Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 koooaei wrote:
Improving your fnp from 1/3 to 5/9 on someone like a boss or painboss himself is well worth 5 pts in my book.

Certainly better than paying the 5 points for a Cybork body. :( Why didn't GW just make them stack with FNP or keep it as an invuln. save? As it is there's no point in taking them.

I meant on a mob of boyz with Painboy

Yeah, but it only ever matters when you fail LoS! - might as well just get more bodies to catch bullets.

Unfortunately, you can't get more than 30 on foot (except for a greentide) or more than 20 in a wagon. It's saved me a few times. Maybe, not an auto-include but still something to consider. Think about it this way. Sometimes you fail look outs and sometimes, your warboss/painboss is the only surviving character that just has to take the challenge or has to start tanking wounds with his 4+. Happens to me all the time vs mellee armies when all is left of a huge squad with attached mek is just warboss, painboss and a few boyz. I gladly give up this 5 points to have an increased chance to last a turn longer.

If you use the Mogrok's Bossboys formation you can get a ton of HQs easily.

Perfect for those extra Painboys or whathaveyou.

Or in my case, a ton of Shokk Attack guns.

 koooaei wrote:
Unfortunately, you can't get more than 30 on foot (except for a greentide) or more than 20 in a wagon. It's saved me a few times. Maybe, not an auto-include but still something to consider. Think about it this way. Sometimes you fail look outs and sometimes, your warboss/painboss is the only surviving character that just has to take the challenge or has to start tanking wounds with his 4+. Happens to me all the time vs mellee armies when all is left of a huge squad with attached mek is just warboss, painboss and a few boyz. I gladly give up this 5 points to have an increased chance to last a turn longer.

Sadly, the printed list of things I would buy with spare points is large enough to play a game on, and anything that isn't definitely going to help me nine out of ten games is not going to be close to the top. For that reason anything that helps "sometimes" is right out, as an additional boy or another rokkit somewhere will help every time, unaffected by any situations that might occur in a game. In any case, a PK nob is more valuable than a pain boy, so you should not have the pain boy left as the last character if you can help it, barring it getting sniped. When your warboss is the last character, you've lost the orderly anyways - not to mention that you only have this problem on Biker Warbosses, a MA DLS Warboss tends to be completely unwounded by the time he has to start answering challenges.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dan2026 wrote:
If you use the Mogrok's Bossboys formation you can get a ton of HQs easily.

Perfect for those extra Painboys or whathaveyou.

Or in my case, a ton of Shokk Attack guns.

It has the huge downside of denying you the Waaagh! though.

 koooaei wrote:


It has the huge downside of denying you the Waaagh! though.

True enough. But like anything with Orks, there is always a downside.

 Jidmah wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Unfortunately, you can't get more than 30 on foot (except for a greentide) or more than 20 in a wagon. It's saved me a few times. Maybe, not an auto-include but still something to consider. Think about it this way. Sometimes you fail look outs and sometimes, your warboss/painboss is the only surviving character that just has to take the challenge or has to start tanking wounds with his 4+. Happens to me all the time vs mellee armies when all is left of a huge squad with attached mek is just warboss, painboss and a few boyz. I gladly give up this 5 points to have an increased chance to last a turn longer.

Sadly, the printed list of things I would buy with spare points is large enough to play a game on, and anything that isn't definitely going to help me nine out of ten games is not going to be close to the top. For that reason anything that helps "sometimes" is right out, as an additional boy or another rokkit somewhere will help every time, unaffected by any situations that might occur in a game. In any case, a PK nob is more valuable than a pain boy, so you should not have the pain boy left as the last character if you can help it, barring it getting sniped. When your warboss is the last character, you've lost the orderly anyways - not to mention that you only have this problem on Biker Warbosses, a MA DLS Warboss tends to be completely unwounded by the time he has to start answering challenges.

It does help me out from time to time. Up to your preferences what's better. 1 more boy or a slihtly increased chance not to loose your warlord.

Has anyone used biker nobz since the new book? I know they are nerfed, but getting a t5 2w model FnP and then the invulnerable from shooting still seems tough.

Has anyone been using the Combination skorcha on nobz in boyz squads to any effect as a means of protection from assault?

Does biker mek with KFF, maybe even with Biker painboy attached, in a full stormboy squad seem lIke mobility and lots of bodies or junk?

