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I play an Ork Speed Freaks army, and was wondering abou these alleged 'Hidden Powerfists.' What exactly are they, and how are they used? Are they effective, and would they be helpful in my Speed Freaks army list?

Thanks for the responses.

Hidden power fists are PFs on a unit character as opposed to an IC. Unit characters are untargetable, so as long as the enemy does not kill every model in his kill zone (the PF model being one of them), the PF-weilding character remains unharmed and nasty.

For instance, you have a mob of 20 boyz with 1 nob with a power claw. You now have many ablative wounds that can be taken instead of the Nob while the nob kills whatever it is that needs killing, such as a MC, WL, or IC. Because you can get many models into the kill zone, it is unlikely that the enemy will be able to kill all of them, allowing your PC to operate unmolested.

A war of attrition functions in the same way. Perhaps you have two MEQ squads (T4 3+) against each other but one has a hidden PF. The hidden PF will do much more damage than the basic S4 attacks of everyone else. In this case, you use it to grind down the squad as opposed to taking down a big nasty, but the same rules apply: S8+ attacks that ignore armor saves and your opponent can't do anything about them.

As an added bonus, S8 attacks will pop marine characters.

Unforutnately, I can't speak to the usefulness of the hidden PC in Speed Freak armies because I don't play them.  I'd imagine that a hidden PC would be useful, even with the smaller mob sizes of speed freaks.

Nobz with p.klaw are great because they have a high number of attacks (4 with double arm, 5 on the charge) and two wounds each. The boyz are usually meat shields and cause an occasional wound but the nob is a killer.

You almost always want a PK in a KoS mob. Mainly because 10 boyz arent nearly as great as 16, where you might not need a powerklaw to be effective.

Remember though, a PK jacks up unit costs like GW and their products, making the trukks much more likely to be targeted.
And as rule of thumb with the KoS, you charge in a ratio of 2 to 1. 2 ork mobs vs 1 marine squad. 2 nobs on the charge = 10 powerfist attacks.

So they unit holding the fist gets to make full attacks, just after everyone else, right? Thats the purpose of 'hiding' the fist, right?

Yes, the model with the fist gets to attack on initiative 1.

The whole point of the fist being HIDDEN, is to put it on a squad upgrade character rather than an INDEPENDENT character. In 4th edition, Independent Characters can be picked out in close combat - the enemy can choose to direct their attacks to the independent character, and that character MUST take any of the wounds inflicted. So an Independent Character with a powerfist will often be killed before Initiative 1 rolls around.

However, since a squad upgrade character (eg Ork Nob, SM Vet Sgt) CAN'T be picked out in combat, you can assign any wounds inflicted by the enemy to other squad members. This make it very likely that the powerfist-wielding upgrade character will still be around at initiative 1 and get to smash things. Sometimes people refer to squad models as "ablative wounds" for the upgrade character, especially if the Fist/Klaw is likely to do much more damage on it's own than the entire rest of the squad with their normal cc weapons.

Independent Characters should have a normal initiative weapon (eg Choppa, Power Weapon, Lightning Claw etc); upgrade characters should have Initiative 1 weapons (PowerFist, Klaw, Thunder Hammer).

You can get away with BOTH a normal initiative cc weapon AND an initiative 1 weapon on an Independent Character though (eg Choppa + Klaw on a Warboss), as long as you don't need to give it a gun. It's sometimes better to have that loadout if the character isn't any good at shooting anyways. He can then choose which cc weapon to use in any round of combat - the Choppa in normal circumstances, and the Klaw if facing monstrous creatures, dreadnoughts, or once the enemy squad is so small that the Boss can take a few wounds and still keep coming.

This discussion brings up an interesting question. Last game I played, against bugs, he had a genestealer squad go at a Tac squad with a PF on the Sgt. When rolling armor saves, he "directed" one of those saves had to be for the PF guy. I'm not 100% up to snuff on those rules, but a couple of guys watching are, and they didn't say a word about it, so I went with it.

Can that be done? Can you specifically target a line trooper to make saves like that?

Yeah, the "Torrent of Fire" rule also applies in close combat, so if he inflicted as many wounds as you had guys, he could nominate one of your models to take the first hit. You do get to decide which hit he takes, so you don't have to throw a rending wound on him, instead deciding to take a normal hit.

It's just hits though, not wounds? Don't have a rule book on hand at the moment to dig it up myself.

Wounds, you chose which wound to take on him, generally this means if a character is being targeted you nominate him to take the wound that won't kill him but one that allows the save.