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Greetings!

Due to GW's latest release I have retired my WHFB army and looking towards 40K instead. As always I go by looks when choosing an army so Orks became the natural choice for me =)

So far my army consist of 1 shoota boy! and his 9 buddies soon to be painted, but I would like to get some help developing a decent 1000p list. That is about the amount my friends currently have.

My own ideas are 2 groups of 20 boys equipped with shootas, since you obviously need some numbers playing Ork. Then I thought 3 kans with grotzookas could be nice, mostly because I like the models but they should be able to bring some pain unless they blow up instantly. Lastly a group of 10 tankbustas for my.. tankbusting needs.

There are quite a few point open after this and I have no clue what to take, apart from a warboss of course, any tips? or critique/feedback in general? The ones I play with are not that hardcore so I don't need a min-maxed list but would like to stay competitive. I would mostly play against space marines, imperial guards, tyranids and Cult Mechanicus.

Thanks for reading!

Staying competitive with Orks means you need a structured game plan for your green boyz. Orks are rather weak when you just throw whatever on the table so they need a proper game plan to survive the trek across the table and getting into the enemy's face. The general Ork strategies are
- Green Tide: 100+ boyz with a warboss made into a giant mob of foot slogging terror. Its a formation so you also take a small CAD to get a painboy to give everyone FNP. Its hard to pull this off in smaller games below 1250 as you won't have any anti air or ranged AV.

- Trukk spam: Lots of trukks with lots of boyz, tankbustas, meganobz, burna boyz, etc. Trukks are super fragile but they are cheap and get the boyz up field quickly into shooting/charging range. You spam lots of trukks to overwhelm the enemy so they can't kill all your trukks.

- Biker Gangs: Lots of warbikers riding around shooting and occasionally charging into the enemy. Warbikers are one of the most cost effective units in the Ork codex and they have a good mix of mobility, durability, shooting, and CC capability. Taking the forgeworld character Zhadsnark (its basically a warboss on a bike) lets you have warbikers as troops so you can flood the board with multiple smaller units of bikers (with objective secured if using a cad).


- Blitz Brigade: Using battlewagons to transport your Orks down field. The actual Blitz Brigade formation is 5 battlewagons but in low point games you would just take battlewagons in the heavy support slots. Being AV14 in the front they are incredibly hard to kill at range and each can hold 20 boyz. 2-3 battlewagons in a 1k point game is beyond the ability of any army (outside of list tailoring) to kill your wagons before they get close enough to unload your orky payload into close combat.

-Shooty Orks: This isn't really tournament capable but its an interesting way to play Orks. Lots of Mek guns, Lootas, Tankbustas, Flash Gitz, or other units that favor shooting over getting into CC. There is a formation that is 3 big meks, a weirdboy, and a warboss which lets you spam Shokk Attack Gun Big Meks which are incredibly powerful (if random) weapons. Basically you turn your army into a green..er version of the imperial guard.

-Dread Mob: All walkers all day. Ork walkers are rather lackluster in low numbers but they can do work well when they reach a critical mass. There is a Forge World detachment for them (you can get the rules for Free of the website) and a formation with the same name (not very good as it requires two gorka/morkanauts which are overcosted). The forge world rules are good as you can take killa kanz in the fast attack slot, deffdreads in the troop slots and in formations of 3 if so desired. Basically you bring so many walkers that they can't kill them fast enough and then the walkers can close the game and bring the hurt.

As if it wasn't made clear Orks are all about redundancy. If you want something done you throw a lot of orks at the problem until its dead. 1 ork is always bad but 20 are extremely deadly. Orks can't reliably hit anything with 1 shot so they tend to throw buckets of dice at the problem. When you want to survive getting across the battlefield you want as many of a similar thing to be going at the enemy. You can't rely on any one single unit (other than the mighty green tide) to make it across the field without being killed (its not hard to focus down a single ork unit) but when you have mass redundancy then it doesn't matter if you lose a unit or two because you have 5 more to finish the job.

Only ten boyz right now? Getting a trukk could be a good start towards a logical army. Also, after games get bigger, you might use a trukk to carry a small support unit.

If you are going two units of twenty shoota boyz instantly. Consider a battlewagon or two in the near future. It gets you slowly moving towards having a blitz brigade. You can equip your battlewagon with four rokkits then supply your boyz with two more and have around 1 HP/turn damage towards light armor. Or you could take big shootas, which are nice to have on the last turn of the game.

If you want to do anything to win you probably will need tankbustas. Rerolling unsuccessful penetrating shots is a great way to really secure some damage after our poor to-hit rolls. Also, armor is everywhere all the time, and so are many shapes and sizes of MC which Tankbustas can also use melta bombs on. More importantly they cover the biggest weakness ork boyz have, which is the inability to really cause any damage to high T or high AV. With tankbustas and ork boyz you can handle all the extremes of the game and skirmish with the exceptions inbetween. Nothing worse than a 500 point game with a DA Land Raider in it and you brought Lootas for support.