I'm using stormboyz in a unit of 10 + pk/bp nob. Their main strengh is that they can charge 24-27' on average when you call WAAAAGH! So, they synchronise with footsloggas quite well. Such a squad is not too hard to hide and won't draw too much attention. And could even use deepstrike in the case when there's no place for them. However, i don't see how a full unit of 30 is any better than a squad of 15 bikers in a regular game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Biker nobz are now just more expensive regular bikers. Though, you could always use them as a min squad when you've got a hell ton of other fast stuff and your fast attack is full. Even 3 nobz with 1 pk will chop down anyone who's not mellee oriented or open up a tank like no big deal.

If you are taking a lot of bikers there is no reason not to take Zhadsnark and get them as troops.

Biker armies have real potential this edition

 dan2026 wrote:
If you are taking a lot of bikers there is no reason not to take Zhadsnark and get them as troops.

Forgeworld not being allowed / not having IA8?

 morganfreeman wrote:

 dan2026 wrote:
If you are taking a lot of bikers there is no reason not to take Zhadsnark and get them as troops.

Forgeworld not being allowed / not having IA8?

Forgeworld not being allowed aside, you can have easy access to the IA8 Dread Mob list rule update pdf located at Forgeworld's website which also includes the update for Zhadsnark.

except be weary that in the pdf it may not list things that can be used with an ork codex.


like my beloved big trakk. it isn't in heavy support in the pdf

 koooaei wrote:
As for the kff vs fnp for the blob, fnp also helps in mellee and vs flamers + it's cheaper and allows you rerolls with grot orderlies. It stacks with cover/armor.

The thing is that in a regular game, if the opponent shoots ID stuff at cheapo boyz, they've allready earned their points back. And when you face something like a revenant titan with pulsars, i doubt 5++ will make a difference.

KFF ain't too bad on it's own. It's just that FNP is often better. I'd not bother with kff for infantry and try to utilise it with vehicles. Either via a biker KFF/MFF mek hiding behind a wagon or walker wall or a morkanaught with it's enormous base covering enough models to not bother with meks at all.

Wait, why doesn't the KFF not work on flamer templates? They still count as a ranged attack, and the KFF is not a cover save anymore. So how does it get ignored?

 Grimskul wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Improving your fnp from 1/3 to 5/9 on someone like a boss or painboss himself is well worth 5 pts in my book.

Certainly better than paying the 5 points for a Cybork body. :( Why didn't GW just make them stack with FNP or keep it as an invuln. save? As it is there's no point in taking them.

This bugs me still to this day. It really makes no sense as to why they made it a shoddy 6+ FNP when you'd ALWAYS prefer the extra body and unit wide 5+ FNP for 50 points. Not to mention Mad Dok actually HAS the damn upgrade yet he grants FNP to himself normally ANYWAY Basically making him cost 5 points more than he should (At minimum, I'm honestly surprised he doesn't cost less to begin with now that normal Painboyz are so accessible, losing his major shtick)

Melevolence wrote:

Wait, why doesn't the KFF not work on flamer templates? They still count as a ranged attack, and the KFF is not a cover save anymore. So how does it get ignored?

Yep, i've read somewhere it didn't work vs templates. Can't find it in codex, so probably i'm wrong. But don't forget that the opponent can try to shoot the models not covered by a 6' bauble. So, it's basically a protection from one direction and has problems with positioning vs large blasts cause of this.

 koooaei wrote:

Melevolence wrote:

Wait, why doesn't the KFF not work on flamer templates? They still count as a ranged attack, and the KFF is not a cover save anymore. So how does it get ignored?

Yep, i've read somewhere it didn't work vs templates. Can't find it in codex, so probably i'm wrong. But don't forget that the opponent can try to shoot the models not covered by a 6' bauble. So, it's basically a protection from one direction and has problems with positioning vs large blasts cause of this.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it works against templates. I can't even fathom why it wouldn't, since the Codex doesn't give the limitation, nor does FAQ (yet)

I'm still surprised to see so much, well not so much hate for, but hesitation I would say, for the KFF. Yes, it's limited to models now, which makes absolute sense, especially now with it's upgrade to invuls, not cover. As with anything in 40k, positioning is one of the most important aspects of the game. Keep the KFF closest to the models that tend to be facing enemy fire. And you REALLY only need to worry about Barrage, since normal blasts/large blasts are still directional. (and if they DO bring Barrage, do your best to cover as much as you can, or let them slim down your ranks if you have no choice).

I still pack KFF's almost every single game, because they are TOO GOOD to not bring. Be it on foot or in a vehicle, or to cover a walker army. Invul is somethign our army lacks heavily, and I'll take it in ANY form I can. Once we get to CC, the game is pretty much done anyway, unless they have CC experts as well (And of course, all of this is heavily influenced by local meta. I'm pretty much the only CC army runner in the entire area, so I tend to seal a game once I'm close anyway, and every body i saved on the way is well worth the 85 points for the KFF Mek)

 koooaei wrote:
It does help me out from time to time. Up to your preferences what's better. 1 more boy or a slihtly increased chance not to loose your warlord.

