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Hey Guys and Gals
I was hoping for a little tactical advice for a noob in how I should run my units formations.
Basically had my first game the other week and lost, got a lock-in at my LFGS this friday and would like to win some games (who doesnt ).
I am running:

1500pts
Big mek - KFF
Wazzdakka/or warboss on bike
5x Nob bikers
2x Battle wagons
19x shoota boys in one
5x burnas in the other with another 15x boys
12x boys in trukk

This list is mainly built up from simply what I have, I can bring more boys if needed.
My thought tactics wise was that id run the two BW's side by side up the middle with the trukk behind and bikes at the side. Perhaps bringing the bikes in front? to block los? although with front armour 14 I should be ok I guess.
Tank shock, and get into combat ASAP, using wazzdakka either solo to tank hunter rear armour (with his turbo boost and still being able to shoot his Str 8 cannons -pew pew) Keep the flamers in the trukk to roll around and flame stuff.

My first game I had a foot slog army which sorta just got blasted of the table :( - any advice would be greatly appreciated. Hopefully il get to play lots of different forces through the night and get a victory here and there!
Solar

Solar Shock wrote:
Hey Guys and Gals
1500pts
Big mek - KFF
Wazzdakka/or warboss on bike
5x Nob bikers
2x Battle wagons
19x shoota boys in one
5x burnas in the other with another 15x boys
12x boys in trukk

Unfortunately you can't have two units in the same transport, so that's a no go. The only time you can do that is if it's an Independent Character joined to a unit.

Generally speaking, I think your tactic is pretty solid. Blast across the table and get into close combat ASAP. I would personally use the Warboss as a regular Warboss on a bike along with the Nobs, since such a unit is dead hard. Don't forget to upgrade one of them to a Painboy and give them all Cybork Bodies! Feel No Pain is a fantastic extra save to have. If you keep a Big Mek in the one Battlewagon then any mob or vehicle even partially within 6" of anywhere on that Battlewagon gets the 5+ cover save, so there's no reason to put the bikes in front. Run them up alongside the Battlewagons as an extra threat to fire at - 5 bikernobs and a Warboss can soak up a tremendous amount of firepower.
One thing to keep in mind is that while Battlewagons with Deffrollas are very, very fun to Tank Shock with (and one of your best tools against AV14 like Land Raiders), you can't Tank Shock and disembark in the same turn. So you'll have to make a choice when you get close enough of doing one or the other. Another thing with Battlewagons is that when they blow up they'll cause Str 4 hits on everybody inside, so you are liable to lose half of your 20-ork mob in one go. For that reason I don't like to use them as transports for regular boyz mobs - but it's probably still better than footslogging. You could perhaps upgrade the 20 boys to 'Ard Boys.

Excellent advice above. If you run the Mek with the Burnas, he can take one too although it is pricey, considering a Klaw is only 20% more.

The Regular BikerBoss is Str 10, has an extra attack with AS and makes your Nobz troops. For this list it's a no-brainer over Whazdakka. Whaz works with making regular bikes troops which are no worth it IMHO. Considering everyone is getting point cost reductions, they will probably be worth it in the next codex coming soon (6 months?).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
BTW it is also my humble opinion that a person learns more when they lose than they win. Focus on learning something every game, win or lose.

excellent advice guys! thanks I can see all your points. tbh I like wazdakka simply fluff wise but good point about the differences between the two. At this points cost and with the units I have the perks of making a unit of nobs troops is pretty arbitrary? as I am not hitting the 3 elites slot max anyways? but the extra PK attack on the warboss should be good at the moment I have with him 1 pain boy 2 with Bchoppas and 2 PK's, so A very nasty unit indeed, expensive too, but with T5 and FnP I am hoping I wont take too many casualties before im krumping stuff in close combat.

I shall then indeed change the 19x boys with the Bigmek to 'ard boys and I think in the other battlewagon I shall take another squad of boys as I dont have enough burnas to max it out.

