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I have been reading a lot of the ork threads recently on account of starting orks up, and noticed a bunch of references to 'kan walls' but very little in how to actually run them.

So far, all I have managed to gather is that you put boyz behind kans and shoot everything. It might include a KFF or not, I am unsure about this.

I know this seems like a basic idea, but I ran a search and could only find people saying 'do a kan wall!' without actually saying how to execute that. Any help from dakka?

-cgmckenzie

Basically, the kans are in front, the boyz (preferably shootas in the popular opinion) behind, 2 KFF Big mek.

The kans gives 4+ to the orks and the kans get 4+ from the KFF. You can add koptas/buggies as need be toa dd more AV int he list. Rokkits with shoota boyz mob can be good too.

also I'll send you to this thread where the deployment and working of a kan wall was discussed pretty well.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/364702.page

A kan wall MUST include a KFF mek to run properly. More often than not if you are running a 9 kan wall you should run 2 KFF's. You always want to make sure you keep all the same weapons in each squad of kans. IE
3 kans with rokkits
3 kans with rokkits
3 kans with grotzooka
etc
Shoota boys are usually better so you can advance, shoot, advance shoot, advance shoot assault. The shooting weakens enemy units making it easier on the assault and therefore making sluggas less effective.

Rokkits tend to be the best way to go in order to take advantage of the BS3 on kans. Grotzookas are nice for hordes or a combo can also mix things up. Some like the KMB for termies but I personally like to save the extra points.

Deffcoptas with saws fit nicely in kan walls as they can alpha strike and cause trouble by popping long range tanks such as manticores, basiliks and the like. They can also tie up long fangs for a turn potentially buying you more time to run ahead first turn.

Lootas are not a must but I never leave home with out them. Long range attacks are super valuable for transports and the like.

Plus if your lootas pop transports your rokkit kans can mess up the contents. Just wait till your boys arrive with their PK nobs and the enemy is pretty much done for in a lot of cases.

Overall, it is a competitive build and looks amazing on the table as kans are IMO one of the coolest models out there.

its a cool tactic, and its good,

Wow, thanks for the help!

Now to start building...

-cgmckenzie

BTW, what is the counter to a kan wall?

lots of ML, but in my SM army they are my solution to many things, S8 for most vehicls, S4 blasts for crowd control, a sacrificial unit to slow em down.

same thing for my guard basically, a few sacrificial guard squads while my tanks go boom!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
just what i'd do, not the worlds greatest player, im sure there are better counters

cgmckenzie wrote:Wow, thanks for the help!

Now to start building...

-cgmckenzie

BTW, what is the counter to a kan wall?

I would say fast lists armies/list. Any thing that can go around the kans an shot at the shootas while staying out of assault range (ie: tau, eldar, etc.)

the counter is lots of templates and antitank. krak missles hurt kan wall.. most balanced lists will have a hard time dealign with a good kan wall, but a tailord list can obviously beat the army it is tailored against

dajobe wrote:lots of ML, but in my SM army they are my solution to many things, S8 for most vehicls, S4 blasts for crowd control, a sacrificial unit to slow em down.

same thing for my guard basically, a few sacrificial guard squads while my tanks go boom!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
just what i'd do, not the worlds greatest player, im sure there are better counters

yeah, the KFF will double the life expectancy of the kans, but a big AV shooty army will end up bringing them down in two turns of shooting. However, that means the boyz should be in assault range

thats what the poor sacrificial units are for, but i like your mobile idea, need more bikers(grumbles to self)...

dajobe wrote:thats what the poor sacrificial units are for, but i like your mobile idea, need more bikers(grumbles to self)...

yeah, forgot that outflanking units can be good too. If you are playing orks (you talked about bikers so I am guessing here), snikrot 2 scorcha and a kommando squads will destroy the boyz when out flanking.

Basically, find a way to either go around the kan wall or break it (going around being the most cost effective way)

IG motto: If you cant break that kan wall...throw more guardsman at it!!!

Kan Walls simply consist of 9 Killa Kanz and usually some Deff Dredds to increase armor saturation.

These shield the big Boyz mobs and from there you can really build them however you want.

