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Ok, so I figure this is a good place to post for help with an ork army.

Here is the deal, I know the Orks can be a powerful army, however I can't seem to make anything work with the enemies I'm fighting against.

My typical opponents are SM, IG, and Tau (rarely). The melee combat is average, but the true problem arrises from the massive amounts of Multimelta, melta, and flamer weapons that keep being brought up on the table. Tanks (Preds, Rhinos, and Landraiders) with these weapons and models inside the transports with the weapons as well. Space marines are also deep striking in Landspeeders with both on them (and my friends never seem to roll a damn scatter) so within a turn, they can pop a BW, then drop flamers on the units who manage to survive the inevitable explosion.

I have tried a heavy shooty list, but the low BS of orks mean I can never really hit, and when I do, their 2 and 3+ saves keep them alive. When I go heavy mechanized and melee (BWs filled with boys to rush in and destroy), the pop the transports and burn before I have a chance to react.

This list I ran last sunday, and we destroyed by my friends Salamanders list.

Gaz

Big Mek
-KFF
-heavy armour
-pole
-Burna

20 boys
-nob+power claw

20 boys
-nob+power claw

20 boys
-nob+power claw

5 Meganobs

10 grots with runthurd (for objective grabbing)

3 battle waggons
-extra armour
-ram
-1 big shoota

1 battle waggon as Dedicated Transport for MegaNobs (holds Gaz and Mek as well).
-extra armour
-ram
1 big shoota

My Meganobs managed to destroy 4 terminators on the charge during the Waaagh! (leaving 2 left along with Vulcan) and by turn 3, three of the BWs had been popped, two full units of boyz burned to the ground, one half burned and running (with no recovery allowed as they were below half strength).

I know without a full Battle Report, getting advice on what I did wrong is difficult, but the problem was the large amount of flame templates being laid down, especially as they happened the same turn that a wagon would be popped by a multimelta.

Have you tried making the mobs 30-strong and just foot-slogging it?

Your friend is deepstriking 2 landspeeders? If not then all firing is done at the same time and he cannot flamer you after he fired at your BW. If this is not the case however then you have another problem.

Use terrain to your advantage. Make it so that if he deepstrikes around you he ends up with a mishap. Other than that there's other advantages that you can try to figure out as well. I'm not an ork player so I can't give exact tactics just generalized ones. Try using different units as cover for other units. A gigantic footslogging army would have a good chance as well. Multimeltas and such would be useless since you have no tanks. 30+ in a mob takes forever to take out. Make sure you spread the troops out in a way that flamers are useless.

Just let the mech do it's thing and let the orks excel in what they do: Mass bodies and Power Klaws! The rear armor on almost everything is 10 so a 180 ork boyz list with Ghaz should be able to glance and pen most vehicles into non-existence or at least negate thier advantage. If you enemy is dumb enough to sit still the turn Ghaz calls his waagh with a 180 ork boyz list then you have him. Melti will only kill one boyz a turn. Also take a Big Mek with KFF and that will negate some fire. If you do not like Ghaz then take Mad Dok Groznik and a 30 ard boyz mob. Line them up infront of as many boyz mobs as you can that will give you a 4+ regular save and a 4+ feel no pain save meat shield. Then with a Big Mek with KFF touching one ard boyz model then that meat shield gets a 5+ cover. That next to impossible meat shield then will give everyone a 4+ cover save behind them. That will give you the survivablity to make it to his forces.

If you make the mobs 30 strong and just walk them accross the field it shouldn't be too hard to make them get a mishap on the deep strike. If you're not already mix the squads together to screen them as they walk accross giving them all a 4+ cover save while out of cover. For Tau and IG it's all about rushing across and bashing them in CC.

For the Terminators, charge them with a 30 man boyz squad with a Power Klaw. If Vulcan is there you can assign the Power Klaw attacks to him because of how CC works, letting you target independant characters if they're attached to a squad. He'll only get his 3+ invul to it and the attacks will be S8 one attack through and Vulcan is gone. But with Orks, you should expect a fair few to die on the way. Tau can be tricky though. If they can play them right, it will be very rare for you to get into CC and if you do it's a sacrificial unit leading to a trap to remove the unit as it would be the most threatening to the whole army.

Tank killing is fairly easy as most of the time the Nobz should be able to rip it appart on the charge. The main problem is getting to them, which is why they need to be screened by weaker units (Grots).

Go footsloging for a while, then surprise them by using mech again all of a sudden. But, it's not surprising you're having so much trouble, those three are the best at killing vehicles.

Battlewagons can work, just try staying about 13" away from the meltas and have a counter charge unit nearby to attack them while the battlewagon goes past. Those drum things (death rollers or something like that) that you can put on the vehicles might also be an interesting idea. You would have to get into melta range, but it could be surprising. Don't rely on it though. But, I think if the counter charge unit (doesn't need to CC, just be a fair bit more intimidating at the time) does it's job right the roller should work.

Intermixing units does not give both units a cover save. Only one unit gets a 4+ cover save.

Ok a few pointers that should really help you out.

