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Hello all, might I start off by saying that I am slightly new to 40k and this forum and love the Ork army that I have starting up. I just have a few questions regarding tactics.

First off the Orks Big gunz look both good and bad, especially the Zzap gun, which can cause a crew shaken result if it glances or penetrates. I just want to know if Big Gunz can be good, and which gunz are recommended / are good in what situations.

Secondly, one of the players that I play with a lot is making a shooting line imperial guard army, which will have quite a few leman russ's. I just want to know what would be a good way to either survive their barrages to get close, or a quick way to get them to stop for good .

All opinions / advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-Uglifruit

First off, welcome to Dakka.

Speaking from a strictly observer stand point (I play DA and Vanilla), I'd say the best way to take out a gunline is to assault it. I'd say use Trukks, Battlewagons and Bikers to get close.
As for the Arty, that seems more of a Guard thing. I'd use the point to get more boyz.

Hope I helped

Defenitely. You should get trukks, put boys inside and also get power klaws. Those chew up tanks quite a bit!

As a player of IG, BA and Orks (Speed Freeks and dread bash), I know a thing or two about it.

Now, there are a great many people who know a great deal more about it, especially the big gunz as I see Orks and shooting as a no-no. Now, some outflanking rokkit deff koptas are a good tank buster suicide unit.

Trukks full of boyz (always including a nob with pk) are great ways to get stuck in quick and wreck house. Include a battlewagon with either a Warboss and nobs retinue or a Big Mek and nobs/burnas and you've got your deathstar unit.

Nob bikers are a devastating (yet wildly expensive) unit on a charge. Include a decent number of pks (in my 8 nob unit I have 3) and there isn't much that'll survive.

Give your trukks and battlewagons boarding planks as they can then attack vehicles with the onboard nob as they careen past. Now if the enemy armor has moved then they'll only hit on a 4+ or 6+ but there's always that chance.

Always take slugga boyz in trukks and shoota boyz if you're foot slogging.

Trakks with rokkits also make decent fast-moving anti-tank. Remember that despite the Leman Russ' excellent front armor you always hit that vulnerable AV10 in an assault.

Take a big mek with kff and stick him in the middle of your vehicles to give em all an obscured save. If you have a battlewagon then keep some trukks in close to obscure it from enemy fire.

If you're fighting the IG, as much as I love those good Imperial grunts they'll fall apart in an assault against you. Even their best assault troops aren't much of a match for the green horde. Even with relatively small squads they'll have to lose a few before they become unfearless.

Hope that helps somewhat, feel free to ask anything more specific on here or in PM.

Search out some posts by DashofPepper he's something of an authority on speed freeks.

Welcome to the madhouse my friend. Now let's go out there and Mash up dem 'umies!

Good advice given from the boyz. If I may offer some from a green tide player. Kannons are great, I always take a couple in any list. Personally I use Kannons over zzapp or lobbas. zzap's sound nice but I find never really deliver on the anti tank front since the STR is variable. I know this is orks we are talking about but we need to be a little serious when it come to AT weapons. Kannons have frag or krak so you can fire upon armor or harass infantry. They do have the best BS in our army but don't forget to take a couple of cheap ammo grotz.

For IG I use a lot of boyz positioned just right to get the KFF save, kannons and 12 boy Komando squad with Grotsnik. Always a nasty surprise for any army

Merc_for_Hire wrote:Good advice given from the boyz. If I may offer some from a green tide player. Kannons are great, I always take a couple in any list. Personally I use Kannons over zzapp or lobbas. zzap's sound nice but I find never really deliver on the anti tank front since the STR is variable. I know this is orks we are talking about but we need to be a little serious when it come to AT weapons. Kannons have frag or krak so you can fire upon armor or harass infantry. They do have the best BS in our army but don't forget to take a couple of cheap ammo grotz.

For IG I use a lot of boyz positioned just right to get the KFF save, kannons and 12 boy Komando squad with Grotsnik. Always a nasty surprise for any army

So Kannons are worth it then?

Also may I ask why Grotsnik specifically? Couldn't Snikrot literally appear at their edge of the table? They both seem good, I just want to get a full out look on things.

