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Yo! With Ork leadership generally being pretty lackluster they rely on the mob rule a great deal to keep their boyz in the fight. However the mob rule only works for morale and pinning, but not fear. Now fear to me seems like it can most certainly take hold over Orks just as it can other races, but I feel that the Orks are TOO weak to it to the point where its just silly. They come off as just plain cowards who are AFRAID to fight something far too often with their weak leadership 7. Thats just not orky! I think its not lore friendly at all.

Now personally I think Orks should be able to mob rule through fear, but in a bit of a different manner then say morale or pinning.

The Orks are engaged in battle by demons. These demons naturally strike fear into the heart of the Orks whom start to give into fear and falter until the Nob amongst them sees his opportunity to show everyone just how big N bad he is. The Nob grabs the nearest boy with his Power Klaw, rips him and half and puts more fear into his boyz than the demons do reminding them that if they dont fight nice and propa then he himself will show them true terror. The Boyz are convinced with their superiors display of power and overcome their fear of the demons in front of them with the fear of the Nob behind them and engage them with their full fury and might.

Essentially what I suggest is that in the event where the boyz fail their fear test if they have a character among them (Independent or not), said character may also take a leadership check. If passed roll a d3 on the mob rule table where a 1 is the born to fight special rule (The Nob inspires his boyz to fight on without having to hit them) and a 2 or 3 results in Breaking Heads. If you make the mob rule then you count as having passed the fear check. If your character fails their leadership test then you count as having failed the fear test as he gives into fear as well.

I feel this is a Orky solution to dealing with fear in a manner that is a buff, but remains true to the lore and is not a free pass as you still do have to pass leadership on a 7. This makes them properly resistant to the effects of fear.

Note: Boss pole would allow for a re-roll on the character only mob rule.

Its inspired by a commissars blamming of soldiers to "inspire" them.

The current Mob Rule is both fiddly and ineffective. The old rule was both more fluffy and less fiddly.

For those who do not know, Orks could substitute number of models in he mob for their Ld. The more Orks there were the more confident they became. Once the mob was 11+ they became fearless. It encouraged Orks to take fewer large mobs rather than more small ones, which is very fluffy. Large mobs could no longer go to ground or fail a Ld test because 'our weapons are useless' - they were consumed by battle lust and would not fall back once they got stuck in. Also very Orky.

The change to Mob Rule was one of the worst choices GW made in the current Codex. Given the current weakness of Orks it would seem the boost is warranted.

My two cents.

I feel that MR should simply apply to fear tests as well. The fact that it doesn't is so glaring an oversight I honestly feel it was an error by the authors.

Not that anyone cares what I think, but I think MR should be changed to count not models, but remaining wounds involved in the same combat.

Counting wounds means MR would have a much greater effect on things like mega/nobz, and wounds in the same CC means that two smaller squads (say, 2x trukk boyz) could essentially bolter each other in combat, rather than fail individually.

But the new MR was easily the worst part of the new codex, and the worst army-wide rule of any codex that I can think of, with the possible exception of champion of chaos.

I personally would like to see what I call "Nob Rule" where each Nob type model in a unit adds +1 to the leadership of the unit and going above leadership 10 causes fearless. Might be a bit fiddly but it could go a long way to fixing Ork leadership in majority of Ork units plus giving more reason to pick off the Nobz leading the unit.

A less powerful but still decent fix for fear issues is to have the Bosspole give an immunity to fear.

 Vankraken wrote:
I personally would like to see what I call "Nob Rule" where each Nob type model in a unit adds +1 to the leadership of the unit and going above leadership 10 causes fearless. Might be a bit fiddly but it could go a long way to fixing Ork leadership in majority of Ork units plus giving more reason to pick off the Nobz leading the unit.

A less powerful but still decent fix for fear issues is to have the Bosspole give an immunity to fear.

I think it might be easier if Nobz were Ld8 base and all Nob-level + above characters had stubborn base. Now small Nob/MegaNob squads no longer have to deal with Ld issues that boyz have to deal with, Nob upgrades make a sizable difference to trukk boyz units and mitigates their lack of large unit size. It also reflects how the larger the Ork, the tougher and more battle-hardened they are than the normal boy and less likely to break.

