Heavy Armour to mitigate trukk and battewagon explosions but otherwise unnecessary.
More Lootas and more tankbustas will help you greatly. 12 Lootas and 3 Meks in a battlewagon fits nicely and if the battlewagon didn't get killed but lost some hull and weapons during your opponants turn 3 meks and
IWND from a grot rigger will restore that battlewagon to full power again. 9 Lootas and 3 Meks and you can fit em in a battlewagon that has the KillKannon upgrade for extra Str7 killiness in the form of a big pie plate.
Careful with trukks they pop easily, we mitigate this by bringing even more trukks. Some will explode some will make it through. Rams are important for trukks and battlewagons because it allows us to crash through ruins and other difficult terrain with a reroll and take an objective. Deff Rolla is not an option players use anymore because it now requires the other player to choose to do a death or glory and fail before the deff rolla does anything. I suppose it helps in the sense that no opponant will ever choose to do a death or glory against a vehicle with a deff rolla, they'll just fall back instead.
Shootas look different from sluggas when you put Orks together. Each box provides enough shootas, sluggas and choppas to make 10 boyz. The Shootas are the ones that are wielded with two hands, one hand is gripping under the barrel.
Tankbustas are fine using their ranged against lighter vehicles but against the big heavies and super heavies you might find them more reliable up close using their melta bombs. In the case of super heavies the explosion will most likely wipe out the tankbusta squad. This is fine since trading 65 points for something that cost your opponant hundreds of points is a great tradeoff but keep in mind that you probably won't have anymore tankbustas left afterwards. Bring an extra unit.
Actually this is the main truth about Orks. If you plan a strategy around some units. Bring an extra of each unit. Redundancy is needed for when one unit gets wiped you still have another unit to keep your strategy going. It's a 5 turn game (sometimes 6 or 7) representing a single short moment of battle within a much larger war so don't over do it with trying to come to the table with a full roster of tactics but focus on a couple tactical ideas and bring enough units to make sure you can make it happen in those short 5 turns.
Another thing about Orks to keep in mind is the sheer amoount of Wounds we can bring to the table. Current meta these days is a result of power creep.
Str 10/D with AP1/2 and low
rof is the flavour these days. Orks have become the anti metas as a result of this. I'll explain. I'll use an example that is small, unit vs unit, with some proper list building you can extrapolate from this for the bigger picture of a full size game. Imagine a full unit of Tactical Marines and a full unit of Boyz. Notice how much smaller the number of models and wounds are on the marine squad compared to the 31 wounds on a squad of 30 boyz. Marine bolters are rapid fire. 1 shot at full range 2 shots at half range. Not enough shots to deal with all those wounds, not all those shots are going to hit either. If you face an opponant who hasn't prepped for Orks and came to the table with high powered low
rof weapons instead of bringing weaker weapons with much much higher
RoF your opponant probably doesn't have enough
atks throughout the entire 5 turns to take out all the wounds you brought to the table. In this regard you can see how this game can become Math Hammer. Most players do tend to equip appropriately against horde armies but even then it's most likely still not enough
atks to stop your mobs from reaching them and getting stuck in as the Orks would say.
We can use the two
FOCs in the main rule book. Combined Arms Detachment and Allied Detachment. We also have an
FOC in the Ork Codex and another in the Waaaaagh! Ghazzghkull supplement. There's a formation in the Ork codex as well and a bunch of competitive ones in the supplement. I haven't picked up sanctus reach where the Red Waaaagh! happened so I haven't seen any of Grukks detachments and formations if he's got any.
Converting Ork models is fun and easy, hard to go wrong. Painting and Ork army on the other hand can be a challenge to your determinations and will power. Lots and lots of models because they are a horde army. Also if you want to make you stuff look weathered and chipped (I know I do) then you got lots and lots of detail work ahead of you. It's challenge in it's own right,
Here's a few paints I'll recommend from
GW to do some weathering;
Agrax Earthshade: Talent in a pot. Use this to add mud and dirt to your models.
Nuln Oil: Same idea as Agrax above but this is for metal parts you want to look oily and grimy.
Nihilakh Oxide: This makes the verdigris effect for brass/bronze. When those metals oxidize it's a bluish-green. paints like a shade.
Typhus Corrosion: To make a rust effect on the other metals which also paints like a shade.
Necron Compound: use this on raised edges/corners where paint can appear rubbed off and exposing metal.
Abbadon Black+Ironbreaker+Runefang Steel: can be used for paint chips painted in that order each smaller and within the previous.
Finally for weathering, depending on what you used to dry brush the base, you use that the feet and lower legs of foot sloggers and along tracks wheels and lowest spots of vehicles near the ground.
edit add: also read this thread, every post, it'll help biiiiiig time.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/643980.page