I play a variation on the classic (Klassic?) Kan Wall @ 1250 and 1500 pts lists that consist of the following:

HQ
WB (pk attack squig, armor, cybork, bosspole)
Big Mek with KFF (that's all, keep him cheap)

Troops
Deff Dredd w/ 4x DCCW

30 Boyz, nob, pk, bp

6xNobz
Painboy
Cybork
Waaagh banner
mixed weps for wound allocation (min 1 PK)
Battlewagon w/Deffrolla

Heavy:

3 Kanz
Big Shootaz

3 Kanz
GrotZookas

3 Kanz
Rokkitz

*Edit (forgot to include):

Elites

6x Lootaz
6x Lootaz

Overall this has worked out really well for me and I've gone 7-0 with it.

Now I haven't fought Gray Knights or any really new dex armies, but I've taken on Guard, SWs, CSM and Vanilla Marines to good effect.

The key with this and any Kan Wall is to keep your KFF in range of all or at least 2 of the 3 Kan squads.

Even at AV11 the 4+ cover save makes them really really really hard to kill. In my experience most opponents end up splitting fire amongst all 3 units and are not able to kill one squad before the others make it in to combat.

Once you get a squad of 30 Boyz, or Nobz into someone supported by Killa Kanz or a Deff Dredd you can be sure you'll come out on top.

I also like the idea of adding nobs to the boring old klassic kan wall. Keeps it fun. It can get old with the same old 3x30boys.

Personally I don't use a deffdread as it rarely pulled its weight. I'd rather a pair of buzzcoptas for popping long range tanks or support. Or even rokkit buggies but I like the kopta better as a suicide unit.

skycapt44 wrote:I also like the idea of adding nobs to the boring old klassic kan wall. Keeps it fun. It can get old with the same old 3x30boys.

Personally I don't use a deffdread as it rarely pulled its weight. I'd rather a pair of buzzcoptas for popping long range tanks or support. Or even rokkit buggies but I like the kopta better as a suicide unit.

Re the Nobs, yeah they're just crazy fun. Popping transports with a Deffrolla then assaulting the juicy targets inside is so satisfying.

Re the Dredd, yes I agree, but where he does do a good job is deterring/countering deep strike units from bum-rushing my BW.

I tend to just run him up along side the BW to assist the Nobz+WB.

Oh one thing I forgot to mention, I keep the Big Mek cheap because I'll leave him behind in the battle wagon when the Nobz assault in Annihilation games. Keeps him from getting targeted and the BW is way more survivable with him riding along.

One quite hard counter to Kan wall should be mentioned: Battlewagon Bash. Whenever I face a Kan wall, I usually butcher it. Deff rollas can take down an entire squad in one ram, and if you're not careful even ram the same squad twice(explode first kan, hit second). Due to my battlewagons and ghazghkull, I always get the charge, and every good ork knows that the assaulting one wins. It's also quite easy to instant-death bigmeks with the PK nobz. Another problem for them is that I have burnaz and nobz, while they only have boyz. If they are forced to get them out of their battlewagon by assault, the assaulting unit will usually be filling the bw's crater as red paste next turn. If they don't get them out, flamer dive-bys and 5++/FNP nobz assaulting out of their wagon will still kill multiple units of boyz.

As I don't play a Kan wall, I can't really tell how to counter my army, but everytime someone tried, they got tabled.

I would have to disagree with some of the above posters. The key thing with using a Kan Wall isn't shooting. The Kanz are a screen units for your boyz so they can make it across the board. You need to be running for the first couple turns to get across the board as fast as you can before you get shot to pieces, then drop the hammer. Even with a +4 cover save those Kanz are not gunna stand up to any decent shooty list (Long Fangs will eat them) the less rounds of shooting you take the better the list will do.

True, I do run the first turn which is why buzzcopta help so much to tie up long fangs and the like. You also have lootas shooting from the back doing their thing and hopefully reduce long distance shots. I don't run mre than 2 turns because I actually want to make use of my rokkit kans. I mean why give them rokkits if you are just going to run.

next time i face an ork hoarde army with my guard, im gonna give both my Leman Russ's those Punisher gatling guns, and all heavy bolters, thats 29 shots coming out of each LR each turn! sweeeet, probably use a battle cannon against a kan wall though

General_Chaos wrote:I would have to disagree with some of the above posters. The key thing with using a Kan Wall isn't shooting. The Kanz are a screen units for your boyz so they can make it across the board. You need to be running for the first couple turns to get across the board as fast as you can before you get shot to pieces, then drop the hammer. Even with a +4 cover save those Kanz are not gunna stand up to any decent shooty list (Long Fangs will eat them) the less rounds of shooting you take the better the list will do.