A slightly increased chance to do something is the same as a high chance to do nothing. So, the boy it is. Also, as pointed out, you should never be in situations where you can use the grot orderly on your warboss. Basically it boils down to five points for an upgrade that rarely saves you in case you made bad choices in your game.

 Jidmah wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
It does help me out from time to time. Up to your preferences what's better. 1 more boy or a slihtly increased chance not to loose your warlord.

A slightly increased chance to do something is the same as a high chance to do nothing. So, the boy it is. Also, as pointed out, you should never be in situations where you can use the grot orderly on your warboss. Basically it boils down to five points for an upgrade that rarely saves you in case you made bad choices in your game.

What bad choices are you talking about. I'm playing footsloggas, ofc my boyz will get charged from time to time or get wounds from barrages on the boss/painboss. We're not playing ideal-hammer here, really.

You're moving goalposts again. You were talking about challenges before, now we suddenly have barrage issues.

The bad choice I'm talking about is answering a challenge with your warboss against an opponent that can reliably wound him when you still have your pain boy.

If barrage hits your warboss/pain boy, there are three options:
1) It's S8+, no FNP
2) He is at the center of the blast and takes so many wounds that no amount of grot orderlies are going to save him.
3) He is either not at the center of the bast, so a lot of other orks use up wounds before you even need to roll a single LoS!, or the blast caused very few wounds and he'll live without the help of a grot orderly.

The difference between taking the wound with an orderly and not taking the wound is very low. For example, the chance of a S7 hit on an IC to actually take off a wound is already as little as 4.63%, the grot orderly decreases that chance to 3.6%. Which means that it will make a difference once every 100 games, assuming we have situation 3) every game.

In comparison, Kombi-Rokkits manage to kill an infantry model once every four games, and are therefore considered a terrible upgrade.

Sure, it may make a difference at some time, but that's like arguing that playing a lottery is a good source of income, because you could win all those millions.

For that reason, I find it hard to believe that there is no other, more reliable upgrade available for your army for 5 points than a maximum 1.03% increase of chance to save a valuable model or 12.34% increase of chance to save a six point model.

 Jidmah wrote:


The bad choice I'm talking about is answering a challenge with your warboss against an opponent that can reliably wound him when you still have your pain boy.

How's that a bad choice when noone else's left? I've had a game recently vs spawns + lord and nob and mek got killed in challenges. Than i had an option: either sacrafice painboss and loose even more boyz and no fnp for the boss, or not strike with boss at all. Since there were just 4 boyz left, there was no difference if i denied - they'd all be dead. So, i accepted with a boss. And fnp + grot orderly kept him alive for an extra turn. That won me enough time to make it matter. How would an extra boy improve my odds in such situation?

You're acting like such things can't happen. That's why i "accused" you of ideal-hammering. Maybe you can avoid all that stuff if you're running speed freaks or all your opponents are slow. But when you're footslogging and meet a fast opponent, there's not much you can do other than bauble wrap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
My experience with barrage shows that it does matter. Things like Wiverns tend to do so much damage, they kill all the boyz able to look out the wounds. And every little bit to increase a chance of living another turn is a big deal. While s8-9 barrage wouldn't care about fnp, it wouldn't also care about an extra boy either since he's not even in the way.

First of all, you are wildly mixing pain boy, pain boss and warboss, so I have no idea who as actually present in your example.
If you had a warboss, a painboy and four boyz, the right thing to do would be accepting the challenge with the pain boy, so the lord would kill him and some boyz, allowing the warboss do a bunch of instant-deathing on the the spawn, depending on the unit-size maybe even putting wounds on the lord. The orderly only actually mattered in your situation out of pure fluke.

Yes those things can happen. So can winning the lottery. Upgrades with little to no chance to have an impact on a game are terrible.

There is no way to justify using an upgrade with a one in a hundred chance to impact the game and a one in ten chance to merely be inefficient instead of being useless. It makes your army slightly better in one game and worse in 99 games.

"Every little bit to increase the chance of living another turn is a big deal" is flat-out wrong. It's only a big deal if it's properly costed. A situational 1% increase of survivability on a maximum 150 point model is never, ever worth 5 points. Cybork is more efficient than that, and I think we both agree that cybork is a big waste of codex space.

You should also stop insisting on the "extra boy" thing: I've pointed out multiple upgrade which are superior to the grot orderly, including the absolutely terrible kombi-rokkit. Actually, the chance of the kombi-rokkit hitting the chaos lord in the face during overwatch and killing it is higher than the chance of the orderly saving your warboss.

