Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

First off, I am going to apologize to anyone who thinks this gets overly complicated, unfortunately the Ork codex is such a mess that realistically even basic rules will have to change in order to make this a competitive option for play in Warhammer 40k.

Secondly, if your advice or opinion on anything pertaining to orks in someway relates to "Learn To play" or "Your orks your not supposed to be competitive" Please don't post and just leave, your opinion is both unwanted and invalid. Why is it invalid? Because, Warhammer 40k is a COMPETITIVE war game where two armies face off against each other with different modes, rules and gear, both should have an even chance of winning before dice are rolled, therefore your opinion that if you want to be competitive play Eldar/SM/Tau/Necrons is not relevant.

Alright lets get down to the basics. The Orkurion is currently....Useless. Why? Well lets start out with the requirements; You are required to take 1+ Core and 1-10 Auxiliaries. This by itself doesn't sound terrible....until you realize what the core choices are.

Your core choices are either the Waaagh Band which is
1 Warboss
1 Mek
1 Unit of Nobz/Mega Nobz
1 Unit of Gretchin
and 6 Units of Boyz.

Naked, this costs about 524pts. (Not terrible for a Decurion style right?) Wrong! Why? Well for starters, Boyz are utterly useless without a nob for a number of reasons, ranging from lack of leadership to no ability to hurt High Toughness and AV targets. S3 boyz just aren't that great. Also, a warboss is a pretty good unit, its a bit expensive but T5 with 3 wounds is pretty good, only problem is he doesnt have any armor or a CCW that does anything unless he takes a PK. Nobz are just useless at this stage in the game, at least as a unit by themselves. Meganobz are ok but only because the upgrades and base cost of a Nob are ridiculously over priced.

So lets give the usual upgrades to this choice, no vehicles mind you because realistically 7 trukkz just adds another 245pts to the total. (Rams of course) So anyway, the basic upgrades are a Nob with a PK in each unit of boyz, giving the Warboss Mega Armor and DLS as well as upgrading the Nobz unit to Mega Nobz. This gives you........slightly over 900pts....still not terribly expensive but not really competitive. So lets give those guys some upgrades to make them a bit more competitive, EG Some Eavy Armor and a Trukk (The Eavy armor is to help negate the destruction that happens when a Trukk inevitably explodes) And Boom your up to 1345 for an optimized (slightly competitive) list of orks. SO what are the benefits of taking this detachment? Well....you get to waaagh every turn which is nice (keep in mind your in a trukk so....doesn't matter 1st turn unless your opponent got 1st turn and move close to you), you get to reroll warlord trait (Keep trying for that prophet of the Waaagh) and lastly your boyz units get to HoW their target until they lose 1 model (unless you spent even more points and increased the size to 12, then its 3 models). So really pretty underwhelming bonuses for a supposedly good Close Combat army. Ohh and keep in mind those HoW attacks are only S3.

Or the other Core choice of Dread Mob: Well I am not going to get into it as much as the other choice because only a fluff list would take it, or a moron. Why? It requires a Gorkanaut, 2 Deff Dreadz and a unit of Killa Kanz, arguably the 3 worst units in the Ork Codex.

But what about the auxiliary choices? Do they have some sweet special rules to make up for the expensive core choices? No. Simple as that, no.

"But wait, didn't he leave out the command choices? Surely that must be good to justify this garbage" Well I did, so lets go over the command choices.

Lets start with the weaker of the two, Oddboyz: 1 Weirdboy, Painboy mek or Big Mek.....ok anything special about it? Anything at all? No. So lets get to the Elephant in the room, the choice that makes SM players tremble...usually with laughter but anyway.

The Council of Waaagh choice, Requirements? Ghaz, Grotsnik, a Big Mek, a unit of nobz and two warbosses. Naked total of 494 points. Optimized? well that really depends on the person playing them, however usually it is 3 Meganobz, 2 Mega Armor warbosses (one with DLS) and a Mega armor Big Mek. That brings you up to 805pts.

Benefits of taking this? well for starters, if Ghaz is your warlord (he will be) then if you get 1st turn your army is FEARLESS the entire game(until ghaz dies) which is awesome, ghaz also gets a 2++ the entire game, awesome, and you get to Waaagh every turn. Nice! The Downside? your paying 805pts (Optimized) for a Death Star unit that only has 1 model with an Invul, 1 model with a rerollable armor save and a 5+ FNP (Unit Toughness is 5). Also, you need a Battlewagon to transport this unit because they are to big to fit in a trukk, so you have to spend another 115pts minimum for a BW with a ram, probably throw on some Rokkitz or Big Shootas to make sure it doesn't get immobilized with a weapon destroyed result so 135pts. So if you take this option you are using Naked: 494 + BW Naked = 604pts (Only 2 PKs and 1 model with a 2+ everyone else is 6+ except grotsnik who has a 4+) Or you are using an optimized version of this which brings you to 940pts (8 PKs and 2+ for everyone as well as a 2+ Rerollable).

