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I have recently been coming up against Space Marines (Blood Angels in particular) and Tau armies that I've never played before, and my orks are always tabled by turn 4. For the past 3 games I have gone second, and I've lost about a quarter of my army before I even get to move. I usually run Speed Freeks, but my last game against Tau I tried footslogging to some degree (I didn't know I was playing Tau beforehand). I want to do better and maybe even win a game , but I'm stumped as to what I can try against marines. I'm willing to try any strategy, as I have all the models needed to run any type of army (my gaming group allows proxying). I'm looking for any strategies I could try against MEQ or Tau so I can avoid getting tabled. Thanks for the help

Warboss on bike with lucky stikk, painboy on bike, bunch of war bikers with them.
Then spam trukks with boys and a pk/boss pole nob, add a set of tankbustas in a trukk, and a couple loota units. No upgrades on any vehicle. Should be points left in a 2k list for a couple deff koptas or something.

On deployment, line up like you're at the races, and go forward at max speed. Bike unit and any trukks' units that make it through a turn of flak should be able to assault, especially with a waaagh!! activated.

Take normal cad for objective secured just in case. Place objective in middle of table. Use empty OS trukks to park on them late game.

Borrowed my friend's orks a few times, and this is what I came up with. So far, it's tabled everything AND held many objectives. Great at maelstrom.

Try that out and see if that's not more what you're looking for.


Without knowing what the tau and sm players are running, this is, in my experience, the all around best tac list for orks, and it's a meanie.

If you respond with what the two opponents are running, I might be able to help you with tactics.

Well in the two games I played against blood angels, I tried that tactic to some degree. Lots of bikes and trukks. However, in the first game his large jump pack unit got infiltrate from his warlord trait, and with the aid of a drop pod with a flame oriented tactical squad, he wiped out a quarter of my army, as I failed morale checks and suffered heavy losses. When I played the next game, I lost my entire 10 man biker squad with Zhadsnark, Big Mek on bike with KFF and Painboy on bike to 2 deep striking dreads (drop pods) with 3 templates each. Only Zhadsnark and the Painboy managed to survive, and the dreads finished them 2 turns later (luckily I killed one). I lost like 500 points turn one in a 2k point game. When I played tau, I decided to try flamer spam, so I used 20 man boyz squads with kombi-flamers, small Kommandos unit with 1 Burna, big unit of burnas, deff dread with 2x skorcha, skorcha wartrakk, and 2 looted wagons with skorchas. His tau got several turns of shooting me, and on turn 3, 3 charges by small squads led to death for all of them. Hopefully now that you have more info you can give more advice (your other advice was helpful too, just now you can be more informed).

P.S. I tried the strategy you mentioned, and it really worked against IG gunline when I played it. However, I got first turn in that game by stealing the initiative, so it is a little less effective going second, and especially against drop pod spam (8 pods!!!)

When you deploy against drop pod spam, you should heavily consider leaving a lot of dudes in reserve to come on after the first wave of pods. If he literally has nothing but pods, deploy all the empty trukks all spread out. Fragiosos aren't great at destroying vehicles on their drop-in turn. It's a pretty tall order to actually kill 7 spread out trukks in one turn. After the first wave, have surviving trukks flee across the table, and as units come in, shoot at what you can, and overwhelm his tiny drop army with all those 11 boy+klaw units walking on.

If you feel like he does have enough support fire to take out all the trukks, deploy lootaz or tankbustas in the corner, and completely pin them in with empty trukks to keep them out of flame range. They should be able to see dreads and pods over the trukks. (Ask to see drop pod, set drop pod next to lootaz in corner, put first trukk RIGHT next to it so there isn't a 1" space between them, then make an expanding quarter circle with 2" between each trukk like you're in the old west circling the wagons.)

Against almost any tau list, the ork pyromania list sounds like a mismatch. Playing with the above list should turn out better. Even the tau lists I ran wouldn't be able to bring down that much orkiness fast enough.

A couple clarifications: use a boss. Waaagh is good. KFF on a bike squad is nice, but I'd rather have dat boss with dat stikk, along with the painboy. If your group does multiple detachments, you could have all 3. My group still sticks to single foc+ one ally/formation/whatnot and no self allying.

Make sure your warbikers are warbikers, NOT nob bikers. (Although you should still upgrade one to a nob just so the boss isn't the only pk in the unit.)

Yeah. Thanks for the advice so far. I did have a boss, but it was Zhadsnark the ripper (FW) and next time I'll take a Lucky Stikk boss. The reserves thing is also a good idea, and I'll definitely try that. My only big problem was he also had an imperial knight, so he had the potential to kill a lot of stuff. I don't really understand your Trukk wall idea. Do you just line up your trukks circling your guys?

for tau:

I generally run speed freeks, but also throw in some wildcards and "unnecessary" units - a deff dread and 2 units of grots, for example. they don't keep up, they aren't much of a threat, but whoops, you forgot them and that deff dread just twisted your ethereals head off.

a unit of lobbas will bring pain onto tau, as you will want to snipe out the ethereal pronto. smasha guns will help with vehicles too.

as a rule i never run a unit that's over 200 points with orks - it invariably winds up being easily countered, and I like variety. orks don't have any units that are guaranteed to do well, so bring as many different ones as you can and one of the shoes should fit. the only exception to this is 17 'ard boys in a wagon with a lukky stikk megaboss and a painboy, sometimes grotsnik, with a PK BP nob. they beat face, extremely well.

 Waaagh 18 wrote:
Yeah. Thanks for the advice so far. I did have a boss, but it was Zhadsnark the ripper (FW) and next time I'll take a Lucky Stikk boss. The reserves thing is also a good idea, and I'll definitely try that. My only big problem was he also had an imperial knight, so he had the potential to kill a lot of stuff. I don't really understand your Trukk wall idea. Do you just line up your trukks circling your guys?

For the trukk wall, yeah, toss a long range unit in the corner, then surround them with trukks, so that anything wanting to get to them needs to blow up bunches o' trukks.

However, with the knight on the table, I'd probably default to the empty trukks spread out plan. Unless he's an errant, it's unlikely that he'll kill a trukk with the knight alone, so you're still not looking at any real tabling possibility before getting reserves. A paladin at long range is probably the worst knight for you to deal with, so just fight in a jumbled up mess with his drop pod forces and maybe he'll scatter on some of them. Don't forget to embark on any still-living trukks after that to get several units to threaten the knight at once.

Try out a Big Mek with KFF on a bike, he should give some survivability to a truck-based army. Kommandos and outflanking Deffkoptas could also be usefull.