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So I've been playing Orks for about 3 years now and I do alright amongst my friends and local tournies with a semi-mech list.

But what I really, in my heart of hearts want to do is field a ton of stompy walkers and go smash face!

With the release of the absolutely amazing new Killa-Kan models I finally got enough kanz together to make myself a kan wall army.

Rather than a proper blog I thought I'd post my progress with the army and solicit feedback on how to improve it.

I got my first game in with the new kanz on Saturday against Nids playing a Battle Missions randomly rolled, we rolled up Invasion and the Nid player became the daemon player for this mission.

I had

KFF Mek
KFF Mek

5 x lootaz
5 x lootaz
5x lootaz

30 x shoota boyz, 2 x BS, Nob with Pk and Bp
25 x shoota boyz, 2 x BS, Nob with Pk and Bp
23 x shoota boyz, 2 x BS, Nob with Pk and Bp

12 x sluggaz, Nob with Pk and Bp - trukk with ram
11 x sluggaz, Nob with Pk and Bp - trukk with ram

6 x warbikes - Nob with pk and bp
rokkit buggy
rokkit buggy

3 x kanz with rokkits
3 x kanz with rokkits
3 x kanz with grotzookas

He fielded (some of this may be wrong)

Swarmlord and 2 guard with boneswords
Parsite of Mortrex

Deathleaper
3 x hive guard
2 x hive guard

10 x termagants
10 x termagants
Tervigon - all the trimmings

8 x stealers, posion, broodlord
8 x stealers, poison

Trygon


20 x uber gargoyles


A brief battle report

I deployed first and made a semi-circle around the edges of the board facing the portal in the centre as I knew jon was going to March everything out of the warp rift rather than deepstrike.
To my left I had the grotzooka kanz and some rokkit kanz in a line with a squad of boyz and the KFF behind them.
In the middle I had my remaining 6 rokkit kanz behind a lot of area terrain with a squad of boyz behind them and another slightly to the right of them. In front of those boyz the 2 trukks with another KFF mek sat.
The rokkit buggies hid and the bikes deployed on the right. 2 squads of lootaz deployed on the left, 1 in a bunker, 1 in ruins and the 3rd in ruins on the right.

Turn 1 - and Jon gets swarmy, 10 gants, 3 hive guard, 1 set of stealers and his trygon right away. Swarmy heads off to go eat the bikes but the trygon and stealers tyy and run through cover to reach the potentially close enough front rokkit kanz. they looked to be exactly 18" away. Trygon flubbed his rolls but the stealers managed a 6 for difficult terrain and another 6 for fleet. Bugger! I was hoping to lure them into a gunline with a tantalising target but instead Jon's luck meant they had a 1st turn charge.
Jon had even more luck when with the first shot of the game his hive guard penetrated and exploded all 3 rokkit kanz on the left!!! 6 shots did 4 pens which I rolled for 3's to save. Worse the explosion killed 11 boyz standing behind the kanz! Meanwhile his gants ran onto 1 objective and hunkered down.
In assault the stealers destroy 1 kan and my return attacks whiff missing entirely. Not a great first turn. In retaliation I shoot at his trygon with nearly everything dropping it to 2 wounds. He also loses 2 hive guard from orky shooting thanks to rokkit buggies and lootaz. The bikes have a pop at the swarmlord with their guns and manage to remove 1 wound. In assault 1 trukk squad charges the trygon killing him and consolidating into cover. The other charges the stealers, flub their rolls, break and flee the table. Grrrr!

Turn 2 - the tervigon, remaining hive guard, remaining gants and remaining stealers arrive. Swarmy moves off to the right and charges the bikes (I swore I deployed them 19" away but hmmm) wiping them all out. 1 set of hive guard lack range but the others kill a buggy. The stealers go after my grotzooka kans and kill 1 in return for quite a few being squished. The terivgon and gants charge the trukk squad in cover who lose a lot of their number but win cc and take a wound off the tervigon.
In retaliation 1 squad of boyz in the middle goes off to charge the gants (wiping them out and putting 2 more wounds on the tervigon), the squad with the kanz charges the stealers wiping them out. The rokkit kanz kick some stealers to death and another of their number dies. From this point on the rokkit kan killed a stealer a turn as he progressively lost limbs, was immobilised and was shaken but never destroyed. My other squad of boyz moved away from the swarmlord and unloaded some dakka into him taking a wound off his guard. Meanwhile the lootaz shot all but 4 gants off the far objective. That's a bit more like it.

