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I was talking with some guys at the hobby shop yesterday and I mentioned the MANz missle tactic. I was told that it not really a sound strategy to use this tactic. They really didnt give any reasoning except that they are in a trukk and will get destroyed way to fast before they make it into combat.

Is it typical to just have the three mega nobz in one missle? anybody ever run more in a trukk?

What do you hope to accomplish with the MANz?

What are typical targets of the MANz? Tanks? tough infantry (Termies) or regular infantry (MEQ) or light infantry?\

What units should you avoid with MANz?

Thanks guys!

From what I understand and use them for myself, MANz are used for anti-tank or as a bully unit against noncombat elite infantry (meqs, heavy weapon units, artillery)

Not saying you can't use them against combat units but just be cautious against ap2 or high volume hordes.

Yeah you don't want them to get tar pitted.. what melee weapons are ap2 except power fists?

Would it be worth putting a pajnboy with em to stitch em back up when dey get a little krumped?

Some characters/hqs have ap2 but could be worth the trade. If you add a painboy you might as well do MadDok! But now you have a fairly priced unit, now you might actually care if they live.

Edit: also MCs and most dreads have ap2

5 MANz with mad dok in a trukk with boarding plank.

+2 to charge range, fearless, fnp and Rampage. Thats 25-35 S9 AP2 attacks on the charge. from 5 models. Add in mad doks 6-8 S9 Ap2 hits.

Thats a total of 31 to 43 S9 Ap2 hits. Even being charged they only lose 1A and 1S each.

The tactic of the MANz missile is simple: For 160 points, you take 3 Meganobz with 1 set of Killsaws, launch them forward as quickly as possible on turn one, and then either tank wounds or assault something. It's cheap as chips, and will either terrify the enemy into throwing a bunch of firepower at it (Bear in mind that Meganobz laugh at anything weaker than S8 AP2) or else get to blow up a tank or similar.

Tjolle79 wrote:
5 MANz with mad dok in a trukk with boarding plank.

+2 to charge range, fearless, fnp and Rampage. Thats 25-35 S9 AP2 attacks on the charge. from 5 models. Add in mad doks 6-8 S9 Ap2 hits.

Thats a total of 31 to 43 S9 Ap2 hits. Even being charged they only lose 1A and 1S each.

at that squad size, I would probably throw them in a wagon rather than a trukk. This way, they're much less likely to get stuck on the wrong side of the table, which is much more important when you have that much in one unit. Also, again based on the size, they'll probably survive several combats, and could re-embark the wagon to get to the next one faster... As opposed to the trukk which will likely get popped to prevent exactly that.

Of course you could go wagon, but its already an expensive unit. The wagon brings something to the table as well though of course. But a wagon aint that hard to stop either by someone that really wants to

As has been said above I think the consensus on the best way to use them is to bully shooting units, MEQs and medium-infantry as well as threaten tough vehicles. They will make light work of almost anything under this broad term. Not good for huge mobs of enemies or Terminator equivalents, you want to make the most of T4, W2, 2++ so avoid anything that doesn't let you lord that over your enemy.

3 MANz go in a Trukk (maybe spend points on boarding plank), 5 or more go in a wagon. If they have an attached HQ they definitely go in a wagon IMO.

Add a killsaw and sprinkle with kombi-skorchas to taste.

Remember though that if you're only running one or two trukks your opponent would be really sloppy to let them cross the board.

DaKrumpa wrote:
Some characters/hqs have ap2 but could be worth the trade. If you add a painboy you might as well do MadDok! But now you have a fairly priced unit, now you might actually care if they live.

Edit: also MCs and most dreads have ap2

A squad of boyz with nob and PK can take down walkers no problem because of the PK.. but MC's will tear the MANz a new one so.. better find another unit to attack that threat.

tthre MANz with one killsaw and a trukk is puching 200 points. 300 if your in a wagon. in a 1500 point game thats 14%/20% of your army respectively.. Maybe the trukk for 1500pts and the wagon for anything higher? Then it gets me thinking.. for 100 points more then the 3 in a wagon.. I can have 6 and 2 trukks.. obviously rolling 3 per trukk. This sounds dead killy at like 1850.

Heres the thing. Orks in my opinion are all about distractions. If you are playing a green tide but for some reason have a MANz missile, yes thats ~170pts that will never do anything other than be a valid target for the few anti-tank guns everyone has.

Same goes for a battlewagon, which is a much more hardy vehicle. Bring a SINGLE battlewagon in a foot list, it is going to die fast and be a waste of points.

