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Hi all,

Like many Ork players, I learned after a while that nobz were underwhelming for their points. I swapped them for flash gitz and didn't look back. I have found this to be a much better setup against most armies as the gitz can unleash devastating firepower from the safety of their battlewagon, and boyz with character support are more than capable of handling my melee needs. And meganobz can handle almost anything else.

However...

I still struggle against Necrons. Boyz aren't powerful enough to put a dent in them. Meganobz are good against most Necron units, but they get creamed by their elites.

I wonder if this is the one time when it is worth bringing my regular nobz out of retirement. They have a lot of hitting power, especially with all those hidden claws, plus (for once) an initiative advantage and the ability to sweeping advance.

What do you guys think? Good idea or scraping the barrel?

Scraping. there's no way a nob will damage an elite necron unit more than a meganob will for less cost and more effectiveness against everything else.

The only benefit is being able to bring a big choppa, which wounds most necron elites (T5) on a 2+, but then it doesn't ignore their armor, which immediately makes it 3 times less effective than a power klaw. So to make it worthwhile, it needs to be 3 times cheaper. The only advantage is going before unwieldy units, which means they'll probably edge out megas vs JUST scytheguard, but against sword-n-boardguard the megas get their 2+ armor, and I think they get it against praets as well? I forget if praet sticks are AP2 or AP3 these days.

A choppa nob is 18+5. A meganob is 40.

Sure, meganobz die against necron elites (against warscythe lychguard, 2+ wound, instant death with no save). but nobz die just as fast, and generally speaking, you're never gonna have a unit big enough to survive.

tldr: Meganobz are always better than standard nobz at pretty much anything. Nobz are only good on bikes.

Nob squads are great for hiding power klaws in the unit. Personally when I take mine, I usually take 2 PK on someone other than the boss nob. Now my power klaws can be challenged out. When 6th edition came out, I would run a unit of 9 nobz with pain boy. 2 with PK. Waagh banner. and 9 combi-scorchas. Put them in a battle wagon and just roll forward with the warboss. Anyone tried to assault that unit was in for a word of hurt. 9d3-ish coming at them at str 5 ap 4 can do a lot of serious damage to non SM units.

the_scotsman wrote:
Sure, meganobz die against necron elites (against warscythe lychguard, 2+ wound, instant death with no save). but nobz die just as fast, and generally speaking, you're never gonna have a unit big enough to survive.

Even with their superior initiative?

for necrons I usually am using my lootas at their elites, they are scarier than their transports and I am usually glancing on 6s anyway. never leave home without 15 lootas (3 groups of 5) note a stompa also has the firepower and with 4 fireing points does a decent job. holding a 7 man loota team 3 as meks, 3 regular meks from HQ and a big mek with kff

I mean, let's say we've got Nobz and Meganobz fighting some Necron Lychguard with Warscythes in a Decurion.

Going with roughly equivalent points, a standard MANz missile is 135, for that you can get 5 standard nobz with big Choppas and the 'eavy armor upgrade.

The Big Choppa nobz will kill, on average, 1.4 Lychguard before they get to swing back. Your nobz will only survive the encounter if there was only 5 lychguard, and you managed to kill 2.

Compare to the MANz, who will always die pretty much guaranteed, but take down 2.5 lychguard with them.

Bullyboy formation give some sick bonuses to MANz, basically a free waaagh banner each, fear, fearless... Nobz don't have anything close. Painmob maybe, but it's very tax heavy.

Nob I3 might offer first strike power in Melee against Necron stuff. It is perhaps maybe the only reason to try it. You have to decide that Nobz output in CC would be better then other Orky supplies of offense. You'll have to keep them cheap or your shooting might be more point efficient. If you could be sure you'd have a turn two assault they might do good work. The problem is buying the Battlewagon gives a large efficiency edge to Shooting units like Lootas. For the same points, they might put out more offense in two turns of shooting, and be AP4, ignoring some Necron Armor saves. Lets not forget about Tankbustas in the same slot if you want a Battlewagon, at AP3 you are forcing cover saves.

Of course there is something to be said about the quantity of s7 hits a bunch of Big Choppa Nobz can put out compared to the quantity of shots you might be able to land with anything else the entire game.

MANz synergize better with the trukk too. An exploding trukk is still going to take wounds off of regular Nobz, but MANz laugh them off. Same deal with the template weapons that can hit passengers inside an open topped transport.

A nob in eavy armour and PK is more expensive then a Meganob if I recall. Meganob even has a tl shoota and has hidden Klaws as well. Only reason to use nobz over manz is for the bikes and initiative. Stick to manz if it's all about hidden Klaws it's cheaper to lose them.

