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.

I know there are a lot of "depends" on these types of questions, I'm asking in everyones over all general experience, Is it worth bringing the Trukks? How often is the Armor penetrated, and how much of a target do they make themselves in combat?

I like trukks, and I think they can very much be worth taking. They will get targeted and they will get popped. The point is not to worry about that. If they move your boyz 18" up the field before getting popped they have done their job. Your Boyz are closer. I think the key with using trukks is to use 1 or 2 as backup for your main force of Boyz, or to have a lot of trukks so that your opponent can't pop them all.

It depends!

1. What's your opportunity cost? Are you forgoing taking 3 or 4 Battlewagons in exchange for trukks?
2. How many trukks? If it's one or two or three then it's not worth it because AV 10 is only vehicle armor in the technical sense of "not having an armor save". Once you start talking about 6 or 7, though, it becomes possible (at lower points values).

How many points are we talking here? 500/1000 or 2500?

The more trukks the better. Never take a few, and if your facing a list with lots of Autocannons, Missile Launchers, Lascannons, ect.-switch to a few Battlewagons, and use them as a screen for your trukks.

And always take a Big Mek Kustom Force Field.

It really *does* depend.

Running a couple of trukks by themselves in a foot-slogging list is definitely a mistake. Running 6 trukks with speedy support (stormboyz / warbuggies / other) is a decent strategy. Running a couple of trukks in a kan-wall (9 kans, 9 warbuggies, 2 trukks) where there are 18 other vehicles, all of them deadlier than the trukks is also a decent strategy.

Personally, I use 1-2 trukks in 1850-2500 points in support of my battlewagons (3 at 1850-2000, 4 at 2500). My trukks generally deploy behind my battlewagons, are full of boyz, and are there to either deal with backfield threats that develop, to late-game grab an objective in midfield to enemy territory, or to assault in support of the contents of one of my battlewagons. Here's a few pictures from different batreps of mine of how trukks fit in with my battlewagons. General rule of them: Trukks behind battlewagons can't be shot at; they're shorter.

Deploying a trukk behind battlewagons in a spearhead deployment:


Better shot of my table corner, and you can see how the enemy spearhead zone doesn't have line of sight to my trukk


With all my enemy forces in the top left corner, my trukk deploys to the right of my battlewagons to get screened.


Keeping the trukk safe behind the battlewagons until I can maximize their utility:


In this game against tyranids, most of the threats were in midfield and a trygon popped up by my Lootas. Those battlewagons went forward to deal with threats while my trukk skipped along their rear flank to deliver boyz to help deal with the trygon.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And here's a standard deployment for me: Warbuggies hiding from heavy weapons to the left of my battlewagons, trukk hiding in the rear.

I like using a trukk full of ard boys to support a triple wagon list, (sometimes 2, 1 ard boys and 1 regular boys) it/they can sit behind the wagons to be sheilded from fire and is handy to toss at whatever surprises pop up during the game. Such as deepstriking units trying to hit my lootas, or if any combats arn't going my way I can toss more boys at the problem, usually fixing it. They can also shoot towards last minute objectives if the trukk is still alive, which admittedly is rare.

The other option for them is too take them at max numbers to saturate the table with vehicles, 6 trukks full of boyz plus buggys and maybe stormboys hiding behind the trukks, the hope here is that there are too many targets for the opponent to drop them all before they hit.

The problem though is that unless the unit in the trukk hits it's target with full numbers they turn out to be underwhelming, you need to either hit one target with more than 1 trukk unit or have the trukk unit come in and support say a battle wagon full of boys. 11 boys + nob can be killed off fairly easy, especially if they lose some when they are blown from there trukk.

@ Dr. Optimal: 1500 Points. If no trukks then extra boyz.

@ Dashofpepper: I think the idea of an armor wall as cover, but how quickly do the wagons move? Would it work if boyz were on foot (would they be able to keep up is what i'm asking)? Also, would the same strategy work, but tweekd? My idea was to run 6 Koptas and 5 Bikes to tie up enemy armor shellers. As well as 3 Kannons to lay down cover fire (in hopes to make enemy shooters go to ground and stay there). 4 units of 20 boys, 2 units of shooters and 2 units of choppers. Shooters cover whilst choppers use a pincer move to flank.

Maybe not as practical, but perhaps less predictable.

