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Anecdotal evidence is great and all but luck is still luck and human remembers exceptional results more often than average so it feeling broken doesn't mean it's broken. Human mind remembers exceptional results better so it's easy to remember that time it one shots knight(7% chance) but not as much when you do like 3-4 damage to it.

Even with Command Reroll, Moar Dakka, and Freebooterz, I still can't see how you'd reliably delete a unit with a Super SAG every turn. It just doesn't have the shots for it. Unless you're specifically talking about vehicles/monsters, but even then he's gonna need some back-up.

With the above Strats, you're looking at around 8-9 shots, on average. With a 4+ BS (from Freebooters) you're only gonna land around half of those. So, like 4 shots. Against T4, with Big Killa, you'll have a 2+, so let's say you get lucky and they all Wound. Your 4 that made it through won't even take out an MSU of Guardsmen. Against a vehicle, the average Toughness is around a 6, so you'll be looking at 3+ instead, for 3 going through to Saves. Let's say the vehicle *doesn't* have a Invuln or FnP, so you deal 10-11 or so Wounds. Sure, that's plenty to take out most vehicles. But, in the end, you spent 3 CP on it.

Even if we take into account Kustom Ammo, which will cost you a total of 5 CP (with all the other stuff) to use, the Super SAG is still *barely* handling an MSU of Guard, and maybe taking out two middling vehicles, or a single better one. All for the low, low cost of an entire Battalion's worth of CP. I wouldn't call this "reliably" taking out a unit every turn, at least not if you plan for the game to last longer than 2 turns.

 flandarz wrote:
Even with Command Reroll, Moar Dakka, and Freebooterz, I still can't see how you'd reliably delete a unit with a Super SAG every turn. It just doesn't have the shots for it. Unless you're specifically talking about vehicles/monsters, but even then he's gonna need some back-up.

Certainly average damage should be enough to wipe vehicle per turn(seeing average vs knight is about 8 and that's with 5++ and 5+++ vs mortals) but of course with SAG issue is huge variance of damage. The average goes up nicely when you can cause 24 wounds and not be wasted...So yeah average damage is enough to vaporize leman russ but in practice there will be turns where you don't. And then one where you would wipe 3 but as the wounds don't spread...

And obviously it's not wiping infantry Then again it's not really anti infantry weapon any more than the volcano lance on the castellan. But castellan IS quite reliably vaporizing 2 vehicles a turn with firepower to spare. While sporting 4++, h2h ability etc. Albeit is free to be shot as well.

Delete a light vehicle per turn with the SSAG is believable. Anything tougher, average dice doesnt kill it (though leaves it in a really sorry state).
Anything with numbers? Even stuff like elite troopers where theres only ~10 of them? Unlikely. Hurt, yes, wipe them? no.

Knight Soup/Eldar Flier spam is a thing and people just accept it as something you need to deal with specifically. Orks get 1 model that uses a warlord trait and 2 CP thats powerful and everyone thinks its OP and needs a nerf....right...

Yeah, that's what I meant. The Super SAG *can* reliably take out a light vehicle every turn. But "unit" is incredibly misleading, cuz unless your opponent is running Eldar or Tau (or leaving his/her vehicles in LoS), you probably ain't gonna have a bead on a light vehicle every turn. Either they won't have that many targets for you, or they're gonna hide them from the Super SAG.

As an aside: there is actually a non-zero chance that an MSU of Grots could take down a Castellan in a single shooting phase. So, basically, basing how powerful a unit/model is, based on specific alignment of factors, is poor decision making. I ain't saying the Super SAG ain't good. It just ain't this OP unit that wipes everything it sees.

 r_squared wrote:
Mathammer is great and all, but I've played it, and it felt broken. With the right setup, and the right strategems you are deleting a unit a turn. If you're using this to take out vehicles and knights then big killa boss is a must to counter those low strength rolls.

