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I recently played a two vs two game with a SM as an ally and we played against a DE and an Eldar player. My army was a Horde Detachment that had somewhere around 110 models on the table and more in vehicles. In rather quick succession however, the eldar player was able to obliterate 30 ork blobs with a handful of units of Scat bikes and some Scat Walkers.

In previous editions of this game horde style armies were able to take enormous casualties and keep on coming and eventually overwhelm the enemy. However, in today's game it is easy for certain races, Eldar, Tau and such to obliterate whole blobs of infantry in a single shooting phase without batting an eye. In the case of the Scat Bikes, MSU's can fire 12 shots that are S6 AP6. meaning lots of hits and lots of wounds and no armor save because 6+. So what would be a good fix for horde style armies to be able to field these numbers again or at least have a chance to get them into combat where they belong?

I was thinking either something along the lines of an inbuilt 5+ FNP or a 5+ Invul save. Something that allows them to stay alive that extra few inches to reach their target. Even with a 5+ FNP or Invul they will still die in droves but at least now they are back in line with how they used to be. 12 Scats = 8 hits and 7 wounds with a 5+ thats 4-5 dead Orks instead of before where it was 7 dead orks. What say you lot? (Side note this would be for ALL horde style armies, so im looking at you tyrnids)

Horde armies in this day and age of 40k need to have someway of replenishing lost models and units. Tyranids have some formations that do this but are woefully bad because of the cost.

A representation of the size of the horde would be better in that at certain model numbers the army as whole would get bonuses. The difficulty of this is of course deciding what these model numbers are, they could be army specific for simplicity's sake. Some bonuses for being a certain size the horde could include the following.
- Fearless
- Furious Charge
- At the largest size for a codex, the army could replenish half of its losses for one turn, said replenished units would appear on the side of the board, behind the horde's most frontal point (They would of course not be able to charge).

Also certain objectives should be made impossible to accomplish against horde armies such as Linebreaker, Behind enemy lines etc. Because if you want to get behind a horde you would have to go quite a few tables away.

There are quite few fun things that could be done with horde-style armies if GW didn't have its head up its ass.

In general, in the current metagame, they don't counter it.

Really, the game needs a 2E-3E style reboot, GW appears to have forgotten the lessons and made the same mistakes of late. The scale the game is played at is at odds with the fundamental design of the rules, and the awful, almost intentional, colossal lack of balance is just too much to overcome without basically having a 3rd party GM designing the scenario and armies for both sides.

1) You don't fix the 16 under powered codecies, you fix the 4 broken ones. Fighting power creep by handing out additional rules to other armies just keeps the creep going until guardsmen are 1/2 a point per model and wraithknights are 50 points.

2) Orks can already buy a 5+++ for their blobs (Painboy), as well as a 5++ (Kustom Forcefield).

3) Orks are one of the weaker dexes while Eldar are easily the strongest and their entire army is basically tailored to removing orks models with ease, even though it's not on purpose, simply because infantry without invis or some other equally broken mechanic isn't viable anymore. Sometimes not even then against certain power armies.

Even if you hit the supposedly four overpowered codices, it doesn't fix the issue that specific units aren't worth taking anyway. Nerf Eldar all you want (and properly so), but Wyches and Boyz still won't be worth taking.

A big problem with horde armies is the rule change of removing the closest model first. If I move my guard blobs up 6" only to have that first 6 inches killed in the next shooting phase. Makes it extremely difficult for them to get anything done or go anywhere.

I'd also be interested in a change of some kind for going to ground? make it easier to get back into it the next turn.

I've found the best way to run a "horde" army is actually to run extreme MSU these days.

With such high firepower units running around, the best defense is a maximum casualty count.

I'm not saying it'll work against scatbikes (they are definitively the anti horse unit) but try the Ghaz detachment with totally in upgraded 10 man squads, and min squads of stormboyz and tankbustas. Then you can do traditional horde stuff but you can also survive decently well against heavy firepower stuff.

In my opinion it would take a few things. First I think that some of the Power Armies like Eldar have units or formations that eliminate that traditional troops choice. For example. jetbikes as a troop unit instead of a fast attack. If they axe that and go back to using a regular troops and FOC it could level it out a bit.
Secondly it's finding survivibility upgrades, like with the Mek or Painboy mentioned. Even with using shield drones with tau, daemon saves with chaos, or synapse with Nids.
And lastly I think at lower point levels the horde armies can be useful. Taking 80 boyz in a 500 point game is an advantage if the other person has like SM with a captain, a couple tac squads and a dread.
I used to play slogging Orks, but they lost power so I switched to KDK, it is a similar vibe with way more power.

