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You know... something I've been thinking about, and something that I don't think has been mentioned yet in this thread, but that I think could actually go a long way to fixing (or at least improving) the usefullness of some of our units... is a change to Da Jump.

At the moment, it only works with Ork INFANTRY units. So it's only good for boyz and nobz, and in doing so they lose out on character buffs (at least until the next turn, if you then decide to jump the character forward too). This is fine, this actually helps get some boyz up into some turn 1 fights and stuff, not a problem.

HOWEVER... What if they changed it so that it worked, instead on Ork INFANTRY, to simply any ORK <CLAN> unit? This would mean you could fling a deff dread up on turn 1, or a battlewagon filled with tankbustas or nobs.

Would it be overpowered? Well you could put one unit of tankbustas in range of the enemy tanks on turn one and do some damage. But then IG can put 10 units of plasma scions within range of enemy tanks on turn one. So it's certainly not overpowered.

And before someone says "Ahh but the psychic powers have been balanced the way they are for a reason", think about this - Grey Knights have the exact same psychic power as Da Jump. Except theirs works on all Grey Knight units.

They can throw a land raider into rapid fire range of all it's nasty guns. So why can't orks? It's definitely a much more Orky thing to be able to do.

If that happens i imagine people would start trying to Jump a Stompa lol
Or multiple gorks

skyfi wrote:
Warboss (ghazgul preferably)
KFF mek on bike
Waaaagh banner nob
Weird boy

^ standard characters

Painboy I haven't used this edition but he's better suited to follow ghaz around and heal him over giving FNP to random units nearby. Seems to be better to use mad doc grotsnik over standard painboy with his klaw
...

Thanks for the answer.

How good are stormboyz? Do they have a place in the army? Are they also effective? What about Nobz with ammo runt? What about Kommandoz? And Shootas?

Niiru wrote:
You know... something I've been thinking about, and something that I don't think has been mentioned yet in this thread, but that I think could actually go a long way to fixing (or at least improving) the usefullness of some of our units... is a change to Da Jump.

At the moment, it only works with Ork INFANTRY units. So it's only good for boyz and nobz, and in doing so they lose out on character buffs (at least until the next turn, if you then decide to jump the character forward too). This is fine, this actually helps get some boyz up into some turn 1 fights and stuff, not a problem.

HOWEVER... What if they changed it so that it worked, instead on Ork INFANTRY, to simply any ORK <CLAN> unit? This would mean you could fling a deff dread up on turn 1, or a battlewagon filled with tankbustas or nobs.

Would it be overpowered? Well you could put one unit of tankbustas in range of the enemy tanks on turn one and do some damage. But then IG can put 10 units of plasma scions within range of enemy tanks on turn one. So it's certainly not overpowered.

And before someone says "Ahh but the psychic powers have been balanced the way they are for a reason", think about this - Grey Knights have the exact same psychic power as Da Jump. Except theirs works on all Grey Knight units.

They can throw a land raider into rapid fire range of all it's nasty guns. So why can't orks? It's definitely a much more Orky thing to be able to do.

I only have the index version of Gate to look at but it is actually better than Da Jump across the board. it is WC 6 instead of 7 and has 12" range instead of 6", counts as moving (gate says nothing about this) and effects any GK unit instead of just infantry.

On one side GK have a much smaller selection of units, don't get re-roll charges, and nothing like Ork boyz to teleport, and weirdboyz can typically get a 7 off pretty easily. On the other GK are much better at shooting than anything orks could throw into range.

But yeah it would be pretty interesting if you could teleport a gorkanaut or dread. Especially in combination with Kommandos, teleport the naut up to eat overwatch from small arms, or use the commandos to do so for lascannons etc, then charge with the other.

 Lothar wrote:

skyfi wrote:
Warboss (ghazgul preferably)
KFF mek on bike
Waaaagh banner nob
Weird boy

^ standard characters

Painboy I haven't used this edition but he's better suited to follow ghaz around and heal him over giving FNP to random units nearby. Seems to be better to use mad doc grotsnik over standard painboy with his klaw
...