My Op is a veteran player, and we were chucking some dice in a beer and pretzels game, but he is fantastic at building some really tricksy strong lists for a variety of armies and we regularly go toe to toe with full on lists and we discussed the Super shocka at length. We decided that the clutch part isn't just the 2d6, it's the fact that it's on a character that really makes it effective. The access to warlord traits is a real bonus, and even with scouts snipers my OP could not touch this killing machine. If the SSAG was on a vehicle, it'd be so so, on a character, in the backfield, correctly screened, it's broken.

For the points? I'd take 2 more SAG Big Meks to complement the SSAG, at 80pts a go, once the Super shokka lights up its first target, you can guarantee your ops target priority is changing.

I'm sure it did feel broken. But that's exactly what anecdotal evidence is - feelings. Unfortunately feelings don't mean much when we have stats.

Come back to us in a week or 2 when you've had that one game where the SSAG just refuses to hit, or when you do hit it's with S2-4 shots, or when your opponent lands all their saves. You'll see where we're coming from.

You're not "deleting a unit a turn" unless you are incredibly lucky every turn.

Re the character protection, I suggest you wait until your OP manages to sneak a few Vindicares into his list. Or any other counter to the SSAG Mek (Deep Strike melee units, flyers).

The average damage for the weapon is incredibly low, even with BKB, but you're just remembering the big hits.

Last game I played with the Super SAG, the very first roll I got was for S11. Then I rolled 4 shots (after command reroll) and no hits. It was very disappointing. After that, he played adequately, but never took anything out in his own. Most of the time, my Smashas would soften something up and then the Super SAG would take it down.

I've played maybe 25ish games with the supa SAG mek, although 10-15 of them have been between 1000-1500 points and the rest at 1750 (which is what most people play here).

Overall he's done well, it's rare that he ends up doing nothing but it's happened. I've also had a few games where he single handedly took out 750+ points (a baneblade plus some just random tanks in one, and another game where he rolled 11+ strength 4 times in a row). It can happen and he's absolutely really strong. But he's still vulnerable enough to take out in several different manners and I don't see him as being broken.

Snipers in general can screw him up for sure but psychic powers that don't have to target the nearest unit are a big weapon against him. Obviously the abslute best way is to kill him in CC so "Orkz is never beaten" is basically useless. That might be tougher though depending on the Ork list used, for me I usually only have him and some grots in the backfield so an evrsor managed to consolidate into him once. I didn't know they did a 6" rather than a 3" consolidate move and he could scale up two floors to tie him up then.

Point is, even with a dud game or two, I still feel he is one of those "auto-take" units for me unless the game is really casual or I'm facing a horde. Still don't see the broken argument however. He's really good value, but also a highlander.

 flandarz wrote:
Last game I played with the Super SAG, the very first roll I got was for S11. Then I rolled 4 shots (after command reroll) and no hits. It was very disappointing. After that, he played adequately, but never took anything out in his own. Most of the time, my Smashas would soften something up and then the Super SAG would take it down.

Personally I would start with SAG without good reason as it does have potential to vaporize vehicle on it's own. Don't want to shoot smashas and then get lucky and overkill the target. Starting with sag if you do take it out you can shoot elsewhere with smashas or use those to finish the target. Could be wrong though.

 Jidmah wrote:
It's pretty much the same for almost every army though. Is there any codex that has more than one list doing well at tournaments?

I'd also appreciate more talk about orks in the game and less tinfoil hat talk about how GW will nerf orks into the ground because they/space marine players hate them. Right now, there is zero reason to believe that orks will be treated different than any other faction.

*Looks at Basic infantry choice for Orkz going up 17%
*Sees literally nobody else having this happen to them



It isn't so much "Tinfoil hat talk" as it is verifiable fact that orkz tend to have their better units nerfed far more often then units that really need a nerf (*Cough Castellan, Loyal 32, Eldar Shenanigans *cough). In 7th one of our better units was the warbiker, when was the last time someone took out warbikers for a tournament and really was trying to win? how about Trukk Boy spam? Then from Index to Codex, our best unit without a doubt, boyz, got hit with a points increase but our atrociously priced Stompa is still......atrociously over priced.

