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bucheonman wrote:Boyz, boyz boyz. That's what you need. More and more.

Good anti-GK advice. Just know you are fighting an uphill battle. Orks don't fair well against GK in most cases.

Well, my orks do fair well against GKs, except for Crowe lists.

Maybe that's because I don't plonk down 100+ boyz without thinking, like everyone else keeps suggesting to any new players.

A classic Green Tide is a very solid approach to fighting GK.

A lot of people talk about how GK 'own the midfield' with psycannons. . . well, against Orks I don't think that's really true.Agianst Orks, GK own the ASSAULT, which is a bit of a reversal from the normal order of things, but it can't be denied. Strike Squads die like any other MEQ, but Purifiers and to a lesser extent Paladins are horrendously painful to fight in CC.

Y'know what's a lot less painful? Shooting them. Lootas are your friend, but they don't quite lay down enough fire to ensure a steady stream of casualties; 10 Lootas gives you an average of 30 shots, 10 hits, 8-9 wounds, which isn't enough to guarantee even ONE unsaved wound against Paladins, and will only kill one or maaaaybe two Purifiers. No, your champions here are Shoota Boyz. 30x Shoota Boyz, PK Nob, 3x Big Shoota. Take three or four of those units, wrap 'em in Grots, and march forward with your 4+ mobile cover save to just within 18", then stand there and just unload. Disgusting numbers of shots will force disgusting numbers of saves, and those s will turn up. Keep enough grots hanging around to keep them from charging you with something disgusting, though.

Paladins are the exception to this; as much damage as they do in CC, they are if anything HARDER to shoot. It takes an average of 16 wounds to kill a Paladin; a 5-Paladin squad simply isn't going to die to Shoota Boyz, they're more than twice as tough as Plague Marines. You have to hit them with ID weapons, and preferably ones that ignore armor. That means PKs; so there's two ways I see to deal with them. One; Hit them with multiple small Boyz units, like Trukk Boyz. They'll only last one round of combat, but the Nobz should survive, and on the charge they'll ID a Paladin or two each. Since Paladins cost 55 points base that's a decent trade, though not great; you're killing off your Troops in job lots, and you still haven't wiped the Paladin squad. The other way is Ghazghkull, alone. Waagh! him in and they won't be able to kill him, since he's a 4-wound EW with a 2++ on the Waagh; he'll get 7 attacks and ID 4 of them on average, win combat by 5 or 6 and either send the survivors running or mop them all up next round.

The problem with your paladin tactica fails at force swords and warding staffs, combined with the banner granting them bonus attacks. While hitting and wounding boyz on 3+ with fifteen attacks, 2++ and 4++ pretty much defeat any chance of the nob actually killing a model.
Same for Ghazghkull. Even if his average 4-5 attacks hit, three or more of those are going to bounce of invulnerable saves. Still, he get's another round of 2++ to finish off the unit.

Paladins tend to be acompanied by a character with grenades (Defensive+Psychotrok) or Draigo, who each make killing them much more difficult.

Jidmah wrote:The problem with your paladin tactica fails at force swords and warding staffs, combined with the banner granting them bonus attacks. While hitting and wounding boyz on 3+ with fifteen attacks, 2++ and 4++ pretty much defeat any chance of the nob actually killing a model.
Same for Ghazghkull. Even if his average 4-5 attacks hit, three or more of those are going to bounce of invulnerable saves. Still, he get's another round of 2++ to finish off the unit.

Paladins tend to be acompanied by a character with grenades (Defensive+Psychotrok) or Draigo, who each make killing them much more difficult.

You need to also mention the number of points here. You are talking about seriously expensive models with relatively few number of attacks even with banner. Draigo for example costs more than 30 boys with nob which he'll take his time to eat, whilst being a hit crazy number of times.
You can not expect the nob to definitely cause any damage, the point is the wounds will ignore FNP and instant kill models.

Jidmah wrote:The problem with your paladin tactica fails at force swords and warding staffs, combined with the banner granting them bonus attacks. While hitting and wounding boyz on 3+ with fifteen attacks, 2++ and 4++ pretty much defeat any chance of the nob actually killing a model.
Same for Ghazghkull. Even if his average 4-5 attacks hit, three or more of those are going to bounce of invulnerable saves. Still, he get's another round of 2++ to finish off the unit.

Paladins tend to be acompanied by a character with grenades (Defensive+Psychotrok) or Draigo, who each make killing them much more difficult.

