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To be honest - if you are running competitive orks - you should really be running 9-15 KMK. They aren't actually expensive. 38 points - and they have 5 wounds each...auto includes.

They've got 6 wounds but are 48 - you got to pay for grots either. And they take damage when overheat - basically every second turn cause they overheat on 1 to hit with every shot on the d6 shots. They have 5+ armor, no mobility and a mobile opponent can deal with them by killing grot gunners unless you really stick to board edges.

I'm not telling kmk are bad overall. Just generally not worth taking in large amounts and are not that good vs knights.

1 KMK statistically deals 1.16 wounds to a knight. So, if you want to kill one knight, you statistically need ~20-21 kmk. That's around 1000 pts. Although, it'd be a fun game to watch - 4 knights vs 40 kmk - and orks would have real chances of winning - unless you play killpoints - cause kmk and grots are all separate squads, it's definitely not an overly practical list to take vs 95% of other armies.

Another thing is that 40 kmk cost...how much? 2000$?

did you factor in the KMK hurting itself on rolls of 1? or how about the fact that it is shorter range and has a 5+ save? (6+ for grots) How about the fact that if you inflict a couple of wounds that unit will just die completely because LD6.

I would take Lascannons hitting on 3s of a KMK any day of the week right now

 koooaei wrote:
They've got 6 wounds but are 48 - you got to pay for grots either. And they take damage when overheat - basically every turn cause they overheat on 1-2 when shooting at night. They have 5+ armor, no mobility and a mobile opponent can deal with them by killing grot gunners unless you really stick to board edges.

I'm not telling kmk are bad overall. Just not worth taking in large amounts and are not that good vs knights.

Forgot to ad the cost of the grots. 48 points is a little more pricey but I can think of a lot of ways to protect these gunners. You could just surround the whole group of guns with grots - and if they don't have flyers or a lot of deep strikers you can just do grot things with them.

For Orks having something in the backfeild dishing out legit damage drawing fire is an excellent problem to have anyways - it means your charging units are hitting at full strength. If your issue is ravens - maybe take tractor cannons instead? Though - could see that backfiring.

This is totally a conversion effort I would assume. Just buy civil war artillery pieces and glue pipes and things to them. I had a friend that built 3 of these things out of sheet metal. Sounds kind of fun actually -you have peaked my interest.

had my first Orks V Knight matchup. 125 PLs, a friend and I were trying out our armies for the first time. I had pretty much a random assortment of stuff (Six kanz and a deff dread, one trukk of tankbustas, one trukk of flash gits, a blitza bommer, a shokk attack gun, some boyz, some deffcoptas, etc.) and he had what was previously a war convocation list (so knight+admech support).

I went first (because yay transports) and focused down the three man squad of dakka kastelans buffed by Cawl because I did not want those ripping my face off turn 1. Luckily they're a big beautiful target for the blitza bommer. Didn't attack the knight at all.

His turn 1 the knight moved up aggressively, shot up a trukk but didn't kill it and charged a deffcopta putting it roughly in the middle of the board.

shooting from the 10 tankbustas+2 squigs, the five man squad of flash gitz with ammo runt rerolls, and 2 rokkit deffcoptas plus assault from the Killa Kanz downed it in 1 turn.

Seems like tankbustas are a solid answer to anything vehicular. They're a bit less efficient vs knights because they're T8, but a single squad still chunks a quarter of its hp off from 24" away. Their guns aren't actually that great, so if you avoid melee with it until you're ready to deal the deathblow with some nob bikers or walkers, you're good to go.

Against an all-knight army, you really only need to kill 1-2 to make victory pretty much assured unless you're being stupid and playing kill points vs knights.

SemperMortis wrote:
did you factor in the KMK hurting itself on rolls of 1? or how about the fact that it is shorter range and has a 5+ save? (6+ for grots) How about the fact that if you inflict a couple of wounds that unit will just die completely because LD6.