I don't know about adepticon because I didn't read their specific rules, but if they didn't go full ITC rule set then yeah it might not have any value added to this discussion. BTW I say that because in my META everyone plays ITC.

I generally start with with Gunz, because I run Freebooterz. I want my Super SAG to get that sweet +1 to hit. So I wipe some MSU or other easy to kill thing, then fire whatever else I have at harder to take down targets.

Generally speaking, with my SSAG I target something important that my opponent forgot to protect because he doesn't worry about ork shooting. I had a game a few weeks ago where my opponent put two IG flyers in range and LOS of my SSAG and i got 1st turn, well guess what happened to those things. spent CP to dakka on 5s, spent CP to shoot twice, rolled 8+ for shots and strength both times and liquified both his planes and killed a huge part of his passengers with Boyz before charging and finishing them off. Game was over turn 2 because he had run out of vehicles besides 2 Tank commanders hiding in the back.

That i think is the capital issue: "my opponent forgot to protect an important model because he doesnt worry about ork shooting"

Thats such an old mentality that until now would be valid and usually a safe assumption. Not the case anymore, even shootaboyz can put some hurt down, they just cant do the whole Imperial shooting thing of "This unit fires 10-20 shots that hit on 2s and reroll 1s" so its never a sure thing.
And i know in my local area, nobody is adapting to my shooting. They walk right infront of my SSAG, Morkanaut, Shootaboyz, Dakkajets, dragsta, or scrapjet and expect to only take a little damage if any and get plastered. Its been beaten into their minds for so long that orks dont shoot, and when they do it rarely does anything, that now it DOES do something they forget about it.
Then i face the one guy that does adapt and i get my face melted off lol

 flandarz wrote:
I generally start with with Gunz, because I run Freebooterz. I want my Super SAG to get that sweet +1 to hit. So I wipe some MSU or other easy to kill thing, then fire whatever else I have at harder to take down targets.

Ah but then you aren't using mek guns to soften target for SAG to finish it off now though? I was specifically talking regarding SAG. SAG first and finish with mek gun or start with mek gun and finish off with SAG. For that I think the one that has bigger chance of vaporizing target in one go(sure technically smasha gun can get 6 hits causing 36 wounds but odds of that...) and finish with mek gun rather than reverse seems more effective.

Obviously with freeboota starting with mek guns vs small units is good idea but then you aren't really aiming to finish unit with the SAG


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 Vineheart01 wrote:
That i think is the capital issue: "my opponent forgot to protect an important model because he doesnt worry about ork shooting"

Thats such an old mentality that until now would be valid and usually a safe assumption. Not the case anymore, even shootaboyz can put some hurt down, they just cant do the whole Imperial shooting thing of "This unit fires 10-20 shots that hit on 2s and reroll 1s" so its never a sure thing.
And i know in my local area, nobody is adapting to my shooting. They walk right infront of my SSAG, Morkanaut, Shootaboyz, Dakkajets, dragsta, or scrapjet and expect to only take a little damage if any and get plastered. Its been beaten into their minds for so long that orks dont shoot, and when they do it rarely does anything, that now it DOES do something they forget about it.
Then i face the one guy that does adapt and i get my face melted off lol

Also rolling super hot helps ;-)

But yeah orks are surprisingly enough turning into bit of a shooty army O_o Though still not that much. Few units holding up army with shooting and then tellyporting boyz.

