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I was pondering on buying a Gorkanaut for my ork collection. They are nice model and can make a good center piece for a collection, but can they be a center piece for a semi competitive army list? On paper they don't look that bad and have decent firepower against infantry, but is it enough to make them really a central figure of an ork army?

Depends. Do you think a 6" moving, non assault vehicle with 5 hull points it rarely gets to use all of before being shot off the board with melta or lascannons that loses in meelee to a space marine dread because of i2 is worth the points? The answer is in even a just semi competitive list no.

Unfortunately, as much as I love stompy Ork walkers, they're not great taken by themselves. The only way you get the most mileage out of them is if you take them as part of a Dred mob formation (gaining 'Ere we Go! and D3 HoW hits really helps) or the Gorkanaut Wrecking Krew. They need serious support and lots of armour saturation in your army to ensure they make it to where you want them to be. Taking a Gorkanaut also makes a KFF almost mandatory so whatever build you're putting in him, the list can't be small.

So they are definitely a unit you need to build a list around and not a unit you can just stick in to any Ork army. It's go big or go home. So if you don't have any other walkers I wouldn't suggest it.

Short answer: No

Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

They're pretty much unplayable.

their at the best of times mediocre and making you wish you brought your stompa instead, at the worst of times hes awful. he needs assault vehicle and he needs higher BS i think at least on his variant without the KFF. this i feel would make you take pause over which naught you take to battle, and would make him infinitely more useful

Why GW introduced such a cool model with such meh rules is a mystery, especially as the basic rules problems (e.g. no assaulting or shooting from inside) seem so easy to fix. Fingers crossed that they'll fix the rules next codex.

Personally I like both the naughts. Just a single naught will ensure it gets blown up fast because they can do some damage. Yes a space marine dread can kill it. They go first anything short of a stompa will lose 1-1. I know that they can explode in one shot but in my experience they either explode early or they don't die. Of the two times they have exploded one was due to a 6 on the D table which kills most things. The other time it was a melts bomb but that happens. You do need to take them jn one of the before mentioned formations though. Target saturation is needed. Also having some fast units to take pressure off them can help. They will crumble to grab but so will most vehicles. Personally for the gorkanaut I take the extra armor and grot riggers. For the morkanaut I take the KFF as well. If I'm low on points I drop the riggers. I ignore the transport capacity because it isn't worth it IMO because it can be killed in one shot. If you are having a fun game they are great. They are definitely not the best but if your looking for a unit that can be used in an army that will at least make a good game then yes they can be used. As usual in a dice game it can require some luck as well. They are not as bad as most people on the internet say though. Mine have taken out demon princes, space marine dreadnaughts, one almost got angron, and imperial and wraithknights have fallen as well. Of course they are best against things like terminators and Marines where they can walk through them. I had a gorkanaut chew threw two thunder hammer storm shield squads the one time.

It's not as bad as people make it out to be. It's not going to do much heavy lifting, but it can do some against the right targets.

They're slow overcosted ork walkers that usually don't do much cause of core rules. They'd be fine for 5-th edition.

Gorkanauts are just fine for casual, fun games, but for anything competitive there are far better options.

Gorkanaut is incredibly meh due to its limited firepower (when you factor in BS2, its not really putting out a lot of damage unless you get incredibly lucky on rolls) and with it being a walker it has very limited mobility. Its designed to be a bit like the stompa with its repair crew inside but without the super heavy rules to keep it from exploding it just isn't going to survive dedicated anti tank weapons. If it was an equivalent MC then it would be good, if it was a super heavy without stomp it would be good, but as a standard walker its too slow and too vulnerable to the vehicle damage table to be effective.

I used a Morkanaut in a couple of games expecting it to be really bad. I was surprised at how GOOD a job it did. I failed every single KFF save that I had, but Meks inside it kept it running the entire game. I used it with a couple of Dreads and some Killa Kans. It sucked up a LOT of firepower, and it went a long way towards winning the games for me because my opponents had to stay out of its assault range. I marched it right into the middle of the table, and basically got table control that way.

The thing the Mork/Gorkanaut is really good against is Monstrous Creatures... of which there are a ton in the game. Who cares about it fighting other Dreadnaughts? There aren't many other armies using them. Most Monstrous Creatures in the game are S6, meaning they are incapable of hurting the Morkanaut in close combat unless they use their Smash Attack, and they only get ONE of those.

