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I love the idea of trukk boys but are they any good? 12 orks in assault against most things is going to come second (low I and rubbish armour). How do I make them competitive or are they just spam in a can?

They are good, but you have to commit to them. The point of Trukk boys is to hit the enemy as fast as possible, making it less likely to take casualties. That's about all I can tell you, so just wait until Dash of Pepper shows up. He wrote the book on Mech Orks.

I was playing in a local tournament this weekend one of the players there used 1 ork truck filled with boyz what he did was, use 2 battle wagons (one with a KFF) he would just keep it in the bubble and drive as far as possible. Next turn practicably in assault range and the opponent had to decide to blow up a truck or 2 battle wagons or some kans. Also the boyz on the charge can easily wipe a tac squad but there really good for typing up units then more orks arrive to killz the rest.

Speaking from a completely inexperienced and entirely theoretical standpoint:

How many points are you playing? If 12 boys in a trukk are taking the place of a bigger squad, don't do it. If, however, you are playing a smaller game, then rushing a truck full of sluggas into the enemy's face to keep them busy for a round or two until the real krumpin' mobs arrive might not be a bad idea. If doing so, you'd either have to: A) do as cheesesteak said and keep them in a KFF bubble for most of the trek or B) rush them like mad and hope they don't go boom before they get to a squad and can tie them up. Like a tac squad in a rhino, the lower the points, the less likely the enemy will be to be in a position to pop your transport on turn one then pewpew you to death from afar (also depends on the army you're playing). A trukk full of sluggas has done wonders in a 500pt. skirmish, but I'd never take it in a 1500pt. game.

Just my noobish musings. Let the more experienced players weigh in.

x12 Slugga Boyz w/ Nob w/ Pk & Bosspole
-Trukk w/ armour plates & boarding plank

162 points

your right, 12 trukk boyz hitting a target aren't going to do much....24 trukk boyz however are going to lay some hurt, and 36 trukk boyz will wipe something out. A big mek with a KFF will help keep the trukks alive a little bit while they rokkit towards the enemy.

The nice thing about truuk boys is that they are cheap. Even with a PK/bosspole nob you can fit 4-6 in an army.
Combine that with some battlewagons full of scary nobs and you have yourself a very fast, hard hitting army.

Really it depends on your style. Just remember that like any Ork build, you have to either go all the way, or forget it. Mixing in one or 2 trukks in the rest of your army is usually a bad idea.
I take ALL my boyz in trukks. Period. The trukks are fast, so an 18 inch move is friggin sweet. A KFF keeps them all together on the way up to the slaughter.
Also you have to use them properly. If you put one trukk here, 1 trukk there and try to take your enemy on in spirts, itll fail horribly. With trukk boyz, you want them to hit the same area at the same time. I can tell you from experience that 4 trukks smashing head long into one flank of you enemy will cause a serious "OH gak goto plan D from plan A" in a hurry.
One trukk will grant you 44 attacks with choppa boyz on the charge. not to mention 4 PK attacks as well. Granted some will die off because of the low I, but the boyz always plow through that. Boyz are basically a filter for the nob anyways. Sure they will kill things, but your really wanting that PK to come into the game. Now multiply that by 4 trukks and your talking about a total wipe out on one flank.

I think KingCracker nails it pretty well.

Remember, the rules require you to go B2B with every possible model when making your assault move; it's going to be very difficult to get more than 2 squads of Boyz into one unit unless it's either a very large unit or on very large bases.

The hidden danger then is if you do *not* wipe out the unit in close combat, there's a very good chance that both of your squads are running for the hills. If your opponent is smart, he'll focus as much as possible on a single squad, forcing the other to take Fearless wounds.

Well in the case (which is usually rare these days lol) of playing a good tactical player, I do the following.
Ill dump the boyz out with the trukks blocking the LOS from the rest of the army. Witha KFF mek, the trukks USUALLY still are within the 6 inch range to get that always lovely 4+ cover save. So after you stomp the piss out of say, a couple tactical squads or some heavy supporters, just just jump back in them trukks. Rinse and repeat. Even if you lose a trukk trukk or 2 youve still got some left for LOS issues and moving to the enemy, allowing the now, footsloggers to march up with little to no fuss. And they hit the lines just in time, to help out the ones that got there first.

