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I'm trying to decide between the following:

Tankbustas x5
-Nob w/ power klaw
-2x hammers
-3 bomb squigs

or

Lootas x5
-plus 3 Mekboys with KMBs


I'm looking for something anti-tank / anti-monstrous creature. At first I was going for the tankbustas because of the rokkitlaunchas and hammers as well as the squigs... but now I'm wondering if it would be better to have something a little bit more versatile as well as more range friendly like the Lootas... Tankbustas have the S8 ranged attack but seems like they'll need to get closer than the Lootas. The Lootas have more shots that can hit from a farther distance though not as strong; the meks give them an anti-armor option (unfortunately at the same range as the rokkitlaunchas) ... I'm worried about the 'gets hot' of the megablastas.

I can't have both because the 2 other elite slots are being used by Nob Bikers (running with Wazdakka) and Kommandos (mostly to run Snikrot).

I'm leaning more towards the Lootas... but how do you say no to cute cute bomb squigs!?


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If you have any comments/suggestions I'd like those too

...but thanks for your voting

If your taking Wazdakka your biker squad should be taken as a troops choice. thus freeing up an elite slot. allowing you to take both Lootas and Tankbustas.

Orkymike wrote:If your taking Wazdakka your biker squad should be taken as a troops choice. thus freeing up an elite slot. allowing you to take both Lootas and Tankbustas.

I don't believe Nob Bikerz can be made a troop choice. I think you can only do that with regular bikerz.

*runs to check codex*

Here is the thing, you already have a really great weapon to use against MC's

The Ork Boys.

Most Mc's have a low number of attacks, at most maybe 6 for a really big one. Hit on a 3+ (worst case for the orks) and wound on a 2+ and you will lose maybe 3 orks a turn. Then your PK goes to town. It may take a few turns, but a lot of MCs do not have an INV save. Your orks can take a few casualties and will probably win the war of attrition.

If it is a bigger and badder MC all you will need is a few more PK's, and these you will find in a unit of Nobs. You get a save against the MC's attacks, (5++ cybork) and 12 PK attacks at WS5 is nothing to laugh at. With wound allocation, you might not even take a casualty.



Tank Bustas are not that great. They do less damage with less range with less control than lootas when they are shooting against vehicles. You can not shoot MC's with them as they must attempt to shoot vehicles. In combat against vehicles any compotent player with move 6+" so you hit on a 6+ and are not very dangerous. You can not fight anything else in combat as you have to attempt to charge vehicles.



Lootas are an awesome unit. The DeffGun is great. You get a lot of shots and it is very versatile. It is also the only ork gun with long range. Lootas can take on almost anything, because they have volume of fire, and high Str. Cover is no issue as you get enough shots to force a lot of saves. Armor saves are no issue as you get enough shots to force a lot of saves.



The KMB is a terrible, terrible gun. 24" range and heavy means you will not shoot much with it. Then let us look at the MathHammer.

5+ to hit, 2+ to wound, 4+ cover save
.14 wounds per shot

Gets hot on a 1, you save on a 6+
.14 self deaths per shot

Most of the time, you will do nothing. You are just as likely to hurt yourself with the KMB as you are to kill the enemy, and that is so bad. If you want KMBs take them on Killa Kans, you get BS3 and you ignore gets hot.


(If you are running Nob Bikers, you should not be running Wazdakka. Take a regular Warboss on a bike instead, and one of your Nob Bikers units will become troops (now they are scoring!), take 2 warbosses, and then they are both troops and you do not need any more troops. That is the classic way to run a nob biker list)

I guess it would depend on what the rest of your list looks like. what hqs your taking and the like.

Nob Bikers can be troops choice's I'm pretty sure. They are not a seperate entry in the codex. You just take a squad of Nobz (which can be made troops with a Warboss) and put them on bikes

With regards to the choice, Lootas are far far better imo. No contest really, but I would consider taking them all as standard lootas with no Mekboyz. The 48" range is amazing in an ork army. The KMB 24" range means they dont get involved enough.