My experience with superSAG is that is an autoinclude but ain't reliable at all. Today I blew out 3 ADmec robots I one turn with 7 shots S8 and than made 2 W on a knight without shields with 11 shots A 10 the turn after that. . .
I also went second the last 6 matches so I never had the opportunity to use all my mek gunz to proc the +1, just still, he's good.
Ofc freebooterz and all the gimmicks are necessary, as 10 grots for as a shield

I agree with you about ork shooting becoming a bit of a thing, but shoota boyz are still atrocious. say by some miracle you get a full 30 blob of shoota boyz in range of a tac squad in the open. Furthermore, lets say you are bad moonz.

30 boyz = 60 shots, 20 hits, 10 reroll 1s for 3 more hits including 1.5 more 6s so 11.5 rerolls (say 12 for ease) for another 4 hits including 2 1s which reroll for .6 more hits, So 28ish hits, 14 ish wounds and against 3+ armor that is about 4.66 dead Marines. Put those Marines in cover (like they always are it feels like) and its 2.33. Without cover you have a 210pt unit killing between 52 and 65pts worth of Marines, with cover its between 26 and 39. Neither is good. My old go to comparison for attackers is the 3 to 1 test. A unit should be able to kill 1/3rd of its points in a specific phase to be considered good at that phase, not great, but good. Shoota boyz are still not where they need to be in regards to shooting for me to consider them worth taking, bump them to 4+ base and yeah that is nice. (Math for 4+ base: 60 shots, 30 hits, 10ish extra hits for 40 actual hits and 20 wounds for 6-7 Dead Marines a turn. That becomes 78 to 91pts of dead Marines)

So, take Freebooterz Shoota Boyz, then?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Though, to be fair, even Shoota Boyz still perform better in CC than at range.

Yeah pretty much the only reason to run pure shootaboyz is they can shoot one target and charge another after Da Jump (or the same one given even with 'Ere We Go its easy to fail a 9" charge anyway), and even then probably better to run a mix unless you are Bad Moonz. Freeboota works in melee so i'd still wager slugga boyz would be better in general.

 Emicrania wrote:
Man some of you are never gonna be happy.
LVO, no orks top 10= the orks are bad
Adepticon= 4 orks top 10, GW is bad they will never make orks good.
Jezuz....

QFT.

LVO the sky was falling, our list is bad and it can't win games. Now GW will nerf us. Dudes just admit we have a good codex with awesome options that is seriously competitive. Soon as I read a page of this thread that doesn't have wish-listing in it, I'll be super happy to get back involved.

PS: SSAG Mek is legit. Anecdotal evidence aside, there are statistics and mathhammer that promote its use, even if the meta is moving towards snipers. 80pts to kill up to 2x200+ point models over 5-6 turns is a no brainer, and lists that included the SSAG in LVO were winning at 55%. Someone in the thread (i think r-squared) hit it on the head, the fact that it's a character is the reason it is good, because you can reliably expect it to shoot 3-4 turns, which will average out your variance in a game. I can't imagine a game where it doesn't kill its points worth.

SemperMortis wrote:
I agree with you about ork shooting becoming a bit of a thing, but shoota boyz are still atrocious. say by some miracle you get a full 30 blob of shoota boyz in range of a tac squad in the open. Furthermore, lets say you are bad moonz.

30 boyz = 60 shots, 20 hits, 10 reroll 1s for 3 more hits including 1.5 more 6s so 11.5 rerolls (say 12 for ease) for another 4 hits including 2 1s which reroll for .6 more hits, So 28ish hits, 14 ish wounds and against 3+ armor that is about 4.66 dead Marines. Put those Marines in cover (like they always are it feels like) and its 2.33. Without cover you have a 210pt unit killing between 52 and 65pts worth of Marines, with cover its between 26 and 39. Neither is good. My old go to comparison for attackers is the 3 to 1 test. A unit should be able to kill 1/3rd of its points in a specific phase to be considered good at that phase, not great, but good. Shoota boyz are still not where they need to be in regards to shooting for me to consider them worth taking, bump them to 4+ base and yeah that is nice. (Math for 4+ base: 60 shots, 30 hits, 10ish extra hits for 40 actual hits and 20 wounds for 6-7 Dead Marines a turn. That becomes 78 to 91pts of dead Marines)

Keep in mind though shoota boyz isn\t primarily shooting unit but mixed so you need to factor in h2h ability. so 24,7% of unit's cost when primary function is in h2h...That shooting isn't supposed to be primary killer but more of added tool. It's function is more of to clear chaff so that your h2h is maximum power.

