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Just what the title says, are orks really that good at Close Combat?

Pros: Numbers, numbers in every way possible. your average ork boy has 2 attacks base + 1 for CC weapons and has furious charge making that 4 attacks per boy at S4. Thats pretty damned good.
Cheap: they are incredibly cheap and easy to field in huge numbers
Nobz: each boyz unit can take a nob with a powerklaw for 35pts extra. not bad.

Cons: your best close combat units are regular boys
They are only S3 so if they get charged or they don't wipe out there opponent during your initial charge then your down to S3 attacks which against MEQs means wounding on 5s, so you might have 3 times as many attacks as them but your only going to get on average 1 wound per 2 boyz.
Without the nob they are useless.
Mob rule kills your boys sometimes faster then the enemy.
no access to specialized weapons beyond 1 rokkit/BS per 10 boyz.
The entire army lacks an invul save in CC

Boys have three things going for them assuming they can make it to close combat, which is a general problem for all assault units

1. Cheap, at 6 points a model who cares how many die, you probably have plenty more, and they have decent toughness
2. Nob with a power klaw in the unit is still nasty and can get work done.
3. Weight of attacks, even at strength three that is a lot of attacks.

Personally, I'd say they were. I'll explain by trying to counter your cons on them. You say that being strength 3 after the initial charge will result in only 1 wound per 2 boyz. Having about 20 boyz means you are gonna kill most units. No invun save? It is a horde army, they are gonna die by the dozen. But you have so many it doesn't matter. To everything else, I would just say numbers. Pure, overwhelming numbers.

You have so many attacks its almost death by paper cuts for your enemy. This is probs the biggest buff you can get.

...yes? The trouble is, close combat isn't good.

They've got a split between cc and shooting, which some purer melee armies lack but they're doing better at cc than anyone bar Space Wolves currently. Which isn't saying much, because 90% of competitive armies are just shooting shooting shooting currently, with cc being "that thing deathstars with invisibility sometimes do".

I'd say Meganobz, Nob Bikers and Tankbustas tend to do just as well if not better in cc than boyz though. Boyz are severely limited ATM.

I have ork and sadly they are not good on melee

Your best melee unit arethe boys, but they dead like babies against ALL before attack.
Only the nob has some special weapon. And could be neutraliced by a good oponent.
No really "specialided" melee units or something unique of the army...pretty strange
The warboss is cool on paper, but then realiced no invulnerable is the death vs any other melee HQ of the game. Also only one option of weapon (klaw). Is a melee oriented HQ that must avoid melee oriented HQs........
A base S of 3 is terrible. When you dont erase the enemy on the assault the things start to become bad for you. No mention only S3 impacts from bikes.


Actually I see the ork army way better shooty oriented than close combat. In any case at the moment is one of the worst codex on a competitive way (but I love it, the ork army is supa cool if dont mind lose but have a fun game xD)

Boyz can do good work against a lot of targets. MEQs, terminators especially are in my experience at quite a disadvantage point-for-point against orks in melee.

You are right that boyz especially need the charge. The extra attack and extra strength works wonders.

Even so, it often times seems like the PK does the work of a dozen boyz, so much so that I'll often just go to the PK and only roll boyz as needed.

They start to break down against tough MCs, especially characters. Fear tests are murder on boyz, and just about any character that goes before I1 and isn't awful in CC will shred a nob with PK. Once the nob and PK is out of the picture, either by death or denying a challenge, the remaining boyz start to flail rather uselessly against high T, good save MCs, assuming they pass fear tests.

Dreadknights, for example, are basically unkillable by ork melee, or really by anything else ork, in my experience.

But to answer your original question - are boyz really good in close combat, the answer is yes.

If you can get them stuck in with decent numbers, if you charge, and if your nob doesn't get singled out and murdered in a challenge.

There's not a whole lot I can think of that's infantry that will stand up to charging boyz, point for point, other than maybe necron wraiths with RP. The trick is getting them to their target with decent (~20) numbers remaining.

Orks are kind of weird when it comes to CC. They aren't top tier when it comes to showing off mano-a-mano with other CC specialists, in many cases we will get slaughtered by higher initiative, often higher strength and tougher opponents. However, I think we, unlike most factions, are able to exploit our abilities in close combat in the form of bullies moreso than durable juggernauts like Smashfether or TWC can be. Through boyz weight of attacks and their Nob PK's we can overwhelm both elite units like honor guard and THSS terminators while our Mega Nobz slaughter lesser units with ease. Things like MANZ missiles work simply because we overwhelm the foe with a number of bully units that beeline towards their intended target. It may not always work out but that's why you zerg rush your opponent with so many targets, so as to make them fluster and react poorly. So instead of deathstar HQ or units, our specialty is more spread out in the army itself, with several units taking the burden of taking the CC role and aiming for the soft bits of the enemy army.