Thanks for the tip btw!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Zarake wrote:First off, welcome to Dakka.

Speaking from a strictly observer stand point (I play DA and Vanilla), I'd say the best way to take out a gunline is to assault it. I'd say use Trukks, Battlewagons and Bikers to get close.
As for the Arty, that seems more of a Guard thing. I'd use the point to get more boyz.

Hope I helped

Thank you for the advice! I'll look into trukks, any specific things to give them?

Uglifruit wrote:Thank you for the advice! I'll look into trukks, any specific things to give them?

I usually give them a ram and nothing more...40pts and you can still tank shock stuff and reroll difficult terrain...trukks are simply for getting your boyz up there really fast...w armor 10 all the way around they WILL die very easily...ive been thinking of adding a wreckin ball...but ill probably just throw it on one of me battlewagons...

Id invest in some battlewagons too...I have 3 and never go into a game without all 3...they are a bit slower than trukks (who are fast vehicles) but they are FAR more survivable and have way way way better weapons options...deff rollas are probably the best AT we have and the look on my friends face is priceless every time i run over his land raider!!! and on the upside they carry 20 models instead of 12 making the boyz you throw inside more survivable as there are more of them...they take up a heavy slot (unless you Dedicated transport them to a unit of nobz...which you should do)

EDIT: my bad gitz dont get wagons as a dedicated trans

Greetings OP:

I submit to you my general thoughts on Orks - once you take these thoughts and coalesce them int your personal ideas about what you would like to run in an Ork list, we can offer unit guidance and strength advice and synergy guidelines and FoC thoughts...
-------------------------

I'm going to work off of a couple of assumptions.
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1. Playing Warhammer 40k is fun.
2. Playing Warhammer 40k and winning is more fun.
3. Playing Warhammer 40k and losing is less fun.
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Human nature and natural selection demand that we continually seek to improve ourselves. Having an A type personality probably doesn't hurt this effort, but if you lose a game of 40k and don't reflect on the game with, "What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? How can I prevent this from happening again?" then I can't really talk to you.

If this thought process and those three assumptions *do* apply to you, then read on.

******
Orks are a unique codex. An ork boy is significantly cheaper than just about any other model in 40k, and is basically a platform from which many things spring (other kinds of ork variants - stormboyz, lootas, nobs...). If you read the fluff, every ork starts in the same place, and as they develop, they lean towards on klan/society, which is how they figure out what kind of ork they're going to be.

In other codexes (space marines and their variants being the most prolific), basic troops are well-rounded models. You ever play Final Fight? How about ANY kind of game with character selections? You've got the big, strong guy that's slow...the average Joe....and the weaker but very speedy character. This applies in 40k as well. Space marines are like your average, well-rounded Joe. Orks are NOT. You can't mix and match orks in any order you like to make a generalized list.

This is *not* called power building, its called understanding your codex, how your codex is designed, and using it as such. Every time someone calls "playing a theme" to be "powerbuilding" I want to stab them in the F***** eye. If you look in the Ork codex, do you see the codex writers putting in pictures for the sample armies of some Lootas backing up a squad of meganobs in a trukk, who are advancing next to some buggies and a deffkopta or two?

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They even TELL you how to make your army. They tell you what the Ork klans are - Bad Moons, Kult of Speed, Deffskullz, etc.

That kind of thematic army construction is the intent of the Ork codex. That is what makes orks powerful. The ork codex is written so that you can design an army list that is absolutely ridiculously powerful, but it is NOT made up of average Joe units; everything is specialized towards a specific goal. When you build an army list, you should follow the thematic advice given to you in the Codex. PICK a theme. There's a lot of them:

Green Tide. Mechanized Assault. Mechanized Shooting. Ork Gunline (Moar Dakka), Kan-Wall. Dreadz of Fury. Kult of Speed. Outflanking Goodness. Rebel Grotz. Nob Bikers. Super Units. Orky Burnas.

All of those things have something in common - the lists were designed with a theme in mind, and have the synergy to work together towards that goal. When you start combining those themes to make a list, you're being counterintuitive to the very style that the orks were created for.

