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I could send a unit of a million orks to a squad of purifiers with a champion that is using defend. The orks will loose far more points before anything even half decent can happen. This war boss is one of those times. Sorry but 40k isn't balanced and some units can't compare to others, the warboss on bike with claw are great against centurians but that is what it is.

 Slayer222 wrote:
I could send a unit of a million orks to a squad of purifiers with a champion that is using defend. The orks will loose far more points before anything even half decent can happen. This war boss is one of those times. Sorry but 40k isn't balanced and some units can't compare to others, the warboss on bike with claw are great against centurians but that is what it is.

Not really. I don't know what Defend does, but Purifiers die to shooting as easy as any other marine. 30 Shoota Boys will cause 3 dead Purifiers in the Shooting Phase. 100 Boys will wipe them off the map.

Also, Purifiers are a hard counter for hordes of Ork Boys. Chapter Masters are not a hard counter for 3 Warbosses.

It was in refrance to points ie cleansing flame. and making an inst death barrage from the sky, or using weapons that are hard counter like 3++ save and ap2 is death to orks, SO it basicly is.

You can look out the wounds.
Besides, this scenario is pretty fine. A chapter master should have an upper hand over an ork warboss. Orkses value trophies taken from space marines for a reason. And chapter master is best of the best with many hundreeds of years of martial and tactical practice.

Slayer, koooaei, I am having trouble deciphering your posts. But as much as I can understand them:
Slayer: Against Bikerbosses, the barrage doesn't cause Intant Death, AP2 is irrelevant, and a 3++ isn't so much a 'Hard counter' as it is 'General protection.' 3+ ignores Psychic powers is a hard counter. 3+ ignores damage is basic protection from all heavy weapons. Against Megabosses, the AP2 and Orbital Bombardment are a lot more powerful, but my math was against the option where a CM *didn't* instantlt wipe the floor. I have no idea what your first sentance was supposed to mean.

Koooai: I was assuming 3 Biker bosses and nothing else. If they had someone to LoS the wounds onto, the Chapter Master would get a retinue as well.

Waaaghpower wrote:


Koooai: I was assuming 3 Biker bosses and nothing else. If they had someone to LoS the wounds onto, the Chapter Master would get a retinue as well.

They can los each other

 koooaei wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:


Koooai: I was assuming 3 Biker bosses and nothing else. If they had someone to LoS the wounds onto, the Chapter Master would get a retinue as well.

They can los each other

Ah. I didn't think about that... In that case, the CM would die, but the Warbosses still would all die. (Striking at the same I can be a bitch like that.)

IWND? You mean you give him Gorgon Chain?

Yeah, if you put up Warbosses against that ugly son of a squig, they should damn well lose, for he is one of the ultimate melee powerhouses for his price, whereas warbosses are in the middle.

I do not see the problem with the warbosses being in the middle.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
IWND? You mean you give him Gorgon Chain?

Yeah, if you put up Warbosses against that ugly son of a squig, they should damn well lose, for he is one of the ultimate melee powerhouses for his price, whereas warbosses are in the middle.

I do not see the problem with the warbosses being in the middle.

Iron Hands Chapter Tactics gives IWND. And I'm not comparing 1 Warboss, or even 1 at a time, I'm comparing 3 all at once. My problem, as I have repeatedly stated, is not that Warbosses are in the middle. It's that they habe absolutely nothing which can even get close to touching something on top.

To be fair, that is something that many other units have. Watch the Ork shooting units trying to touch what is on top on shooting, like Tau and Eldar.

Watch them die.

This is not a particular problem the Warboss has.

Indeed, not even an Ork-specific problem.

The warboss wrecks most low point HQs, which is fine. He is decent where he is.

If he is wrecked by the top units, then fix the disease, not the symptom...

A warboss will, indeed, kill most low-point HQs. But can he kill three HQs who are about 2/3rds of his price (Assuming they are CC based, at least a little.) No. Heck, a couple of stock Librarians with axes (or Mauls, against a bike boss) have a very good chance of killing a boss. Sure, a Warboss will win against, like, Imperial Guard HQs. But against anyone designed for Close Combat, on a point-for-power basis he always loses.
And once again, I'm not proposing that these buffs should be free. I just wish that Orks had *someone* who could actually be awesome in CC against actual CC enemies, regardless of cost.

Ghazghkull.

Waaaghpower wrote:
Orks are supposed to be a dedicated Close Combat army

Not with Lootas, Shoota Boyz, and Dakkajets running/flying around!

If you want dedicated CC, play Warriors of Chaos in WHFB.

Come on, you can get a t6 4+, 4+ cover, 5++ 3 wound monster with 5 s10 ap2 ws5 attacks on one of the best bikes in a game for 135 pts. He can be backed up with one of the meanest and toughest cc bikes in a game - nobs with a painboy that can also shoot decently with lots of tl s5 goodness.

