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If you're going to put a choppy unit in a trukk or perhaps an 'ard-topped battlewagon, what choppy unit would you use and why? Also would you pack something extra like a warboss or big-mek (or painboy or wierdboy or whatever) in with them?

I go against the grain, but I have been running boys in trukks. I beat a thousand sons army with Magnus this Wednesday.

-6X trukks
-2x bosses
-1 kff behind the trukks
- grots and kannons backfield
-each trukk gets 5 stormboys
-Boyz squad deploys behind the trukks.
-One trukk (decide in late deployment) gets 8X tankbustas behind it.
-On first turn, stormboys disembark 3, move and advance, then try to make a charge on anything with a nasty shooting potential. Then boys embark in the trukk, then the trucks run up field as far as they can get.
-KFF then moves to keep the kannons protected from shooting a bit and repairing them when possible.

Does REALLY well when you get first turn. Does okay'ish if you dont (ramshackle+kff is not great, but not terrible either.

But what list DOESENT do well if it goes first in 8th and fall a bit if it does second?

I also prefer mechanized lists over footsloggers and, considering only the choppy units, I usually play:

Trukks:

- 12 boyz with pk
- 3 meganobz with killsaws
- 6 nobz with big choppas and ammo runts

BWs:

- 19 boyz with pk and a warboss
- 2x10 boyz with 2 pks
- 4-5 meganobz with killsaws and 10-12 boyz with pk/big choppa

Never embarked a painboy, big mek or a weirdboy, but a biker mek with KFF helps your transport. Sometimes I embark a cheap warboss because I need 3 HQs to have more heavy supports and I only own 2 biker characters. Two warbosses can also help in those kind of lists.

Nobz seem to be the best option. Meganobz could also be taken to some extent. But keep in mind that you really need to max out on trukks and wagonz. And interestingly enough, trukks don't seem to make boyz enter combat much faster since you can't move and disembark. Yes, you do get 2-d turn charges but once again, half of your stuff gets wrecked and delayed. And vehicles are quite expensive and really easy to shoot down for a balanced shooty list. Can be ok vs relaxed fun lists though.

Anywayz, i'd go with nobz + ammo runts and meganobz + some chaff like kommandoes or burnas.

Thanks, guys. I figured tankbustas seemed the clear choice on the shooty front (and my shooty BW will be full of gretchin), but by all means if there are better shooty trukkloads I'm interested in those too.

@kooaei -- presumably the chaff are just meatshields for the meganobz when the trukk gets destroyed, what advantage do they provide over a minimum squad of boyz? In my hypothetical 650 list (for a pseudo-local tournament i didn't actually go to lol) I had a hard time finding explosion chaff that didn't fill up half the trukk (was trying to fit 5 MANz in the trukk and the only thing I could come up with to go with them was big mek+oiler (or painboy+orderly, but the big mek also filled the HQ slot).

I'd only play (and I actually do very often) bustas in trukks as shooty options. BWs are way to durable at T8 to be wasted carrying shooters. Lootas become way to expensive if they start in a transport and flash gitz are lackluster.

The problem with embarking big units of meganobz in a trukk (even without a character) is that they become an expensive priority target. If 3 dudes are joined by a "cheap" unit like burnas, bustas, kommandos or they're just alone if the transports explodes turn 1 you won't have 250+ points of stuff you want to throw into combat that is forced to footslog and die by shooting before reaching anything. Especially if you play with small formats.

I've been trying to make BWs and Trukks work all edition, but so far I have yet to actually get results that can compare to green tides

In general, battlewagons and trukks have the same role now, two trukks almost as survivable as a T8 battlewagon against most weapons that are good at taking out vehicles.
Trukks get open topped, more wounds and ramshakkle and can drive in two directions
Closed battewagons have better toughness against lances, missile launchers, S4 shooting and the CC attacks of many horde units.
Open topped battlewagons are the clear loser here as they have the advantages of neither.