Remember this: Orks can do anything that any other army can do, and they can do it better than that army. However, orks can only do it one at a time. You can outshoot a Tau Gunline. You can out-assault a khorne army or an army of genestealers. You can put down more templates than IG....whatever your goal in mind is....orks can do it better, but it has to stick to that theme. Orks are not meant to be universal, middle-of-the-line armies.

To give another analogy...if you've ever played an MMO, there are different classes. Fighter, Tank, barbarian, mage, cleric, wizard, hunter, ranger, red mage, death knight, rogue, whatever.....its all based on the game you play. The class you pick sets you on a path for the kind of game you play, the skills you get - they are pre-defined roles.

40k armies fit into that kind of typification. Except for Orks. Orks would be the generic class. You start with a neutral character, with skillpoints to assign, and you can make orks any kind of army you want them to be. People fail with orks because they want some of everything. Instead of making them a fighter, or an archer, or a guardian...and they would be better fighters, archers and guardians than every other type...they split points between all three to make a Figardian. F.A.G for short.

Do you want to excel in something, or be a F.A.G? That's what it boils down to.

Are you a F.A.G?




*EDIT* I'm adding information for the tactics article I'm working on.

If you're running a foot-slogging list, shoota boys are your friend. Slugga boys belong inside vehicles. In fact, I think you should convert your slugga boy mobs into shoota boys. In 5th edition, the shoota boy is the most efficient point purchase across all 40k.

Think on that - for 6 points...SIX POINTS....you get an infantry model with an assault 2 STR4 gun, who is WS4, STR4, T4 on the charge. In terms of math hammer between shoota and slugga boys, it's pretty simple. Slugga boys have +1 attack in close combat, and shoota boys have +1 attack outside of close combat. Since your Orks on the assault are only I3, you're going to strike last meaning that 30 boyz are going to take some casualties before getting their attacks back.

On the flip side, shoota boys get 2 shots before assaulting, and the enemy doesn't get to shoot back first and cause casualties - putting in any kind of hurt before you assault is incredibly valuable. And since it has an 18" range, you can shoot into a unit even when you don't have range to assault this turn. My advice for green tide:

Take all your troops choices as shoota boys. Consider taking a squad of gretchin - you can spread them across your front lines to provide 4+ cover saves for your whole army. Alternatively, you can take a squad of ork boyz to do the same. If you make them 'Ard Boyz they gain considerably in staying power.

Want to get real freaky? Take a squad of 'Ard Boyz, stick Mad Dok Grotsnik with them for a 4+/4+. Spread that unit out 2+ coherence to minimize the damage that blast templates can do, and have the whole thing move+run in front of your army. Your screening unit has 4+ armor saves, 4+ feel no pain, and the rest of your army has 4+ cover saves now. If your points allow it, what really tops off the list is adding some fast attack Stormboyz. You can put them into close combat, or have them multi-assault to shake/stun some tanks/artillery, have them get in fast and tie up enemy units (hello Tau!), or if the situation doesn't call for it, you can leave them behind your screening unit and keep them in reserve to get in where you need supporting assault units at.


Here's a quick take on those various lists. Please remember something important: Every list needs to be tailored for point allocations. What I'm putting down here is an "optimized" list where you get the maximum ability from it, so if you're playing a 1,000 point gunline, three full squads of Lootas + supporting units and troop choices isn't really what you're going to play. You'll have to tweak to match your needs.

Green Tide:
Green tide is actually an apocalypse battle formation, but is a common name for a foot-slogging ork army list. It consists of mobs of 30 shoota boys, a nob with a powerklaw, and either a unit of gretchin or a unit of boyz or 'Ard Boyz (maybe even with Mad Dok) screened across the front to give the rest of the army a 4+ cover save as they advance up the board.

Mechanized Assault:
12 slugga boyz+Nob/PK stacked into trukks, perhaps some battlewagons in the mix, covered by a Big Mek with a KFF...an elite unit or two (kommandos, lootas, burnas) tacked into the mix depending on your personal playstyle - they get into close combat as fast as orkishly possible; with Ghazghkull leading the mix, that's usually turn2.

