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I tried the concentrated shoota boyz thing (might even have been on your suggestion, kooooaei) with Battlewagons, since having the power of 40 shoota boyz in one wagon seemed like a good idea.

Short story: It's not. Burna wagon can be shut off by assaulting it (no overwatch for passengers) and twenty burnas simpöy don't do enough damage to justify their points. They bounce off most dangerous things (stuff they are supposed to kill) and get killed way to easily. The few things they do excel at killing would get clobbered by a unit of boyz with nobz anways.

So, if you are looking for a unit with same AP close combat attacks, use nobz with powa stabbas.

Yeah, that's a concept that doesn't work currently. Not much they can do for points.
Doesn't mean it won't work if burnas ger a significant point reduction alongside a trukk or wagon.
A trukk with 12 burnas costs around 250 pts. Now if it goes down to 160, it becomes much more viable with clan rules and strategems.

Bummer! I'm already building some kommando burnaz and liked the idea of fire-men (fire-grotz?) driving around in a looted firetruck, but having replaced the water spray with a FIRE spray!

It sez "FIRE" right dere on da side, boss, so we filled up da tanks wit burny stuff!

Well we don't know how codex changes. Unlike the hyperbole they don't need to be 0 pts to be worth it.

Without mathing it out, I'd say 8 points for a burna feels about right - assuming pyromaniacs doesn't get some useful rule replacement.

8 is unlikely. But that's probably about right currently. There is just no niche for them. I'd like to have burna upgrades for boyz for about 4-5 pts though. 10-11 pts for a burna boy in a mob of boyz feels about right.

Does everyone suspect that Big Guns will no longer be an option in the codex? I've always enjoyed the zzap guns myself and mek guns are fun but pretty different. I think you actually pay more in dollars per gun than you do in points as well.

Biker HQs will most likely be gone as well. Are we losing anything else from the index? I already miss my Grot Bomb Launchas and Mega-Dred, it seems a shame to lose even more unit options. Last time around we lost scarboys and 'ardboys, correct?

Enough with the negatives, besides the buggies, what other fun tools are we expecting?

Nuck Fewton wrote:
Does everyone suspect that Big Guns will no longer be an option in the codex? I've always enjoyed the zzap guns myself and mek guns are fun but pretty different. I think you actually pay more in dollars per gun than you do in points as well.

Biker HQs will most likely be gone as well. Are we losing anything else from the index? I already miss my Grot Bomb Launchas and Mega-Dred, it seems a shame to lose even more unit options. Last time around we lost scarboys and 'ardboys, correct?

Enough with the negatives, besides the buggies, what other fun tools are we expecting?

I hope not, but given that the big gun models are no longer on the website (at least for Canada) and they were in metal, I wouldn't be surprised if they were just a legacy index choice post-codex release. It doesn't help that there's a butt ton of 3rd party models for them that only encourages GW to avoid keeping them updated. Hopefully they make the other Mek Gun variants besides the KMK worth taking to compensate, I would love to have a reason to take the smasha gun or bubblechukka over a KMK.

While I'm perfectly ok with the re-introduction of 'ardboyz, I think I would prefer the suggestion someone made of making it a pre-game stratagem of some sort rather than something you spend points on. I think the balance is very difficult to strike. If the 4+ save is too expensive, it will never be taken (I remember when it costed 4 points per boy and was limited to one unit in the 4th edition codex, totally worthless, never bothered with it). But if it's too cheap of an upgrade then it just becomes the new baseline for orks. I want it to be an interesting option or sidegrade. Maybe something where the points scaled to mob size? So for a trukk boy mob of 10-12 orks or a specialist squad it could be cheap as chips, but trying to make a mob of 30 boyz 'ard would be disproportionately expensive and not cost-effective. Might give small squads a better niche.

The above reasons are also why I'm not super keen on skarboyz being introduced. I think nobz and boyz already run into the issue of being too similar to the point that its easy to do the math and figure out which one is strictly better from a points-efficiency perspective. Nobz at least have the option for lots of specialist melee equipment for smashing hard targets that boyz cant get, but I don't see how you could really give skarboyz a statline that is somewhere between nobz and boyz without making them either clearly better or worse than one or both datasheets in terms of points-efficiency.

