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pismakron wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Stormboyz are great. Haven't tried Zag but he looks ok.

How are you using them? As objective grabbing minimum-squads?
Can you get first turn assault with them?

I've got one batrep up with stormboyz.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/728648.page

Have made some mistakes with them and even so, they still worked good enough vs such tough list.

 Frozocrone wrote:
I wouldn't put too much stock into PK Nobz hitting on 3s at best (usually 4s).

Last edition WS4 meant you hit on 4s against a large proportion of stuff, with the exceptions being Tau, Guard and Tyranids, with two of those folding in combat and the third resorting to Flyrant spam that WS4 may as well have been WS0, especially since the Job could be challenged by all those Hive Tyrants.

Vehicles were the only thing that WS4 Power Klaws were reliable against but Tankbustas and Meganobz did that for you.

While I agree with your numbers, I disagree with the conclusion.

Previously, against a squad of MEQ a Nob would have 4 attacks S9 hitting on 4+, wounding on 2+, no save. This means he would kill 1.66 Marines on average - usually the nob would kill just as much as the entire mob.
Right now, he gets 3 attacks on the charge, still wounds on 2+, but now there is a 6+ save, resulting on about 1.04 dead marines.
In addition to vehicles being harder to hit, you no longer hit vehicles on rear armor (usually 2+ to pen), but wound them on 3+, having 83.33% chance of doing d3 damage on average without any chance of taking out the vehicle in a single pen.
The chance of the nob doing no damage at all is as high as 27.82% against MEQ and 37.67% against vehicles with 3+ save, which is IMHO too high for a 25 point weapon you are only going to be using two or three times per game.
Last but not least, there is no longer a need to win combat. If you kill two honor guard models and they kill 5 boyz back, you will no longer get run down or have half your mob explode because of fearless, mob rule or other silly penalties for trading 120 points for 30.

The big choppa on the other hand got better due to having a meaningful AP value, killing .66 marines on average and having a chance of 66.66%/50%/33.33% to deal 2 damage to T6/T7/T8 vehicles. So, unless fighting T8 or higher it's at least half as good as the PK with costing slightly more than a third the points. Against T8 it still does roughly the same damage per point spent. From a pure points perspective it strictly more efficient than a klaw.

The second part is that the nob no longer needs to do all the killing. As you take no casualties before striking and hitting on 3+, every choppa boy in combat will kill .33 MEQ and have a 22% chance to damage a vehicle or monstrous creatures with T7 or lower (which includes all the walkers that boyz were unable to harm previously). So, 5 boyz pretty much outperform the PK now (30 points) while adding wounds and leadership to the mob.

TL;DR: PK is less point efficient than the BC and it can no longer handle any threats that boyz can't handle themselves. Obviously a mob with PK will always be stronger than a mob with BC, but in my opinion it's no longer worth the points.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:
So we should have them move and shoot, avoiding assault? Is that really the best way to utilize them? Maybe move and shoot, charging a weakened unit?

If you want to use them, they are best at picking off units backfield units and light vehicles. Things like whirlwinds, razorbacks, land speeders and space marine bikes simply break under the weight of all those shots. In my experience bikers fail hard when shooting units with good saves, like scouts in cover, centurions or termintors.

As for charge target, I charged whatever got me closer to the backfield or used their charge to prevent things from shooting (like that whirlwind with the S7 2 Damage shots). I'd stay away from anything that can actually beat them in combat or has weapons that do more than 1 damage. Don't even think about engaging space marine characters or dreads, gun them down and charge someone else.

 Jidmah wrote:

TL;DR: PK is less point efficient than the BC and it can no longer handle any threats that boyz can't handle themselves. Obviously a mob with PK will always be stronger than a mob with BC, but in my opinion it's no longer worth the points.

I still prefer pk on nobz for footslogas when i have points. And it's because hordes really lack ways of effectively dealing with tough t8+ stuff. While choppas and bigchoppas are allready enough to tickle anything t7 and lower, t8 is really problematic for us. And having played with footsloggas, i've got a feeling that this few anti-tank units orks have don't really fit all that well in footslogging lists. I'm not sure yet but it seems that the best way of dealing with tough vehicles for ork hordes is...simply to get as many buffed boyz as possible. And all the help we can master from klaw nob leaders, bosses and whatnot.