Mechanized Shooting:
Instead of slugga boys, you have shoota boys, preferably in battlewagons, with a KFF screening them, rolling around the battlefield pouring firepower into enemy units. Alternatively, (and one of my favorite setups) this is 3 Loota squads inside battlewagons sitting on the back table edge, Big mek with KFF in the middle one in a trident formation \|/ to present front armor across the battlefield, surrounded by a unit of gretchin to prevent assaults on rear armor.


Ork Gunline:
Three squads of Lootas form the backbone of this, either sitting in cover or with a screening unit to give them a 4+ cover save, heavy support of big guns or some dreads/kans to provide long range firepower, with the obligatory shoota boy squads.


Kan wall:
One of the current meta-game favorites: Three squads of three killa-kans, protected by a KFF mek (or two) marching up the field screening mobs of shoota boys behind them.


Dreadz of Fury:
Three DeffDreads for Heavy Support + 2 Deff Dreads for troop choices, with a KFF mek screening them for a 4+ cover save, set for either long ranged fire support or close ranged pwnage; I prefer the STR10 DCCWs.


Kult of Speed:
Straight out of your codex! Boyz in trukks, mechanized element + Stormboyz. Ponder this for a moment: 6 trukks full of boyz screened by a Mek with a KFF, in turn screening 3 units of Stormboyz who can move as fast as the trukks moving flat out...that's a lot of fast moving destruction.

Outflanking Goodness:
Kommandos as elites and Deffkoptas as fast attack, as many of each as you can fit in, often with Deffkoptas equipped differently for wound allocation spread outflanking (unless you get turn1 and put your deffkoptas out for a turn1 turbo-boost).


Rebel Grotz:
Instead of six units of boyz, you get.....gretchin! Bwah ha ha. Not particularly scary in themselves, but using covering units or terrain, able to go to ground for a 3+ cover save, making them incredibly difficult to remove from an objective, especially with other gretchin (inside killa-kans) are krumping around the battlefield.

Nob Bikers:
Two warbosses + 20 nobs = 2HQ + 2Troops. 22 models = 1750. Diversified wargear and weaponry let you spread wounds around instead of removing models, and the unit is incredibly tough, has the ability to get anywhere fast, and kill anything fast.

Super Units:
Similar to Nob bikers in having an army with a low model count: Warboss Krumpmaster and the Megaboyz; a couple units of Meganobs, or my personal preference, units of regular nobs with diversified wargear for wound allocation magic - in vehicles!


Orky Burnas:
Start with three units of burna boys. Put them in battlewagons if you like. Mek with a KFF to screen if you do, and you have an army of combination templates / power weapons. Alternatively, a warboss makes nobs a troops choice, and you can give them all kombi-skorchas for some real carnage.


Battlewagon Spam:
Did you know that you can field 8 Battlewagons in a single army list? That's right...eight battlewagons. Three Heavy Support, Three dedicated transports for elite unit nobs, and two warbosses making two units of nobs troop choices so that you can take two more battlewagons. I think any time you have vehicles, you should have a KFF floating around, so I wouldn't advocate going for 8....but you can do a lot of things with a list of Battlewagons.



This all comes from this thread: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/269441.page#1180405

As Dash has covered the tactics rather well I thought I'd way in on big gunz.

General Pros: Big gunz are incredibly cheap. I think a single kannon at 20pts qualifies as literally the cheapest legal unit in the game. They are great for filling in those last 20 or 30 pts or so. They are also fairly well ranged and fairly accurate for the ork army giving you the ability to play with range a bit more and some shooting support. ammo runts in particular up the accuracy tremendously. Being quite small models they are quite easy to deploy in cover which ups their surviability considerably.

General Cons: It's grots. their combination of low toughness, no save and low leadership means that whatever looks at them funny causes them all either to die or run from the board. nothing you do will stop this. Adding the bully, adding more grots, all they'll do is make the unit more expensive for when it breaks and runs off the board. They are an easy KP in KP games.

Generally this fragility doesn't matter, they're cheap and disposable enough that they aren't key to your battle plan and most enemies don't rank them as significant threat so people won't fire at them. But when people do fire at them they die, as simple as that.

