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I'm not saying "all orks units are good". Far from it. I'm just saying that calling orks "weakest", when the results say the complete opposite, is silly.

And yeah, every list is boyz, stormboyz, weirdboyz, etc

 Blackie wrote:
Of course I know that, but if the artillery dies, you'll only have 2-5 grots that cannot even shoot.

if you field a unit of gretchin on a backfield you have 10 gretchin that also cannot shoot, but can be shot instead. And you payed 3 points more for those.

And in green tides all the anti tank goes against artillery deleting every piece of it very easily, unless you have tons of them.

If you go first, the cannon is going to shoot at least once, making it better than all the shooting a grot unit will ever be able to do.

Then a deep striking assault squad can fire a few crappy shots towards the surviving grot gunners deleting them all. 10 invisible gretchins require a full anti infantry unit to shoot at them to be removed.

Even the deep striking assault squad can only shoot the gunners if they are the closest unit, which means that they can kill no more than one unit of grot gunners per turn. It also means than it's usually impossible to shoot them while trying to assault another unit, which most deep strikers want to do.
And if the unit is not an assault squad (no one uses those), but is equipped with anything even slighly more dangerous than bolters, it will kill the entire unit anyways. Or - the more likely scenario in my experience - something like a heavy stubber, rhino bolter, big shoota or similarly important weapon on some vehicle will simply kill them because they are in range. No need to waste a deep striking unit on them.

I use mek gunz, KMKs usually, pretty much in every game I play (big gunz only sometimes), I love them and I'm aware of their usefulness but in a green tide I'd only take a huge amount of kannonz. But sometimes they die turn 1 and the surviving gunners are worse than a unit of gretchin.

They are cheaper, harder to kill and only have the illusion of actually being able to shoot over a unit of gretchin. How is that worse?

A unit of gretchin competes with boyz, if they get shot several boyz survive. Artillery soaks the anti tank and when some gunz dies a single dude can wipe out the gunners. Deepstriking assault units can also wipe out the artillery and the gunners very easily and usually artillery attracts some deep strikers. 10 gretchin can be ignored for the entire game instead.

Getting ignored because the unit doesn't do jack is not a quality. The single dude that tries to kill grot gunners will still be doing that for at least one turn per kannon, and he costs probably a lot more than all those gretchin combined.
In addition, if you have enough kannons, enemy anti-tank is not guaranteed to wipe them out in one turn. Some armies actually don't field the guy with the burning sword of everything-hits, so lascannons actually miss, fail to wound or roll bad damage at times. Mortarion/Magnus lists are usually light on anti-tank providing you with plenty of time to shoot your artillery.
Especially in maelstrom missions, killing gretchin off an objective is not necessarily a bad thing. Especially for the missions which require you to hold an objective for two turns, gretchin are killed way to easily.

I know they're a suboptimal choice compared to the artillery in holding objectives, but I think sometimes they may be more useful.

And yet, they never are. Anything that kills big gunz will also kill gretchin. The only difference are those 10 grot blasters that might actually kill an opponent or two, however that is massively inferior to the ability of not getting shot unless closest and bringing the kannon in the first place.
Gretchin are not doing nothing when you field them - just like that kombi-rokkit I mentioned. However, without rose-tinted glasses they will never be a better option than boyz or kannons.
Therefore, whenever you could use gretchin, change your list to avoid that - it will be better that way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

pismakron wrote:

 JimOnMars wrote:


No.

If you took 60 wounds on turn 1 before you even started (which almost all non-ork armies can do) you would lose 10 less with armor. If you started with 840 points of boyz ( 140 6 pointers or 120 7 pointers) you would get to use 80 7s or 90 6s after alpha. By turn 2 you would have 40 of each, and would have zero by turn three. The only difference would be the 10 extra sixers on turn one. Cheaper is better.

What would you pay for ard'boyz? I mean, regular boyz with a 4+ Save? Eight points? Nine?