Actually, there's not a lot that I need to say; Kingcracker beat me to this thread.

Poodle: If you math-hammer out what happens if you assault a unit of terminators (even going second) your trukk boyz come out ahead. Keep in mind that your trukk boyz are really a delivery system for your powerklaw. A squad of trukk boyz will deliver 44 attacks on the charge, which is nothing to scoff at either...but to make it work, you take a mechanized army.

I'd ramble on and the like, but its being handled well without me. My addition will be for you to read a couple of threads about mechanized orks:


http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/265245.page#1113036
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/266100.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/263869.page

Those are a couple of my favorite threads about mechanized orks that are particularly brutal - there's a lot to read and pick up on there that will make you nasty in kind. WAAAUGH!

The trukk boy is great because he can be both troops and fast attack within one affordable slot. If you buy footsloggers, you're typically buying 30 hoping that after a couple of turns of move + run, you get half or less into combat after a couple turns of whittling fire. Or you're buying a grot screen or a kan screen and hoping the enemy will stay put for you to reach them with your choppas. The wartrukk costs only about the same as about 8 boyz (with BP, RPJ, ram) and gives you much more tactical flexibility and mobility. Sure, the trukk can get annihilated by some enemies, but if you're careful and smart, you can minimize those chances.

I just read the disembark rules. It says that if your vehicle moved that turn you can disembark and shoot but not assault!!! Doesn't that neuter mobile assault armies? If I have to leave 12 trukk boys standing around with their thumbs up their butt aren't they just going to get shot to heck then assaulted back?

Ah, but you forget, trukks are open-topped. You're allowed to assault after disembarking from an open-topped vehicle.

What's more, if you Waagh! your boyz get the Fleet rule, which means you can Run, and THEN assault. That's loads of fun.

poodle wrote:I just read the disembark rules. It says that if your vehicle moved that turn you can disembark and shoot but not assault!!! Doesn't that neuter mobile assault armies? If I have to leave 12 trukk boys standing around with their thumbs up their butt aren't they just going to get shot to heck then assaulted back?

The trukk is open topped, check out the rules for open topped vehicles.

Your boys have a huge assault range from that truuk.
The truuk can move 13" with a red paint, the boys can hop out another 2 inches, then assault another 6"
It gets even better if they are on a road.

I had no trouble dealing with truk boys with my standard space wolf list.

I need to take a look at peppers list and see if there is a good way for mech orks to go.

imweasel wrote:I had no trouble dealing with truk boys with my standard space wolf list.

I need to take a look at peppers list and see if there is a good way for mech orks to go.

That is the problem I'm facing. Space wolves are kicking my butt with their long fangs. I only have two trucks and one battlewagon at the moment though.

poodle wrote:

imweasel wrote:I had no trouble dealing with truk boys with my standard space wolf list.

I need to take a look at peppers list and see if there is a good way for mech orks to go.

That is the problem I'm facing. Space wolves are kicking my butt with their long fangs. I only have two trucks and one battlewagon at the moment though.

The major thing I saw in those lists in the links pepper provided, is that they take a few truck squads and at least 2 battlewagon squads along with loota support.

Much better than the list I mauled. Small truck units just don't mean anything to space wolves.

20 boyz could be a different story. I'll have to try it out someday.

Yes, Long Fangs are a very good unit. Everything dev squads should have been.

imweasel wrote:

Much better than the list I mauled. Small truck units just don't mean anything to space wolves.

20 boyz could be a different story. I'll have to try it out someday.

Small trukk units are viable everywhere, including against Space Wolves. That nob with a powerklaw has a purpose, and the ability to delivery multiple small trukk squads anywhere on the board at the same time is potent. That might be the point being missed here. A squad of 12 ork boyz in a trukk aren't a self-reliant unit capable of taking on anything in 40k in a fair fight. Tactics still play a part.

Dashofpepper wrote:

imweasel wrote:

Much better than the list I mauled. Small truck units just don't mean anything to space wolves.

20 boyz could be a different story. I'll have to try it out someday.

