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Hey I could use some advice.

I play orks, and I have a game in two days... Standard battle to the death, 2000 pts against my hated nemesis... Spacewolves! I have recently come into possession of some killa kans and Im dying to use them.

How do I build a list around 9 kans and 1 def-dread and face mechanized Space Wolves with all their silly Norse tricks?I plan to run a big mek w/kff, grot riggers for the Kans and I might be bold and get Ol' Ghazgul Thraka stuck in with a full loadout of Nobs. I haven't played much since 5th ed. Are Battlewagons still a threat? Is the best strategy "Boys Before Toys? and so forth...

Shimsham wrote:
Hey I could use some advice.

I play orks, and I have a game in two days... Standard battle to the death, 2000 pts against my hated nemesis... Spacewolves! I have recently come into possession of some killa kans and Im dying to use them.

How do I build a list around 9 kans and 1 def-dread and face mechanized Space Wolves with all their silly Norse tricks?I plan to run a big mek w/kff, grot riggers for the Kans and I might be bold and get Ol' Ghazgul Thraka stuck in with a full loadout of Nobs. I haven't played much since 5th ed. Are Battlewagons still a threat? Is the best strategy "Boys Before Toys? and so forth...

I'm not an ork player, not a space wolves player. I have played against orks alot though. When I'm running some leman russ' I know that if the boys get into melee with me, I have lost. However, i can take down 1 truck or battlewagon a turn. I see people run kans with flamers to kill my infantry quickly. Bombers work well in smaller games. Ghazkul is fantastic as a warboss. Hope I helped with my limited knowledge.

Grot riggers on kans are not worth it. They only have two hull points so are likely to die before getting the chance to maybe get a hull point back. Kans are tough to use against wolves because they have access to loads of ways to kill av11. Missile launcher long fangs, wulfen, and thunderwolf cavalry will do a number on them. Ive lost units of 6 kans in combat with 3 thunderwolves with hammers or fists before my kans could even attack. Their dreads beat your dreads, again often before you get to attack. Even drop pod meltas with their bolter wielding brothers will do work on your walkers.

What i have found to work is running grotzookas on the kans to wear down the thunderwolves before they get to you. A couple units of boys in trucks is a great way to tie up ranged units. Youll probably lose the boys over time, but their ranged units wont be shooting your walkers. Tankbustas are a great choice in general for high strength ap3. Throw a unit or two in trucks to react to things like podding dreads or to rush camping vehicles. If youre going to run a kff mek, ive actually found some success in running the mega force field on the mek in a unit of 20 grots, then hide the mek behind some of the bigger walkers, though this is usually in support of a morkanaut or two with kff.

In summary, have some fast units to tie up big scary stuff that would wreck your walkers or blow them apart from a distance. Walkers are slow, but can have some success if certain, problematic units are taken care of for them.

Thanks for the advice!

Here's what I got so far...

Hq: Ghazgul Thraka w/ Battlewagon and Nob squad


Big Mek w/ KFF

Troops:
2x 30 boyz

Ghazgul and Nobs in a big flashy battlewagon should be a very tempting target and I will use them as a distraction to keep my Kans alive. The boyz will foot slog and screen for the walkers. I want to use as many Kans as possible just for the fun factor. I have 18 GW Kans from 3rd ed. How many can I use in a single list?

What all do you own?

If you want a max Kan list, You could roll with a double CAD for 6 heavy support slots. Take 3 kans each for 18 total. I'd give them all rokkits fwiw

There's also the dread mob formation:

Dread Mob Formation

Requirements: 1 Big Mek, 1 Painboy, 2 Gorka or Morkanauts, 3 Deff Dreads, 3 Killa Kan Units

Restrictions: All units of Killa Kans must include three models.

Special Rules: Biggest an’ da Best, Da Boss iz Watchin’.

’Ere We Go!: If every model in a unit has this special rule, the unit can re-roll a single dice when determining its charge range.

Wall of Steel: All models in this Formation with the Hammer of Wrath special rule inflict D3 hits instead of the usual 1.

Source: Supplement: Waaagh! Ghazghkull

I haven't checked the points but a double cad + dread mob formation would give you 27 kans, 3 dreads, and 2 gorkanauts total and be ITC legal, composition wise at least.

Kans can be run in squadrons of 6, so you can run all of your kans in one combined arms detachment if you,d like. It would mean you could run no other heavy support choices though. Your battlewagons are safe if you use them as dedicated transports for nobs.

I have 2 Nob squads with all the toys, 2 battlewagons,2 trukks 18 kans and 1 Def Dread. a big mek and all the boys to fill the list.