Sadly the mission rules bit me in the arse massively here. Winning combat with the tervigon meant I HAD TO lap round with the boyz but that meant moving within 6" of the portal, which meant instant destruction for any model moving there. I lost 18 boyz and both my p-fists for WINNING combat. This was probably the most crucial error I made and cost me the game.

Turn 3

Jon's gargoyles show up and move off to the left. In shooting and assault they kill the boyz mob on the left leaving them in front of my grotzookas. Swarmy moves to threaten the boyz in the centre not locked in cc with the tervigon. The tervigon whiffs his attacks but so do I and lose more boyz from lapping round. Hive guard blow out the KFF mek's trukk (and the other one) causing it to kareen into the portal where the mek dies.

In response I move the kanz a little back from the gargs so the blasts won't hit me. The centre boyz back away from swarmy a bit and try to light him up to no avail. Lootaz on the left and grotzookas kill tons of gargs but after casualty removal they are out of charge range. In the middle the boyz fighting the tervigon cause a wound! And the tervigon flubs his rolls. Just 2 wounds remaining on him now. I lose a few more from lapping round.

Turn 4

The Parasite and Deathleaper finally show up. Deathleaper stuns a rokkit buggy whilst the parasite goes to help the broodlord fight the one rokkit kan who is still going. The parasite whiffs all his rolls and the rokkit kan yet stands. The swarmlord finally catches my last remaining full squad of boyz and gives them a massive mauling for the loss of one guard in return. The gargs kill one of my 5 man loota squads.

In my turn I shoot the last remaining gants off the objective with lootaz and use the kanz to finish off the gargs. Rokkit kan kills the broodlord! Meaning that the only troop remaining for Jon is his 2 wound tervigon. Who finally wins his cc (scoring 1 wound to 0) making my sole boy in that squad break and run.

Turn 5.

Deathleaper disappears, the tervigon casts catalyst on itself and runs to get into range of the objective. The parasite finally kills the last remaining kan and the swarmlord mauls more of my boyz with no wounds back in retaliation. They break and run off the board. I now have no troops.

for my part a rokkit buggy, both remaining loota squads and the grotzooka kans all take aim at the tervigon. The zookas bounce off his T6, one squad of lootaz whiff their rolls and the buggy is out of range. but the last loota squad scores a whopping 7 wounds! 2 break through and I jump in the air at having pulled out a draw.

Then jon reminds me that he cast catalyst and thus has feel no pain.

He rolls 2 4's.

I roll a dice, 1, game ends. 1 objective to 0 (out of 4).


Overall Thoughts

Considering Jon's incredible first turn, wiping out 3 kanz and 11 boyz and getting into cc with my remaining kanz and my subsequently poor 1st turn assault losing me a squad I thinkI did well to come as close to drawing as I did. The crucial mistake I made was getting involved in cc so close to the warp portal. that cost me a full squad of boyz that could have easily held the objective the tervigon took. If I had charged them instead into the stealers to help out the lone kan the tervigon and gants probably would have beaten the squad they were in cc with and been forced to move further away from the warp portal to charge me again.

Backing away from the gargs was a bad mistake too, as was leaving the bikes so close. In fairness I don't know if that was my error or Jon fudging his movement a bit (we did have an issue with Mc's faling off terrain).

Specific thoughts

Kanz - well the heart of the list and what I'm really interested in but frankly I don't how well they performed at all as they nearly all died in the first turn! Not a single rokkit was fired from the rokkit kanz and really rokkits would have massively helped me out vs Jon's very MC heavy Nids. they did perform well in cc though with 2 seperate squads ultimately triumphing against genestealers. The grotzookas were mostly bouncing off T6 for want of better targets but when I did get to open up on a worthwile target (the gargoyles) they were very messy. I like them so far.