H2h units don't need to have great shooting to be good. And even shoota boy is primarily h2h unit with secondary use with guns. And that 28 hits translates nicely against kills into common chaff. 12 dead GEQ's. That's one unit dead. And then you can charge something else. With 18" range you can reach out vs another unit than the one you are aiming to charge even.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hollow one wrote:

 Emicrania wrote:
Man some of you are never gonna be happy.
LVO, no orks top 10= the orks are bad
Adepticon= 4 orks top 10, GW is bad they will never make orks good.
Jezuz....

QFT.

LVO the sky was falling, our list is bad and it can't win games. Now GW will nerf us. Dudes just admit we have a good codex with awesome options that is seriously competitive. Soon as I read a page of this thread that doesn't have wish-listing in it, I'll be super happy to get back involved.

PS: SSAG Mek is legit. Anecdotal evidence aside, there are statistics and mathhammer that promote its use, even if the meta is moving towards snipers. 80pts to kill up to 2x200+ point models over 5-6 turns is a no brainer, and lists that included the SSAG in LVO were winning at 55%. Someone in the thread (i think r-squared) hit it on the head, the fact that it's a character is the reason it is good, because you can reliably expect it to shoot 3-4 turns, which will average out your variance in a game. I can't imagine a game where it doesn't kill its points worth.

Yeah it's real nice that this tournanament with unique enviroment that's not really available elsewhere orks made well. Good for them. Now whatabout rest of us who don't play in that tournamanet so can't use what they did to same effect while facing knights etc that aren't neutered by tournament rules?

Ah yes that old chestnut. Like how boy spam wasn't good but it topped the London GT.

You're right, the list is probably garbage since Adepticon wasn't using ITC... oh wait did you mean CA2018 missions? What about NOVA missions? Sorry maybe you meant maelstrom. [edit: I think I've been too sarcastic here and my point might be lost. Every tournament has a slight new spin on rules, your arguement could invalidate MOST tournament results, so it's fairly meaningless to point at a rule you don't approve of and say the results are now void]

And you're also right about the meaning of these results... Adepticon results are likely not even correlated to the quality of an army. It's not like Steve Pampreen came 15th in LVO and 3rd in Adepticon with the exact same list. Probably has nothing to do with the strength of the list. [edit: The fact that the exact same loota star list dominated in LVO (with knights btw) and Adepticon speaks to the strength of the list because it is able to adapt to rules changes, adapt to meta differences, and still be top tier]

I'm still giddy we got this many top 10 placements. I'm a bit surprised about that, I'll admit. The different ruleset does matter of course but Orks have a lot of good players piloting them ATM so obviously there's upside to the army. I also think a lot of players really like Orks so they break them out now when they're actually good, unlikely many previous editions.

The only thing that is somewhat of a wory for me about these results (which might be a non-issue) is, is there any way of knowing how many rounds every game went? There weren't any chess clocks present AFAIK and nothing sours me on victories more than stalling for victories.

Pampreens list is real interesting to me since it doesn't even have lootas so I'm not even sure what he's using all those CP's on. Super buffin and double shooting the supa SAG every round?

Also Jidmah, should we put up Pampreens list on the first page? EDIT: Actually looks like this list is incomplete, I only tally it up to 1852 points. Did he have some lootas in there as well?

 hollow one wrote:
Ah yes that old chestnut. Like how boy spam wasn't good but it topped the London GT.