It's the sheer firepower available to certain factions, Tau and Eldar especially. Closing the gap 24"+ gap becomes incredibly difficult without at least two of either Scout/Infiltrate/Transport. I've opted for an invisible blob squad of CSMs, but that just gets tank shocked to death.

Don't feel bad bub. I played Eldar 30 Eldar models vs nids in 1000 pts match, musta been 120 nids- 9 warriors 30 gargoyles 60 gun gaunts 40 skyths (was the apoc formation) and he ceaded t4. I basically backed up for 2 turns -farseers casting cleansing flame and superior firepower mobility and gun range, focusing warriors and closest models, then pushed forward. Hordes are easy for Eldar to kill because they've traded low ap for high Str and volume of shots.

Fix scatbikes-not ork boyz

You fought eldar that's why, they are massively op.

 koooaei wrote:
Fix scatbikes-not ork boyz

Nobody disagrees Scatterbikes are a problem unit, but that goes back to my original statement:
Even if you fix problem units, would another unit be worth taking? Scatterbikes are an issue, but isn't the uselessness of Boyz and Wyches another one that needs more fixing?

 cox.dan2 wrote:
In my opinion it would take a few things. First I think that some of the Power Armies like Eldar have units or formations that eliminate that traditional troops choice. For example. jetbikes as a troop unit instead of a fast attack. If they axe that and go back to using a regular troops and FOC it could level it out a bit.
Secondly it's finding survivibility upgrades, like with the Mek or Painboy mentioned. Even with using shield drones with tau, daemon saves with chaos, or synapse with Nids.
And lastly I think at lower point levels the horde armies can be useful. Taking 80 boyz in a 500 point game is an advantage if the other person has like SM with a captain, a couple tac squads and a dread.
I used to play slogging Orks, but they lost power so I switched to KDK, it is a similar vibe with way more power.

Jetbikes have always been troops. They just gave them too many heavy weapons in this latest codex.

They don't horde armies just lose.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I played a ork horde army in 6th and lost every game to most eldar lists. In 7th the ork codex got nerfed and the eldar codex got buffed. There is no way to win horde style other then gambling that your opponent goes crazy on Grav cannons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you want a more objective view at it. Just search for "Boyz before toyz" on the internet. It used to be the tactical advise for any ork player. Nowadays nobody ever mentions it any more.

 oldzoggy wrote:
They don't horde armies just lose.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I played a ork horde army in 6th and lost every game to most eldar lists. In 7th the ork codex got nerfed and the eldar codex got buffed. There is no way to win horde style other then gambling that your opponent goes crazy on Grav cannons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you want a more objective view at it. Just search for "Boyz before toyz" on the internet. It used to be the tactical advise for any ork player. Nowadays nobody ever mentions it any more.

This is completely true, I have yet to find a way to get my Ork boyz up the table without suffering catastrophic losses. I did run a rather fun list that worked decently well in getting my boyz up the table, but against a good army it probably wouldn't have worked ( I was against Dark Eldar, no allies) I fielded 2 Ork Horde Detachments, for a total of 2 Big Mekz in Mega Armor attached to Lootas (slow and purposeful meant they could move and shoot at BS2) Next to them I had 9 Killa Kanz in 2 units, all armed with Rokkitz, 2 Deff Dreadz armed with CCWs and a Morkanaut in the center equipped with his KFF, in front of all this I had 6 squads of boyz, 3 were barebones, and 3 were Eavy Armor boyz with a Nob/PK. Ironically the DE player focus fired my naked boyz and tried to kill my Morkanaut. While he did that my Eavy Boyz ran up and spanked his guys while my Kanz fired their BS3 Rokkitz at everything they could get close enough to.

I feel that units such as Scat Bikes, Scat Walkers, and other Hire rate of Fire units should receive a major points increase, I don't want to remove them because someone paid money for them and its a bit unfair to have them lose that investment. But seriously a Scatter Laser should be closer to a 20-25pt upgrade per bike. Feel free to field 3 Scat Bike squads but you should be paying through the nose for them.

So would a points increase for units like Scat bikes be enough to help fix the game? or would it take more then that, such as a revamp of the rules, maybe buffing boyz to come standard with 4+ armor and Eavy armor makes them a 3+?

I find the best thing to do is to remove all the horde elements from my list and just bring tanks instead forget running an IG horde, you are never going to be able to get the troops (or damage) down board fast enough.