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So really loving this edition so far everything's been pretty great but as ever there's a few teefin' problems that need a fix. In 7th scatter dice gave orks a similar chance to out right hit the target as any other army then if they did scatter your dice roll might still be low and your orkoid ballistic skill was not an issue. Fast forward and your expensive killkannon - a weapon I loved using is now a bit of a joke. Roll that D6 for your number of hits whoop you luck out on a 6 awesome! Roll to hit epic ork skill time bs 5+ ( -1 if you moved your tank, it's a transport/deffroller so probably ) 2 hits on average, 1 if you moved - oh... then wound n save - new save rules, maybe with cover, mean models that wouldn't have got a save still do and it's suddenly easy to score 0 damage from you maxed out 6 killkannon shot!?

What can be done about this because it's just rubbish. Lucky I don't have a gorkanaut - your never getting any hits with a small blast lol.

 Zognob Gorgoff wrote:
So really loving this edition so far everything's been pretty great but as ever there's a few teefin' problems that need a fix. In 7th scatter dice gave orks a similar chance to out right hit the target as any other army then if they did scatter your dice roll might still be low and your orkoid ballistic skill was not an issue. Fast forward and your expensive killkannon - a weapon I loved using is now a bit of a joke. Roll that D6 for your number of hits whoop you luck out on a 6 awesome! Roll to hit epic ork skill time bs 5+ ( -1 if you moved your tank, it's a transport/deffroller so probably ) 2 hits on average, 1 if you moved - oh... then wound n save - new save rules, maybe with cover, mean models that wouldn't have got a save still do and it's suddenly easy to score 0 damage from you maxed out 6 killkannon shot!?

What can be done about this because it's just rubbish. Lucky I don't have a gorkanaut - your never getting any hits with a small blast lol.

Current thinking on this topic is - Wait for the codex, and hope that they give us some decent rules.

There is literally a whole thread on the current state of ork shooting on the forum at the moment, under the premise of "what is better, a storm bolter or a big shoota?" The point of the thread being that the storm bolter is far better in every respect... but is cheaper than the big shoota. All ork shooting units are currently terrible, and essentially unusable. This includes all the big weapons like killcannons, Lootas, Flash Gitz, etc etc. They're all hugely overcosted and mostly ineffective at actually killing anything. The only weapon that doesn't require BS, flamers, would usually be great for Orks.. but the Burna has been nerfed to only D3 hits instead of the usual D6 that every other army gets. So it's also not worth it.

In fact, the only potentially useful shooting we have are the big gunz / mek gunz. Because they're fired by grots. Unfortunately they're also very easy to kill, so they're not a great solution, but they're the best we have.

Oh, and they're also overpriced for what they are, they're just *less* terrible than all the other options we have.

I'd suggest reading the storm bolter vs big shoota thread, as it has some good explanations and maths about Orky shootin'.

However, the TL;DR is - Nothing can be done. GW wants you to only run hordes of boyz in close combat. Hope the codex changes it.

If you want orks to be good at shooting, you're barking up the wrong tree. Orks as an army are never really going to be the faction that's both good at shooting AND at melee combat.

As for the burnas being D3 hits instead of d6 - I can 100% guarantee that this is because they're useable in close combat and have -2 AP. Again, you can't really have the best of both worlds - flamers are already amazing, and a unit of 15 burna boyz putting out 15d6 automatic hits at range and then charging into combat, hitting on 3+, and with -2 AP might, just might, be a little overpowered.

I'm pretty sure in their "extensive playtesting" they really didn't think it through what getting rid of templates is going to do to Ork shooting. Blast/explosive weapons should probably hit automatically since the "randomness of scatter" would already be covered by the random number of shots. What's really killing it for Orks is the hit rolls.

So basically because they cannot change the core rules at this point, the only way to bring Ork "blast weapons" even close to what they were in 7th they need to at least double the amount of shots. It's not an elaborate solution and it wouldn't really make sense that say Frag Grenades do D6 "shots" and Stikkbombs would do 2D6 "shots". So I don't really know what they can do to bring Ork shooting to a reasonable level at this point...

With that said, I'm building my Ork army as Goffs and hoping their Klan Rules are going to be ripe with fething sweet CC buffs.