Comparing a warboss or even a set of warbosses with a tooled up chapter master is not correct. Ideally they shouldn't even meet on a battlefield. Feed 6 pts orkses to a chapter master and kill other stuff with your warboss. That's the way to go if you play as ork.

We're a tac mid-str army both in 40k and whfb. We're decent in both fields - shooting and mellee but not exceedingly well in any. U got to deal with it. It's much more important that your warboss can kill almost anything else except for such expensive and tough mellee-oriented things like chapter master. Golden rule: chop the shooty, shoot the choppy, tarpit which you can't kill. We CAN do it.

I'd simply make a profile for Warbosses that have reached monstrous creature size rather than replace the normal warboss.

Mind you, Warbosses that are larger than Ghazghkull are very, very rare, and should be treated as such.

Snagrod is one of them afaik, but otherwise they are so rare as to be on a special character level.

Gazghkull is twenty feet tall despite his orkoid hunched over posture, which makes him taller than a hive tyrant. He absolutely should be an MC.

WAT

Twenty feet, the fether is bigger than a Primarch?

Where did you get this from?

(And how can Yarrick wrestle with that...?)

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
WAT

Twenty feet, the fether is bigger than a Primarch?

Where did you get this from?

(And how can Yarrick wrestle with that...?)

Gazghkull is listed as six meters in height by any source that lists his size.

And Yarrick really doesn't, the one time he fought Gazghkull to my knowledge, he got his ass kicked and was captured.

Which sources list his size?

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Which sources list his size?

It is what everyone quotes his height as being without exception, but currently I'm not seeing a quote for this on google, and I'm at work and thus don't have access to my books.

However, we do know from Last Chancers that Gazghkull was able to tear a Baneblade's turret right off it's chassis, and to properly reach the turret (baneblades are 6.3 meter tall tanks and there's a fair bit of space from the chassis to the turret from any angle) he'd need to be at about the height range I stated.

I'd say that him being at about eye-level with a baneblade's main gun would be a reasonable assumption for his height, and for his fluff, his profile is considerably unimpressive.

He should be able to wrench off the head of a Hive Tyrant in a single grab, squeeze, and throw motion or beat a generic Chaos Lord to death with his own retinue.

I'd suggest making him a monstrous creature, upping his stats to S6 T6 W5, maybe one more attack, and switching out that Big shoota for a supa-shoota. Yes this means that he gets S10 AP2 (maybe even AP1 could be argued as something he should have) at initiative and would beat the Swarmlord's face in (especially on the Waaagh!), but this is the same edition that has given us Iron Armed, Warp Speeded, 2++ rerollable Tzeentchilist Daemon Princes rocking an eternal blade and the Swarmlord sucks anyway.

Some would argue for S7 and T7 and more wounds and attacks and perhaps WS and I, but I'm feeling a bit conservative with regard to that today.

You gotta find me those quotes some time, for I am not convinced.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
You gotta find me those quotes some time, for I am not convinced.

Orks never stop growing as long as they keep on winning fights, and Gazghkull got where he was by beating up countless other warbosses and warlords as well as skilled warriors of the Imperium. It's not a particularly hard sell that a warboss who can force two thousand ships of escort to capital size, an unknown number of troop transports and roks, and twelve space hulks worth of Orks into obeying him.absolutely is a head taller than a Hive Tyrant.

Orks only respect size and battle prowess, and the biggest and baddest warbosses like Gazghkull, Blaktoof, and Snagrod who can force tens if not hundreds of billions (or even trillions) of Orks to follow their every word are almost certainly going to be much bigger than your average warboss.

I mean, Warboss Grimskull attacked a forgeworld with a force in the tens of millions (one spire had a million Orks committed to it) at least, and he's what? 10-12 feet tall? He's not a particularly large warboss, nor is his Waaagh! particularly big.

Gazghkull would need to be able to beat up or earn the respect of literally thousands of guys like him or even a fair deal bigger than he is.

Warlords who run interstellar empires with multiple systems under their belt like Blaktoof also need to be able to beat down literally everyone else in their empire and be prepared to beat down any challengers that pop up.

Really, the only big surprise is that there aren't warbosses who are much bigger than six meters given how much fighting they have to do. With how Orkoid growth cycles are described, you'd expect Warbosses able to engage in boxing matches with Hierophant bio-titans popping up every now and then.

Warbosses are very cheap, and good at what they do. But honestly, the book as a hole needs some serious aid; the fact that people interpret the Ork army as a shooty one comes mostly from the players being forced to bring hordes of Lootas to compete. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back to melee Orks again (though I'm not hopeful).