Thanks for the answer.

How good are stormboyz? Do they have a place in the army? Are they also effective? What about Nobz with ammo runt? What about Kommandoz? And Shootas?

Stormboys are solid. Their ability to ignore terrain and speed, makes up for the points difference compared to normal boys IMHO. Lots of competitive lists around with a handful of stormboys. Now that regular boys are getting objective secured, boys are looking better. I would say stormboys def serve a purpose. For 49 points you can hide a unit of 5 of them to hop over stuff or grab obj in hard to reach places. Just don't expect them to survive shooting, or melee for that matter with squads so small. The names character benefits multiple units nearby and is good this edition as well.

Nobs with ammo runts are great. Get shot by small arms? Put wounds on a 4+ nob, get shot with las cannon, pick a worthless ammo runt to take the wound ( who counts as t5). Plus if you give them kombi Rokkits they function the same as tankbustas, except get a re roll vs every target and pack a wallop in melee with nob stat line

Kommandos are in similar situation as stormboys but less combat prowess. They seem to be used as cheap distraction units doomed to die, or used to grab objectives. For measly 49 points as well iirc, can bring 5 kommandos including a big choppa nob and 2 burnas. They probably won't kill anything, but could hold objectives or give other small units a run for their money

Slugga/choppa benefit you more than a shoota in most instances. Having shoota squads to hold objectives, or get jumped to dakka stuff weak to small arms isn't bad. Also now you can mix squads with shootas and sluggas, so you can take casualties from your shoota boys to ensure choppa boys get into CC and take pot shots with shootas while you're movinf across board. Sometimes a few extra wKinda in shooting are. Ended to open a gap up to fit by with modes to charge thru a screen etc

Da jump is pretty terrifying for many armies, it doesn't really need a buff. Keep in mind that not every army is a primarch blueberry donut or conscript meatgrinder.

A much more sensitive buff to dreads and nauts would be removing bike meks repair limitation after moving more than 5".

I don't think the rules of KANz, Dreads or Nauts are bad though. If they lose enough points so you can bring them in decent numbers or add enough support they will suddenly start shining.

The biggest problem of the dread mob right now is that you cannot bring enough models to have the typical target saturation orks mostly use as a defense. Even if you mix bikes in with the walkers (they are also weak to multi-damage weapons), you simply cannot reach the wound count to outnumber our opponent's weapons damage potential - especially when your opponent has some hot dice and takes out a whole squad of kanz because he rolled some fives and sixes for damage.

What might help is moving Kanz to troops, providing the army with more CP and granting them objective secure. It's not like they are harder to shift than GK terminators.

 Waaagh Junkie wrote:
Is anyone having any units good at destroying imperial knight armies, like say 3 of them with gilliman?

One thing to remember facing knights (or any other army composed of a small number of powerful units) is that their split fire has to be completely declared before they roll any dice.

In the multi-knight list, you might try tankbustas in trukks. Each knight will need to declare how many weapons will be allocated to which trukk, and its spilled contents.

There is a good chance the first knight will either focus on 1 trukk and waste the rest of its shots, or to split among several trukks and not get them all.

Likely it will take the second knight to clean up the tankbustas...certainly no problem for it, but always force your opponent to map out their shooting from each knight before rolling. That way there is a good chance of him overkilling something.

It may not be much, but anything help is better than nothing.

 JimOnMars wrote:

 Waaagh Junkie wrote:
Is anyone having any units good at destroying imperial knight armies, like say 3 of them with gilliman?

One thing to remember facing knights (or any other army composed of a small number of powerful units) is that their split fire has to be completely declared before they roll any dice.

In the multi-knight list, you might try tankbustas in trukks. Each knight will need to declare how many weapons will be allocated to which trukk, and its spilled contents.

Waitwaitwait.

