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I hear many people advising Tau allies for Orks, and I wonder why Tau over something like IG. Anyone mind filling me in? I'm thinking of adding an allied detachment once I get my Orks all painted up and am wondering what are my most beneficial options.

Propably because Tau do serious long range anti tank even better than IG, which is what orks need.

IG does pie plates, which the orks dont really need, as they already are anti infantry. They are still really good at accurate anti tank, it's just that Tau are slightly better at it, due to railguns.

Tau.

Because Tau.

Well, when fielding tau, you get six railguns and a bunch of "useless junk" (firewarriors, hq, etc). When fielding IG you get a vendetta, a manticore and a different bunch of "useless" stuff. So when just looking at anti-tank, tau are superior. However the IG's HQ and troops are a lot more useful than the things tau bring (melta or plasma units, potentially in vehicles), in addition to the vendetta being a lot harder to remove than your three railgun suits (as well as being anti-air itself), so IG is really the superior choice at second glance. Orks are one of the best allies for tau, but that doesn't mean it's the other way around, too.

Personally, I think the best allies we can currently get is the new chaos codex, because you can use everything, not just the FA/Heavy support slots. What we really want is the helldrake, and either a bunch of lascannons(havocs, obliterators, predator) or something that rushes forward with our orks and tears up vehicles for them (vindicator, siege fiend).
The HQ can be your choice of badass flying monstrous creature, reliable psyker or just another warboss-like beatstick. For troops you can have five cheap FNP space marines to sit on your objectives and/or cult marines to do their thing. Cultists really aren't much more than gretchin with better guns, so unless you really need to save points, I'd rather opt for minimal units of chaos space marines with an icon - we can do throw-away units better than chaos.

I actually find the Farseer + Pathfinder combo nice and cheap, for what it provides.

But yes, Tau is a nice choice as well.

Pathfinders aren't scoring though, due to being desperate allies.

I chose necrons.

I got a doom scythe so it can come on the table, fly 36" and drop its death ray up to 12" away. In other words, it's range is the whole battle field. then the ray can really help thin out parking lots as it could hit 2 or more vehicles, getting close enough to ignore potential cover saves, and with a 50% chance to explode a vehicle, 16% to wreck it.

Tau shoot and likely kill 1 tank a turn.

Tau probably are the better choice, but I find the necrons to be a fun compliment to the orks

Broadsides with target locks can shoot three different targets with a twin-linked railgun each. That's really the only reason why tau are so popular

 Jidmah wrote:
Broadsides with target locks can shoot three different targets with a twin-linked railgun each. That's really the only reason why tau are so popular

So in gaming terms that means Tau will roll a 1 to pen your rhino 3 times and wreck it ^^
The people I know that play tau have the worst luck on the planet.

I watched that happen 3 turns in a row last week. Luckily he knows he has bad luck so shot 3 BS's at a rhino >.<

 Jidmah wrote:
Pathfinders aren't scoring though, due to being desperate allies.

I don't believe Orks can get any scoring allies.

Regardless, they are there mostly to be the combo-purchase for the Farseer, and can provide some nice sniping while they are at it - which also allows you to keep them apart from the horde.

Since I don't have easy access to the Tau Codex, I've not been able to actually really delve into them. Generally though, I tend to try to keep the Allies at low cost.

CSM, guard, crons and tau are all allies of convenience, so their troops score. Everyone else is desperate or worse.

Me, I'm having a hard time seeing any allies as truly helpful. I've found that Orks rely so heavily on target saturation that they don't "play well with others" in general.

My vote would be for Guard, since they do a mix of light infantry and heavy vehicles as effectively as Orks. That, and they can spam the daylights out of Melta weapons, which Orks lack.

Fouler wrote:
CSM, guard, crons and tau are all allies of convenience, so their troops score. Everyone else is desperate or worse..

Ah dang, had missed the note about scoring units. NOW I KNOW!

Fouler wrote:
CSM, guard, crons and tau are all allies of convenience, so their troops score. Everyone else is desperate or worse.

Me, I'm having a hard time seeing any allies as truly helpful. I've found that Orks rely so heavily on target saturation that they don't "play well with others" in general.

My vote would be for Guard, since they do a mix of light infantry and heavy vehicles as effectively as Orks. That, and they can spam the daylights out of Melta weapons, which Orks lack.

