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I was mulling over an idea today about trying to improve ork shooting, but realised that any buffs to ork shooting is just gonna make them even more swingy in the shooting phase. I cant really come up with a way to make them more consistent. Would it be so bad to give them a flat increase to BS. Or is it so ingrained in ork rules that they must be bs5?

 EagleArk wrote:
I was mulling over an idea today about trying to improve ork shooting, but realised that any buffs to ork shooting is just gonna make them even more swingy in the shooting phase. I cant really come up with a way to make them more consistent. Would it be so bad to give them a flat increase to BS. Or is it so ingrained in ork rules that they must be bs5?

Let them ignore all negative to-hit modifiers.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 EagleArk wrote:
I was mulling over an idea today about trying to improve ork shooting, but realised that any buffs to ork shooting is just gonna make them even more swingy in the shooting phase. I cant really come up with a way to make them more consistent. Would it be so bad to give them a flat increase to BS. Or is it so ingrained in ork rules that they must be bs5?

Let them ignore all negative to-hit modifiers.

I dont like doing this, taking away other peoples toys isnt fun. But I dont really see a way around it. A single -1 to hit modifer basically invalidates the entire phase.

 EagleArk wrote:
I was mulling over an idea today about trying to improve ork shooting, but realised that any buffs to ork shooting is just gonna make them even more swingy in the shooting phase. I cant really come up with a way to make them more consistent. Would it be so bad to give them a flat increase to BS. Or is it so ingrained in ork rules that they must be bs5?

I came to the same conclusion - dedicated ork shooting units need a higher BS to work in the current 40k.

They need it, ok but they are orks... more shoots are more fluff i think
If orks gets a BS3... they arent orks anymore

There should be both - units that simply compensate BS5+ by a crapton of shots (lootaz, shoota boyz, grotzookas) and those that simply need to hit with their zappy gubbins, like SAGs, KMBs and tellyporta blastas.

Flashgits need range and durability. Or alternatively snazzguns could become assault again.

SAG and tellyporta Blasta should autohit (d3 autohits)

 petitflacheur wrote:
They need it, ok but they are orks... more shoots are more fluff i think
If orks gets a BS3... they arent orks anymore

More shots is fluffy and fun. But is a difficult thing to balance.

 petitflacheur wrote:
They need it, ok but they are orks... more shoots are more fluff i think
If orks gets a BS3... they arent orks anymore

That's a bit of misnomer, they had BS3 in editions previous of our 5th ed. codex and its been shown that Orks that dedicate themselves to dakka often become good shots, even our Flash Gitz have BS4+. Nazdreg himself was known for being a notoriously good marksman for an Ork and back when he had rules he was BS4.

As Jidmah said, give the BS increase to those who need it (i.e. SAG Big Meks/Meks in general, vehicles/walkers) and more shots for those who don't.

 EagleArk wrote:
I was mulling over an idea today about trying to improve ork shooting, but realised that any buffs to ork shooting is just gonna make them even more swingy in the shooting phase. I cant really come up with a way to make them more consistent. Would it be so bad to give them a flat increase to BS. Or is it so ingrained in ork rules that they must be bs5?

All I have come up with would be a few stratagems that would improve the to hit roll for shooting. So it's there but we have to pay for it and there's a small number of times we can use it. Other than that I don't know.
Orks would be fine still with BS4+ on more units. As fast as Orks die it shouldn't be OP.
I'd even go as far as making the SAG auto hit it's targets and make it more random to balance it, like the bubble chukka kinda. But it still needs to be something we would want to use even if it is more random.

I really think that to-hit modifiers need to be capped, or at least make it to where a 6+ ALWAYS hits. Then Orks won't be so damaged with "auto-miss", and stacking - hit modifiers will only be useful against the super-guntastic armies like IG, AdMech, or Tau.

Idea for a unit:
Ammo trukk!
It's a trukk that gives +1 to hit shooting to units within 6".
But if it dies it explodes horrendously, maybe 6" automatic explosion d6 or even 2d6 mortal wounds?