 Weazel wrote:
I'm pretty sure in their "extensive playtesting" they really didn't think it through what getting rid of templates is going to do to Ork shooting. Blast/explosive weapons should probably hit automatically since the "randomness of scatter" would already be covered by the random number of shots. What's really killing it for Orks is the hit rolls.

So basically because they cannot change the core rules at this point, the only way to bring Ork "blast weapons" even close to what they were in 7th they need to at least double the amount of shots. It's not an elaborate solution and it wouldn't really make sense that say Frag Grenades do D6 "shots" and Stikkbombs would do 2D6 "shots". So I don't really know what they can do to bring Ork shooting to a reasonable level at this point...

Ork blast weapons will never be what they were in 7th because nobody's blast weapons are what they were in 7th.

8th's design paradigm is based around no weapon being able to one-shot units except in very unusual circumstances. This means, among other things, no weapons that do large numbers of hits.

An Ork shooting list shouldn't be too terribly effective, just like how a guardsman melee list shouldn't be effective. It's not what their army is good at. I've played a whole lot of games against orks in 8th edition, and, aside from some internal balance changes I feel they could use, their strengths are solid.

Once the melee units get in melee, it's hard to stop their green tide. As it should be, but such a binary system is boring.

If previously Blast-Template weapons went the way of flamers and became autohits, it would be a major buff to everything else as well. Not just Orks. Numerically Orks would benefit more than, say, Guardsmen, but a Baneblade with 2d6, str8 -3ap, 3 damage shots, auto-hitting would make the already deadly Baneblade even more dangerous. And the same goes for the baby-baneblades. Leman Russes are already a cheap and deadly tank, would skyrocket in power.

What is the solution to Ork shooting? Probably just give them more shots.

Alcibiades wrote:

 Weazel wrote:
I'm pretty sure in their "extensive playtesting" they really didn't think it through what getting rid of templates is going to do to Ork shooting. Blast/explosive weapons should probably hit automatically since the "randomness of scatter" would already be covered by the random number of shots. What's really killing it for Orks is the hit rolls.

So basically because they cannot change the core rules at this point, the only way to bring Ork "blast weapons" even close to what they were in 7th they need to at least double the amount of shots. It's not an elaborate solution and it wouldn't really make sense that say Frag Grenades do D6 "shots" and Stikkbombs would do 2D6 "shots". So I don't really know what they can do to bring Ork shooting to a reasonable level at this point...

Ork blast weapons will never be what they were in 7th because nobody's blast weapons are what they were in 7th.

8th's design paradigm is based around no weapon being able to one-shot units except in very unusual circumstances. This means, among other things, no weapons that do large numbers of hits.

Well of course they are not the same, and that is not my point. My point is BS had way less impact then shooting blast weapons before making them a decent choice for Orks. You had a 33% chance of a direct hit and even missed (read: scattered) shots had a good chance of hitting something. However now that BS means everything I feel Orks suffered a bit too harshly.

But I agree with Thadin, Orks' strength is and should be in melee, shooting shouldn't be their main focus. I just wish the ranged weapons were costed around the difficulty of hitting anything and the amount of shots increased somewhat.

 Mr. Grey wrote:
If you want orks to be good at shooting, you're barking up the wrong tree. Orks as an army are never really going to be the faction that's both good at shooting AND at melee combat.

As for the burnas being D3 hits instead of d6 - I can 100% guarantee that this is because they're useable in close combat and have -2 AP. Again, you can't really have the best of both worlds - flamers are already amazing, and a unit of 15 burna boyz putting out 15d6 automatic hits at range and then charging into combat, hitting on 3+, and with -2 AP might, just might, be a little overpowered.

First off, Orks should be good at shooting, and CC, just like every other army, otherwise what is the point of having dedicated ranged units? I have this debate all the time and its usually against people who want to put Orkz into the CC army list and keep it there. IF shooting for orkz is always going to be terrible then about 1/2 of our model range is useless.

As for Burnas, you are probably right, the only thing is that they cost 8pts, possibly more because of the way they used Tankbustas/rokkitz to lower the cost of the model to compensate for the price of the weapon.

And ironically, Burnas are useless even with their ridiculous double profile. The only Burnas which are used are the FREE burnas for Kommandos, otherwise they are ignored.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Thadin wrote:
An Ork shooting list shouldn't be too terribly effective, just like how a guardsman melee list shouldn't be effective. It's not what their army is good at. I've played a whole lot of games against orks in 8th edition, and, aside from some internal balance changes I feel they could use, their strengths are solid.

