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What strategies have you guys found to work good for hoard armies, when facing armies that stick in the way back and just fire away.

I play a hoard ork army, so if you guys have any boyz specific advice let me know. I've found that mek boy with kff is good. And dropping storms, if used well is helpful. But I'm still finding myself getting absolutely destroyed by my friend who has a very shooty army. Any advice???

Can you give more specifics? Are you playing with 25% terrain? Army list/points values?

Horde Ork armies pretty much run themselves. There's really not very many shooty armies that can stop them consistently.

with a horde against a shooty army the plan is to have more bodies than the opposition has bullets, this can pose a problem especially if the opposition castles up in a corner to make you huddle together, making templates really painfull.

If you can send distractions that stop your main horde getting shot up then that works even better, outflankers are very good for this.

so with regards to orks some options are:


-snikrot + lots of kommandos, behind the gun line, job done.

-grots may be your friend, stick them in front and get the boyz a cover save, gets more boyz to the target assault

-Stormboyz with Zagstruck, though if properly castled you'll only get to charge their front gunline, so they can be fairly sacrificial.

other option is to mechanise so you can get there quicker, Ramshackle means that Trucks are great for this as the boyz who get shot out can keep running

with Orks thoug your best plan is to run shoota boyz, they can outshoot most infantry in the game anyway.

Without knowing more all i can suggest is a few units:
#1. Snikrot, 14 kommandoes and 2 burnas poppinmg up from the enemy table edge.

#2. 5 death koptas with buzzsaws and big bombs out flank

#3. wall O'Kanz [3x3 kanz] as mobile wall + kff

#4. 30 gretchen mob as cover

I do both. I make shooty Tyranid armies. No one expects it!

If you're running a horde army and you're getting shot to bits, then you just need to add more models.

Tying up their gunline is the key. Kommandoz, outflank and trukk mounted troops get the job done. But do you want to know what my favorite trick is? Pounding the gunlines with 3 looted wagons with Boomguns (no upgrades). Lately I have been throwing in a Big Mek with SAG which is an ok unit...but scares opponents. I am totally ok with spending 400 points on support slots and even an HQ choice that put fear into my enemy and make them forget the mobs of boyz marching across the field at them. I am also OK witht them concentrating on those mobs while all those templates drop on their heads. Win/Win.

The dirtiest of them all are the 3 Deffkoptaz, all in a seperate FA slot. So what if you give away a few killpoints? When you turbo boost those Deffkoptaz into your enemies deployment zone, they will forget all about those mobs of boyz.

Just for the record, my opponent plays very shooty Chaos with two lashes, and holes up most of his models in one of the corners. He uses Oblits and pretty much anything that puts out a lot of pie templates. So it gets pretty frustrating, and having more bodies doesn't really help.

In a game of 1500 pnts. would you say Ghazy would be a decent idea, because of his "special" waaagh???

Also, and this may be a given, but if you're deploying first and its a pitched battle (so you're not sure which corner he's going to hole up) deploy all your guys in the middle of your deployment zone, hopefully behind some cover. This will make it so everyone is arriving at about the same time.

Bikes would probably help for distractions as well. With their 4+ cover save, 5 toughness, and now i'm told 2 wounds (correct me on that if i'm wrong) they can eat up a lot of shots.

Ghaz or Grotsnik are both great ideas, as Ghaz gives the 6" WAAAGH! and is a real hard hitter, and put grotsnik in a mob of 30 boyz and they all get FNP and will run at the nearest enemy

Don't Weird Boyz have something that can mess up lashes? Look into it. Otherwise the only real suggestion is minimize your toys and add as many boyz as you can. At 1500pts, if you have close to 150 models (pretty much all troops on foot) there aren't enough guns to deal with it. You can also run lots of trucks and battle wagons, shots going to them dilute those going to troops. Play objective missions, you can't really sit n shoot if you have to capture the center of the board. And all the advice to take snikrot and/or stormboyz sounds good. Truks may be your best friend here.

Ahh, the lash. Well, think about going mechanised (battlewagons and trukks). Another thing I noticed is massed big shoota fire will take down DP's. So if you have mobs of 30 sluggaz, thats 3 each. 18 Big Shoota shots will probably bang up a DP, especially if you have lootaz to back them up. Of course, by doing this, you lose a chance to run.

Another thing you may want to consider is shoota boyz mobs.

Be careful with trukks and BWagons- Oblits like to shoot at them more than cheap boyz. Popping them can cause serious problems.

Big shootas should never get the chance to massed fire on a DP unless he does something wrong. And that dilutes your CC strength.

Pie plates shouldn't be that common- oblits can only throw down (plasma) blasts. Defilers are the main source of Chaos pies and are actually a pretty subpar choice. Oblits are actually a very good idea to engage if possible as they would rather be shooting than tied up. Be wary of flame templates when you get close, though!

3 units of 3 koptas is a very good suggestion and will probably give him fits. Then just load up on boyz and Ghaz and Grot to help you out. Set up in the middle towards the edge of your DZ. Move, run, Waaugh/Assault. Someone should get there by turn 2. Keeping spread out can minimize blast damage and force him to use lash to clump or push your mobs back. At most he can lash 2x per turn. You should have more than 2 mobz. Also, DPs don't like Power Klaws, so don't be afraid to rush a DP that gets a little to close or rolls a little low on his Lash distance.

He also uses noise marines with blast masters (48 inch str8 ap3 pie) and sonic blasters, so he's pumping a lot of lead... or sound