Well, I'm not an elite Ork player like Dash is, but my initial reaction to your suggestion is that it won't really work that well. with 6 koptas and 5 bikes and 3 kannons, you're looking at roughly 400 - 500 pts, which is an awful lot for units that are really just intended to tie stuff up until your boys get there. Also, Kannons are cool, but not effective enough to really rely on them to lay down cover fire. It's doubtful they'd make anyone go to ground as you suggest. The biggest issue is, you're sort of half way between a speedy army and a foot slogging army. For Orks, at least in my experience, you have to choose a style and go all out with it. So, if you're footslogging, you go all footslogging. If you're speedfreak, you go all speedfreak. Part one and part the other ends up going badly. At least, that's my experience.

The idea of making opponents units go to ground with kannons isn't going to fly, there just not that scary to anybody, not that they can't do something but nobody is going to go to ground because of it.

To keep it simple, as I'm sure others will fill in, as Madmax said:

Go all on foot, or all mech, ie. dont have foot slogging boys behind trukks or battle wagons.

The most accepted, and with good reason, way of making a mech wall for foot sloggers is with kanz + a kff mech

The other way I havn't tried because of lack of models but have a wall of trukks or battle wagons with stormboyz behind them, as the stormboyz can keep up.

Now there is a debate over whether stormboyz are good or not, so you'll see two camps chime in on it I'm sure. Unfortunately I have no experience with them so I can't give you my input, they seem ok though, you can keep them completely out of los behind wagons. I just gotta make some rokkits to strap on some boyz first.

Stormboyz aren't "omgawesome" but they aren't "omgsuckage" either. They're in the middle, which tends to make them a difficult choice for inclusion in a competitive list.

@DaNewBoy: My battlewagons move 12" per turn. My trukk can move 12" - 18" per turn. If my trukk needs to get in line with my battlewagons it has the speed to do so, but more often than not, it serves as a backup role to one of my heavy hitter units.

Scouts coming on my backfield? No problem! My trukk goes and gets them. Deep-strikers? No problem! Got a trukk full of boyz for that. Not to mention an extra boarding plank.

When I ran a trukk list, mine was similar to Dash's build there. I had less BW and more trukks, but it was played pretty much the same. BW are the line breakers and the trukks would follow up behind to bolster, late game grabs, or zoom away from the blob and take on something that needed to be handled.
Trukks are very much worth it if you use them correctly.

DaNewBoy wrote:How often is the Armor penetrated

50% of the time. For the most part if the KFF don't block the shot they go ramshackle

how much of a target do they make themselves in combat?

Depends on your target saturation. They usually rank lower than stuff like battlewagons and my fast attack units

Thanks everyone for the advice and tips. I Think I now have about as good an idea as one can without having played a game, as to how useful these trukks are.

I would, however, like to defend my idea of forcing the enemy to go to ground.

While more of an attempt to manipulate my enemy, I think the tactic (if given a fair chance against most enemies), has some soundness to it. Especially small, perhaps even elite units, early in the game. For example, SM. A unit of 5 takes a direct hit from a Kannon. It is in my favor that they take the risk of taking a causality, and then a morale test. If they fail, potentially the entire unit could run off the map. Of course there is a chance they don't take any causalities too, but either take 1, or go to ground, the odds of favorable actions to my strategy is more likely.

I might be understanding this all wrong, or I might be thinking more along the lines of a WWII video game where support fire is more certain and therefore useful, but it seems the strategy on the surface holds water.

Firstly, the chances of a SM unit running off the table is pretty slim. Im talking, unless you have a trukk infront of them, and they somehow have to take a test and fail, and you keep pushing them back with the trukk, sure. Pretty much, when Im playing against a SM opponent I just expect them to never fail a LD test. So when they do (again rare) its a nice surprise, unless they are with in shooting range of a boyz mob, which always sucks.

But good luck on the games man, just think everything out before you build a list and play them hard.

Kanons do not force pinning tests, an no one should go to the ground with that kind of unit when shot at. Also if you cause a single casualty to a unit of 5 they will not be forced to take a morale check.

When using lobbas (which DO force pinning tests), my experience was that anything you want to pin can't be pinned or will pass their pinning tests realy easy due to high ld values, rerolls or other special rules.

