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A simple question, I suppose. A squad of Boyz can take 1 heavy weapon for every 10 Boyz. The options are a rokkit launcha or a big shoota. These are both nice (the big shoota more so than the rokkit) but are they a good idea? Should you rather take boyz before toyz and spend the points elsewhere?

make sure you take the boyz before the toyz, if you're going with shoota boy mobs I'd take the heavy weapons
for choppa boyz the heavy weapons aren't really necessary, but you can take 'em so if a boy mob gets separated out and can't get to any targets you can send some small arms fire out

Every Ork mob needs a heavy weapon. It is the nob's 'option' of a powerklaw. The big shoota and rokkit are optional in all cases. The added effect of 1 Str8 hit or 3 Str 5 hits will almost never be worth 30 or 15 points.

If you take the rokkits, and you fire a mob at a vehicle then you have 27 boyz mucking about. This is true whether they're shootas or sluggas.

The situtation is slightly more complex for the shoota boyz with Big Shootas. Your average shoota has 2 S4 shots at 18". If you fire your big shoota at a range over 18", you probably should have run to get the extra 52 S4 attacks next turn. If you are within 18", then you have 3 more attacks, and 3 of your wounds will wound on 3+ rather than 4+. Someone else can crunch the math for just what a big shoota does over a shoota against a MEQ, but it works out to not very much.

In short, keep your tank hunting duties to units that won't cause 220 points( the cost of a 30 man squad with nob, no rokkits) to twiddle their thumbs every time you fire at a vehicle. For your anti personnel work, if 29 shootas can't do it- I doubt 3 big shootas will make the difference very often.

@ Huffy: The points expenditure doesn't seem to cover the added benefit. Anyway, Orks are only WS 2.

@ Gitbitah: This makes a lot of sense to me. I always took heavy weapons upgrades but I now see that they probably are a waste of points, just wanted to see if there were any arguments in favour of heavy weapons but none seem to be forthcoming.

Orky-Kowboy wrote:just wanted to see if there were any arguments in favour of heavy weapons but none seem to be forthcoming.

Boyz who are used as objective holders certainly can use heavy weapons. 10-12 boyz with a rokkit sitting on an objective can earn it's points back.

The idea of running boyz every is not always useful. If you have waves of boyz and the first only ran an inch or 2, than the boyz behind can only run an inch or two, why not have them fire off their weapons that turn? I don't have any shoota boyz but I'd use Big Shootas with them. I've been maxing out rokkits in all my Slugga boyz squads recently with good results. They add up, they're needed, and they're cheap.

There is a point for giving objective holding boyz heavy weapons I suppose. In my experience you could fulfill that role much better with gretchin. The boyz and rokkit costs 70 points. For 70 points I could have 10 gretchin, a runtherd, and be five points away from a rokkit buggy. Move up to the 12 boyz and a rokkit unit and you can have your 10 gretchin, and be 3 points away from a deffkopta with tl rokkits. The gretchin also start with a leadership reroll that the boyz must pay at least 15 points for.

Out of curiousity PipeAlley, how many slugga squads do you run? How many points worth of rokkits is that? I've found that I'd rather have my anti-tank hit early like the Deffkopta with TL rokkit and Buzzsaw than spread it out over units that might need it at some point in the game.

Almost always run Big Shootas in my boyz mobz. Especially if they're gonna footslog or hold objective they have to have something that can reach farther than 18" even if it's not that scary a weapon.

Orky-Kowboy wrote:@ Huffy: The points expenditure doesn't seem to cover the added benefit. Anyway, Orks are only WS 2

Ork Boyz are WS4. Their BS is 2.

I'm not a fan of rokkits on the boyz. They're unlikely to hit and poorly ranged and if you're shooting rokkits then the other boyz in the mob are wasting their time usually. Unless you\'re trying to open a transport to charge the guys isnide but, well, good luck with that. you do need to cram rokkits in there but it isn't like buggies, koptaz and kannonz are expensive.

Big Shootas, however, I do rate for several reasons.

1 They give you the ability to reach out and hurt things turn 1. With the 12 or so big shootas in my army I have quite a bit of first turn shooting capability if I need to. I've dropped daemon princes just by combining big Shoota fire.

2. Range has many benefits. Running towards the enemy is not always the smartest strategy. What if there aren't enough turns in the game for you to reach them? What if they can charge into you from outside standard shoota range? What if you're holding an objective? What if you killed an enemy on your side and want to support another boyz critical charge? Range 36" with a 6" move lets you hit a lot of the table and focusing fire lets you do a lot of damage if you need to.