If you take just the Naked requirements and throw in Ghaz to get army wide fearless your paying 494 for the Ghaz command requirements and 524 for the cheapest core requirements..... 1018pts, with only 2 PKs in the entire army, no transports and no ranged weapons of any kind except ghaz's big shoota.

So why is this ridiculous? 1018pts for 2 PKs and a bunch of fearless boyz and a Deathstar without any good armor except a 2++ on Ghaz. Why would anyone ever be scared of this?

Necrons on the other hand are paying 479 for their Decurion Core requirements which gives the entire Decurion Move through Cover, Relentless and reroll RP rolls of 1 for the overlord and units within 12 inches of him, not to mention that the basic weapon of a necron warrior can wound a AV14 vehicle as well as T10 models. You can literally field 2 Decurions like that for the price of the Orkurion with ghaz detachment, biggest difference is that the decurions come almost standard with good weapons/armor and equipment where as the Orks have to pay for upgrades for anything worth taking (IE 4+ armor or PKs)


So what can be done to fix this issue? well let me get to that in a bit, I will let this stand alone for a bit to see if anyone else has suggestions.

Have you tried it without trukks and PK nobz? Might sound silly, but with the ghazcurion benefits of fearless and run+charge, you're basically sinking more than the points cost of the squad for something that gives far fewer benefits than usual as you don't need the bosspole (or the character in general for Mob Rule) and you don't need as much mobility.

When I've run the ghazcurion, it's actually worked pretty well. I had 2 mini-stars, the Ghazzystar and a nob bikestar with allied in Zhardsnark and the boss from the Waaaghband with stikk and bike, and everything else was MSU all day long. Basically filled the rest of my points with tankbustas and warbikes w/PK nob.

the_scotsman wrote:
Have you tried it without trukks and PK nobz? Might sound silly, but with the ghazcurion benefits of fearless and run+charge, you're basically sinking more than the points cost of the squad for something that gives far fewer benefits than usual as you don't need the bosspole (or the character in general for Mob Rule) and you don't need as much mobility.

When I've run the ghazcurion, it's actually worked pretty well. I had 2 mini-stars, the Ghazzystar and a nob bikestar with allied in Zhardsnark and the boss from the Waaaghband with stikk and bike, and everything else was MSU all day long. Basically filled the rest of my points with tankbustas and warbikes w/PK nob.

Without a PK/Nob your boyz are (if they charge) 40 WS 4 S4 attacks if they all get in. Thats 20 hits against WS4 and around 10 wounds against T4 units. Against SM 3+ armor that is 3 casualties, of course the SMs get to swing first so really its less then that, but the point is that after that 1st round your Boyz are now S3 and wounding on 5s, Fearless is great and all but without some kind of power behind your attacks your not going to be able to even hurt vehicles with those boyz.

Also if you don't take nobz or PKs on anyone, keep the units naked your still paying 1018pts for those requirements. In a 1500pt game that leaves you with 482 pts to pay for bikes/tankbustas. If you ally in Zhadsnark your paying another 150pts for him, giving the Warboss in the detachment a PK, DLS and a Warbike is another 75pts so now your up to 1243 leaving you with a grand total of 257pts which is enough for 2 units of 4 warbikes with a Nob/PK. Grand total of 6 PKs in the entire army, with the entire army foot sloggin except for the Biker star and the other unit of 4 warbikes and a Nob.

Again not exactly intimidating, VERY gimmicky which will sometimes get you a surprise win over an opponent not prepared for that sort of contest (much like Green tide being horrible but still good against opponents not ready for 200+ models with 5+ FNP).

Basically just like the SM gladius (NOTE: THIS IS NOT ME MAKING AN ARGUMENT THAT THEY ARE THE SAME LEVEL OF POWER) you don't waste time taking each tactical squad, giving them 10 models, buying 2 meltaguns, putting a powerfist on the vet sarge... almost every gladius list you're going to see is just going to run 5-man tac squads with maybe 1 special weapon.

