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So you have this nice Shokk Attack Gun big mek model, well it's a high ap large blast weapon and isn't absurdly expensive. But where do you place him when you run like mostly trukk boyz and some battlewagons and lootas?

He can't be alone obviously.

If he's with Lootas he's forced to shoot what they shoot plus it's easy to make them run.

If he's in a vehicle he again has to shoot what the passengers shoot (frankly I don't even know if he can shoot while the vehicle is moving).

You could always have a minimum troop squad to stick him into for ablative wounds. But they run easily, so they need to have numbers, which would mean something like maybe 30 boyz sitting on your tableside objective. Is this the best option to place him into?

I always ran him with leftover slugga boys that were on an objective. Worked great, cheap, scoring and if he forced the unit to charge, deadly.

Any other unit tends to be a bad option. Lootas are priority targets and always shoot different targets than he shoots at, vehicles explode and wasting a battlewagon just for him is kinda dumb.

I stuck mine with a large mob of grots to keep costs down. With the Big Mek's Ld8 and a bosspole they are typically reliable enough to not run off.

I find him not super-useful but totally fun to play. There are generally 3 options for him to be used.
1. Grot mob 10-19 grots and a runthread in ruins - standart. they're pretty long-lived but can't do nothing if someone comes up to them.
2. Min shoota boyz squad with a bigshoota - cost a bit more than grots but can kick some 'eadz if needed and shoot further.
3. The most interesting option is to put sag mek with an artillery grot squad giving him t7 Making him most durable with cheap 3 pts t7 grot krew and you don't waste his retinue firepower. It might be hard to decide which arti unit to take - lobbas or kannonz. I'd go for lobbas cause from my experience they're way more useful than kannonz. However, they won't be scoring 5/6 of the time if you consider dat an issue. But if you take both grots and arti anywayz - put him in an arti unit (give him bosspole so you might not need a 10 pts runthread in an arti squad).

Must tell that first 2 options rely on a "who needs to shoot at that at all" type of survivability

Put him in a firestorm to remain backfield. It will keep him safe and help out with anti-air.

Kannonz? They could enjoy the ld8 and BP and their shooting profile wouldnt be as wasted sharing a shooting phase with the SAG then lootas firing with SAG.

These are some good ideas. I want to run him mostly for the potential, there's not a lot of stuff available to Orks that can simply kill anything even if it requires extraordinary luck.

Don't forget to give him an ammo runt. U'll be happy to have an opportunity to reroll his awful scatters espetially if you managed to get something useful for the str roll

I run my SAG Big Mek in a similar list. I usually just field him with a minimum size unit of grots. They rarely get shot at, but they will fold to just about anything in assault.