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Hello everyone

As the topic suggests I am needing some advice on some Ork tactics, namely tactics against Tyranids. I have a Nid based event coming up this Saturday.........Only problem is that I have never actually faced a Tyranid army but do know from battle reports that they do what orks do, only faster. This kind of worries me so any advice on how to help slow down or crush the bug menace would be appreciated!

1. Play Mechanized Orks. Trukks and battlewagons.

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

Read those.

2. If you know that you're going to be facing Tyranids, and its a tyranid based event? Bring burna boys. Two squads of burna boys. Power weapons in close combat = dead monstrous creatures, and those flame templates will incinerate swarms of gaunts and genestealers. If you're not sure what all you'll face, bring at least one squad of burna boys.

3. Ghazghkull Thraka. Turn2+ on the Waaaugh! he has a 2+ invul save with 7 STR10 attacks and it lasts for a full game turn (2 rounds). That big old base can often multi-assault monstrous creatures. Or go find a Hive tyrant with a guard to attack, or whatever the most potent, venomous creature(s) that you can find to take down.

That's pretty much all you need.

I both agree and disagree with Dash.

Mech orks can smash nid's faces in....but I think that foot sloggers stand a chance too. Ork boyz will beat gaunts in combat, even if they have FNP and counter charge, because boyz have one thing the gaunts don't, the power klaw. Also gaunts can wail on a deff dread all day and they will never hurt it, so dreadbash lists could work too, just remember that a deffdread is dead if it fights something like a Trygon or a Hive Tyrant, any MC with I3 or greater will wreck the deff dread before it gets a chance to swing.

Slowing down the bugs: Put walkers in their way or just be faster (mech) Force them to fight you on ork terms, not on nid terms.

Crushing the bugs: Burnaboyz murder gaunts, lootas murder MCs (and rokkits muder zoanthropes, but we're not too worried about those, by the time that thing can blast you with it's lance you are in its grill assaulting it), burnaboyz do stand a chance against MCs with their burnas in the assault, but T6 or T7 makes the MC's hard to wound, and they have 5 or 6 wounds, Power Klaw will do the same job. Boyz will cause gaunts to eat themselves in no-retreat, but if the gaunts charge you they will do the same, keep that in mind.

thanks for the advice guys! I like both ideas but for the event I am going to have to stick to the foot slogging as I have only one trukk. Also Burnas are going to be a no go as I didn't think them to be that good lol I know better now.

What I have done to try and make up for the lack of burnas and vechicular objects is have a squad of 12 lootas and 5 deffkoptas 3 of which have bigbombs and twin linked rokkit lonchas strapped to them
It won't be as effective but I am sure things will go SPLODY

Dashofpepper wrote:1. Play Mechanized Orks. Trukks and battlewagons.

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

Read those.

2. If you know that you're going to be facing Tyranids, and its a tyranid based event? Bring burna boys. Two squads of burna boys. Power weapons in close combat = dead monstrous creatures, and those flame templates will incinerate swarms of gaunts and genestealers. If you're not sure what all you'll face, bring at least one squad of burna boys.

3. Ghazghkull Thraka. Turn2+ on the Waaaugh! he has a 2+ invul save with 7 STR10 attacks and it lasts for a full game turn (2 rounds). That big old base can often multi-assault monstrous creatures. Or go find a Hive tyrant with a guard to attack, or whatever the most potent, venomous creature(s) that you can find to take down.

That's pretty much all you need.

Why don't you just breakdown and write your tactica already. You've got 2030 posts alluding to it. Perhaps its unimportant at this point with 2030 posts conveying your word to the masses...

That said, I have seen some interesting nid tactics, interesting to me at least, that seem painful for mechanized orks.

Firstly, venom cannons can crunch through open topped vehicles without dealing with the glancing rule. That means that if they take aim at your trukcs, there is a 1 in 6 chance of eliminating a trukk, with 12 shots to do so, or roughly 1/3 (2 trukks) of your army left behind on turn 1. The numbers aren't much better with a battlewagon, as they are 1 in 8 chance of popping one on its front armor (curse you, str 10!). That's a lot of shots, but each carnifex can put a 4 of shots on the table, meaning 3 to 4 of your vehicles exit the game on turn 1 and turn 2, which is particularly bad if he went first.

Add to that that you have difficulties carving vehicle walls into tyranid lines to prevent counter charges due to the DoG from a carnifex being very close to auto-penetrate on reinforced rams and not far off on wagons.... You can't really manipulate their hordes quite as effectively as you can a group of marines. Granted, he is looking at 2/3 chance to stop you, and everyone loves it when a big nid goes squish under the wheels, but a 3, 4, 5, or 6 putting your vehicle out of commission is pretty bad given such high odds of landing a penetrating hit.

With the above difficulty cutting lines with vehicles in their groups, it's pretty difficult to stop counter charges. That would mean what... The burnas are busy flaming genestealers, so they can't lay one of the fexes down. 80 regular slugga boys hitting the same carnifex in the best of conditions can only put about 2 wounds on a WS 4 MC (160 attacks - 80 hits - 13 wound - 2 unsaved), meaning only your powerklaws are now left to do any real work. 2 klaws can put down a monstrous creature, and you have only 6 klaws to work with, of which 1 to 4 of them wouldn't make it to the front due to the barrage of venom cannon fire.