My strategy with the ghazcurion was just to take the minimum amount of tax to unlock the nice benefit (beefy ghaz and waaagh every turn) and then go with optimized stuff (Zhardsnark with obsec bike squads, min tankbusta squads)

Does it make Orks competitive? Doubt it. Is it a way to structure your ork army in a new way that works just as well as any other ork setup that currently exists? I'd argue yes.

In your list Zhadsnark doesn't give you Obsec Bike squads, or any real benefits because those are only unlocked when he is the Warlord, and if you want ghaz to have his 2++ then Ghaz needs to be warlord.

What Zhadsnark does give you is a Skilled rider warboss with a PK that swings at intiative, something not even ghaz has, and for some reason Zhad has 6+ armor....wtf?

40 S4 attacks gets me a reliable 4HP against an AV10 rear armor vehicle, or a solid won combat against small troop units. I'm a staunch believer in the idea that boyz are just too unreliable in the current game to actually pull their weight. In most of my games, the role of the boyz was to hold objectives, claim cover saves in ruins, and force my opponent to actually kill 10 t4 models completely to get rid of them.

I've played the list I described to you against a fairly optimized razorback gladius, a necron decurion with double harvest, and a competitive nid list with success. Admittedly it would definitely fold against a competitive Tau list, but I'd argue that's more an ork thing in general than a built-in flaw to that list. I do generally play at 1850 since that's usually tournament standard, so in 1500 yeah I agree it's too tight to be feasible. If you're curious how the points work out I'll put my list into Bscribe and see how it looked.

I don't think MSU particularly feels like much of a "gimmick" given how often it comes up, particularly in competitive environments and maelstrom games.

the_scotsman wrote:
40 S4 attacks gets me a reliable 4HP against an AV10 rear armor vehicle, or a solid won combat against small troop units. I'm a staunch believer in the idea that boyz are just too unreliable in the current game to actually pull their weight. In most of my games, the role of the boyz was to hold objectives, claim cover saves in ruins, and force my opponent to actually kill 10 t4 models completely to get rid of them.

I've played the list I described to you against a fairly optimized razorback gladius, a necron decurion with double harvest, and a competitive nid list with success. Admittedly it would definitely fold against a competitive Tau list, but I'd argue that's more an ork thing in general than a built-in flaw to that list. I do generally play at 1850 since that's usually tournament standard, so in 1500 yeah I agree it's too tight to be feasible. If you're curious how the points work out I'll put my list into Bscribe and see how it looked.

I don't think MSU particularly feels like much of a "gimmick" given how often it comes up, particularly in competitive environments and maelstrom games.

At 1850 its doable, but at 1500 your just bashing your head into a brick wall and expecting to win. Even at 1850 though that is still only another 2 biker squads or 3-4 min Tank busta squads.

The problem I see with your list is that the only units worth a damn are the Council and the bikes. Everything else is easily killed and will not get any armor saves except cover. Against an average Eldar list this folds in the 1st turn, maybe 2nd if your lucky, against Dakka Tyrants? I don't know what you would do except hope to win on objectives, keeping in mind that he will be deleting your units 2-3 a turn. Against SM Gladius, the only way I see this working is if his Razorbacks are all equipped with Anti-armor weapons, otherwise just the bolters are going to chew through this list rather quickly.

a 2++ Ghaz is scary, but not when it costs you more then a Stompa to get.

Although you are totally right about not being able to bring warbike squads as troops, I was doing that wrong. I forgot Zsnark's thing was a warlord trait.

Now I'm questioning whether he's worth including at all. I may retool the list just to include the nob bikers with the stikkboss for a rerollable 4++. Skilled rider with a reroll is pretty solid, but having to bring two squads of gretchins even if they become fearless with the runtherds may be too much chaff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have played against 2 of those three, and primarily that's exactly what I did. The razorbacks did cause casualties, but there are a lot of boyz and you have to kill all of them (unlike regular ork lists, they don't kill themselves for you/run away). Generally, they have 8 free razorbacks with heavy bolters (at least, the one I played did) which generally kill about 16 boyz a turn before cover save. they did get about this before turn 2 when I got my first big multi-charge off with the bikerstar.

the_scotsman wrote:
Although you are totally right about not being able to bring warbike squads as troops, I was doing that wrong. I forgot Zsnark's thing was a warlord trait.

Now I'm questioning whether he's worth including at all. I may retool the list just to include the nob bikers with the stikkboss for a rerollable 4++. Skilled rider with a reroll is pretty solid, but having to bring two squads of gretchins even if they become fearless with the runtherds may be too much chaff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have played against 2 of those three, and primarily that's exactly what I did. The razorbacks did cause casualties, but there are a lot of boyz and you have to kill all of them (unlike regular ork lists, they don't kill themselves for you/run away). Generally, they have 8 free razorbacks with heavy bolters (at least, the one I played did) which generally kill about 16 boyz a turn before cover save. they did get about this before turn 2 when I got my first big multi-charge off with the bikerstar.

