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So I tried out my first Gretchin squad today, had the full 30+3 models, and when the opposing player (Blood Angels) got close, I moved them away from the Sag Mek having him leave the squad and forming a screen around him with the Grots.

The problem was once the BA company assaulted they kill 7 Grots, lost one in return. This is when I noticed Gretchin don't have mob rule, so I needed double 1's, failed, killed some grots to roll again and failed again. So some 25 gretchin & herders got sweeping advanced.

Now the unit is cheap enough that it wasn't a devastating blow (although it did lead to a tie since they were holding my objective in C&C), but the real question is should you ever take the full squad? They seem excessively prone to sweeping advance.

I may get crucified for saying this, but i honestly don't see the point in Gretchin.

At 3 points, they are a "barrier" for your boys - id much rather trade in that barrier for more boys. Sure you may get less of them, but at 6 points a model, I think i can live with the casualties. Especially if you take a Big Mek with a custom force field. Then you get cover saves anyway, and you get more boys (which DO get mob rule).

As for the "It's a grot's life" special rule, I have yet to play a scenario which warrants this.

The point of gretchin is to have a forty point scoring unit with a 3+ cover save (gone to ground in area terrain) holding an objective! And no, a full squad of gretchin is hardly ever warranted.

The best unit of Gretchin is probably 19 with one runtherd for 67 points. I run this unit in my Ork lists and I prefer it to a ten-man squad because it is resilient and it is a larger bubblewrap. Objective holding is only half the job for gretchin. They are also great as an assault barrier in front of my lootas which buys me an extra turn of shooting.

I second the 67 point unit.

During 'Ard Boyz in round one, I had my unit of 19 gretchin holding 4 objectives while the rest of my army bashed up the enemy. I ended up losing the gretchin in a close combat because I overextended them (to get the 4th objective) but if I had kept them to two or three, I would have been fine.

I've also used them to screen my Lootas from outflanking assault units. I played against an Ork player with Snikrot, so my Gretchin made a nice 2" coherency chain around my Lootas, leaving Snikrot to come on the table and assault....Gretchin or nothing.

They serve a purpose in a list. Not in every list. But in mine they do. In a capture and control mission, I don't have to leave a squad of boyz in the back to hold an objective. I have gretchin for that. They stay in reserve and come on whenever to grab it. The rest of my army gets ta' krumpin. In a seize ground mission, that's 1-2 objectives held while I give my enemy the rest of my army to deal with. I reserve them in killpoints, hide them when they come in....if I ever lose them, its a 67 point "So what?" loss.

BBSR standard advice number 3

Grotz have won me more games with my orks than any other unit.


There are 4 main tactical uses of grotz in a list.

1. Grot Screen - 80 pts buys you 20 grots and 2 herders or a KFF. For a footslogging force the KFF will grant a 5++ save, the grots wil grant a 4++. That helps keep those more expensive shoota and slugga boyz alive as they advance across the battlefield more effectively for the same points. Oh and the extra wounds, extra sots and extra attacks over the KFF are a pure bonus.

The only downside if a drop in mobility since you can only manouveur as fast as the grots so if they roll a 1 to run you either have to break past the screen or slow down.

I use this strategy nearly every game to minimise incoming damage as I move up the field.

2. Grot Shield

If packed together tightly enough (i.e. less than the full 2") the enemy cannot assault past your gretchin to get at the orks behind. As we all know orks are amazing on the charge but rubbish if they get charged. If you have a bunch of grots in front of your orks the enemy cannot charge you. He either has to shoot the grots away (and there are 20 of them) or he has to charge them. The grots will almost certainly die but then the enemy is left out in the open ready to be charged by the rest of your force.

I used this just the other weekend against a chaos player. 2 dreads, a daemon prince, a greater daemon and a squad of berserkers were all poised close to my orks and ready to charge but the grot screen was in the way of all these units. He couldn't charge me and instead was shot + charged by me the next turn depriving him of his daemons and zerkers in one turn.

3. Hold objctives - in at least one mission we need to leave a unit at home whilst the rest of the short ranged ork army goes and does some killing. 80pts gets you 20 wounds, probably in cover, probably going to ground that only have to exist to potentially win the game. 160pts buys you 20 orks who aren't going to do the job any better at all.

4. Bait - this is more of a psychological trick but you'd be amazed how often it works.

In Dawn of War you can only deploy 2 troops and 1 HQ. I routinely deploy my gretchin in a vulnerable position and leave the rest of my army ready to emerge turn 1. Players don't like to do nothing, they like to feel like they've achieved something even if it is just killing grots. So most players will move towards the gretchin "bait" in their turn and try and shoot/assault them. In one tournament I had a ravenwing player manage a first turn assault against my grots with a big expensive bike unit and kill them all. In response my entire army including some bikes marched on, shot and charged him and made short work of that expensive unit.