Once the melee units get in melee, it's hard to stop their green tide. As it should be, but such a binary system is boring.

If previously Blast-Template weapons went the way of flamers and became autohits, it would be a major buff to everything else as well. Not just Orks. Numerically Orks would benefit more than, say, Guardsmen, but a Baneblade with 2d6, str8 -3ap, 3 damage shots, auto-hitting would make the already deadly Baneblade even more dangerous. And the same goes for the baby-baneblades. Leman Russes are already a cheap and deadly tank, would skyrocket in power.

What is the solution to Ork shooting? Probably just give them more shots.

is about 1/2 or more of the Imperial Guard made up of Close Combat options? Because the Ork codex is mostly ranged options. So when you say they should suck at shooting you are saying half our codex should be deleted.

I think the best fix for ork blast weapons would be one of 2 options

1.) Make ork blast weapons not random shots. Large blast = 6 shots, small blast =3. This is going to be 2 hits for large blasts 1 for small blasts. not great but at least usable. especially for high damage weapons.

2.) Make ork blasts based on dice with a softer curve. large blast weapons = 3D3 or 3D2 etc. Similar to the first fix but a little more variability. I'd like to see probably 3D3, so on a good roll you are getting 9 shots (likely 3 hits), at worst you are getting 3 hits.


As for orks not shooting. I feel like they will always be slanted toward CC, and I don't want ork gunline to be a thing, but I do want our shooting units to be good as a compliment to the assault options.

SemperMortis wrote:

is about 1/2 or more of the Imperial Guard made up of Close Combat options? Because the Ork codex is mostly ranged options. So when you say they should suck at shooting you are saying half our codex should be deleted.

You could also, read what I said. I did not say that ork shooting should be useless and "suck." I said it shouldn't be as effective as armies who's entire effectiveness is predicated upon their shooting skill.

What do Ork armies do as they walk or drive up the board to close in to melee with the enemy? They're shooting. With whatever gun they may have. Of course, this does not apply to all Ork units. Loota's, Grot Artillery, Dakkajets. Dedicated shooting units in an Ork army should be good at shooting. Should they match up to the effectiveness of Space Marine Devastators, Artillery and such? Hopefully not. They should cost appropriately however. Ork shooting isn't the main draw of the army. However, having been on the recieving end of Dakkajets and blitzabombas, I can say that their shooting is threatening.

Throwing around hyperbole and misrepresenting my arguement does not make for good discourse on how Orks should be changed. Makes one think you don't want a discussion and would rather have sweeping buffs to make Ork shooting as strong as Guardsmen gunline.

Why not do what orks do in the fluff? If one boom gun ain't killing enough just slap a second one on. Orks SHOULD be able to get ok shooting. But it should be achieved with quantity - not quality. So, cheaper guns and more of them will be enough to bring ork shooting to mediocre level - which is what it should be. It's still gona be leagues ahead of where we are now.

See, orks are primarily a close-fighter army. Means we're most effective at short-ish ranges and in mellee. We're never going to be as effective (and probably shouldn't) as purely mellee specialists from other armies. But we should be able to compensate it with shooting. Those who are playing really shooty armies probably don't understand HOW important and powerful shooting is for such a slow and not very durable army as orks. And we do need to get decent shooty options that can go along the lists we're fielding. That's another serious problem. Target saturation and ranges. But let's not go into it just yet.

 koooaei wrote:
Why not do what orks do in the fluff? If one boom gun ain't killing enough just slap a second one on. Orks SHOULD be able to get ok shooting. But it should be achieved with quantity - not quality. So, cheaper guns and more of them will be enough to bring ork shooting to mediocre level - which is what it should be. It's still gona be leagues ahead of where we are now.

See, orks are primarily a close-fighter army. Means we're most effective at short-ish ranges and in mellee. We're never going to be as effective (and probably shouldn't) as purely mellee specialists from other armies. But we should be able to compensate it with shooting. Those who are playing really shooty armies probably don't understand HOW important and powerful shooting is for such a slow and not very durable army as orks. And we do need to get decent shooty options that can go along the lists we're fielding. That's another serious problem. Target saturation and ranges. But let's not go into it just yet.