Kap'n Krump is right though regarding certain MC, GMC or SHW like Knights though, in those cases you have to rely on more specialized Orks like Tankbustas to make a dent in those walls, if you survive.

units of 20 boyz charging from a battlewagon with choppas and lead by a nob with a PK and bosspole. That seems to work well.

In smaller games or against a MSU army, trukk boyz will do. but for the real tough opponents, the 20-boy squad works wonders.
And be smart about the challenges. sometimes its smart for the nob to decline the challenge if the attacker has lots of attacks and a high str at Init.

And whoever said they were afraid of facing meq in melee as orks must have done something wrong. Let's say I charge 20 boyz at 10 marines. They swing first, average kill 2.5 boyz, lets round up and say they kill 3. Nob accepts challenge, takes one wound from sarge. then we have 16 boyz attack, killing on average 5 guys, and then the nob swings back with the PK killing the sarge and 1 other guy. The marine player now has 3 guys left in combat and if all of those s3 attacks dont get them, that PK nob will on the next round.


20 boyz can also act as a great tarpit for monstrous creatures. the mob rule means you lose a few but you will also stay in combat. And that PK nob can chip away wounds on those things.

Don't forget we are THE army that actually cares about Fear tests.

I had a game where a Tau Stormsurge was down time it's last wound, I charged it in CC. failed fear, and was locked in combat for almost 3 Turns whiffing every Power klaw attack, and eventually getting wiped out. My Tactical Objective was to Win an assault....

It was pretty shameful.

They aren't "good" per say in CC, there are plenty better cc units out there. But none as cheap as the boyz. Get that hidden claw a swinging and it'll eat through almost anything.

And as said, numbers numbers, numbers! Drown the enemy in bodies.

If you go "IF two units are in cc then who wins" then no, orks don't win.

But if you're asking "who can actually make cc a lynchpin of their army strategy?"

....CSM can't, DE can't, Daemons can with some units, GK can but with only one model, Eldar can with one model, SMs can with one unit...

Orks KDK and SWs are the only armies that can have their whole force CC capable and use CC as most of their power.

the_scotsman wrote:
If you go "IF two units are in cc then who wins" then no, orks don't win.

But if you're asking "who can actually make cc a lynchpin of their army strategy?"

....CSM can't, DE can't, Daemons can with some units, GK can but with only one model, Eldar can with one model, SMs can with one unit...

Orks KDK and SWs are the only armies that can have their whole force CC capable and use CC as most of their power.

I think CC isn't a linchpin for Orks its THE linchpin for the orks. The one thing that stands out to me though is that the Ork CC specialists (Meganobz or nobz) as well as the entire Ork army for that matter, lack a invul save. Whats the point of trying to get your best unit into CC if a SM sergeant with a powerfist can kill them without batting an eye? The only good way to run Nobz without losing to much to a single lascannon shot is to run naked Nobz (maybe in Eavy Armor) and have 2 or maybe 3 equipped with PKs. The problem with that strategy is that a Nob in Eavy armor equipped with a PK is actually more expensive then a Mega Armored Nob who comes standard with a better gun and a PK not to mention having a 2+ save compared to a EA Nob having a 4+.

I dread fighting units that have a sergeant equipped with a Power weapon of any kind because I know my nob will have to turn down the challenge or else get killed which ruins the mob of boyz effectiveness.

15 pt Meks solve challenges but its a gakky mechanic (no pun intended).

I tend to do shooty Orks. Have a few units for CC but they are reactive not proactive.

My problem with the Challenge Mek setup is: how many challenges meks are you realistically gonna field? You only get one per HQ... I field 5-6 Trukks. Is it really worth 50 pts tax (for a Big Mek and Lil Mek per)?

Ran into a unit of TH/SS terms that could re roll saves the other day. I could not kill them, the boyz attacks got shrugged off by 2+ armor (reroll) and the PK's got shrugged off by the 3++ (re roll.

Issue I found with orks isnt the boyz killing their troops/non cc unit, is we have no counter death star / resilient units. The lucky stikk mega warboss is nice, but once he faces AP2, he dies.

