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Hi all,

Long time reader first time poster.

I've been working on my 750 point army for a 40k doubles tournement, and have opted for the below option. Any comments would be appreciated but I have one main discussion point - what is the big fuss with Nobs? They're expensive, have poor armour and are tough but not tough enough. I fully realise the benefits of sticking then in squads of boys to give the squad penetrating power (PKs and big choppas etc) or leadership with boss poles. But I can't see the point in forming squads of them which will give the enemy something attainable to score big points from. Any views?

Thanks guys.

Taloncab

Graznak's Teefsmashers
(NB rules state I must have one HS, FA, and Elite before I can pick another similar special unit type - so can't just opt for loads of HS or FA for example)

[HQ] 1 x warboss with PK and Eavy armour
[TR] 11 slugga/choppa boys
Trukk for this squad

[TR] 10 x shoota boys
1 x big shoota boy
1 x Nob with big choppa & bosspole
Trukk for this squad

[TR ] 17 x slugga boys
[HQ] 1 x wierdboy
On foot

[EL] 5 x Lootas
On foot (high up using range of guns usually)

[FA] 5 x Stormboys

[HS] 1 x Lobba

[FA] 3 x Warbikers (one is nob with PK)

I think the thing with Nobs is they are 2 wound and you can arm them up all differently so you can abuse the wound allocation system and spread the wounds through the squad meaning you can take a chunk of damage without effecting your combat effectiveness...

Particularly effective with Nob Bikers.

If you take a warboss, you can take a squad of nobs as a troop's choice.

If you take 10 nobs, and give them 'Eavy armor, they're now 4+ armor saves. If you now equip them all differently, they're different wound groups. Here's my favorite:

1. Painboy
2. Bosspole
3. Waaaugh! Banner
4. Powerklaw
5. Powerklaw + Ammo Runt
6. Powerklaw + Kombi-Skorcha
7. Big Choppa
8. Big Choppa + Ammo Runt
9. Big Choppa + Kombi-Skorcha
10. Normal Nob

Now you have 10 different wound groups to spread wounds amongst, all of them are WS5 and will usually need 3+ to hit in close combat, they're STR5 on the charge, and are tacking on a 4+ feel no pain to the 4+ armor save. If you shoot at the unit of nobs, or attack them, or if they're mixed up in close combat, they can potentially take and fail 10 wounds without losing a model since you pull unwounded models from the same wound-group first and each wound group only has one model in it.

Stick that unit into a battlewagon with a Warboss or Ghazghkull, or into a trukk; give the vehicle a 4+ obscured save with a Big Mek with a KFF, and you have a nigh unkillable, ridiculously powerful unit.

Guys - really useful stuff thanks. I'll look on nobs with a new light of respect.

Saying that, warbikers have 2 wounds too. Might be worth investing in a few more of these!

I also need to get a painboy and big mek involved in my army for sure!

Thanks again!

Heh, warbikers do not have 2 wounds
I take it you have one of the mis-print codex's?

Most have 2 on the profile, but 1 everywhere else in the dex.

Warbikes...IE the regular boys on bikes...are not worth taking (and only have one wound).

If you take the Nob squad I listed above, and put them all on bikes, you now have a unit capable of long distance assault, with +1 toughness in addition to all the other junk, with 4+ armor saves anyway, 3+ cover saves when you turbo-boost, and adding FNP to a T5 model with a 3+ cover save, 4+ armor save, 2 wounds where all 10 are equipped differently for wound allocation voodoo is just sick.

Dashofpepper

Cheers for putting together more specific advice than I could. I'm not an Ork player and never have been. But the everyone armed differently wound allocation abuse is damn frustrating particularly for a Tau player!

Great tactic though, but is clearly abusing the system.

Dashofpepper wrote:Warbikers... only have one wound).