If Nobz had more weapons options besides BC and Power Klaws they might see more play, but as is its hard to justify them now that they don't even have base access to invulns or FNP like they used to.

interesting

That is a tough matchup for Orks. Kustom mega kannon units are probably one of the best ways to go. Eliminate their armor save and instant death on warriors/immortals in order to lower their reanimation protocols. They also threaten elite troops and vehicles.

Kasten wrote:
interesting

Welcome to Dakkadakka!

Bikerbos and Da lucky stick with biker nobz is still useful but crazy expensive. I recently brought them out of retirement. Turbo boost turn 1 and lots of hurt turn 2.

The only thing I see nobz being used for is tank hunting. I plan to run an ghazcurion tomorrow and give the nobz BCs to keep them cheap and somewhat decent against vehicles. Otherwise they're just too expensive or outclassed by MANz.

The ghazcurion is good because ghaz can take on elite necron units and shrug off most atks with his 2++ and 5+ fnp with a Lukky stikk mega armour warboss Los any atks ap3 or worse.
That unit also should have a good 4 pks, ghaz, mad dok, and 2 mega armour warbosses. However the nobs in that unit are mostly just chaff to Los ap2 hits off the rest of the unit.

Even the 3 nobs in the waaagh core are better served as warbikers with the pk warbiker warboss to be a fast unit to atk other targets.

And then we run into the other problem with the ghazcurion you are stuck with 6 units of boyz that don't have much offense and become to expensive to give pk nobs and trukks too make them effective. They don't even have obj secured.

After this you have a few points left over for some token elite choices such as lootas, tabkbustas, or big guns but that's it.

If your opponent is able to tie up or hit your ghaz unit with a lot of str10 ap2 and anti horde your fearless boy blobs your done.

I'm really hoping for a small ork update to our codex to make the army more manageable.

However I really do like this list. It's not ultra competitive but it's fun and more manageable then a pure greentide. It feels fluffy and makes ghaz feel like the badarse he should be.

the_scotsman wrote:
I mean, let's say we've got Nobz and Meganobz fighting some Necron Lychguard with Warscythes in a Decurion.

Going with roughly equivalent points, a standard MANz missile is 135, for that you can get 5 standard nobz with big Choppas and the 'eavy armor upgrade.

The Big Choppa nobz will kill, on average, 1.4 Lychguard before they get to swing back. Your nobz will only survive the encounter if there was only 5 lychguard, and you managed to kill 2.

Compare to the MANz, who will always die pretty much guaranteed, but take down 2.5 lychguard with them.

How can they take lychguard down with them? Don't lychguard strike first and at ap2, thus slaughtering the whole squad?

EDIT: according to my mathhammer, the regular nobz actually do better than the meganobz here. The nobz kill 2 lychguard. The weakened respond and cause 2.5 wounds, which really kills only one nob. And that's when we are talking about a suboptimal loadout for the nobz - swap the 'eavy armour for a WAAAGH banner and swap the big choppas for an extra guy (big choppas aren't worth the points without better AP) and the nobz actually win.

In fairness I will add that I am assuming the nobz get to charge, however I think this assumption is a reasonable one taking into account trucks etc.

Further edit: forgot lychguard were t5. Doh.

In a game that is quickly devaluing the 2+ with rending, grav, and at initiative AP2, it wouldn't surprise me to hear that cheap nobz might find their way into the battlefield again. When your enemy is always swinging for ignores armor, and with no invul save, why not just field more bodies to be waded into? The trap with them is that it needs to be cheap, the moment you add any gubbinz to them they become inefficient.

Of course, we should maybe be shooting scythegaurd with rokkits maybe. Or just throw 20 or so ork boyz into them because that would likely be cheaper and better then nobz.

Edit, also, reanimation protocols are a thing

 Rismonite wrote:
In a game that is quickly devaluing the 2+ with rending, grav, and at initiative AP2, it wouldn't surprise me to hear that cheap nobz might find their way into the battlefield again. When your enemy is always swinging for ignores armor, and with no invul save, why not just field more bodies to be waded into? The trap with them is that it needs to be cheap, the moment you add any gubbinz to them they become inefficient.

The problem here is that Nobz have never been points efficient. They've always been super overcosted, but in the past we've been able to load them up with enough (expensive) gear to at least make them fairly good at killing.

If you're just going to run naked nobz... Just run 3 extra boyz per nob instead. They'll soak more fire, deal more death, pass more moral checks, and do absolutely everything better for the same number of points.

 morganfreeman wrote:
The problem here is that Nobz have never been points efficient. They've always been super overcosted, but in the past we've been able to load them up with enough (expensive) gear to at least make them fairly good at killing.