Tank Busta's for me are only used for a laugh, and for the amazing suicide squig models

If you put the tankbustas in a trukk they are great against vehicles. They aren't really that amazing against MEQ troops because the melee attacks are str10/ap-. If you are having problems popping high AV armor, go with the tankbustas.

On the other hand, if you are looking for versatility Lootas win hands down.
They can be amazing or a total waste of points, as orks can't hit squat with guns. Personally I run 15 lootas, which will handle anything AV13 or less on a good 1d3 roll. Avoid the CMB as the deff guns are just as good and have a much better range profile.

If your going against nids, tankbustas all day. They actually shine against nids, since they dont have tanks to possibly mess up your plans. Anything else, Lootas all day. They are just a fantastic little unit, and once the transports and the like are popped/not in LOS, then you can just vomit bullets at other units.

1 question though, why 3 meks?

CageUF wrote:If you put the tankbustas in a trukk they are great against vehicles. They aren't really that amazing against MEQ troops because the melee attacks are str10/ap-. If you are having problems popping high AV armor, go with the tankbustas.

It's amazing how many people give advice on units they've never used...
Tank bustas have to shoot at vehicles if the can see one, no matter how far away it is. They would actually be great against MEQ, if they wouldn't have to shoot vehicles which any MEQ army will inevitable have some. The only vehicles they are really much better against than regular boyz or lootaz are Landraiders, Stormravens and certain Leman-Russ variants. They will be killed by the explosions and the contents of any transports though.

Has anyone ever tried running a squad of 30 grots with 3 runtherders at an MC?

Runtherds remove 3 attacks and effectively can tie up the MC for the entire game, losing 2-4 grots per turn.

Jidmah wrote:

CageUF wrote:If you put the tankbustas in a trukk they are great against vehicles. They aren't really that amazing against MEQ troops because the melee attacks are str10/ap-. If you are having problems popping high AV armor, go with the tankbustas.

It's amazing how many people give advice on units they've never used...
Tank bustas have to shoot at vehicles if the can see one, no matter how far away it is. They would actually be great against MEQ, if they wouldn't have to shoot vehicles which any MEQ army will inevitable have some. The only vehicles they are really much better against than regular boyz or lootaz are Landraiders, Stormravens and certain Leman-Russ variants. They will be killed by the explosions and the contents of any transports though.

Wow I appreciate you slamming me and a perfectly valid tactic. Tank bustas regardless of whether or not they are in a trukk have to shoot vehicles within LOS... hence THEY AREN"T REALLY AMAZING AGAINST TROOPS. The reason you put a squad in a trukk is to get them (and their little bomb squigs) within melee range (Or 18'' for squiggies) of av12+ vehicles. Orks stink at shooting, they shine at melee.

Oh, and yeah str10 hits vs str3 are so a waste... They don't help against anything... (I hope my sarcasm is clear here...)

Please don't give advice on tactics you don't understand.

Green is Best! wrote:Has anyone ever tried running a squad of 30 grots with 3 runtherders at an MC?

Runtherds remove 3 attacks and effectively can tie up the MC for the entire game, losing 2-4 grots per turn.

Works with Dreads too... the exception being those with Blood Talons.

Lootas are by far the better choice, but Tankbustas with a Trukk have some nifty tricks. You'll need to buy one for a Boyz or other squad (for me it's usually 10-12 shoota boyz that I plonk on an objective or in cover) - you can basically hide your tankbustas behind it on deployment, jump in first turn, and hang on!

Their 12" move + 2.99999"disembark gives them effective range, but the Trukk also goes some way toward alleviating their great weakness too. You can use a Trukk's hull to block LOS to other vehicles when you disembark, in addition to having a greater movement distance to seek LOS-restricting cover. They are not completely useless as they are mobile, and quite often you will want to be shooting and assaulting tanks anyway! You are in no way required to fire at the closest vehicle either - but Drop Pods are still a pain in the arse!

Wow I appreciate you slamming me and a perfectly valid tactic. Tank bustas regardless of whether or not they are in a trukk have to shoot vehicles within LOS... hence THEY AREN"T REALLY AMAZING AGAINST TROOPS.