I'm talking about builds that aren't terribly uncommon, and castling those together doesn't leave much opportunity to lay into the opponent, the pain returned by a couple of dakkarants and genestealers spaced 8" apart (to avoid losing more than one group to your burnas per turn) is substantially greater than the defensive power of a handful of sluggas. If you could get everything to the front unmolested (which I don't believe is possible with that much venom cannon fire), I see where the boyz would have a field day laying down 3 melee fexes, with the boyz laying into maybe even a group of stealers for good measure. The burnas, assuming they weren't needed on flaming duty, could put down a dakkarant without breaking a sweat. The 3 venom cannon fexes can't even hurt you at this point since you singing the 'all your base are belong to us' song. Doing the numbers for a full delivery of troops, it works.

Without them... not so much. You don't have any range options with your build other than the occasional big shoota shot coming off a trukk. Your maneuverability is a distant memory if you didn't get to the venom cannons by the enemy's third shooting phase...

I guess what I'm saying is that the more that I play the same method against a friend of mine, the more his list gets skewed in my direction. The more it is tailored for me, the more it feels like the "nids don't stand a chance" mantra that Dashofpepper preaches is cutting it close, and the more I begin to wonder when dude will claim his first win against it.

Ahem...

Ah.

I thought we were talking about generalized take-all-comers lists, which can welcome some burnas like that. If you keep running into the same nid opponent, its time for something new:

Warriors and elite carnifexes have 3+ armor saves. Heh...that's right. Units of Deffkoptas or a tank-busta mob inside a battlewagon are going to wreak havoc with them. And since there's no vehicles on the table, you control the tank-bustas the entire game. I brought tank-bustas to 'Ard Boyz last year and the round I ran into tyranids, they mowed down a carnifex per turn while my two units of deffkoptas mowed down half a carnifex per turn. I wouldn't waste rokkits on 2+ save MCs, but that's what burna boys and ghazghkull are for.

In fact, its been a year+ since I've built a list specifically to play against someone, but if I were to cater a list to tyranids, I would keep my mechanized list that I have now with a few changes - more deffkoptas, Snikrot would probably bite the dust and be replaced by a unit of tank-bustas, who would share a battlewagon with Ghazghkull instead of the 18 boys usually in there, and my trukks would get rokkits instead of big shootas. I'd think that would pretty well cover it.

OK, so let's play 'What would DoP do?'

Supposing you took your all comers list to a tournament, and encountered a nid player that just happened to have:

- 3 Carnifexes with pairs of TL venom cannons

- 3 Carnifexes sporting dual scything talons, perhaps toxic miasma

- 2 Hive Tyrants w/ warp field, TL devourers, 3 hive guard apiece

- As many genestealers as he can conjure with the remaining points (what is that? 4 groups of 10 or so?) with each group separated out far enough to keep you from multi-templating them with your burnas

I'm assuming from your previous posts that you are running 4 or 5 trukks full of boyz, 2 wagons (1 w/ burnas, 1 w/ Thraka and boyz), and a few koptas in your normal list. How do you avoid the counter charge with your guts and glory charge forward method?

I've beaten more or less this build using vehicles as walls and manipulating control of the castle of troops by preventing movement until it was too late for them to grab objectives, but that was a pretty good fight even with Dawn of War as the scenario, effectively taking away 2 turns from my opponent without a fight.

I doubt he would field this as his all-comers strategy, though it does have some merit. But if he did, and I ran up against him in a tournament with my typical build, which is only a bit different from yours (more boyz in battle wagons, no koptas, mega warboss + dread instead of Thraka), and I'm thinking I'd be splattered on the assault if I went for a turn 2 smash and grab. Assuming my list is sub-optimal, how does yours deal with it?

I guess the outstanding question is - With mech orks, you've put yourself into such a small number of ork bodies that there is little room for allowing large scale counter assaults. Assuming you aren't tailoring your list, how do you break the big nids away from their clutch of stealers and fellow big nids enough to break them down into bite size chunks, when you really can't rely on your vehicles to wall off help? I mean, with enough venom cannon shots, you can't even rely on the vehicles getting you into combat in sufficient numbers to do anything.

While I find mech orks to be considerably more successful a lot of builds, I keep looking at my friend's list and thinking how much easier it was to wipe the floor with him by roving around the board with multiple 31 wound PKs (read: big groups of shootas) and lootas shooting over their heads. Stealers can't touch shootas cuz they die before they assault more often than not, and monstrous creatures just get bogged down into a group they can't kill for a couple of turns before they come out bug juice when you have that many bodies to absorb them.

Horde Orks have traditionally been excellent against 'Nids. Too many boyz to kill and the hidden PKs end their MCs while stealers and little bugs alike get eaten by shootas. You could run a kan wall provided that 10 of the 30 boyz that would normally be behind the kans would be in front or a grot screen for absorbing MC charges. With a rokkit/grotzooka mix the kans could wreck shop and be fairly hard to hurt in turn and the boyz could absorb MC charges from the front to tarpit/PK them to death and/or let the kans counter charge with their 9 strength 10 attacks. Dunno what init the new MCs are at but I'm thinking they could still murder a carnifex reliably.