I would agree with just about everything said here. The Ork player I typically fight against makes use of Gork/Morkanaut(Whichever one has a gakload of dakka), mobs of boyz backed up with ghazzy, painboyz and a couple weirdboyz. Nobz and Tankbusta's behind the boyz. Grot artillery in the back. Dakkajets and Blitzabomba's. I've won most my games against him, using an All-Primaris marine army, but each time it's been a hard-fought victory. But when I've lost, it's been a bloody massacre. He solves the Ork slowness by Da Jump'ing mobs of boyz or nobz close to my lines or behind them. He uses the dedicated shooting in his army, plus the Gorkanaut moving up while shooting, to soften my lines up for when the Green tide makes it in to melee. It's not wholly melee list. It's not wholly gunline. But it is an effective list.

More shots on most of the Orks more dedicated shooting units would certainly make them a stronger army and wouldn't be a bad thing.

I said it before that flat to hit modifiers (usually negative modifers) would have a far more detrimental impact on Ork shooting that any other army and that is absolutely true for Ork shooting in 8th. Losing blast weapons also hurts Orks the most as blast weapons had a flat to hit roll of 1/3 of the dice rolls while the other results had scatter which usually went off wildly due to BS2. Orks had huge scatters but a scatter can still hit other things so it made Ork shooting usually do damage but just not always at the targets we where aiming for (sounds Orky to me).

In 8th we get the short end of the shooting mechanics with low base BS, heavy weapon movement/hard to hit targets being basically snap shots (or worse impossible to hit) while other armies (such as Marines) can move and shoot a lascannon or fire at a flyer at -1 to hit (BS4 to BS3). Also the changes to cover saves hurts Orks a lot as our weapons are generally fairly garbage at piercing armor but it also meant that cover was irrelivent for the enemy as we just threw dice at the problem until it died. Now cover gives an improved armor save so it's another point of armor we have to grind through with volume of dice while most of our infantry weapons have little to no AP. Side note that we also get mulched by shooting even more as before we use to rely on things like 4+ cover from ruins to stay alive but now it only boosts our armor by 1 so we get flak armor while a MEQ gets a bump to terminator status in cover.

Orks are an outlier in the dice roll spectrum as we are the only BS2 armor and one of the few majority 6+ armor armies (and nothing else to compensate like daemon invuln saves) in the game. 8th hamfisted flat modifers hurt us the most as each change to hit hurts us the most while each armor shift helps us the least when we start at 6+ armor. Add to that GW's general inability to mathhammer which is important to figuring out points so we end up with some fairly overpriced shooting options.

 Mr. Grey wrote:
If you want orks to be good at shooting, you're barking up the wrong tree. Orks as an army are never really going to be the faction that's both good at shooting AND at melee combat.

As for the burnas being D3 hits instead of d6 - I can 100% guarantee that this is because they're useable in close combat and have -2 AP. Again, you can't really have the best of both worlds - flamers are already amazing, and a unit of 15 burna boyz putting out 15d6 automatic hits at range and then charging into combat, hitting on 3+, and with -2 AP might, just might, be a little overpowered.

I dunno how it would be overpowered... I mean burna boyz die super, super easily, and if you walk a mob of 15 up the table there's a good chance that none of them will make it to the enemy.

You can put them in a vehicle sure, but then thats adding 200-odd points for a battlewagon, or dropping some burnaz and fitting them into a trukk which is still adding 100 points to their cost. I would say that, considering the extra costs they basically -require- to get into the fight, they would be actually worth their points if they did D6 hits.

As of right now, because of how expensive it is to field a unit of them (capable of actually hurting the enemy), they're actually less points-efficient than a squad of Nobz with kombi-skorchas.

In the old edition, I loved blasts as orks because it more or less sidestepped our awful BS, and still let us use templates to at least some effectiveness.

To be honest, though, blast weapons game-wide are pretty underpowered right now. But for orks it does hit especially hard, especially since our weapons, ranged and melee, are stupidly overpriced compared to most other races.

Example: The kilkannon you referenced is 5 more points than a IG battle cannon, but worse in every way, other than arguably a fixed 2 damage instead of D3.

