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Hey folk - still pretty new to the game & enjoying lapping up all your wisdom while I build my blood-axe ork mob!

I'm curious as to your thoughts on the 'ultimate' nob squad. I've got boxes arriving in the mail and want to get some guidance before I build them. So in terms of:

Size, gear, wound allocation, points-economy/worth, maybe even the odd tactic....

what would you run / do you run / been kicked in the @ss with?

Cheers folk

h.

9 nobz with painboy, banner, combiscorchers, bionics, eavy armor, 5 with big choppaz, 4 with PK

sounds good - not a little point heavy?

hamlet wrote:sounds good - not a little point heavy?

You could probably get away with a unit of 6 or 7 if you wanted to save some points, but sometimes you have to spend points to make a unit good.

I just run a banner, boss pole, painboy, and three power claws and then everyone has 'eavy armor. Works very well and isn't too heavy on the points.

Depends on the points of the game. a unit of 9 is kinda pricey for anything less than a 2K game. Most lists I see seem to go towards 6 or 7 plus painboy.

If you build this list, you will have all your bases covered. You could probably swap the TL Shootas for eavy armor, that would be a solid trade.

Painboy
PK, Waaagh! Banner, BP
PK, Shoota/Skorcha
PK
BC, Shoota/Skorcha
BC, TL-Shoota
BC
Shoota/Skorcha
TL-Shoota
Stock Nob

sumi808 wrote:9 nobz with painboy, banner, combiscorchers, bionics, eavy armor, 5 with big choppaz, 4 with PK

somecallmeJack wrote:

hamlet wrote:sounds good - not a little point heavy?

You could probably get away with a unit of 6 or 7 if you wanted to save some points, but sometimes you have to spend points to make a unit good.

Actually, what you are doing is spending points to make a unit inefficient, not good.

A unit of 7 or 8 nobz with 2-3 PK will pretty much stomp anything it charges flat into the ground or die horribly to it. Adding more nobz or PKs doesn't change a thing about that, you will still rip any MEQ (or weaker) apart and get your face kicked in by hammernators, huge MCs, combat characters and DCCW walkers.

A nob unit is always point heavy, but you should just drop as many points into it as possible. As a rule of thumb, a nob unit needs:
- 2-3 PKs. Less is wasting potential, more is wasting points.
- BCs for diversification. No need to give big choppas to everyone, a regular nob is already S5 on the charge.
- Cybork OR 'eavy armor. Never both.
- Waagh! Banner. Mandatory, no discussion. WS5 simply makes too much of a difference, both in offense and defense.
- Pain boy. I guess you could skip him for units of five, but anything above that should have one.
- Combi-weapons for diversification only. Even if you drop 50 points of TL-shootas on them, nobz wil never be a better shooting unit than shoota boyz - or flash gits, for that matter.
- At least one boss pole. Nobz are ld7 if they ever have to test. You do not want 300+ points pinned or running away. I usually use two in units of more than 5, so I make sure it doesn't get killed by accident.

Hey jidmah when you refer to combat characters, what specifically are you mentioning?

Jidmah's advice seems pretty spot on - except the Boss Pole (re-roll Morale tests) won't save your 300+ points from Pinning (straight Leadership test). Good to remember it for Tank Shocks though.

Grots R OP wrote:Hey jidmah when you refer to combat characters, what specifically are you mentioning?

Draigo, Thrakka, Abbadon, Kharne, Mephiston, Calgar, Emperor's Champion, Warboss, you get the idea. Basically anything that can walk though a unit of troops mostly unharmed, flip a tank without sweat and doesn't drop dead from a single PK hit. I wouldn't count autarchs, chaplains or necron overlords into that category though.

Arakasi: Can't check my codex right now, doesn't it explicitly mention pinning, too?

Nope - unless there is another entry for it outside of the Wargear one... Not sure why Pinning *isn't* a Morale check though...

Is thgere really such a thing as an "ultimate" squad for nobz? I like them don't get me wrong, but once the dust settles, in my experience, they are simply more dangerous sluggaz. Maybe its just because sluggaz are so good at what they do, but it doesn't seem like anything that would eat your sluggaz for lunch wouldn't finish your nobz as dessert.

Other books have an easier distinction, like wyches are pretty nasty but incubi are "holy crap keep that away from me!" I just don't get that vibe from our "ultimate" CC unit

Goresaw wrote:Is thgere really such a thing as an "ultimate" squad for nobz? I like them don't get me wrong, but once the dust settles, in my experience, they are simply more dangerous sluggaz. Maybe its just because sluggaz are so good at what they do, but it doesn't seem like anything that would eat your sluggaz for lunch wouldn't finish your nobz as dessert.

Other books have an easier distinction, like wyches are pretty nasty but incubi are "holy crap keep that away from me!" I just don't get that vibe from our "ultimate" CC unit

Nobz are best at killing things that are good at killing boyz. Sure, the hidden klaw might still take the unit down, but you will end up grinding a lot of boyz into that, maybe even losing the entire unit. Close combat units with loads of attacks, units with dedicated anti-horde units and multi-wound models with decent armor saves come to mind. The aren't half-bad at taking on MCs that can't instant-death them reliably. For example, prime targets for my nobz are khorne berzerkers, striking scorpions, purifiers, genestealers, blood talon furiosos, tyranid warriors or two-attacks-base marines. Charging those with boyz is near suicidal, while nobz can walk from such a fight and still kill another unit. In addition, you are pretty much guaranteed to take down a vehicle if it gets charged by a unit of nobz, and multi-charging a couple of big choppas into a nearby vehicle is always an option.

Rule of thumb, anything that boyz can't kill, can be killed by nobz; anything that nobz can't kill can be killed by boyz.
So it really makes sense to field both.