Nuck Fewton wrote:
Does everyone suspect that Big Guns will no longer be an option in the codex? I've always enjoyed the zzap guns myself and mek guns are fun but pretty different. I think you actually pay more in dollars per gun than you do in points as well.

Biker HQs will most likely be gone as well. Are we losing anything else from the index? I already miss my Grot Bomb Launchas and Mega-Dred, it seems a shame to lose even more unit options.

Nob bikers might be gone, as will a lot of weapon options for vehicles that don't come in the box.

Last time around we lost scarboys and 'ardboys, correct?

Scarboys were already missing from 4th edition codex. We lost quite a few upgrades when going to 8th, 'ard boyz was one of them. They have not been a separate unit since 4th edition, but an armor upgrade.

Enough with the negatives, besides the buggies, what other fun tools are we expecting?

We have rumors for both a Mek Shop and a new Thrakka model. Neither is confirmed in any way though.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Unfortunately, if you're inside a vehicle you don't get to use the ammo runts re-rolls IRRC, since they're not on the actual table and thus unable to use their abilities (similar to how auras don't pop out of vehicles). So tankbustas would still be better. Interesting alternative though.

Ammo runts work perfectly fine inside transports. The only abilities that do not work from inside transport are those that require you to measure to or from the embarked model or those which require the model to be on the table. Ammo runt are neither.

Are you 100% on that? How about command point farming skills, I’m pretty sure they don’t work from transports?

 Marklarr wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Unfortunately, if you're inside a vehicle you don't get to use the ammo runts re-rolls IRRC, since they're not on the actual table and thus unable to use their abilities (similar to how auras don't pop out of vehicles). So tankbustas would still be better. Interesting alternative though.

Ammo runts work perfectly fine inside transports. The only abilities that do not work from inside transport are those that require you to measure to or from the embarked model or those which require the model to be on the table. Ammo runt are neither.

Are you 100% on that? How about command point farming skills, I’m pretty sure they don’t work from transports?

Those had IIRC statement "as long as X is on board" which models in transport don't fit as they aren't on board(they got to another dimension)

Got my ass kicked out by necrons yesterday which wasn't surprising since I took fun casual list of 2 battlewagons+2 trukks filled with boyz and another trukk loaded up with meganobz, 2 grot squads, 4 KMK and dakka jet. Was up against warrior squad, 2 immortals, some destroyers, 3 doom ark's and tesserract vault. Yup yup. Not surprising I got beaten but much to my surprise my vehicles weren't totally wrecked instantly. Turn 1 only trukk was blown up(and that didn't help that I remembered ramshackle after he had fired first doom ark and denied going back to that). As he had advanced forward 3" disembark from BW and other trukk got infantry into charging range anyway. Here rule arqument came up. He claimed that I couldnt' charge immortals due to them covering under the tesserract vault(and said he had been told this way on tournaments) without charging the vault as well(with it's 20 S7 tesla shots). Umm...how? It's hovering so measure from hull or base right? Well hull is floating so high 1" from my bases won't be reached any time soon.

Anyway I caused pile of wounds though less than I had hoped and got unit vaporized with veil of darkness pulling squad of immortals that I had at least tagged with pile in.

Mega nobz got their transport shot and then charged by his warlord destroyer lord. Sliced my trukk(thank god ramshackle didn't save here) so I disembarked straight into combat and sliced and cut the lord apart and consolidiated toward another immortal unit. Lord then used strategem to come back alive with 1 wound. On my turn I decided to skip that and charged(and sliced for good) immortals(diiiiie!) while ~13 or so grots moved closer and shot at the warlord. 4 hits, 1 wound, one failed save, one dead necron lord. HA! Grots killed necron lord! Alas meganobz were vaporized by destroyers who promptly rolled 3 for every single damn damage roll. Sheesh.

Last unit of 20 boyz disembarked from battlewagon and charged the tesla immortals but as they had no mobub candinate left by then after overwatch casualties had no +1A and while I caused casualties they fell back and unit was vaporized by the tesserract vaults(20 S7 tesla shots is just rude).