I have 10 warbikers 5 def koptas.

It sounds to me like you have quite a bit of speed. If you fill out those battlewagons and trucks, as well as run a decent size bike squad, you can intercept any scary units your opponent might be bringing pretty easily. Do you know what units your opponent likes to run or how they like to play? That could help a lot.

Try this:

CAD

Big Mek - Da Fixer Upperz, KFF
100

2x 5 Nobz - 2x pk, 2x bc, boss nob w/ bp, bc, battlewagon w/ 4x rokkit, RR
290(580)

3x 10 Boyz - Shootas, 2x Big Shootas
80(240)

2x 3 Warbikers
54(108)

1x 4 Warbikers
72

3x 6 Killa Kanz - Rokkit
300(900)

2000

There's five main components to this list. Pair the killa kanz with a squad of boyz for bubblewrap and a warbiker squad (The unit of 4.)to tank overwatch and other fire with jink/T5, provide supporting fire, and basically act as outriders. Deploy these in the center of your force as a spearhead, with the kff on hand to provide you with the 5++ inv vs his long fangs. This will force his wulfen, TWC to charge your boyz or warbikers, setting them up to be counter charged by the kanz. They will be slower than boyz, so giving the boyz shootas will encourage them to provide supporting fire rather than leaving the kanz in the dust by making a run move.

Set up the battlewagons on your flanks with a squad of warbikers on their flank. The bikers and the board edge will shield your side armour. These units will be faster, and the nobz will pack a punch.Your opponent will be forced to abandon his flanks into your meatgrinder central force, or reposition to support his flanks, leaving both flanks to be counter charged by and kanz/biker/boyz combo, with the third advancing into his backfield. Alternatively, if he does make a push into your center force, you can use them to countercharge in support.

If you have another HQ choice you could restructure this list into a double CAD for smaller kan unit sizes to including the deff dread.

Hey sorry it took a few days to reply...

My Kans tabled my opponent in turn 4. I ran...

Hq:
Ghazgull w/ 10 nobs and a dedicated battle wagon

Big mech w/ kff and 10 nobs w/ big choppas an a klaw. and a dedicated battle wagon

2 mobs of 25 shoota boyz w/ 2 big shootas footslogging alongside the Kans.

2 mobs of 6 Killa Kans w/ rokkits

1 def dread w/ 2 rokkits.

I didn't even need to call Ghazgulls prophet of the waagh...

Heres the trick boys and girls... Killa Kans are (in my opinion) the best armored choice for Orks. true they move slow, and die quickly if left untended, but if you give the enemy something perceivably scarier to shoot at (Battlewagons full o Nobs) then my Kans are utterly left alone. Next thing you know the Kans and Dread are ripping his army to shreds. Excellent list all around.

The only perceivable issue I find is the lack of heavy armor defense. Ghazgull and the def-dread are the only defense against say, a landraider.

Glad it worked out for you. Out of curiosity, what type of list did your opponent run?

Nice result!

Did you run the KFF alongside the kanz for added protection? Or keep him with the BW to double down on the "look over here!" distraction?

Did you find Ghaz worth it, or next time would you downgrade to a warboss and use those extra points somewhere else?

Kans should do fairly well against wolves if you get them into combat with their basic infantry.

However I believe the grotzooka is always the best option for kans it does a ton of damage and you can shoot rhinos with them.

I own 9 kans myself which im hardly using lately since Kan wall isn't as powerful as it used to be, 2 hps on AV11 doesn't go the distance in the current meta. But the trick is to bring other really powerful units to draw fire away so either bring units in trukks that can get up close and personal really fast and draw fire or bring bigger badder units like Battlewagons, Stompa or what have you.

Kan wall used to be centered around killa kans being the main target, the highlight of the list. This will fail every time in my experience with current ruleset. Now you want them to slide under the radar and put a serious hurt on an unsuspecting enemy.

Kan wall used to be centered around killa kans being the main target, the highlight of the list. This will fail every time in my experience with current ruleset. Now you want them to slide under the radar and put a serious hurt on an unsuspecting enemy

Right you are! I think the primary role of Kans has never really been defined. While I prefer as much versatility in a list as I can get, the Killa kan is a one hit wonder. Dreads have never really received a whole lot of love where I play, but I never leave home with out them... 18 Kans in a list = most fun game ever!

lol jeezus 18 killa kans? That's cool as hell. lol I particularly enjoy my orks by dabbling in a little pyro mania...12 burna boyz + trukk x3 lmao 36 flamer templates ....most fun evar!!