The thing with 'ard boyz is that either 'ard boyz or non-'ard boyz are better, with little middle ground. It has been that way in all previous edition, though before our last codex the number of 'ard boy units was limited.
I think the best solution would actually be having 'ard boyz cost one CP or two before the battle starts.

If I had to put a point value on them... any more than 8 would be too expensive. Keep in mind that nobz are currently 21 for 3 wounds with 2 of the wounds protected by 4+ armor, and they struggle to survive already. Hard to justify 24 for 3 wounds with a 4+ save.

8-9 points is probably about right, but not because of the Nob comparison (three 4+ boyz is more durable than a Nob + Runt Nobz suffer from multiple damage weapons and one of their wounds is only a 6+ save, and those boyz have 9-12 attacks vs 5 attacks), but more compared to other boyz.

IF we look at 6 boyz (36 points) 6 NO ap wounds kill 5 on average or 30 points.

At 8 points (48) 6 no AP wounds, kill 3 or 24 points
At 9 points (54) 6 no AP wounds kill 3 or 27 points.

So if the idea is that they are more durable per point than regular boyz they need to be less than 10 points.

Offensively 6 point boyz pay 1.5-2 points per attack (assuming choppas)
8 Point ard boyz would pay 2-2.67
9 point would pay 2.25-3.

So if we look at a full mob of 30 ork boyz (180 pts) they get 120 attacks
at 8 points, 180 points would be 22 orks (176 points) - 88 attacks
at 9 points it would be 20 orks (180 points) or 80 attacks.

So you are right that 8 seems like the best value as you give up a lot of offense (32 attacks) for a decent durability bump.

 rvd1ofakind wrote:


Weakest armies??? WHAT?
https://youtu.be/CfKketr-ReM?t=6m21s

Results wise, it's was the 4th best army IN THE GAME in october. You can't argue with results...

he literally says, you see armies of boys and stormboys and if you ABUSE the pile in move you can win. That sounds boring as hell to play.

Nuck Fewton wrote:

 rvd1ofakind wrote:


Weakest armies??? WHAT?
https://youtu.be/CfKketr-ReM?t=6m21s

Results wise, it's was the 4th best army IN THE GAME in october. You can't argue with results...

he literally says, you see armies of boys and stormboys and if you ABUSE the pile in move you can win. That sounds boring as hell to play.

How do you abuse the pile-in move?

I assume he means just mob stuff and spread out to pull other units into combat.

I realize this is the competitive thread but spamming a few useful units and having a mono list build might win you games, but if it's boring, why even play the game?

Nuck Fewton wrote:
I assume he means just mob stuff and spread out to pull other units into combat.

I realize this is the competitive thread but spamming a few useful units and having a mono list build might win you games, but if it's boring, why even play the game?

I dunno, because you like the game and like to win?

Do you really think that it is rule-abuse, when a player uses the pile-in or consolidate moves to enter combat without declaring a charge?

4th strongest? Does ITC still list players on points? Because last time I checked the top Ork player wasn't even in the top 100

Nuck Fewton wrote:
I assume he means just mob stuff and spread out to pull other units into combat.

I realize this is the competitive thread but spamming a few useful units and having a mono list build might win you games, but if it's boring, why even play the game?

This is the competitive thread. Stuff like "I don't use this unit because he's boring" and "using the best units is lame" belong elsewhere.

Here you should have the mindset of "Why am I taking this unit? Can't I take something else that does the same-ish job better? If so - the current unit shouldn't be taken, as the intention is to win". Obviously this isn't always the case as even the most competitive players take random fun stuff as a guilty pleasure type of thing. But condemning people for taking what's good and using optimal tactics is not what you should be doing in this thread.

Not talking from experience but I have watched several Ork battle reports on youtube and they seem to be more playable than people in here are letting on. They didnt win every battle sure, but most were real close calls if they lost

 rvd1ofakind wrote:

Nuck Fewton wrote:
I assume he means just mob stuff and spread out to pull other units into combat.

I realize this is the competitive thread but spamming a few useful units and having a mono list build might win you games, but if it's boring, why even play the game?

