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I'm currently working on an Ork army with my sister, and we were wondering what to get next.

We have:
.The Black Reach set
.Ghazskull
.3 Killa Kans
. A trukk
. Strom boyz and wazdakka
. Some extra boyz

Another Black reach set perhaps? Those orks are perfect for conversions and can be found cheaply on ebay.

As you already have killa kanz, you should continue down that road. Get more kanz, and a KFF mek(or two).

When you've done that, loota and burna boxes would be you next steps. Keep in mind that you can use torsos from boyz boxes to buid all the models in that box, rather than just lootaz or burnaz. As the mek is probably the worst model in the codex, just don't build it.

Boyz, boyz and moar boyz.

Oh, and more Killa Kanz too! They play well together. Do like Jidmah suggests and put them with a KFF Big Mek to protect the Kanz, the Boyz behind the Kanz get a cover save then too, and you march up the board. Fun times.

Since you've started with Kanz, I'd steer clear of Battlewagons or more Trukks unless you are looking to take your army in a totally different direction.

I'd say it depends on what point level you most commonly play at. If you play at 1500, then most definitely build up the Kan Wall by getting more Kans and 2 KFF Big Meks.

If you're playing at 2k, I suggest getting Battlewagons. You also need a KFF Big Mek, so no matter what route you go, you should buy that model.

Or go Speed Freeks, and just keep buying Bikes and Trukks and Boyz. And stormboyz.

What about deff dreads instead of more killa kanz?

A fun combo I've been running lately is 2 Deff Dreads (3 DCCW and a skorcha on each) and 3 Killa Kanz with grotzookas. They've proven surprisingly resilient and very effective when run up the battlefield in one big group as their numbers allow them to avoid being tarpitted by weaker, more numerous units and they force your opponent to deal with them instead of the mobs of trukk boyz rushing up to their lines.

marauder6272 wrote:A fun combo I've been running lately is 2 Deff Dreads (3 DCCW and a skorcha on each) and 3 Killa Kanz with grotzookas. They've proven surprisingly resilient and very effective when run up the battlefield in one big group as their numbers allow them to avoid being tarpitted by weaker, more numerous units and they force your opponent to deal with them instead of the mobs of trukk boyz rushing up to their lines.

Just curious - I was considering a build like you're describing - do you have any trouble dealing with highly mobile units or kiting tactics? What do you do against units with longer ranges (48"+)? How long does it take you to close distance into Rokkit range and how many casualties do you sustain? How long does it take for you to close distance into DCCW range and how many casualties do you sustain?

Thanks.

Dredds tend to be surprisingly resilient, especially with Armour Plates- same thing with Kans, though they get it naturally.

TedNugent wrote:

marauder6272 wrote:A fun combo I've been running lately is 2 Deff Dreads (3 DCCW and a skorcha on each) and 3 Killa Kanz with grotzookas. They've proven surprisingly resilient and very effective when run up the battlefield in one big group as their numbers allow them to avoid being tarpitted by weaker, more numerous units and they force your opponent to deal with them instead of the mobs of trukk boyz rushing up to their lines.

Just curious - I was considering a build like you're describing - do you have any trouble dealing with highly mobile units or kiting tactics? What do you do against units with longer ranges (48"+)? How long does it take you to close distance into Rokkit range and how many casualties do you sustain? How long does it take for you to close distance into DCCW range and how many casualties do you sustain?

Thanks.

Mobile enemies can be tricky, so you either have to make use of available terrain, pray to Mork their guns don't land too many hits, or trust in your trukk boyz to reach them and tie them up. The most important bit of this is to keep moving, so running the dreads up every turn instead of shooting can get them into CC by turn 3 typically, with decent rolling.
Though it really depends on who you're facing....I've had success with these guys against Imperial guard and chaos, mostly. Granted, one of the dreads is usually destroyed by turn 2, but that still leaves the 3 kans and 1 dread left almost untouched as, by turn 2, the trukk boyz are already choppa-deep in the enemy shooters. Oh, and if you also have a battlewagon or two in your army as well, you'll find they draw a tremendous amount of firepower away from the walkers (especially if those battlewagons are laden with nobz)

marauder6272 wrote:
Though it really depends on who you're facing....I've had success with these guys against Imperial guard and chaos, mostly. Granted, one of the dreads is usually destroyed by turn 2, but that still leaves the 3 kans and 1 dread left almost untouched as, by turn 2, the trukk boyz are already choppa-deep in the enemy shooters. Oh, and if you also have a battlewagon or two in your army as well, you'll find they draw a tremendous amount of firepower away from the walkers (especially if those battlewagons are laden with nobz)

Thanks, that helps...

particularly to dispel a popular notion on this forum that it is a bad idea to mix fast and slow with orky armies

Well...maybe sometimes. I'm anxious to start theorycrafting some more now that I have some more options

marauder6272 wrote:A fun combo I've been running lately is 2 Deff Dreads (3 DCCW and a skorcha on each) and 3 Killa Kanz with grotzookas. They've proven surprisingly resilient and very effective when run up the battlefield in one big group as their numbers allow them to avoid being tarpitted by weaker, more numerous units and they force your opponent to deal with them instead of the mobs of trukk boyz rushing up to their lines.

