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I'm new to Warhammer 40K and have chosen the Orks as my race because they are fantastic! I am having a very hard time getting a handle on army building though. I'm trying to build myself a fun and effective 500 point army to start things off with (other friends are running Chaos Marines, Space Marines (Imperial Fists), and Adeptus Militarum). For my first army at 500pts I was going to run a Garukk, 2 Weirdboyz, and 3 units of Boyz (20 Boy unit of Shootas and two 10 boy units of melee). To be quite honest though I'm not sure if there is a more effective army I could be running at 500 points with the similar theme I'm going for here but this is as far as I've gotten so would LOVE any input and feedback and advice on either how this could work or ways to make it better! Thank you in advance for any feedback - I have medical grade ADD and am prone to way overthinking things so input will save me from myself here

Wayyy back when someone gave me this advice: Orks do one thing and they do it great. What that means is when youre building a list pick one "theme" and build it to that. You have to be very disciplined in this. For example, if you want trukk boyz you build the entire army to be mobile, not some trukks and some gunz. My personal favorite is bringing 200+ Boyz to the table and casually walking them up the field. Find your niche and build to that.

Also, I wouldn't recommend having less than 20 models in a unit of boyz and, in fact, most of the time you should have 30 (unless you're using one to mob up). Units of 10 and less die sooo easy to basic bolter fire, probably even lasgun fire.

Weirdboyz are great but you only need 1 at that point level. You bring the Weirdboy for Da Jump for the most part. The SAG Mek with Da Souped Up Shokka is one of our best HQ choices, it'll punish your opponent heavily for dumping too many points into any one unit/model you face.

At 500 I'd consider something like SAG mek, Weirdboy, 1 unit of 30 boyz, 2 units of 10 grots (For Grot screening the mek and weirdboy.) Da Jump your boyz next to an enemy unit that'll die to shoota fire, SAG the biggest scariest thing and GG.

It could be worth waiting a little while to see what happens with the new rulebook. But starting off a force of a few characters you like then 3 units of troops is always a good bet. Maybe some Gretchen if you like other units in the codex. Or a bunch of ork boyz if you want something relatively durable and killy.

Right now it's really hard to get your hands on a Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun. I thought about ordering the new Ghazghkull off Ebay or get Grukk for my HQ. Between those two which would you recommend?

I also think buying a few boxes of Grots will never go wrong. YOu'll always want grots. Right now the meta is to build battalions of grots to get the CP, as an ork player you should have 10+ CP in your games because of grot battalions. I would also try your hardest to get SAG meks and a Weirdboy, proxy if you have to.

Apollo39 wrote:
Right now it's really hard to get your hands on a Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun. I thought about ordering the new Ghazghkull off Ebay or get Grukk for my HQ. Between those two which would you recommend?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Grukk is legal in matched play.

You'e right Grukk AS Grukk is not only in open and narrative BUT he is no different than a regular warboss as far as his part and loadout goes so you could run his as a standard Warboss.