This is the competitive thread. Stuff like "I don't use this unit because he's boring" and "using the best units is lame" belong elsewhere.

Here you should have the mindset of "Why am I taking this unit? Can't I take something else that does the same-ish job better? If so - the current unit shouldn't be taken, as the intention is to win". Obviously this isn't always the case as even the most competitive players take random fun stuff as a guilty pleasure type of thing. But condemning people for taking what's good and using optimal tactics is not what you should be doing in this thread.

But to be fair, the topic of "what's our best units?" has been done to death.

From what I can see the answer to that question is; Boyz, Trukk Weirdboyz, Kommando, Stormboyz and Mek Gunz in that order?

How are our weaker units and where are they useful? Not all of us have 120 Boyz and even if we did, we wouldn't want to use them.

Tactics is as much about getting the most out of less efficient units as it is using the "best" units.

I've found minimum squads of Warbikers to be a useful annoyance. For some reason the opponent either ignores them or dedicates way too much firepower to deal with them. I think it might be a legacy from last edition and the fact that they have such great movement they can get around the board to claim objectives. Anyone else had similar experiences?

Well I'm new on this thread so I haven't done the "what's best" talk to death :p

Also, as long as units fill somewhat different roles - they can be a niche units, which are also fine. However there are plenty strictly worse units that fill the same roles. And it's not like those should be discarded completelly. "How this unit could become viable" is useful for future pts/rules changes.

And seemingly, the best way to make certain units viable is to make other, currently viable units more expensive? Surely not. Boyz are fine where they are. Let's not suggest nerfing one of our best performing units.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
And seemingly, the best way to make certain units viable is to make other, currently viable units more expensive? Surely not. Boyz are fine where they are. Let's not suggest nerfing one of our best performing units.

Rule number #1 on how to seem credible when asking for points drops - suggest point increases on your most powerful units along with the points drops

 rvd1ofakind wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
And seemingly, the best way to make certain units viable is to make other, currently viable units more expensive? Surely not. Boyz are fine where they are. Let's not suggest nerfing one of our best performing units.

Rule number #1 on how to seem credible when asking for points drops - suggest point increases on your most powerful units along with the points drops

That's how we ended up with 12pt rokkitz and 27pt warbikes.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 rvd1ofakind wrote:

Nuck Fewton wrote:
I assume he means just mob stuff and spread out to pull other units into combat.

I realize this is the competitive thread but spamming a few useful units and having a mono list build might win you games, but if it's boring, why even play the game?

This is the competitive thread. Stuff like "I don't use this unit because he's boring" and "using the best units is lame" belong elsewhere.

Here you should have the mindset of "Why am I taking this unit? Can't I take something else that does the same-ish job better? If so - the current unit shouldn't be taken, as the intention is to win". Obviously this isn't always the case as even the most competitive players take random fun stuff as a guilty pleasure type of thing. But condemning people for taking what's good and using optimal tactics is not what you should be doing in this thread.

But to be fair, the topic of "what's our best units?" has been done to death.

From what I can see the answer to that question is; Boyz, Trukk Weirdboyz, Kommando, Stormboyz and Mek Gunz in that order?

How are our weaker units and where are they useful? Not all of us have 120 Boyz and even if we did, we wouldn't want to use them.

Tactics is as much about getting the most out of less efficient units as it is using the "best" units.

I've found minimum squads of Warbikers to be a useful annoyance. For some reason the opponent either ignores them or dedicates way too much firepower to deal with them. I think it might be a legacy from last edition and the fact that they have such great movement they can get around the board to claim objectives. Anyone else had similar experiences?

I like this idea to open up the tactics discussion to be more more than just optimizing points.

I use a unit of 3 bikers with no upgrades and the can do some nice screening. If they are left untouched they can charge tanks and stop them from Shooting or grab occasional objectives.

Gitdakka wrote:
I like this idea to open up the tactics discussion to be more more than just optimizing points.

I use a unit of 3 bikers with no upgrades and the can do some nice screening. If they are left untouched they can charge tanks and stop them from Shooting or grab occasional objectives.