Lootaz - star of the game for me easily. The 3 squads of 5 works very well. They're small enough that its not really worth Jon taking the time to shoot them out of cover. Its easier to deploy them in cover with smaller squads. They can control more of the battlefield and ensure less places to hide and it averages out the poor D3 rolls a bit. i was very impressed with them. I've used lootaz in all my ork armies and had mixed results but this is the first time using them in this configuration. I think they had 2 hive guard, half a trygon, about 11 gargoyles, 10 gants, and part of a tervigon to their kill total in the end. Not bad.

Shootaz - accounted for most of the other half of the trygon as well as some whittling. I was hampered by the fact that Jon got his smaller bugs into cc very swiftly so their only targets were things like the trygon and swarmlord. They did well in cc though and had one of the squads not got sucked into the warp they probably would killed the tervigon and won me the game.

Trukkers - the squad everyone told me not to include. I feel naked without some ast assault units to be proactive and hunt things down so they got included. They had a poor day, one squad managed to bag a trygon whilst the other whiffed massively against stealers. I think I was too aggressive with them and would have been better using them as tactical reserve.

Bikers - had a gak game purely because of poor placement. Although they intimidate the local players enough that Jon sent swarmy after them rather than straight into the main mess of orks and kanz as I feared he would. Next time I'll remember to make them back up and force swarmy to chase them all game.

Buggies - got shot by hive guard mostly for want of betetr targets. Maybe I need a few more in place of my trukkers or the bikers.

KFF Meks - I think I passed 1 KFF save in that game. Part of the model broke off just before playing so clearly that was the crucial piece that made it all work.


Overall I can see a few key errors on my part would have helped me swing the game the opposite way. As it was I'm happy with how well I did considering Jon's luck. I like everything in the list and think it has a purpose except possibly the rokkit buggys. I think i need more or to not bother with them.

Don't know if Dash has experience with this type in particular, though send him a PM, he could make a perfect list for you in one post.

Your opponent did have some amazing luck though.

Well.....a game is a combination of list, opponent, mission, and generalship.

When you take a poor list, pit it against a list your army tends to do poorly against, in a mission disadvantageous to you with poor tactical decisions.....this sort of thing happens.

If your warbikers are intimidating the local gamers, that speaks volumes in itself.

Against Tyranids, I personally play as ranged as I can; although if his Hive Guard got 3 explode results out of 4 pens, he had to roll triple 6s for his penetrates and you failed all your KFF saves. Wow.

Dashofpepper wrote:Well.....a game is a combination of list, opponent, mission, and generalship.

When you take a poor list, pit it against a list your army tends to do poorly against, in a mission disadvantageous to you with poor tactical decisions.....this sort of thing happens.

If your warbikers are intimidating the local gamers, that speaks volumes in itself.

Against Tyranids, I personally play as ranged as I can; although if his Hive Guard got 3 explode results out of 4 pens, he had to roll triple 6s for his penetrates and you failed all your KFF saves. Wow.

I did indeed fail all my KFF saves (4 3's) and he actually rolled 4 6's. Each kan exploded 5 inches catching about 30 boyz, he wounded 18 of them (on 5's!!!) and after KFF saves 11 were dead. Quite the lucky shot.

I don't think the list is poor at all. It has ranged firepower, fast assault units, plenty of bodies, 3 big tough scoring units and mobility. It needs some tweaking and that's why I'm detailing the development of it on dakka, to solicit info on how best to tweak the list. But there's nothing wrong with a core of kanz, boyz, kff and lootaz.

The mission was fairly balanced, his army comes out peicemeal and gets shot by my entire army. Its just that I completely forgot the warp storm rule and Jon cunningly manipulated me into getting near the warpstorm. Other than the mistake with the warpstorm my only real tactical errors were positioning my bikes, moving the kanz back and possibly commiting my trukkers too early. The bikes and the backing up hurt me but didn't lose me the game. What lost me the game was forgetting about the warpstorm because it was a new mission rule I have never played with before.

