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Im running a 5 units of boyz 30 strong in my green tide army behind 6 kans. my current list consists of 3 slugga units and two shoota units. Ive been reading how alot of people swear by more shoota than slugga. Why is this? why wouldnt you want extra assault attacks? is it cause of the speed therefore a waaaagggghhhh!!! is harder to obtain?

You lose an attack in CC for the ability to pepper them with 2 shots a piece over 2 rounds if you're lucky. If you play it right you move/shoot one turn then next turn you shoot again and then assault. With 60 shots per mob you're bound to hit something.

Yeah, with Ork accuraccy, you want as many shots to hit as possible. Shoota Boys still have 3 attacks on the charge, and the huge mass of numbers more than makes up for the one attack lost due to not taking a Choppa.

IMHO Shoota boyz get a bit more bang for being free, yes they lose 1 cc attack, but they gain a tonne more possible killing wounds. Plus, they can assault after shooting them!

26shootas, 3 big shootas puts out 52 str 4 shots and 9 str 5 shots. your bound to deal tonnes of damage before you even assault the foe.

example:
I had a mob of 30 boyz, 1 was a nob, and 3 big shootas. I positioned my self to assault a group of 5 termies and a chaptermaster. I rolled my shots (i roll 10 dice at t time, then the final 12 after 40) and scored an amazing 30 hits!. then my big shootas scored another 5 hits. my big shootas scored 4 wounds, and my 30 shootas scored another 15!

He put 4 on the master, and 15 on the termies.. It was hilarious.. he rolled 2 1's on the master (who only had 2 wounds left) and 5 1's on the termies! The dice gods were friendly with me today.

Now if they were slugga boyz.. I would assault him. and he would kill off 10+ boyz before they even got to hit. and my boyz would still win if i was lucky. but now they are weakened. and if they didnt kill them all. they are now stuck in combat.

Shootas
The advantage of the shoota is they have an effective range of 24" with their guns (move 6" and fire 18"). What give shootas the edge is the ability to shoot at longer ranges while moving in, instead of just on the last round like sluggas get.

Shootas have a huge amount of STR 4 shots, and can be used to down things vulnerable to massive small arms fire -- such as TH/SS termies. Weight of dice will drop those.

Shootas can also shoot people off objectives. On turn 6, if you need to get rid of 6 dire avengers sitting on an objective, their a great option that sluggas dont provide.

What shootas can't do is run and shoot their shootas. That fits very well with a kan wall, as they shootas are moving at the same speed as the kans. Slugga boys in that situation will tend to outrun the kans if the kans are all shooting rokkits.


Sluggas
Sluggas can only fire 12", so when charging into combat they don't get as many shots on the way into a fight. Most of the shootas will be in 18", giving 54 shoota dice + 9 big shoota dice. (You gave your nob a shoota and a PK, right?) In comparison, maybe only 15 of the sluggas will be in range, so there are 15 shoota dice + 9 big shoota dice -- resulting in an average of ~40 extra dice being shot by the shootas or ~13 extra hits.

I play with 3 big shootas in my sluggas squads so I also get the 9 big shoota dice (a 36" range also lets me put em at the back of squads and they still hit). I find that for a 15 point upgrade they are well worth it as it gives my sluggas more flexable tactical options -- but thats another thread.

The fact is that you will rarely have all 30 boys engaged in combat. On average I have about 18 or so of them close enough to the enemy to attack. That gives the sluggas ~17 more attack dice with 9 hits. As you can see the shootas edge out slightly.

Over a long protracted combat the sluggas win out slightly, but long protracted combats are not what Orks are about. They need to do their job and do it well.


Summary
The advantage goes to the shootas on a basis of pure tactical flexibility of the unit.
If you dont ever actually SHOOT your SHOOTAS until your getting into assault, their advantage gets pretty thin.

In most short assaults, the edge goes to the shoota, and in longer ones it goes to the sluggas. In both bases, the unit is a delivery engine for the PK nob that will be crushing 2-3 MEQ a turn.

Shootas are the way to go, just because they are better holding objectives, and they have moar dakka!

Shootas are great for large mobs

for everything else, theres Slugga Card

kenshin620 wrote:Shootas are great for large mobs

for everything else, theres Slugga Card

Almost everything else... i do like shoots boys in trukks...
"Do i really want to charge those 10 termies? or would i rather sit 18" away and pour fire into them?"

dayve110 wrote:Almost everything else... i do like shoots boys in trukks...
"Do i really want to charge those 10 termies? or would i rather sit 18" away and pour fire into them?"

Those really work for you?
12 shoota boys in an AV 10 vehicle seems 2 easy KP and not much firepower.

It works ok, not the best combo but its very fun ^.^ sometimes i like to play for fun rather than to win hands down.
Isn't this game supposed to be about fun anyway?