I just reread the rule and think that you actually have to declare all target before shooting a single weapon. Which means that all targets need to be visible to the shooting units, which passengers are not.

Which means that a unit which destroyed a transport can never shoot the passengers. Right?

 Jidmah wrote:

 JimOnMars wrote:

 Waaagh Junkie wrote:
Is anyone having any units good at destroying imperial knight armies, like say 3 of them with gilliman?

One thing to remember facing knights (or any other army composed of a small number of powerful units) is that their split fire has to be completely declared before they roll any dice.

In the multi-knight list, you might try tankbustas in trukks. Each knight will need to declare how many weapons will be allocated to which trukk, and its spilled contents.

Waitwaitwait.

I just reread the rule and think that you actually have to declare all target before shooting a single weapon. Which means that all targets need to be visible to the shooting units, which passengers are not.

Which means that a unit which destroyed a transport can never shoot the passengers. Right?

Yup

Correct. The same unit can't shoot some of its weapons at the Trukk, blow it up, and then use different weapons to shoot the Boyz inside it. All the targets from that Knight have to be announced before any rolls are made. However, if the 1st Knight blows up the Trukk, the 2nd Knight can shoot at the Boyz inside.

 Jidmah wrote:
Da jump is pretty terrifying for many armies, it doesn't really need a buff. Keep in mind that not every army is a primarch blueberry donut or conscript meatgrinder.

A much more sensitive buff to dreads and nauts would be removing bike meks repair limitation after moving more than 5".

I don't think the rules of KANz, Dreads or Nauts are bad though. If they lose enough points so you can bring them in decent numbers or add enough support they will suddenly start shining.

The biggest problem of the dread mob right now is that you cannot bring enough models to have the typical target saturation orks mostly use as a defense. Even if you mix bikes in with the walkers (they are also weak to multi-damage weapons), you simply cannot reach the wound count to outnumber our opponent's weapons damage potential - especially when your opponent has some hot dice and takes out a whole squad of kanz because he rolled some fives and sixes for damage.

What might help is moving Kanz to troops, providing the army with more CP and granting them objective secure. It's not like they are harder to shift than GK terminators.

Yeah Da Jump doesn't really need a buff. As for vehicles I mostly agree, the only buff I would like is making Dreads a bit faster maybe 8" move or allow them to benefit from Waaagh, as is they can be a bit slow for a close combat unit.

I think the buff I would like to see is to make the Battlewagon T8 base. As it is now it is barely more durable than a rhino (it takes 32 wounds to kill vs 30 for a Rhino with AP 0, 24 vs 20 at AP -1, 19.2 vs 15 at -2, and 16 vs 12 at -3, it remains 16 v 10 at -4+). And costs twice more than twice as much with no upgrades. It's biggest advantage over 2 Rhinos (161 points vs 144) would be that it is open topped and being better in combat, higher Strength (8 vs 6), WS 5+.

The thing about dreads/kanz is they dont get weaker unlike other vehicles, heck even the TRUKK gets weaker as it gets hurt. That is actually a pretty strong perk as ive had my deffdread wittled down to 1hp, pop 2cp to attack next and outright pummel a character (in this case, daemon prince), before i get finished off. Despite being a 1W vehicle, im still swinging full strength because i dont have variable stats.

But i do wish they were slightly faster, or could advance + charge. Getting them into combat is so hard, though they usually shred things once they get there.
Still say (been saying this since 5th) we should be able to transport a deffdread in a BW. I dont care if its insanely expensive to do that, it would be HILARIOUS and very orky lol

Deff Dreads definitely could use the benefit of the Waaagh! rule. It would be even better if they could indeed be slightly faster with their movement distance standard at 8" also. The Nauts should be able to move 10" standard. The fact that all of our units have WS 3+ (outside of the grechin units OC) is the attribute we should be building our armies around. I didn't say it was going to be easy to find ways to get into combat but worthwhile nevertheless.