Ghazzy doesn't care about Force Weapons, he's an EW; and Boyz Nobz can't be picked out, so they don't care about them either. A Nob on the charge gets 4 attacks, hits twice on average, both hits will usually wound, and has quite a good shot at killing a Paladin even with the 4++ save. If one of the Pallies has taken a Warding Stave, that just means fewer PW attacks are coming back; overall, that's a GOOD thing! The Brotherhood Banner has the same effect; a Paladin with the BB is a Paladin that doesn't have a Nemesis Sword, meaning that his attacks aren't FW attacks and his Invulnerable save is only 5++.

Ghazzy wins combat against Paladins regularly, no matter what they're equipped with; at least for those two rounds when he's nearly invincible. After that they'll smack him down, but if he kills 4-5 Paladins he's made his points back. Draigo or no Draigo, ol' Thraka is still the hardest CC character in the game. Boyz LOSE combat against Paladins, once again no matter what, but the Nobz do have a good shot at taking a Paladin or so down, each.

The thing to really consider about Pallies, though, is that they become VERY expensive, VERY quickly. 5 Paladins, Apothecary, a few upgrades and Draigo. . . that's about 600 points, maybe more. For six models. In a 1500 point game, a Paladin deathstar can easily be half the GK army.

The best unit to take against Pallies might actually be MANZ. Think about it; against that 600+ point unit, you could take Ghazzy and 9 cyborked MANZ; you have to take Grotsnik, but they do need the extra survivability from the Invul save. Get Ghazzy in BTB with Draigo and one of the Pallies to cut down on the number of attacks the MANZ have to take; they get, say, 12 attacks, 8 hits, some of which are NFW hits and some of which are not. You'll lose a couple MANZ, but by abusing WAC you could hold it down to 2 or 3 losses.Then the other 6 MANZ add 24 PK attacks to Ghazzy's charge. That's 10 extra ID wounds for the Pallies to save against, plus the 4 Ghazzy deals out; that's enough to put two wounds on every Pallie and three on four of them, practically guaranteeing that you'll wipe out everyone except possibly the Pally with the Warding Stave. If you do that, you win combat; the Paladins no longer have enough attacks to wipe out the remaining MANZ and Ghazzy before they clean up.

And if they took a Warding Stave and a BB, you can abuse wound allocation somewhat, as well. Of those 4 wounds, 2 will NOT ignore armor or inflict ID, so if you used kombi-weapons to give your MANZ three wound groups you can stack the ID

The other alternative, and possibly the best, is to avoid them altogether. Are they in a Land Raider? Deffrolla it and leave. Let 'em sit there chucking out psycannon fire all game; they will never make back their points that way, and you can use the time to take all YOUR rock-hard assault units and clear out the rest of the GK army.

MFletch wrote:You need to also mention the number of points here. You are talking about seriously expensive models with relatively few number of attacks even with banner. Draigo for example costs more than 30 boys with nob which he'll take his time to eat, whilst being a hit crazy number of times.
You can not expect the nob to definitely cause any damage, the point is the wounds will ignore FNP and instant kill models.

Points don't factor in at all if they grind down all those 30 orks without a casualty.

A group of paladins with Apothecary and Banner joined by draigo will go up to 20 attacks. Draigo himself has a strom shield and can't be instant deathed by the klaw, so he is a bad target for the nob. Any boyz ganging up on him have to wound on 5+ and then get bast 2+/FNP and four Wounds. Even if you manage to get all 29 charging slugga boyz in combat with just Draigo (rules-wise all but impossible), you will get only about 2 Wounds off him. Take away the casuatlies he and the paladins cause when striking first, the boyz killed while walking there and the boyz forced to attack paladins rather than draigo and those 275 points are a pretty safe investment for your opponent.

In return, you can expect the paladins+draigo to kill 9 boyz, plus the same number in fearless wounds. Now, if you don't use mobs of 30, but rather trukkboyz like BeRzErKeR, (who I was responding to), six units of trukk boyz will cause a total of about two pk wounds, not counting any lucky rolls that wiped out the trukkboyz before their nob manage to strike (about 12% chance, or about one in six). So you basically have to throw away more thann 900 points to kill 150 points worth of paladins. Just taking those six trukks and tank-shocking 18" across those paladins six times has an incredibly higher chance of success, even if Draigo boosts them up to ld10 (41% chance of epic deathstar running away!).

The only strategy against paladins (unless you can produce ridiculous amounts of tankshocks) a is to move away from them and shoot them dead. Holocaust, three strom bolters and two psycannons can cause nowhere near the damage you cause to yourself when charging those paladins.