Then just add that Mob Rule applies also to Fear tests and I think a lot of issues are covered.

Just bring back the old mob rule, it was simple to understand and implement and matched much better than what we have now. I hate when GW changes things just to change them.

Quite literally the only reason i like the current mob rule is because non-boy blobs can actually benefit from it, since previously nothing could get large enough (or wanted to be large enough) to benefit from it.

That being said, i hate how unreliable it is. Also the exclusion of fear is utter BS since we are the ONLY DAMN MELEE ARMY that suffers from Fear - everyone else is immune to it. Everyone that suffers from Fear except Orks are usually dead once they need to make such a test anyway, but Orks it shafts them. Pisses me off when my boy blob fails a Fear test and their charge gets rendered completely useless.

Heck, Orks should just flat out be immune to Fear. Since when did they ever start showing a sign of weakness in the face of danger?

Though i dont think changing Mob Rule was the dumbest thing they did to the Orks. Dumbest thing they did was remove our invul save. 9/10 of the time if a unit in our dex is sub-par or useless, its durability related.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Quite literally the only reason i like the current mob rule is because non-boy blobs can actually benefit from it, since previously nothing could get large enough (or wanted to be large enough) to benefit from it.

Don't forget the old Bosspole rule could let you deal a wound to get a reroll at normal leadership. The new Mob Rule helps small units with characters but then any benefit that gained was lost when they turned the bosspole into rerolling mob rule.

With a boss poll even a small group of orks had a good shot of passing a morale test. The current rule is very random and hurts greentides.

Right, but not everything had access to a bosspole unless you attached a boss to it.

MANz, Flash Gitz, Burnas, and Lootas do not have access to it unless you attach an IC. Burnas/Flash Gitz not that big of a problem since they suck anyway (well, burnas suck since the burnawagon strat went byebye) but Lootas were way easy to run off the board since they die just like any other ork and are ld7 by the time they take a test at all. MANz missiles were just as bad, though at least they could survive some bullets with their armor. My MANz missiles got so hilariously dependable in the current dex because i have a much higher odds of passing pinning/morale checks than before. Previously they were LD7 with no pole reroll, now theyre still LD7 but have a pole and character for mob rule - since its pretty hard to lose the character before the others its an all out win.

I would take fearless boys back over the chance over the current rule. Lottas are have range and can take advantage of cover. As someone who fought orks constantly in 5th, the current codex weakened them in every way.

a bit of a moot point because in most areas now it is not possible to field blobs of boyz because they will get shot off the table to quickly. I played against a SM player and an Eldar Player who could remove at least 30 boyz a turn. Scat bikes make mincemeat out of boyz,

Personally I like the idea of rolling a die to see if the nob needs to crack a few skulls to get the boyz back in line, but the way GW implemented it is inconsistent. It punishes small squads, max squads of boyz can still fail on a 1, and applying positive or negative modifiers to the table can both help or hurt a given squad. While I do miss the old rule, I've come up with an alternative that we've been testing at our FLGS that still lets us roll a die and and bonk a few boyz on the noggin if they get outta line.

To start, the rule is that if you fail a morale or pinning test, you roll a die and on a 4+ the unit takes d6 str 4 hits and passes the test like normal. If the unit has a character, add +1 to the roll. For every 10 models in the unit, add +1 to the roll. If the unit is locked in combat, add +1 to the roll. With this formulation, positive modifiers are always good, and we can consistently pass our leadership checks if we meet a few standard conditions. A squad of 20+ boyz with a nob will always pass their mob rule, as will a squad of 10+ boyz with a nob locked in melee combat. Smaller units like lootas will have a consistent 50% chance of succeeding on the table which can be improved to 67% with a character (as opposed to the current table which is 0% and 33% respectively, assuming they aren't in melee). If you want to make it a little harder you can tone down the modifiers, maybe only give a +1 for 20+ models and no bonus for 10+ models.

