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I have been out of 40K for several years now, but have had an itch for the Orks that might need to be scratched, but having been out of the loop, I have a couple of questions.

1. How does 40K currently scale? I don't have the time for huge armies right now, so am wondering if it plays well at lower points, or if there are any rules for smaller warband/squad level combat.

2. After doing some research, apparently Nazdreg ug Urdgrub isn't in the current army list - is that true? I usually don't use special characters, but I want to make a small army based upon him.

3. If Nazdreg doesn't exist, how could I best replicate him? It appears that kombi-weapons still exist; what is considered the shootiest of them?

4. Is it possible to have an army of Meganobz, or at least a lot of them? What is the best equipment for them?

I am not an expert but the consensus seems to be: Orks do not scale well.

If you get hold of the Kill Team rules you can play games at a few hundred points to start with...no Ork models in the game though.

Orks are not really a low model Army. If you go 'unbound' you have more or less whatever you want...but there are penalties as well.

FacebookJunkie wrote:
I am not an expert but the consensus seems to be: Orks do not scale well.

If you get hold of the Kill Team rules you can play games at a few hundred points to start with...no Ork models in the game though.

Orks are not really a low model Army. If you go 'unbound' you have more or less whatever you want...but there are penalties as well.

Do you need the core rules to play Kill Team? Also, can Orks be played, or does the boxed set just come without Orks? Is Kill Team fun?
I played before "unbound" was a thing, but it sounds familiar. What are the general penalties?

I won a 500 point game with orks yesterday. It came to 71 models. Against 17.

Orks are pretty strong in kill team and low point games because at these low points Orks can bring more models on the table then the competition, the rules target models individually instead squads, and at low points the enemy can't spam the big stuff that gives Orks problems (sigh scatterbikes not included). Then there is a big gap where Orks aren't very competitive. They pick back up again with a Ghazcurion featuring The Waaagh! Council but is very expensive in tax to field it. Even at 1850 pts you'll feel limited on what to upgrade or add to the field. A Ghazcurion will feature an army that is fearless and the Waaaagh! special rule is turned on for every turn including the first. At 2000+ pts you can really start piling on points into this decurion and make Orks very effective again. It's a formation of formations and can carry into apocalypse sized games.

I was trying to look up Kill Team, and to my understanding models with a 2+ save are not allowed. Is that true?

I'm not really interested in going back to 2,000+ point battles with 40K, but would like to keep it small scale. I would also like to use a lot of Meganobz, if possible, as I'm more interested in using the models I like at this point, rather than spamming hordes and hordes of core. If Kill Team is out, how does 40K play at, say, 500 points these days?

 ProwlerPC wrote:
Orks are pretty strong in kill team and low point games because at these low points Orks can bring more models on the table then the competition, the rules target models individually instead squads, and at low points the enemy can't spam the big stuff that gives Orks problems (sigh scatterbikes not included). Then there is a big gap where Orks aren't very competitive. They pick back up again with a Ghazcurion featuring The Waaagh! Council but is very expensive in tax to field it. Even at 1850 pts you'll feel limited on what to upgrade or add to the field. A Ghazcurion will feature an army that is fearless and the Waaaagh! special rule is turned on for every turn including the first. At 2000+ pts you can really start piling on points into this decurion and make Orks very effective again. It's a formation of formations and can carry into apocalypse sized games.

The problem with Orkz in killteam is that no one actually wants to play against that one guy running an Ork horde, because holy crap, it's painful to sit through. Plan on losing friends and making enemies as you force your opponents to sit through three-and-a-half hours of you painstakingly moving all 30 of your models individually.

But in all seriousness, do yourself a favour and hard cap yourself at 20 models. Hell, even 15 is pushing it.

Philhelm wrote:
I have been out of 40K for several years now, but have had an itch for the Orks that might need to be scratched, but having been out of the loop, I have a couple of questions.


4. Is it possible to have an army of Meganobz, or at least a lot of them? What is the best equipment for them?

Yes there is actually. You will need one or more "bully boyz" formations, its not bad at all but require a lot of mega nobz. This might be just what you want.
For their load out, just put them in a transport and it will result in a low model count army,

For Nazdreg -> Warbozz in MEGA armour + Bosspole + gitfinda + Da Dead Shiny Shoota" or the "Kill-Dakka" makes the shootiest one
Kombi weapons aren't shooty at all they are single use items, the relics are shootyer. However the warbozz can only take 1 relic most players like the "lucky stick" more. It isn't that the lucky stick is shooty, but its just way too good on a mega armoured warboss to pass.


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Philhelm wrote:

1. How does 40K currently scale? I don't have the time for huge armies right now, so am wondering if it plays well at lower points, or if there are any rules for smaller warband/squad level combat.

