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How do people run their nobs? I'm wondering and optimal way to kit mine.

Not sure there is an optimal way.... But I like Nob squads a lot. Mine are just equipped with big choppas, shootas and max runts. Boss Nob may take a Klaw/Saw. They're admirably killy vs armour and reaaonably survivable with runts.
I'd love to run them with kombi skorchas and big choppas but it's prohibitively expensive. Would be dead good if it didnt cost so much.

I've found two loadouts that both work pretty well. Both use shootas on every nob (they are free!) and ammo runts for the extra wound. I have found the optimal unit size to be between 5 and 7 nobz.

1) 3 PK, rest is just bringing sluggas. In multiples, PKs actually do meaningful damage to vehicles and mosters and their AP makes them deadly to elites not sporting 4++ saves or better. The choppas on the excess nobs also make dealing with hordes easier, which PKs are somewhat bad at.

2) Big Choppas for everyone. A bit weaker against T7 and T8 units, but more dangerous to multi-wound models with less toughness (read: characters). They will easily clobber things like tervigons or daemon princes to death. If you are short a few points, you can have one or two in the unit without big choppa - they tend to die before combat anyways.

I'm no longer using powa stabbas, while they look like a good deal on paper, they never had any actual effect on my games. Since the other weapons dropped in points, I'd rather pay 4 more points for a big choppa or trade 4 stabbas for an additional PK.

As for kombi-skorchas, I prefer putting them on my warboss or big meks - the character rule protects that 19 point investment and especially big meks don't need to worry about making a charge after moving in skorching position.

I've only run nobz before the price reduction. 5 nobz + 5 runts in a trukk with Warboss and 2 * (5 nobz + 4 runts) in a wagon with Ghaz.

They had 3 bigchoppas and 2 stabbas.

Now it might be a good idea to get klaws instead of bigchoppas. 2-3 klaws would be great. Stabbas are still decent and they do more than regular choppas do point-for-point vs targets with at least 5+ armor. But than you might want to get big choppas instead. Cause BC still outpunch stabbas vs multi-wound targets by a lot. And are even cheaper than they used to be.

I run mine this way:

Full unit of nobz: 5-6 of them with big choppas and ammo runts. Pks are too expensive, stabbas too dedicated to specific enemies and all shooty options (including kombi skorchas) too expensive to be worthy. I prefer meganobz with killsaws now, if you want to embark them in a trukk or BW. If you go with footslogging nobz the more you have, the better it is, even 10 + 10 ammo runts.

Biker nobz: avoid them completely, too expensive.

Nobz leading boyz squads: pks are my favorite setup after CA, but big choppas and even standard choppas are not a bad choice either if you don't have the points spared.

Nobz leading kommandos squads: I usually keep them stock but in large groups of 10-15 kommandos they may have a big choppa or a pk.

Nobz leading bikers and tankbustas squads: keep them stock.

Nobz leading stormboyz squads: I prefer pks, it's not wrong giving them a big choppa though.

The best way to run nobz is one boss nob with a klaw and 9-29 boyz tagging along.

^^ That post

also best way to run the is not at all.

Min-maxing wise they are no good.

fluff wise they are cool

tabletop wise they are meh

painting wise they are fun to paint

Bottom line, I only ran them once in 8th. Plain boyz is better.

I've had some success with all big choppa/power stabba, shoota and ammo runt Nobz. In Trukks or deff rolla Battlewagons backed up by Warpath Weirdboy and Ghazghkull

I've always run them at about a 3:1 big choppa: power klaw ratio. Max runts, shootas, a couple skorchas for flavor.

I'm not on fire about power stabbas. Killsaws are not a bad option, honestly, I just don't have any modeled on nobz.

As for effectiveness, they're.....ok. Runts are essential (if a bit cheesy) for absorbing big hits, but once they're gone nobz die pretty quick.

But they are pretty krumpy for the points, and a fun and iconic unit. And very good at taking out heavy armor, something boyz struggle with.

I won't lie and say I have experience playing them in 8th, because I don't. All my Nobz are in Kommando and Boyz squads. But from a fluffy standpoint run them however you want. From a competitive standpoint? Don't use them at all except as a Boss Nob. They are just too expensive for what they do. Boyz are better across the board.

30 wounds of boyz +1 PK are 187 points
30 wounds of nobz +1 PK are 223 points, two thirds of the wounds have a 4+ save but are more vulnerable to multi-damage.

36 points are not the ocean people make them out to be. Nobz are less efficient than boyz (what isn't?), but far from terrible.

Too much hyperbole on this thread.

30 wounds of Nobz without a PK costs 255pts.
30 wounds of boyz without a PK costs 174 (free Nob has 2 wounds).

That's a pretty huge gulf now I realize you did 10 Nobz and 10 mearshields but still.

But using your math the boyz produce 112 S4 attacks and 5S5 attacks.

The Nobz produce 40S5 attacks. Even against T8 the boyz do statistically more damage.

Like I said, I've never even bothered with Nobz in 8th because boyz do everything better for less and help with target saturation.

 Jidmah wrote:
30 wounds of boyz +1 PK are 187 points
30 wounds of nobz +1 PK are 223 points, two thirds of the wounds have a 4+ save but are more vulnerable to multi-damage.

36 points are not the ocean people make them out to be. Nobz are less efficient than boyz (what isn't?), but far from terrible.

Too much hyperbole on this thread.

Nobz are are a very decent option. Unfortunately they pretty much do what boyz do, boyz just do it better. It is like, they are twice as good as boys, but they are three times as expensive.

Now, if you could mob them together with boyz, that would be another thing entirely.

I find that you reasonably cannot get all 30 Boyz within hitting range most of the time. 10 Nobz are much easier to fit in to do their thing. So comparing absolute damage output of Boyz vs Nobz is a bit moot.

That said, outside of a transport your Nobz are probably going to be a likely candidate for first blood if you lose 1st turn. So I probably wouldn't run them outside of transports and the transport tax ups their cost considerably.

I have run them in my green tide multiple times (4 units of 30 boyz + 2 units of 7-10 nobz), they are just as tough as boyz when it comes to footslogging. Simply take all multi-damage shots on gretchin and all low AP shots on nobz without upgrades, and they will live just as long as a unit of boyz would.

They aren't obvious targets for things like lascannons and plasma since gretchin will take the first 10 hits. Deep striking plasma units will not kill a single nob, and you would need 10+ lascannons to actually kill some nobz.

Any weapons without AP or AP-1 also have a harder time killing nobz due to 4+ armor. In my experience it's pretty much always easier to kill a unit of boyz than a unit of nobz.

The only things that really stand out as strong against them is heavy artillery with multiple shots, like basilisks, LRBT or predator autocannons.

I like running 2 untis in trukks

209 points buys 4 nobz with 2 pk, 3 big choppas and 5 ammo runts to eat wounds. I also run 2 skorchas which seem to always earn back their 19 points each. usually just flaming squads near what I plan to charge add 82 points for a trukk

at 291 points per unit, they do work though and the trukks usually live through turn 1 and deposit the nobz to hit the turn 2 charge. This is assuming you have adequate terrain so the trukks can try and lose LOS to some heavy weapons, otherwise they will just poof

2 units ~600 points, but it occupies the other army turn 2 setting up the boys for their turn 3 charges

It's not a bad tactic but 600pts of just boyz works better which is the problem with Nobz. Anything they can do, boyz can do better for cheaper. Plus it's hilarious having your opponent fire lascannons at boyz because there aren't any other targets