You need to distract your opponent somehow. Kommandos infiltrating to soak a ton of fire with their Stealth + whatever cover they found, warbikers turboboosting turn 1, outflanking buggies/koptas, or a legit wagon list will give your opponent one hell of a decision that he/she wont want to make. Deal with the cheap as hell MANz missile, or the giant blob of bodies thats sitting right in their face.

I use warbikers. 305pts for 15 + NobPK attached with a Warboss and Painboy. They draw damn near ALL the guns while my boyz footslog it up and my 2 MANz missiles zip across the board virtually ignored. In ~9 games, ive only had 1 missile not hit something worth as much or more than the missile did.

Slightly off topic but this is also why i am highly against Tankbusta Trukkas. That is a very deadly unit for a fairly high cost that isnt that hard to remove. Even with the 17 bikes sitting 3-6" away from my opponents front line, he would be an IDIOT to not shoot the tankbusta trukk first.

Dont paint them a bullseye target, and they will work wonders.

EDIT:
Incidentally i use this loadout for my missiles:
3 MANz 135pts
1 Killsaw 1 BP
Trukk w/ Ram, 35pts
Total: 170pts

Dirt cheap, and like i said earlier they almost ALWAYS do something because i distract the hell out of my opponent before deploying them.

Another problem with the Wagon is it isn't fast.
First turn you're going to be going flat out.
That extra 6" can make a difference on such a slow unit.

Vineheart, THANK you so much. that was incredibly insightful and very helpful. My MANz squad is exactly the same. one KS for vehicles, one BP and a bare bones trukk. (ram is essential)

Even though I FULLY grasp the point you made I do have another question. How can units like kommandos and outflanking koptas distract the enemy when they wont be on the board unit turn 2 or 3. The missile should have already hit the lines or been shot down. Now, your warbikers make a GREAt distraction. INSTANTLY the opponent has to make that decision has to be made.

I REALLY want to have MANz in my list.. but run somewhat a a horde list. lots of infantry. the kommanods balance out my lack of speed.koptas to.. but having the MANz in a trukk would be my only armor. I would be running into the shortcoming you spoke of.

a few possible remedies I can think of is either putting them in a wagon..but thats getting expensive. pair with some trukk boyz or trukk ard boyz..but now we are trekking into mechanized orks (YUCK!)

adding a dread for armor saturation would be helpful? also keep the sloggin feel. Im rambling at this point.. I will ponder this.. but thanks for your input.

Just always be careful to keep armor saturation up if you are running vehicles. Give the opponent something to use their anti tank guns on or they will use them all on one target. If you valued it enough to put it in a lone vehicle and want it across the board that bad then they will gladly turn it to dust for you lol.

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:
Vineheart, THANK you so much. that was incredibly insightful and very helpful. My MANz squad is exactly the same. one KS for vehicles, one BP and a bare bones trukk. (ram is essential)

Even though I FULLY grasp the point you made I do have another question. How can units like kommandos and outflanking koptas distract the enemy when they wont be on the board unit turn 2 or 3. The missile should have already hit the lines or been shot down. Now, your warbikers make a GREAt distraction. INSTANTLY the opponent has to make that decision has to be made.

I REALLY want to have MANz in my list.. but run somewhat a a horde list. lots of infantry. the kommanods balance out my lack of speed.koptas to.. but having the MANz in a trukk would be my only armor. I would be running into the shortcoming you spoke of.

a few possible remedies I can think of is either putting them in a wagon..but thats getting expensive. pair with some trukk boyz or trukk ard boyz..but now we are trekking into mechanized orks (YUCK!)

adding a dread for armor saturation would be helpful? also keep the sloggin feel. Im rambling at this point.. I will ponder this.. but thanks for your input.

Think of it this way.

Who says you have to send them up the field turn 1? Unless they have nothing to hide behind, hold off a turn or so. I had one game where my MANz literally sat there on my end of the table not doing a damn thing completely out of sight (both units btw, i run 2 of them) until turn 3. I did this because i felt i didnt have a big enough distraction going on because of enemy positioning or bad dice on my end.
Kommandos infiltrating appear turn 1, but they cant assault. Big deal, the point of them is theyre in turn 2 charge range especially with WAAAAGH! rules letting run + charge that if you ignore 20+ kommandos sitting in a 3+ ruins cover thanks to stealth, theyre going to eat you alive.
Outflanking koptas/buggies are less menacing but they are the same idea - a target you dont necessarily want to deal with, but have to. Even scouting koptas work too, since theyre 24" up the board WITHOUT turbo boosting. Ever scouted, moved, then turbo'd a kopta squad before? that draws a LOT of attention since thats 48" of movement on a rokkit platform shooting rear armor (jetbikes turbo 24").
EDIT: Actually now that i think about it, i kinda wanna start doing that again. Coupled with my bikerball thats a lot of speed with deadlyness. And theyre way cheaper now.
Question is...what can i shave to bring a squad lol....dont feel like ditching my lobbas since theyre the only thing in my army that stays on my side of the board.