Wait....are you using the tool bag who slow played an entire tournament to prove that Orkz were good in Index form? Just want to make sure your point here is taken at actual face value. Some guy slow played an event to the point where basically no game went past Turn 3 and that is your proof that boyz spam was good?

As for Orkz being good with codex, I still disagree, the fact remains that the one competitive list that made it far (At LVO), (loota bomb) is easily countered now by 2 factions. Plus, vs a Castellan Knight with a 3++ shield up is basically laughing at a loota bomb. And if that knight gets first turn he will delete most of your Mek Gunz without trying that hard.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 r_squared wrote:
Mathammer is great and all, but I've played it, and it felt broken. With the right setup, and the right strategems you are deleting a unit a turn. If you're using this to take out vehicles and knights then big killa boss is a must to counter those low strength rolls.

My Op is a veteran player, and we were chucking some dice in a beer and pretzels game, but he is fantastic at building some really tricksy strong lists for a variety of armies and we regularly go toe to toe with full on lists and we discussed the Super shocka at length. We decided that the clutch part isn't just the 2d6, it's the fact that it's on a character that really makes it effective. The access to warlord traits is a real bonus, and even with scouts snipers my OP could not touch this killing machine. If the SSAG was on a vehicle, it'd be so so, on a character, in the backfield, correctly screened, it's broken.

For the points? I'd take 2 more SAG Big Meks to complement the SSAG, at 80pts a go, once the Super shokka lights up its first target, you can guarantee your ops target priority is changing.

I'm sure it did feel broken. But that's exactly what anecdotal evidence is - feelings. Unfortunately feelings don't mean much when we have stats.

Come back to us in a week or 2 when you've had that one game where the SSAG just refuses to hit, or when you do hit it's with S2-4 shots, or when your opponent lands all their saves. You'll see where we're coming from.

You're not "deleting a unit a turn" unless you are incredibly lucky every turn.

Re the character protection, I suggest you wait until your OP manages to sneak a few Vindicares into his list. Or any other counter to the SSAG Mek (Deep Strike melee units, flyers).

The average damage for the weapon is incredibly low, even with BKB, but you're just remembering the big hits.

I'm not such a noob that I've not played a shock attack gun before, just not this variant, and not with the backup of codex options.

I'm sorry but I get the feeling that you just want this to be bad and are refusing to acknowledge that outside of a vacuum this is a very good, and useful bit of kit. Big killa boss is clutch, it means that against t8 you are guaranteed to wound on a minimum of 5+, with a greater than average chance of wounding on 4+.
That threat alone with the huge range makes my op really consider every move, much more so than before.

Forcing my opponent to now having to consider how to take out a character, buried in cover surrounded by grot and a counter charge units is a great investment. If you want to deliberately talk it down and not use it, you're only hurting yourself. It's laughable that you're even suggesting deep striking assault units against an ork army, I mean seriously? I'd love an op to try. Any op that can place a flyer in my backfield in a position that could hurt him means that I have fethed up.

As to deleting a unit a turn, any vehicle targeted by the 60" range weapon is either going to be gone, or crippled by this as are any small numbered elite units that happen to stray into LOS. We played it, we saw it happen, I used the strategems to ensure it and my op's decision making changed completely based on his experience of facing it.

I see the maths, but this game is more than stats and maths and all weapons and characters act in support of each other to max out their effectiveness. If you're so blinkered then the loyal 32 have no value and are trash, but I'm pissing against the wind here.

"Feelings" are based on years of gaming experience and knowledge, not wishing and unicorns. I know this is good, I can see how it can cheaply and easily supplement my list and has the potential to tear the heart out of an opponents list with relative ease. I accept that occasionally it may fail, but at 84pts, with maybe 60pts in grot screens, I can live with that.

You want to take my years of gaming experience and knowledge and belittle it as "feelings" then go right ahead, im old and ugly enough to accept that. However, this puppy has found a home on my future competitive lists, and I'm only taking it against people prepared for a tough game in future.