I would take Lascannons hitting on 3s of a KMK any day of the week right now

You don't have to take a test for wounds to an artillery piece. Only if you lose grots right? Which you will be actively trying not to do - probably by screening with grots. I'm not really familiar with orks - is there no access to reroll 1's? Practically every army has it.

 koooaei wrote:

1 KMK statistically deals 1.16 wounds to a knight. So, if you want to kill one knight, you statistically need ~20-21 kmk. That's around 1000 pts. Although, it'd be a fun game to watch - 4 knights vs 40 kmk - and orks would have real chances of winning - unless you play killpoints - cause kmk and grots are all separate squads, it's definitely not an overly practical list to take vs 95% of other armies.

Another thing is that 40 kmk cost...how much? 2000$?

You don't need enough KMK to kill it in one turn. Averages are nice to get a general sense for things, but with random hits and random damage it is NOT a good indicator of their overall effectiveness - after all a SM lascannon averages 1.03 to a knight.

5 would run you $230, but i'm sure some enterprising folks have found cheaper alternatives...even if I do adore the models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:

You don't have to take a test for wounds to an artillery piece. Only if you lose grots right? Which you will be actively trying to do - probably by screening with grots. I'm not really familiar with orks - is there no access to reroll 1's? Practically every army has it.

Grots and artillery and separate. You can't target gros unless they're the closest. It takes a fair amount of fire to kill a T5 6W 5+ piece - above 3 lascannon shots. If they kill one you have a 1/6 to lose another. They'd have to put a lot of fire into them to get you to fail on 1/3.

No bonuses to them in the index, but I can see a stratagem for them in the future.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
They've got 6 wounds but are 48 - you got to pay for grots either. And they take damage when overheat - basically every turn cause they overheat on 1-2 when shooting at night. They have 5+ armor, no mobility and a mobile opponent can deal with them by killing grot gunners unless you really stick to board edges.

I'm not telling kmk are bad overall. Just not worth taking in large amounts and are not that good vs knights.

Forgot to ad the cost of the grots. 48 points is a little more pricey but I can think of a lot of ways to protect these gunners. You could just surround the whole group of guns with grots - and if they don't have flyers or a lot of deep strikers you can just do grot things with them.

For Orks having something in the backfeild dishing out legit damage drawing fire is an excellent problem to have anyways - it means your charging units are hitting at full strength. If your issue is ravens - maybe take tractor cannons instead? Though - could see that backfiring.

Except those Backfield KMKs aren't dealing any real damage worth note and aren't worth shooting at. As stated already they do about 1 wound per shooting round to a knight and even that is generous. 3 or a 4 is average for shots, on a 4 that is 2 hits on average at S8, vs T8 = 1 wound at minus 3 AP gives the knight his 5++ save so you have a 2/3rd chance to do 2 damage on average to the knight, you also have a 1/6 chance PER SHOT to overheat and inflict a mortal wound on yourself. So on 4 shots thats a 2/3rd chance to inflict a mortal wound on yourself.

To simplify that, on average you have a 2/3rd chance to inflict 2 damage to your enemy AND a 2/3rd chance of giving yourself a mortal wound


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Does the BRB say artillery doesn't have to take leadership checks?

SemperMortis wrote:


Except those Backfield KMKs aren't dealing any real damage worth note and aren't worth shooting at. As stated already they do about 1 wound per shooting round to a knight and even that is generous. 3 or a 4 is average for shots, on a 4 that is 2 hits on average at S8, vs T8 = 1 wound at minus 3 AP gives the knight his 5++ save so you have a 2/3rd chance to do 2 damage on average to the knight, you also have a 1/6 chance PER SHOT to overheat and inflict a mortal wound on yourself. So on 4 shots thats a 2/3rd chance to inflict a mortal wound on yourself.

To simplify that, on average you have a 2/3rd chance to inflict 2 damage to your enemy AND a 2/3rd chance of giving yourself a mortal wound

Check my graph on the other page. It is better than an SM lascannon. Do people avoid taking lascannons just because it's average is 1.03?