I still think it's expensive for what it does... but is it absolutely terrible? Depends who your opponent is. If I knew a ton of Melta was going to be on the table I'd probably leave it at home.

My verdict is that they don't absolutely suck, they can work in certain situations.

I say go for it, if you've got the extra cash and want a fun centerpiece for your army.

But as others have said, it's not even CLOSE to even a semi-competitive choice. It's almost purely for the lulz.

That being said, if you load it up with max meks (highly recommend) and it doesn't get blown up outright (which happens all the time), it can be fairly resilient. It just doesn't do anything. Its guns are awful and its melee is barely better than a deff dread that costs almost a third the points.

But......an orkanaut with max meks costs more, if I'm not mistaken, than an imperial knight, but is worse than one by any objective measure.

They are by no means amazing, and if youre playing competitively i'd stay away from them unless youre running the Wall of Steel formation in Ghazzy's book.

Fun-wise, theyre fine. I dont own one but ive proxied one several times and it usually does an average job, sometimes an amazing one. Never had it completely flop though like Deffdredds tend to do.

Do people really have them explode all that often? I've only had it blow up 2-3 times out of 20 without making its points back. One was to a 6 on the D table though. Also I've had a fairly good time against melta because even if it pens unless it is a 5-6 it doesn't blow up. Still for competition I'd use them only with the dread mob. For fun games they are great. Although at 1850 5 is apparently difficult to deal with when the enemy tailored to fight a horde....

 cranect wrote:
Do people really have them explode all that often? I've only had it blow up 2-3 times out of 20 without making its points back. One was to a 6 on the D table though. Also I've had a fairly good time against melta because even if it pens unless it is a 5-6 it doesn't blow up. Still for competition I'd use them only with the dread mob. For fun games they are great. Although at 1850 5 is apparently difficult to deal with when the enemy tailored to fight a horde....

Blowing up is problematic for sure but also its the immobilize result and to a lesser extent the vehicle stun result that shuts down a walkers ability to get into close combat. With a melta gun its roughly a 66% chance on the vehicle damage table which is a better than average chance per pen to remove its most powerful combat option as well as mobility (if it didn't outright destroy it).

 luke1705 wrote:
It's not as bad as people make it out to be. It's not going to do much heavy lifting, but it can do some against the right targets.

Actually it's much MUCH worse. It costs nearly as much as a wraith knight or imperial knight and isn't a super heavy / gargantuan. That sums it up... More than worries about assault vehicle, fire points etc.

Fixes:
Super heavy walker
Assault Vehicle with 1 fire point.
Same points...
Fixed.

Yeah I would love to add one to my army, but they just dont seem to be worth the $ to buy or the points to really use them. It really just seem silly that it is an effigy of all that is Orky. It is a true example of the will of Gork N Mork and it cant fight very well at all + will go boom pretty easily. The none assault vehicle does not make sense to me either.

From a competitive standpoint, you could get a double massive D stompa for the price of 2 Gorkanaughts that would do more on it's first turn than 2 naughts could have dreamed of during the whole game.

To make naughts fine, drop ~80-100 points off their cost. Or rule them out to be superheavies. This way they'd be good. Not too great but good. As is, they're too overpriced for what they get.

 koooaei wrote:
From a competitive standpoint, you could get a double massive D stompa for the price of 2 Gorkanaughts that would do more on it's first turn than 2 naughts could have dreamed of during the whole game.

To make naughts fine, drop ~80-100 points off their cost. Or rule them out to be superheavies. This way they'd be good. Not too great but good. As is, they're too overpriced for what they get.

You're talking about the kustom stompa you can make from IA8, right?


Also, yeah definitely agree on just making them superheavies. I've thought through upping their weapons damage output/accuracy, which, although nice, still doesn't really compensate for their lack of mobility/survivability. It would be nice if they made the deffstorm gun twin-linked or at least have rending. It also feels weird that they only have 4 attacks base now that even normal dinky beakie dreadnoughts start with 4. *sigh* Beakies gotta have everything.

Personally I find the people who rubbish them the most, have only read the stat line and not actually played with them much, if at all.
AV13 can soak up some punishment, I've not had one 1 shotted yet, and tbh I tend to overwhelm my opponent with target saturation. As well as the morkanaut I will usually run gunwagons of tankbustas.
So on its own, it's not comparable to a knight, but then it's actually in the heavy slot, it's more comparable to a landraider in role. A troop carrying, heavy vehicle with support weapons that can melee isn't bad. If you compare any tank to a super heavy then they look crap, yet people still take tanks.
Tbh, if they'd made it a super heavy "ork knight" that would have been cool, you'd certainly see more of them being used for a start. As it is, it's only fault is that it points are probably a bit high, and people keep expecting it to be a knight.