Source?
That's not what my codex says, aside from in the final page list, and I don't see any faq or errata that says otherwise. And I've got the late 08 reprint that includes all the errata, so it's not like I'm way behind or anything...
I've been playing them with 2 wounds for over a year

IIRC, original print included an error that Warbiker Nobs had only 1 wound. This was corrected in Errata and new print - resulting to misprint that gave REGULAR Warbikerz 2 wounds.

FlingitNow wrote:

Great tactic though, but is clearly abusing the system.

Not at all. Every army can do this, if it was an abuse, only limited armies could abuse this rule. Orks can take advantage of it more blatantly than others, but still, if everyone can use a rule it's not abusing anything IMHO.

On your list... The stormboys, lootas, wierdboy, and lobba... Yeah the army could use some work.

I would try and not include any actual ork squads under 12+ to make sure you can use the fearless. Also, 5 ork Stormboys or 5 Lootas really won't be THAT effective.

You could grab a Nob Squad + Boyz squad for troops. Dash would really know better than I what a sweet list would be like :3.

Perhaps you have an old Codex?

Page 101 of the Codex; the stat line shows 1 wound for the ork boy. Page 46 of the Ork codex (warbiker entry) it has 1 wound.

A warbiker is a six point ork boy with a slugga and a choppa sitting on a bike. I'm not sure how you could have any confusion there. ><

*EDIT* And Flingit, it isn't abusive; who do you think invented wound allocation magic? Tau. Equipping all the crisis suits differently to spread wounds around spread to popular metagame and was taken up by other armies; Tyranid warriors, Ork nobs, the practice is now used by everyone with multi-wound models.

I think you need to revisit what you find abusive. =p

Taloncab is this for the 40K doubles in Jan at Lenton?

Reason I ask is the rules for army selection is across both sides of the army, so you can have a HQ, two elites and all troops for example, as long as your partner has a fast and a heavy in theirs.

Dashofpepper wrote:Perhaps you have an old Codex?

Page 101 of the Codex; the stat line shows 1 wound for the ork boy. Page 46 of the Ork codex (warbiker entry) it has 1 wound.

A warbiker is a six point ork boy with a slugga and a choppa sitting on a bike. I'm not sure how you could have any confusion there. ><

Page 101 and 46 both show 2 wounds for warbikers, and for the warbiker nob entry, and my book says 2008 in the back. Weird.

Nob bikers have two wounds because Nobs have two wounds anyways. Regular ork boyz do not. So far as I know the only way for boyz to get another wound is to take a deff kopta

Tortoiseer wrote:Nob bikers have two wounds because Nobs have two wounds anyways. Regular ork boyz do not. So far as I know the only way for boyz to get another wound is to take a deff kopta

The boyz statline has nothing to do with the statline of warbikers... or deffkoptas or tankbustas or lootas or kommandos or burna boyz or storm boyz ... other than numerical similarity. Warbikers are not boyz on bikes like nob bikers are nobs on bikes... they're just warbikers, a completely separate unit.

If you take the Nob squad I listed above, and put them all on bikes, you now have a unit capable of long distance assault, with +1 toughness in addition to all the other junk, with 4+ armor saves anyway, 3+ cover saves when you turbo-boost, and adding FNP to a T5 model with a 3+ cover save, 4+ armor save, 2 wounds where all 10 are equipped differently for wound allocation voodoo is just sick.

Point cost for that insane unit? It ought to be hovering around 600-700p for 10 of those nob bikers.

Pyriel- wrote:
Point cost for that insane unit? It ought to be hovering around 600-700p for 10 of those nob bikers.

Yep. Doesn't mean they can't be horrifically effective though, nob bikers are one of the best units in 40k.
I don't field them because the expense can cut down harshly on your army's variety and numbers, but tons of people do.

Dashofpepper wrote:Perhaps you have an old Codex?
And Flingit, it isn't abusive; who do you think invented wound allocation magic? Tau. Equipping all the crisis suits differently to spread wounds around spread to popular metagame and was taken up by other armies; Tyranid warriors, Ork nobs, the practice is now used by everyone with multi-wound models.

