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I'm a new player and just getting the basics down, but i have 10 ork shootas and 5 or 6 nobz who i want to make a choopa and klaw (melee) group. I was wondering about buying Gretchen who i could use as a flesh shield for my orks as i run between covers and positioning them so if the enemy comes to the side of the tower they will still face the gretchen, basically their gretchen will always be a meat shield for my orks until it is time for a charge, in which my nobz would charge and wreck, while if i had any i would use the Gretchen to be a shield for my shootas as the traded fire. is this bull gak? i'm just trying to understand. Can someone tell me if this idea is viable, and how this would pan out. thanks

I can see where you are going with this, but id use the Big Mek HQ withe Kustom Force Field. That gives a 5+ cover save to any unit within the 6 inch bubble, even if it only covers one dude from the unit.

Well the thing is, as the rules stand, any way you can obscure your model, behind anything, including your own guys, grants a 5+ cover save. A Big Mek with a Kustom Force Field actually GRANTS them that same cover save just standing out in the open. So really, although using Gretchen as meat shields is fairly fluffy, it's a rather wasteful way to use them. You might as well throw both the units behind a small pile of rocks and let them BOTH claim 5+ cover whereas putting one in front of the other puts one in the open with no saves of any kind and ist just asking for the unit to get removed from the board by anything with a gun.

As a cheap objective holding unit they're fine.
But a better use is modeling some cannons, and taking a Big Gunz mob.

Ok i see what you guys are saying, but don't enemy shots have to hit the nearest target in that group don't they? or can they choose to shoot over the gretchen and just aim for my orks behind them? and the reason i choose them instead of some others i do want to make it a assault mostly army. so just using the fluffy gretchen to get from cover to cover, obviously i won't try to get them killed, but itd rather loose a few of them running to cover (let's say against a tao army) then me close range orks

Adversary wrote:
but don't enemy shots have to hit the nearest target in that group don't they?

Orks and Gretchin are seperate units. So if they shot the Gretchin, you take off the closest Gretchin

or can they choose to shoot over the gretchen and just aim for my orks behind them?

Yes, they can. Shooting through the Gretchin does give the Orks behind a cover save though.

If you only have 10 boys, id say you should get more of them. You really need at least 20 for a decent unit unless you are putting them ina trukk.

As a unit i find gretchin are only useful for camping an objective, and even then i prefer a group of 10 shoota boyz. As already stated, if you like them use them as big guns, if you want a save, use a mek.

 Adversary wrote:
I'm a new player and just getting the basics down, but i have 10 ork shootas and 5 or 6 nobz who i want to make a choopa and klaw (melee) group. I was wondering about buying Gretchen who i could use as a flesh shield for my orks as i run between covers and positioning them so if the enemy comes to the side of the tower they will still face the gretchen, basically their gretchen will always be a meat shield for my orks until it is time for a charge, in which my nobz would charge and wreck, while if i had any i would use the Gretchen to be a shield for my shootas as the traded fire. is this bull gak? i'm just trying to understand. Can someone tell me if this idea is viable, and how this would pan out. thanks

Gretchin armies are what I played in my brief stint as an ork (I was actually just borrowing stuff).

Pros:

1. Gretchin dont matter. So lose all you want in the pursuit of your tactics. Doesn't matter.
2. they score. So killing them matters a LOT more to the enemy than it ever will to you. This is good.
3. they ensure that YOUR units behind the gretchin will always BE the ones doing the charging. This is needless to say important. It is a luxury that most dont' have.
4. KFF quintuples the value of the Gretchin for you. Even in a world where ignores cover weapons might seem plentiful, see rule 1. Don't sewat that stuff.
5. a reserves gretchin squad might be the cheapest late game playt in 40K besides inquisitorial troopers. The Windryders of Eldar fame aren't even that cheap.


I will say that a 10 man group of Meganobz is ridiculously awesome in this type of army. Take a tank to hide them if you're worried about it.

My Gretchen list was this, roughly, Wargeared to taste but this was the outline. I can definitely see less shoota boyz and maybe adding a Kill Kannon. I tried it a couple times and it worked really just fine.