Shootas are not that good. This is coming from a BA player, but today I killed 60 shoota boys from me shooting at them. They killed MAYBE 5 models. Honestly, I have had more trouble with the sluga/choopa units then the 60 ork shootas. Big shootas, on the other hand, have killed a far share of their FNP marines.

Happygrunt wrote:This is coming from a BA player, but today I killed 60 shoota boys from me shooting at them

You killed 60 orks from Shooting? I really wouldn't of matter if they was slugga boys or shoota boyz if your shooting at them. But am really really curious to how you killed 60 Orks in the shooting phase....

If 4th edition were still around then sure I would use shootas, however 5th edition is here and I will gladly skip the shootas that hit on a 5+ in trade for sluggas who have WS4 and take advantage of the new Run rule. We should be thankful that we can get to grips and get stuck in much quicker and possibly a round earlier. Why take guns that everyone can take a save against minus other Orks or Kroot when you can get your sweeping advances on and table your opponent instead of being caught out in the open after an assault? I prefer to keep 'em sluggas since I dont shoot them anyways...ever...

It seems like the basis for the argument is a catch 22 like rokkit boyz. Sure, they can shoot something powerful but since when are Orks a shooty army? (Besides Lootas) A rokkit boy gets an assault weapon thats Str 8 AP3, however they will miss all the time. It's strange people think Tankbustas are better now with an assault weapon but the old rules forced people to use them to better effect as in their Tankbusta Bombs and now they even get Rokkit Hammers. Again, 5+ rolls to hit thats shady at best or WS4 Strength 10 thats almost guaranteed to hit...you do the math

General_Chaos wrote:

Happygrunt wrote:This is coming from a BA player, but today I killed 60 shoota boys from me shooting at them

You killed 60 orks from Shooting? I really wouldn't of matter if they was slugga boys or shoota boyz if your shooting at them. But am really really curious to how you killed 60 Orks in the shooting phase....

Well maybe he ran 3 baal preads with heavy bolters and the ork player never bothered with rokkits or fast options

Happygrunt wrote:Big shootas, on the other hand, have killed a far share of their FNP marines.

Yah.... because... strenght 5 AP4.... does what to FNP?

General_Chaos wrote:

Happygrunt wrote:This is coming from a BA player, but today I killed 60 shoota boys from me shooting at them

You killed 60 orks from Shooting? I really wouldn't of matter if they was slugga boys or shoota boyz if your shooting at them. But am really really curious to how you killed 60 Orks in the shooting phase....

Ordanance and blasts up the kazoo! And lasscanons. lots of lasscanons. Over many turns.

General_Chaos wrote:

Happygrunt wrote:Big shootas, on the other hand, have killed a far share of their FNP marines.

Yah.... because... strenght 5 AP4.... does what to FNP?

Its not the gun per say, its the amount of fire it can put out. An assault heavy bolter is a scary thing.

Big shootas have S5 Ap5*.

I don't know about you guys, but the way I play I quite typically get the entire mob into assault.

Just a little math hammer: a 30 man shoota boyz mob shoots and charges a 10 man tac squad (we'll say the sergeant has a PW)

60 shots: 20 hits: 10 wounds = 3 dead marines.

Charge: 6 marines do 3 hits: 1.5 wounds (round to 2) Sergeant does 1.5 hits (round to 2) and 1 wound. 3 dead orks.

26 orks do 78 attacks: 39 hits: 19.5 wounds (round to 20) 6.6 dead marines (round to 7). Possible the someone could survive due to wound allocation and PK finishes them off.

27 orks alive.

30 man slugga boyz shoots and charges the same.

30 shots: 10 hits: 5 wounds = 1.6 dead marines (round to 2).

Charge: 7 marines do 3.5 hits (round to 4) = 2 wounds. Sergeant does 1.5 hits (round to 2) and 1 wound. 3 dead orks.

26 orks do 104 attacks: 52 hits: 26 wounds = 8.6 dead marines. (round to 9) same possibility of someone surviving from wound allocation but less and PK finishes them off.

27 orks alive.

Not counting PK shoota boyz do 29.5 wounds (30) and slugga boyz do 31 wounds.

To me this means two things. It depends on the unit you're charging and it's up to the user to what they take. Personally I take slugga boyz almost all the time because I'm running every turn and then waaghing.

Icehawk18 wrote:To me this means two things. It depends on the unit you're charging and it's up to the user to what they take. Personally I take slugga boyz almost all the time because I'm running every turn and then waaghing.

Good mathhammering. The only real problem I see is the number of boys that are within 2" of the enemy. I run 30 strong boy squads often (my ork army is a green tide army), and rarely do I get every boy into a position where they are in the assault.