 Vankraken wrote:
I said it before that flat to hit modifiers (usually negative modifers) would have a far more detrimental impact on Ork shooting that any other army and that is absolutely true for Ork shooting in 8th. Losing blast weapons also hurts Orks the most as blast weapons had a flat to hit roll of 1/3 of the dice rolls while the other results had scatter which usually went off wildly due to BS2. Orks had huge scatters but a scatter can still hit other things so it made Ork shooting usually do damage but just not always at the targets we where aiming for (sounds Orky to me).

That could be a way to do it, but it would require giving every Ork unit/ gun that is Heavy, a rule to bypass the heavy restriction, or create an entirely new weapon profile type. Orks would benefit quite a bit from not having -1 to hit on their big guns. It would enable Ork guns to be mobile and still effective while they advance towards the enemy. If they so chose.

I won't claim to know everything about balance, but letting Orks effectively ignore Heavy is one way of going about it, potentially. Increase how much they can shoot, or make their on the move shooting more reliable for heavy weapons. I feel that one of those would bump Ork shooting up well enough, to be a reasonable threat.

 Thadin wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
I said it before that flat to hit modifiers (usually negative modifers) would have a far more detrimental impact on Ork shooting that any other army and that is absolutely true for Ork shooting in 8th. Losing blast weapons also hurts Orks the most as blast weapons had a flat to hit roll of 1/3 of the dice rolls while the other results had scatter which usually went off wildly due to BS2. Orks had huge scatters but a scatter can still hit other things so it made Ork shooting usually do damage but just not always at the targets we where aiming for (sounds Orky to me).

That could be a way to do it, but it would require giving every Ork unit/ gun that is Heavy, a rule to bypass the heavy restriction, or create an entirely new weapon profile type. Orks would benefit quite a bit from not having -1 to hit on their big guns. It would enable Ork guns to be mobile and still effective while they advance towards the enemy. If they so chose.

I won't claim to know everything about balance, but letting Orks effectively ignore Heavy is one way of going about it, potentially. Increase how much they can shoot, or make their on the move shooting more reliable for heavy weapons. I feel that one of those would bump Ork shooting up well enough, to be a reasonable threat.

Just make all the weapons you want to have this work for assault weapons. If you did that for Flash Gitz, Lootas, and things like Grotzookas. Then they could move and shoot effectively, and if you want to take the penalty to advance you could do it. I think it would actually be pretty fluffy for all ork non-artillery weapons to be Assault. It would make them more an aggressive mobile shooty/assault army. I mean points would need to be worked on a bit, but if you could throw lootas in a trukk and Drive them up the board, shooting and assaulting with them they could potentially be attractive as a unit.

I concur, the "Blast is now a random number of Attacks" changes the dynamics of so many Units and Orks are feeling it for all the worse reasons....
I really really want to come back to this game, and I would love to be an Ork player this time around, but every time Game Workshop screws them over worse.

Though, I have to wonder:
Does Game Workshop screw Orks over because the Orks collectively believe Game Workshop can not write good Rules?

 Thadin wrote:
Should they match up to the effectiveness of Space Marine Devastators, Artillery and such? Hopefully not.

Why not? Devastators in cover sport a 2+ save and will probably be shooting their autocannons until some orks finally reach them in turn 3 or 4 to beat them out of their ruin.
A unit of lootaz will casually be gunned down by a storm talon in one round of shooting.
And lootaz are one of the only units whose weapons are actually as good as their imperial counter-part.
Compare Zzap gunz or KMK to lascannons.
Rokkits or kannons to missile launchas.
Big Shoota to heavy bolter.
Killkannon to battlecannon.
KMB to plasma gun.
Shoota to bolter.
Not a single ork wants any of them changed in stats. Just priced according to BS 5+, like they have the previous four editions. According to some of the ancient WH40k veterans even longer.

Ork's weakness has never been terrible shooting. Short ranged shooting? Sure. But ork's weakness is that they are easy to kill.
If some unit is putting out too much lead, blow it away..Can't do that with marine squads, imperial artillery or tau suits without deep striking a bunch of plasma weapons. And orks can't even do that - most imperial units will survive having a unit of shoota boyz jumped next to them. Unless we jump 500 points of flash gits next to them of course... which have 30 T4 6+ wounds at best.

My favorite comparison is always the Battle Cannon to the Killkannon because it just shows how far GW went to make ork shooting terrible. There is no reason to EVER take a KillKannon, realistically if you made it 5pts, JUST 5PTS! people would still go....meh. Why? because on average you are going to hit with the thing once a turn on average. And when you take it you eat up precious Transport capacity on a Battlewagon.