Playing Jon's nids is usually a really tight game for me coming down to a draw or a win by 1kp or objective either side. I don't blame the match-up, list or mission for my loss I blame my own bad play and with hindsight I'd know not to make the same mistakes.

As for the warbikers intimidating local players. Everyone in my gaming group loathes my warbikers. When I first started playing orks they got slotted into the list because a) I had the models from the army box and b) I had a few pts spare and no FA options at the time. They proceeded to have an amazing run of luck for about a year solid. Opponent's would ignore them until it was too late and then gape slack jawed at the carnage they caused, they've had entire necron squads, entire berserker or plague marine squads, land raiders, monoliths, carnifxes, vindicators, defilers, dreadnoughts, preds, etc, etc on their kill list. They practically won me a game single handedly vs IG not to long ago in fact (killing 4 leman russes and 2 chimeras all by themselves). And in fact once did win me a game when a single contesting bike managed to hold off the firepower of practically an entire blood angels army.

Conequently they are feared and loathed for their rightfully earned reputation. So my opponent's started trying to kill them as a priority early in games. This means that recently they haven't been doing much of anything, since they're usually dead. But being a T5 4+ cover save unit they are remarkably survivable (with a bit of luck) so they tend to draw quite lot of firepower before they die. This also works out well for me so I've kept them in. I know bikes are considered a less than optimal unit and thus i would never reccomend them to others but they have worked well for me. Besides, I like having one or two more unusual units in an army. Its more fun that way for you and your opponent.

DashofPepper:

You forgot Terrain.

With the addition of the plastic Killa Kans I'm hopeful that Kan Walls will become a more common army. It's fairly competitive and lots of fun to play.

2250pts Trench Warfare Game

Probably my last game in Japan before I move home and bust out the wall against British players. This was a grudge match against a long time foe, my friend Patrick, and I'm usually the victor against him.

Expanding the Kan Wall up to 2500pts is a little tricky as it doesn't scale well so I throw in some units from older army builds that I know work wonders. I'm also experimenting with getting rid of the bikes and adding in more rokkits! My list is;

KFF Mek + Klaw
KFF Mek

7 x Nobz all with cybork
1 has a klaw
1 has a klaw and bp
1 has a bc
1 has a skorcha
1 has a waagh banner
1 is a dok
1 is normal
Riding in a b-wagon with rpj, 3 x bs, deffrolla, armour plates

8 x lootaz
7 x lootaz

30 x shoota boyz - nob, pk,bp 2 x BS (Brown Boyz)
25 x shoota boyz - nob, pk, bp 2 xBS (Black Boyz)
25 x Shoota boyz - nob, pk, bp 2 x BS (Red Boyz)

12 x trukkers with a nob, pk, bp (bull boyz)
Trukk - ram, plank

12 x trukkers with a nob, pk, bp (feral boyz)
Trukk - ram, plank

17 x grots with a slaver

2 x rokkit buggies
2 x rokkit buggies
2 x rokkit buggies

3 x kanz - rokkits
3 x kanz - rokkits
3 x kanz - grotzookas

His list was something like

Daemon Prince of Nurgle
Lash sorceror

5 x chosen (4 x meltaguns)
rhino - combi-flamer

3 x termies (2 x plasma 1 x heavy flamer)

Dread - plasma cannon, missle launcher

10 x plague marines 2 x plasma, champ with fist
rhino - havoc launcher

10 x plague marines 2 x flamer champ with fist
rhino - havoc launcher

8 noise marines - all have sonics and 1 has a blastmaster

12 lesser daemons

10 berserkers champ with fist
rhino - havoc launcher

Defiler

3 x obbies
3 x obbies

every squad that can has an icon


Trench Warfare is basically a pitched battle set up with objectives (3 for us) and some funky rules.
For starters only troops outside of transports and heavy support choices may deploy. Everything else is in reserve. That's a bugger for me as it means i can either bring the kanz in piecemeal or deploy them without the KFF support. Its an even bigger bugger for my opponent as his plan was to drive rhinos forward and use icons to drop termies, obbies and daemons off.

