How much Dakka do you need to kill a 30-strong Boyz Mob?

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**Razerous**

The question is pretty much all in the title.

Im quite happy for replies concerning tau, eldar, necrons, space marines or Imperial Guard.. Any will do really.

Ive just not had any experience of these very large mobs and would like some tactical low-down.

Thanks

**LunaHound**

Not sure but i think even 3 flamers will give them a hard time.

**Vindicator#9**

Flamers and pie plates are some of your friends.

**sourclams**

If you're relying on X 'shot' weapons, like bolters, heavy bolters, or autocannons, then far, far too many. So many that you may as well just have him pick up 10 models, put them to the side, and you set your Predator on fire because it'll amount to the same thing.

For example, one of the shootiest vehicles in the game, the Dakka Pred:

2 autocannon shots, 6 heavy bolter shots: less than 2 dead Orks after 4+ cover saves, or 2.5 after 5+ cover saves.

Shot weapons are fail.

Blasts and templates are better, especially cover-ignoring templates because you can basically double your kill total by ignoring all relevant saves.

The real ranged killers against Orks, though, are the multiple small blast (or in the case of Manticores, large blasts) weapons like Thunderfire cannons, Grotzookas, and Executioner plasma Russes. Because of spacing limitations in actual gameplay, it's almost impossible for an ork player to position his units so you don't hit at least 4 on a direct hit. In theory it's easy, in practice I've never seen it done 100% effectively. Many times you can get 5+ on a direct hit.

**Doombot001**

Tau: Hammerhead w/submunition railshot w/burst cannons.

Burst Cannon/Flamer combo w/Multi-Tracker on Crisis Suits.

9 man squad of stealth suits.

3 (just to make sure) 12 man Firewarrior teams at Rapid Fire range...and PRAY they kill enough guys.

What I did was peg my friends 40+ man unit with missile pods but I still couldn't kill enough of his boyz. Fricken mob was too huge. It would just soak the hits until he bumrushed my tau line. The mob was so huge I didn't have enough room to maneuver. Wiped out most of my men...

**Razerous**

I can think of Faaaar shootier non-template vehicles.

Land Raider Crusader or the Punisher full H.bolter russ or a Chimera with Harker (1x h.bolter) and a h.bolter vet team, 4 shotties/lasguns and 3 special weapons.

But anyways, yes, I can see it does require an inordinate amount of shot X firepower... most of the time.

Edit: My understanding of the KFF is that units have to be reasonably close meaning that you can only just cover two large mobs per one KFF mek and that with both mobs within 6" with the mek on the inside egde. But then ofcource 60 boyz is alot of boys.. and will provide a more than adequete cover-wall for those behind. (Okay, fair enough, it can be done, to a degree.)

**The Revelator**

Bolters have a 50% chance of wounding boyz.
That is 60 bolter hits.
That is 90 bolter shots. 180 if they are 'ard boyz or are in cover.

**Iron_Chaos_Brute**

You can't kill enough at range. Kill them in HtH.
Failing that, blasts as sourclams said.

**Razerous**

Surely you only have to kill 21 boyz to start seriously threatening the integrity of the Haeeoowuuge squad?

**sourclams**

Razerous wrote:I can think of Faaaar shootier non-template vehicles.

Land Raider Crusader or the Punisher full H.bolter russ or a Chimera with Harker (1x h.bolter) and a h.bolter vet team, 4 shotties/lasguns and 3 special weapons.

Let's look at these:

Crusader: 4 dead Orks. At twice the cost of the Dakkapred.

Punisher triple HB without Pask: 5 dead Orks.

Chimera with Harker and H.bolter vets: 4 dead Orks. Again, significantly more points than the Dakka pred.

Cover just rapes shot weapons to pieces. You need blasts or combat resolution.

**firebat**

Valkyries with Multiple Rocket Pods and heavy bolter sponsons give boyz a REAL hard time. Just remember to bust out the flamer, thats all you really need for them.

**Horst**

my favorite anti-horde is my 9 man sternguard squad + librarian....

unload in front of it, fire avenger + 2 combi-flamers... then rapid fire with hellfire rounds (wounds on a 2+, ignores armor, hopefully at that range no cover).

usually reduces a 30 man squad to less than nothing.

**Warboss Niblet**

You dont really need to kill the whole squad. Just kill enough greenies that they are manageable in CC. Kill off ~20 of them and then assault them with something survivable.

**Ciaphas-Cain**

Flamer templates are deadly, especially if you can use a tank to tank shock them into very good position for your flame throwers (or poison weapons etc..). The real reason ork players take lootas is because of Hellhounds

- we all know it

Ignoring cover is another huge factor (which flame templates have)as a lot of the time the orks will be atleast under a 5+ cover save (if not 4+); so i guess an eradicator would be actually useful here

Ok so what you need basically... which has been said many times before Blast, templates (Ignoring cover is nice to but not 100% needed) and that weapons with something like heavy 3 or even heavy 20 is only marginally useful

**Ultrafool**

What kills all of my 30 man squads are boyz are whirlwinds and their missiles that ignore cover

Just those and lots of Flamers.

**freddieyu1**

Units firing multiple blast templates indirectly...preferably s6 above so as to wound on a 2+....

Manticore, shadow weaver batteries, griffon squadrons....

or a tough CC unit with a LOT of attacks that charges first, so that the fearless orks get a lot of extra wounds after combat resolution...ie 5-6 man ogryn squad, or a full squad of zerkers.....

**thehod**

1 Vortex Missile.

**freddieyu1**

thehod wrote:1 Vortex Missile.

or 3.....