They are great against marines and multi-wound units with armor of 3+, as they ignore that armor and FNP, even two hits from 10 tankbustas mean two dead marines, nobz or tyranid warriors. How is that not good? You mentioned charging MEQ, which you can never do, unless you shot them first. I mentioned that they usually can't shoot them, so no reason to capsflame.

The reason you put a squad in a trukk is to get them (and their little bomb squigs) within melee range (Or 18'' for squiggies) of av12+ vehicles. Orks stink at shooting, they shine at melee.

So you take 10 Tankbustas, a trukk and a minimum of ten boyz now footslooging. You need two turns to get to a vehicle. You have a 40% chance of blowing up your own transport(the one you paid at least 100 points for) when throwing three bomb squigs. You will only hit the vehicle on a 6+ and lose a little less than 1/3 of the unit in the resulting explosion. Not even mentioning the juicy target for any pie plates shooting a trukk and the tankbustas standing next to it on turn 1.
Does not seem great to me.

Instead you could take a unit of 15 lootaz for less points, shoot the exact same vehicle to bits on turn 1 (turn 2 if your dice really hate you) and not lose a single ork.

Oh, and yeah str10 hits vs str3 are so a waste... They don't help against anything... (I hope my sarcasm is clear here...)

First of all Boyz are str 4 when charging, and have superior numbers, are cheaper and do not use up a precious elite slot.
Tank bustas have tankhammers and their bombs, which totals to an average of 3 attacks hitting a vehicle, of which one will fail to penetrate. So you trade up an elite slot and a lot of points for two penetrating hits instead of three glancing hits. And you can't even tell the expensive unit to shoot something they could easily kill. Are they better at killing vehicles? Sure. By a great margin? Not so.
And I did agree with you, they work ok against heavy armored vehicles, there just isn't a lot of them.

Please don't give advice on tactics you don't understand.

Please don't feel personally insulted when someone calls you out on your advice. Tankbustas in a trukk are not "great", and you can't charge the MEQs with your S10 anyways.

Green is Best! wrote:Has anyone ever tried running a squad of 30 grots with 3 runtherders at an MC?

Runtherds remove 3 attacks and effectively can tie up the MC for the entire game, losing 2-4 grots per turn.

But as they dont get mob rule, if they are losing 2-3 grotz per turn you are gonna be testing on leadership 4-5. Cant imagine they'd stick around very long

Well, they got rerolls, so while not easy to pull off, it might not be entirely impossible, especially if he meant game turns.

Jidmah wrote:
1.) They are great against marines and multi-wound units with armor of 3+, as they ignore that armor and FNP, even two hits from 10 tankbustas mean two dead marines, nobz or tyranid warriors. How is that not good? You mentioned charging MEQ, which you can never do, unless you shot them first. I mentioned that they usually can't shoot them, so no reason to capsflame.

2.) So you take 10 Tankbustas, a trukk and a minimum of ten boyz now footslooging. You need two turns to get to a vehicle. You have a 40% chance of blowing up your own transport(the one you paid at least 100 points for) when throwing three bomb squigs. You will only hit the vehicle on a 6+ and lose a little less than 1/3 of the unit in the resulting explosion. Not even mentioning the juicy target for any pie plates shooting a trukk and the tankbustas standing next to it on turn 1.
Does not seem great to me.

3.) Instead you could take a unit of 15 lootaz for less points, shoot the exact same vehicle to bits on turn 1 (turn 2 if your dice really hate you) and not lose a single ork.

4.) First of all Boyz are str 4 when charging, and have superior numbers, are cheaper and do not use up a precious elite slot.
Tank bustas have tankhammers and their bombs, which totals to an average of 3 attacks hitting a vehicle, of which one will fail to penetrate. So you trade up an elite slot and a lot of points for two penetrating hits instead of three glancing hits. And you can't even tell the expensive unit to shoot something they could easily kill. Are they better at killing vehicles? Sure. By a great margin? Not so.
And I did agree with you, they work ok against heavy armored vehicles, there just isn't a lot of them.

5.) Please don't feel personally insulted when someone calls you out on your advice. Tankbustas in a trukk are not "great", and you can't charge the MEQs with your S10 anyways.