Nothing has to be done immediately. If you can protect the trukks from any danger, no matter how unlikely, wait a turn or two if you feel there isnt a big enough clusterfeth going on. My opponent seriously thought i forgot about my two MANz missiles since i didnt even poke them out to use the bigshoota, turn 3 they surged up and assaulted a dem....demolisher? whatever the hell that rhino thingy was that has the snow-plow and an S10 pi plate. He got too close, and all he managed to do was pop the trukk since everything else in range was tied up.
Other missile ravaged some random marines, virtually unscathed, and camped an objective.

God damn brilliant. This is why I love this site.

Ever take planks on their Trukk?

basically buggies vs koptas is do you want a tougher infantry or a light vehicle.. I guesss it depends on your meta. Dont have my codex handy to see if thier is a points difference.

So do you typically infiltrate to kommandos or reserve/snikrot them?

Just as an amusing note:
Meganobz attached to Grotsnik with Killsaws get somewhere between 6 and 8 attacks on the charge.

The point of a MANz missile is to keep them as cheap as posseble. Yep, you could attach stuff like painboyz, killsaws everywhere, boarding planks...they're all useful but that contradicts the very idea of MANz missile. It's supposed to be another threat to deal with.

I prefer them to be like:
3 manz [bosspole]
Truck[rokkit, ram]

I'm not sure bout a killsaw. If the enemy is gona have something that they threaten alot - landraider for example - truck's gona be downed no matter if there are killsaws or not, thus fulfilling one of it's purposes. Distraction. While 12 s9 ap2 attacks are generally enough to wreck anything. That's a matter of preference, i guess. If you got free 10 pts to spend and allready have rams, bosspoles, rokkits and stuff like this, sure killsaws are not bad.

Things change when there are superheavies riding around. In this case killsaws are a must.

I've used Meganobz a fair bit. They used to always struggle with Pinning checks - whenever the Trukk dies (always) then half the time they stood around looking stupid for a turn. But the Bosspole now helps with this.

They absolutely murder vehicles. I'd avoid MCs and Dreads, but they can go for them in a pinch if required. They also do horrible, hilarious things to Marines. Just avoid Terminators like the plague, as you'll be losing bodies faster than they will thanks to the ubiquitous stormshields. Charging enemy Meganobz is hella fun, but don't expect to have many models left afterwards

Trukks work better in packs. I own four, and tend to use all of them in games at 1500pts: that way it is hard for the opponent to kill all of them. If you get first turn, you can really threaten your opponent, and make him kack himself facing all this Orky goodness coming towards him. If you don't, then at least some of your models should still be able to move forwards. Mechdar are effectively a hard counter to this though, sadly, as you'll lose vehicles too fast to keep going.

If you want to really focus on Meganobz, then the Bullyboyz formation is great fun. You need a lot of Meganobz (15, so approximately £7mil worth of models), but they get Fearless which is amazing for this unit. WS5 is just the cherry on top.

Not sure bout bullyboyz in trucks. They seem to expensive for a missile. I'd better put them in wagonz. And boyz can have their trucks. 200 pts is allready quite an investment in a squad. So it's not a distraction anymore but allready a potent target in my book.

The Wagons would cost a lot, though. I think that it comes down to:

a) reinforce that one formation
b) reinforce the rest of your army

With ~700points in the Bullboyz at minimum, adding another 300points to them seems dangerous to me.

 Charles Rampant wrote:
The Wagons would cost a lot, though. I think that it comes down to:

a) reinforce that one formation
b) reinforce the rest of your army

With ~700points in the Bullboyz at minimum, adding another 300points to them seems dangerous to me.

I really want to run bullyboyz with the blitz brigade
Scouting those fearless MANz will be so damn evil! then load the other two full of shoota boys for a couple of gunwagons and scout them all. Costly yes. but oh so damn scary! Use any points left to add in characters and warbosses.


But yeh if you want to keep the costs lower, id go with trukks and bring 3 extra trukks at 105 pts, they can follow up and simply pick up which ever trukks get popped. They also can score objectives, (with OS if you bring them as dedicated transports for some boys), they can pick up units and help keep mobility up during the later turns.