Yea I've found them to be surprisingly useful, their dakka output is also decent considering. I also use mine to try and catch characters out of position where possible but it's not always feasible.

 rvd1ofakind wrote:
Rule number #1 on how to seem credible when asking for points drops - suggest point increases on your most powerful units along with the points drops

I disagree and I feel like you imply that us asking for point reductions or improvements in under performing units is somehow not credible. If Boyz' points are increased, they become virtually useless. They aren't great now; unless taken in squads of 30, with other characters buffing/teleporting them and spammed so much that they can't be picked apart piecemeal. Not exactly an ideal choice and if the opponent knows how to play against them they will focus 11 out of each squad. Their flaws are compounded further and made much more obvious when taken in Trukks, or Battlewagons. They really don't need a nerf.

A tactic I use is min squads of stormboys. I like to fly them out in front just to bottle up the opponent's movement phase. Just hope you don't get the killpoint mission...

how about they would bring back the old 3rd edition gretchin rules?

living shield
every time a boy unit is shot "through" a gretchin unit and suffers a wound, on a 5+ a gretchin is killed instead...

mine clearance
gotta love those ol' days... where you could clear a minefield by sending in the gretchin...
"If a Grot mob moves on to a minefield marker remove 3D6 grots and the minefield"

better footing
if a boy mob is in the same difficult terrain piece as gretchin, they reroll the dice to see how far they can move (didnt work for meganobz though... well for obvious reasons)



while better footing and mine clearance are obsolete in 8th the living shield rule would be a viable option

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 rvd1ofakind wrote:
Rule number #1 on how to seem credible when asking for points drops - suggest point increases on your most powerful units along with the points drops

I disagree and I feel like you imply that us asking for point reductions or improvements in under performing units is somehow not credible. If Boyz' points are increased, they become virtually useless. They aren't great now; unless taken in squads of 30, with other characters buffing/teleporting them and spammed so much that they can't be picked apart piecemeal. Not exactly an ideal choice and if the opponent knows how to play against them they will focus 11 out of each squad. Their flaws are compounded further and made much more obvious when taken in Trukks, or Battlewagons. They really don't need a nerf.

Well I've seen it work in practice quite a few times. Every post with just asking for buffs is met with "omg, you're a powergamer, you just want your army to be the best". When I include "x and y shuold be nerfed as they are autoincludes" people take you way more seriously. I actually turned a hater into um... not a hater I guess... by saying this. His response: "Oh I thought you were just a powergames, but you actually want the game to be balanced and to make tough decisions when making lists"

 rvd1ofakind wrote:
Well I've seen it work in practice quite a few times. Every post with just asking for buffs is met with "omg, you're a powergamer, you just want your army to be the best". When I include "x and y shuold be nerfed as they are autoincludes" people take you way more seriously. I actually turned a hater into um... not a hater I guess... by saying this. His response: "Oh I thought you were just a powergames, but you actually want the game to be balanced and to make tough decisions when making lists"

I understand where you're coming from but you're in an ork tactica thread here, you don't need to worry about other users claiming you're 'a power gamer who just wants his army to be the best'. From what I gather your 'main army' is admech anyways?

We all play Orks and know their issues better than most (I assume). Our issue isn't that Boyz are just so damn good they are auto include, our issue is that many of the other units in our index can't perform their intended function as well as/as points efficiently as Boyz so Boyz become auto include. Suggesting our core troop has a points increase is tactical suicide. Our other units need to get better/gain utility/become more efficient to compete in the codex.

Aren't Bloodletters 7 ppm with a 5++, 2" faster movement and ability to be summoned? I'm not convinced green tide, ere we go and a slugga makes up for that.

Its not other Dakka Dakka members we need to convince either - it's GW.