Zhadsnarks not worth bringing in your list unless you want that 2+ rerollable cover save (4+ jink, skilled rider + Turbocharge or Night fighting = 2+ rerollable Cover save) of course keep in mind that is only a cover save not an actual Invul save which means against ignores cover weapons with AP4 or better (Tau) your dead.

And to think, I thought the Guard Decurion was bad... Ork players have it worse methinks

Yep, a couple riptides with marker support who don't miss will kill the nob bikers. Since the orks don't have access to Crutch Discipline (TM) and its magic instant deathstar spell, we generally have to make do with bully deathstars.

No, the ghazcurion does not magically make orks capable of hacking it with the standard tournament eldar list or tau list. But it does give you solid odds against the competitive lists of more armies than a standard cad-based ork army tends to. At least, that's my experience.

the_scotsman wrote:
Yep, a couple riptides with marker support who don't miss will kill the nob bikers. Since the orks don't have access to Crutch Discipline (TM) and its magic instant deathstar spell, we generally have to make do with bully deathstars.

No, the ghazcurion does not magically make orks capable of hacking it with the standard tournament eldar list or tau list. But it does give you solid odds against the competitive lists of more armies than a standard cad-based ork army tends to. At least, that's my experience.

The only benefit that is worth noting in the entire Orkurion is the Fearless to the entire army if you take Ghaz. Otherwise a standard CAD is actually better then the Orkurion. In fact the Great Waaagh Detachment from the codex gives all the same benefits as well as not forcing your nobz/characters to challenge and die against other characters with a Power sword or hell even a couple of S4 attacks (6+ armor sucks).

I believe that a Zhadsnark biker army is both better and more competitive then the Orkurion, and is significantly easier to play since your not moving 100 models around the table

I've found that alot of the decurion dettachments are not that good until you play about 2500 points. Which is great for casual games, but becomes a time issue when you play competitively. Pesonally, I like to run the other core, goff killmob. Fear is nice, but the real bonus is the ability to re-roll charge range. Which you are most likely thinking, why is that good? we have ere' we go. Yes, but the deff dreads, kans, and gorkanaut does not.

Both of these core choice require at lease 60 boyz. Either 6 squads of 10 for the warband or 3 squads of 20 for the goff kill mob. This is where your aux choice come in handy. You can take 3 battle wagons to carry all the boyz and then put the warboss and nobs on bike. Also take a pain boy for good measure. This would give you 1 command (painboy) 1 core (Goff killmob) and 3 aux (Mek stuff: battlewagons)

The issue I have with the other core choice, warband, is that its formation bonuses are the same for the Orkurion. So what is the freaking point of even taking that one in the orkurion. Great I forced my self into taking specific units just for getting copies of the same rules. Its not like they even stack or anything.

When it comes to competitive play, personally, I'll stick to my CAD or the Ork detachment from the codex: orkz. I can build something leaner and tougher for the competitive environment. The nice thing about the new WAAAGH: Ghaz book is we got all of our formations in there. Those are nice to put into a Battleforged army.

 Glitcha wrote:
I've found that alot of the decurion dettachments are not that good until you play about 2500 points.

That is only true if you are talking about armies besides Eldar, SM and Necrons. The Necron one is amazing and doesnt take much in the way of points to play. The SM one is very expensive as it requires the double demi company or whatever to get the Free vehicles, but still doable in 1500(very competitive)

The eldar one? WTF its cheap as hell and you can fit 4-5 Wraithknights into a 1500pt list....and still be battleforged.

Don't get me wrong, nothing can fix the Ork codex except a complete rewrite. TO much of the strength of the ork codex was based on the rules from 5th edition, which since have been destroyed, making our units useless.

I think it would be significantly better for the Orkurion if it requires far less in terms of requirements. A simple fix would be allowing you to replace the Warboss in the Core requirement with Ghaz and let him get that 2++ without having to invest another 300pts. A second big benefit would be to give our auxiliary choices some form of bonuses like the Eldar get, and/or give any unit of boyz a free transport based on the size of the squad, For example, a mob of 12 or less gets a trukk for free, anything up to 22 gets a Battlewagon for free. Free battlewagons seems OP as hell, but remember a BW has no weapons so you would be paying for anything worth a damn on it.