How have you guys gotten around the issue of your boyz blobz getting out of the range of your buff units? I know you can sometimes conga line them to make sure they're within buff radius but often times even with advance moves people like Ghazghkull can't make the charge with the boyz which means they miss out on a lot of important bonuses. Are bikes for most characters basically mandatory for that reason?

With both units moving and advancing, the characters start off towards the front of the blob and usually are still within range by the time they get there. If you deploy 'em towards the back of the blob, it's easier for them to fall out of range as they move across the board. I haven't had too many problems with my blobs advancing so much further than the character that they fall out of range of the buff. If you have a few back-to-back-to-back poor advance rolls for the characters, you may have to create a short conga line to keep them in buff range, but that's usually an exception and not an expectation.

Yeah you need them up front.
Long as they have atleast a 1model barrier though they wont ever get hurt or solocharged.

I guess I've been playing too carefully, I've been keeping them in the back most of the time since I have to deal with a lot of terrain/model ignoring armies like Harlequins who can really light up a character with their fusion pistols. Thanks for the advice!

Deff Dreadz I feel need to start off with a few more extra base attacks, and maybe make it so that a deff dread with all 4 PK's get's to re-roll advance rolls (if they get a run and charge buff, whether its being affected by WAAAGH! or it being an in-built rule, otherwise just give Deff Dreadz run and charge if they have all 4 CCWs).

Hello all,

After reading through the entirety of this thread during the past two weeks, I want to say "Thank You" to all of you who contributed to these valuable discussions - I did benefit a great deal by them, and feel I can finally challenge my groups' fellow players (who repeatedly spanked my butt during last edition).

But I still have one question before I can move on to list building (maybe it's obvious to the lot of you): do units of Kommandos and Deffkoptaz, when they are not placed during deployment (as per their respective abilities), count towards the total count of drops for determining who goes first?

 Grimskul wrote:
I guess I've been playing too carefully, I've been keeping them in the back most of the time since I have to deal with a lot of terrain/model ignoring armies like Harlequins who can really light up a character with their fusion pistols. Thanks for the advice!

Deff Dreadz I feel need to start off with a few more extra base attacks, and maybe make it so that a deff dread with all 4 PK's get's to re-roll advance rolls (if they get a run and charge buff, whether its being affected by WAAAGH! or it being an in-built rule, otherwise just give Deff Dreadz run and charge if they have all 4 CCWs).

Your caution is 6/7th ed experience. 8th ed is so easy to protect characters its kinda silly.
The rules make no mention about legal targets closer than the character, just that there are models closer. A little, pathetic Grot hiding behind a barricade thats too tall for his tiny green butt to see over could prevent an entire gunline from hitting a character, even though they cant see the grot. Same goes for any boyz that get melee and said character does not, even though theyre not legal targets they prevent character killing.
i wouldnt suggest using the grot that way though lol...any elevation would still see him.

Are you calculating the dread's attacks right? Each klaw adds an attack now rather than after the 1st so they have 5 attacks with 3 klaws. While not insane, its pretty respectable.

 DeffSquig wrote:
Hello all,

After reading through the entirety of this thread during the past two weeks, I want to say "Thank You" to all of you who contributed to these valuable discussions - I did benefit a great deal by them, and feel I can finally challenge my groups' fellow players (who repeatedly spanked my butt during last edition).

But I still have one question before I can move on to list building (maybe it's obvious to the lot of you): do units of Kommandos and Deffkoptaz, when they are not placed during deployment (as per their respective abilities), count towards the total count of drops for determining who goes first?

Yep. Just declare "1 unit of kommandos in reserve" for your drop, then the other player drops 1, and so on. Counts just the same.

Bummer. So Deffkoptaz and Kommandos in reserve cannot used to reduce your total drop count...? What a pity.

 DeffSquig wrote:
Bummer. So Deffkoptaz and Kommandos in reserve cannot used to reduce your total drop count...? What a pity.