Put it this way, if you TRIPLED not doubled, the shots a KillKannon could put out it would still be inferior to the battle Cannon because of range (24 vs 72) and Strength (7 vs 8) and Price (27 vs 22). If you tripled the KillKannons shots to 3D6 it would average about 10-11 shots a turn of which 3.3-3.6 would hit. The BattleCannon averages 1.5-2 hits a turn. So for almost 25% less and with higher strength and 3x the range that seems a lot closer in comparison doesn't it? Ironically, you still wouldn't see KillKannons all that often, because we completely lack synergy with it to make that a useful tactic. A battlewagon with KillKannon (x3 version), Deff Rolla, Kannon and 4 Rokkitz puts out 3D6 S7 shots and 5 S8 shots for 270pts. you could not put the Deff Rolla on it to save 19pts but realistically 5 different weapons that have a max range of 24 you are going to want that ram. And at 270pts you could field 2 for more then the cost of Knight Titan. And which is really scarier, 2 Battlewagons or a Titan?

I think random number of shots for blast weapons was just a bad idea in general.

Great responses glad everyone is engaged with this, I think haveing multi d6 for blasts would be good effectively double them. I hope we see this and not just price cuts, a cheat 0.5 damage is still unusable when you can only deploy so many of its platforms

Like has been said by others, a lot of the problems with Ork blast weapons are actually problems with blast weapons in general.

KMK on BS 5+ vehicles do feel like a punishment, and the way things are priced right not it's pretty silly to take a Kannon, Lobba or Zzap Gun on a Battle Wagon.

The Killkannon is the most egregious example, in my opinion. I think that in 7th Edition GW charged for the transport capacity of a Battle Wagon (rightly so), but then when they priced the Killkannon they didn't factor that it takes up eight transport slots into the cost. It was still a weapon that could kill things pretty well, and because multiple units couldn't ride in a vehicle sometimes the eight models of capacity wasn't a big loss. Now losing eight models of capcity is always going to hurt, plus the Killkannon doesn't really kill much, and it's still expensive.

If we go to Forge World I think that the Supa Kannon and Bursta Kannon aren't that bad. The Supa Kannon isn't great, but it isn't terrible either. The Bursta Kannon seems pretty good.

 Thadin wrote:
Ork shooting isn't the main draw of the army.

Ork shooting is actually my favorite part of the army, at least in my imagination. I like the mental image of loads of orks with oversized and unreliable machine guns indiscriminately throwing lead (and more exotic projectiles) in the general direction of the enemy at a high rate of fire. I like to think of the joy of the orks at the noise and kick of their shootas and at all of the explosions, fires and weirder things happening down range. That's how they are in the fluff, but it doesn't always work out on the tabletop.

I think I mostly agree with what you've said, Thadin.

Orks should be bad shots, but ork shooting should be effective. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. Ork shooting is supposed to be effective based on the sheer amount of dakka they can put out. Most of it should miss, but enough should hit (and hit hard enough) to do serious damage. Orks should also have access to powerful but unreliable weapons. Unreliable shouldn't mean something that ranges from bad to terrible, but rather something that has a good chance of inflicting a tremendous amount of damage on the enemy as well.

In my mind there should be two broad builds of orky shooting armies.

Highly aggressive, short ranged shooting that can also assault is one. Lots of units like Shoota Boyz, Tankbustas, Flash Gitz, Burna Boyz and vehicles bristling with gunz. An army like this gives up a decent amount of assault in order to have effective close range shooting (effective by volume rather than accuracy), but it is still pretty good at assault. This army wouldn't be able to outshoot a dedicated gunline, but it has the flexibility to run up and krump them. It wouldn't be able to outchop a dedicated assault army, but it can try to hang back and soften them up with shooting. I think with some rules and points tweaks the orks should be able to pull off a jack-of-all trades, master of none army like this.