As far as other buffs, I would really like to see some of the other requirements get removed, the Mob rule that affects the Orkurion (Without ghaz) is just to big of a negative (D3+3 attacks against your own orks). Some other benefits would be beneficial as well.

A couple things you have incorrect.

1) "Da Biggest and Da Best" in the new waaagh ghaz book - unless I'm missing something here - applies ONLY to the warlord, and now as a bonus gives him rerolls to hit and wound for the rest of the game if he kills someone in the challenge. You are not required to challenge with your nobz anymore, that was the previous book.

2) The Warband formation (which is what I think you're referring to?) I believe only gives you the ability to waaagh every turn after the first. This extends your turn 1 threat range slightly, and gives you fearless turn 1. This actually makes starting Ghazkhull in a battlewagon a more interesting option, because you force your opponent to deploy back a good 6" from his original deployment zone, giving your boyz a bit more breathing room against standard small arms.

Also worth noting that besides fearless, you get a character with a 2++ and two random bonuses (most of which are pretty cruddy but the offensive ones are quite nice).

A full zhardsnark bike army may be slightly better in a vacuum, but I find with an army like that, you're basically doing what everyone else is doing...but worse. Everyone's going to have some sort of plan for an army of bikers with 1-2 big scary star units, but fewer people plan for MSU these days.

the_scotsman wrote:
A couple things you have incorrect.

1) "Da Biggest and Da Best" in the new waaagh ghaz book - unless I'm missing something here - applies ONLY to the warlord, and now as a bonus gives him rerolls to hit and wound for the rest of the game if he kills someone in the challenge. You are not required to challenge with your nobz anymore, that was the previous book.

2) The Warband formation (which is what I think you're referring to?) I believe only gives you the ability to waaagh every turn after the first. This extends your turn 1 threat range slightly, and gives you fearless turn 1. This actually makes starting Ghazkhull in a battlewagon a more interesting option, because you force your opponent to deploy back a good 6" from his original deployment zone, giving your boyz a bit more breathing room against standard small arms.

Also worth noting that besides fearless, you get a character with a 2++ and two random bonuses (most of which are pretty cruddy but the offensive ones are quite nice).

A full zhardsnark bike army may be slightly better in a vacuum, but I find with an army like that, you're basically doing what everyone else is doing...but worse. Everyone's going to have some sort of plan for an army of bikers with 1-2 big scary star units, but fewer people plan for MSU these days.

Your correct, they no longer require nobs to challenge. Of course the enemy always does challenge in return because its neuters the squad

The Warband formation in the codex is turn 2, but really unless your opponent moves forward or deploys right at the very edge of the deployment zone your never going to get that 1st turn charge anyway, the only real benefit for 1st turn Waaagh is to give ghaz that 2++ and army wide fearless right away. Otherwise you still just run your boyz forward like normal.

On a related note, I am not a huge fan of 1st turn charges, even if your enemy is silly enough to deploy forward, why? because usually you need a 10-12inch charge, and even with rerolls this is incredibly difficult, and when you charge your opening yourself up to getting shot to pieces by overwatch, not a big deal unless its against naked orks, A SM unit can reliably put out 10-20 S4 shots (double tap bolters and a flamer) and depending on range what have you, but a single flamer will usually kill 1-2 boyz and the rest of the fire kills another 1-2. If you are lucky you lose 2 models unlucky...4-6. That 10 man squad just got whittled down to 6-8. SMs attack first 5 hits 3wounds 2-3 more dead orks and your down to 3-6 boyz. of course this is in a vacuum, but the point is, why risk that overwatch just for a slightly better then 1 in 6 chance at a charge turn 1?

Unless you don't bring nobz in the first place...which is why I like the Ghazcurion in the first place, remember... You can't argue nobz are a vital upgrade then argue that they suck

As I just said, the benefit of the turn 1 charge threat from the ghaz-star is forcing your opponent to stay back in their deployment. The gap difference from being targeted by weapons with 24" range to only being targeted by weapons with 36" range is generally pretty big, given how many small-arms (ie threats to boyz) have 24" range.

You know how much overwatch damage a ghaz-star is going to take if you go for a long-bomb charge? Preeeeeetty much zero. Yes, you might wipe something out and leave yourself open to getting shot at....but I want my opponent to be shooting the ghazstar.... I've got tons of 2+ armor wounds and 2++FNP EW wounds. Id far rather eat an army's worth of shooting on that turn 1 or 2 than have my boyz eat it.

the_scotsman wrote:
Unless you don't bring nobz in the first place...which is why I like the Ghazcurion in the first place, remember... You can't argue nobz are a vital upgrade then argue that they suck

As I just said, the benefit of the turn 1 charge threat from the ghaz-star is forcing your opponent to stay back in their deployment. The gap difference from being targeted by weapons with 24" range to only being targeted by weapons with 36" range is generally pretty big, given how many small-arms (ie threats to boyz) have 24" range.