Gitdakka wrote:
Idea for a unit:
Ammo trukk!
It's a trukk that gives +1 to hit shooting to units within 6".
But if it dies it explodes horrendously, maybe 6" automatic explosion d6 or even 2d6 mortal wounds?

I feel that might be interesting as an upgrade to a trukk that takes up transport space, rather than a new unit altogether. It depends on the points cost however, I'd say 20 points at the trukks current cost?

It's a very cool idea, I'd love an ammo-wagon or anything I can use to buff my shooting. Especially becuse it's such an orky concept.

I think orks are more likely to have something like the dakka stratagem instead should a ranged buffing aura unit be introduced though, maybe like;
'If this unit is neither retreating nor in close-combat add (D3 -1) shots to all shootas/big-shootas/kustom-shootas within 6"'

Or have an opt-in "ammo-caddy" (glass-cannon) trait for most vehicles, i.e bikes/walkers/wagons/koptas that applies some sort of shooting bonuses on itself and its effect on its passengers for a worse Save and Higher explode chance.

Fingers crossed GW will think to put something like your unit suggestion in, probably just going to be new war-buggies.

-

O and I agree with the limit on -BS modifiers, orks shoot thereabouts, not straight at things. Should be one of our faction rules, i.e "D'ereaboutz: All units labeled ORKs may ignore up to 1 negative BS modifier" or something like that.

Hey all, what's the etiquette for posting links to pdfs and such? I wrote up a sort of summary of suggested changes for the whole ork codex (minus stratagems), taking ideas I've heard here and in the ork tactics thread, hoping to make something of a "living document" that we as ork players can revise and compile and come to a sort of consensus so that we have something to send to GW as a suggestion that might be noticed/paid heed too.

This hasn't been play-tested and is pretty much a first draft document- please let me know if you feel changes are too much, not enough or just bad, in your opinion. I'd love to hear your thoughts and will try to edit this as people make suggestions and critiques (making sure to credit individual users of course).

Here is a pdf of the document, if this shouldn't be posted or there is a better way to share this please let me know and I'll remove it or a mod can.

Thanks ladz

I like the idea of a Runtherd being able to "whip" the mek gun/kannon grot crew that shot the gun for 1 mortal wound, within 3 " to give him a re-roll if he missed, with always hit on 6's our artillery would kick some butt I think...

Read it, and a lot of stuff sounds really good.

Let's hope GW puts at least have as much effort into the real codex.

A great list of changes. You did a solid job.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to have Deff dreads to be able to advance then charge instead of having a 3D6? Granted, second is more powerful though.

A thing I’d like to add is that squads with random amount of shots should roll amount of shots for every 5 models in squad rather than the whole squad. This would make spread between really bad outcome and awesome one less janky while not slowing down the game.

Burnaboys still feel crappy im afraid, even with these changes. They seem to have just as much justification as lootas to have 4+. Lorewise they cut apart metal hulls for meks. What if they gained +1 to wound when in melee vs vehicles/monsters? Also I feel like pyromaniac rule needs a rehaul.

Thanks y'all! I'll look into typing up a more readable, organized version of this document soon.

@JawRippa, The reasoning for the deffdread charge is because a nearby warboss can already let dreads advance and charge, so I wanted to make sure the buff wasn't redundant. Stormboyz getting to advance and charge works because they are faster and more likely to operate independently of a warboss, while a deff dread isn't really.

As for the burna boyz, with the addition of supa charga spanner boyz, I'm afraid to buff them too much. 1 spanner with a supa charga can make 14 other burna boyz get 6 auto-hits each- that's 84 hits, which is 14 dead MEQ or 37 dead GEQ. I could see the wound roll for vehicles, or perhaps d3 damage. They are supposed to be able to carve them open after all.

Hey guys,

has anyone posted these ideas to GW already?

I posted mine to 40KFAQ@gwplc.com a couple of days ago.

Does anyone know when they will start designing the Ork Codex?

Who will be in the designing team?

My goal is to give them our ideas in a concentrated fashion and to the right person for maximum effect.