At this point with 4 KMK's(that had only managed to cause 1 doom ark degrade. How many 1's and 2's I can roll for to wounds? I mean if I hit something 7 times I could expect to get at least ONE wound for opponent to save with 3+ to wound? Right?) and 2 grots of ~13 members(he had bombarded them with vault's powers a lot...) left we called it quits.

tneva82 wrote:
He claimed that I couldnt' charge immortals due to them covering under the tesserract vault(and said he had been told this way on tournaments) without charging the vault as well(with it's 20 S7 tesla shots). Umm...how? It's hovering so measure from hull or base right? Well hull is floating so high 1" from my bases won't be reached any time soon.
.

What does hovering have to do if you can charge it or not? It's not a flyer right? So it can be charged and attacked. Or am I missing something?

Gruxz wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
He claimed that I couldnt' charge immortals due to them covering under the tesserract vault(and said he had been told this way on tournaments) without charging the vault as well(with it's 20 S7 tesla shots). Umm...how? It's hovering so measure from hull or base right? Well hull is floating so high 1" from my bases won't be reached any time soon.
.

What does hovering have to do if you can charge it or not? It's not a flyer right? So it can be charged and attacked. Or am I missing something?

I could charge IT but I couldn't charge the immortals under the thing(but so tall my models could fit comfortably under and bases were well more than 1" from the hull) without charging the vault as well.

My understanding is that with hover rule saying you measure from hull or base and the hull being so far I would actually need to reach the base for close combat with the vehicle rather than end up several inches from the base with line measured being somewhere in empty space.

So in the end I charged the vault(soaking 20 tesla shots in overwatch) and used pile in to tag the immortals forcing at least the deep strike relic used for 1 use ability. My boyz vs vault were then piled up somewhat approximately(because the hull is floating well over their heads) and attacked from there. Caused like 9 wounds to the thing but not even enough to degrade it.

Just charging the immortals would have been better as half the tesla shots and easier target to kill. My boyz would have been vaporized by the vault anyway but could have at least got that unit dead.

You measure from your base to his hull. So, if he doesn't have it up front of immortals, you have really good odds of igboring it straight away.

That's what I thought as well but didn't want to start arquing too much. Thing is the hull is WAAAAAY above orks and immortals were closer to the base of the thing than edge of the cylinder of the vault.

 Marklarr wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Unfortunately, if you're inside a vehicle you don't get to use the ammo runts re-rolls IRRC, since they're not on the actual table and thus unable to use their abilities (similar to how auras don't pop out of vehicles). So tankbustas would still be better. Interesting alternative though.

Ammo runts work perfectly fine inside transports. The only abilities that do not work from inside transport are those that require you to measure to or from the embarked model or those which require the model to be on the table. Ammo runt are neither.

Are you 100% on that? How about command point farming skills, I’m pretty sure they don’t work from transports?

Yes, 100%. All CP farming abilities, traits or relics require the model to be on the board, so models in deep strike reserve or transport can't farm CP.

tneva82 wrote:

Got my ass kicked out by necrons yesterday which wasn't surprising since I took fun casual list of 2 battlewagons+2 trukks filled with boyz and another trukk loaded up with meganobz, 2 grot squads, 4 KMK and dakka jet. Was up against warrior squad, 2 immortals, some destroyers, 3 doom ark's and tesserract vault. Yup yup. Not surprising I got beaten but much to my surprise my vehicles weren't totally wrecked instantly. Turn 1 only trukk was blown up(and that didn't help that I remembered ramshackle after he had fired first doom ark and denied going back to that). As he had advanced forward 3" disembark from BW and other trukk got infantry into charging range anyway. Here rule arqument came up. He claimed that I couldnt' charge immortals due to them covering under the tesserract vault(and said he had been told this way on tournaments) without charging the vault as well(with it's 20 S7 tesla shots). Umm...how? It's hovering so measure from hull or base right? Well hull is floating so high 1" from my bases won't be reached any time soon.

Anyway I caused pile of wounds though less than I had hoped and got unit vaporized with veil of darkness pulling squad of immortals that I had at least tagged with pile in.