Ork boyz cant counter other army heavy cc hitters in my experience. The nob will be challenged out , he my get a mek to suck it up round 1, but round 2 nob dies.

Orks are suppose to be a Swarm CC army with some shooting and tank support, but Tyranids took over the swarm CC melee over time and Orks became sorta "cheap, but spammable" faction. Unfortunately this means a lot of their stuff are sub-par because the game's scale has gotten bigger.

If template weapons, massive number of shots and the likes weren't in the game, as well as letting Orks keep their old mob rule (where a unit of 10+ became flat out fearless) then Orks would be pants-gakkingly terrifying. As it stands now though, not so much.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
My problem with the Challenge Mek setup is: how many challenges meks are you realistically gonna field? You only get one per HQ... I field 5-6 Trukks. Is it really worth 50 pts tax (for a Big Mek and Lil Mek per)?

I work around this by using the buddy system. If you have 5-6 trukk boyz squads, assign 2 each to a target unit that can prove troublesome to a single unit (i.e. a decent character that can challenge out our Nobz, MC characters like Dreadknights, etc). This way one can absorb overwatch for the other unit while allowing them to only deny one klaw from swinging.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
My problem with the Challenge Mek setup is: how many challenges meks are you realistically gonna field? You only get one per HQ... I field 5-6 Trukks. Is it really worth 50 pts tax (for a Big Mek and Lil Mek per)?

I work around this by using the buddy system. If you have 5-6 trukk boyz squads, assign 2 each to a target unit that can prove troublesome to a single unit (i.e. a decent character that can challenge out our Nobz, MC characters like Dreadknights, etc). This way one can absorb overwatch for the other unit while allowing them to only deny one klaw from swinging.

The only problem with that strategy is your assigning double the points to a single target and now you cant threaten as much.. Worse then that your relying on an AV10 vehicle getting there. Something that just doesn't happen.

MorkorpossiblyGork wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
My problem with the Challenge Mek setup is: how many challenges meks are you realistically gonna field? You only get one per HQ... I field 5-6 Trukks. Is it really worth 50 pts tax (for a Big Mek and Lil Mek per)?

I work around this by using the buddy system. If you have 5-6 trukk boyz squads, assign 2 each to a target unit that can prove troublesome to a single unit (i.e. a decent character that can challenge out our Nobz, MC characters like Dreadknights, etc). This way one can absorb overwatch for the other unit while allowing them to only deny one klaw from swinging.

The only problem with that strategy is your assigning double the points to a single target and now you cant threaten as much.. Worse then that your relying on an AV10 vehicle getting there. Something that just doesn't happen.

It's called target priority. Most units that can be handled by a single unit of boyz will more likely than not be mopped up by the boyz who do survive the elimination of the targeted units. Those units often aren't the best in CC anyways and can't shoot into the combat until its often too late, worst case scenario he tries to move them away and it helps you direct board control.

Also, there will definitely be situations where the trukk gets popped early before the boyz can be unloaded, which is why you invest in preventative measures like VSG, proper TLOS-blocking terrain usage and why you have more than one trukk boyz squad. Typically in a list like this you'll have a lot of redundancy like MANZ missiles. Trukks are fragile as heck, but when your opponent has to shoot down so many there's some that inevitably get through.

Very true, I play against to many Eldar/Tau shenanigans in my local meta where unless I am deploying at least 3 Battlewagons I can't expect any of my boyz to get there in a vehicle. On the other side of things though I have gotten a lot more kunning using foot slogging boy blobs.

MorkorpossiblyGork wrote:
Very true, I play against to many Eldar/Tau shenanigans in my local meta where unless I am deploying at least 3 Battlewagons I can't expect any of my boyz to get there in a vehicle. On the other side of things though I have gotten a lot more kunning using foot slogging boy blobs.

I'm actually surprised that foot slogging boy blobs are working out more for you than mechanized orks. I started Orks that way and now I'm on the mechanized end. Do you use the Finkin' Kap and bank on rolling the Master of Ambush warlord trait for your Warlord? Against Tau I find footslogging to be tantamount to a death sentence with the amount of dakka they put out, not even including buffs via markerlights.

Against Tau my tactic is to distract him with my blobs and then my bikers roll up and eat his expensive broadsides/riptides. Warboss on a bike with a PK/DLS and a painboy is probably the cheapest/best Deathstar orks have.

Mob rule and and being subject to school-girl levels of fear make the orks much, much weaker than they should be.

Most armies get special rules that kill the OTHER team, not themselves.