Orkses don't grow at full rate all the time. The growth deminishes over time. Like if a warboss that's 2.5 meters high carries on a sucksessful year-long campaing full of choppin' and lootin' he can grow up to 3 meters. But when he succeeds in the next one with exact same sucksess, he'll grow to 3.2-3.3 metersm not 3.5. The bigger he is the slower he grows. So i believe there's a limit to ork size somewhere near the Ghazzy's current one.

It occurs to me that the the reason warbosses are struggling against chapter masters so much is that chapter masters have access to really good invulnerable saves. If the warboss was rocking a 3++ or the CM was restricted to a lower save, things would be a lot more even. While ~70% of hits are just bouncing off, there's no way that a couple more attacks are going to help. Piling on better stats just lets you walk all over characters who aren't optimized to survive challenges (and makes you frankly ridiculous against normal troops), while still not being able to take on those who are.

The solution would seem to be either giving them some way of getting past invulnerable saves (rather dubious, but I'd accept a special item which made the enemy re-roll all saves or something) or an equivalent defence.

We've got a few options for ork defences; invulnerable saves can be justified by force fields, while various bionics could give better Feel No Pain, some kind of focus for Waaagh energy could give re-rolls and a nearby painboy might offer IWND. Make a bunch of items, each offering a fairly modest upgrade (I don't think orks should have anything as simply great as the Shield Eternal) for a reasonable price and let them stack, so that you can eventually get something like 4+ Inv. 4+ FNP, one re-rolled save a turn and IWND. That would bring you up to the point where a warboss could at least hold a Chapter Master or Daemon Prince up for a few rounds and inflict a couple of wounds before dying.

 koooaei wrote:
Orkses don't grow at full rate all the time. The growth deminishes over time. Like if a warboss that's 2.5 meters high carries on a sucksessful year-long campaing full of choppin' and lootin' he can grow up to 3 meters. But when he succeeds in the next one with exact same sucksess, he'll grow to 3.2-3.3 metersm not 3.5. The bigger he is the slower he grows. So i believe there's a limit to ork size somewhere near the Ghazzy's current one.

On the other hand, there was a warboss capable of threatening the Emperor's life in a one on one conflict, and if the Primarch stats are anything to go by, this would require a warboss with bio-titan like stats.

 Kain wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Orkses don't grow at full rate all the time. The growth deminishes over time. Like if a warboss that's 2.5 meters high carries on a sucksessful year-long campaing full of choppin' and lootin' he can grow up to 3 meters. But when he succeeds in the next one with exact same sucksess, he'll grow to 3.2-3.3 metersm not 3.5. The bigger he is the slower he grows. So i believe there's a limit to ork size somewhere near the Ghazzy's current one.

On the other hand, there was a warboss capable of threatening the Emperor's life in a one on one conflict, and if the Primarch stats are anything to go by, this would require a warboss with bio-titan like stats.

It's not the matter of size. Horus was not nearly as huge as Ghazzy but still was able to lay down Emps. I'd say it's more of a psy-protection issue vs Emperror.

What do you mean by "psy-protection issue"? The Warboss is, as I recall, described as having his arm around the Emperor's throat, requiring Horus to chop it off to save his life. (Shame he didn't just let it happen, save everyone the effort of the Heresy...) So this clearly suggests that there was at least one warboss - two if Ullanor can be considered the same - capable of threatening someone of the Emperor's stature. If we can take the stats for Horus, which show him as the Warmaster rather than his Chaos Ascendant form, then we might consider that to be around the level of the Emperor before the end of the Great Crusade. I don't think that this is accurate, but it is probably about as close as we can get right now. So:

WS 8, S 7, T 6, W 6, I 6, A 5

This would easily overwhelm Ghazzghul, assuming that he is allowed at least one AP2 weapon. What kind of a statline can threaten him?

Of course, the Heresy was an 'Age of Myth', and perhaps we shouldn't read too much into it. But while the Smurf codex might be chock full of stories of assassination runs that work, equally all those space marine helmets on the Ork models suggest that it doesn't always work.

Let us return to the basic point being made by the OP. The Orks are an assault centric army. They rely heavily on elite melee characters (Nobz, Bosses) to do major damage in those assaults. For the Warboss to become only mid-tier is a problem, for what precisely do the Orks do at that point? It is like if the Hive Tyrant became a mid-tier combatant, an obvious issue. Thus the comparison to Eldar is wrong, because nobody should be relying on a Phoenix Lord to win the combats by himself, it isn't how that army should work. For the Orks, in the current rules iteration, characters are what win combats. Those characters should thus, realistically, be pretty good at winning combats and challenges in order to make that rules conception work.

Do Orks get so much faster?

I mean, when you reach the speed of a Wych (Dark Eldar have been filmed by Guardsmen in-universe; they had to slow the film down something ridiculous just to see which faction it was who was attacking them) but we're talking a Carnifex-size Warboss, something is strange.