I dunno, throwing 100+ dice at a vehicle with 3's/2's to hit then needing 5's/6's to go through, you should be able to deal with most vehicles with just choppa boyz alone. Anyone have experience with this yet?

30 Boyz took 12 wounds off a ~13 wound Wave Serpent in my battle today, easily finished off with some Tankbustas. That's with a Big Choppa Nob. Took a few rounds to kill a Wraithlord though.

 More Dakka wrote:
I dunno, throwing 100+ dice at a vehicle with 3's/2's to hit then needing 5's/6's to go through, you should be able to deal with most vehicles with just choppa boyz alone. Anyone have experience with this yet?

100 attacks at an imperial knight is around 3-4 wounds. And he has 24. So, it's gona take you some time to kill it. 3 klaw attacks would just add 1-2 more wounds but it's at least something and >2 times more than a bigchoppa. Also, a klaw benefits from buffs much better in this case.

Save the klaws for meganobz. Add a few killsawa and jump them into the knight. Save the 16 points per boyz mob and get buff characters with those savings. Profit.

 koooaei wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

TL;DR: PK is less point efficient than the BC and it can no longer handle any threats that boyz can't handle themselves. Obviously a mob with PK will always be stronger than a mob with BC, but in my opinion it's no longer worth the points.

I still prefer pk on nobz for footslogas when i have points. And it's because hordes really lack ways of effectively dealing with tough t8+ stuff. While choppas and bigchoppas are allready enough to tickle anything t7 and lower, t8 is really problematic for us. And having played with footsloggas, i've got a feeling that this few anti-tank units orks have don't really fit all that well in footslogging lists.

I agree, but the klaw is terrible at tackling those units as well. You have a chance of almost 40% to completely miss those T8 vehicles, and you need at least four or five successful hits to even take them down You are basically spending a lot of points to suck slightly less at something.

The biggest advantage I see of the Big Choppa (for the price) is the static D2, while you're getting a better chance to hit, wounding most vehicles on 4s-5s and then getting a guaranteed 2 damage, vs, as has been pointed out, a lot harder time hitting with the Klaw then typically wounding on 3's for a chance at doing 1 more damage or 1 less.

 Jidmah wrote:
You are basically spending a lot of points to suck slightly less at something.

That's correct. But vehicles are everywhere - what else can we do.

 koooaei wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
You are basically spending a lot of points to suck slightly less at something.

That's correct. But vehicles are everywhere - what else can we do.

Tankbustas and bomb squigs are the only answer we have for vehicles at the moment. Lootas also work well. Last game opponent charged an empty rhino into my full blob of boyz. I da jumped them right out of combat so fast lol. Blew that thing up with my tankbustas and smite. I also wonder if the fireworks rules for reinforced ram will carry over into our codex. On the charge..+2 star and d3 mortal wounds would be dope!

It's pretty clear that footslogging Nobz squads with Max ammo runts supported with a Painboy, KFF, Warpath, and da jump and bubble wrapped with Boyz is the most efficient army construction archetype to me. The nobs get a mix of Big Choppas and Killsaws to handle the armor problem Orks have. Just send in Boyz when your target is softer. Take about 6 weirdboyz with 3 of each power for redundancy; their smites are really good when you aren't casting the kill combo; they also completely handle the flyers problem through auto hitting mortal wounds.

 koooaei wrote:

 More Dakka wrote:
I dunno, throwing 100+ dice at a vehicle with 3's/2's to hit then needing 5's/6's to go through, you should be able to deal with most vehicles with just choppa boyz alone. Anyone have experience with this yet?

100 attacks at an imperial knight is around 3-4 wounds. And he has 24. So, it's gona take you some time to kill it. 3 klaw attacks would just add 1-2 more wounds but it's at least something and >2 times more than a bigchoppa. Also, a klaw benefits from buffs much better in this case.

This is where smite is really good. Smite does not solve the flyer problem, but if you have grotsnik and a handfull of weirdboyz those knights will go down eventually. And weirdboyz will fit into a foot army really well, unlike tankbustas and manz.