This works against any opponent where you might want to reserve your entire army i.e. daemons. Take everything away and he'll get canny by deploying into cover, out of line of sight, too far from the edge, etc. Give him a focus however and most players will send at least 1 unit to go kill the grots which gives you 1 unit you can move up, shoot and assault turn 1.

Those 80pts can be used to lure your opponent into making tactical misjudgements which can help you.


There are of course dozens of other uses, they can bodyguard a Big Mek, they can actually shoot something sometimes maybe if they get lucky, they can assault an enemy and pull it out of position and with 2 herders their actually pretty good at taking on MC's. But none of those other uses have ever helped me directly win games like the first 4.

Arguably all of these can be done using standard orks who are also better at killing. But those orks won't do the grots jobs any better than the grots and they'll cost twice the price, if all you want from a unit is to die and in so doing potentially win a game then keep that unit cheap.


As for whether to take the full33. No, there really isn't much benefit to having a unit bigger than 20. About 16-20 is usually the right size. It provides enough bodies to do all the tactics described above without being too much of a points sink or too big to move on the table effectively.

I play a full grot revolution, so I may be slightly biased, but I believe the little buggers can make very cheap screens or objective holders.

One use of a big unit nobody has mentioned yet is the 'combined arms MC takedown'. 3 runtherds with grabba sticks = 3 less attacks for enemy models. Sucks vs assault marines, rocks vs dreads, flyrants, etc. If you simultaneously assault with a dread or kans, the enemy will have 1-2 attacks max, which means he won't be doing all that much, and that you can tear him a new one without major losses. Not easy to achieve, but huge potential vs units kans/dreads/meganobz tend to struggle with or take heavy losses from.

My Grot Mobz were Banned from a local set Kill Team tornoments for being too Killy!
In addition after this the TO also banned Conscripts, just to be safe

One time my buddy landed his deep striking Crisis Suits on top of a bunch of grots. The Suits were destroyed. Those grots paid for them themselves tenfold.

Hmmm... looks like I will have to downgrade my 2 units of complex Nobz a little to make room for 20 grots... objectives games seem to be hit and miss with my army. (with BS 2, mostly miss...)

Kroot Loops wrote:
The problem was once the BA company assaulted they kill 7 Grots, lost one in return. This is when I noticed Gretchin don't have mob rule, so I needed double 1's, failed, killed some grots to roll again and failed again. So some 25 gretchin & herders got sweeping advanced..

Well- the Grots dont get Mob Rule- but the Runt Herds do.... But since the Mob Rule specifies 'the number of Orks can be substituted for Ld'. Most of the Orks players Ive seen playing, use Mob rule for grots as long as the Runtherds are alive.

I'm gonna go look for an FAQ clarifier- as if the grots dont get it- they are pretty useless

You know, if you have Mad Doc Grotsnik in the army, then you can upgrade all of your Grots with Cybork Bodies, and then throw the Mad Doc in the unit to give them all Feel No Pain. They'll charge forward, but it'll be funny.

Nurglitch wrote:You know, if you have Mad Doc Grotsnik in the army, then you can upgrade all of your Grots with Cybork Bodies, and then throw the Mad Doc in the unit to give them all Feel No Pain. They'll charge forward, but it'll be funny.

Being T 2, of course, even Bolters will deny the Grotz Feel no Pain...

Will it deny them their Cybork Invulnerable save? More to the point, will it even matter? They're Grotz. You're lucky they don't spontaneously combust.

This is a picture of my gretchin in a game against daemons a month or two ago.


They assaulted and killed 4 horrors on an objective. Then they accepted a charge from a soul grinder and stood fast through it for a turn, letting me focus elsewhere.

I just leave em and do something else, unless their on an objective, then I murder them with bolter fire.

Mistress of minis wrote:

Kroot Loops wrote:
The problem was once the BA company assaulted they kill 7 Grots, lost one in return. This is when I noticed Gretchin don't have mob rule, so I needed double 1's, failed, killed some grots to roll again and failed again. So some 25 gretchin & herders got sweeping advanced..

Well- the Grots dont get Mob Rule- but the Runt Herds do.... But since the Mob Rule specifies 'the number of Orks can be substituted for Ld'. Most of the Orks players Ive seen playing, use Mob rule for grots as long as the Runtherds are alive.

I'm gonna go look for an FAQ clarifier- as if the grots dont get it- they are pretty useless

Exactly, the rules says "the number of orks" not the number of grots. So you could always opt to substitute your leadership for the number of slavers, i.e. 3.