The other kind is an unreliable gunline. I do think orks should be able to field a gunline, and I think it's pretty fluffy, but I think it should be risky. I think that the ork gunline should be able to hit pretty hard, and probably have a slightly better ability to withstand being assaulted than the gunlines of Imperial Guard and Tau. However, I think that the cost of being able to be a little better at withstanding assaults should come at the cost of not being able to outshoot a dedicated IG or Tau gunline with average rolls. That's part of the risk. The other part is the unreliability of ork weapons, but that unreliability cuts both ways. If the ork player is lucky and he keeps rolling three shots for his Lootas, his KMKs one-hit tanks and his SAG mek creates a vortex in the midst of the enemy the ork gunline should have a chance to beat the IG or Tau gunline. On the flip side, the unreliability should mean that sometimes the ork player rolls ones for his Lootas, his KMKs melt themselves without doing much to the enemy and his SAG backfires, killing the big mek and any unfortunates standing too close, resulting in the ork player losing what should be an easy game for him.

Of course elements of what I listed above should also be able to be used in a more mixed army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think a combination of dropping points, increasing shots, clan abilities, warlord traits and stratagems will hopefully fix ork shooting. Not necessarily all of those things for every weapon or unit, but I'm hoping that some things will get one type of fix while others will get something else.

Killkannons are often considered the orky version of Battle Cannons. I don't have a problem with ork Battle Cannons being worse than their Imperial counterparts, but I'm not sure they should be so much worse. I think that doubling the number of shots but keeping the lower strength and range would be a good fix that is both thematic and synergizes well with orky BS. I can easily imagine orks looting a Battle Cannon, but not making as good of a projectile (lower strength and range). However, I can also seem them loading massively oversized projectiles into their cannons (shorter range again, but a lot more shots to represent a bigger blast).

This might be in fitting with the Supa Kannon. I've red before that Supa Kannons are the ork equivalent of Earthshaker Cannons and are often made out of looted Earthshaker Cannons. The Supa Kannon has twice the number of shots but only one quarter the range and -1 strength compared to an Earthshaker Cannon. The Supa Kannon does get a fixed 3 damage rather than d3 like the Earthshaker.

 argonak wrote:
I think random number of shots for blast weapons was just a bad idea in general.

I am on the fence myself:
On one paw, the Blast Marker was really just a way of generating a number of hits and the dice roll is just a way of generating a number of hits
Mechanically the D6 is likely to generate more hits over time then the Marker, while being far easier to handle, so it is an improvement there

On the other, the Blast Marker Automatically Hit and where a physical object that could be accounted for with proper spacing
Removing the Automatic Hit portion has rendered them useless on poor Ballistic Scored Models
removing the physical object simply encourages as many tightly packed blobs as possible


If they give back the Automatic Hit but reduced the number of Hits generated?

 JinxDragon wrote:
If they give back the Automatic Hit but reduced the number of Hits generated?

Blast weapons still missed roughly one fourth of their shots, plus automatic hits would make former template weapons obsolete (not to mention their overwatch and anti-air ridiculous).

The only way to fix blasts across the codices would be re-evaluating every single one of them and fixing their shots or points.

I like the idea of blasts generating automatic hits like templates, but with the addition that neither can be used on aircraft, and maybe blasts can't overwatch.

The swingyness of the D6 or 2D6 or what have you should keep them from being too powerful. You'll almost never see them wipeing out whole units like in previous editions, but they'd be kinda scary again. Points should, obviously, be adjusted as necessary.

 Jidmah wrote:

 JinxDragon wrote:
If they give back the Automatic Hit but reduced the number of Hits generated?

Blast weapons still missed roughly one fourth of their shots, plus automatic hits would make former template weapons obsolete (not to mention their overwatch and anti-air ridiculous).

The only way to fix blasts across the codices would be re-evaluating every single one of them and fixing their shots or points.

Not necessary.

What you should do is roll to hit with a single shot. If successful, you roll a D3/D6 to see how many hits you got. Relatively easy to houserule or implement in the game, makes the shots more plentiful, and makes sure they're worth the cost.

I think it would be nice if some ork weapons had a rule that let them always hit on a 5+ like the Dark Reapers ability.

It effects Orks more than most - but are any formerly blast weapons good? Don't cite vehicle X from forgeworld which appears on 1% of tables.

I think it should be like a flamer. Roll a dice and get that many hits and then be balanced accordingly. Right now most of them kind of suck - Orks are just especially bad.

There is no reason for having the two step process.

I personally think it should be one roll to hit. Hit does the normally rolled number of shots as having hit, a miss equals half of said roll hits. That way most Ork weapons will basically hit 1d3 times and sometimes a bit more.

As it stands, all the Ork weapons should have become assault like the Tyranids did.