I totally agree that cover fire can be a useful way to give your footslogging boyz time to get into postion. The problem is that Kannons aren't powerful or scary enough to cause units to go to ground. Truthfully, if you really want something to go to ground, it's much more likely to happen if you are shooting at them with Lootas. If you roll a 3 for shots, you can kick out an awful lot of firepower at pretty good range.

There are only 2 units I have ever seen go to ground from anything, grotz and guard.

Grotz because they are usually holding a back field objective and can't contribute anyways, plus they are weak and need that extra cover save.

Guard because they have a order that take get them back up from gone to ground whenever they want, negating what your going for.

Not that kannons can't have a place in a list, but your not going to make anybody forgo a turn for fear of what 3 rocket equivalents are going to do, infact you will find you will be shooting the str. 8 krak shot at vehicles trying to open them up for your boyz to squash the insides much more than shooting the frag at infantry.

Boyz are your answer to enemy infantry, kannons and lootas and the like are for vehicle destruction.

Not trying to be a dick, just trying to inform.

My I ask a question for all involved in this thread? Along the same lines of course.

Ive heard more than a few people say "A battlewagon for every 500pts." Does this apply to 500 point games? The reason i'm asking is that i'm struggling on whether to buy two more trukks, to have three at 500, or to buy a battlewagon.

So Battlewagon vs three trukks, which is more effective in low point games?

If this is obvious then please forgive me for my noobishness.

gpfunk wrote:My I ask a question for all involved in this thread? Along the same lines of course.

Ive heard more than a few people say "A battlewagon for every 500pts." Does this apply to 500 point games? The reason i'm asking is that i'm struggling on whether to buy two more trukks, to have three at 500, or to buy a battlewagon.

So Battlewagon vs three trukks, which is more effective in low point games?

If this is obvious then please forgive me for my noobishness.

Its actually saying "For every 500pts section in your army, put a battlewagon in that space". If you stick with Battlewagon rush, then yeah this can apply, but 8 Battlewagons should be reserved for very big sized armies.

As for trukks, they work great in numbers. Having one, it'll be shot. Having 2, similar story. Having 5+, yeah they'll be around for more than a turn, even two turns. And by turn 2 you should be hoping to hop into CC so at least one turn is what you'll need them for. Distraction units like warbikers, deffkoptas, buggies, stormboyz (pretty much the Fast Attack slot) can easily boost the lifespan of those trukks. And of course, as many love pointing out on here, the KFF big mek for that free Obscuirty (4+ cover save) to ensure half the attacks hitting your trukks won't make them explode into fireballs of scrap

A friend of mine has a 1750 list that has 5 trukks, 2 battlewagons, 9 killa-kans (with rokkits), and 3 units of 2 warbuggies (with rokkits).

With all those rokkits on the table, guess what doesn't get shot at. =D

Again, I have yet to play a game... with all the painting orks require, I am starting to wonder if I ever will. But it seems to me that the battle wagons are serving the exact same purpose the Kannons would be, just in a more flamboyant way.

Here is what my dilemma is. Orks strength is in numbers. Orks weakness is in armor. So I am trying to decide if points spent on armor is really worth it. I know it *can* work, but what I am looking for is a scenario that (in a game that relies much on chance) more often than not will work out in some part in my favor.

The real hang ups I have about the Trukks, is as mentioned, the trukk for all intents and purposes is a "soft shell" transport. Not only that but it also restricts the size of a squad, which means more are needed for the remainder. The trukks have armaments, but not all that great, so they do really bode well (in my mind) as being able to protect itself and its transportables. In my mind, it would be like comparing a hmmwv to a stryker. The warwagon is a leap up in both armor and armaments, but has even less space for transports.

So I can resolve to create an armor wall for the trukks, with the wagons, but then I have sacrificed my strength for my weakness. And seemingly in a great amount.

I was only trying to explore a way to possible maintain a several large slugga squads, and be able provide some type of support without having to just plan on eating causalities up the field until I get within assaulting range. One way was maybe trying to adapt a cover fire, shoot/move doctrine to the game. This was really just one aspect, I was also trying to tie in some distraction and faint, hit/run type maneuvers too.

But I take no offense to the criticisms. You all have infinitely more game experience than me, so I have to take your word on the "go to ground" idea and I'll have to adjust my game plan to it.

Thanks :-)