1) every single squad that has a nob needs to have a bosspole no matter how big it gets. No ifs ands or buts,orks die fast and will lose fearless after 1-2 combats vs most cc units. You need that bosspole to keep that power klaw in the game longer, and the pk is how you get most of your kills.

2) you need at lest 2 units of lootas if your opponents are all mech armies. Don't shoot the lootas at troops, thats a waste. Use them to nail things like speeder squadrons, and rhinos first. This might sound strange but poping them is more important then poping things like preds and vindis. If you pop the rhinos then your battlewagons will have a very very good chance of getting to within melta range before they get poped. By that point it does not matter because you will be able to call a waagh next turn and charge.

3)look into taking the deep striking stormboy squad. They are great, land them close to fast units like grps of atk bikes or squads on foot and watch as you create havoc in your opponents line.

4) if your taking a mech list stay in your transports untill your opponent has gotten out of his if possible, try to bait him with a nice assault on a b wagon. Remember the squad that gets out of his transport first usually loses.

5) finally some new things im thinking about for dealing with mech are the following

A) boarding planks on trukks and wagons, lets orks pop rhinos first and gives them the advantage.

B) squads of 3 buggies with tl rokkits. These scout ahead of the trukks blocking the rhinos from getting to my trukks and using their tl rokkits to maybe pop transports first.

again these last 2 need to be tested but they are ideas I have come up with that might help in the war vs meq. If you try them out let me know how they work for you.

rogueeyes wrote:Intermixing units does not give both units a cover save. Only one unit gets a 4+ cover save.

Both will get the cover save. Not really just placing one unit in front of the over but by using the 2" coherency to mix the two units together enough. But, yes, only one will have the cover save at a time, the other would gain it when it gets shot at.

n0t_u wrote:

rogueeyes wrote:Intermixing units does not give both units a cover save. Only one unit gets a 4+ cover save.

Both will get the cover save. Not really just placing one unit in front of the over but by using the 2" coherency to mix the two units together enough. But, yes, only one will have the cover save at a time, the other would gain it when it gets shot at.

Yeah they killed that cheese. The unit with the front most model doesn't get a cover save.

gardeth wrote:

n0t_u wrote:

rogueeyes wrote:Intermixing units does not give both units a cover save. Only one unit gets a 4+ cover save.

Both will get the cover save. Not really just placing one unit in front of the over but by using the 2" coherency to mix the two units together enough. But, yes, only one will have the cover save at a time, the other would gain it when it gets shot at.

Yeah they killed that cheese. The unit with the front most model doesn't get a cover save.

only in the adeptacon faq (which most, but not all) people consider official. I could be mistaken but I don't think they updated that in an official gw faq.

KFF big mek will make your BW twice as resilient, and screening them with war buggies will prevent your opponent from deep striking closely or assaulting them.

I don't consider the adepticon FAQ official at all. None of the people I play with do either.

On topic:

The problem is not that you're running a bad ork list, it's just that orks don't compete well against lists that are truly optimized for fifth edition.

PxDnNinja wrote:
My typical opponents are SM, IG, and Tau (rarely). The melee combat is average, but the true problem arrises from the massive amounts of Multimelta, melta, and flamer weapons that keep being brought up on the table. Tanks (Preds, Rhinos, and Landraiders) with these weapons and models inside the transports with the weapons as well. Space marines are also deep striking in Landspeeders with both on them (and my friends never seem to roll a damn scatter) so within a turn, they can pop a BW, then drop flamers on the units who manage to survive the inevitable explosion.
.

Sounds like your opponents figured out how to play 5th edition. sucks to be you.

Harsh Mattv2099

Having said that I think orcs belong with Nids - between the impartial battle sights of a holy Vindicator

Your battlewagons lack boarding planks. Something is wrong.

Not that those are necessarily the end-all, be-all of the ork arsenal but they're REALLY great at killing tanks, and incredibly easy to use.

As far as shooty orks go, what did you try to use? orks can make a GREAT shooting army with lots of lootas, lots of shoota boyz, and lots of buggies.

Spellbound wrote:Your battlewagons lack boarding planks. Something is wrong.

Not that those are necessarily the end-all, be-all of the ork arsenal but they're REALLY great at killing tanks, and incredibly easy to use.

As far as shooty orks go, what did you try to use? orks can make a GREAT shooting army with lots of lootas, lots of shoota boyz, and lots of buggies.

For a shooty list, I had boyz with Shootas and a 15 man squad of Lootas, battlewagons with max guns, and a couple other things. With my roles though, getting hits that actually end up wounding is very hard. 30 shoota boyz firing at a 10 man SM squad is lucky to get a wound, extremely lucky if I pull off two...

Have you done the math on that?

30 shootas, 60 shots. 20 hit, 10 wound, 3ish dead marines.

This is of course before you charge, and not counting any big shootas you may have in the squad.

Also, try a squad of burnas in that battlewagon.

"ok my flamer fires and hits.... 6 marines. Ok, times 15. That's 90 hits, 45 wounds - go ahead and make your armor saves".

I don't know, the big issue with that is Battlewagon survivability to get to do that.

Don't forget, you can only shoot out of it when it rolls only 6" max.

My 7 Cents.