If you're just going to run naked nobz... Just run 3 extra boyz per nob instead. They'll soak more fire, deal more death, pass more moral checks, and do absolutely everything better for the same number of points.

I agree with you in respect of taking on any army in the game besides Necrons. Necrons are the one army against whom Nobz' initiative 3 actually helps. Higher initiative = more of our guys get to attack, more of their guys get taken out before they can hit back and less of our guys get killed. Winning combat by just one or two points more can make the difference between sweeping the Necrons and your unit being slowly ground down. In contrast, you will lose a fair amount of boyz and they will really struggle to do much damage after their initial charge. IMHO Necrons are not an army against whom conventional Ork tactics work.

I would also argue that it is a bit more complex than simply substituting more boyz for nobz if you are not using a footslogging list. If you have gone mechanised then you don't necessarily have the option of just sending in wave after wave of expendable boyz.

Anyway, I will have a go against Necrons using nobz again next weekend and test the hypothesis! Cheers for everyone's input.

I played a little fluffy malestrom-hammer tonight against a friend of mine. Fluffyhammer really shouldn't be analyzed too thoroghly because it rarely compares to a competitive game, at all.

The first pen my gorkanaught took ended up immobilizing him. Two deff dreadz suffered early immobilization results as well. I bothered to bring the Vulcha Sqwad to this game, they got pie plated, shot, and swept on turn two, ultimately a distraction. Two manz missiles, one stranded by the curse of double 1's forced to walk, and the other botched an assault on a land raider, leaving it with 1 HP. Ultimately, after eating their points in vangaurd vets died to a gorram vindicator blast and multimelta.

Turn six and all the welfare points could offer me had me up 14 to 12. My grots have silently harvested an extra card for me every turn and I am in fact struggling to hide 12 boyz behind a building because I need linebreaker. Oh how I wish they would have been nobz :/

Anyways, linebreaker didn't matter, because I scored one more victory point on some lucky rokkits from 6 tankbustas on a Land Raider. Leaving him one point short if he bothered to use the demolisher cannons on his two remaining vindicators to wipe the ork boyz hiding poorly

Footprint is a silent advantage nobz have. If it was three models I hide them easily.

Anecdotal, apples to oranges arguement however, also nobz are bad I know already. This thread just had me thinking about it while shuffling twelve bodies around.

Boyz do better against crons cause neither boyz nor nobz can reliably kill them but boyz have obsec.

 Krusha wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Sure, meganobz die against necron elites (against warscythe lychguard, 2+ wound, instant death with no save). but nobz die just as fast, and generally speaking, you're never gonna have a unit big enough to survive.

Even with their superior initiative?

MANZ can't sweeping advance or run either, right? Or am I confusing them with Terminators?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rismonite wrote:
In a game that is quickly devaluing the 2+ with rending, grav, and at initiative AP2,

every power weapon used to be at initiative AP2...

Alcibiades wrote:
MANZ can't sweeping advance or run either, right? Or am I confusing them with Terminators?

MANz are slow and purposeful so they can't sweep or run. Terminators are similar with their inability to sweep but they can run.

You can use nobz + DLS boss to roll over gravspam and yet remain well protected against bolters and stuff. I used to run the nobz+megaboss combo before the new dex.

Alcibiades wrote:
MANZ can't sweeping advance or run either, right? Or am I confusing them with Terminators?

No, but nobz can. My point was that this is an advantage for regular nobz when facing Necrons.

 Krusha wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
MANZ can't sweeping advance or run either, right? Or am I confusing them with Terminators?

No, but nobz can. My point was that this is an advantage for regular nobz when facing Necrons.

Sure. My point was that the statement "MANZ are better in melee combat" isn't really 100% true when you factor in that MANZ will never wipe out a fleeing opponent. Which is, I surmise, why power klaws are pointed as more expensive on nobz than on MANZ.

Marines are the most numerous enemy and can't be swept at all. The next is Eldar and at I 5 that isn't happening often either. (Average d6=3.5. Eldar average fall back =8.5, nobz =6.5, nob max = 9) The only time I really see it happening is vs necrons or AM.

I get what your saying about 100% truth... I'd say it's more like 90%.

Alcibiades wrote:

Sure. My point was that the statement "MANZ are better in melee combat" isn't really 100% true when you factor in that MANZ will never wipe out a fleeing opponent. Which is, I surmise, why power klaws are pointed as more expensive on nobz than on MANZ.

You deal wounds with Manz, they take WAY fewer wounds back cause they recieve less hits as there are fewer MANz in btb and they have 2+ to tank those wounds. Than you sweep with a few koptas or a small bike squad which you get for the point difference.