BeRzErKeR wrote:Ghazzy doesn't care about Force Weapons, he's an EW;

They still get a crapload of attacks and wound him on 4+ due to hammerhand. Due to all those swords he will never kill the amount of paladins you claimed. He will most likely beat them in his two rounds of combat, but there is a chance of him simply dying along the way, or the last paladin/draigo taking him down on round 3 of combat.

and Boyz Nobz can't be picked out, so they don't care about them either.

He does care if his unit get's wiped out before he strikes or he get's hit by grenades reducing his attacks. A techmarine or inquisitor joined to the paladins is more dangerous to orks than Draigo.

A Nob on the charge gets 4 attacks, hits twice on average, both hits will usually wound, and has quite a good shot at killing a Paladin even with the 4++ save. If one of the Pallies has taken a Warding Stave, that just means fewer PW attacks are coming back; overall, that's a GOOD thing!

Hint: The thing is called "Nemesis Warding Staff", listed under Nemesis Force Weapons.

The Brotherhood Banner has the same effect; a Paladin with the BB is a Paladin that doesn't have a Nemesis Sword, meaning that his attacks aren't FW attacks and his Invulnerable save is only 5++.

Force Weapons aren't exactly a factor against boyz. In addition, there is no reason to ever allocate a wound to him, as long as the two guys with swords/warding stave are still around.

Ghazzy wins combat against Paladins regularly, no matter what they're equipped with; at least for those two rounds when he's nearly invincible. After that they'll smack him down, but if he kills 4-5 Paladins he's made his points back. Draigo or no Draigo, ol' Thraka is still the hardest CC character in the game. Boyz LOSE combat against Paladins, once again no matter what, but the Nobz do have a good shot at taking a Paladin or so down, each.

Trading a mob of 30 or even 20 against a model worth 100 points maximum is hardly a good trade. A GK player fielding 5 paladins will have other stuff around than those. Even a player fielding 10 paladins will have other stuff around.

The thing to really consider about Pallies, though, is that they become VERY expensive, VERY quickly. 5 Paladins, Apothecary, a few upgrades and Draigo. . . that's about 600 points, maybe more. For six models. In a 1500 point game, a Paladin deathstar can easily be half the GK army.

Exactly. So there is no point in sacrificing your entire army to take down half of his.

The best unit to take against Pallies might actually be MANZ. Think about it; against that 600+ point unit, you could take Ghazzy and 9 cyborked MANZ; you have to take Grotsnik, but they do need the extra survivability from the Invul save. Get Ghazzy in BTB with Draigo and one of the Pallies to cut down on the number of attacks the MANZ have to take; they get, say, 12 attacks, 8 hits, some of which are NFW hits and some of which are not. You'll lose a couple MANZ, but by abusing WAC you could hold it down to 2 or 3 losses.Then the other 6 MANZ add 24 PK attacks to Ghazzy's charge. That's 10 extra ID wounds for the Pallies to save against, plus the 4 Ghazzy deals out; that's enough to put two wounds on every Pallie and three on four of them, practically guaranteeing that you'll wipe out everyone except possibly the Pally with the Warding Stave. If you do that, you win combat; the Paladins no longer have enough attacks to wipe out the remaining MANZ and Ghazzy before they clean up.

First of all, you will most likely be forced to move MANz into base contact with either draigo or the paladin. You must move into base contact if possible as per the assault rules, you can't circumvent that unless you gamble on rolling 6 for your assault move. If you fail to do that, your MANz will get charged next turn and wiped out. If either Draigo is the closest model to your MANz, or Ghazghkull the closest to the paladins it's even against the rules to do at all. Afterwards, even if you cancel out Draigo (doable), those paladins will get 16 NFW attacks, hitting 11, wounding 6 and then killing 4-5 MANz instantly. The remaining 4 MANz will have 16 attacks, hit 8, wound 7. The Paladin with the warding staff has a 70% chance to survive two wounds, a paladin with a force sword 25%, The apothecrary will survive 50% of the time, the banner carrier and non-sword carrier 33%. The chance of killing all five is about 5%. As Thrakka had to cancel out Draigo and they are unlikely to kill each other, you are very likely to now lose combat by 4 or 6, possibly causing extra fearless wounds to Thrakka. You will them most likely be forced to pile into Draigo, allowing him kill your MANz next turn, with Thrakka maybe killing him if you are lucky. If you are not, he is dead, too. All in all, you just tossed even more points than the paladins are worth away and wasted a HQ slot on Grotznik. Not exactly a great trade-off.