You know how much overwatch damage a ghaz-star is going to take if you go for a long-bomb charge? Preeeeeetty much zero. Yes, you might wipe something out and leave yourself open to getting shot at....but I want my opponent to be shooting the ghazstar.... I've got tons of 2+ armor wounds and 2++FNP EW wounds. Id far rather eat an army's worth of shooting on that turn 1 or 2 than have my boyz eat it.

Ahh, but I can claim they are essential and that they suck. A boyz unit without a nob with a PK is just a distraction unit, or an objective holding unit. A Mob with a Nob/PK can literally hurt titans, and more importantly can make a unit with 2+ armor hate themselves (IE Terminators and equivalents). But considering your paying 35pts EXTRA for that stupid model it sucks, but in the context of an ork codex its a good investment. Much like Tankbustas are one of the best units in our codex, but in the SM Codex they would be seen as sub par and never fielded. You see what I am getting at?

I have yet to play a game of 40k against anything EXCEPT Tyranids/Orks/KDK where my opponent didn't deploy as far back in his deployment zone as possible. Moving 6 inches backwards means 1 more full turn of shooting my orks to death before they can reliably get a charge. That isn't the work of a tactical genius, just the common sense of most wargamers. On top of that, most players who play competitively know that you just ignore death stars unless you have an equally potent deathstar. Why waste a full turn shooting at Ghaz when all you really need to do is pop his transport and let him walk the rest of the game? Shoot the piss out of the boyz units and make them disappear off the table .

Well, I suppose we're going to agree to disagree then. If you have one of those metas that's entirely competitive tau/eldar players then I'm sorry and you're probably correct for your own meta, but in my own experience an opponent starting on his table edge just means I get to be in the middle of the board squatting on most of the objectives in terrain by the time he moves his models up to where most of his shooting is effective. But then again most of my opponents are mid-level competitive power armor armies, that's just the thing people bring around here for the most part. To me, then, ork boyz can be a solid distraction/objective holder/tarpit or they can be terrible at attacking heavy armored targets by paying upwards of 150 points for 3 power klaw attacks...and I can get the same thing for FAR cheaper with warbikes or I can just handle light to medium armor with tankbustas.

LoL you all might be slower then a cripple servitor in a stasis field or suffer from some warp time fluctuations. This "debate" has been settled ages ago : P


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Whats next why that new TAU titan is totally op ?

What's wrong with the orkurion?

First, the ork codex is total garbage so the whole foundation your trying to build off of is garbage.

Until us ork players get a decent codex nothing is going to change. Do what I did 2 years ago and put your orks on the shelf it's not worth the frustration.

Auto correct fix.

I like Orkurion a lot. Orkz are affected by fear more then any other army in the game and probably to an unreasonable balancing issue. Fearless gives every ork model a new lowest common denominator. Most noticeable is that they will not waste time running to 25% casualties and they will not be swept. When Orkz are not failing leadership tests you are secretly making points back that you would have lost taking these tests elsewhere. We have all been there, bad leadership dice turn one and two, games over already we can pack it up today. Fearless can change this very random element into something dependable and eliminating randomness is something most will seek to do in a competitive environment. There is also an intangible value in the way your opponent has to go about removing your orkz. He can no longer depend on you failing a leadership check here and there to get success on the table. He now has to micromanage his shooting to a T perhaps causing more waste in his shooting phase. This compounds the advantage to Ork MSU, he isn't just shooting to force a leadership check he is shooting to kill every model in the unit now and only his dice can mess you up now (and maybe your cover save dice if you have one, but hey that is like a bonus anyways). Also, being able to actually be a tarpit, not fail combat and be swept. Much like one other person above said, you very much can just run the core mostly naked and vanilla and receive great benefit from them, if you'd like to run a small Nob Biker Star and Ghaz Star. Also, a WAAAGH every turn means move run assault all day everyturn, everytime.

Ghaz Star, I suggest running it very lite, between a MA WB w/DLS, and Ghaz, you have the saves vs. shooting to keep the army moving, running, and assaulting, and also fearless. A Big Mek with the MFF can make a nice addition to help the unit deal with mobile flanking fire. Try to concentrate on using your boyz to keep him screened from cheap assaulty stuff that might strip the unit of everything but maybe Ghaz in one round of combat. If the bulk of your army is walking I wouldn't put them in a battlewagon, only because it sounds like an explodes result waiting for a pie plate (not that ghaz can't take it just that you don't want to make your opponents pie plates that efficient).