So far it seems like alot of the 'design' work was done at the start of 8th in the form of a template (strategems, traits, etc) and then fleshed out with copy and pasting from prior edditions/indexes + ballance adjustments.

In this case "Designing' a codex is little more work than comming up with a fluffyish way to word the traits and strategems so that they aren't just obviously repeats and sprinkling in one or two new things for each book.

If this is the case, then 99% of the 'work' on the ork codex is already done. Whats left is adjusting for ballance and writting some fluff about how the new 'eye of terror rift' affects the orks.

Then who do we need to contact to propose our balancing ideas? Who is responsible for the Ork Codex at GW?

Im fairly certain they learned their lessons about letting books be written 'by' someone.... Those people end up eating vitriol. Even if one person is in charge of it, I doublt GW would let the name get out.

Just send it to GW FAQ adress and mention youd like it to reach the design team.

A weird issue I have with my orks now is squigs and equipment grots taking up transport capacity. So in order for my flash gitz to take all their ammo grots (or else they suck at shooting) I have to have less flash gitz in my actual battlewagon.... >_<

24 inch range on a dedicated heavy support gunner unit? trash.

Heavy weapons, so moving and shooting makes them a 5+ to hit? why even give them heavy and git findas? just give them assault weapons

But they have a 6+ save with movement 5" and 24" range so they HAVE TO TAKE A TRANSPORT, but then you're always moving and shooting at 5+??!?!?? Everything about orks is so contradictory.

The past 2 ork codexes have been some of the worst, uninspired rule books ever, that were designed almost on purpose to be lower tier than all the other armies at the time. They are really going to have to pull a complete 180 to change my mind on orks.

ManTube wrote:
Hey all, what's the etiquette for posting links to pdfs and such? I wrote up a sort of summary of suggested changes for the whole ork codex (minus stratagems), taking ideas I've heard here and in the ork tactics thread, hoping to make something of a "living document" that we as ork players can revise and compile and come to a sort of consensus so that we have something to send to GW as a suggestion that might be noticed/paid heed too.

This hasn't been play-tested and is pretty much a first draft document- please let me know if you feel changes are too much, not enough or just bad, in your opinion. I'd love to hear your thoughts and will try to edit this as people make suggestions and critiques (making sure to credit individual users of course).

Here is a pdf of the document, if this shouldn't be posted or there is a better way to share this please let me know and I'll remove it or a mod can.

Thanks ladz

That document is a brilliant idea to start with. Just give it some proper headings like 1) ... a) ... b... 2)... 3)... so there will be a higher chance of someone at GW reading trough it and getting our ideas at first glance. From what I heard, the staff at GW has to work with insane Deadlines, so I think we should make it as easy as possible for them.

 Don Savik wrote:
A weird issue I have with my orks now is squigs and equipment grots taking up transport capacity. So in order for my flash gitz to take all their ammo grots (or else they suck at shooting) I have to have less flash gitz in my actual battlewagon.... >_<

24 inch range on a dedicated heavy support gunner unit? trash.

Heavy weapons, so moving and shooting makes them a 5+ to hit? why even give them heavy and git findas? just give them assault weapons

But they have a 6+ save with movement 5" and 24" range so they HAVE TO TAKE A TRANSPORT, but then you're always moving and shooting at 5+??!?!?? Everything about orks is so contradictory.

The past 2 ork codexes have been some of the worst, uninspired rule books ever, that were designed almost on purpose to be lower tier than all the other armies at the time. They are really going to have to pull a complete 180 to change my mind on orks.

Well, the only reason flash gits have BS 4+ is because they had BS 2 in the old codex and got +1 when standing still. So they didn't actually change anything in that regard, they just streamlined it.

Not to mention that flash gits are probably the worst example for this, as in the 4th edition codex they considered the most terrible unit in the codex. They literally have never been better than they are now.

In general the short ranges on orks kind of make sense if they were balanced. Since we are supposed to field duplicates and triplicates of everything we would have a ridiculous alpha strike if we go first. In 5th ork gunlines would move to the center of the battlefield and start shooting until they were ready to charge. You didn't have a lot of shooting during the first turn, but from turn two onward, you were pretty much at the same level as vanilla marines or necrons.
In that context, flash gits are almost considered to have a decent range. With 4+ armor and ammo runts I could already see them being effective for moving onto some mid-field objective or cover near the center and then simply create a death-zone from there, similar to how plague marines operate.