Allies are to plug gaps in codices, such as the orkish ranged anti-tank deficit. Guard light infantry is a redundancy if you're taking them as allies with orks.

I think subconsciously you don't want to take Tau allies because of the clash in appearances between the two sides. The smooth clean finish of the Tau and the ramshackle orks, they're complete opposites.
I think maybe necrons would be a good choice against a shooty army. You'd take Imotek to limit enemy shooting.

Or just loot the damn Tau.
No self respecting warboss WOULDN'T
There is even a P&M blog where a guy is doing it here in Dakka.
No one does allies like Ork looters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here ya go.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/472920.page

Jidmah et all, can you give me some examples/tips about chaos/orks ally opprtunities? I just got the new chaos codex, not sure where the synergy is. I can see the use of the FA and Heavy slot, but HQ and troops? Elite?

I like using Orks and Chaos together because they are both crazy, and Marines with the Mark of Khorne are like elite armoured boyz and the chaos tanks can help because the Orks don't really have a stand-out heavy armoured tank, unless you have a battlewagon. And the High BS helps in the shooting phase.

DrDuckman wrote:
Jidmah et all, can you give me some examples/tips about chaos/orks ally opprtunities? I just got the new chaos codex, not sure where the synergy is. I can see the use of the FA and Heavy slot, but HQ and troops? Elite?

HQ could be a daemon prince, which is pretty expensive, but you get a flying monstrous creature, which can either smash vehicles via vector striking(including fliers) or land and start wrecking whatever units are tossed his way. I wouldn't turn him into a psyker, he gets way to expensive that way. The great thing about flying MCs is that people usually use all those small weapons tucked to transports and high volume of fire weapons to attempt to ground them - incidentally all those weapons are also good at shooting boyz as well. So if your opponent wants that winged daemon out of his face, he will be killing a lot less boyz. I think there are plenty of great combinations to pick from, my personal favorite is using a Daemon of Khorne with Wings and the Axe of Blind Fury. Hurray for seven+d6 S9 AP2 attacks on the charge
If you want a more resilient daemon price you could either go for a daemon of tzeench (gets a 4+ save and rerolls 1s) or nurgle (shrouded), but those can't a decent daemon weapon. You could buy a murder sword to kick Mephiston in the nuts, but that's about it. The black mace seems nice, but at 45 points, is really expensive, too. I'd rather buy my khorne daemon power armor instead.

As for the Chaos General, no matter what you do with him, really is no different from a warboss. Warbosses aren't exactly bad, so you might just take a Chaos General instead of a warboss to unlock allies. -1WS from the Axe of Blind Fury hurts him a little more than the daemon prince, but you still get a lot of high strength AP2 attacks at I5. Put him on a bike or one of the steeds, and you're done.

Another option would be a sorcerer. Obviously they can't bless orks, so I'd either go with tzeench powers in order to get doombolt(all other powers besides boon of mutation are useful, too) or telepathy powers to debuff stuff to smash with your orks. Either way, he does something for your orks which they normally couldn't do. For just 100 points you can get a level 2 psyker with rerolls on his psy tests (or level 3 for 125), which will screw up a lot of your enemy's plans. Of course, you could get him terminator armor, a bike, 3+ invulnerable saves or whatever, but that really defeats the point of getting a cheap HQ instead of the daemon prince. Sadly he needs a unit to run along with him, so that might get a little bit moer expensive.

All other HQs either are too expensive or have to little impact on your army as allies. Putting Abbadon and Thrakka in one army might be fun though.

Troops can do three things:
1) Be cheap. Five Chaos Space marine cost 75 points. Add Veteran of the Long War for ld10 and you're at 80, and provides you with a cheap scoring unit that require non-trivial firepower to remove. In addition, unlike gretchin, they don't fold to the first thing assaulting them, while being unlikely to run off from taking casualties. Of course, any dedicated attack will kill them, but what do you expect from 80 points?
2) Be resilient. Ten Space Marine Veterans are just 150 and can now take lascannons or missile launchers to help with ranged anti-tank. You could also add a rhino or a mark of nurgle to increase their survivability even more.
3) WAAAAGH! Did you know? For just 6 points per model over regular 'ard boyz, you can get up to 20 power armored boyz with rage, counter-attack, reroll charge range, I4, S4 and hatred(space marines). They do get expensive very quickly though.
So troops are either better gretchin, or the can run in front of your boyz to catch bullets with their power armor.