I wanna mention that I *do* think Orkz are good. We have a real strong mono Army, with lots of options for play. I've argued this before. I just also recognize that a meta dominated by our weaknesses (Flyers and Knights) means we're in a tough spot competitively. I also don't think the Super SAG is an auto-include or OP. It's real good, no doubt. But, with those 90 Grots you mentioned, you're spending 260+ pts and a minimum of 1 CP on a unit that, on average, can dish out about 8-10 Wounds a turn. Character protection *does* help him out a lot, but it's still a hefty investment on something so swingy. Especially since, to use it to its maximum efficiency, you're gonna burn a Battalion's worth of CP on him every turn. I kinda put the Super SAG in the same place as the Loota Bomb. It's real good, but basing your whole win strategy around him is gonna bite ya in the butt.

Position the dude backfield with a small unit of grots hidden for shield, position your backline to prevent DS and you are good to go for at least 3 turn, where this dude make his points back the majority of the time.
Is one goddamn Mek, not a knight for 88 points he is awesome, we got 1912 more points to win the game .

 flandarz wrote:
I wanna mention that I *do* think Orkz are good. We have a real strong mono Army, with lots of options for play. I've argued this before. I just also recognize that a meta dominated by our weaknesses (Flyers and Knights) means we're in a tough spot competitively. I also don't think the Super SAG is an auto-include or OP. It's real good, no doubt. But, with those 90 Grots you mentioned, you're spending 260+ pts and a minimum of 1 CP on a unit that, on average, can dish out about 8-10 Wounds a turn. Character protection *does* help him out a lot, but it's still a hefty investment on something so swingy. Especially since, to use it to its maximum efficiency, you're gonna burn a Battalion's worth of CP on him every turn. I kinda put the Super SAG in the same place as the Loota Bomb. It's real good, but basing your whole win strategy around him is gonna bite ya in the butt.

I did say that he is to supplement my lists. At 144pts with grot screens he fits in easy. Im not building a list around him, because i dont have to, which is where hes not comparable to the Loota bomb at all. If he doesn't get his points back, and divert my ops attention then he's failed, but I highly doubt that'll be the case.
I have 1856 points left with which to build whatever I like, that gives me a great deal of flexibility.

I also think you're underestimating the strength of the character ability, he cannot be targeted apart from by specialised units, and then you have grot screens and an oiler to deflect that. A similar amount of points of smasha guns, whilst amazing value do not have the staying power of this character despite being tougher and having many many more wounds by the simple expedient that they can be targeted and deleted at will.
His range means that he can sit literally at the very back of the table, on top of a building with clear view of everything, screened effectively and your op cannot even touch him. My Admech transuranic aqueous is the only sniper unit that I own that has a hope of taking him out, having the same range, and can be buffed to hit on a 2+. Most armies don't have anything that can do that.

Where he wins is that, barring sloppy play or bad luck, you'll have him shooting every turn of the game until the end. If maths is your thing he will definitely get his points back in that case. Orks are about playing the numbers, on average, with multiple shots you will do something useful. But too many people arguing against him remember the time they were let down, so say he's too "swingy". It's actually the bad things you remember longer, not the good times. That's proven psychology, so you can see why so many cynics talk units like this down.

He's undoubtebly crazy good value, especially since you're pretty much guaranteed to field the grots sorrounding him anyways. He might be the singular best unit in our codex IMO.

As I stated earlier though, several factions has psychic power that doesn't have to target the nearest enemy unit and there are no character targgeting restrictions in that phase so that's a vulnerability worth keeping in mind. And speaking of psychic powers, always keep one grot within 1" of him if playing GSC so if they manage to Mind Control him they can only use the ability to fight in CC and not fire at your own stuff.

 r_squared wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 r_squared wrote:
Mathammer is great and all, but I've played it, and it felt broken. With the right setup, and the right strategems you are deleting a unit a turn. If you're using this to take out vehicles and knights then big killa boss is a must to counter those low strength rolls.