And if they took a Warding Stave and a BB, you can abuse wound allocation somewhat, as well. Of those 4 wounds, 2 will NOT ignore armor or inflict ID, so if you used kombi-weapons to give your MANZ three wound groups you can stack the ID

As the paladins are unlikely to cause more than 10 wounds when not using hammerhand, wound stacking does nothing. Again, the warding staff is a nemesis force weapon, just like any other close combat weapon a Paladin can carry.

The other alternative, and possibly the best, is to avoid them altogether. Are they in a Land Raider? Deffrolla it and leave. Let 'em sit there chucking out psycannon fire all game; they will never make back their points that way, and you can use the time to take all YOUR rock-hard assault units and clear out the rest of the GK army.

Actually a much better alternative.

Jidmah wrote:

MFletch wrote:You need to also mention the number of points here. You are talking about seriously expensive models with relatively few number of attacks even with banner. Draigo for example costs more than 30 boys with nob which he'll take his time to eat, whilst being a hit crazy number of times.
You can not expect the nob to definitely cause any damage, the point is the wounds will ignore FNP and instant kill models.

Points don't factor in at all if they grind down all those 30 orks without a casualty.

A group of paladins with Apothecary and Banner joined by draigo will go up to 20 attacks. Draigo himself has a strom shield and can't be instant deathed by the klaw, so he is a bad target for the nob. Any boyz ganging up on him have to wound on 5+ and then get bast 2+/FNP and four Wounds. Even if you manage to get all 29 charging slugga boyz in combat with just Draigo (rules-wise all but impossible), you will get only about 2 Wounds off him. Take away the casuatlies he and the paladins cause when striking first, the boyz killed while walking there and the boyz forced to attack paladins rather than draigo and those 275 points are a pretty safe investment for your opponent.

In return, you can expect the paladins+draigo to kill 9 boyz, plus the same number in fearless wounds. Now, if you don't use mobs of 30, but rather trukkboyz like BeRzErKeR, (who I was responding to), six units of trukk boyz will cause a total of about two pk wounds, not counting any lucky rolls that wiped out the trukkboyz before their nob manage to strike (about 12% chance, or about one in six). So you basically have to throw away more thann 900 points to kill 150 points worth of paladins. Just taking those six trukks and tank-shocking 18" across those paladins six times has an incredibly higher chance of success, even if Draigo boosts them up to ld10 (41% chance of epic deathstar running away!).

The only strategy against paladins (unless you can produce ridiculous amounts of tankshocks) a is to move away from them and shoot them dead. Holocaust, three strom bolters and two psycannons can cause nowhere near the damage you cause to yourself when charging those paladins.

To get 20 attacks with paladins and Draigo you are looking at at least about 660 points but actually a lot more usually.
660 pt unit kills 220 pt unit shock! three times the number of points happens to be better?

4 paladins which can be bought for 210 but usually a lot more, how would they fare against 30 boyz?
Or even Draigo with 4 attacks that only kill on 0.81 of the time, will have a huge number of rubbish hits against him and a good number of klaw attacks to push him down whilst trying to thin the squad out.

i doubt hes fielding a force like that, we are only doing 500 pt games for now, were all relitivly new at at actuall gaming side

thanks for all the replies as it will warn me about what he could bring in higher pt games.

i know hes got 2 squads of "tactical" GK, a unit of termies, stern, a landraider and some psy cannons i think, but i have no idea about upgrades etc etc that he will use haha

my arm consists of:

1 warboss ( with pk)
1 mek (kff)
1 weirdboy

20 shootaboys (1 pk nob, 2 big shootas)
10 boys (1 pk nob, 1 big shoota)
3 warbiker nobs
10 nobs ( 3 pk, 3 big choppas, 3 combi shootas, 1 waaagh banner)
1 painboy
1 truck
3 killa kanz (1 bigshoota, 1 rokkit launcha, 1 scrap launcher thing)

i havnt drawn up points yet, or upgrades , i was thinking of next getting more boys (shootas) boost 20 up to 30, and increase 10 squad to 20 too. get 6 more canz, some grotz, increase warbiker aquad also.
what do ya think?

MFletch wrote:To get 20 attacks with paladins and Draigo you are looking at at least about 660 points but actually a lot more usually.
660 pt unit kills 220 pt unit shock! three times the number of points happens to be better?

5 paladins + Banner + Draigo = 575 Points for 20 Attacks. Of course that unit would be mostly useless, as it's missing everything, but so is your unit below.
All assuming Draigo didn't use Grand Strategy to get Counter-Attack on the Paladins.