3 full units of Zzap Guns

10 Meganobz

30 shootaboyz

9 Lootaz

15 Kommandos

Bik Mek

Warboss

unit of 3 Rockit buggiez
Unit of 2 Rokkit Buggies

About 65 Gretchen


This list only lost once, at the top table of a tourney. And this despite me not knowing the codex that well or having played as orks before or since. So the army definitely was a good mix.

Those zzap guns (I chose to pay for all the ammo runts) was really quite cool. Those did a surprising amount of damage and i felt the AP 2 was absolutely critical in the new meta. Tough 7 Gretchen manning the guns was awesome.

thanks man that's awesome i'm going to stick to them because i like them and can you clarify on number 3?

#3 meant that the gretchen move like an amoeba around the dispersed main assault units, then anyone who gets to rapid fire rannge or charge range can't get the jump on your real assault units. Net result, you get to charge through the grots and into the enemy. Rarely will enemies get to charge you

Okay I can see that you like the gobbos so you will probably just go ahead and use them anyway (nothing wrong with playing units you like) but in my experience the grot shield thing is a waste of points. they start to add up eventually and you need a whole lot of them to make the meat shield effective. these are all points you could be spending on boyz, and by the sounds of it that's what you really need to be stocking up on anyway. I cant stress enough on how important more boyz (shoota boyz preferably) are at the moment and if you are footslogging them Then a well placed big mek with a KFF is just more effective imo.

im only saying this because I have tried the meat shield tactic a good few times and have failed quite miserably. good use of terrain cover and kustom force fields is the safest way to footslog. I only use grots now to man the quad gun in an ADL, a 10 man unit or 2 (at most) to be ignored and sit on objectives and for the big gunz crew.

Which is odd because you're spending very little on the shields and they are providing a great deal of utility. Do the math on 65 grots and how many units it can take to drive them off.

 Jancoran wrote:
Which is odd because you're spending very little on the shields and they are providing a great deal of utility. Do the math on 65 grots and how many units it can take to drive them off.

Okay 195pts which can almost get you TWO big mek KFF's,or even 32 Ork boyz (give me the extra Shoota boyz any day as they have the potential to do a lot more killing than the grots). And compared to terrain cover of equal or better cover value for 0 points those 65 grots are looking pretty expensive for what op is planning on using them for. YMMV of course im only talking from experience But saying it "doesn't matter" when 65 grots die or are stuck doing nothing is just fluffy/wishful thinking.

 RobZie wrote:
YMMV of course im only talking from experience But saying it "doesn't matter" when 65 grots die or are stuck doing nothing is just fluffy/wishful thinking.

...or experience, in thius case. Perhaps you missed that I DID include the KFF in there along with the Gretchen.

Look. You dont actually need many punchers when they ALWAYS get trhe jump. Gretchin make sure you always get it. So as you pierce forward there is little the enemy actually can do to you that matters.

Now consider that the list I posted has a LOT of twin linked Zzap guns (ammo runts) and a lot of of other long range shooting. So the enemy cannoy concentrate on gretchen, your fire bases and your actual spears without wasting a lot of energy.Thats the nice thing aboutit., anyone who is a bad fit for the Meganobz gets ZZap gun'd down before they can cause problems.

I think you should develop strategy around the basic idea..

Grots are not as cheap as they seem to be. And they're definitely not point efficient in a fight. 3 pts for t2 s2 bs3 ws2 ld5 armor- and +10 pts for a runthered compared to what others can get:

cultists: t3 s3 ws3 ld7 armor 6+ - 4 pts
conscripts: t3 s3 ws2 bs2 but armor 5+ and they have lazguns - 4pts. Backed with a comissar lord's aura and orders they're so much better than grots that it's hard to discribe
termagaunts...
basically, any other cheap throwaway unit in any other codex is better than grots and costs the same or close to the same ammount of points.