Weapons with d6 shots - using average damage as an indicator doesn't really do them justice. Potential damage is far more interesting to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would gladly take these orky artillery over my peices of gak eldar support weapons.

Daedalus81 wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:


Except those Backfield KMKs aren't dealing any real damage worth note and aren't worth shooting at. As stated already they do about 1 wound per shooting round to a knight and even that is generous. 3 or a 4 is average for shots, on a 4 that is 2 hits on average at S8, vs T8 = 1 wound at minus 3 AP gives the knight his 5++ save so you have a 2/3rd chance to do 2 damage on average to the knight, you also have a 1/6 chance PER SHOT to overheat and inflict a mortal wound on yourself. So on 4 shots thats a 2/3rd chance to inflict a mortal wound on yourself.

To simplify that, on average you have a 2/3rd chance to inflict 2 damage to your enemy AND a 2/3rd chance of giving yourself a mortal wound

Check my graph on the other page. It is better than an SM lascannon. Do people avoid taking lascannons just because it's average is 1.03?

Vacuum argument, those SM lascannons can also get buffed by SM Characters easily enough to get rerolls to hit/wound and what not, they also have Signum and the cherub. So for a few points more you can almost guarantee 2 units of Devestators are going to hit about 90%+ of the time and wound at about the same rate.

KMKs can get buffed with a 5++ Invul save and a Big Mek to fix them when they get blown apart....that is it.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
They've got 6 wounds but are 48 - you got to pay for grots either. And they take damage when overheat - basically every turn cause they overheat on 1-2 when shooting at night. They have 5+ armor, no mobility and a mobile opponent can deal with them by killing grot gunners unless you really stick to board edges.

I'm not telling kmk are bad overall. Just not worth taking in large amounts and are not that good vs knights.

Forgot to ad the cost of the grots. 48 points is a little more pricey but I can think of a lot of ways to protect these gunners. You could just surround the whole group of guns with grots - and if they don't have flyers or a lot of deep strikers you can just do grot things with them.

For Orks having something in the backfeild dishing out legit damage drawing fire is an excellent problem to have anyways - it means your charging units are hitting at full strength. If your issue is ravens - maybe take tractor cannons instead? Though - could see that backfiring.

Yeah, i absolutely agree that having something shooty is great for orks - even if it's not as great compared to what other get overall. Simply because you need at least some ranged support to help out the bulk of your mellee-oriented army.
However, you shouldn't forget that going overboard on mediocre ranged support takes away from the really good stuff you're supposed to support. There's also a sort of threshhold on your offensive - as well as defensive - output. If you're aiming to effectively cripple a knight from afar - like at least down it's wounds to 50% - while at the same time maintain a level of offense suffecient enough to do it, you need >10 kmk. Ideally, around 15. That's 720 pts in kmks. A LOT of points taken away from the front. And they also need bauble wrap cause otherwise something fast can easilly wipe 2-3 squads per turn simply shooting and charging grot gunners.

Personally i think that some mek/big gunz are nice to have in a list but not for actual shooting they provide. But for backfield scoring.

Also, traktor kannons are arguably worse vs ravens than regular kannons.

KMKs are not an answer to Knights, in fact no Ork ranged weapon is an answer to a knight. So the point is moot.

I do like using Artillery in single gun units to hold backfield objectives and to give me a CP For cheapish (about 200pts 3gunz and a HQ)

So - bigmek with shock attack gun and kustom force feild seems pretty awesome in his own right. Maybe him 6 or so KMK in 2 units and big unit of screening grots. Sounds fun.

 Xenomancers wrote:
So - bigmek with shock attack gun and kustom force feild seems pretty awesome in his own right. Maybe him 6 or so KMK in 2 units and big unit of screening grots. Sounds fun.

Sounds like an amazing waste of points that will become a prime target for a deepstrike assault. A Big Mek can't take a SAG and a KFF, So thats 2 big mekz, but lets just say you ditch the second big mek and just go with the KFF. you are also going to need a runtherd to make sure those grots don't run away after losing 1 guy.