Also, being sarcastic while missing the point doesn't exactly make for an argument. My point was that charging boyz into a paladin unit always a bad idea, no matter the size of the boyz mob. Even if you toss 1000 points of boyz at those five paladins+character, you might still not kill the unit. So why do it in the first place? Why not stay at save distance and not suffer fearless wounds, where you can benefit from cover saves and the paladins get less and weaker attacks? All for the possibility of getting a claw hit in?

4 paladins which can be bought for 210 but usually a lot more, how would they fare against 30 boyz?

First of all, paladins are 55 each, so you probably meant 220. Second, why would anyone ever field such a unit, except for being an idiot? Do we field nobs without gear? Boyz without PK Nob?
For the same reason, no one would ever field four naked paladins. There is absolutely no benefit in fielding them if you don't give them their toys. If anything, they would field single paladins to deepstrike them onto objectives, but that's about it.
There is no point in musing about how to handle a unit no one would ever field.

Or even Draigo with 4 attacks that only kill on 0.81 of the time, will have a huge number of rubbish hits against him and a good number of klaw attacks to push him down whilst trying to thin the squad out.

If he's in a unit with a banner that would be 5 attacks and he gets FNP from an apothecary. He has a storm shield to save against klaws. Again, there is no point in discussing whether a mob of boyz can take on Draigo, because Draigo isn't goint to be running around by himself. Even then, simply shooting him dead ist still the better option, because, again, you are not taking unnecessary casualties, as he is using a regular Storm Bolter you can deflect with cover, rather than four attacks of his S6, armor ignoring, instant-deathing sword of daemon decapitation. You aren't taking on units accompanied by Abaddon, Kharn, Thrakka, a Hive Tyrant or Logan Grimnar with boyz just to get a klaw hit hin, why attempt such nonsense with Draigo?

This is not the "Beat this unit!"-thread where you have to match similar points. In a real game you have to take an actual threat to your army down without wasting too much points doing so. Crying about how much more points Draigo and his pals are, doesn't make them go away. If you use 1500 points of shooting to kill those 750 points and those 1500 points mostly survive, you are in a much better position than when you toss 750 points at them and they kill each other (like MANz+Thrakka). in addition, if those 1500 fail to kill them, they don't get run off the board. They can simply try to killing them again next turn.

Jidmah wrote:
They still get a crapload of attacks and wound him on 4+ due to hammerhand. Due to all those swords he will never kill the amount of paladins you claimed. He will most likely beat them in his two rounds of combat, but there is a chance of him simply dying along the way, or the last paladin/draigo taking him down on round 3 of combat.

A Paladin hits Ghazghkull on a 4+, wounds him on a 4+ if they passed their Hammerhand test, and then he gets a 2+ save for two rounds. It requires an average of 24 attacks to deal a single wound to him. He isn't going to die until the third round, if then, unless the GK player rolls really, really well.

Force Weapons aren't exactly a factor against boyz. In addition, there is no reason to ever allocate a wound to him, as long as the two guys with swords/warding stave are still around.

You get a max of one Warding Stave per unit, and if you take as many wounds than there are wound groups in the unit, you MUST allocate one of them to the banner-bearer. In which case he has a 66% chance to die. Ghazzy and a single Meganob will inflict 5 wounds, and as long as they're in BTB with a Paladin each, they don't even have to attack Draigo.

First of all, you will most likely be forced to move MANz into base contact with either draigo or the paladin. You must move into base contact if possible as per the assault rules, you can't circumvent that unless you gamble on rolling 6 for your assault move. If you fail to do that, your MANz will get charged next turn and wiped out. If either Draigo is the closest model to your MANz, or Ghazghkull the closest to the paladins it's even against the rules to do at all. Afterwards, even if you cancel out Draigo (doable), those paladins will get 16 NFW attacks, hitting 11, wounding 6 and then killing 4-5 MANz instantly. The remaining 4 MANz will have 16 attacks, hit 8, wound 7. The Paladin with the warding staff has a 70% chance to survive two wounds, a paladin with a force sword 25%, The apothecrary will survive 50% of the time, the banner carrier and non-sword carrier 33%. The chance of killing all five is about 5%. As Thrakka had to cancel out Draigo and they are unlikely to kill each other, you are very likely to now lose combat by 4 or 6, possibly causing extra fearless wounds to Thrakka. You will them most likely be forced to pile into Draigo, allowing him kill your MANz next turn, with Thrakka maybe killing him if you are lucky. If you are not, he is dead, too. All in all, you just tossed even more points than the paladins are worth away and wasted a HQ slot on Grotznik. Not exactly a great trade-off.