 Jidmah wrote:

 dan2026 wrote:
If you use the Mogrok's Bossboys formation you can get a ton of HQs easily.
Perfect for those extra Painboys or whathaveyou. Or in my case, a ton of Shokk Attack guns.

It has the huge downside of denying you the Waaagh! though.

Sorry, I'm confused, how does this deny you the Waaaagh! ? It doesn't state that one of the Meks needs to be your Warlord, does it? Surely you could just have Warboss in this formation be the Warlord...?

Sketchyfk wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 dan2026 wrote:
If you use the Mogrok's Bossboys formation you can get a ton of HQs easily.
Perfect for those extra Painboys or whathaveyou. Or in my case, a ton of Shokk Attack guns.

It has the huge downside of denying you the Waaagh! though.

Sorry, I'm confused, how does this deny you the Waaaagh! ? It doesn't state that one of the Meks needs to be your Warlord, does it? Surely you could just have Warboss in this formation be the Warlord...?

It does, one of your Big Meks within the formation must be the Warlord, unfortunately you're also saddled with the Kunnin' but Brutal trait as well, there is no limitation of not being able to take the Thinkin' Cap though.

 Jidmah wrote:
First of all, you are wildly mixing pain boy, pain boss and warboss, so I have no idea who as actually present in your example.
If you had a warboss, a painboy and four boyz, the right thing to do would be accepting the challenge with the pain boy, so the lord would kill him and some boyz, allowing the warboss do a bunch of instant-deathing on the the spawn, depending on the unit-size maybe even putting wounds on the lord. The orderly only actually mattered in your situation out of pure fluke.

You can't insta-kill t6 spawns. Taking a challenge with a warboss helped me out saving another turn of fighting. Unlike a painboss, he doesn't get insta-killed. I'll explain the other benefits a bit later.

 Jidmah wrote:

Yes those things can happen. So can winning the lottery. Upgrades with little to no chance to have an impact on a game are terrible.

There is no way to justify using an upgrade with a one in a hundred chance to impact the game and a one in ten chance to merely be inefficient instead of being useless. It makes your army slightly better in one game and worse in 99 games.

"Every little bit to increase the chance of living another turn is a big deal" is flat-out wrong. It's only a big deal if it's properly costed. A situational 1% increase of survivability on a maximum 150 point model is never, ever worth 5 points. Cybork is more efficient than that, and I think we both agree that cybork is a big waste of codex space.

Let's look at the situation: A warboss fighting vs an enemy character. Yep, you might insist that one should never accept a challenge with an important character while there are others to sacrafice and i absolutely agree with you but in this case, the painboss was more important cause he not only prolonged the life of the boyz, but also improved warbosse's chances of survival in a duel vs Chaos Lord. (painboss-painboy, no big deal - there's no painboyz no more, so pain-anything is one entity).

So, back to the duel: the character that strikes 4 attacks and wounds on a 2+. Statistically, that's around 1-3 wounds. 3 feel no pains will statistically save you for a turn. The thing is you need to last as long as possible. And this extra fnp reroll has an increased chance of making your warboss live a turn longer. That's critical.

See, if you watch the overall picture, it's just a few percents of total durability increase. But when you see details and that your opponent deals only a limited ammount of wounds, it starts to matter. At least, it DID matter for me often enough to not ignore this minor wargear upgrade. I often end up holding something in the middle of the board with my blob of boyz + warboss + painboss while the rest of the army does other important stuff. Every turn matters.

 Grimskul wrote:

Sketchyfk wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 dan2026 wrote:
If you use the Mogrok's Bossboys formation you can get a ton of HQs easily.
Perfect for those extra Painboys or whathaveyou. Or in my case, a ton of Shokk Attack guns.

It has the huge downside of denying you the Waaagh! though.

Sorry, I'm confused, how does this deny you the Waaaagh! ? It doesn't state that one of the Meks needs to be your Warlord, does it? Surely you could just have Warboss in this formation be the Warlord...?

It does, one of your Big Meks within the formation must be the Warlord, unfortunately you're also saddled with the Kunnin' but Brutal trait as well, there is no limitation of not being able to take the Thinkin' Cap though.

That means then that this formaiton should really be used for either:
A. A Biker/Deffkopta list or;
B. A Shooting List.

No Waaagh! really sucks... However that many SAGs seem fun.

Got one of my friends into the game a few years ago. He became an ork player, and I've probably played against him more often than anyone else. (I've also used his orks to great effect against others.)