Small trukk units are viable everywhere, including against Space Wolves. That nob with a powerklaw has a purpose, and the ability to delivery multiple small trukk squads anywhere on the board at the same time is potent. That might be the point being missed here. A squad of 12 ork boyz in a trukk aren't a self-reliant unit capable of taking on anything in 40k in a fair fight. Tactics still play a part.

A tactic involving any number of AV10 open topped transports that don't provide cover to their squishy not-so-fearless passengers is a bad one

Unfortunately, the only armies you might play that have weak enough shooting that you can potentially "swamp" with trukks can deal with 12 strong mobs in combat very easily. Go ahead, charge those orks into my bloodletters/genestealers/berserkers/whatever. Let me know how that works out for you.

It worked out for me pretty well the other night actually. Took out two fexes, a tyrant, 4 warriors, 3 squads of gaunts and 4 squads of stealers....

imweasel wrote:That is the problem I'm facing. Space wolves are kicking my butt with their long fangs. I only have two trucks and one battlewagon at the moment though.

That is not enough armor to get across the table. You need to have 6 truuks surrounding 3 battlewagons to make that tactic really viable. Use a big mek or two to obscure the entire army.

Here is the best ork advice I ever read. It says it all...

Orks can do anything that any other army can do and do it better than they can. However, they cannot do everything that any other army can do. Make sense? If you make an ork assault army, they'll out-assault any other army in 40k. If you make a shooting army, you can outgun IG or Tau. If you go foot-slogging, or mechanized, or kan-wall....all those options make you a completely awesome army, but there's a catch. You can only do one of them at a time with an army list.

If you combine a mechanized and a foot-slogging list, you're going to lose. If you have part assault, party shooting, you're probably going to lose. Your strength is in being able to pick something and be completely awesome at it. So before giving you advice on where to go next with your army, you need to pick a theme and build around it. If you want a bike army, or a shooting army; an outflanking army, mechanized, assault, figure out what your playstyle is and start building your units and armylist around that idea.

THAT is the strength of Orks.

poodle wrote:

imweasel wrote:I had no trouble dealing with truk boys with my standard space wolf list.

I need to take a look at peppers list and see if there is a good way for mech orks to go.

That is the problem I'm facing. Space wolves are kicking my butt with their long fangs. I only have two trucks and one battlewagon at the moment though.

Well your list is really the problem then. I know it sucks, but the only way to fix what your trying is getting more trukk boyz out there. HAving 2 trukks and 1 battlewagon is just not good. Maybe if you stick a KFF meck in one of the trukks or the battle wagon to get the cover save, MAYBE. But still its only a 50% chance they wont get hurt.
How I do it, is take a KFF in the list (preferably in the BW but Ive gotten away with it in a trukk) and then run that group tightly packed, but with enough room to move past a wrecked trukk if need be. That way you can get a few vehicles in the 6 inch KFF range. USing that, and blocking LOS using terrain is the only way to fly. That way you can position yourself close enough to you enemy to drive up 12 or 13 inches (red paint job) and then disembark. Then you can WAAGH 6 inches and then assault 6 inches. So yes thats a movement of 24-25 inches in 1 turn and presto theres a couple trukks dumping Orks out into your opponent. ITs a nasty move

And like Pepper said, the 12 boyz are mainly a means to an end. Sure you want them to kill some stuff, and normally you take down a good number, but mainly they are there to die so the PK nob can grab you some insta kills. Thats what they are all about

Dashofpepper wrote:Small trukk units are viable everywhere, including against Space Wolves. That nob with a powerklaw has a purpose, and the ability to delivery multiple small trukk squads anywhere on the board at the same time is potent. That might be the point being missed here. A squad of 12 ork boyz in a trukk aren't a self-reliant unit capable of taking on anything in 40k in a fair fight. Tactics still play a part.

The biggest tactic that you have to accomplish is getting the grey hunters out of their transports AND delivering a maximum number of boyz 'on target'. Point levels matter greatly as well.

That's not so easy to do vs space wolves. My list gets to fire 12 tl-autocannons, 10 ml's, 5 lascannons and d6 str7 shots w/tank hunter.

Even with 4+ cover saves, lots of trucks die. If you can't get most of my grey hunters out of their rhinos, survive that shooting on your vehicles and deliver a bunch of boys on target simultaneously onto a grey hunter squad, I'm not gonna be to concerned about a power klaw or two.