Then in the trukk I may bring some meganobs, although a trukk is likely to get wrecked and then they gota walk :(

Perhaps I should stick with just boys for the moment, as I dont have enough meganobs to max the BW transport (unless it is worthwhile taking 6 meganobs in a BW over 20 boys?) Although with meganobs id have very few orks on the field, and I think more bodies probably is more forgiving tactics wise

I think the plan will be to disembark into combat (as I can assult out of an open-topped vehicle - I think) and then roll around tank-shocking. Unless ofc I have a tank in front of me and nothing worth assulting with boys.

It is indeed very true that you learn more when you lose. Especially to tau shooting I learnt not to be stindgy with my movement distance and make those 6" count! (as the guy commented on how many moves it took me to get across the board and I was prefering to go less over more, as I didnt want to appear to cheat!)

I also learnt that cover is my best friend! and more grots in the grot shield! Was a fantastically fun game, even if 90% of it was me moving my horde slowly across the board

You can indeed assault out of an open-topped vehicle, so never buy the 'ard case upgrade

I find that Meganobz work in two ways: Either you take them as a 3-man throw-away "MANz missile" in a trukk aimed squarely at something squishy, which is cheap enough at roughly 160 points and much too dangerous to ignore for your opponent, or with a Mega-Armored Warboss in a Battlewagon. The problem is that they only have leadership 7, so if you invest a significant amount of points in them they really, really need that Warboss and his bosspole to avoid running off the table. Regular nobz thankfully don't have that problem as they can buy the bosspole themselves.

Other than that, the perk of making your bikernobz Troops is that they then are scoring. And since they can zip around the table quite fast and are hard to kill, they are excellent for grabbing objectives.

ahh ok I see. So with a biker bos I actually gain a lot more versatility with the bike unit. The MANz missile does sound like a really enjoyable setup. I think ive seen that in a battle report actually, although he got lucky with ramshackle and literally drove straight into a vindicator Il possibly bring that then That leaves me 4 reasonably high priority targets. haha yeh actually i look forward to that and seeing how it plays out

Thanks guys, you've helped me trim the edges and I definitely feel like im gona have some sweet battles.

what loadouts are you giving the battlewagons? I'm seeing some reasonable anti-tank holes in your list, and the last thing you want to do is be killing a transport in the close-combat phase. tanks are fine to CC to death, but transports usually have guys inside just itching to flame/shoot/charge your mob right off the board. deffrollas and rokkits work in this regard, and personally I've found that 4 rokkits and a kannon on a wagon works wonders against fliers - with a bit of luck you'll get 1-2 hits (it generally works that way, mathhammer be damned) and the S8 is a real treat for bringing down those low armour fliers. I'd also recommend a home objective sitter, as your list is revolving around charging forwards (as one would expect of orks!). do the shootaboys have any bigger guns? i'd add rokkits there too for maximum flexibility & the ability to splat space marines without giving them a save. lootas will always be recommended, and they do work, they're brilliant at killing fliers and amazing if parked in a bunker-wagon with 4 big shootas for maximum survivability!

Both kannon and rokkits are AP3 though, so even if you do hit a flier once per turn, you are not that likely to actually take it down - not to mention that due to weapon placement on the battlewagon model, you can usually only fire three rokkits at the same time.
Considering that you are spending 80 points across two battlewagons for that weapon loadout, you might as well get a unit of lootaz instead.

Sadly I dont have time to build a squad of lootas (although it is next on my unit list), But I do see my anti-flyers problem Well lucky for me my battlewagons are both conversions/scratchbuilds, so weapon positioning is changeable/mostly front centred. Il consider taking rockets instead of big shootas, but my current BW load out was simply:
Deffrolla, Kannon, Big shoota.
With the Kannon for defensive shots while moving up and the str8 shot once ive unloaded and the big shoota to prevent a weapon destroyed taking the kannon/and or getting an immobilised from having no weapons.