3. +1 str, +1shot -ap.

Doing the maths quickly, against a tac marine vs just another shoota boy
The BS has a 0.22 chance of doing a wound
The Shoota has a 0.11 chance of doing a wound

So double your killing power for less pts. Now obviously your shoota boy has the advantages of an extra wound, extra attacks, etc but the BS has the range advantages I mentioned. and vs anything with a 5+ sv (so probably T3 as well)

BS 0.83 chance of a kill
Shoota 0.14

4. The strength helps against tanks. Not very much but you could shred rear av prior to charge and turn what was meant to be a charge into the transport into a charge against the occupants of the transport.


I like my Big Shootas and my Shoota boys always get 2 per mob. for only 10 points its more the tactical flexibility they open up than anything else that makes me like them.

More dakka is never truly a bad thing.

While I much prefer having my Orks devote their time to bashin' in eads' there is something satisfying about taking out a dreadnought before it comes into range of flaming you, which hurts like a bitch. Heavy Weapons are helpful to Orks as they are assault weapons meaning it doesn't slow them down too much, and can give a chance to take out or weaken vehicles and large monsters (Wraithlords, Walkers, etc.) that they would otherwise have no hope of doing. I think Rokkits are much more useful, primarily because most of my opponents have an army made of at least 4+ or better armour meaning Big Shoota shots can always be saved. It is worth it to have a Rokkit even if its being shot by someone who barely knows which way to point it, because you never know what it could do. That little bit being said, as many in the thread have already mentioned they are options for a reason, if you don't plan on having the unit do anything except bash some eads in, then feel free to use that points for more boyz.

Gitzbitah wrote:
Out of curiousity PipeAlley, how many slugga squads do you run? How many points worth of rokkits is that? I've found that I'd rather have my anti-tank hit early like the Deffkopta with TL rokkit and Buzzsaw than spread it out over units that might need it at some point in the game.

2-3 in a 1850 point game. Check out my profile for links to my Battle Reports to see how I use them and how well they do.

I've been adding more Rokkits every week, I keep playing Raider-heavy Dark Eldar. The mob of 12 Tankbustas has done very well in my games. They "steal" a Trukk and survive longer than they should. Our campaign environment is very mech heavy.

I've used Grots in larger point games but up until this last week, I had a pure KOS list which Grots didn't fit into well.

I have never seen any point in taking Rokkit Launchas, expect that they are super cool. Big Shootas, however, are situational. For Shoota Boyz I like taking them sometimes when I must fill 5 points (read=run out of Boyz models), but for Slugga Boyz, never.
Even though Gitzbitah still makes a valid point.

My shoota boyz get big shootas. That's it. Rokkits go where they can be twin-linked - on Koptas and buggies.

D'Ork wrote:My shoota boyz get big shootas. That's it. Rokkits go where they can be twin-linked - on Koptas and buggies.

Valid point. 10 pts is a lot for an upgrade that will miss 2/3 of the time. At least twin-linking improves your chances.

I would always take rokkits on mobs of thirty shoota boyz. Taking three means that one is likely to hit that hit has about a 25% chance of stopping or destroying a vehicle in cover. It may not seem like much, but any damage result will save your boys getting shot, or allow you to auto hit the vehicle in melee.

In my current Kan Wall list I have 6 BS2 Rokkits, and 6 BS3 Rokkits as well as three units of lootas. I subscribe to the firepower against transport swarms ideal.

I wouldn't ever take rokkits on mobs ob boyz. If you shoot at a vehicle that means you only moved D6", aren't running, and aren't trying to get into combat with infantry. If you're close enough to shoot AND assault a vehicle, you should be on the Waaaugh! so that you can use your Waaaugh! movement to try completely surrounding the vehicle so that if you wreck it, everything inside is killed on the spot.


*EDIT* And if we're talking about mobs of troops on foot, big shootas are fine. I wouldn't give mobs in vehicles any heavy weapons - ork vehicles are simply transports designed to get your assault units up into combat as fast as possible.

the awnser is yes but take the big shootas in the choppa mob and a rockkitt launcha in the shoota mob either way they are assault not heavy so there be no muckin about

I always like having a big shoota or two in my squads, it gives the boys a little long-range sting. Not much, but even so, it's only 5 pts in any case.