1.) The only reason to take tankbustas are bomb squigs and charging armor. They suffer from short range, myopic sight and poor accuracy.

2.) 5 tankbustas w/ squigs w/ trukk = 115 pts. If you can't find a squad of boyz to donate their ride, you've got other problems.

3.) 225 points of lootas not comparable to 115pts of tankbustas.

4.) Actually I don't disagree on any of these points... For your average player Lootas are the better choice. They are more well rounded and one of the best Ork units period.

5.) As your statement was phrased as such, I'll take it as it was written. Telling someone they don't know what they are talking about is a personal insult.

Thanks for the help folks... plenty of stuff to read through.

BTW I couldn't make my Nob bikerz a troop choice because I'm running a mek with shokk attack gun (or whatever its called) and Wazdakka Gutsmek... No Warboss here.

Lootas....minus the Meks.

Lootas are one of the BEST elite units in the Ork Dex. In fact, they are one of the best units in the entire dex.

Tankbustas, on the other hand, are tied for the WORST unit in the entire Dex, along with Flash Gits.

Tankbustas aren't effective because of their stupid rule about going after the closest vehicle they can see. Because of this, Lootas, Rokkit/Buzzsaw Koptas, Deffrolla BWs, Rokkit Killa Kans, Biker Nobs, and Biker Bosses all do the job of killing vehicles MUCH better than tankbustas. Also, Boys with a hidden PK Nob will be better against MCs....and they are socring

As for the other elite choices...

Snikrot Kmmandos can be VERY usefull, but lack the versatility and constant game use of Lootas...Snick will usually come in, kill something important, and then die. Kommandos w/o Snick are just meh.

Nobs and MANZ are usually taken as troops, thanks to a Warboss, so I don't usually count them as elites anyway

However, taking MANZ or Nobs as eiltes is still a better choices than Tankbustas for the same slot.

I've used lootas against everything and there isn't a single army they aren't effective against-reliably. I like the idea that a unit can be dangerous to whoever I end up playing. Fast armour, heavy troops, MC's, drop pod, bikes, etc. Either I can wreck armour or reliably put wounds on high toughness things. That's very nice to have.

I can also say that I like koptas with rokkits. They've also done very well for me against armour and MC's. I take the fact I've almost never seen tankbustas on the field as an indicator. Every experienced ork player I know loves them but just can't justify fielding them.

Dashofpepper wrote:Lootas....minus the Meks.

Well Dash has spoken.

/Thread

Alerian wrote:Lootas are one of the BEST elite units in the Ork Dex. In fact, they are one of the best units in the entire dex.

Tankbustas, on the other hand, are tied for the WORST unit in the entire Dex, along with Flash Gits.

Tankbustas aren't effective because of their stupid rule about going after the closest vehicle they can see. Because of this, Lootas, Rokkit/Buzzsaw Koptas, Deffrolla BWs, Rokkit Killa Kans, Biker Nobs, and Biker Bosses all do the job of killing vehicles MUCH better than tankbustas. Also, Boys with a hidden PK Nob will be better against MCs....and they are socring

While I'll agree that Lootas are better, Tankbustas are not quite Flash Gits bad. For one thing, Glory Hounds is not Rage. You attack a vehicle, not the closest one. If anything, shooting a vehicle farther from you and using bomb squigs can destroy two vehicles in one turn.

Occasionally I wish I had some tankbustas instead of my lootas.




Very occasionally.

I'm gonna go with the Lootas definitely... also, I'm keeping the mekboys in the unit... I think they'll add a character of unpredictability to the unit.

Thank you sooo much folks for your input.


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Green is Best! wrote:Has anyone ever tried running a squad of 30 grots with 3 runtherders at an MC?

Runtherds remove 3 attacks and effectively can tie up the MC for the entire game, losing 2-4 grots per turn.

I would definitely love to do this it'll be like that game Overlord where you send your minions to do stuff haha.

2.) 5 tankbustas w/ squigs w/ trukk = 115 pts. If you can't find a squad of boyz to donate their ride, you've got other problems.