That's fine, just be aware that a grumpy opponent or TO might have an issue with your battlewagon being "better" than the official model - even thought an additional 10 points BS2 rokkit is hardly going to have an impact on most games

 Jidmah wrote:
That's fine, just be aware that a grumpy opponent or TO might have an issue with your battlewagon being "better" than the official model - even thought an additional 10 points BS2 rokkit is hardly going to have an impact on most games

haha yeh ive been careful to keep the size of it to the same dimensions etc, but everyone at my local store seems friendly enough not looking to play no grumpy fools realised ive got a load of boys with converted big shootas that i might take to stand in as lootas for the evening, what target priorities should I have with them? As obviously they can have an incredible amount of shot output, but with BS2 and such I imagine I am wanting to use them more as anti-light vehicles and not against troops? perhaps deal with those transports I dont want to CC?

I also have a couple deffcoptas, scout, and hope to pop some rear armour early on? combined with the MANz missle draw the fire away from my battlewagons?

Lootaz are good at killing light vehicles (up to AV12), monstrous creatures and light infantry (4+ armor or worse). They are mediocre at taking out flyers, AV13 and TEQ. They aren't good at taking out MEQ, units with better saves than 2+ (FNP or rerolls), units of multi-wound models or artillery.

Basically the more dangerous it is, and the better you are at killing it, the more deffgun ammunition should fly in its general direction.

As for the koptaz, a single rokkit isn't likely to destroy a vehicle - even if you hit rear armor. The most likely result is taking off a hullpoint with no lasting effect, and your deffkopta dies of lead poisoning next turn. I've found a more efficient way to use them is to run them along with your army. Next to a mob of boyz, a battlewagon or a trukk they are basically no threat at all, making it more likely to survive. A deffkopta in your front lines can have many uses - of course, you can still shoot vehicle, but you can also draw overwatch for one of your charging units (2W/T5/4+ is pretty tough), tarpit a strong shooting unit like pink horrors, devastators or fire warriors for multiple turns or just get in the way of a counter-charge unit. A GK player will really start cursing at you, when his GKT have to move around the whole flying base +1" to break his henchmen out of combat. He might also opt to charge the kopta, which basically gives you another two rounds of combat to wreck havoc in his lines.

 Jidmah wrote:
A deffkopta in your front lines can have many uses - of course, you can still shoot vehicle, but you can also draw overwatch for one of your charging units (2W/T5/4+ is pretty tough), tarpit a strong shooting unit like pink horrors, devastators or fire warriors for multiple turns or just get in the way of a counter-charge unit. A GK player will really start cursing at you, when his GKT have to move around the whole flying base +1" to break his henchmen out of combat. He might also opt to charge the kopta, which basically gives you another two rounds of combat to wreck havoc in his lines.

Ok, so let me see if I am getting this right, what your saying is, if I have the deffcopta in front of a squad of charging boys the overwatch is shot at the deffkopta? Doing the same trick for a enemy shooting squad? Is this because the deffkopta isn't a flyer I assume? (its a jet bike yeh?) and therefore it still counts as blocking LOS? so I can charge past it, but in order to charge me they have to go around the base?

Sorry if im missing something really obvious But could you add a little detail? if its working how im thinking thats a awesome little trick to add to my know-how.

No, but multiple charges and overwatch are resolved by you declaring one at a time which unit is charging. Once you have declared the first unit charging your opponent then declares whether he wants to overwatch, and then after that's resolved you roll for charge distance. Only then do you declare the second unit's charge. So what people will sometimes do is use a particularly tough or throw-away unit to declare the first charge in order to get your opponent to 'waste' his overwatch before you charge with your more important unit. What Jidmah is suggesting (in part) is that you would declare a charge with the Deffkoptas first, since they are relatively hard to kill at T5 2W and 4+ save/5+ jink save.

The second part of his suggestion is that you might want to protect your boys, once they are locked in an ongoing assault, from being counter-assaulted by a more dedicated close combat unit that could wipe them out. You can do that by blocking the path between the orks and the unit with your Deffkoptas, since the attacking unit would then have to either go all the way around them to get in, or simply attack the Deffkoptas instead.

tgjensen wrote:
Snip.

Ah ok that makes perfect sense now, thanks

Never use wazzy over a bikerboss unless you are going all out bikes. He costs more and is vastly inferior to a bikerboss, he just makes warbikers troops (note that does not include nobs on bikes, as the bikerboss does)