Manz are awesome in a foot army. Warpath them and jump them and toss them straight at the enemy. If they make the charge..dope. If not they are tough enough to weather enemy fire

So I made a list recently featuring 6 units of Kommandos each with 1 big choppa nob and 2 burnas. Anyone have any thoughts on kommandos? I think having 6 of those in the enemies face alongside a "Da jump!"ed blob of 30 boyz would work really for clogging up the enemy with bodies to allow the rest of the horde to advance.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
So I made a list recently featuring 6 units of Kommandos each with 1 big choppa nob and 2 burnas. Anyone have any thoughts on kommandos? I think having 6 of those in the enemies face alongside a "Da jump!"ed blob of 30 boyz would work really for clogging up the enemy with bodies to allow the rest of the horde to advance.

I haven't had success with them yet. Usually then end up piling in to some other combat. I haven't done enough maelstrom games yet but I think they would obviously shine there.

I was thinking about taking a bunch of bare minimum choppa kommandos and just use them for objective grabbers. Perhaps it would be good to take 6, in case they swarm near an enemy who has 5, just to get the cheap score

I have Snikrot and 5 fw komnando upgraded boys, and I'm still waiting on an order from my flgs for about 2 months on komnandos that have been sold out on gw website forever. I have 6 burnas and 5 big choppa nobs. So all in all I can eventually field 3 units of 5 komnandos w 2 burnas each.

Long story short I'm worried about the viability of kommandos since if the advanced terrain rules become standard play fare this can seriously mess them up. Infiltrating them into cover and then getting screwed trying to charge from cover means I'll need an 11" charge and that's not going to happen often. Or I get lucky and my opponent leaves me some ruins I can deploy within. Or I deploy in the open and just eat overwatch with 5 boys w a 6+ sv.

Honestly the only way I see them viable is deploying in cover and getting their 4+ sv so they can make a 9in charge and survive overwatch. And I think they will work well other units in your opponents face like a blob of mega nobs or 30 da jump boys. Because if your opponent is wasting shots into a 45pt unit w 4+ saves. He's not shorting something else.

Personally I don't think snikrot is worth the cost. He either needs to add +1 to cover saves of kommandos within 6in or give them -1 to hit ability. But reroll 1s in combat isn't going to help them get into combat.

A wierdboy'z smite will statistically deal around 2 wounds on d3 and 3.5 on d6. While 60 pt of choppa boyz buffed with +1 attack and WAAAGH banner will deal around 1.85 against t8 3+.
Probably the combination of a mass of boyz, wierdboyz, buff characters like ghaz and banner nobz and pk on nob leaders might be enough for our tankhunting purposes. Untill we meet something like a couple vultures or stormravens.

Snikrot doesn't seem great, but MSU kommandos seem like a passable way to tie up things like HWTs and Fire Warriors to allow you a few turns to deal with any vehicles unopposed. You're not going to kill anything but you'll be able to take something out of the fight for a while. Still, you might as well put points into something that'll kill them instead.

Kommandoes are a great tool for the modest amount of points they cost. As they can now arrive whenever they want and get 2 free burnas and a free nob for 1 more wound and ld, they can easilly try to help the front - a re-rollable 9' charge will succeed every second time - or just get on remote points you need to score.

I'd not rush putting kommandoes on board asap but use them when the opportunity presents itself.

I love min units of kommandos and I'm currently running 3-5 units of them. All with a nob and two burnas.

I basically play with vehicles, no footsloggers (with the exception of a single mob of 30 boyz + teleporting weirdboy sometimes), and kommandos' role is to mess the opponent's deployment, movement, shooting and give pressure to the enemy. Eventually they can camp on objectives that are far from the action.

They're not there to kill a lot of stuff, they just help the rest of the army that is advancing. Even if they stay in reserve.

With teleporting footsloggers they're even better as they compete to absorb the anti infantry firepower.

Not sure about snikrot, he's one of my favorite models, but in my lists ghaz and a biker mek with KFF always join the party and I tipycally end up with zhad or a weirdboy to complete the required HQ section (I usually need 3 of them), maybe I can give him a try.

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:
Save the klaws for meganobz. Add a few killsawa and jump them into the knight. Save the 16 points per boyz mob and get buff characters with those savings. Profit.

there is something to be said about having a 30 boy blob and a single pk nob that unless you snipe out will be there swinging away until the entire unit is destroyed. Don't forget green tide buff, warpath, and ghaz ability and nob w banner all help the pk nob. 4+ to hit sucks... still it's going to hit a few times before the games over.