**labmouse42**

Use the right tools for the job, don't use meltas!

Templates and Ordnance are your friends.

**starbomber109**

I wonder how the Baal Pred would do? I mean Blood Angels players seem to think of it as "the true dakka pred" (And they can get meltas for anti-vehicle elsewhere)

But what everyone else has been saying holds true as well. Templates will ruin an ork's day, even if it's from a missile launcher! Frag missiles hurt. Submunitions hurt as well, and every Nob Biker Gang knows to stay FAR away from the Vindicator (then, at the last moment, rush in and assault it!)

But a full squad of rapid fire hurts as well. Imagine 24 fire warriors rapid firing your Ork boyz? (that's 48 shots!) If they fail to kill them, then maybe there's someone nearby with an awesome armor save that can charge the boyz so the FireWarriors don't get charged next turn.

**Witzkatz**

30 boyz will most probably roll with a Big Mek with KFF, because it's hard to get everyone behind normal cover. So I calculated with 32 T4 wounds with 5+ coversave to kill...

...you need:

288 lasgun shots at BS3
144 bolter shots at BS4 (double efficiency!)
144 plasma rifle shots at BS3 (so Tau are as good as Marines in this case)

That means you need 96 FRFSRF guardsmen in rapid-fire range. Two full-strength regular infantry platoons.
Or you can roll with 7 tactical marine squads...almost a whole company!
The next way would be 12 fire warrior teams of 12...

...interesting. You can only field that much pure small-arms firepower in a guard army, because you get FOC problems with the other ones.

Is someone interested in calculating if it is even possible for 96 guardsmen to be a) completely in rapid-fire range AND b) not less than 6" from the orks away?

(Because less than 6" would mean that the Orks would have assaulted last round)

**Horst**

yea, but the marines would just fire a flamer + bolt pistols, and then charge... and take the orks in hand to hand.

**starbomber109**

I'm going to math hammer this

3x Baal Predators fire at a mob of Ork Boyz

Baal Preds fire 12 twin linked s6 rending shots, and 18 s5 heavy bolter shots.

Of these, ~9 of the twin linked shots hit, and ~12 of the bolter shots hit.

Of those, ~7 of the Assault cannon rounds will wound, and 6 of the bolter shots.

The orks (assuming KFF) save two or three of those wounds, so you killed around 11-10 orks, way better than anything else, but STILL not ideal, and still not wiping them out. Edit: Btw, never played MathHammer before, it dosn't seem like a fun game to me :(

**Witzkatz**

Postscriptum:

I just did the math for my last question.

Assuming that the Ork mob moves in a rather circular formation with a diameter of ~6", the guardsmen need to be in a ring around this circular formation with a clearance of 6".

I also assumed that the guardsmen can only use one quarter of this ring in real gameplay, because otherwise the Orks would have already attacked them in another direction.

Apparently, one is able to fit at least 300 guardsmen in this area! So this would probably even work in "real game". I think an IG horde would be an awesome counter for an ork horde, just for the looks of it...

**starbomber109**

I just imagined the air full of Dakka if the targets of your IG shooting were 'Ard Shoota Boyz or something

I'm actually not sure if Tau can 'shoot orks to death,' they need to either get lucky, or get creative with their crisis suits (IE: use some heatwaves as firefighters to jump on assaulty units, yes, I'm actually advocating an assault, but having fought 3+ armor saves with ork boyz it takes FOREVER for the boyz to kill that, and if you charge the mob on the side farthest away from the Nob you might even win)

**LunaHound**

All IG player have to do is get chimera... 2x heavy flamer ,
3 flamer riding in the chimera >.>

BBQ everywhere

**Witzkatz**

Yeah, flamers are probably a far better solution for this.

However, the Chimera will have to move to be in optimal flamer range, so can only fire turret HF or hull HF. So we have one HF and probably three Fl from the hatch...a boyz mob this big will need to be packed to move in between terrain pieces, let's assume each of them is able to hit 8 boyz.

8 hits with HF = 5.33 dead orks
24 hits with Fl = 12 dead orks

So, 17 dead orks per chimera. IG can get Chimeras kitted like this for 140 points each, so it's no problem to field two of them - which means the 30 orks are getting toasted quite easily!

**starbomber109**

Witzkatz wrote:
24 hits with Fl = 12 dead orks

Hey, exactly the same as the baal Preds, only it took three of them, but they were 30" away.

I guess every army has an anti horde gun, for most it's the trusty flamethrower. (especially since they ignore cover saves) The assault cannon can do alright I guess, but it's better turned on MCs (rending) or MEQs (again, rending) It's kinda pointless to shoot a rending weapon at orks, who don't have a good armor save that the rending shots will ignore.

**ManwithIronHands**

Best way ive dealt wit them is with 3 10 man LC termie assault squads. jsut as many termies as they have boyz!

tho the Op asked for shooty solutions, mine is a plasma blastgun from my warhound as I really only encounter a 30 boy mob in apocalypse.

but in the good ol' days of 3rd ed when the 30 mob was prevelent 3 basilisk worked mighty well. so did a guard infantry platoon. the current one should rule them. 160 frfsrf bs 3 lasgun shots, 150 frfsrf conscript lasgun shots, 6 plasma shots 9 frfsrf lasgun shots and a demo charge from special weapons team and 45 heavy bolter shots.

**wuestenfux**

I'd charge it with a Seer Council, 10 Warlocks and a Farseer with fortune.
The math shows that the Boyz are dead in one or two rounds of cc.

Shooting them? Forget it.