I love me some shooty orks!

Anyway, the point is, I am running 6 buggies and 2 deffdreads under my KFF, as a screen for my Kans, so that I can dictate assaults and give even more AV target saturation (17 pieces of armor ). Not only do the buggies absorb an insane ammount of firepower thanks to the KFF, but they assure that my Kans and Dreads live even longer due to more targets. My koptas NEVER did any of that for my list.

Yes, my Koptas really annoyed opponents with their turbo-scout, but the resiliency of Buggies under a KFF have added an insane ammount of resiliency to an already resielnt Kanwall. Buggies FTW!

Deffkoptas and Buggies serve two different functions but are very similar as King Cracker said, Buggies are very sweet especially if you move them correctly I love them for a cheap alternative to koptas especially against nids. Koptas get more in your enemies face and force him to make hard choices right off the bat for a meger 70ish points

Buggies = I ideally use them as a game of cat and mouse with big MC's which have 3+ armor

Koptas= Blitz force meaning fast hit to cripple some elements or sneaky blitz to deceive my opponent into thinking his flanks are safe and I'm a dumb ork player

Now i am not a fan of ever tailoring so... normally i never use buggies, but I see the strength behind them and know they are VERY good for the points.

Koptas to me play more to my style, i don't think their use is hard at all you just need to run them a few ways before setting up.

Okay so your match is starting well here is your first decision with your DeffKopta Boyz and it's important to pay attention here, When your roll off starts review the results did you get the higher result; or are you beaten out? If you get the higher result your best option is to deploy them with the army and get them as center forward as possible. If you lost you have a small chance of making them still work in deployment if you have seize init... but it really is a gamble i advise against it heavily... instead put them all in reserves to Outflank your enemy. The Outflanks will do 1 of 2 possible outcomes, either your enemy doesn't accord for them... or he does and makes a poor deployment to compensate either way the advantage is yours.

Alright so the battle begins and in the first option where you won the roll off you then Scout move your Koptas toward the most advantageous thing as close as they can get!; i prefer low back armored tanks or small squads like long fangs or devastators. The enemy will have a 1-in-6 chance of making this backfire on your though as he could steal init, but the aspect of it is rare enough that I tolerate it, as a suggestion that is why i try to turbo-boost them during their scout move to protect them from that event and it works well enough but they probably aren't making their points back. Once the match officially start you simply move in shoot your rokkits hoping that a 2/3 chance of hitting will pay off for you and then Crash into assualt where all 3 of your buzzsaw attacks will auto-hit. If it's a vehicle understand you won't be protected from gun fire if you don't kill the tank, if it's a small squad like Long fangs or the like you have a high likelihood of living due to high toughness, armor and wounds so you get the insurance that if you don't kill the squad and they don't flee then they will probably provide you much needed protection against the enemy's shooting phase. I normally wait till the enemy's assualt phase then pop hit and run if they are still alive somehow (unlikely but has happened a bit more than i would like to admit) the hit and run sets you up to do it again with minimal damage taken and you get the chance to do it alll over again! The whole time your horde apporaches ready to take on a weakened army not capable of receiving your charge while in chaos like that.

In the other option if you are in Outflanking I try to step forward in such a way that my horde tries to cleave the battlefield in half, most of my enemies like Dark eldar, Imperial guard, Eldar and Tau all fall for this as they avoid combat like the plague and seeing 100+ orks on the field fast approaching the center back of the field they unwittingly seperate or hold strong pulling away the elements they don't want assualted slowly toward their flanks. I love the Outflanking Kopta cause it just shows up out of nowhere and makes the enemy regret not bringing the fight to me instead. I love doing this with multiple Koptas, It panics my enemy commanders as they realize nowhere is garanteed safe now if they flee from the right like Eldar and Dark eldar so aptly do then that new flank they are fleeing to becomes a new threat. Normally the outflanking koptas help me a little less than round 1 kopta chaos but i still like this as it set things up for unexpected reinforcements which will prove deadly unless you are dealing with a very seasoned player who knows how to still probably shield his units during the early rounds. Note, even experienced players have no way of telling where you will come from and neither do you try and fan out in rounds 2 and 3 to become wider to block them in so the deff koptas don't need to waste rounds chasing something that got past your horde.

Sorry if that was too long, I wanted to give my whole tactic with them since it looks like we are post little tidbits.


Added: Oh and I don't run units of them to protect them it's too big of a waste of points IMO unless you do MAYBE 2 1 built rokkits and buzz the other rokkits to absorb hits and help you wreck what your shooting at vehicle or MC wise. You can do it but if you want more than the cheap kamikaze Koptas then you should consider the buggies as you can get a 3 fast vehicle squadron all with TL-Rokkits for 105 pts not this isn't with the upgrades i normally take like armor plates on one just for the idea that my buggies might all be killed down to 1 that one will still have the benefit of shrugging off stuns when it's all alone. But again i like to play Cat & Mouse with them... so *shrug*

Argyle Culpepper wrote:I used a taktik against a friend of mine who ran a Dark Eldar list. I had three units of five deffcoptas all with TL rokkits and bigbombs. held them in reserve and as luck would have it, all three units come onto the board same turn, same table edge. turboboosted across his main force and dropped every single bomb. two words can describe what happened.

Utter Chaos.

I now call them deff skwadron

I have tested 5 koptas with big bomms and nothing else about 20 times to get a feel for how effective it is. 5 koptas + 5 Big Bomms = 250points

The Kopta uses the big template and only 1D Scatter (but do not subtract your BS-FAQ's) AND can turbo boost and drop them.

on average I inflicted ~20 wounds with 5 koptas. This should leave 6-7 dead marines.

Since you can drop the Bomms even during turbo boost, you will get a 3+ cover save the next round when they try to shoot them out of the sky. Next round you have no bombs, but you can shoot and asault. It's pretty deadly, but not cheap at 250 points, if you get very unlucky on the scatters you might only kill 1-2 marines(and waste alot of points), if you get really lucky you can kill a full squad with the Bomms.

Alerian wrote:I have started running buggies with my kanwall. That is 6 TL rokkits from my buggies, 9 rokkits from my kans, and 15 deffguns from my lootas... I love me some shooty orks!

Anyway, the point is, I am running 6 buggies and 2 deffdreads under my KFF, as a screen for my Kans, so that I can dictate assaults and give even more AV target saturation (17 pieces of armor ). Not only do the buggies absorb an insane ammount of firepower thanks to the KFF, but they assure that my Kans and Dreads live even longer due to more targets. My koptas NEVER did any of that for my list.

Yes, my Koptas really annoyed opponents with their turbo-scout, but the resiliency of Buggies under a KFF have added an insane ammount of resiliency to an already resielnt Kanwall. Buggies FTW!

Alerian has seen the light! And by light, I mean the dim wavy light, of burning wrecks from all dem rokkits!

If you want to see first hand the highs and lows of suicide Deffkoptas with Buzzsaws and Rokkits, check out any or all of my batreps. Can't add much to the combined wisdom here other than to not overlook them as added target saturation.