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I always hear of using shoota boyz on foot for Ork mobs over sluggas. They have extra range, are good objective campers and still have 3 attacks each at Str 4 with Furious charge. Sounds great, have yet to try it since all I own is about 100 sluggas. I think the run rule was written for foot armies in general. Perhaps it's just too random to be worth it? That D6 has helped me negotiate difficult terrain fairly well but it's tricky timing a proper Waaagh! since most of the mobs will run at different intervals, and the KFF then becomes tricky too. I'd use shootas for camping objectives if I didn't already invest in some grots to do the job. What are your reasons for shootas > sluggas?

The issue is the I2 of an ork or I 3 on the charge.

Two shots at S4 followed by 3 S4 charge attacks as opposed to 1 S4 shot followed by 4 S4 charge attacks.
Because of your low initiative, orks have to take all the damage 1st before getting their attacks. Because orks have almost non-existent armor that means you are going to lose a lot of attacks.

Take an example of 20 orks vs 10 grey hunters.
Say you are 12" apart at the beginning of your turn. You move 6" closer fire 40 S4 shots and hit 13 times. Wound 6 and kill 2 marines. Then you charge in because you are initiative 3, the grey hunters get 16 attacks on you, hit 8, wound 4 and probably kill 4. Now you get 42 attacks, hit 21, wound 10 and kill 3. That is 5 dead marines to 4 dead orks. Do the same with slugga boys and you will probably kill 1 with shooting, lose 5 to their attack, you should get 58 attacks hit 29 times wound 15 and kill 5. All sounds good on paper but the extra 6" range should mean one extra shooting phase for the orks so you are talking 4 dead marines to shooting versus 1. Then 12 attacks versus 18 attacks that you have to weather so 3 dead versus 5 dead orks.

Agreed with above. Shootas allow you soften up units you plan on Assaulting that you shouldn't (i.e Dark Eldar, Deamons, Gay Knight Purifers, etc(

Yup, mass of bullets, brings any troop choice down. Not to mention sitting on objectives or camping in terrain. Also because like OP mentioned, how random running multiple units can be, specially when using a KFF (and who doesnt use them in a game that matters?) you are trying to keep everything under that bubble, which is hard as hell to do when everyone is moving upto 5inches more/less then the other units

you should keep in mind that your enemy is going to be shooting back and with 10 marines shooting at your orks you might do better getting into close combat asap than shooting back and forth... BS 4 vs BS 2... not to mention the free missle launcher template and flamer those marines can take.

I have 100 Slugga boyz as well and I'd be happy to have at least a mob of Shootas but the main problem is where to get them. I routinely scour ebay but usually only find arms and shootas which would require conversion. Most of my boyz are second edition and would probably look foolish with shootas.

In short, if there were more Shoota boyz for sale, we'd all see more shoota boyz on the tables.

As far as any tactics:

I'd say have at least one mob of each type on the board. That's how I'd play them: 3 mobs of 20 Sluggas (rokkits) and 1 full mob of 30 (rokkits) Shootas.

General_Chaos wrote: (i.e Dark Eldar, Deamons, Gay Knight Purifers, etc)

I see what you did there.

Sluggas go in trukks because they won't be doing a lot of shooting; shootas run across the board, opening up the dakka once in range. If you bring a kan wall with KFF, run those too and keep the pain a rollin'!

-cgmckenzie

Math says Shoota boyz are better if they get to fire one additional time than Slugga boyz.

I've been running exclusively with shoota boyz in trucks. They are still decent in assault, but they shine against units that it is unwise to assault.

My current mechanized list has shoota boyz in trucks w/ rokkits, 2 squadrons of rokkit buggies, large bike squad (for shooting, not assault), and a pair of looted wagons. It's rounded out with 2 squads of lootas, grots, a squad of nobs in a battlewagon (for the KFF mech), warboss and snikrot kommandos.

Since switching to that setup, I've lost maybe 3 out of 20 or so games. It's downright scary the amount of lead orks (even mech ones) can send down range.

Isn't one thing worth considering, the amount of time you expect your unit to last in combat?

If an slugga unit lasts several phases in close combat, throwing out 3 attacks each phase, even with attrition, surely the maths of the extra attack could win out in that circumstance?

Expecting Shoota OR Slugga Boyz to survive through several rounds of fighting, 2 each turn (once on yours and once on the enemy's) is very unrealistic. After the initial assault (if you get it), you generally have to take Fearless wounds on 6+ armour. Then, they lose 1 attack each, drop to I2, go back down to S3, AND start loosing LD. Even if they escape sweeping advances with I2 to I4, they are probably below 50% and will not rally. If Shootas or Sluggas they can't win it in the initial assault, it is really hard to not lose subsequent assault phases. The power of Shoota Boyz is that they can lay on like 2 rounds of shooting before assaulting. On foot, I like to have a 2-1 Mob ratio of Shootas to Sluggas. In vehicles, Trukks have Sluggas and Battlewagons have Shootas.

Agree on the 2-1 ratio. While shootaz are better on average, there are targets you want to charge with sluggas, for example stuff you need to pile wounds on, like hammernators, dreadknights or multi-wound units.