General tips for use: Always get at least one ammo runt and usually the maximum amount allowed. This drmatically increases their deadliness for a piddly little cost. Avoid all the other upgrades because all they do is make the unit look bigger and scarier making it seem more of a threat. They don't make it scarier and they don't make it tougher so all your doing is drawing attention to them and reducing their surviability by paying more pts. If you take a full squad of 3 the bully is maaaaaaaaaybe worth it for the ld boost but I still don't rate him.
Stick them in cover with a good line of sight and then just use them to shoot stuff. There aren't really any tricks to them.

Onto the specific guns.

Kannons - are great. Flexible but chiefly they provide us with accurate, ranged anti-tank ability. Something the ork army sorely lacks and sorely needs. for 23pts a kannon with a single runt only has to kill 1 rhino to have earned its pts back and had a positive effect on your army. If your opponent has no tanks then you can drop blast templates on them all day and again probably earn your pts back.

Zzzzaps -are absolutely crap. The average roll on a 2D6 is 7 so most of the time they will have LESS or equal str than the Kannon. And they don't have the flexibility, and they cost more. More pts for less effective is not a good deal in my book. The only niche they could possibly occupy is that they have ap2 which makes them good at hunting monstrous creatures with a 2+ save which, oh wait, hang on. the new nid dex got rid of all the monstrous creatures with 2+ saves. Kannons all the way.

Lobbas - are great guns, cheap and cheerful powerful for your pts and with pinning! An underestimated ability that can really help you out. Plus barrage rules mean that they can hide out of LOS reducing your fragility issue dramatically.
but they're an answer to a problem orks don't have. Orks are fine at killing ifnantry, we have a hundred boyz who are amazing in assault and more dakka than you can shake a stick at. What we need is ranged anti-tank/anti-MEQ support to complement our boyz and nobz. Lobbas don't do that and thus they have no role in most ork armies.

There are better choices in the heavy section (dreads, kanz and wagons) and a lot of players play themed forces that require the use of those heavy slots for kanz or wagonz. However if you have a heavy slot spare you could do a lot worse than buy a few cheap kannons to try and bring down some enemy tanks. They're not an auto-include unit or anything to build a strategy around but they work just fine.

since dash pretty much covered all this, and gave sound advise, ill not counter that. ill only attempt to add, that when i play my orks, i run 4x 12 boys in trukks (nob with pk/bosspole inc) 2 warboss, 1 on a bike, a squad of nobs on foot with a painboy (join to a warboss and load in trukk), and a unit of nob bikers with a painboy and half and half of powerklaws and big choppas.

the nob biker unit is now 4+armor and cover with a 5+ invun and fnp. you can delever roughly 6 str 10 pk attacks, and 9 str 9 pk attacks, with 9 str 7 big choppas. tell me a tank...any tank that will take that. go ahead.

i dont believe in abttlewagons for transports, and heres why:

they arent fast. so you are moving slower, and if you want to give it better guns in defenxe, it turns into a massive point sink. its also not ramshackle, so when someone DOES blow it up, (and they will cause its a huge bullseye) it generally pops on the spot, and injures your guys inside. trukks on the other hand are dirt cheap, fast, and have the ramshackle rule. that rule alone has saved my boys from getting killed in a crash, and often times i end up going closer to the meat that just shot me down anyway! with riggers plates and ram, the trukk only costs 55 points. is fast, re-rolls terrain tests, and can repair immobilized on a 4+, and if it gets wrecked you dont assplode all over the place (well not always anyway). my 2k ork list includes 5 trukks and nob bikers. im generally assaulting on turn 2. (sometimes turn 1 if i go last, and the guy moves forward). want some more numbers?
trukk moves 18", 2" disembark, +d6 run, 6" charge on the wagghh! = 26"+d6 charge range.
bikes can almost do the same with a 18" turbo boost move turn 1, followed by a 12" move and a 6" charge next turn. those bikes reliably have destroyed more armor then anything ive ever used, and they can throw a pretty good beatin on infantry as well (although the amount of strike last can sometimes hurt you in that scenario). exampole: in my last game my 7 nobs (1 was a painboy) with a warboss took out 3 soul grinders 2 greater daemons of nurgle and a squad of bloodletters before they died. in roughly 3 and a half turns. they also tallied 2 ironvlads, 2 landraiders a pred and a 5 man termie squad in another game. they invariably end up getting nuked....but the pain they bring is ultimate.

hope that helps (keep in mind this is all personal prefrence and expierence. i find orks suit the player and the best way to play them is find your style that fits and do it. orks can be masters of alot, but generally only 1 at a time. find that.... and youll find the best 40k army youll ever play.)