I think you need to revisit what you find abusive. =p

Yeah I know about doing it with Tau first. I tend not to because I think it reduces the effectiveness of my weapons fits and I often take monats.

People saying everyone can do it need to explain exactly what in a space marine army can do this. I know it is common practice and everyone does it who can. But it is still abuse of how the rule was intended to be used. It was clearly created to stop special equiped warriors from being immune to death until all their comrades had died liekwise for characters. Whilst units of 2 wound models were not intended to take 10 wounds without taking a casualty.

I don't have a problem with it and I'm sure if I had an Ork army I'd take Nobz armed in this fashion. But like it or not it is finding a hole in the rules and exploiting it. A bit like the old take away the casualties from the guys surrounding the power fist in version 4 CC. Nothing wrong with the tactic and if you are taking nobz you'd be foolish not to use it, just like in version 4 you'd be dumb to take casualties away from the guys that have already hit allowing the fist to smack you. Doesn't mean it isn't abuse of the rule.

Space marines already get as much help as GW can hand them. The fact that they can't abuse this one thing is of little consequence lol.

FlingitNow wrote:
People saying everyone can do it need to explain exactly what in a space marine army can do this.

Well, not everyone. However, Space Marines have enough other garbage that I couldn't begin to feel sorry for you if I tried; we'll talk again when my Dark Eldar get a new codex.

I'm not sure why everyone keeps saying it, but you can no longer abuse wound allocations. The codex says that you must always take off as many models as possible, and if you suffer an instant death you must take off a healthy model if possible. Many people don't play with these rules, but it is printed in the rulebook.

despoiler52 wrote:I'm not sure why everyone keeps saying it, but you can no longer abuse wound allocations. The codex says that you must always take off as many models as possible, and if you suffer an instant death you must take off a healthy model if possible. Many people don't play with these rules, but it is printed in the rulebook.

The biggest reason that people have rules arguments in the FIRST place is because someone thinks they read something in the rulebook, and instead of reading it to find out, they paraphrase their best remembrance, like you just did. RTFB. Page 26. If you're too lazy to actually read the rules before demonstrating your ignorance on the forums, I'm too lazy to bother quoting the rules to you.

Alternatively, post your supposition in the YMDC forums. There are plenty of folks there who will be happy to rub your face in the rulebook until you learn them. But this forum here is for helping folks with army advice, not for dispensing bad advice about rules you don't know enough to talk about.

Sorry if that was harsh; I just really despise when someone makes up a rule that's "in the rulebook" when the rules (quotable) clearly require the opposite.

despoiler52 wrote:I'm not sure why everyone keeps saying it, but you can no longer abuse wound allocations. The codex says that you must always take off as many models as possible, and if you suffer an instant death you must take off a healthy model if possible. Many people don't play with these rules, but it is printed in the rulebook.

It says nothing to prevent nobs from behaving as they do.
It only says you cannot spread unsaved wounds in a homogeneous multi-wound group to avoid removing models. Kitting the nobs properly makes them entirely separate groups and allows you to take single wounds across the whole squad before you remove a model (unless you assign multiple wounds that go unsaved to a specific nob, which means the squad was hit and wounded by more than their number and you were unlucky on multiple saves if applicable, and then you also failed FNP if applicable).

It also doesn't say you can't allocate instant death attacks however you like, it only says you have to assign the unsaved results to a model in the group without wounds if possible. You can assign the instant death wound pre-saves to whatever single nob group you like, wounded or not.
P26 BRB:
"Once you have determined the number of unsaved
wounds suffered by a group of identical multiplewound
models, you must remove whole models as
casualties where possible."
Doesn't apply to kitted nobs, as they're all individual groups.

"If amongst the unsaved wounds there are some that
inflict instant death, the player must first, if possible,
remove one unwounded model for each unsaved
wound that causes instant death, and then proceed as
normal (this is done for each group of identical
multiple-wound models)."
Doesn't apply to kitted nobs, as they're all individual groups.