So grand total for that? 479pts, how much dakka can it put out? 6x D6 shots which averages 21 shots hitting on 4s so 10.5 hits, against the knight that is 5.7 wounds, against his 5++ that is 4ish wounds going through, averaging 2 damage each, you have managed 8 damage against the knight. So you only need 3 full turns to kill that knight on average. Of course you are also spending about 100pts MORE then the knight to kill it in 3 turns and that is in a vacuum where the knight is always in range and doesn't choose to liquefy your unit with his superior ranged capabilities, or get into CC and utterly destroy you there as well.

So....yeah, not going to be effective against a knight.

Mathhammer on single units can only ever tell you so much. Taking down anything big requires a number of things.
I can say that my boy vaporised my Predator and Land Raider in turn one using no less than 5 different types of shooty ork units, over half of which were hitting on 4s. He even went 2nd. Yes, it's purely anecdotal and was quite probably not average rolling, but I couldn't even begin to sum up all the various contributing factors with math.

 Cuz05 wrote:
Mathhammer on single units can only ever tell you so much. Taking down anything big requires a number of things.
I can say that my boy vaporised my Predator and Land Raider in turn one using no less than 5 different types of shooty ork units, over half of which were hitting on 4s. He even went 2nd. Yes, it's purely anecdotal and was quite probably not average rolling, but I couldn't even begin to sum up all the various contributing factors with math.

And I can, simply by you telling me what units he used. Mathhammer tells you the high, the low and the average of everything in the game. The entire game is built upon math and can be calculated relatively easy. The fact that your son killed a Landraider with Ork shooting is alone a statistical outlier since most of our weapons that can hurt it are meh at best. You tell me what units he fielded and I can tell you the probability of that result happening.

As it stands, Orkz have no hard counter to a Knight except to drown it in numbers and hope for some lucky rolls.

The combination of scoring, drowning in numbers and eventually wittling it down can work. The fact that you can't kill a knight from afar or from just one charge doesn't mean you can't deal with it. Just don't focus on killing stuff - it's not alwayss required to win.

 koooaei wrote:
The combination of scoring, drowning in numbers and eventually wittling it down can work. The fact that you can't kill a knight from afar or from just one charge doesn't mean you can't deal with it. Just don't focus on killing stuff - it's not alwayss required to win.

Which brings me back to my original comment of, don't deal with the knight, delay it and score objectives and kill his other stuff. Since we have no effective counter to a knight its pointless investing points in horribly inefficient units trying to do so.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Cuz05 wrote:
Mathhammer on single units can only ever tell you so much. Taking down anything big requires a number of things.
I can say that my boy vaporised my Predator and Land Raider in turn one using no less than 5 different types of shooty ork units, over half of which were hitting on 4s. He even went 2nd. Yes, it's purely anecdotal and was quite probably not average rolling, but I couldn't even begin to sum up all the various contributing factors with math.

And I can, simply by you telling me what units he used. Mathhammer tells you the high, the low and the average of everything in the game. The entire game is built upon math and can be calculated relatively easy. The fact that your son killed a Landraider with Ork shooting is alone a statistical outlier since most of our weapons that can hurt it are meh at best. You tell me what units he fielded and I can tell you the probability of that result happening.

As it stands, Orkz have no hard counter to a Knight except to drown it in numbers and hope for some lucky rolls.

Oh of course, I don't doubt you could take the stats and the dice average and bash out a bunch of numbers and I do see the value in that. Point is that there's more than dice going on in a game. Even then, the average roll is not going to happen a lot of the time. On a game by game basis, I think one can take mathhammer as vague guide but boiling everything down to it and thinking according to the results is going to send you off course.
And as always, it's often worth throwing statistics aside, going with the good stuff and just hoping for the best. Chance guarantees results some of the time, nothing guarantees them all the time.
How to deal with knights? Shoot it with your best shooty units, fight it with your best fighty units, clean up the obj points with everything else. I guarantee it will sometimes work.