I'm really not sure where you get some of these numbers. First off; the paladins will have 15 attacks, not 16, unless one of them has taken Falchions; and 3 of those are not NFW attacks, because the banner-carrier has no NFW. The apothecary will have exactly the same chance of surviving 2 wounds as the NFS wielders, ie 25%. The only model with an even shot at surviving or better is the one with the Warding Stave.

If Thraka managed to get into BTB with both Draigo and a Paladin (not hard, with a 40mm base), he is allowed to direct his attacks against the Paladins and ignore Draigo. Furthermore, it would be simple in many cases to make sure that Ghazghkull blocked the other MANZ from having a direct line to Draigo, thus making the other Paladins better targets. Do remember that ONLY the first model which moves is forced to attack the closest enemy models; the others are allowed to attack any model they please, so long as they get into BTB if possible. Will setting up the assault require paying some attention? Yes. But it wouldn't be very hard, particularly not with Ghazghkull's Waagh giving you an automatic 6" Fleet move.

Adding in Ghazghkull's attacks on the Paladins gives you 12 wounds, among 5 models. Each of them WILL make at least 2 saves; the Stave-carrier will probably get a third, and then probably one of the sword-carrying models. Odds are that at least 3 or 4 of the Paladins will die, leaving 4 or 5 MANZ and Ghazzy to clean up with ease against Draigo and 1-2 Paladins in the next combat round. Ghazghkull and 9 cyborked MANZ (630 pts) wipe out Draigo and 5 diversified Paladins (710 points if they brought psicannons with them, 670 without them), with Ghazghkull and probably 2-3 MANZ (315-360 points) surviving.

The Orks might tie, lose combat by 2, or lose combat by 4 in that first round; I think losing by 2 is most likely. Fortunately Fearless wounds don't matter at all; the most likely outcome is that all are saved by armor, and even if you do take one, in this fight it doesn't matter at all whether a Meganob has one wound or two.

The other alternative, and possibly the best, is to avoid them altogether. Are they in a Land Raider? Deffrolla it and leave. Let 'em sit there chucking out psycannon fire all game; they will never make back their points that way, and you can use the time to take all YOUR rock-hard assault units and clear out the rest of the GK army.

Actually a much better alternative.

BeRzErKeR wrote:

Jidmah wrote:
They still get a crapload of attacks and wound him on 4+ due to hammerhand. Due to all those swords he will never kill the amount of paladins you claimed. He will most likely beat them in his two rounds of combat, but there is a chance of him simply dying along the way, or the last paladin/draigo taking him down on round 3 of combat.

A Paladin hits Ghazghkull on a 4+, wounds him on a 4+ if they passed their Hammerhand test, and then he gets a 2+ save for two rounds. It requires an average of 24 attacks to deal a single wound to him. He isn't going to die until the third round, if then, unless the GK player rolls really, really well.

The average is kind of misleading here. Due to very few rolls, there is a high chance to stray far from the average. The chances of the Paladins killing Thrakka during those two rounds of combat is about 15%. That's more than one out of six.

Force Weapons aren't exactly a factor against boyz. In addition, there is no reason to ever allocate a wound to him, as long as the two guys with swords/warding stave are still around.

You get a max of one Warding Stave per unit, and if you take as many wounds than there are wound groups in the unit, you MUST allocate one of them to the banner-bearer.

Yeah, we were talking about boyz there, not MANz. Boyz will never get to hurt an important model.

In which case he has a 66% chance to die. Ghazzy and a single Meganob will inflict 5 wounds, and as long as they're in BTB with a Paladin each, they don't even have to attack Draigo.

Again, it is impossible without breaking assault rules to get Thrakka in the fight and Draigo out of it. The first model may not move in contact with two models, so if your opponent has any mind at all, you'll be forced to assault Draigo with your first model, getting either the meganobz in BTB with draigo, seriously diminishing your offensive, or Thrakka, taking him out of the combat, too.

I'm really not sure where you get some of these numbers. First off; the paladins will have 15 attacks, not 16, unless one of them has taken Falchions; and 3 of those are not NFW attacks, because the banner-carrier has no NFW. The apothecary will have exactly the same chance of surviving 2 wounds as the NFS wielders, ie 25%. The only model with an even shot at surviving or better is the one with the Warding Stave.

For some reason I calculated counter-attack in, which would probably not be a factor in objective games. Without counter attack it would be 12 NFW attacks, 9 hits, 4.5 wounds and three dead MANz. The apothecary did not get two wounds, thus having twice the chance of regular sword (who did take two) to survive.
So, without counter-attack, you would get three more wounds on the paladins(double wounds on all), boosting the chance of killing all to 13%. Still not that great, if you ask me.