Ninski wrote:
Personally I like the idea of rolling a die to see if the nob needs to crack a few skulls to get the boyz back in line, but the way GW implemented it is inconsistent. It punishes small squads, max squads of boyz can still fail on a 1, and applying positive or negative modifiers to the table can both help or hurt a given squad. While I do miss the old rule, I've come up with an alternative that we've been testing at our FLGS that still lets us roll a die and and bonk a few boyz on the noggin if they get outta line.

To start, the rule is that if you fail a morale or pinning test, you roll a die and on a 4+ the unit takes d6 str 4 hits and passes the test like normal. If the unit has a character, add +1 to the roll. For every 10 models in the unit, add +1 to the roll. If the unit is locked in combat, add +1 to the roll. With this formulation, positive modifiers are always good, and we can consistently pass our leadership checks if we meet a few standard conditions. A squad of 20+ boyz with a nob will always pass their mob rule, as will a squad of 10+ boyz with a nob locked in melee combat. Smaller units like lootas will have a consistent 50% chance of succeeding on the table which can be improved to 67% with a character (as opposed to the current table which is 0% and 33% respectively, assuming they aren't in melee). If you want to make it a little harder you can tone down the modifiers, maybe only give a +1 for 20+ models and no bonus for 10+ models.

The old rule was significantly better even for small units. So long as you had a nob and a bosspole you had a 50/50 with the LD 7 when your unit is finally that small. And a 50/50 with a boss pole = 75% chance to pass and for the reroll you only lose 1 ork not 1-6.

The old rule was better for the ork player when combined with a boss pole, which was a cheap upgrade and was much simpler to implement. I personally hate GWs obsession with adding random tables

MorkorpossiblyGork wrote:

Ninski wrote:
Personally I like the idea of rolling a die to see if the nob needs to crack a few skulls to get the boyz back in line, but the way GW implemented it is inconsistent. It punishes small squads, max squads of boyz can still fail on a 1, and applying positive or negative modifiers to the table can both help or hurt a given squad. While I do miss the old rule, I've come up with an alternative that we've been testing at our FLGS that still lets us roll a die and and bonk a few boyz on the noggin if they get outta line.

To start, the rule is that if you fail a morale or pinning test, you roll a die and on a 4+ the unit takes d6 str 4 hits and passes the test like normal. If the unit has a character, add +1 to the roll. For every 10 models in the unit, add +1 to the roll. If the unit is locked in combat, add +1 to the roll. With this formulation, positive modifiers are always good, and we can consistently pass our leadership checks if we meet a few standard conditions. A squad of 20+ boyz with a nob will always pass their mob rule, as will a squad of 10+ boyz with a nob locked in melee combat. Smaller units like lootas will have a consistent 50% chance of succeeding on the table which can be improved to 67% with a character (as opposed to the current table which is 0% and 33% respectively, assuming they aren't in melee). If you want to make it a little harder you can tone down the modifiers, maybe only give a +1 for 20+ models and no bonus for 10+ models.

The old rule was significantly better even for small units. So long as you had a nob and a bosspole you had a 50/50 with the LD 7 when your unit is finally that small. And a 50/50 with a boss pole = 75% chance to pass and for the reroll you only lose 1 ork not 1-6.

Agreed, but I'd like to think GW was kinda, sorta, almost halfway to a creative idea. The old rule is both simpler and better almost across the board, I'm just trying to "fix" the new rule so that's mechanically similar but makes sense.

Honestly, 30man boy blobs stopped being a thing for me ever since 6th started removing models from the front. I could care less if theyre fearless, its pretty hard to fail it with Mob Rule anyway (which is why fear should be flipping included..). 30man boy blobs tend to get hung up on terrain or congo-line to the other side of the table, and every time they get shot at they get pushed back ~1-2" per damn unit hitting them. Being able to run and charge again on the Waaaagh! turn somewhat fixed the problem, but nowhere near enough.

Boyz would benefit more from "Remove wounds from the rear" more than old mob rule.

The problem with the current mob rule is that small units don't benefit at all. since it spells out you need either a character or 10+ models most small units don't benefit as much as they think they do. And even when they do pass the Mob rule test they then suffer D6 S4 hits and with that wonderful 6+ save they usually die. So your going to lose on average 2-3boyz per test.