If you are going heavy on reserves do what did in my last ITC tournament. Declare ALL reserves first, since you know you won't be getting that +1 then its best to see where he is placing his army and adjust accordingly and then hope you get better roles or a seize.

My last tournament had 7 Units of Kommandos and 3 Units of Koptas in reserve. Most armies don't even have 10 drops

 Grimskul wrote:
How have you guys gotten around the issue of your boyz blobz getting out of the range of your buff units?

I'm fielding more boyz and less buff units. Basically, the only buff unit i'm running is Ghaz. I find painboyz and banners pretty overpriced when you can just spend more points on bodies that you'll always lack. Especially now when terrain doesn't mean anything most of the time.

 DeffSquig wrote:
Bummer. So Deffkoptaz and Kommandos in reserve cannot used to reduce your total drop count...? What a pity.

You can use transports to do this. You could put two units plus a character or two in a Battle Wagon and it would only be one drop.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
A little, pathetic Grot hiding behind a barricade thats too tall for his tiny green butt to see over could prevent an entire gunline from hitting a character, even though they cant see the grot.

Actually, no. A character can be a legal target if it's the closest VISIBLE ennemy unit. A grot hidden behind a barricade could not protect a CHARACTER from being shot.

Smite has the same wording, yet I always see people playing it wrong.

 Nym wrote:

 Vineheart01 wrote:
A little, pathetic Grot hiding behind a barricade thats too tall for his tiny green butt to see over could prevent an entire gunline from hitting a character, even though they cant see the grot.

Actually, no. A character can be a legal target if it's the closest VISIBLE ennemy unit. A grot hidden behind a barricade could not protect a CHARACTER from being shot.

Smite has the same wording, yet I always see people playing it wrong.

I think GW has clarified it in the faq. The character needs to be closest regardless of los.

wtwlf123 wrote:Correct. The same unit can't shoot some of its weapons at the Trukk, blow it up, and then use different weapons to shoot the Boyz inside it. All the targets from that Knight have to be announced before any rolls are made. However, if the 1st Knight blows up the Trukk, the 2nd Knight can shoot at the Boyz inside.

I guess I have been "cheated" multiple times. Centurions, Soul Grinders, Tactical Marines, Defilers and other units have been blowing up my battlewagons with their heavy guns and then gunned down the passengers with their lighter weapons.
As there aren't any ork units that would care about this, I never gave the shooting rules that close of a look. Damn.

Grimskul wrote:How have you guys gotten around the issue of your boyz blobz getting out of the range of your buff units? I know you can sometimes conga line them to make sure they're within buff radius but often times even with advance moves people like Ghazghkull can't make the charge with the boyz which means they miss out on a lot of important bonuses. Are bikes for most characters basically mandatory for that reason?

I usually keep them on the frontlines, with no more than row of boyz in front of them. Best case I have enough room for the character to make a heroic intervention, surprising amounts of enemies don't declare the characters as charge targets, so they can add their attacks without being in danger. If you keep them in the back I see how you can lose your buff when charging, but when the banner, ghaz or a dok is in the second row, they can often just join the charge.

 koooaei wrote:
I think GW has clarified it in the faq. The character needs to be closest regardless of los.

There's not mention of that in any FAQ. There's only a question regarding Mortars and other weapons/abilities that ignore LOS.

If you're shooting a weapon that needs LOS, you can target a CHARACTER if it's the closest visible model.

Now that it's allowed, what are we saying to mixing shootas and sluggas/chopped in boyz mobs? Personally I can't see an advantage, but wanted to see if anyone had any hot takes.

 Nazrak wrote:
Now that it's allowed, what are we saying to mixing shootas and sluggas/chopped in boyz mobs? Personally I can't see an advantage, but wanted to see if anyone had any hot takes.

I've done it a few times, if you are chaining guys back to buff characters the shootas can be good to give a little bit of punch and die first. But there is not a huge advantage.