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Seems to me like everyone is trying to find a way to get as many AT units on the board as possible...everyone needs a counter and they they need the redundancy of that counter.

My experience with horde bugs thus far has been pretty positive in this meta. It may be luck thus far but it seems as if no one is kitted to handle horde.

Even IG lists are becoming softer on the bugs...there's all this chimera spam which in turn has been decreasing the "pieplates" and bugs become all the more survivable.

Melta what?...a gant takes a melta to the face as well as he takes any other shot to the face...

All you need for something like Horde bugs is a few choice MCs that are much more survivable than even a LR.

With all the recent ML spam it means those delicious flashy marines don't have that annoying box around them either.

So what's your take on this?

Has the recent tank war opened the way for horde bugs (or orks for that matter too)?

I really think it depends. Those missile launchers are still very good against the bugs, and there are still quite a few blasts in IG lists (most of the time). A true horde might be able to make it, but the problem is that, at that point, you really don't have anything for anti-tank, which is an even bigger problem for nids than for the people they're fighting against.

Well, I've noticed that IG players aren't putting heavy flamers on their hulls. It is a real good idea to do that, the rest of the list can bring enough heavy and medium strength long range firepower. The hull heavy flamer fills a nice gap in range and damage type.

SM players who aren't spamming ML are also not building with the possibility of horde in mind, too many las cannons and melta guns, no enough dakka and flamers.

That being said, I don't think that means that horde lists become some sort of meta breaker. Horde orks still can't beat a canny opponent who refuses a flank , and they still can't reliably break armor without klaws. Nids are better off, but you really need to make sure you bring enough transport popping power. (unlike orks, nids can horde up and still do this pretty well)

Suppose it depends if they sell out completely for Meltas/LC/ML rather than other things to take down lighter vehicles... IG have Hydras that are pretty decent at throwing a lot of fire downrange, can take light vehicles and still put a pretty decent dent in a horde... And I usually take my Long Fangs with a mix of HB and ML since they can split fire anyway...

For the IG, hull flamers and manticores do the job pretty well.

The AT is killing big bugs. Oh, a Tervigon. Ok, I fire my 15 ML at it that wound on 2+ and ignore your armor, at best you're faced with trying to make about 10 cover saves.Still alive? Guess I'll fire my five lascannons at it then..

From the games I've seen with heavy AT versus nids, the AT weapons can fairly reliably drop a MC every turn, and this quickly eats away synergies

The biggest problem with hordes is the time it takes to play. I have an ork horde army with 181 models at 1850 points and it takes 3 to 4 hours for a game, as there are tons of models to pull out of ny cases and move.

Sure thir great, but I can get in 2 games with my biker marines in the same time.

I altered my Ork army from horde to mechanized not b/c of effective/not effective. After three games of tourney play, my lower back and knees were killing me b/c of the amount of time I spent hunched over the table moving the horde.

I could play it fast enough to finish, but I paid for it later that evening.

Sarigar wrote:I altered my Ork army from horde to mechanized not b/c of effective/not effective. After three games of tourney play, my lower back and knees were killing me b/c of the amount of time I spent hunched over the table moving the horde.

I could play it fast enough to finish, but I paid for it later that evening.

That plus the idea of actually painting up 100+ units is what keeps me ( and may people I'd guess) from fielding a true horde army.

It looks great on paper to say that you're going to be using 150 Guardsmen or Orks, but then you think about just how big that is and how long it takes to move it and paint it and the amount of money to buy it and it all gets fairly overwhelming.

The trick with hordes is to use movement trays. Litko Aerosystems sells some, but they're easy enough to make yourself.

I do tend to agree with the original poster in that my gaming group in Toronto was bouncing back from pure mechanization a while ago once we started to see the problems with vehicles in 5th edition. It's much easier to suppress them than to suppress infantry, and there's armies with no armour at all (like Tyranids), which makes overwhelming Melta weapons inefficient. Before I headed out I had started to experiment with Chaos Space Marines on foot with Heavy Weapons.

i would definitly say that hordes are decent in the meta.



if you go to a tourny you can be sure that many lists will have a bunch of anti-tank in the form of melta.

that right there means those points have been wasted against you because even if they get some shots off at you, you are in charge range.


orks can do the horde thing too.

6 squads of 30 boys with a PK nob is around 1300 points.

180 bodies is tough to stop, and if we are talking Ard Boyz points here there is another 1200 points of orks.

that could be a couple of diversified Nob squads in Battlewagons and a couple of KFF meks, or a bunch of Kans.


orks don't really need to kill AV14 as most of that can't really deal with that many orks. the orks can simply drown the enemy in bodies, kill their transports with Klaws(which Str8 is really good at doing) and take every objective.

I love my horde of orks boyz and i have become quick at moving them but having to roll for 30 orks in one combat is annoying as hell rolling 120 dice is not as much fun as I thought it would be