Mega nobz got their transport shot and then charged by his warlord destroyer lord. Sliced my trukk(thank god ramshackle didn't save here) so I disembarked straight into combat and sliced and cut the lord apart and consolidiated toward another immortal unit. Lord then used strategem to come back alive with 1 wound. On my turn I decided to skip that and charged(and sliced for good) immortals(diiiiie!) while ~13 or so grots moved closer and shot at the warlord. 4 hits, 1 wound, one failed save, one dead necron lord. HA! Grots killed necron lord! Alas meganobz were vaporized by destroyers who promptly rolled 3 for every single damn damage roll. Sheesh.

Last unit of 20 boyz disembarked from battlewagon and charged the tesla immortals but as they had no mobub candinate left by then after overwatch casualties had no +1A and while I caused casualties they fell back and unit was vaporized by the tesserract vaults(20 S7 tesla shots is just rude).

At this point with 4 KMK's(that had only managed to cause 1 doom ark degrade. How many 1's and 2's I can roll for to wounds? I mean if I hit something 7 times I could expect to get at least ONE wound for opponent to save with 3+ to wound? Right?) and 2 grots of ~13 members(he had bombarded them with vault's powers a lot...) left we called it quits.

Sounds like he was cheating on the hull thing, If you're not within 1 inch of the hull, you're not in combat with it. If he wants to argue it's too high up and hte hull counts as lower, don't let him place his dudes under there.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, you can't disembark within 1" of an enemy. So when you say you disembarked into combat with his lord, I don't think you can do that.

ManTube wrote:
While I'm perfectly ok with the re-introduction of 'ardboyz, I think I would prefer the suggestion someone made of making it a pre-game stratagem of some sort rather than something you spend points on. I think the balance is very difficult to strike.

Spoiler:

If the 4+ save is too expensive, it will never be taken (I remember when it costed 4 points per boy and was limited to one unit in the 4th edition codex, totally worthless, never bothered with it). But if it's too cheap of an upgrade then it just becomes the new baseline for orks. I want it to be an interesting option or sidegrade. Maybe something where the points scaled to mob size? So for a trukk boy mob of 10-12 orks or a specialist squad it could be cheap as chips, but trying to make a mob of 30 boyz 'ard would be disproportionately expensive and not cost-effective. Might give small squads a better niche.

The above reasons are also why I'm not super keen on skarboyz being introduced. I think nobz and boyz already run into the issue of being too similar to the point that its easy to do the math and figure out which one is strictly better from a points-efficiency perspective.

Spoiler:

Nobz at least have the option for lots of specialist melee equipment for smashing hard targets that boyz cant get, but I don't see how you could really give skarboyz a statline that is somewhere between nobz and boyz without making them either clearly better or worse than one or both datasheets in terms of points-efficiency.

I can see your points about points efficiencies and units being difficult to differentiate. I think they are valid.

I like having 'Ardboyz and Skarboyz, more for flavor than anything else. I don't mind some redundancy in units. That might mean that between two units that mostly do the same job will always be a little more efficient and therefore that's all we'll see in cutthroat tournament lists. That doesn't actually bother me that much as while one unit will probably always be slightly more efficient than the other, I think it's totally reasonable to say they could be balanced enough that taking the slighty less efficient one won't be totally crippling your army. (Maybe I shouldn't be bringing this up in the competitive thread, since it is more of a casual mindset.)

As far as Skarboyz go, something I've been thinking about for a while is how GW seems to be pushing Power Level and how Nobz are one of the units that doesn't work well with it. A nob with a Slugga & Choppa is relatively cheap. A nob with a Killsaw, Kombi-Skorcha, Ammo Runt and Cybork Body is very expensive, but has the same Power Level cost as the Slugga & Choppa nob.

I was thinking they might be able to bring back Skarboyz and fix the PL problem with Nobz by splitting the Nobz unit into Nobz as we know them now, and Skarboyz which use the Nobz models but are limited to using Sluggas & Choppas for the most part.

If two units fulfill the same role, one is simply obsolete.

Now, if they fulfill almost the same role, it becomes a matter of taste which one to pick. I really enjoy this about Death Guard. At non-competitive levels I can have a Helbrute, Blight Hauler, Plagueburst Crawler, Predator or Defiler for shooting enemy tanks. All of them fit roughly the same role, but at the same time each one has an advantage the others don't have: Helbrute can move and shoot at 3+, Blight Haulers are very durable, mobile and provide cover to nearby infantry but only work well when fielded in triplets, Plagueburst Crawler is night indestructible but only hits on fours and get punished for movement, Predator has long range but low durability, Defiler is a jack of all trade, needs CP to work properly, but can tear and arm off a knight in combat.