Finally every unit that deploys has a 4+ cover save until they move. We took this to mean vehicles as well but the book isn't clear.

Oh and every side gets D6 obstacles but that played no part at all in our game

Deployment

The objectives went 1 in the middle right in between 2 forests. 1 in the centre of the table slightly closer to my short board edge and 1 waaay off to the left and in the open in roughly the centre of the table depth wise.

My opponent opts to go second and I deploy heavily on the right dumping red and brown boyz squads either side of a ruin with a squad of rokkit kanz in front of red and grotzookas in front of brown. The grotz sit on my objective in their trench and my black boyz deploy on the left in a trench sklulking near a building. The remaining rokkit kanz hide in between the 2 boy kan groups in a ruin.

He deploys roughly opposite me with his noise marines in area terrain, his plasma plagues in another piece of area terrain and one squad od obbies standing proud next to the noise marines. His defiler sits in the far right corner at the very back outranging everything else.

Turn 1

Red and Brown boyz and their respective kanz move up. The remaining kanz cower for a bit. Grots and black boyz stay where they are. Due to a combination of range and Feel No Pain my shooting accomplishes exactly nothing this turn.

In response he shuffles his obbies for a shot and moves the plagues up a little. Shotting from his obbies is poor bouncing off cover saves but his defiler explodes a grotzooka kan killing some of the brown boyz in the process.


Turn 2
I get my battlewagon with noz and 1 KFF. I also get both trukks and...nothing else! Bugger.

The Bullboyz trukk bursts through the ruin and past the kanz. The b-wagon rolls into the ruin and just behind the kanz, the feral junkatrukk moves up behind the b-wagon. The rokkit kanz break from the ruin and the 2 groups of boyz + kanz advance forwards. Grots and Black boyz stay where they are.

In shooting my rokkits kill a plague marine (yay) and big Shoota fire takes 1 wound off an obliterator.

Patrick gets his daemon prince his deep striking obbies and his deep striking termies! Yes. He gets a poorer reserve roll than me and even better he has his deepstrikers but hardly any icons.

His termies try and land so as to kill my b-wagon but mishap and go back into reserve. His obbies drop onto the objective in the forest. His plagues advance towards the centre objective too and the daemon prince flies in front of the defielr and looks to threaten my right side.

In shooting between his defiler and 6 obbies my remaining 2 grotzooka kanz are gone along with a few brown boyz and 1 of the central rokkit kanz.

Turn 3

1 squad of lootaz arrives and runs onto my right hand side. all 3 buggies arrive and come in from the middle. Still no KFF. The black boys run for their objective on the left and away from the table edge. The reds hold but brown boyz advance along with both squads of rokkit kanz.
The bull boyz trukk zooms off to deploy the bull boyz to fight the plague marines.
The battlewagon rolls out of its building and through the middle obliterators and the plague marines killing 1 obliterator!

In shooting my rokkit kanz on the far right knock a wound off the dp and in the middle kill a plague marine. Shooting from all boyz is ineffective vs obliterators.

The bullboyz assault the plague marines losing 3 of their number but killing most of the plagues in return. The brown boyz assault the central obliterators and wipe them out!

In response patrick gets his empty rhino, his berserkers, his lash sorceress, his chosen who outflank on the left (far away from the fighting) his other plague marines who drive up to where the old suqad used to be and his termies who drop in the middle of the fighting behind my b-wagon but kill two of their number from dangerous terrain checks! Ouch! He also gets his dread who comes on near his defiler.

In shooting he plinks off my battlewagon with his defiler and obbies. His chosen manage to kill 2 of my buggies and his blastmaster kills another. His heavy flamer tries my battlewagon to no luck but he positioned it in such a way that it roasts 2 red boyz.

In assault his dp assaults the rokkit kanz, exploding 1 and ripping the arm off another. He gets no wounds in response. The plagues take more wounds reducing their number to 2 but beat the bull boyz and wipe them.


