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Sounds like your best bet is to dust off and nuke 'em from orbit.

Hmmm. Wuestenfux, do you think the Seer Council did better point-for-point than Harlequins would have in that situation? Destructor must have helped, but I wonder about the points-sink. More details, please!

In a DoW mission, Orks immobilized the HQ Serpent in first turn. My Council charged a large Orks mob in turn 2 and he was unlucky (lol) with the morale check. The Orks stayed in cc. His Nobz squad incl Painboy and another Orks mob charged in. The Orks lost cc and the Nobz fell back, while the other mob stayed in cc. Eldrad and 3 Warlocks came on top and charged the last mob. The mob also lost and got destroyed. This was at the bottom of round 5. The game ended. Nobz held one mission objective. While I held one and a Serpent with Storm Guardians were close to the remaining objective. I would have won in round 6.

A fortuned and guided Council in cc is a tough nut to crack. I only fear a Nobz mob with a Painboy. However, if the Nobz and another Orks mob is in cc with a Council, the Orks will lose as the Council will mainly target the normal Orks.
Harlies might have a chance vs Orks but only with hit-and-run.

Moz wrote:The orks do have an expensive answer for the seer bike squad, being 10 nobz with FNP and heavy armor + banner. It's hard to squeeze it in 1850 with the rest of the wagons and boyz, but it's an extremely effect counter to many obstacles. It usually leaves you with one less 20 man boyz team, which is kind of a big deal with troops being so important.

Klaws & big choppas square off with bike-seer for instant death attempts, and the rest of the boyz work on warlocks.

It doesn't hurt that the squad is half the cost of the seer team and will win against it handily regardless of who gets the charge (though the nobz in a wagon do outrange the bikes).

Nob team cost to beat 700+ point seerbikes: 350

Farseers can swing this if they bring mindwar and succeed for 2 wounds on the painboy.

You can make those nobs scoring if you don't need 2 KFFs. Lead battlewagons can give trailing battlewagons cover...

But you are taking the generalship of the eldar player out of the equation. If the ork player has 1 big unit of nobs with a painboy, and then the usual small nob units/shoota boys, then you make that single battlewagon the one you kill from range. Once the nobs are on foot, they aren't going to catch up to the jetlocks, possibly until the jetlocks have done an incredible amount of damage by killing 2 or 3 more wagons by themselves. Regular bikes and fire prisms mop up the former passengers.

Biker nobs with painboy on the other hand, are not as easy to counter, but don't tend to show up in wagon spamming lists (for good reason)

What I think is certain, is that the sky is not falling. Everything still has a counter, its just a question of "did you bring it" or not...

First off, how many points is the standard 5-6 battle wagon orc army? Are we talking 1500 or 2000 or what? Is the entire orc army generally mounted in the battle wagons or are there some on foot following behind? Do battle wagons have upgrades (that are normally taken) that allow them to ignore difficult terrain or immobilization?

It seems like ravager/raider dark lance spam dark eldar would do well against orcs. They got the guns to bust the tanks and then they got the numbers to take down the hordes.

It also seems like eldar could do well. Big bike seer council with destructors, 3 fire prisms, and a bunch of flamer toating storm guardians (and/or firedragons) in wave serpents should do a number on the orcs. First turn or two you sit back and shoot. You can load up the serpents with bright lances to take on the front armor of the battle waggons or maybe mix in a couple of missile launchers since moving into position to get side shots on them shouldn't be that hard. Once they get close, zoom 24" +12 from star engines over their heads, tank shock any mobs that are no longer fearless, and end your turn in their deployment zone. Let them come and chase you. At this point, the battle wagons are 2 turns or more away from you and they got huge hordes of their own guys (that they can't move though) between you and them. This should give you some time to work your magic.

With imperial lists, it might be worth it to invest in some sacrificial rhinos. Take the rhinos (with no upgrades or units inside) and zoom them towards the orcs as fast as possible. Then position them to clog areas of the table. The orcs will quickly blow them up, but that then means that they do explosion damage to anyone within 1d6 inches of them and leave a pile of difficult (or is it dangerous...someone check that) terrain sitting there that they then have to slog though. While this may not stop the battle wagons, it will certainly slow down the masses behind them.