I think if I ever ran the bully boyz I would also run the battle wagon blitz formation with it. You're looking at ~1300pts (I would do this in an 1850+ game) but it's just too important to get those fearless MANZ krumpin, which is made very possible by scouting BWs. Then you've got about 500pts for troops and distractions I would probably do 2 squads of 20 boyz for troops, and a squadron of 5 rokkit buggies to keep the speed and armor saturation thing going (they would be my MC hunters). It may have a big weakness or two, but it sure sounds fun as all hell

[edit] Lol ninja'd by solar shock

 Awesomesauce wrote:

[edit] Lol ninja'd by solar shock

great minds think alike....
Funny that it was almost a complete ninja too

But yeh im really pleased with the formations in general, all seem awesome fun (which is why we play orks right). And combining the formations just seems to create weird and interesting play styles. You could run the 3x morka formation with the bully formation (ahh scratch that you cant at a capacity of 6.... doh!)
Green tide with a wall of 2+ out front? blocking LOS fearless and not going anywhere although slow moving! bully boyz + council for simply 4 Powerhouse units

The council sounds hilarious, but I'm not sure that we have an adequate delivery system for one mega-unit. I used to run a Nob Squad a lot, and their Battlewagon never seemed to survive...

Waaaghpower wrote:
Just as an amusing note:
Meganobz attached to Grotsnik with Killsaws get somewhere between 6 and 8 attacks on the charge.

Issue with this now days is they cannot get an invul anymore, which was the bigger reason to taking grotsnik with manz.
This makes a unit that honestly isnt that hard to remove suddenly act like a gigantic bullseye for heavy weapons. S8+ weapons to deny fnp and paste/pen armor isnt hard to find, the advantage of a MANz missile is the unit is so cheap yet still effective that the opponent is less likely to shoot it.

Also, 6-8 PKs each in a unit that should be at least 5 MANz if you want grotsnik is severe overkill. The 2 MANz with PK and 1 Killsaw is enough to kill just about anything that wont splat the MANz back in the process. In which case, the MANz shouldnt even be there (theyre bullies, dont send them at terminators send them at marines and watch bullets bounce off their armor).

I know the general idea of an ork is "No such thing as overkill" but that went out the window this edition i believe. Pump a crapload of points into a unit, its going to get blasted. Keep it cheap, yes its probably 50% as effective but its alive and that 50% effectiveness is still pretty good.

EDIT:
Bullyboyz is the 3x5 MANz units that are fearless right? Is there another requirement im not aware of? Cause 15 MANz is 600pts bare, not 700. Like the MANz missiles more than one killsaw is a waste of points and theyre fearless so drop the bosspoles. Thats 630pts for the units themselves.
Still expensive though lol. I probably wont ever run it for the sheer fact i dont have THAT many MANz lol and youre looking at a legit wagon list to make it effective - which that on its own is usually 1250 before its truely viable WITHOUT the manz lol

Ever think about taking the other 2 MANz with combi skorchas?

My issue with kombi scorchas on MANz is they cannot overwatch due to SNP, and its not THAT great of an offensive gun for a single use unless its against things that i might burn my way out of assault range afterwords.

I used to auto-take them on my nob bikers, but screw nobbikers now. 6-7 of them for overwatch counters the weakness of getting assaulted first. Nobbikers cost the same as they did before for me, and lost their invul which was basically the only save i ever got for them anyway, so to hell with that unit.

3 mans in a trukk is 150 pts.


the will kill much much MUCH more expensive units/vehicles and can walk through a lot of squads.

fast, cheap, durable, killy, sure one or two of htem will loose their trukk before you move them up if you dont get 1st turn..

but that means your other stuff is unmolested, and the 3rd or 4th manzx missle has made it.

they key is not to half arse it with orks,

pick a strategry, then embrace that strat whoole heartedly, dont mix and match too much.

if you go manz missle/speed freak type list, go with it all the way, same with horde, kan wall, and so on.


I much prefer leaving manz as is, or adding kill saws, the twin linked shoota is the best ranged choice I think in terms of pts eeficiancy,

6 MANz of which 4 have KS's with Grotsnik in a Wagon next to a full Biker Mob with KFF MekBiker. Next to, or behind (Depending on whether I have turn 1 or not) goes 2 MANz missiles of 3 each, one of which 1 has BP and KS in RR trukkks.

So the opp. can shoot the BW, the Trukks, or the Bikes, but something is getting through to assault top of second turn (or possibly bottom of 1st.)

10 points is a very small price to pay to add Armourbane AND an extra attack.