Disembarking from a transport specifies "within" 3" rather than "wholly within" 3". Given the clarification in their FAQ, that gives Boyz almost an extra full 1" of range when disembarking from a vehicle, since they only havie to be touching that 3" bubble rather than having the entire model inside it. Anyone else interpret the RAW that way?

 wtwlf123 wrote:
Disembarking from a transport specifies "within" 3" rather than "wholly within" 3". Given the clarification in their FAQ, that gives Boyz almost an extra full 1" of range when disembarking from a vehicle, since they only havie to be touching that 3" bubble rather than having the entire model inside it. Anyone else interpret the RAW that way?

That's right. And larger models like meganobz and megabosses get even further. Though, they usually move 1' less.

 koooaei wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
You are basically spending a lot of points to suck slightly less at something.

That's correct. But vehicles are everywhere - what else can we do.

But as my math showed, klaws aren't good against vehicles any more. You might as well arm all your nobz with combi-rokkits for the same reason.

I like using komanndos in conjunction with deffkoptas. Combined with a big da jump shoota boy squad can throw a lot of units into their deployment zone turn one.

Deffkoptas soaks overwatch the kommandos don't want a taste of.

gungo wrote:

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:
Save the klaws for meganobz. Add a few killsawa and jump them into the knight. Save the 16 points per boyz mob and get buff characters with those savings. Profit.

there is something to be said about having a 30 boy blob and a single pk nob that unless you snipe out will be there swinging away until the entire unit is destroyed. Don't forget green tide buff, warpath, and ghaz ability and nob w banner all help the pk nob. 4+ to hit sucks... still it's going to hit a few times before the games over.

You make an excellent to point. In one of my games, the nob of a boyz mob had more attacks than the warboss he was fighting along side

 Jidmah wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
You are basically spending a lot of points to suck slightly less at something.

That's correct. But vehicles are everywhere - what else can we do.

But as my math showed, klaws aren't good against vehicles any more. You might as well arm all your nobz with combi-rokkits for the same reason.

Let's compare them to an equivalent point cost of choppaboyz and take buffs into consideration.

VS t8 3+ save
1 PK nob - 31 pts:
Hitting on 4+: with 3 attacks - 1.67; with 4 attacks - 2.22; with 5 attacks - 2.78; with 6 attacks - 3.33
Hitting on 3+: with 3 attacks - 2.22; with 4 attacks - 2.96; with 5 attacks - 3.70; with 6 attacks - 4.44
5 Choppaboyz - 30 pts:
Hitting on 3+: with 20 attacks - 0.74; with 25 attacks - 0.93; with 30 attacks - 1.11; with 35 attacks - 1.30
Hitting on 2+: with 20 attacks - 0.93; with 25 attacks - 1.16; with 30 attacks - 1.39; with 35 attacks - 1.62

VS t8 2+ save
1 PK nob - 31 pts:
Hitting on 4+: with 3 attacks - 1.33; with 4 attacks - 1.78; with 5 attacks - 2.22; with 6 attacks - 2.67
Hitting on 3+: with 3 attacks - 1.78; with 4 attacks - 2.37; with 5 attacks - 2.96; with 6 attacks - 3.56
5 Choppaboyz - 30 pts:
Hitting on 3+: with 20 attacks - 0.37; with 25 attacks - 0.46; with 30 attacks - 0.55; with 35 attacks - 0.65
Hitting on 2+: with 20 attacks - 0.46; with 25 attacks - 0.58; with 30 attacks - 0.69; with 35 attacks - 0.81

So, as we see, a pk nob is still underwhelming vs t8 stuff but he's at worst 2.25 times and at best 4.40 times less crappy than an equivalent pointcost of choppaboyz.

That's what i meant when i said that a pk nob is scaling with buffs better than the rest of the mob. And he concentrates power in one spot which means most of the time it's possible to get 100% of his damage output while you won't always get all 10 boyz into striking range. And that it's not even possible to add the damage of 10 boyz to the average performance of a mob because they simply won't have a place to fit in and won't be able to strike at all.