Stormboyz, bring at least two or three minimum squads and expect them to do nothing except make your opponent consider their turn 1 assault distances (put them in front). Think of them as an empty threat that you'll use to maybe buy some board control, but probably just send on a sacrificial mission to maybe claim an objective.

Deffkopta, he doesn't want to shoot that, yeah he might have to shoot that, but he doesn't want to shoot that. Every little model you can stuff in there will slowly contribute to your enemy zoning out at the sheer model saturation on your side (but we know this).

Try to bring two min squads of tankbustas (Because you need some strength 8 laying around, or being shot at w/e). Even one tankbustin git that just didn't die can walk up on something and send it sky high.

The Nobz in the core make a good nob biker with nob biker boss with Klaw style unit. I have also just walked three Nobz with a Klaw across the table, pretty sweet watching my opponent evaluate shooting at it considering chance to overkill/not kill can be soo variable.

I think the formation is often dismissed because it is inflexible, which we know. But if you are the kind of guy that likes what MSU can do then it's a relatively nice way to play malestrom.

When you have had your fill of making customized ork lists or are tired of leadship checks dictating game flow, it's maybe time to consider the Orkurion. Many small fearless units. Deploy and race to objectives, score early, score often.

IIRC nobz in ghaz squad are regular ones - they can't be meganobz.

My problem with orcurion is that it's "benefits" are more of drawbacks. +2 to mob rule is basically what leaves you without mob rule at all. And that's ld7 for your whole army. The only way to fix it is to add Ghaz which you can't get without a bloated comsquad. And fearless from WAAAGH! starts only on your turn, so if you don't get to go first, you loose half the army to ld tests.

I'd not call our codex horrible though. There are still decent options. Personally, i'm moving towards bully boyz, bikers and ranged support. A squad or two of trukkboyz and that's it. I used to be a dedicated footslogging horde player but my 100+ boyz are just collecting dust atm. Tired of 5 hour games.

 Chute82 wrote:
What's wrong with the orkurion?

First, the ork codex is total garbage so the whole foundation your trying to build off of is garbage.

Until us ork players get a decent codex nothing is going to change. Do what I did 2 years ago and put your orks on the shelf it's not worth the frustration.

Auto correct fix.

Why put good models to shelf? Waste of models. Might just as well sell them then.

Or better yet switch to edition that's actually good! Orks in 2nd ed are much more viable and you get better core rules to boot

Kudos to the OP for a really good summary. Where I think you get it wrong is that the decurion style detachment for orks is designed to represent a typical waagh style army in the fluffy way. It cannot be competitive at 2k and under but really starts to sing when you push the points up.

If 3+ of those 6 ork boyz squads are maxed at 30 boys they become a tide like major threat to the board and you can totally dominate board control. You can if you get first turn run and spread out totally nerfing drop pods and high mobile opponents.

The 'orkurion' only really function with ghaz whot then allows you to ignore mob rule completely and I wouldn't run the nobz in there as meganobz and I think they can't actually be meganobz and have to be standard nobz. They're best treated as ablative wounds for look out sir etc juts give em big choppas and move on. What I would do is run ghaz or a mega armoured DLS warboss on point tanking all non ap2 wounds and try to look out sir any others onto the nobs. It then becomes an effective deathstar unit rocking 4-5 PK's

 Nithaniel wrote:
Kudos to the OP for a really good summary. Where I think you get it wrong is that the decurion style detachment for orks is designed to represent a typical waagh style army in the fluffy way. It cannot be competitive at 2k and under but really starts to sing when you push the points up.

If 3+ of those 6 ork boyz squads are maxed at 30 boys they become a tide like major threat to the board and you can totally dominate board control. You can if you get first turn run and spread out totally nerfing drop pods and high mobile opponents.

The 'orkurion' only really function with ghaz whot then allows you to ignore mob rule completely and I wouldn't run the nobz in there as meganobz and I think they can't actually be meganobz and have to be standard nobz. They're best treated as ablative wounds for look out sir etc juts give em big choppas and move on. What I would do is run ghaz or a mega armoured DLS warboss on point tanking all non ap2 wounds and try to look out sir any others onto the nobs. It then becomes an effective deathstar unit rocking 4-5 PK's

I was using Battlescribe and they seem to think you can upgrade those nobz to Meganobz, But your right the rules specifically say Nobz. On an unrelated note, but one that I feel I need to point out.....why are Nobz and Meganobz separate entities? They are literally the same except the MegaNobz have upgraded their armor...thats it. Why not just save the paper and add in (Can take MA with a PK and TL Shoota for 22pts) I think I just answered my own question, if they did that it would become more apparent that GW doesn't know wtf it is doing as far as rules writing. (PK costs 25pts but a MA Nob gets 2+ armor a TL gun and a PK for 22pts.....whooops!)