The most effective list to me is MSU spam with one troubleshooter deathstar biker unit, and some loota back up and tankbusta threats, and a couple seperate deffkoptas either in reserve to zip in later, or to zerg up and help overwhelm early.

Boss on bike w/ lucky stikk, PK, bosspole.
Painboy on bike.
14 warbikers and a nob w/ a big choppa. He takes a challenge if I3 would be better than the boss using his PK at I1. Or if he just needs to sacrifice himself to a challenge that the boss is scared of, like the raukaan chapter master or something.

6 Trukks with PK/bosspole nobs and 11 ablative wounds, shooty choppa variety.

Trukk of 10 tank bustas just because they're awesome now. They can really ruin some marine days, and that bonus VP comes up now and again. Use lootas to glance something a couple times first, then have them fire rokkits when it has like 1 HP left. Bam, bonus VP on turn 1.

2 full 15 man loota squads for backfield support. Also anti-air.

2 TL rokkit deff koptas as seperate units. Keep in reserve for objective games, or throw wildly at enemy to suck up an important overwatch or something. Very scalpel-ish and have the speed to be where they need to be. Awesome in maelstrom games, sadly a detriment in the scouring mission.

That comes in a few small upgrades shy of 2k. Always take turn 1 when possible, line up your army (sans the lootas) like they're at the races, and go full speed when the light turns green, overwhelming the opponent with threats. Don't forget to waagh.

I've just been running it as normal force org for objective secured. That seems to come up as more important than other bonuses a lot. Especially with the surviving empty trukks at the end of the game.

I do not know what all you are talking about 'eavy armour is awesome. I deffinintly notice the difference when I use it, typically you get overwatched, most armies have rules that allow them re-rolls or more shots. This usually results in 3-8 wounds. No 'eavy armour most of them die and you miss your charge, when you could of made it if you had the save. Then the next turn the shoot the crap out of you charge you and run you off the table.

 koooaei wrote:
Let's look at the situation: A warboss fighting vs an enemy character. Yep, you might insist that one should never accept a challenge with an important character while there are others to sacrafice and i absolutely agree with you but in this case, the painboss was more important cause he not only prolonged the life of the boyz, but also improved warbosse's chances of survival in a duel vs Chaos Lord.

See, answering the challenge with the boss increases the chance of the warboss not dying. Answering with the pain boy ensures the warboss not dying. As in 100%, always. It doesn't really make a difference whether the spawns or the lord kills the pain boy, but you do get 2+ LoS! rolls for your warboss outside of a challenge, instead of just 5+ FNP in the challenge.

(painboss-painboy, no big deal - there's no painboyz no more, so pain-anything is one entity).

Taking about a warboss, then pain boss and then saying "the boss" is what was confusing. But I think I guessed your intention right, so no harm done. The HQ choice is still called painboy, no painbosses outside of the dread mob.

So, back to the duel: the character that strikes 4 attacks and wounds on a 2+. Statistically, that's around 1-3 wounds. 3 feel no pains will statistically save you for a turn. The thing is you need to last as long as possible. And this extra fnp reroll has an increased chance of making your warboss live a turn longer. That's critical.

The chance of a warboss not suffering 3 wounds from that encounter (assuming no saves) is already as high as 91.2%, the grot orderly only changes the outcome if you suffered exactly three wounds, increasing the chance of the warboss surviving the fight to 93.8%.
Not critical at all, you were merely lucky to save the killing wound while your opponent was lucky to hit and wound that often. Any time outside those 2.6% the grot orderly does absolutely nothing for the duel except handicapping your army by 5 points.

See, if you watch the overall picture, it's just a few percents of total durability increase. But when you see details and that your opponent deals only a limited ammount of wounds, it starts to matter. At least, it DID matter for me often enough to not ignore this minor wargear upgrade

The overall picture is that it's a single 33.33% chance to save wound that would be lost otherwise, assuming you get to use FNP in the first place. That's not worth 5 points.
Buying upgrades always makes a unit better, no matter how terribly inefficient that upgrade is. Best example would be the old -1AP upgrade for Flash Gits - while every single flash git got better at killing terminators, the upgrade actually made the unit worse. However, due to every single flash git becoming more expensive, it actually took more points of flash gits to kill the same amount of terminators that it did without the upgrade.
This is really the same. You pay five points for an upgrade that's not even remotely worth five points.

I often end up holding something in the middle of the board with my blob of boyz + warboss + painboss while the rest of the army does other important stuff. Every turn matters.

If fail how this has anything to do with buying a terrible upgrade. A waste of points doesn't magically become great because you put it on an important unit. The only reason to buy one is when you have nothing else you could buy with those points except for equally situational upgrades.