Why only 3 killa kans? If you take the deff dreads as troops because of the big mek, you can take 2 dreads with 9 killa kans.

Sovspot wrote:

marauder6272 wrote:A fun combo I've been running lately is 2 Deff Dreads (3 DCCW and a skorcha on each) and 3 Killa Kanz with grotzookas. They've proven surprisingly resilient and very effective when run up the battlefield in one big group as their numbers allow them to avoid being tarpitted by weaker, more numerous units and they force your opponent to deal with them instead of the mobs of trukk boyz rushing up to their lines.

Why only 3 killa kans? If you take the deff dreads as troops because of the big mek, you can take 2 dreads with 9 killa kans.

He must've meant 3 units of Kanz

because that's what I was thinking

Sovspot wrote:

marauder6272 wrote:A fun combo I've been running lately is 2 Deff Dreads (3 DCCW and a skorcha on each) and 3 Killa Kanz with grotzookas. They've proven surprisingly resilient and very effective when run up the battlefield in one big group as their numbers allow them to avoid being tarpitted by weaker, more numerous units and they force your opponent to deal with them instead of the mobs of trukk boyz rushing up to their lines.

Why only 3 killa kans? If you take the deff dreads as troops because of the big mek, you can take 2 dreads with 9 killa kans.

Monetary limitations, I'm afraid. I did just purchase 3 more kanz a couple days ago, and hopefully I'll be able to get some more next week. But yeah, I will eventually use a Kan wall, but for the moment, the units I was talking about have been quite effective

Big Mek with KFF and burna, then just get Battlewagons and Burna boyz!

TedNugent wrote:Thanks, that helps...

particularly to dispel a popular notion on this forum that it is a bad idea to mix fast and slow with orky armies

Well...maybe sometimes. I'm anxious to start theorycrafting some more now that I have some more options

While you're at it, you might as well try to dispel Newton's laws.

I have yet to see an army that would not have benefited more from just replacing the fast/slow elements with the opposite, rather than mixing them.

The only two arguments for mixing I have heard so far boil down to "Those are the models I own" or "I'm winning, it must be good.". The two-punch theory is a myth when it comes to orks. It's not like the opponent can dodge your first punch, so there is no reason at all to not make it as hard as possible. The entire ork army is based on the principle to get as much in the fight as possible, purposely counteracting that will just set you up for failure.

Consider this simple example:
You have 300 points, and want to beat up 2x 10 plain space marines with bolters.
For the sake of simplicity we can only buy slugga boyz and trukks /w rams.

Option 1:
Get 50 boyz, walk over there and crump them good. You will have to weather two round of shooting, one in rapid fire range, for an average of 20 casualties. In close combat the orks suffer 4 casualties, kill 9 marines. Next round orks suffer 3, kill 4. Then suffer 1, kill 3, and then go on to wipe the marines out with about 10 boyz left (60 points).

Option 2:
You put 12 boyz in a trukk and 30 are footslogging it. After one turn, your trukk is the only thing the marines can possibly shoot, causing 2 glances, one of them stopping the trukk dead in it's tracks(immobilized, wrecked or stunned). You then have to disembark your orks and do the same as above, except that you have 8 boyz less. The round of shooting that hit your trukk instead of your boyz would have cause 6 casualties. Obviously, there is potential for you losing much more in this scenario, as the trukk might explode and/or some marines might be able to shoot your orks after a forced disembark. Due to this, it is possible for the orks to even lose the fight.

Option 3:
You put 24 boyz in trukks and 12 are footslogging it. As above, one trukk gets stopped, the other reaches its target unhindered and locks at least 10 marines in close combat. The stopped orks get shot by the free marines and lose 6, then charge.
During the first round of combat, the marines kill 2 orks and lose 4, then kill another 1 and lose 2. When the other orks join combat, they take 3 casualties and then kill 5, the ones already in combat deal 1 more casualty. The last 8 marines kill another 2 orks before losing further four marines, and kill one more ork before getting wiped out. You then have 19 boyz and at least a trukk left(154 points), enough to weather an unfavorable explosion. However, you are in the danger of being counter-charged, which would result into 4-5 more casualties due to additional attacks and marines taking less casualties.