Also of note is a box of ork boyz actually comes with 11 models. One of them is meant to be the nob. Make sure to give him a bosspole and a powerklaw.

But as Vankraken pointed out, Orks need a theme. You need to pick a preferred method with Orks and stick with that. From what it sounds like, you want to be a shooty ork. So You should get lootas, and a big mek with a shokk attack gun, and mek guns.

Killa Kanz can be fun and fluffy, but on their own they tend not to do much. I like your choice with the grotzookas as they are probably the best option. But Killa Kanz take up heavy support slots which are contested for by battlewagons, mek gunz, and lootas. Oh and Killa Kanz suffer a penalty if there is not a deff dread near them, and you guessed it, deff dreads also take up a heavy support slot.

Good luck with the competative part

seriously

Look up Waaaaaagh! Ghazghkull and get to know Ghazzy and his fluff. You can be both fluffy and competitive since he uses forces from all the Klans. Ghazzy is a tactical genius by human standards so if your opponant complains you aren't happily marching straight into the fire with nothing but choppas you can reply that they are Ghazzy's Boyz and know a ting or two.

Thank you for all the great replies! especially Vankraken for listing the different themes.

It sounds like I might start out shooty, but I will most likely try and get models to play some other way as well in the future. I read something about a wall of kans/dreads in front of boyz marching down the field. It sounded cool, I really like the models, so I'm just trying to see if they have a place without mass spamming them =) But maybe that is a tactic for some other edition, or just not good?

I haven't looked at the points but boyz, lootas, big mek and mek guns like Icculus suggested sounds like a decent start as well.

Kan wall was a 5th edition tactic back when vehicles didn't have hull points. Basically the Kanz would tank a ton of glances and not die and you could touch a kan with the edge of a KFF aura to give the entire unit a cover save. Now kanz are much worse than before, there is more high strength shooting out there which can devastate Kanz, KFF coverage is per model and not per unit, and Kanz die quickly to glances. Somebody at GW had a huge vendetta against Kanz so the 7th edition codex nerfed them hard for no reason. My actually army started out as a Kan wall but it became clear that Kanz in 6th/7th edition didn't stack up to what they use to be back in 5th edition. A Dread Mob with a wall of Deffdreads in the front and spanner boyz (unit of boyz with a mek that's unique to the Dread Mob) could be interesting as the AV12 deffdreads are much more durable and actually good in CC unlike Kanz. Warbikers can serve the same purpose of the wall (units behind the wall get cover from intervening models) but are much cheaper per model, can jink for a nice cover save, and in some ways are more durable than Kanz. They also have greater mobility so they can move out of the way easily to allow for a charge or break off to attack the flanks. (I hate to put down kanz but they really do suck despite being such cool looking models. They might be the worst unit in the Ork codex right now).

Its important to note that Orks are most definitely an assault army. They nearly all have assault weapons which means they can shoot and assault in the same turn. Shooty Ork armies focus on softening the enemy up before charging in to finish the job. Some units like Lootas, Mek Guns, Flash Gitz, and Tankbustas are quite effective in their damage output from range but its still good to have units like shoota boyz or warbikers that can be effective in both shooting and assault to clean up the weakened enemy. Battlewagons with a killkannon full of tankbustas, flash gitz, burnaboyz, or lootas are quick deadly for shooting and can keep those more valuable ranged orks safe from a lot of enemy fire. The Ork flyers like the Dakkajet or the Blitzabommer are decently good and a lot of fun to play.

Thank you once again!

I have now started to rethink my army and will skip the kans and get some other shooting goodies and probably a battle wagon.

I will most likely get some kans later just to paint them, but we'll see if they get any action =)

Taxim wrote:
Greetings!

Due to GW's latest release I have retired my WHFB army and looking towards 40K instead. As always I go by looks when choosing an army so Orks became the natural choice for me =)

So far my army consist of 1 shoota boy! and his 9 buddies soon to be painted, but I would like to get some help developing a decent 1000p list. That is about the amount my friends currently have.

My own ideas are 2 groups of 20 boys equipped with shootas, since you obviously need some numbers playing Ork. Then I thought 3 kans with grotzookas could be nice, mostly because I like the models but they should be able to bring some pain unless they blow up instantly. Lastly a group of 10 tankbustas for my.. tankbusting needs.

There are quite a few point open after this and I have no clue what to take, apart from a warboss of course, any tips? or critique/feedback in general? The ones I play with are not that hardcore so I don't need a min-maxed list but would like to stay competitive. I would mostly play against space marines, imperial guards, tyranids and Cult Mechanicus.

Thanks for reading!

Missile spam and their docs are good I hear. As Tau I've been unimpressed with two different ork opponents. I brought my B army list and tabled him on my turn 4. Two times. Imagine what my A or Cheese list would do. My general strategy. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xproo5_megas-xlr-all-the-missiles_fun