I'm not saying it can't be done. You have waaagh and you might have first turn, but imho that only makes the fight even or possibly slightly to your advantage.

If I get first turn, that's gonna equal a lot of walking boyz.

So at lower point levels, say under 1750-1850 (probably 1500 or less), I think you can get a more effective build than I could with marines.

At 2k? I think you better be going first if you're taking trucks over battle wagons...

grankobot wrote:

A tactic involving any number of AV10 open topped transports that don't provide cover to their squishy not-so-fearless passengers is a bad one

Unfortunately, the only armies you might play that have weak enough shooting that you can potentially "swamp" with trukks can deal with 12 strong mobs in combat very easily. Go ahead, charge those orks into my bloodletters/genestealers/berserkers/whatever. Let me know how that works out for you.

Wow....if my bad tactics perform as well as they do, I'd love to see what good tactics could do for me!

Those AV10 open-topped transports come with a bonafide 4+ cover save, so that by the time you get done passing your rolls to hit, your rolls to glance/penetrate, and do anything meaningful...I'll ignore it 50% of the time anyway. Not to mention that any weapon range tends to go from 24" to 36", and anything less than 36" is probably unlikely to hit me because of my poor tactics giving me a 29" assault range.

And mechanized orks have more than squads of 12 ork boys in trukks. Those aren't what's assaulting into your bloodletters/genestealers/berzerkers. If an ork player is playing mechanized orks....chances are he has Ghazghkull. There's a good chance he's good a squad of burna boyz too, and both of those are quite suitable for dealing with any of the aforementioned units. I don't toss Ghazghkull (even with a 2+ invul save) into genestealers if I can help it though because there's a lot of other things better suited to killing those, but I'll happily toss him into an MEQ, terminator, plague marine, or anything else squad.

Dashofpepper wrote: Not to mention that any weapon range tends to go from 24" to 36", and anything less than 36" is probably unlikely to hit me because of my poor tactics giving me a 29" assault range.

You have said this a few times now. How do you figure that assault range?

13 (RPJ move) + 2 (disembark) + d6 (run) + 6 (assault) = 22-27 inches

Or do you go;

move + road + disembark + full run + assault and say "thats a sure 33 inches of assault everytime"? (I know you don't )

Or is it something in between?

Here's how I would fight mechanized orks. Total # of vehicles/boyz/whatever approximated from looking at various lists. I know there should be lootas somewhere but man is dragging those little dudes out of the menus a pain in the ass. Let's just assume they're not very dangerous to kroot with 2+ cover saves and vehicles with disruption pods to make this easier for me. The tau here is (roughly, didn't feel like dragging out hounds) my "take all comers" 1750 list.

Deployment:



You go/deploy first, it makes the most sense to castle up near the center. This gives you the same shot of reaching me no matter where I decide to go down. I go/deploy first and I put my army primarily in two corners - mobile on the left, less so on the right. Both sides have railguns. Now, what are battlewagons most afraid of? Shots that don't have to deal with front armor. You're only AV12 on the side and damn are those some long sides. This deployment not only forces you to choose between sides (or you can divide up... lol), it also forces you to eventually open up your flanks to some S10 AP1 goodness. On top of that, the choice isn't exactly easy to make as more units are piled up on the left side but the ones on the right will be easy to catch.

Ah, decisions.

Anyhoo, let's say you get first turn and go for the smarter choice.



Everything moves far enough forward that it still gets the cover save from the mek's ride. Smurt. Not much else you can do this turn since you don't have smoke and you can't do anything useful moving that fast.

Of course, the trukks could move even faster and stray out of range of the KFF, but that would just be silly. Nothing like watching kroot down your transports, huh?

Here's my turn.



Piranhas move to block off movement from any vehicles that live past my movement phase. Disembarked passengers will probably waste them, but that's ok. This is what people are talking about when they talk about "movement blocking" - not just a buzz phrase kids! Kroot move up and maintain their 50% in cover count to keep their 3+(2+ with going to ground) saves. The mek's wagon dies this turn and if a list has burnaboyz it's usually in his, so they are not an immediate threat. Crisis suit movement is including their 6" assault - jumping forward for the squad on the right, jumping back for the squad on the left. HHs and broadsides move up their respective flanks to do that whole side armor threatening thing I was talking about.