If Thraka managed to get into BTB with both Draigo and a Paladin (not hard, with a 40mm base), he is allowed to direct his attacks against the Paladins and ignore Draigo. Furthermore, it would be simple in many cases to make sure that Ghazghkull blocked the other MANZ from having a direct line to Draigo, thus making the other Paladins better targets. Do remember that ONLY the first model which moves is forced to attack the closest enemy models; the others are allowed to attack any model they please, so long as they get into BTB if possible. Will setting up the assault require paying some attention? Yes. But it wouldn't be very hard, particularly not with Ghazghkull's Waagh giving you an automatic 6" Fleet move.

You are dealing with Slow and Purposeful models here. You already have to be pretty close to make sure the assault doesn't fail. If you do that and roll a 4+ or more, you can bet on one of the manz being forced to move into BTB with Draigo. Otherwise, if you roll too low, the paladins will charge you, pretty much stomping those MANz flat into the ground.

Adding in Ghazghkull's attacks on the Paladins gives you 12 wounds, among 5 models. Each of them WILL make at least 2 saves; the Stave-carrier will probably get a third, and then probably one of the sword-carrying models. Odds are that at least 3 or 4 of the Paladins will die, leaving 4 or 5 MANZ and Ghazzy to clean up with ease against Draigo and 1-2 Paladins in the next combat round. Ghazghkull and 9 cyborked MANZ (630 pts) wipe out Draigo and 5 diversified Paladins (710 points if they brought psicannons with them, 670 without them), with Ghazghkull and probably 2-3 MANZ (315-360 points) surviving.

The Orks might tie, lose combat by 2, or lose combat by 4 in that first round; I think losing by 2 is most likely. Fortunately Fearless wounds don't matter at all; the most likely outcome is that all are saved by armor, and even if you do take one, in this fight it doesn't matter at all whether a Meganob has one wound or two.

And again, if Thrakka can strike paladins, Draigo will strike MANz, killing at least two of them, resulting in close to no gain, other than additional fearless wounds.

Those point values are also flawed, you already used Ghazghkull's Waagh! and lost some wounds on him, so you can hardly calculate all of his points surviving. In addition you wasted points on grotznik to make it possible in the first place.

Oh, certainly. But if you HAVE to kill them in assault, MANZ and Ghazzy are the way to do it; possibly the ONLY way to do it. Even then, it is a bit risky; a little bad luck on Invul saves could see Ghazghkull having only one or two friends by the time they swing, and thus killing only one or two of the Paladins.

Why would you ever have to kill them in assault, other than doing a grave mistake and losing all your shooting?

Arguably, the better and lower-cost alternative assault unit is just Ghazghkull, alone; he'll win two rounds of combat by several wounds each time, forcing Ld checks at penalties of -3 or possibly even -5, and if you have a unit nearby you can then try to escort the deathstar off the board when/if it breaks. Gimmicky, yes, but also hilarious if you can pull it off!

Even if he doesn't win combat, you have taken down about half the squad. Two or three paladins can be taken on by other units, even boyz.

Jidmah wrote:
Same for Ghazghkull. Even if his average 4-5 attacks hit, three or more of those are going to bounce of invulnerable saves.

How did you derive this?

2++ Ward Stave, Two 4++ Swords, 5++ on everyone else.

Two of them bounce off on average, three ~25% of the time four almost 10% off the time.

Jidmah wrote:2++ Ward Stave, Two 4++ Swords, 5++ on everyone else.

Two of them bounce off on average, three ~25% of the time four almost 10% off the time.

Jidmah wrote:
three or more of those are going to bounce of invulnerable saves.

Using results from the 25th percentile makes for very misleading argument.

One out of four is a high enough risk. Assuming five wounds, the chance of killing exactly two models is almost the same as killing exactly three models, after all.

Jidmah wrote:One out of four is a high enough risk. Assuming five wounds, the chance of killing exactly two models is almost the same as killing exactly three models, after all.

When you calculate your odds and make decisions based on these odds, you look at the average, and then if you are risk averse, consider the results if you were to roll slightly below the average. Whether 25% chance is considered "high enough" is certainly debatable.