A bona fide wagon list will be fully mounted (works 1500 to 2500 at least).

As a dark eldar player, i disagree that lance spam would really work. I could probably count on killing 2-3 wagons over the course of the first 2 turns, but then my army is entirely engaged, and Orks just win vs. dark eldar in assault. Terribly so with the orks charging from open topped vehicles.

The wave serpents playing keep away are a good idea though. It might be tricky since you're trying to avoid such a huge effective threat radius that 24" + 12" of movement isn't exactly a clean getaway. We are testing the idea of prisms here since 2 hits per shot (vs. open topped) is a promising idea, that stupid KFF screws with all of the numbers though.

One promising idea is the old skimmer wall, since the ram dodge of 3+ is about the only thing out there with a decent chance of stopping a battlewagon on the advance.

No dice for the rhinos, wagons can just ram through and the embarked orks don't budge.

Phoenix wrote:First off, how many points is the standard 5-6 battle wagon orc army? Are we talking 1500 or 2000 or what?

I based the Nob squads off my models I own, but still you can see the cost factor regardless of what type you choose. You really got to bare bones to get all 6 in a 2500 list. I could probably get 5 in a 2000 point list but the list would still probably be lacking a lot. It doesn't 'feel' that good and the army comp is horrible if anyone is scoring comp. At least the green tide is like 6 maxxed troops usually. I might try a tweak of this out because I have all 3 of these nob squads.

Edit: ignore the unit sizes, this was a quick 'guestimation' list.

Total 2513 points

HQ: Big Mek (1#, 105 Pts)
1 Big Mek @ 105 Pts
Choppa; Kustom Force Field; Stikkbombs; Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!; Bosspole; Grot Oiler (x3); Mek's Tools

HQ: Big Mek (1#, 105 Pts)
1 Big Mek @ 105 Pts
Choppa; Kustom Force Field; Stikkbombs; Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!; Bosspole; Grot Oiler (x3); Mek's Tools

Elite: Nobz (11#, 465 Pts)
10 Nobz @ 465 Pts
Choppa (x5); Power Klaw (x5); Slugga (x10); Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!; Bosspole (x1)
1 Battlewagon @ [135] Pts
Big Shoota (x1); Armour Plates; Deff Rolla; Grot Rigger; Red Paint Job

Elite: Nobz (11#, 465 Pts)
9 Nobz @ 465 Pts
Choppa (x9); Slugga (x9); Feel No Pain; Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!; 'Eavy Armour (x9); Bosspole (x1); Cybork Body
1 Painboy @ [55] Pts
'Urty Syringe; Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!; Cybork Body; Dok's Tools
1 Battlewagon @ [135] Pts
Big Shoota (x1); Armour Plates; Deff Rolla; Grot Rigger; Red Paint Job

Elite: Meganobz (10#, 495 Pts)
9 Meganobz @ 495 Pts
Power Klaw; Twin Linked Shoota (x9); Stikkbombs; Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!; Mega Armour
1 Battlewagon @ [135] Pts
Big Shoota (x1); Armour Plates; Deff Rolla; Grot Rigger; Red Paint Job

Troops: Boyz (21#, 151 Pts)
20 Boyz @ 151 Pts
Big Shoota (x2); Shoota; Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!
1 Boyz Nob @ [21] Pts
Choppa; Slugga; Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!; Bosspole

Troops: Boyz (21#, 161 Pts)
20 Boyz @ 161 Pts
Choppa & Slugga; Rokkit Launcha (x2); Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!
1 Boyz Nob @ [21] Pts
Choppa; Slugga; Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!; Bosspole

Troops: Boyz (21#, 161 Pts)
20 Boyz @ 161 Pts
Choppa & Slugga; Rokkit Launcha (x2); Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!
1 Boyz Nob @ [21] Pts
Choppa; Slugga; Furious Charge; Mob Rule; Waaagh!; Bosspole

Heavy Support: Battlewagon (1#, 135 Pts)
1 Battlewagon @ 135 Pts
Big Shoota (x1); Armour Plates; Deff Rolla; Grot Rigger; Red Paint Job

Heavy Support: Battlewagon (1#, 135 Pts)
1 Battlewagon @ 135 Pts
Big Shoota (x1); Armour Plates; Deff Rolla; Grot Rigger; Red Paint Job

Heavy Support: Battlewagon (1#, 135 Pts)
1 Battlewagon @ 135 Pts
Big Shoota (x1); Armour Plates; Deff Rolla; Grot Rigger; Red Paint Job

Ok, so this army really only happens at huge point levels (don't think I've ever played in a game where any one person had more than 2000 points...no apoc games for me). At least we've established that. However since 'ard boys is 2500 we can assume this list will be there...a couple of times.