I've played with it a few times.
Tried outflanking it with mogrok formation with 3 combi-skorcha meganobz sitting inside. Unfortunately, bossboyz are allready very expensive and naught made it even worse, so i got outnumbered by black templars and lost on points cause couldn't controle the board. Naught went out 3-d turn, shot down 1 space marine, meganobz disembarked and burnt down a couple more but by the time they arrived it was too late.

Another game was when i ruled it out to be a superheavy with limited stomps, 6" movement and weaker explosion. It didn't do much - basically, got destroyed by nids in the middle of the map.

Personally, they have their place on the battlefield. You most likely will either not use the transport capacity or you will put some type of repair crew inside. Usually in my Morkanaut is 1 mek, 3 mek boyz, and 2 burnas. Inside the Gorkanaut is a big mek with KFF/MFF. Morkanaut is more of a heavy support. It can put out a very large 5++ bubble that you can very easily bubble wrap him with boyz. Personally, I use 30 with a pain boy and a warboss lol. 4+/5++ with FNP. Gorkanaut is an infantry killer. You want to send him after giant blops of things. This way you get is rampage rules as much as you can. Neither one of them can effective take on a Knight titan. Its all in how you play them.

 r_squared wrote:
Personally I find the people who rubbish them the most, have only read the stat line and not actually played with them much, if at all.
AV13 can soak up some punishment, I've not had one 1 shotted yet, and tbh I tend to overwhelm my opponent with target saturation. As well as the morkanaut I will usually run gunwagons of tankbustas.
So on its own, it's not comparable to a knight, but then it's actually in the heavy slot, it's more comparable to a landraider in role. A troop carrying, heavy vehicle with support weapons that can melee isn't bad. If you compare any tank to a super heavy then they look crap, yet people still take tanks.
Tbh, if they'd made it a super heavy "ork knight" that would have been cool, you'd certainly see more of them being used for a start. As it is, it's only fault is that it points are probably a bit high, and people keep expecting it to be a knight.

I've play tested the dread mob twice competitively and the formation. The latter I proxies, but was Tabled T3.

DrG

Of course you got tabled, you played the dread mob. Doesn't mean the G/Mork are bad though. Everything in that formation is bad because the formation is a one trick pony, and everything you come up against, especially competitively has tons of options to deal with it.
I probably wouldn't take it in a hardcore competitve list, but then if that's your aim, what are you doing with orks at all?
However, at my last tournament, for the pre-game warm up I took my Mork and Gork and some kans, for a laugh, and we flattened the Tau we faced upto. We also managed to take out half a line up consisting entirely of Wraith guard and a Wraith knight before going out turn 3, which isn't surprising.

 doktor_g wrote:

 luke1705 wrote:
It's not as bad as people make it out to be. It's not going to do much heavy lifting, but it can do some against the right targets.

Actually it's much MUCH worse. It costs nearly as much as a wraith knight or imperial knight and isn't a super heavy / gargantuan. That sums it up... More than worries about assault vehicle, fire points etc.

Fixes:
Super heavy walker
Assault Vehicle with 1 fire point.
Same points...
Fixed.

I don't even care about the fire point but otherwise yes. For what other armies get, the Naughts should not see a point increase.

I've faced a Gorkanaut a few times and haven't been impressed at all. Granted, I do play Sisters of Battle who love themselves some Melta soo...

The Deffstorm Mega-Shoota looks good on paper, but with the random amount of shots combined with Orky BS2 it completely fails to pull its weight. And while AV13/13/12 is pretty good, dedicated anti-tank options are still a perfectly viable counter. Without an invulnerable save to help it get across the board and into melee, it just gets hammered while doing little back. Compare it to a Soul Grinder, another AV13 non-super heavy walker, and it comes up way short.

I haven't faced a Morkanaut, but imo they look like they would do a little better even if they have a lot of the same downsides as the Gorkanaut

After wondering the same question i got a gorko and have used him in 3 games now. Keep him 245 points dont add anything to upgrades and keep him in middle of your deployment as an anchor he is able to get to deepstrikers and attack anyone who rushes your end. In my opinion