Even against a squad of 10 Pallies, averages 20 attacks, 10 hits, 6-7 wounds, 1 unsaved wounds on average, while Ghaz himself deals an average of 2-3 unsaved wounds. I don't see why the odds are against Ghaz.

hey again , im going to repost my thread as this seems to have been de-railed slightly
you guys can keep posting here about what your war-ing about , as i find it intresting to see what people have to say

thanks for your time and if you could continue with advice on the next thread and not what this has moved too , as no offense, but id really like to get all my points, tactics, and other questions sorted and known before i buy anything, GW products cost alot as you know, and i dont want to waste time, effort and money on something that i wont use often. Again, no offense meant by this

Thank you for your time once again

Isseyfaran wrote:

Jidmah wrote:One out of four is a high enough risk. Assuming five wounds, the chance of killing exactly two models is almost the same as killing exactly three models, after all.

When you calculate your odds and make decisions based on these odds, you look at the average, and then if you are risk averse, consider the results if you were to roll slightly below the average. Whether 25% chance is considered "high enough" is certainly debatable.


Even against a squad of 10 Pallies, averages 20 attacks, 10 hits, 6-7 wounds, 1 unsaved wounds on average, while Ghaz himself deals an average of 2-3 unsaved wounds. I don't see why the odds are against Ghaz.

Without wanting to attack you, you don't seem to understand probabilities.

You will kill 3 on average, true.
However, the chance of actually killing 3 paladins is about 26%
The chance of killing 2 or less paladins is about 25%
So while killing three is the average, it will happen just as often as killing two.

Just like roulette, where you don't win any more when betting on 18 than any other number, while 18 is still the average result.

Also, I never said the odds are against him. Without searching for the post, I said something along the lines of "even if he doesn't win on turn one, he will probably kill them during round two".
I just wouldn't count on him doing it, and not take any other measures against paladins.There is a chance of Ghazzy popping as high one out of six. 2++ only makes him almost invincible.

Jidmah wrote:Without wanting to attack you, you don't seem to understand probabilities.

You will kill 3 on average, true.
However, the chance of actually killing 3 paladins is about 26%
The chance of killing 2 or less paladins is about 25%
So while killing three is the average, it will happen just as often as killing two.

Just like roulette, where you don't win any more when betting on 18 than any other number, while 18 is still the average result.

Also, I never said the odds are against him. Without searching for the post, I said something along the lines of "even if he doesn't win on turn one, he will probably kill them during round two".
I just wouldn't count on him doing it, and not take any other measures against paladins.There is a chance of Ghazzy popping as high one out of six. 2++ only makes him almost invincible.

Instead of saying I don't understand probabilities, you should probably rethink on how best to apply them. You are looking at the concept of probability distribution, while I am talking about expected results. If you are going to be discouraged from taking an action in a game if the probability distribution looks unfavorable (to you), even when the expected results favorable, then you will most probably be avoiding everything and anything in a game of 40k. In your example, if chances are that I will be screwed 25% of the time, then I would rather take the risk because I will NOT be screwed 75% of the time. As with any dice game, you can't expected things to go your way all the time, or even 90% of the time.

Also, no one is saying Ghaz will be able to take down a full squad of 10 Paladins by himself. The point is to weaken the squad after 2 rounds of combat, and then support him in the assault with other elements of your army after his 2++ wears off.

Boyz and Klaws are the bread and butter to any ork army. Get them, love them, use them, cuddle with them.

KFF meks are THE best unit in the game for defensive buffs to your units, namely your vehicles! Get at least 1 for any army, unless you are going for a fluffy army.

Kans = best BS in the codex, use this and give them either Rokkits or Grotzookas, for Anti-tank and anti-infantry respectively.

'Rolla wagons , Battle wagons with the deff rolla upgrade.....get one, and smash everything into the ground with it.

Lootas, always nice to have. with a squad of 5 being able to get up to 15 shots, and a squad of 15 to get 45 shots....these guys will do damage to infantry and transports alike......

Flash gits.........Don't even bother with them....get Lootas

Tank bustas.......again, don't bother.

Ghazzy, The HQ is a close combat monster, and his Waaagh! is very nice! One of the best HQ's in the codex.

Hope this helps a bit.

I like slugga boyz all meched up. 3 x trukks, 3 x battlewagons with deffrollas and 76 boys (5x nobz with Pk) and then burna boyz. I tried nob bikers but they are a little too pricey for my liking. Trukks with red paint jobs can move 13, 2" dismount and then waagh or just 6" assault. A KFF mek should keep this pretty intact. At 1850 then you should be able to choose your poison and add snikrot, zagstrukk, bikes or deffkoptas to your force. A lot of money and looking a bit dated but I am toying with the idea of buggies.
Mek orks can just get on top of an enemy so fast they won't know what hit em.