Mega nobs aren't as bad as people say either.
For example which do you think is better to mathematically buff with warpath and da jump and send into a tough vehicle like a leman Russ tank. T8, 3+ sv
30 boy shoots boy blob w a big choppa nob or
3 mega nobs w dual killsaws? Both cost exactly the same.

30 shoots boy is 6.29 wounds
3 mega nobs is 10 wounds

But the thing is the leman Russ is an ideal target for the mega nobs. It's 3+ sv without invul, it doesn't have a strong overwatch for assault, it's t8 which hurts str4 wounding and has 10+ wounds. The real question is why are you sending boy blobs into a Leman Russ or any tank? Sure they can eventually kill it but they will mathmamtically be better vs any other weaker target (t7, 4+ or worse sv, 5+ or better invul, or less than 10 wounds)

Point is I don't think pk in a boy blob is bad at all however I think the big choppa is much better for the targets a boy blob should be charging. Which is anything worse then a leman Russ. The big problem is orks don't have a lot of ways to efficiently deal with vehicles or flyers.
Outside of zhardsnark, smite spam, and to a degree 2x tanbustas in a transport unloading 2 squigs, 2 tank bombs, and 8+ rokkits from 18 or 6in (which is an average of 7.5-9 wounds to the same leman Russ from shooting with this 190pt unit).
We lack efficient anti vehicle.

 koooaei wrote:

VS t8 3+ save
1 PK nob - 31 pts:
Hitting on 4+: with 3 attacks - 1.67; with 4 attacks - 2.22; with 5 attacks - 2.78; with 6 attacks - 3.33
Hitting on 3+: with 3 attacks - 2.22; with 4 attacks - 2.96; with 5 attacks - 3.70; with 6 attacks - 4.44

<snip>

VS t8 2+ save
1 PK nob - 31 pts:
Hitting on 4+: with 3 attacks - 1.33; with 4 attacks - 1.78; with 5 attacks - 2.22; with 6 attacks - 2.67
Hitting on 3+: with 3 attacks - 1.78; with 4 attacks - 2.37; with 5 attacks - 2.96; with 6 attacks - 3.56

So if you have a banner nob, a warphead casting warpath, Ghazghkull Thrakka and more than 20 boyz in the nob, it will take 4 wounds of an enemy T8 vehicle it took at least two turns to reach. How is this even considered anti-tank?
In comparison, the big choppa nob with the same buffs would deal 1.66 wounds to the 3+ vehicle and 1.11 to the land raider.

So, as we see, a pk nob is still underwhelming vs t8 stuff but he's at worst 2.25 times and at best 4.40 times less crappy than an equivalent pointcost of choppaboyz.

They will still be unable to do anything about that T8 vehicle. Your math says a full mob buffed with 400+ points of buffs will still take two turns to kill a land raider, let alone a knight with its 5++ save on top of a metric ton of wounds. Which is already a pretty generous assumption, because you had to get your boyz and all your buffs to the vehicle in question and then charge it without taking any casualties. And, of course, you might just as well have Thrakka take care of the threat for you, since he is already within 6".

So let's say it took you two turns to reach your desired target (or the desired target to reach you) and let's assume you have at least the banner nob nearby and your mob is down to 25 boyz and a nob (because that's easy to calculate).
The mob will do 4.65 damage to a 3+ vehicle, a nob with PK will do 2.96, a nob with BC 1.11, a nob with slugga and choppa .93

So the best you can do with 250+ points invested in boyz is to fail to kill a LRBT.
So why buy a 25 upgrade that changes absolutely nothing about that?

That's what i meant when i said that a pk nob is scaling with buffs better than the rest of the mob. And he concentrates power in one spot which means most of the time it's possible to get 100% of his damage output while you won't always get all 10 boyz into striking range. And that it's not even possible to add the damage of 10 boyz to the average performance of a mob because they simply won't have a place to fit in and won't be able to strike at all.

Yes, but you and I have both shown that boyz should not be fighting T8 unless they have no other choice. Neither the PK nor the boyz are good at killing T8 models, and the PK isn't even that great at killing anything else, compared to the BC.
When buying a PK to fight T8, you're basically equipping basilisks for close combat.

Also, one of the golden ork rules that have been true since 4th (maybe even longer, can't tell) says: Don't buy upgrades that make something mediocre at something, only buy upgrades that make something great at doing its job.