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Question I'm new to orks and just got a battlewagon from a friend. In your experience what's the preferred loadout people go with? Are def rollas a must? Boys or elite units?

You can build its roof detachable to be flexible in loadout if wysiwyg counts.

I think most people play with minimum cost, so 4 big shootas max, and yes, the deff rolla is nice, but actually I did not reach close combat with it in 4-5 games so far.

It usually carries boyz mobs of 20 or nobz for me. Taking the T8 upgrade counts pretty much, although you cannot shoot out of it in this case, but who cares. I do not suggest putting in anything expensive, except when you want to minimize drops and get out turn 1.

Keep it as cheap as possible, it's basically a transport. So just the mandatory big shoota. Def rolla only if you field multiple wagons or some naugths, otherwise the wagon will likely die before reaching charge range and those points invested on the rolla would be wasted.

Generally speaking a BW is an overcosted transport that can be decent with the 'ard case which makes it T8. So not shooty units embarked. Don't take a wagon to carry flash gitz, lootas or tankbustas.

Go for 2x10 boyz (in order to have 2 nobz), nobz plus ammo runts or meganobz. Eventually 10 boyz plus 5 nobz and ammo runts or 10-12 boyz plus 4-5 meganobz.

It doesn't have a mandatory bigshoota any more. It just used to be the preferred loadout to eat weapon destroyed results in previous editions.

Now it's usually just 'ard case and a deff rolla. Deff rolla is handy when you make contact but if you only have one wagon that's gona be shot off the board turn one, you can save points on a deff rolla.

What koooaei said.

Either get a deff roll and 'ard case, or nothing at all, the mandatory shoota died with the damage table.
In my experience the deff rolla already stops being worth its points when you have lost half your wounds, because d6 attacks is not that great, even if they hit on a 2+. T7 wagons tend to lose wounds a lot faster than T8 wagons, so I simply don't give rollas to them anymore.

As for what's inside them, the star players here are Thrakka, Grotznik (super-resilient warboss with pain boy aura), nobz with ammo runts, and maybe MANz.

Flash gits and tank bustaz are pretty good shooting units to put in battlewagons, but a trukk is probably a better ride for them - two of them are harder to kill than an open-topped wagon, but cost the same. YMMV.

Also make sure to have a big mek on a bike to protect your wagons, or - if you don't have one - put two foot KFF meks in your most valuable wagons. If their wagon blows up, they disembark the KFF starts protecting the other wagons nearby again. Not as good as the bike mek, but a cute trick. You also get two repair rolls that way. Don't forget that grot oilers take up transport space - and that they can take the damage from exploding wagons.
The wagon which is transporting Thrakka is always the most valuable one unless you are transporting something silly like 15 tank bustaz.

You kind of need boyz to get CP, but there is literally no advantage to bringing mobz of 20. Overwatch or explosions will always kill one or more boyz, so you're out of the green tide bonus anyways. Instead use units of 10 boyz in a wagon to have twice as many nobz and PKs. You can also mix wagons to have 10 boyz and 10 tank bustaz, or 5 nobz with runts and 10 boyz. I usually put Thrakka with a slightly larger mob of boyz and no further units (except the KFF mek mentioned above) since his wagon will get shot anyways.
Don't bother with shoota boyz - the damage of a drive-by is so low, that it doesn't justify losing T8.

In general, try to make all wagons equally valuable, so there is no obvious choice for your opponent what to kill first. As a rule of thumb, expect to lose one battlewagon per turn, so there shouldn't be a single wagon which cripples your army when lost. Spread Thrakka, Grotznik and your elites across as many wagons as possible.

The otherwise awesome weird boyz is mostly worthless in wagon lists, since he cannot use psychic powers from a wagon and wagons are too expensive to not completely focus on speed. Lootaz don't belong in battlewagons, no matter what people are saying.

Good support for battlewagons are planes, buggies, skorchas, koptaz(not great by themselves though) and all variants of artillery. Basically anything that is weak to multi-damage weapons will add to target saturation.