Shooting breakdown goes like this:

Pathfinders - light up the mek's BW. 4 hits average.
Broadsides - blow up the mek's BW. +1 BS, -3 cover save is usually one penetrating hit. Open topped? Check. AP1? Double check. Can I roll a 2 or better to stop you in your tracks? Oh, most likely. If the broadsides aren't enough, I have 2 other railguns in this list. Safe to say that BW is dying my first shooting phase. If I pen on a 6 you put the mek down in the wreckage and there's a good chance he won't have KFF range to the trukk in the bottom left. Groovy.
Crisis team with commander - second trukk from the right. 8 missile shots, 4 hits. 4 plasma shots, 2 hits. 2.66 pens, save half. That's a minimum of stunned (you could have extra armor, but really, nobody takes that on trukks). Trukk is dead or down for a turn.
Crisis team without commander - trukk on the far left. 6 missile shots, 3 hits. 3 plasma shots, 1.5 hits. 2 pens, save half. Trukk stopped.
Crisis team on the far right - trukk on the far right. 6 twin linked missile shots, 4.5 hits. 2.25 pens. Save half, one gets through, kaboom. What's that? Trukks are good? lol
Hammerheads - each one has about a 33% chance of popping a trukk after rolls to hit and cover. We'll figure between them they don't accomplish much.
Devilfish and kroot - shoot some disembarked manz. whatever, doesn't really matter at this point.

So there you go. One round of shooting pretty much cripples your army. What can you do on your next turn?

Well obviously, you use your waaagh. It's your only shot of getting into combat. The Piranhas pretty much shut down any chances you have of getting into combat with anything on the left flank this turn - can't move between them, moving around them keeps you out of assault range. So the most damage you can do is to tank shock your last remaining trukk through the kroot and charge the pathfinders. You will wipe them in one round of combat (even if you turn off your power klaw), they will run off the table, and then you're stuck between two forces and no way to get back into combat without at least one turn of hanging out in the open.

The disembarked mobs can either charge the kroot or the piranhas. No matter what you pick, it'll probably fold. Fortunately, that's what those units are supposed to do and once again you're chillin' out in the open for a turn. Good for me, bad for you!

The boss' BW doesn't really have anywhere useful to go, courtesy of the piranhas parked in front of it. If he wants to move towards me in any direction he has to open up his side armor to some railgun lovin'.

My turn - BW dies, trukk dies, some amount of boyz dies. Your mobility is thoroughly neutered, and it only took 2 rounds of shooting.

Imagine if you had to go second. Might not ever cross the middle point.

I should mention that obviously I ignored the ramshackle rules - but let's face it, most of the time it's bad for you, not good. First of all, most of the results leave you with no cover. That's bad. Most of the results also cause damage to your passengers + a pinning check. 12 strong is just barely fearless, pretty soon you're taking morale checks like everyone else and T4 with a 6+ save is not tough by anyone's definition. I also understand that deployments may vary a little. The most obvious choice is to put the trukks behind the battlewagons to hopefully take them out of line of sight. Unfortunately, if you want to maintain that LoS advantage you've got to move slower and you're looking at a turn 3 charge at the earliest. Makes sense as a defensive strategy if you have to go second, but doesn't help a whole lot if you're going first.

Anyway, yeah. People don't take me seriously when I say I ain't skurrd of mechanized orks. This is why.

Steelmage99 wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote: Not to mention that any weapon range tends to go from 24" to 36", and anything less than 36" is probably unlikely to hit me because of my poor tactics giving me a 29" assault range.

You have said this a few times now. How do you figure that assault range?

13 (RPJ move) + 2 (disembark) + d6 (run) + 6 (assault) = 22-27 inches

Or do you go;

move + road + disembark + full run + assault and say "thats a sure 33 inches of assault everytime"? (I know you don't )

Or is it something in between?

Ghazzy gives an automatic 6" on the Waagh run.
13 (RPJ) +2 (disembark) + size of bases (because only the back edge has to be within 2") + 6 Waagh + 6 Assault. Assuming a 2 inch base on Ghazzy, that's where the 29" comes from.