RedNoak wrote:
how about they would bring back the old 3rd edition gretchin rules?

living shield
every time a boy unit is shot "through" a gretchin unit and suffers a wound, on a 5+ a gretchin is killed instead...

mine clearance
gotta love those ol' days... where you could clear a minefield by sending in the gretchin...
"If a Grot mob moves on to a minefield marker remove 3D6 grots and the minefield"

better footing
if a boy mob is in the same difficult terrain piece as gretchin, they reroll the dice to see how far they can move (didnt work for meganobz though... well for obvious reasons)



while better footing and mine clearance are obsolete in 8th the living shield rule would be a viable option

Love this idea too, perhaps "better footing" could allow a Boyz unit charging through grots to get to their target to add 2 to the charge roll? Or a similar thing with advancing?

Do stormboyz have to start on the board or can they deep strike like other jump pack stuff?

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 rvd1ofakind wrote:
Well I've seen it work in practice quite a few times. Every post with just asking for buffs is met with "omg, you're a powergamer, you just want your army to be the best". When I include "x and y shuold be nerfed as they are autoincludes" people take you way more seriously. I actually turned a hater into um... not a hater I guess... by saying this. His response: "Oh I thought you were just a powergames, but you actually want the game to be balanced and to make tough decisions when making lists"

I understand where you're coming from but you're in an ork tactica thread here, you don't need to worry about other users claiming you're 'a power gamer who just wants his army to be the best'. From what I gather your 'main army' is admech anyways?

We all play Orks and know their issues better than most (I assume). Our issue isn't that Boyz are just so damn good they are auto include, our issue is that many of the other units in our index can't perform their intended function as well as/as points efficiently as Boyz so Boyz become auto include. Suggesting our core troop has a points increase is tactical suicide. Our other units need to get better/gain utility/become more efficient to compete in the codex.

Aren't Bloodletters 7 ppm with a 5++, 2" faster movement and ability to be summoned? I'm not convinced green tide, ere we go and a slugga makes up for that.

Its not other Dakka Dakka members we need to convince either - it's GW.

Dude, bloodletters aren't better than Boyz. At all. squishy(toughness 3), slow(6'' with +1'' on advance for the instrument), morale issues, more expensive, etc
They are all or nothing. You summon them(a risk and you have to prepare for that by a character in the middle), you roll the charge and if you don't roll 9'' - you just wasted 150-220 points for something 30-75 points of brimstones would've done better. There's a reason they're not seeing much competitive play despite doing good damage.

And I don't really have a main army. I got 4k pts of admech and about 9k pts of daemons. Orks are where I'm most lacking atm(as I started a few days ago) but I'm working on remedying that I'll post my spreadsheet here after I'm done on it. Right now I'm doing Ork damage and WOW they have a lot of choices. Uff.

About the points drops and increases - obviously most things need a pts drop. It's a tradeoff: make all our garbage units(20+) viable and you can make our 1-2 OP units less good.

I can't tell if he is trolling or not. And I am not trying to be offensive. Orkz have no options dude

Well thats the thing, boyz aren't OP, they're simply useable. Nothing in the Ork list is OP.

Hell, I didn't think the Kill Tank was OP and they put it up loads. The notion of boyz going up should be buried so deep it dies in magma.

RedNoak wrote:

living shield
every time a boy unit is shot "through" a gretchin unit and suffers a wound, on a 5+ a gretchin is killed instead...

Whilst I'd love to see the rule come back, from an actual power perspective it still wouldn't be very good. You're essentially paying 3 ppm for a 5+ save that doesn't work in CC. A KFF that just protects 1 Boyz mob does the same thing and costs 2.5ppm. Plus Grots out in front block charge rolls on the Boyz and without a nearby Runtherd (pushing the price up even more) they'll be running from morale extremely quickly.

Living Shield would protect against Mortal Wounds, which does give it something of a niche I suppose. Now if Grots were 2ppm, then things get a bit different.

 Cuz05 wrote:
Well thats the thing, boyz aren't OP, they're simply useable. Nothing in the Ork list is OP.

Hell, I didn't think the Kill Tank was OP and they put it up loads. The notion of boyz going up should be buried so deep it dies in magma.