3.) 225 points of lootas not comparable to 115pts of tankbustas.

You still waste the boyz unit, as it can do nothing but sit on an objective, so for the cheapest unit you'd pay 60 points, while gretchin doing the same job will only cost 40. Total cost for the suicide trukk would then be at least 135. You get 9 lootas for that, who still do way better. Same point, different numbers.
Also note that a unit of only 5 tank bustas will only get 11 attacks on the charge, that is a pretty high chance to do nothing at all against fast vehicles (should be around 25% without mathhammering it), which results in all those points wasted.
I've found the best two uses for tank bustas are
- units of 9-15 in a battle wagon to make opponents avoid getting near my wagon collumn, and the pile out to multicharge any number of vehicles possible, or using two wagons to block LoS und give some 3+ units a bazookery death. Depending on the opponents list they might eben work better than burnaz.
- full unit footslogging along kan wall boyz. Lots of rokkits help taking down vehicles, and more bodies never hurt. They are not a high priority to kill for your opponent, but if the do shoot at them, more surviving boyz, win/win.
Both will only ever work if you find yourself with spare elite slots after putting in lootaz and nobz.

5.) As your statement was phrased as such, I'll take it as it was written. Telling someone they don't know what they are talking about is a personal insult.

I apologize, you were probably the wrong person to receive the flakk, lots of people are giving random (bad) advice to new players on these forums, which will result in frustration about their army and/or wh40k because it does not work out the way someone how never owned a single ork dreamed up. Just like one of the employees at a close GW keeps selling a kid random ork stuff, and his army doesn't do gak. He was totally stupefied when I played there and he actually saw orks winning and not getting swattet off the board like anoying flies who couldn't even scratch the might of the emperor.

djphranq wrote:I'm gonna go with the Lootas definitely... also, I'm keeping the mekboys in the unit... I think they'll add a character of unpredictability to the unit.

Thank you sooo much folks for your input.


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Green is Best! wrote:Has anyone ever tried running a squad of 30 grots with 3 runtherders at an MC?

Runtherds remove 3 attacks and effectively can tie up the MC for the entire game, losing 2-4 grots per turn.

I would definitely love to do this it'll be like that game Overlord where you send your minions to do stuff haha.

I think you might be disappointed by having the mekboys in the unit... Just look at the range: 24" vs. 48". Having some spice in a unit is great, but I personally always frustrate myself when I have drastically different ranges within the same unit. Inevitably one weapon gets used and the other just ends up being a waste of points. If you're just playing this to have fun, then go for it, but I think you might end up disappointed and not having as much fun with something like this.

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:

djphranq wrote:I'm gonna go with the Lootas definitely... also, I'm keeping the mekboys in the unit... I think they'll add a character of unpredictability to the unit.

Thank you sooo much folks for your input.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Green is Best! wrote:Has anyone ever tried running a squad of 30 grots with 3 runtherders at an MC?

Runtherds remove 3 attacks and effectively can tie up the MC for the entire game, losing 2-4 grots per turn.

I would definitely love to do this it'll be like that game Overlord where you send your minions to do stuff haha.

I think you might be disappointed by having the mekboys in the unit... Just look at the range: 24" vs. 48". Having some spice in a unit is great, but I personally always frustrate myself when I have drastically different ranges within the same unit. Inevitably one weapon gets used and the other just ends up being a waste of points. If you're just playing this to have fun, then go for it, but I think you might end up disappointed and not having as much fun with something like this.

I don't mind... the list it will be part of is mostly a fun/model showcase kind of list. I'll see if I can't post it up. Its a hodge podge of stuff.


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Actually... i'm kind of thinking I never should have started this topic in the first place if I wasn't using the list for serious competition.

In defense of tankbustaz, they're great against dreads in drop-pods. And mopping up drop-pods in general.

Opponents still hate lootaz more.

Well I can see how you might be regretting the thread but if this list is for kicks and mainly for show than go for it!

As long as the people you play with have the same idea and they'll be taking fluffy stuff that's not very competitive than you'll both have a good time.

Here's the full list if anyone wanted to see it:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/361379.page#2680600