I mistakenly thought that you could take cult units as troops, but that doesn't work for allies. Which brings me to the elites: We really don't want any of them. They all are expensive, and do little orks can't do anyways. So, pretty much don't take any, get more orks instead.

At the point where your running a FMC and Heldrake do you think its worth bringing in 2-3 Dakkajets?

Sure, why not? Dakka jets are just used for anti-air because we don't have anything else. If they still rock at turning infantry and light vehicles into swiss cheese if someone does that job for them.


A list of chaos-dakka orks could look like this:
- HQ -
KFF Mek
Khorne Daemon Prince /w Wings and Axe of Blind Fury (I also gave him Power Armor because I had 20 Points to spare)
- Troops -
2x 30 Shoota boyz
2x 5 CSM /w Plasma Gun
- Elite -
2x 10 Lootaz
- Fast Attack -
2x Dakka Jet
1x Helldrake
- Heavy Support -
2x 3 Kannons
1x Predator /w Lascannons

Total of 2000 points.

I am still torn between lootaz and bigger squads of space marines with lascannons. My opponent didn't have that many targets for lascannons though (tzeench daemons), so I was quite happy to have lootaz around.
I'd also like to mention that It's quite funny that Khorne Daemon Princes get Hatred(Tzeench) - my Daemon Prince actually killed Kairos-I-Never-Die-Ever-Because-Of-Rerolls-Fateweavor in one round of combat

I'm not sure you'd be allowed to have 2x5 CSM- aren't Allies only allowed 1 Troop?

I think that it might be cool to ally the Orks with the Eldar, and back up the boyz with some dark reapers or something.

Anvildude wrote:
I'm not sure you'd be allowed to have 2x5 CSM- aren't Allies only allowed 1 Troop?

They must take 1 may take 2

I went with IG because of the looting purposes.

Basic troops get gretchin heads instead of 'ummie heads. Gretchins get put on vehicles (such as the ones from a stompa kit).
Kromleach also makes really nice kits of Orks in Great Cloaks. Got the great cloaks for the 4 command squad; ork commander for the sergeant; and a pack of tank commanders to put on the russ.

HQ:
Command Squad with Plasma/Melta in a Chimera

EL:
Marbo
or
Stormvets with Melta

TR:
Vets with Plasma
-These can either be in a Chimera/Vendatta; with Hakar; or real basic and fire emplaced weapons

FA:
Vendetta

HS:
Russ
or
Manticore

I'm noting a particularly hard time dealing with terminators, feel no pain, and heaven forbid both. Are there solutions to these in the codex are should I turn to an ally to solve it? If allying is the answer which one?

 arinnoor wrote:
I'm noting a particularly hard time dealing with terminators, feel no pain, and heaven forbid both. Are there solutions to these in the codex are should I turn to an ally to solve it? If allying is the answer which one?

Ghaz can answer one of those units by himself ^^

I've actually used him more in 6th than I did in 5th just because of his 2+

It remains true in 6th as it did in 5th. If you want something dead, punch it with Ghaz.

I think it was mathammered out once that there is literally NO single character that Ghaz cannot kill in single combat. Blobs of infantry and walker squadrons and such, of course, are a different story (I think even most Walkers have a hard time with him, though).

Hm, Ghaz could work, honestly when I saw the nerf to his WAAAGH I had shelved him, but perhaps I simply need to bring him back. Not the biggest fan of him denying overwatch, but that might be worked around... I don't know.

 arinnoor wrote:
I'm noting a particularly hard time dealing with terminators, feel no pain, and heaven forbid both. Are there solutions to these in the codex are should I turn to an ally to solve it? If allying is the answer which one?

I guess you could always try a demolisher if you're taking IG.

It's a nice and orky tank to begin with, and the fact that it has a S10 AP 2 large blast means it can tear apart deepstriking termis, hordes, and vehicles with ease.

I'm mainly looking for good ways to incorporate things that will deal with terminators/feel no pain into my list, that will be versital. Ghaz is a good suggestion as not only does he beat on termies and get rid of the enemy's FnP for the most part, but he can handle other things as well, with proper backup.

Allying in IG is an answer I've thought of before, but its a lot of points to spend inducting in the CCS, Vets, Detta, and Russ. At the time it was a struggle to make a list I liked with them in it.

A lot of Power Klaws will do that, actually. And Kustom Mega Blastas are AP2 and STrength 8 as well.