The elder keep-a-way list should do fairly well. First off, you don’t have to avoid the whole orc army. You just have to avoid the battle wagons. The boyz squads have a very limited ability to hurt your skimmers. 30 orcs charging a wave serpent have what…90 (3 attacks each on the charge) or 120 attacks (4 each), assuming they can all physically fit into an area where they get to attack. 90 attacks, need 6’s to hit, need 6’s to glance and you need a 6 to destroy the tank => .4 dead wave serpents (.55 if they get 120 attacks). Now this is added onto a bit if the nob gets in (he does ~.2 himself) so you are looking at losing a couple of wave serpents if they can all be charged, but that’s unlikely. Oh yah, and those numbers are cut by more than half if what’s being charged is a prism with a holo field. Now admittedly, you are in trouble if you get charged by a full squad of power claw wielding nobs. However, if you do, whatever is inside the transport comes out and burns them down (or at least has a good go at it) so it’s not a complete loss there.

Another idea to kick around is speed bumps. What if you broke your forces up into two groups. You make an advanced group and a rear group. The advanced group consists of fairly small (or at least inexpensive) units that possess melta guns (or similar tank busting weapons) and not much else. The rear group would contain lots of long range shooting power. Now the orcs have a choice to make. Sooner or later (probably sooner) they will hit the advanced group with the wagons. Once they do this, they have 2 choices, pile out and murder the advanced group and then get shot up by your rear group. Or they can just death rolla the advanced group, be unlikely to break them or kill the melta gun in each individual squad, and then move on towards your main group with several metla guns pointed at their rear armor. Thoughts?

How about a “circle the wagons” approach? Again working with elder here… Buy ~4 bare bones wave serpents (don’t even bother with spirit stones) for storm guardian units with flamers. They should cost about 800 points…maybe less. Line up these serpents rear to nose across one corner of your deployment zone but leave 2” gaps between them. Place the remainder of your mounted force behind the skimmer wall. Now the approaching orcs can come in, and ram, assault, or otherwise murder those 4 wave serpents. However, now they are out in the open (more or less) and looking down the barrels of 8 in range flamers plus whatever the rest of your army contains (probably a couple of wave serpents with fire dragons amongst other things). Now, the possible flaw in all of this is that I’m a little fuzzy on the ramming rules. If a battle wagon rams a wave serpent, can it push the serpent out of the way (like when you tank shock normal troops)? If so, then this might not work as well. However, even if they can push the serpents out of the way, it limits the room they have to deploy their units inside (since the area in front of the orc transports is going to be covered with elder and the orcs have to stay in coherency). Also, if they decide to try and go that route, it seriously cuts down on their effective range since they will have to get to the serpent line with the battle wagons themselves rather than just getting there with the wagon’s contents (so they lose the 2” deployment, the wagggh move, and the assault distance). Thoughts?

Phoenix wrote:Ok, so this army really only happens at huge point levels (don't think I've ever played in a game where any one person had more than 2000 points...no apoc games for me).

Did you read what Moz wrote? 1500-2500 is enough for a 'wagon list. So at 1500, watch out because the oher player can still field 6 wagons.

A bare bones 5 wagon list costs 1175pts, that's three times 20 boyz including nob with PK in a wagon with big shoota and deffrolla, and two times three nobs in a wagon with the same kit. Obviously you need to add a HQ plus weapons/more nobs, but you get the idea. An ork army can have up to 8 wagons. I'd love to use that list!

2 warboss, 5 nob squads, and 8 wagons with rolla comes in at 1300. Remaining points up to whatever limit you can think of can be filled with defensive upgrades to the wagons and offensive punch for the nobs.

Similarly 2 KFF Bigmek, 3 nob squads, 2 boyz squad, and 6 rolla wagons comes in at 1130. All barebones. First points go into basic wagon defensive upgrades and more boyz + klaws.