Actually I find that if you just walk the Kanz a squad of Boyz on a full out run still end up with 50% of their unit behind the Kan Wall (I spread mine out the full 2" when they chug up the board). I do like to run the Grotzooka squad on T1 to cover any units that get really far ahead though, but the Rokkitz and Big Shootaz tend to have good targets to shoot T1.

Maybe I've just been lucky but my Kanz have eaten a full round of shooting from 2x LF squads with MLs and still had 2 surviving models. I did lose them fully in the next turn, but that's the rest of my army being completely untouched by those 2 LF squads for 2 turns.

More Dakka wrote:

General_Chaos wrote:I would have to disagree with some of the above posters. The key thing with using a Kan Wall isn't shooting. The Kanz are a screen units for your boyz so they can make it across the board. You need to be running for the first couple turns to get across the board as fast as you can before you get shot to pieces, then drop the hammer. Even with a +4 cover save those Kanz are not gunna stand up to any decent shooty list (Long Fangs will eat them) the less rounds of shooting you take the better the list will do.

Actually I find that if you just walk the Kanz a squad of Boyz on a full out run still end up with 50% of their unit behind the Kan Wall (I spread mine out the full 2" when they chug up the board). I do like to run the Grotzooka squad on T1 to cover any units that get really far ahead though, but the Rokkitz and Big Shootaz tend to have good targets to shoot T1.

Maybe I've just been lucky but my Kanz have eaten a full round of shooting from 2x LF squads with MLs and still had 2 surviving models. I did lose them fully in the next turn, but that's the rest of my army being completely untouched by those 2 LF squads for 2 turns.

Well, I play my friend that plays SW and knows I play a kan wall type list. So he always bring LF with missile lunchers and multimeltas. If your opponet has a good Av list, there is nothing that can be done about it, but kans do tank a lot of damage

Yeah, I agree, they are only AV11 after all.

The thing is that the KFF really mitigates the damage they take.

When you consider that between hitting, penning, and actually rolling high enough to do damage to them on the chart (only 4+ actually stops them), you've got a 4+ save against it.

In my experience so far your opponent has to pour a LOT of fire into 1 squad to kill it.

Now, considering the average cost of a squad of Kanz is between 120 and 150 I'd say that even if they're eating all that fire and dying they're still doing their job.

Kans are tough vs shooting with a KFF.

Don't think though they can tackle everything in HtH.

MC and SS/TH terminators will own them pretty handily.

cgmckenzie wrote:I have been reading a lot of the ork threads recently on account of starting orks up, and noticed a bunch of references to 'kan walls' but very little in how to actually run them.

So far, all I have managed to gather is that you put boyz behind kans and shoot everything. It might include a KFF or not, I am unsure about this.

I know this seems like a basic idea, but I ran a search and could only find people saying 'do a kan wall!' without actually saying how to execute that. Any help from dakka?

-cgmckenzie

It's completely idiotproof as far as armies go. Basically, you have a Mek or two with KFF, and 3 sets of 3 Kanz. You keep 2 of the Kanz from each squadron within 6" of one of the KFFs for the 4+ coversave. Then you run your Boyz behind them using the Kanz for a 4+ save. Your entire army has a 4+ coversave, and it becomes Dicehammer to see if you can break it up before H2H starts.

The SW net list is actually a pretty hard counter (Wolfstar and 18 Long Fangs). Krak Missiles hurt Kanz, and Wolfstar butchers them in H2H if you kit them out with TH/SS. Wolfstar doesn't do so hot against 90 Boyz but that's not really the issue...once the Kanz are gone, you can pretty much Frag missile the Boyz with impunity.

If you want to add disruption elements to a Kan Wall, think of using Kommandos. The added flavor can help define your army and help get the boyz and kans into combat.

Yeah, Kommandoes or Koptas running around in the enemy's deployment zone are a great distraction while your kan wall runs as many boyz as possible across the battlefield.

Clang wrote:Yeah, Kommandoes or Koptas running around in the enemy's deployment zone are a great distraction while your kan wall runs as many boyz as possible across the battlefield.

About the right idea.

Just make sure you don't needlessly throw away such units.

A trio of max squadron warbuggies with rokkits is a great unit to distract with. Snikrot with Kommandos are a great way to shrink the battlefield with a wary foe.

As the Emperor, I would simply send tens of thousands of Space Marines...but I digress.