Turn 4

KFF turns up but is too far away to join anyone so skulks in the ruin. Black boyz turn to go fight the chosen. Brown Boyz advance up the middle and the nobz deploy to go threaten the noise marines. Rokkit kanz in the middle hold steady. My feral orks move up to where the battlewagon used to be. The empty trukk drives up to about 1 inch of the plague rhino.

In shooting rokkits and loota fire plink helplessly off the defiler. Black boyz shooting reduces the chosen to 1, scared, looking marine. Rokkit buggies stun the berserker's rhino.

In assault his dp kills another kan and rips the arm off another. The brown boyz charge and wipe the obbies and the black boyz charge and wipe the chosen. The nobz charge and wipe the noise marines.

His turn and he gets his daemons. They land near his zerkers who get out of their rhino and walk over to the brown boyz. His plague rhino tries to ram the empty trukk but instead immobilises itself on a rock. His dread goes crazy and since the rhino couldn't drive away is now in his line of sight. His chosen rhino moves up to draw a bead on the black boyz. His 2 man plague squad and single termie move up to assault the b-wagon (which is sitting on the objective).

In shooting he burns a healthy 6 orks with his rhino and lashes the nobz into a circle around the b-wagon and into difficult terrain (hoping it will explode and hurt them). His dread fails to hurt his plague rhino.

In assault the combined daemons and zerkers wipe the brown boyz with ease. An his dp kills the last kan.

Turn 5

Oh look, my lootaz showed up.

Black Boys run for and secure their far left objective. Red boyz move up to threaten the dp. Feral junkatrukk breaks from the ruin and makes for the daemons deploying the squad inside. Nobz make difficult terrain easily and go after the zerkers. Rokkit kanz try difficult terrain and go after the 2 plague marines. B-wagon can't move because of all my troops surrounding it at this stage.

In shooting the red boyz and the lootaz reduce the dp to a single wound. the rokkit buggies kill the chosen's rhino and the zerker's.

In assault my red boyz finish off the dp, my feral boyz kill the daemons and my nobz kill lots but not all the zerkers. My rokkit kanz charge and kill the 2 plague marines.

In patrick's turn the dread goes fleet crazy and makes a beeline for the b-wagon. His defiler also decides to fleet towards the red boyz.

In shooting his lash sorceress tries to reach the grots on the far objective but misses. His havoc launchers try for the grots and kill 3, not enough for a ld check.

In assault the nobz kill the remaining zerkers and the red boyz smoke the defiler! Killing about 6 of them in return. His dread does blow up the b-wagon leaving a scared looking kff mek near it.

At this point my opponent decides to concede and I win 2 objectives to 0.

Overview

Patrick played badly (especially forgetting he had a plague marine squad in a rhino in the last turn) and had some dreadful bad luck such as losing 2 termies. The scenario wasn't great for him but then it wasn't great for me either. His biggest mistake was letting me deploy my grots on the far objective and then not using his defiler to remove the grots.

That said I played pretty strongly too. Everyone went to plan basically with no massive mistakes or issues (ecept the useless kff mek).

On a unit by unit overview

KFF -rubbish, one didn't show up and the other didn't help at all as I usually had natural cover or failed my saves!

Grotzooka kanz - died before doing anything but did at least take a lot of firepower to down.

Rokkit kanz - awesome in assault if not in shooting. Holding up a DP for 2 turns was very helpful and they cleared out the plague marines nicely.

Rokkit buggies - although arriving late they scored 2 rhinos to their names. I think I7ll be including next time.

Lootaz - did sod all, they really are hosed if you can't deploy them.

B-Wagon + Nobz - zerkers, noise marines and a few obbies all fell before the marauding power of my nobz. Why am I switching from a nob list to a kan list again?

Trukkers - did excellently. Although i expect them to die they each managed to take out one big target before they did so.

Boyz - 1 squad held an objective the others killed a dp and some obbies. A decent game.

Grots - STAR UNIT. simply by sitting on an ojective (in a trench) for the whole game they netted me an objective. What's not to love.

Conclusions - I'm going to rejig my 1750 and 2000pt kan lists to use the 6 rokkit buggies and the grots.