 Don Savik wrote:
A weird issue I have with my orks now is squigs and equipment grots taking up transport capacity. So in order for my flash gitz to take all their ammo grots (or else they suck at shooting) I have to have less flash gitz in my actual battlewagon.... >_<

24 inch range on a dedicated heavy support gunner unit? trash.

Heavy weapons, so moving and shooting makes them a 5+ to hit? why even give them heavy and git findas? just give them assault weapons

But they have a 6+ save with movement 5" and 24" range so they HAVE TO TAKE A TRANSPORT, but then you're always moving and shooting at 5+??!?!?? Everything about orks is so contradictory.

The past 2 ork codexes have been some of the worst, uninspired rule books ever, that were designed almost on purpose to be lower tier than all the other armies at the time. They are really going to have to pull a complete 180 to change my mind on orks.

'

It gets even worse if you read about battlewagonz and their special rule. It allows them to move and shoot heavy weapons with no penalty, awesome right? would make Flash gitz not complete trash right? GW came out with the 1st FAQ and literally shot that idea down hard. Battlewagonz ability only applies to itself, not passengers. Its like they made all these rules for units and then said "how can we make them bad".

Fingers crossed for a good codex, just don't hold your breath.

 Jorghan wrote:
Then who do we need to contact to propose our balancing ideas? Who is responsible for the Ork Codex at GW?

It's too late. The book must have already gone to press months ago, and could be sitting in their warehouse right now, or if not, it's on the way.

I sent them a treasure trove of reasoned thoughts (at least as reasoned as I could possibly be) about how the Orks have not been top or mid tier in a long time, and IMHO, why. I have hope that they read them, and were possibly inspired to make the Orks competitive.

I hit hard what BS5 does to an army in the era of -2 to hit modifiers all over the place.

No one knows if they want the Orks to show up frequently on the top tables. They may think that so many players already own a largely unused Ork force, and people will just pull them out--and not buy models--if the Orks get buffed. I am also concerned that don't want a brutal, swarmy, NPC army to win.

If they don't, there is no argument in Christendom that will change their mind.

 Zid wrote:
I really think that to-hit modifiers need to be capped, or at least make it to where a 6+ ALWAYS hits. Then Orks won't be so damaged with "auto-miss", and stacking - hit modifiers will only be useful against the super-guntastic armies like IG, AdMech, or Tau.

Interestingly in AoS 6+ always hits/wounds, so there's precedent.

The trouble is that this doesn't really do anything to make Ork shooting more viable. -1 to hit still cuts our shooting by 50%, and we don't have the weight of dice to overcome that. It's just too risky to take a shooting-focused Ork army (which is very fluffy) so long as -1 to hit modifiers are being handed out left right and centre. It hard-counters Ork shooting. The only way to make it balanced against Ork shooting is to make it not affect them (which you can make the argument is very fluffy for Orks since they don't bother to aim anyway). You could fix it by increasing the number of shots Orks put out by a lot, but that has even worse balance issues.

I dont like doing this, taking away other peoples toys isnt fun.

The interesting thing is that right now plenty of armies take away those toys anyway. If an Eldar player goes Alaitoc and their opponent slaps down a Khorne Daemon force or an Ork Slugga Boy tide, their chosen Craftworld trait is completely worthless. That's the risk I suppose. So I see no issue with letting Orks just ignore it. I'm probably biased though since there's a great many shooty Ork units in my cupboard that I'd like to use again.

In that regard I really like suggestion by ManTube, orks ignore up to -1 to hit modifiers. So you can move , advance and shoot with BS5+ with shoota boys. Or move and shoot with lootas, flashgits.

It does not take toys from other armies as -1 means that if you advance + shoot with assault weapons then you are hitting on 6+, so you orks become less mobile against those. -2 is still brutal though, but it does not nullify our shooting.