Grots should cost 2 pts per guy to be nice again. They have advantages though. If the runthred is still alive, they can get a ld check reroll. They're really small and easier to hide. They got bs3 which is the best in the ork army. And they're 20 pts cheaper than a min boy squad. Sure, in any combat situation, 10 shootaboyz for 60 pts are way better than 10 grots with runtherd for 40 pts but when you buy backfield pointholders - you hope noone will reach them so quality doesn't matter. That's why they're still used. Mostly as backfield pointholders. They had some use on the frontlines in previous editions to act as an anti-charge sponge to protect boyz. Now footslogging boyz are just shot to pieces and thus need no anti-charge except for friendly fun games vs khorne zerks or something. Besides, grot's cover is very unreliable unless you have LOTS of them. And when you have lots, they're a pointsink and harder to position.

 Jancoran wrote:

 RobZie wrote:
YMMV of course im only talking from experience But saying it "doesn't matter" when 65 grots die or are stuck doing nothing is just fluffy/wishful thinking.

...or experience, in thius case. Perhaps you missed that I DID include the KFF in there along with the Gretchen.

Look. You dont actually need many punchers when they ALWAYS get trhe jump. Gretchin make sure you always get it. So as you pierce forward there is little the enemy actually can do to you that matters.

Now consider that the list I posted has a LOT of twin linked Zzap guns (ammo runts) and a lot of of other long range shooting. So the enemy cannoy concentrate on gretchen, your fire bases and your actual spears without wasting a lot of energy.Thats the nice thing aboutit., anyone who is a bad fit for the Meganobz gets ZZap gun'd down before they can cause problems.

I think you should develop strategy around the basic idea..

Limited experience maybe. Doing well in one tournament doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be an effective option in a lot of cases. Im not saying it never works but there are just better places you can spend the points is all, and isn't really something you should telling a brand new Ork player to gear towards.

almost 170 dudes on the table to take out and a TON of scoring units.

I won 8 straight with it which is plenty enough to tell me it can work. Tweaking it and refining the idea and the numbers will hep, but it is a LOT of fun to play and of course seems to be pretty decent at competing as well.

I dont play orks as an army I own. What I can say is that as an opponent of such a list I would foresee killing fistfuls of it, but that won't win me the game. Its strength is that it stops me from getting anywhere I need to be and sets me up to be charged repeatedly by eithera 30 man ork squad or a 10 man meganobz squad after Ive been softened by cannonade. That doesn't sound like a non issue to me.

A quick note about all those who plan to use gretchin for granting cover saves, remember they are LOW.
Very, VERY low.

The tiniest elevation usually means most units will shot above the grentcin, not through them, and in that case you get no save from standing behind them.

The basic logic to remember, if the line drawn between the highest two gretching does not reach over the bases of the guys behind them FROM THE SHOOTERS VIEW, then they are "below" the firing arc and not in it.
Can be solved with a tiny bit of conga-lining, with a pair of gretching spreading backwards to be "inside" the units you want to protect, so that there is no way the entire gretchin team is below the firing lines.

I think it important to point out though that the 1/4 of those tiny models is hardly anything. Getting cover is pretty darn easy. I think this is good advice but dont OVER estimate either. I think that the average game is never going to allow for more than a "close enough" analysis of that issue on normal models.

KFF's dont care about elevation.

They were somewhat better in 5 ed when cover was 4+ - better than mek's, when you could remove the models you wanted and cover was counted on the majority of models in cover. Now they grant 5+, you remove the closest, they most likely won't have cover themselves. Besides, now enemies can focus fire which makes avoiding cover even easier. This are the reasons i say they're not nearly as good a cover shield as they're supposed to be. For the points you're paying, you're better off with more boyz on the front.

Personally, i still use grots as a meet shield in some situations. For example, when an opponent has some assault elements. Grots act as a charge sponge. Or when they don't need to be camping a point like in a relic mission.

Yep, they also work as cover for a squad that operates far from a KFF but i can tell you from game experience that they're bad and unreliable in this role. If the enemy is shooty, he won't care bout grots or 5+ that much. If he really wants to shoot boyz without cover, he has many easy options. He can spend some weak shooting to kill the grots. t2 without armor is easilly killed by literally anything. Even if 3-5 grots die, it's enough to focus fire the boyz. He can outflank if he's fast enough - and many enemies don't have much trouble fielding fast shooty elements. Besides, the enemy can use your own grot shield to focus fire the nob in the open. Thus, your own meet shield can aid the opponent more than it helps you. So, be careful.