You are in luck. Orks do well in low point games (1000 pts and less) and most decent large point games ork list tend to be relative low model count armies. You might want to read up on articles like these.
-> https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2015/03/23/reecius-adepticon-40k-championships-report-orks-go-to-war/

I'm a little iffy on some of the answers above, so here are my thoughts as an Ork player

1. How does 40K currently scale? I don't have the time for huge armies right now, so am wondering if it plays well at lower points, or if there are any rules for smaller warband/squad level combat.

7th Edition army comp is a pile of stinky, rancid fish being thrown onto a dumpster fire, but if you make up your own reasonable army comp or steal someone else's you can have fun and interesting games at lower points level. I'm not a fan of GW Kill team, because the army comp isn't great, and the balance is terrible. Heralds of Ruin a Fan-made kill team ruleset is far better, but I'm not huge on kill team as a format.

What I really like is Combat Patrol. 400 points. 1-3 troops. 0-1 everything else except no LOW. No combined armor value greater than 33 (front + Side + Rear). No model with more than 3 wounds. No 2+ armor or invuls, and no more than 3 mastery levels. It's a fun game, and has interesting matchups for about every army.

1500 points, single CAD still works so long as you keep out super heavies.

2. After doing some research, apparently Nazdreg ug Urdgrub isn't in the current army list - is that true? I usually don't use special characters, but I want to make a small army based upon him.

He's Gone along with a number of other Ork players, and lots of Ork options.

3. If Nazdreg doesn't exist, how could I best replicate him? It appears that kombi-weapons still exist; what is considered the shootiest of them?

You probably want Badrukk. He doesn't have mega armor but he does shoot plasma. Kombi-weapons are kinda a mess right now. The only kombi that makes sense is a kombi-skorcha. If you really want a shooty Mega-armor character, you can look at a MA Big Mek with a Teleporta blaster. The Killdakka from the Waaagh ghazgul suppliment might appeal to you, but it is stupidly hard to take Ghaz relics these day in legal army lists, and usually not worth the trouble.

4. Is it possible to have an army of Meganobz, or at least a lot of them? What is the best equipment for them?

It is. 15 meganobz is a legal army thanks to Ghazghul's bully boyz formation. It's a minimum of 600 points, but you can easily add upgrades to it to get it around 1,000 points. In smaller games it isn't a very fun army to play against, and isn't likely to have very many close games. You'll either walk all over someone, or get demolished. I probably wouldn't look at it in games smaller than 1850 points.

I like Meganobz, but sprinkle them into my army. My favorite way to run them is 3 MANZ in a Trukk. I give the Trukk a Ram, I give the Boss Nob Killsaws and a bosepole. I give one of the other's a Kombi-Skorcha. It's a MANZ-Missile. It works quite well in games. I usually have 1 MANZ Missile in a 1500 point army. At 2,000 points I do double CAD, and either triple MANZ missile or drop them from the list in favor of Tankbustas. I don't use MANZ in games smaller than 1,000 because of the rock paper scissors nature of them.

The Current edition Ork codex along with the overall shift in the game towards psychic deathstars and high volume of fire high strength shooting has left Orks feeling fairly limited. Trukk rush can work. Bikers can work. If you are willing to exploit a clear typo, then Buzzgob's Big Mek Stompa works. If you are willing to play out of a book that is now outdated greentide works. But Orks don't have a very wide range of viable units / wargear or army builds.

Philhelm wrote:
I was trying to look up Kill Team, and to my understanding models with a 2+ save are not allowed. Is that true?

I'm not really interested in going back to 2,000+ point battles with 40K, but would like to keep it small scale. I would also like to use a lot of Meganobz, if possible, as I'm more interested in using the models I like at this point, rather than spamming hordes and hordes of core. If Kill Team is out, how does 40K play at, say, 500 points these days?

You're lucky. Meganobz are really good now. You can get a formation called Ghazghkull's Bully Boyz - 3 squads of 5 meganobz - to get Fearless and ws5. I've had good luck with them even competitively. There are still some batreps on the 1-st page of battle report section if you want to check out their performance.

It's not fieldable in 500 pt games but 1000-1250 is allready enough for them. Get trukks/battlewagons/gunwagons to transport your meganobz and you've got the core of your choppy elite ork army. And it's kinda tac. Cause it can chop through most things the enemy can throw at them - even giant stompy robots. The only thing they can't kill is wizard-heavy deathstars. But nothing really can kill them anywayz. Luckilly, the geme's not always about killing and you get 5 squads for the same price they get one buffed up squad, so you can scatter around killing support and scoring victory points.