As for passengers, choppy units are better off with a closed battlewagon since you don't need the open topped rule and it's more likely to reach combat in one piece, while the same amount of shooting will definitely kill a trukk.
Things that work:
- If your BW is transporting nothing but boyz, get two units of 10 in there. You will never benefit from the green tide rule anyways, and you get more PK nobs that way. Also, easy CP.
- Nobz are pretty decent, their ammo runts can take the explosion wounds for them. A BW with 10 nobz is a huge target, put 5 nobz with ammo runts and 10 boyz in there instead
- Grotsnik is probably the best character to go in BWs. Warboss statline and you can often exploit one scalpel short of a medpack to assassinate characters. If you're feeling lucky, you can take all mortal wounds from an explosion on him and try to save them with his 5+++/6+++
- Thrakka is always awesome, more so if riding a transport with double his movement speed. Being able to charge after advancing is also essential to catch fast units with ork transports, so you want a warboss anyways.
- MANz work ok, if you keep the unit size to no more than 5 and equip all of them with killsaws. In my experience they mostly perform well because weapons that are good at killing them are busy either killing battlewagons or Ghaz.
- Shoota boyz, tank bustaz, flash gits work fine from a battle wagon, but you might as well split the unit and put each half into a trukk for next to no additional cost. You gain a lot more flexibility that way and lose nothing. While flash gits get -1 to hit while their transport is moving, they still shoot better than most ork units after moving and a lot better when not. Also, don't forget to throw tank busta bombs from your trukks.
- For BW, always make your BW expensive unit+boyz. Pretty much any army can delete a battlewagon on turn one, so you're guaranteed that your most valuable passengers will be walking after turn 1. For me, that's pretty much whatever Ghazghkull Thrakka is riding, even if he is accompanied by 18 gretchin.
- Non-bike KFFs. You can usually tell which one or two BWs are going to die first, and when they do, the big mek will drop out of it and provide the bubble for all other vehicles nearby. The bike mek is superior for KFF coverage in every way, but if you don't have one, two KFF meks riding on BWs work just as good

Things that don't work
- Waaagh! Banner always seems to be in the wrong place, the units in need are not on the same ride and in general, auras and transports don't mix well at all. In addition, he is too expensive to buff just 15-30 boyz on average.
- Dok - same as banner, but lower range. Doesn't work well with an army which splits in half, plus his aura is off until disembarked. I also suck at rolling sixes, so take this with a grain of salt.
- Weird boyz cannot use psychic powers while engaged. 'nuff said.
- No amount of burna boyz are ever worth buying them a transport. Two S4 attacks are just too weak in combat and their shooting is inferior to shoota boyz. Avoid or use as kommandoz.
- Lootaz. Neither transport offers protection that justifies their point costs. If you want a bunker for your lootaz, get an actual fortification, preferably one with a huge gun.
- Gretchin. While a cool idea and fun in practice, you are spending 240 points on a unit that does as much damage as a unit of guardsmen with las guns.
- MANz nuke: You can fit 3x3 MANz and Thrakka into a single battlewagon... if you like walking them across the board from your deployment zone.

 Jidmah wrote:
If you're feeling lucky, you can take all mortal wounds from an explosion on him and try to save them with his 5+++/6+++

Isn't it written in a way that you just kill those models? So, not mortal wounds - just dead models.

I don't have as much experience with transports as the others here. But here is my observations:

Expect to lose 20-25 wounds in total on your transports in the first turn of shooting. Ork transports are not that tough, which would be okay if they were cheap. They are not cheap.

Use closed battlewagons or trukks. Both options are probably equally survivable, whereas the open-topped battlewagon is considerably more fragile.

As with all things orky spamming is key. Don't bring a battlewagon. Bring tree. Dont bring a couple of trukks, Bring six. Or eight. Or none.

Mek-gunz, fliers, skorchas or even walkers can also help a bit with target saturation.

Bringing 20 boyz in a battlewagon can actually work out well. You disembark, move, use the mob up stratagem, shoot and charge. Then you can get benefit of the green tide.

 koooaei wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
If you're feeling lucky, you can take all mortal wounds from an explosion on him and try to save them with his 5+++/6+++

Isn't it written in a way that you just kill those models? So, not mortal wounds - just dead models.

True - only had it come up once so far, and I guess I cheated my opponent on that. Too much playing DG currently