These are not high point lists, but they scale very well up to any points you can think of since the return on upgrades per point is so good. Case in point, grot riggers - 5 points!?! Combi-heavy flamers - 5 points!?!! Nobs are functional at 75 points for 6 wounds and 3 heavy flamers, or all the way up to 450 points for 20 wounds with 3 klaws, 6 big choppas, 4+/5i and Feel no pain.

whitedragon wrote:

Phoenix wrote:Ok, so this army really only happens at huge point levels (don't think I've ever played in a game where any one person had more than 2000 points...no apoc games for me).

Did you read what Moz wrote? 1500-2500 is enough for a 'wagon list. So at 1500, watch out because the oher player can still field 6 wagons.

Yeah but when you drop it down to 1500 while you still have the wagons you dont have anything really nasty inside. If you go full 6 wagons at 1500 you only have points for min sized squads of nobs, or mid sized squads of nobs and min size boys squads. Neither of which are scary. Go tank shock a carnifex or a squad of marines with a meltagun. When he blows it up and 3 nobs or 10 boys get out I dont think it has the same effect.

Khornatedemon wrote:Yeah but when you drop it down to 1500 while you still have the wagons you dont have anything really nasty inside. If you go full 6 wagons at 1500 you only have points for min sized squads of nobs, or mid sized squads of nobs and min size boys squads. Neither of which are scary.

Re-read the two posts above yours. You are wrong.

It's a YMDC question that I'm unsure on, but if obscured counts for the death or glory meltagun hit, then you will not want to DoG with a meltagun.

So if it works, a meltagun has a 1 in 4 chance of stopping the KFF'd battlewagon. 1 in 5 chance of actually destroying it. Meanwhile your crunched unit suffers another D6 S10 hits and you're losing your meltagun 75% of the time.

A carnifex has a 4+ (1 in 2) chance of stopping the wagon. At which point it would take 2D6 S10 hits that have a pretty good chance of offing it anyways. Hell a carnifex usually costs more than the wagon, lets make these trades all day long!

The math is never good when you're standing in front of a battlewagon, it's sad but true. Especially in light of the fact that none of these results have any impact on the wagons real mission which is delivering orks. On all results, they are still getting out and coming after you.

How about a little less bickering about point cost and more focus on tactics? I don't have the codex, but I'm willing to believe that you can get 6 wagons in 1500 points so lets move on. Anyone have any thoughts on the viability of the tactics I mentioned above?

whitedragon wrote:

Khornatedemon wrote:Yeah but when you drop it down to 1500 while you still have the wagons you dont have anything really nasty inside. If you go full 6 wagons at 1500 you only have points for min sized squads of nobs, or mid sized squads of nobs and min size boys squads. Neither of which are scary.

Re-read the two posts above yours. You are wrong.

Sure you have 8 battlewagons. But at 1500 points you can barely have 5 nobs per squad inside if you take upgrades for the wagon and thats with no upgraeds for the nobs. 5 nobs dont scare me. Do they scare you?

Knowing the composition of an army is detrimental to figuring out tactics to counter it. So knowing what you can get in 1500 points is on topic and keeping with the thread. We need to know what were going against in order to formulate a strategy.

Skimmer wall is a good place to start. The 3+ save against the ram (and rolla attacks) will go a long ways.

Load up on units that can beat 20 charging orks with a klaw, that also have a good enough save to ignore incidental shooting and rolla hits, plus a good enough Ld to not get chased off by tanks shocks:
Plague marines for instance will shrug off anything but the tooled nob squad. So bring on the wagons, they don't care. 20 black templars with preferred enemy are good for this too. Large warlock squads with fortune, or some demon squads like bloodcrushers stand a good chance.

Actually, I'm thinkin' plague marines would have a better chance standing up against the tooled nobz then against the battlewagon rollaz. Since the rollaz are S10, the Plague Marines' FNP would be useless because they cause instant death.

Against the Nobz, the plague marines only have to fear the powerklawz, which there is usually only one. The blight grenades also make the charge a little less devastating for the orks. Hell, if the PM's charge the Nobz, they get to strike simo, and the Nobz only wound on 3's instead of 2's!

whitedragon wrote:Actually, I'm thinkin' plague marines would have a better chance standing up against the tooled nobz then against the battlewagon rollaz. Since the rollaz are S10, the Plague Marines' FNP would be useless because they cause instant death.