Although not as experienced w nobz as jidmah, boyz and nobz are yeah sort of counterpoints to each other.

My basic rule is
Vs things w storm shields, tough invuls or 2 plus armor = boyz.

Vs Things w lots of power weapons or attacks or AOE type things like cleansing flame= Nobz.

FNP helps w the many attacks vs berkers, gaunts,etc. Wound allocation and cybork helps vs power weapons on banshees, furiosos etc. Problem w throwing 20 boyz against units like this is that 10 of them might die before they even get to swing.

W 8 nobz , 16 wounds, cybork, fnp, and WS 5, its really tough to kill even one nob much less half of the darn unit.

Awesome. Cheers folks!

I think what I've gone for is:

Waaagh banner
BC
BC & BP
PK
PK & BP
Painboy
(optional stock nob is room)

All with cybork bodies

Looks great, although I'd give your banner guy a klaw or BC.

Agree, my bammer is usually on a PK, so the last guy standing still has a PK and WS5.

I usually run 8-9 nobz w/painboy but only for point 1500+.
1-3 pk, with waagh banner and bosspole and maybe 2 tl shootas with those nobz, and eavy armour and bork bodies. The rest are base nobz. I usually put them in a battlewagon with pk warboss. I mainly run a semi kan wall with loota support and this seems to work pretty well for me. The squad easily takes out demon princes, and bezerkers ( with help from my sluggas.) They just Can't handle that many pk hits.
I'm not really a fan of big choppas just doesn't seem appealing to me id rather have the extra attack for my nobz than strength +2, I just need the wounds they have for the pk nobz and warboss to take out units.

I prefer not to take 'Eavy Armour, it's 45pts that could be spent elsewhere on a 10 Nob mob (as the painboy can't take it) for essentially a +1 to your save that doesn't work half the time due to power weapons, AP4, rending etc. Chances are, your opponent is going to be using S8 against your Nobz anyway, and a large majority of S8+ weapons have an AP of 4 or lower.

I like the big choppas, 5pts to allow you to take out vehicles of AV12 or less and instant death Archons (that happened once, that was fun), yes please.

I also like sticking them in Trukks, when you look at it on paper it just seems like the Trukks are going to be popped in the first turn and your hammer unit is going to be stuck in your deployment zone. Well it seems to actually work quite well on the table, so well that I run 2 10 ork Nobz squads in Trukks. This is because they are cheap, and this allows me to pump additional points into the rest of my army (lootas), but also because they are fast. This allows them to dart across the table hiding behind bits of cover and LOS blocking terrain before hitting enemy lines. This can be a struggle against GK builds with more than 3 dreads but otherwise it works rather well. I'm not sure how well this would work in America though, as I've heard you don't get as much terrain over there as we do here.

Get a drill (2 or 3mm in size) and around 100 magnets the same size but only 1mm thick (not that expensive), then just drill holes in the arms and body of the Nobz, place some magnets in an cover with green stuff or a good strong glue (I prefer glue myself).

This takes about 1hour and now you can change Every gear your nobz have so no longer will you be in doubt to on what gear to choose and no more proxy.
You can even magnetise the heads.
If you do this thou I Highly recommend to to double check the magnet polarity before fixing them to their place

I'm my last game, a large 3 vs 3 annihilation, I ran a unit that basically followed all of the principles outlined in this thread. 10 nobz packed in a battlewagon with two PK', banner, bosspole, three BCs, painboy and split between heavy armor and cybork. I have to say, the carnage they wrought was positively devestating. They ate up a squad of Blood Claws led by a wolf lord, crippled a Land Raider, and inflicted decent casualties on a thunder hammer terminator squad and another squad of Blood Claws before breaking. The best part? They then consolidatated and rejoined the fray to finish off the rest of the Blood Claws with the warboss and his kommandos. They eventually succumbed to Vulcan of the Salamanders and the terminators, but not after making back their points in spades. Our team lost the game by one kill point. Still, the nobz carried their weight and fought to the end. Used properly they can inflict serious carnage.

salix_fatuus wrote:Get a drill (2 or 3mm in size) and around 100 magnets the same size but only 1mm thick (not that expensive), then just drill holes in the arms and body of the Nobz, place some magnets in an cover with green stuff or a good strong glue (I prefer glue myself).

This takes about 1hour and now you can change Every gear your nobz have so no longer will you be in doubt to on what gear to choose and no more proxy.
You can even magnetise the heads.
If you do this thou I Highly recommend to to double check the magnet polarity before fixing them to their place

I don't know if that's worth the hassle, with two nobz boxes, two sets of AOBR nobz and all those nobz and gear from boyz/warbiker/kommandoz boxes you can pretty much build every combination of nob your are ever going to need.

For what it's worth, (and technically optimised for 3rd edition and then modfied for the new codex)

'Eavy armour and Stikkbombz for everyone

PK,SL
Ch,SL
Ch,SL
Ch,SL,Waargh Banner
Ch,Twin Shoota
Ch,Twin Shoota
Painboy (originally a Mek with KFFP) with orderly

You will notice that certain vital things are missing, like a Bosspole and at least one PK. This is because they ALWAYS tool about the battlefield in a trukk with a Warboss in Mega Armour. Making the troops, and the best objective holding unit I can think of.

Not properly optimised, but in about 13 years The Krew have rarely let me down. Long term plans are to give them a couple of Bosspoles and Rokkits, plus a Skorcha and some Big Choppas.

The list I used worked good enough for me to field 2 squads w them:
cybork on all

painboy
pk WB
pk BP eavy armour
BC
BC, eavy armour
ch
ch, eavy armour

cheap, 7 man allocating the 3 4+ saves to those applicable for max saves

but it is still a 300pt squad

Whatever you do, you need at least 2 power klaws