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small units mean shootin at more stuff but how effective are lootas in small units?
also small units mean risk of running and alot less staying power

Well Lootas have pretty good shooting really.

If you don't care about Elites/ Kill Points squads of 7 is probably preferred to one big squad. Maybe get two tanks shook instead of just one.

Squads of 5 is probably too small.

If they are in cover they can probably stand to lose a couple models but it still hurts their offence.

5 man Burna is a suicide squad. They are only I3 so maybe they need a Stikkbomb Trukk. Or maybe you just take more Boyz.

Full unit of burnas in a deffrolla battlewagon is epic.

And either 5 man or 15 man loota mobs, otherwise leadership is a problem.

yeh i think 7 is a good number for them 5 is too small finding points gfor those extra coupla models is such a pain tho lol

Burnas - full squads

Lootas - I personally run them in two groups of 5, I just don't get that much more by adding more orks. Another problem is that there is no way to get a bosspole into that squad so all the opposing player has to do is take out 25% and they have a pretty good chance of splitting.

You could run 12-15 to try and get around that problem with mob rule but then your shooting up to 45 shots which is a bit much for most ork armies. Unless your doing a shooty ork army but I see lootas as transport poppers and I get away with 5 for that roll.

i think my lootas will be taking the roll of a deterant for the ,ost part, cornering off a big chung of the board, and shooting the shiz outta anything in line of sight. so big groups is good to make sure they're causing dangerous amounts of damage even on unlucky dice rolls

Don't you guys face LOS problems when fielding units of 15 lootas??

I know its expensive but a 15 man loota squad in a battlewagon is pretty fun. You shoot their tanks and they shoot 14 armor, not your lootas so it helps with the leadership problem. And a 15 man squad of burnas in a wagon makes feel no pain angels sad panda

I must 100% disagree with the advice being dispensed to take units of 7 Lootas.

You're spending 30 points more than a unit of 5, with the same chance of running (Ld7). It still takes two kills to cause 25% leadership, meaning you're wasting points and literally getting nothing of significance in return.

A unit of five is small - 75 points. They might do nothing. They might explode a Vendetta. The point is that they have a 48" range, and taking them forces your opponent to decide if they want to spend their missiles and lascannons firing at your Lootas instead of your vehicles. Presuming you deploy them in cover, they have a 4+ cover save, meaning that it will take on average 4 wounds to cause them a leadership test, which they have a 50% chance to pass (or better, depending on what else is in the army). Call them a distraction unit if you will, but coupled with an army full of other threats, no one can handle them all. That's the point of 5 Lootas - another threat that can't be safely dismissed, or handled later in the game.

Size really depends more on what else you are running. If you're running a lot of small threats, then the 5-man squads are fine. If you are running a gunline/static type army with large mobs, then the large mobs can be fine. The main thing you need to do is playtest a bit within your list and avoid the middle ground, the 10 or so man Loota squads that are usually just begging to run off the table.

Burnas are best in larger numbers, to maximize templates and also for power weapon assaults (surviving their low Initiative to swing back).

dash of pepper makes sense of it all as usual, cheers dude

Stubby wrote:Full unit of burnas in a deffrolla battlewagon is epic.

And either 5 man or 15 man loota mobs, otherwise leadership is a problem.

This. The only thing I'd say on top of that is put your Big Mek with the Burnas, and give him a Klaw, and your Wagon a boarding plank.

Yeah, Dash got here first... but to hammer it home...

for lootas 5 or 15. Anything in the middle is sub-optimal from a survivability standpoint.

5 lootas is 75 points, it gets and average of around 3 hits. An imperial guard heavy weapon squad with autocannons is 75 points, and gets an average of 3 hits. Both have leadership 7, and both are pretty darn good. You can also compare them to an imperial guard hydra in terms of equivalent points and firepower.

As far as leadership goes, the worst case scenario is that you lose exactly two models to shooting, and the remaining three models run and can't regroup. In this case, you've lost a whopping 45 points. As the number of initial lootas gets higher, that points total increases....

Until you reach that 15 model point. And then you are playing the fearless game for quite a long time. They'll have to kill a full 8 models to make you leadership 7. Unfortunately, when not shooting at infantry, 15 lootas is quite often overkill.

I'd advocate this... find out how many elite slots you want to dedicate to lootas, then buy 5 man squads of lootas. If you want more anti tank, then check to see how many heavy slots you can spare, and buy 3x kannon big gunz units with ammo runts or 3x killa kans with rokkits/kmb, then if you still want long range anti-tank, see how many fast attack slots you have free, and then either buy 3x rokkit buggies or single deffkoptas with rokkits and buzzsaws. Only when you hit this point would I start contemplating popping those lootas up to 15.

As for burnas, I think the reverse is true. As a firepower unit their firepower from a vehicle gets exponentially more terrifying the more templates you can lay down from a single point on the hull, and as a close combat unit with very low initiative, they need a certain amount of bodies just to survive the first attacks in a combat before they can dish out their strength 4 power weapon attacks... Take 15 here.

Shep wrote:Yeah, Dash got here first... but to hammer it home...

Not to be an ass but Dash simply reiterated and expanded on what I said, not that thats bad just don't huck me in with the sub optimal advice givers. 7 lootas wot?

On a side note it's nice to see dash back on here, he seemed to go missing for a bit there, welcome back.

yournamehere wrote:Not to be an ass but Dash simply reiterated and expanded on what I said, not that thats bad just don't huck me in with the sub optimal advice givers.

Sorry bout that...