But yes since 6th ed started giving hull points to everything, ork vehicles have gotten a bit of the short end of the stick.

Shimsham wrote:

Ghazgull and the def-dread are the only defense against say, a landraider.

Which is one of the worst unit in the SW codex I'm glad you won, I run both armies but orks are still my primary love. A competitive SW list would have tabled you by turn 3 though. Kans can be situational, especially with the grotzookas as you can field tons of rokkits in cheaper ways.

But I have a completely different style with 10ish fast units among trukks and bikes, so if kans actually work in your list good for you, it's always nice when grots stand victorius and triumphant after a bloody battle

By the way orks don't have effective ranged anti AV14, you just need a lot of power klaws to deal with those vehicles. Warbosses are S10 and meganobz can have 4-5 S8-9 armourbane attacks if equipped with killsaws. Tankbustas can throw a melta bomb, if you use min units of them they can be effective against AV14 too.

"]But I have a completely different style with 10ish fast units among trukks and bikes, so if kans actually work in your list good for you, it's always nice when grots stand victorius and triumphant after a bloody battle"


So true Killa Kans are pretty aweful this edition... the saving grace is nobody takes them seriously till its too late. the drawback is once again slow movement. With spacewolfs, how does a ork player deal with high weapon skill and initiative? Kans are great with their s7 ap2 "tin-snips" but at weapon skill 2... Fast attack like trucks and bike are a more reliable option but bottom line is I want my opponent to think that melee combat is coming, only to have a blob of Kans wipe out 3 kill points from a distance. I use them mostly as bs3 weapons that can move and still assault if things get sticky.

thoughts?

I love running dreads... its tough to keep up with faster, more competitive lists unfortunately.

With SW you can't compete in close combat, not against wulfen and thunderwolwes at least, but you can deal with them with tons of shooting and a MSU style.

They always have a low number of units, so you can play objective quite easily and score a lot of points, unless they play the blackmane formation, but that formation has poor synergy with their best melee units and you have the edge in close combat against them.

Use bikes, lobbas, kans with grotzookas to soften them, and force their best close combat units to assault expendable units of yours, like min squads of boyz, empty trukks, gretchin... Their best units have usually 3+ invuln (shields) so take a high number of shots. And be mobile.

Orks have a hard time taking down wulfen or thunderwolf cavalry in close combat. However we are really efficient at killing them with shooting.

Lootas lootas and more lootas. Lootas will murder TWC.

The biggest weakness of TWC is being wounded a lot, they save on 3+ so simply force a LOT of saves you don't need to have any AP as long as you make them roll they WILL die. Ive done this time and again my friend's TWC with different armies.

Dark Eldar Venoms (dual cannon) vs TWC = TWC very very dead.

Necron Annihilation Barge vs TWC = TWC very dead

Ork Lootas vs TWC = TWC very dead


My friend hardly brings them on the field anymore because I deal with them so effectively that it's just a big chunk of points lost. Unless the unit gets some psychic buffs, massed ranged fire kills 'em every time. But avoid shooting it with anything that isn't poisoned or S6-7 en masse. You want to make 'em take a dozen or more saves

No arguments there, Lootas are nasty! They are the only unit I would sacrifice melee units to protect but I don't usually want anything sitting still that isn't a scoring unit.

I love those models!

Now tell me a little about the ork heavy walkers...

 Akaiyou wrote:
Orks have a hard time taking down wulfen or thunderwolf cavalry in close combat. However we are really efficient at killing them with shooting.

Lootas lootas and more lootas. Lootas will murder TWC.

The biggest weakness of TWC is being wounded a lot, they save on 3+ so simply force a LOT of saves you don't need to have any AP as long as you make them roll they WILL die. Ive done this time and again my friend's TWC with different armies.

Dark Eldar Venoms (dual cannon) vs TWC = TWC very very dead.

Necron Annihilation Barge vs TWC = TWC very dead

Ork Lootas vs TWC = TWC very dead


My friend hardly brings them on the field anymore because I deal with them so effectively that it's just a big chunk of points lost. Unless the unit gets some psychic buffs, massed ranged fire kills 'em every time. But avoid shooting it with anything that isn't poisoned or S6-7 en masse. You want to make 'em take a dozen or more saves

Well 10 wulfen and 10 thunderwolves cost around 1100 points, and they're 4 different targets. Orks and DE have some effective shooting against them (they're my primary 2 armies) but it's not that easy to kill a lot of big wolves, they're fast and multi targets. Other than those units they can field some drop pods that can screw orks units like lootas. And with wulfen around the TWC gets way faster, they easily get into assault by turn 2 suffering max 1-2 rounds of shooting. I don't play SW without a lot of thunderwolves, TWC and wulfen are the only reason that put SW among mid tiers. But yeah with orks we have to shoot at them with everything we have, I consider bikes a good answer against them as they're fast, tough and have a nice firepower, bikers lists have a ton of S5 twin linked shots.