Against the Nobz, the plague marines only have to fear the powerklawz, which there is usually only one. The blight grenades also make the charge a little less devastating for the orks. Hell, if the PM's charge the Nobz, they get to strike simo, and the Nobz only wound on 3's instead of 2's!

PMs are toughness 5 I thought and nobs are S4; so wound on 5s instead of 4s.

The "tooled" nobz have Uge Choppaz, upping their strength to 6, and 7 on the charge due to furious charge.

I've been following this thread with interest, as an ork player of course, and was curious, has anyone EVER challenged the rulling that a death roller attack works on a vehicle? I've seen some argue that, as a tank shock, it only applies to infantry. Just curious?

It applies to vehicles too. You can tank shock a vehicle as long as it has lower armour than your front armour.

Thats 4th edition your quoting. Vehicle armor has no effect on tankshocking. What Tanks do now is ram, but since ram is also a tankshock the rollers D6 hits also count.

i think that this is being blown out of proportion. sure d6 S10 hits sounds impressive, but it doesnt ignore saves. what will happen is either you will kill a bunch of cheap stuff that doesnt really matter (guard, orks, guardians, gaunts) or a very low number of exspensive stuff (MEQs, MCs). in either case, you will get melta'd or ripped apprt by a big MC the next turn.

the way to deal with this is the say as how to deal with other mech armies, you bring more anti-tank. its just like playing against LR spam armies. if an army was enough anti-tank, you will lose, otherwise you stand a good chance of winning. its better in lower point battles where fewer armies will have the resources to deal with it, but after that it wont be so much of a problem.

any army that hass high strength cc ability (powerfists, 'locks, flyrants, DPs, etc) wont have any trouble with this, because all they have to do is charge the tanks. High S + Rear AV + No Cover save = dead tank

Cool, that's even better cos they can ram land raiders and 'liths.

Regwon wrote:i think that this is being blown out of proportion. sure d6 S10 hits sounds impressive, but it doesnt ignore saves. what will happen is either you will kill a bunch of cheap stuff that doesnt really matter (guard, orks, guardians, gaunts) or a very low number of exspensive stuff (MEQs, MCs). in either case, you will get melta'd or ripped apprt by a big MC the next turn.

Well, no, not out of proportion. Orks don't need help dealing with infantry (even carnifex builds). They need help with Armour 14, and D6 STr. 10 hits, well, that helps!

That's certainly what I plan on using it for. I'm only running one battlewagon though. One wagon, two mobs, some nobs with painboy and banner, boss on bike, some lootas and some stormboys. Fairly nice little 1500 point list. Handy enough on model count, mobile enough, can deal with lots of different threat types.

Still, orks can be beaten in fifth. Templates, the new combat rules, and volumes of fire- they all still work.

I have had wraithlords ran over and killed by a Rolla list... A WRAITHLORD. That was the moment I realized the nightmare that the list truely is.

Our conversation here has apparently spawned a light debate:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/216779.page

Again, though, at least I'm not the only one who thought it was cut and dry. I mean, I went to the FAQ and read it twice due to the certainty everyone was using in this debate.

I'm seriously considering a 4 wagon list at 1500pts, I'll post it in the army list forum to give you an idea of what I'm aiming for.

I have been fielding this list on and off since the Kult of Speed codex came out. It was pretty awesome in 3e with stacked force fields, vehicle force fields, and armor - you could be extremely hard to kill, and with auto-hitting zap guns on 5 tanks you did very well against enemy vehicles. Skorchas were available too. Deathrollers were really just for fun at this point - tank shocking was largely for breaking people, with old stickbomb chuckas.

With the new codex under 4e rules it was heaven for a while - it was easy to kill several vehicles a turn with tank shocking. However I'm in the camp of those not convinced that ramming clearly works with the deathrollas - I agree it *probably* works, but the thing is that the best rule of thumb with ambiguous rules is to err on the side of the least obscene interpretation, and it's pretty clear that deathrollas are pretty obscene.

(Best deathroll so far was last turn of a last round tournament game under 4e - destroyed two vehicles and broke a squad, swinging the game)