This is how it should be. If Scarboyz were re-introduced they should have some function that overlaps with boyz, nobz or kommandoz, but also something that makes them worth taking over the other units. Anything is wasted design time.

Huzzah for wasted design time! May you all break your backs under the weight of a dozen flavorful but reduntant ork books half full of obsolete but fun units!

I'm kidding, of course, but only halfway. I would definitely prefer everything to have its own use and not be redundant, but I'd rather have redundancy than have things be cut.


Did anyone have a chance to try massed mid-toughness multi-wound models? I know there was some talk about combining KMKs and MANz Missiles after the CA points drops, but I don't know if it was actually attempted. I would guess that the overpriced Trukks would really make the list struggle, but I was still curious to hear how it went. I've got plenty of Meganobz and Trukks, but not enough Mek Gunz.

It would still be bad. Meganobz are softer than boyz considering costs(and doubly more now with knights in town) and don't even hit that hard for points. All you do is give excelent targets for enemy multi damage weapons.

Yeah 5 mega nobz and warboss carved through necron immortals nicely for me. So would have 30 boyz and warboss and cheaper and tougher as well. They then died.

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
Did anyone have a chance to try massed mid-toughness multi-wound models? I know there was some talk about combining KMKs and MANz Missiles after the CA points drops, but I don't know if it was actually attempted. I would guess that the overpriced Trukks would really make the list struggle, but I was still curious to hear how it went. I've got plenty of Meganobz and Trukks, but not enough Mek Gunz.

I tried a few times with fliers, kannons/lobbas, kanz, nob bikers, koptas, trukks and battlewagons in varying combinations. The result is almost always the same, you get too few wounds for your points end up getting tabled by turn two.

With a new codex and less points on all units involved I could see this becoming viable (especially with the new buggies in the mix), but not at the current point costs.

MAN missiles in general don't work anymore because MANz don't deal enough damage. There is little use for a suicide unit that can't take out a tank reliably.

I was thinking of ways to give the Trukk more survivability and thought about changing Ramshakkle to:

"Roll a D6 each time this model suffers damage from an attack that has a Damage characteristic of more than 1. On a roll of 2+, reduce the damage caused by the attack to 1. On a roll of 1, double the damage caused by the attack"

What do you think?

That would be frankly ridiculous. You are talking about making trukks take ~6 wounds from VOLCANO CANNON to take out. It becomes way too effective the more damage it gets. Against D2 it's basically 25% damage reduction, almost 40% vs D3 etc...

Trukk doesn't need to be super tough. It needs to be bigger. And 12 orks should be actually useful.

The trukk is already more durable per points than a battlewagon. Let that sink in.

Most people have stated that they would be fine with a trukk that has a buggy profile if it would cost half it does now.

The main issue with the trukk is not durability, but the huge cost it adds to the unit inside, making any potential passenger completely inefficient.

Trukk might be more durable than BW but it doesn't need to be tough enough that it can survive shadowsword's main gun in average...

But, but, according to the internet, every vehicle gets shot by a shadowsword turn 1!

 Jidmah wrote:
But, but, according to the internet, every vehicle gets shot by a shadowsword turn 1!

Pretty much everything does if it doesnt' have 3++. But thing is trukk with that suggestion would have BETTER than 3++. Basically 2++ vs any D5 or better weapon...(technically only bit better than 4++ but that's because the 1 would be ridiculously high overkill)

Start handling out 2++'s like candies and sure shadowsword doesn't kill things. Is that really good for game? Do you want trukk to have that?

tilds wrote:
I was thinking of ways to give the Trukk more survivability and thought about changing Ramshakkle to:

"Roll a D6 each time this model suffers damage from an attack that has a Damage characteristic of more than 1. On a roll of 2+, reduce the damage caused by the attack to 1. On a roll of 1, double the damage caused by the attack"

What do you think?

Your solution is to make a trukk better than a land raider? Christ that's some overkill