So spader you run no HS choices in your armies?

DarthSpader wrote: want some more numbers?
trukk moves 18", 2" disembark, +d6 run, 6" charge on the wagghh! = 26"+d6 charge range.

Troops can't disembark from a transport if it moves faster than 12".

So your Trukk and a B-Wagon have exactly the same charging distance 12+2+6+D6 (21-26)
Your trukk can move 6 inches faster in the first turn so by turn 2 you could have covered 39-45" of distance whereas the B-Wagon has only covered 33-39 but considering most enemies are between 24-36" away from the B-Wagon it can get off a 2nd turn just fine.

I like trukks just fine. They're cheap, they're fast, they're open topped and they do the job of a transport perfectly well. If you need to get an assault unit across the board quickly Trukks will do the job.

But the B-Wagon can do a ton of things a trukk can't do such as

- carry a large squad that will keep fearless for longer making it a tougher proposition. Regular trukk boyz just fade away after their first assault.
- survive incoming fire; av10 isn't surviving crap but av14, particularly under a KFF is a much tougher proposition. Melta? If they're in melta range the B-Wagon already did its job.
- Deffrolla; the best anti-tank weapon the orks have
- Grabbin klaw; which teamed up with a unit with a p-klaw is the 2nd best anti-tank weapon we have
- more guns, expensive. Maybe but you can get a decent shooty wagon for 120-150pts. On my own wagons the guns are there to make it last longer but you can easily drive up, deploy a squad then sit and shoot
- being survivable and open topped you can drive up to an objective and control it whilst firing both the wagons guns and the guns of any troops onboard. A trukk that tried this would be dead.
- Defrolla; because its so awesome it deserves to be mentioned twice.

I'm glad you use your KOS army well and the list works for you. I don't think anyone NEEDs wagons but they are pretty good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ChrisCP wrote:So spader you run no HS choices in your armies?

You don't need to actually. I ran a 1500pt ork list for a good year or so that had no heavy support whatsoever.

What orks need to win is

boyz - for krumpin
klaws - for krumpin harder stuff
rokkits/lootaz/gunz - for opening transports and killin' stuff boyz and klaws can't kill
some method of getting the boyz where they need to be to do dey're krumpin mostly alive

The last part would be the "strategy" part of playing orks. Wagons, Grot screens, Trukks, Bikes, KFFs, Kan Walls and Battlewagons are all units that are used to help boyz and klaws get where they need to be to do some krumpin.

And you can only use one of them as Spader does (KOS so he uses trukks) or as a Kan Wall does or as B-Wagon spam list does or you can combine them to make hybrid lists (I use a mix of boyz behind a grot screen and trukks/wagons under a KFF and it works for me).

So long as you've got boyz, klaws, rokkits/lootaz and some method of moving the boyz around your sorted.

So strictly speaking you don't need to use the heavy support section. Unless kanz or wagons are part of either your klawz, moving or rokkits requirement you can drop them entirely.

=_=

@BBSR: It was a rhetorical question being used to highlight my already salty opinon of that post and the trukk issue.
Asinine yes, and I received what deserved for it I guess.

We have quite a few Ig players here in the panhandle so i'm pretty familiar with the lemus russ rain.

I play BA personally but I cannot remember the last time i saw an ork trukk get far enough for orks to charge from them. Doubly so if your worried about your opponent bringing a lot of big guns. I'm not really sure how to extend the lifespan of your ac10, open topped, mass ork coffin on wheels.

Deff Koptas can bring a huge sawblade or something cant they? otherwise some twin linked rokkits into side armor may kill a tank or two.

Bikers sound like a good idea to me, if i were to drive at a tank it would probably be with a good number of bikes. Plus orks get the smog cover save thing.