I agree with your analysis that the best way to run the Council is to use those nobz as ablative wounds for AP2. The only problem is that your spending so many points on just the bare minimum requirements that you have very little left to flesh out your army with, and worst of all the only Rerollable armor save is the MA Warboss with DLS and the only Invul save is on Ghaz. Put another way, if a unit of regular terminators got into CC with this deathstar it would reliably take out everyone EXCEPT ghaz. 5 Terminators, = 10 attacks 5 hits and more then likely 5 wounds. in a challenge 1-2 of those would hit ghaz but the others would kill nobz and MA Warbosses alike.

 Nithaniel wrote:
Kudos to the OP for a really good summary. Where I think you get it wrong is that the decurion style detachment for orks is designed to represent a typical waagh style army in the fluffy way. It cannot be competitive at 2k and under but really starts to sing when you push the points up.

If 3+ of those 6 ork boyz squads are maxed at 30 boys they become a tide like major threat to the board and you can totally dominate board control. You can if you get first turn run and spread out totally nerfing drop pods and high mobile opponents.
s

Of course when you push up points so too should you push up board size...

Bigger armies with same board size=board just gets cramped=less manouvering=less fun.

Which is why constantly increasing army sizes and base sizes are annoying. One needs to decrease point sizes to allow same amount of room to manouver or increase board size which can be tough for some people(me included) due to real life practicalities.

Orks are a funny bag of tricks that get less funny the more you play them. I've just made the painful decision to shelve them now.

At 1k and under they are a threatening opponent because you can swamp more models than your opponent can deal with effectively. At over 2k the orkurion becomes viable but your opponents threat level increases beyond the bonuses of the orkurion so I agree with the OP that its a pretty useless benefit that only papers over the ever widening cracks in the dex. Anywhere between 1k and 2k Orks suck outside of a zhadsnark build. Which is a shame because that's the points level everyone typically plays games.

The phases of an ork player
1. Discovery phase: This army is so fun quirky and cool.
2. Modelling phase: Argh too many models to paint but check out my sweet conversions
3. Play (Lose)phase: Lost my first game yesterday then two more today but I had fun honest!
4. Is it me? Phase: Damn this codex. Let me go to dakka and get some advice on how to improve.
5. RANT Phase: RANT RANT RANT
6. Reality Phase: Pick new army until Gee Dub fixes up!

I'm at stage 6 with my shiny white scars and evolving nids where are you now SemperMortis? I think you are on 5. I feel you bro!

GW might just like it this way. Since you have a complete army once you reach step 6 ; )

 Nithaniel wrote:
Orks are a funny bag of tricks that get less funny the more you play them. I've just made the painful decision to shelve them now.

At 1k and under they are a threatening opponent because you can swamp more models than your opponent can deal with effectively. At over 2k the orkurion becomes viable but your opponents threat level increases beyond the bonuses of the orkurion so I agree with the OP that its a pretty useless benefit that only papers over the ever widening cracks in the dex. Anywhere between 1k and 2k Orks suck outside of a zhadsnark build. Which is a shame because that's the points level everyone typically plays games.

The phases of an ork player
1. Discovery phase: This army is so fun quirky and cool.
2. Modelling phase: Argh too many models to paint but check out my sweet conversions
3. Play (Lose)phase: Lost my first game yesterday then two more today but I had fun honest!
4. Is it me? Phase: Damn this codex. Let me go to dakka and get some advice on how to improve.
5. RANT Phase: RANT RANT RANT
6. Reality Phase: Pick new army until Gee Dub fixes up!

I'm at stage 6 with my shiny white scars and evolving nids where are you now SemperMortis? I think you are on 5. I feel you bro!

LMAO this is funny as hell, I would agree with you that I am on Step 5, unfortunately I am stuck at step five, never to move on to step 6, because I am cheap Unless someone gives me another army im going to stick with orks.

I would really love to see GW pull their collective heads out of their collective donkey caves and figure out that the game is broken and either fix all of the problems or more likely, give my orks the same problems as the Necron/Eldar/SM/DA/SW/Tau codexs.