I mean, list me troops better than boyz. I doubt the list is more than like 5 units(and that's me hedging my bets).
And exlude codex sources of power: -1 to hit from aplha legion for example. Changeling -1 to hit is fine

Gitdakka wrote:


I use a unit of 3 bikers with no upgrades and the can do some nice screening. If they are left untouched they can charge tanks and stop them from Shooting or grab occasional objectives.

Have you tried skorcha buggies for the same role? At 54 points each they don't look that bad. They can't screen as well as the bikes since they're a single model compared to three and they may suffer from multiwounds anti tank more than bikes but they're significantly cheaper and capable of a comparable amount of damage, even with the shorter range.

About boring but competitive green tides: this is the competitive thread, ok, but playing the green tide is not only boring, it something that requires almost zero skills and tactics. IMHO there's no reason to discuss about a green tide for 100+ pages, what is really interesting is to make viable all the other units. Trying to make them competitive or at least viable is certainly more interesting and useful than giving the same suggestions about the green tide and IMHO it also fits the concept of the "competitive thread".

Of course the ork index in utterly unbalanced but sharing personal experience about different lists and how they perform (even if they fail miserably) and the synergies between units reflects the theme of the thread.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 rvd1ofakind wrote:

 Cuz05 wrote:
Well thats the thing, boyz aren't OP, they're simply useable. Nothing in the Ork list is OP.

Hell, I didn't think the Kill Tank was OP and they put it up loads. The notion of boyz going up should be buried so deep it dies in magma.

I mean, list me troops better than boyz. I doubt the list is more than like 5 units(and that's me hedging my bets).
And exlude codex sources of power: -1 to hit from aplha legion for example. Changeling -1 to hit is fine

Boyz are very good only in huge numbers so they are far from being OP. What makes them competitive is the synergy with buffing characters and an entire list focussed on them.

pismakron wrote:

Nuck Fewton wrote:
I assume he means just mob stuff and spread out to pull other units into combat.

I realize this is the competitive thread but spamming a few useful units and having a mono list build might win you games, but if it's boring, why even play the game?

I dunno, because you like the game and like to win?

Do you really think that it is rule-abuse, when a player uses the pile-in or consolidate moves to enter combat without declaring a charge?

I don't, I was just using his words.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Cuz05 wrote:
Well thats the thing, boyz aren't OP, they're simply useable. Nothing in the Ork list is OP.

Hell, I didn't think the Kill Tank was OP and they put it up loads.

I don't understand the jump for kill tanks, I'd argue they weren't even good, just fun. Maybe they're trying to make the "big" stuff very high so it's only used in Apoc games?

 rvd1ofakind wrote:

 Cuz05 wrote:
Well thats the thing, boyz aren't OP, they're simply useable. Nothing in the Ork list is OP.

Hell, I didn't think the Kill Tank was OP and they put it up loads. The notion of boyz going up should be buried so deep it dies in magma.

I mean, list me troops better than boyz. I doubt the list is more than like 5 units(and that's me hedging my bets).
And exlude codex sources of power: -1 to hit from aplha legion for example. Changeling -1 to hit is fine

Without any additional buffs or anything else? Strictly in a vacuum? Hell tactical marines are better.

10 marines (Sgt and heavy Bolter) cost 140pts. That's equivalent to 20 with a Nob/BC or thereabouts.

Turn 1: 9 shots 6 hits, 3 wounds and 2.5 dead Orkz, heavy bolted = 3 shots 2 hits and 1.33 dead Orkz.

Orkz turn: move, advance, do nothing

Turn 2: (marines are now within 12 inches and get to fire pistols AND bolters unless this changed) 27 (rapid fire and pistols) shots 18hits 9 wounds 7-8 dead Orkz. Heavy bolted kills another 1.3 make it 9 total to be fair. Morale test on Orkz, -9 morale only 7 Orkz left, role a 3 and you are down to 2 models.

Orkz turn: move 5 (7inch charge) shoot pistols 2 shots likely no casualties. Charge, overwatch. 27 shots, 4 hits and that is the end of the Ork boyz.

And those are the most common troops in the game.