I play both Orks and Space Wolves and I mostly run TWC aswell that's why I know their weakness intimately.

Admittedly I "just" purchased a unit of wulfen so I can't comment on how much better it will make my TWC.

I've played a game against my Imperium loving friend where my entire army got annihilated except for my 1 unit of thunderwolf cavalry that was in reserves.

They came in and I kid you not they killed everything! nearly tabled him after doing very little damage with 2/3rds of my force. So yeah that proved the strength of TWC and so that very friend bought himself some TWC to ally with. However I wipe them out every time with massed strength 6/7 shooting or poison. Any good ork player will see those TWC rushing up and be like 'ok sure i'll sit here and wait to counter charge when you get close in the mean time eat some bullets.

While the orks are camping in the backlines you are very unlikely to be able to drop pod in (any ork player worth his salt should be covering the board enough that table real estate in his deployment zone should be hard to come by) that means you gotta lose some twc, then get stuck in combat and hope you don't 'win too much' lol

Not saying it's impossible just that it's never worked against me because I know the unit I'm facing well. Wulfen are a mystery factor that I hope to explore soon tho.

You will have some suprise with wulfen then as they add a lot of movement to the TWC making them litterally flying over the board, not to mention that in close combat they are 10 times more killy than the TWC. Same endurance overall, but slower than the TWC. Wulfen are a killer unit that adds bonuses to the other friendly units near them in terms of movement and close combat.

If you run 4-6 units of wulfen/thunderwolves and 3 drop pods or a drop pod and a stormwolf you would give hard times to the orks. Units like lootas get crippled even by bolter shots.

I think SW are better than orks overall but still not an impossible challenge for the greenskins.

All I'm saying is from my perspective which is a SW and orks (mostly orks) one that use both armies but don't usually play against other orks or SW

I def look forward to running some wulfen I've seen a lot of different gear config for them which is interesting usually a unit has a specific config that is optimal or close to optimal.

I personally go Power Fist + Storm Shield on all TWC because I want to muscle through all targets which I usually do. My friend has his TWC with half Hammers+Shields, some claws and axes which I find that is less than optimal.

But the varying degrees in wulfen customization has me quite interested. Admittedly my friend only plays imperium army so I usually built my lists to face power armor whereas I play almost every faction (even minor ones) but don't get to face off against them as much as I'd like to.

I tend to look for strong cover for my lootas every game as time and again they've been my breadwinner along with a good Waagh!

So as this thread implies...

Say Killa-Kans backed by Def-Dreads is your primary load-out... What is the best way to counter a force of Thunder-wolf Cavalry or Wulfen? They run Circles around my army and I end up relying on my BS3 of the Killa Kans.

This is of course, a nightmare situation to be in but I am determined that these units can shine if used correctly.

Your thoughts?

My response to my brother's wulfen and thundercav is twofold. First, a unit of boys bubblewraps my walkers in case he cant resist charging into my big stompies. Plus, i place them so if he does get through the boys, he would only be able to hit one unit. Thundercav will take out 3 kans in a rurn no problem, so thatd leave them open to my full army next turn. At the same time, i run a couple units of boys in trukks around to distract or tie them up. The boys dont last long but it keeps his models where i want for a turn.

Shoot at them with high saturation weapons (bikes, lobbas, lootas, grotzookas) and surround them by expendable units so they're forced to charge units that they don't want to charge, like small units of boyz, empty trukks or gretchin.

I don't have any trukks... but I have many battlewagons. As battlewagons are considerably higher points cost, losing one takes a chunk out of my list. Since I don't have trukks I tend to footslog 60 or more boyz to bubble wrap the walkers. I find this is a difficult tactic because of the sheer number of models that are moved and positioned each turn.

any terrain I encounter is a problem because it is tough to move a blob of that size around the board.

So heres a question... If Killa KAns can roll to run, would a Warboss calling a Waagh juice them up along with all my troops?

Killa Kans don't stand a chance against TWC.

Deff dreads could maybe do a bit of damage but will always more than likely lose that engagement aswell

As was said before you need high strength saturation shower them in S6+ shooting and force them to engage in combats they don't want for a turn.

This is why I much prefer grotzookas to rokkit launchas on my kans. The grootzookas are solid choices against most targets.