I have never played them as having mob rule because, well, they don't and I find them far from useless.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

gurgle wrote:I just leave em and do something else, unless their on an objective, then I murder them with bolter fire.

That's all fine and danady but if they're standing in front of my boyz and you don't kill them then they've done their job.
Also if you do kill them, they've done their job.

Basically from what I have gathered from Dash's reports, They are about 67-80 points to capture ~3 objectives while the rest of your army tables your opponent...

As a Blood Angels player I can jump over the gretchin and kill the orks.

bravelybravesirrobin wrote:
Exactly, the rules says "the number of orks" not the number of grots. So you could always opt to substitute your leadership for the number of slavers, i.e. 3.

"The Ork race: The first section introducecs the Orks in all their...." Are we really doing this? You're going to tell me that things in the tyranid codex aren't tyranids, that necrons are necron that a Wych Lord isn't a Dark-Eldar?

Anyway yes RAW a Runtherd may always Sub their Ld value yadda yadda yadda.

ChrisCP wrote:

bravelybravesirrobin wrote:
Exactly, the rules says "the number of orks" not the number of grots. So you could always opt to substitute your leadership for the number of slavers, i.e. 3.

"The Ork race: The first section introducecs the Orks in all their...." Are we really doing this? You're going to tell me that things in the tyranid codex aren't tyranids, that necrons are necron that a Wych Lord isn't a Dark-Eldar?

Anyway yes RAW a Runtherd may always Sub their Ld value yadda yadda yadda.

There are units in the Necron codex which are not Necrons.
There are units in the Tau codex which are not Tau.
There are also units in the Ork codex which are not Orks.

Orks have the waaagh, furious charge and mob rule rules.
Gretchin have none of those rules.

The RAW says number of orks but what an ork is is undefined in the codex. If you want to class grots as orks then fine, a grot mob can be fearless if it numbers 11 models or more and can substitute the number of grots for its leadership. I don't class grots as orks for reasons that should be obvious. but until you can point me to a sentence n the codex that defines what an ork is don't act like your interpretation of the rule is self evidently right because it isn't.

What's more my interpretation has precedent because grot mobs could not use mob rule in the previous version of the codex either.

Who says it's my interpretation?


*** Argh~! I wanted to have a full discouyse on this now but have to go tomorrow if we both still care enough?

(For the record I'm undecied on the ruling I'm fairly sure there is solid backing in the codex for the Runtherds to benifit from the # gretchin from RAW perspective. etc etc

BBR actually has his facts correct... except for the Orks have Waargh comment. Bikers are Orks and they do not have Waargh. Other than that bravo ol' chap.

the_ferrett wrote:BBR actually has his facts correct... except for the Orks have Waargh comment. Bikers are Orks and they do not have Waargh. Other than that bravo ol' chap.

Stormboyz don't either (as per the FAQ) and that would be because since neither is infantry neither is allowed to use the fleet rule. But they do have furious charge and mob rule whereas grots haven't mob rule, waaagh or furious charge.

Runtherds had the mob rule removed in the Ork Errata.

Gwar! wrote:Runtherds had the mob rule removed in the Ork Errata.

And....now I have no need to chime into the argument. Whether gretchin count as orks doesn't matter because the runtherders don't actually have mob rule. =p

This weekend my grots held an objective through 3 rounds of intense IG bombardment. They formed a conga-line at maximum coherencey from the objective all along my table edge. I started with 18 (+herder) then I had 12, then 7, the 3 then 1. The line got shorter & shorter. They made all their morale saves and the last grot almost won me the game. (I have modeled him a guard helmet)

I am a recent grot-convert - I like to have them waddle out of reserve and grab objectives, or make a fence around some Lootas who do not have good cover, but want a good firing lane.

Lost Boyz wrote:This weekend my grots held an objective through 3 rounds of intense IG bombardment. They formed a conga-line at maximum coherencey from the objective all along my table edge. I started with 18 (+herder) then I had 12, then 7, the 3 then 1. The line got shorter & shorter. They made all their morale saves and the last grot almost won me the game. (I have modeled him a guard helmet)

I am a recent grot-convert - I like to have them waddle out of reserve and grab objectives, or make a fence around some Lootas who do not have good cover, but want a good firing lane.

+1 for a good story.

+2 for the image of waddling gretchin!

@ Mistress of minis: Runtherdz shouldn't have the Waaagh! & Mob Rule special rules.

@ Nurglitch: I field 180 of these little buggers, BS 3, 5+ Invlunerable, one Grot mob w/Feel No Pain I love these

Grots don't benefit from Waaagh or Mob Rule. The official GW FAQ for the Ork codex clarifies this (deleting both special rules from the Runtherds).

Grots are OK for the stealth objective takers or screens, but that's it. Other tales of grot achievement are grossly overstated.