Option 4: You put 30 boyz in 3 trukks. Again, one trukk get's stopped, both marine squads are locked in combat by turn 2 and will never shoot the orks. 20 marines kill 4 orks, 16 orks kill 5 marines. 15 marines kill 3 orks, 13 orks kill 2 marines, stopped orks join. 13 marines cause 3 casualties, 13 orks kill another 3 marines, 7 charging orks kill 2. As above, the 8 marines kill three more orks before biting the dust. 17 boyz and two trukks left (182 points).

So while option 3 is already pretty good if the marines do not get to countercharge, option 4 is better. Of course, the KFF makes both option 1 and 4 more viable, as the army can stay together and benefit from the KFF everywhere. Option 2 and 3 get worse the more efficient the enemy is at shooting boyz (guardsmen, dire avengers, immortals).

This example also doesn't take into account powerklaws, which will obviously murder those marines - all the more reason to make sure that your reach combat and aren't wipoed out on your way there. If your army is moving at two speeds, the opponent is able to focus fire dangerous close combat weapons from the first wave, while ignoring the ones from the second wave. And orks are full of those, boyz, kanz, warbosses, deff dreads, burnaz and nobz are not really dangerous if they are outside of charge range, except maybe shoota boyz.

No one has mentioned Deffkopta's?
I own 11 of them and just push forward taking the wounds, the 11 of them can take 33 wounds and they deal a lot of damage, twin linked bigshoota which would incour 33 shots at strength 5 and if that hit 22 chaos terminators for example it wounds on a 3+ off the top of my head and that would kill chaos terminator using the mathematic law of probability, admitadly you don't have 11 deffcoptas or the points but if it was 6 deffcoptas (2 fast attack choices) twin linked rokkit launchas at strength 8 wounding on a 2+, 4 hit and 1 terminator wound die as the mathematical law of probability.

Killa kanz are great for their points but work even better in large group

I started off the same way with some trades and stuff laying around. Go with the advise of getting some more black reach sets. They are great for conversions (nobz) and pretty cheap to get hold of. Go with Kan Wall, you have it going so far. Pick up some big mek with KFF, can't go wrong.

KFF and 9 killa kans. Pefect cover for moving any horde of boys forward wanting to thump them hummies!

Big Mek kff, more boyz and trukks

I like the Kan wall Idea, could you please make a 1000 point list with decent saves etc?

There's actually a name for the "One-two PUNCH!" strategy for Orks. It's known as Gorka-Morka (one being the fast bit, one being the slow bit) and is actually used more oftem than you'd think, to great effect; though folks don't realize they're using it.

Snikrot and Kommanoes, suicide Koptas, Stormboyz, are all units that are often hitting, tieing up or destroying enemy units before the main bulk of your Waaagh!! gets going.

Or, if the 'slow' part of your army is made up of heavily armoured units- Killa Kanz, Deffdredds, Battlewagons, Boyz Blobs, while the fast portion is rilly, rilly fast- Bikers, Koptas, Trukks, then you can in fact run a fast-slow army well, as the fast units will be sent out to tie up anything that'd be able to shoot the slow stuff down.

That works only as long as the opponent isn't using any strategies like blocking, counter-charging(not the USR) or bubble wrapping. Just think imperial artillery with a power-blob around it or any marines spaming vehicles.

Because as soon as he is, your first wave is either busy beating sacrificial stuff or is getting crushed by counter-charge units. Then everything that could shoot your slow units dead proceeds to do so. Besides that, many units in the ork codex encourage staying together (kff, battlewagons, kanz), so why would you want to pull it appart?

I know a lot of competent ork players do well with gorka-morka style armies, but that's more testament to their skills than to the army. When fighting competent opponents(both in list building and playing) these armies lose out, simply because you brought a knife to a gunfight.

I really can't put my finger on why the theory isn't working as good in practice as it sounds, maybe it's because GW planned it that way(unlikely), or maybe it's because our codex is aging. Either way, you simply can't expect to beat all those powerful armies with half your army, even if you try it twice in one game.

I think part of it is that people don't play with those sorts of lists, and so they dont' have the experience needed with target picking, sped, or other factors that would cause losses. Also, it's always Bikers or Trukks or Kommandoes- granted Kommandoes aren't really something you can defend against, and so people do have successes with those, but if people tried using Stormboyz for this sort of thing (I think that's what that entry was really meant for, in the first place!) or larger mobs of Deffkoptas kitted for CC (wound shenanigans, etc.) there would be more success.

If your taking it one step at a time I'd simply say get more boyz, it gives you time to decide why style you want to play.
You can always just go green tide and field 180 boys (it sucks moving them) and it's a decent army by itself, in any other list you need support from boys.

Start off getting at least 2 full units of boys and go from there.(that's 58 boys and 2 nob leaders w bosspole and PK!)