My Op is a veteran player, and we were chucking some dice in a beer and pretzels game, but he is fantastic at building some really tricksy strong lists for a variety of armies and we regularly go toe to toe with full on lists and we discussed the Super shocka at length. We decided that the clutch part isn't just the 2d6, it's the fact that it's on a character that really makes it effective. The access to warlord traits is a real bonus, and even with scouts snipers my OP could not touch this killing machine. If the SSAG was on a vehicle, it'd be so so, on a character, in the backfield, correctly screened, it's broken.

For the points? I'd take 2 more SAG Big Meks to complement the SSAG, at 80pts a go, once the Super shokka lights up its first target, you can guarantee your ops target priority is changing.

I'm sure it did feel broken. But that's exactly what anecdotal evidence is - feelings. Unfortunately feelings don't mean much when we have stats.

Come back to us in a week or 2 when you've had that one game where the SSAG just refuses to hit, or when you do hit it's with S2-4 shots, or when your opponent lands all their saves. You'll see where we're coming from.

You're not "deleting a unit a turn" unless you are incredibly lucky every turn.

Re the character protection, I suggest you wait until your OP manages to sneak a few Vindicares into his list. Or any other counter to the SSAG Mek (Deep Strike melee units, flyers).

The average damage for the weapon is incredibly low, even with BKB, but you're just remembering the big hits.

I'm not such a noob that I've not played a shock attack gun before, just not this variant, and not with the backup of codex options.

I'm sorry but I get the feeling that you just want this to be bad and are refusing to acknowledge that outside of a vacuum this is a very good, and useful bit of kit. Big killa boss is clutch, it means that against t8 you are guaranteed to wound on a minimum of 5+, with a greater than average chance of wounding on 4+.
That threat alone with the huge range makes my op really consider every move, much more so than before.

Forcing my opponent to now having to consider how to take out a character, buried in cover surrounded by grot and a counter charge units is a great investment. If you want to deliberately talk it down and not use it, you're only hurting yourself. It's laughable that you're even suggesting deep striking assault units against an ork army, I mean seriously? I'd love an op to try. Any op that can place a flyer in my backfield in a position that could hurt him means that I have fethed up.

As to deleting a unit a turn, any vehicle targeted by the 60" range weapon is either going to be gone, or crippled by this as are any small numbered elite units that happen to stray into LOS. We played it, we saw it happen, I used the strategems to ensure it and my op's decision making changed completely based on his experience of facing it.

I see the maths, but this game is more than stats and maths and all weapons and characters act in support of each other to max out their effectiveness. If you're so blinkered then the loyal 32 have no value and are trash, but I'm pissing against the wind here.

"Feelings" are based on years of gaming experience and knowledge, not wishing and unicorns. I know this is good, I can see how it can cheaply and easily supplement my list and has the potential to tear the heart out of an opponents list with relative ease. I accept that occasionally it may fail, but at 84pts, with maybe 60pts in grot screens, I can live with that.

You want to take my years of gaming experience and knowledge and belittle it as "feelings" then go right ahead, im old and ugly enough to accept that. However, this puppy has found a home on my future competitive lists, and I'm only taking it against people prepared for a tough game in future.

So basically - the SSAG Mek is great against players that don't know how to counter or play against it. Amazing! I need to write that gem down.

Again, to reiterate - even with Big Kills Boss there is absolutely no guarantee you cripple or even hurt a vehicle or elite unit. Congrats though because you've just used your warlord trait and free relic on this 2d6 shots BS5+ (maybe 4+ IF you kill a unit first) platform that has a 2d6 str weapon with +1 to wound against certain targets.

Perhaps your meta is friendly or your OP isn't a good player, I don't know and I don't care.

I take the SSAG Mek, of course. Never said I didnt. I didn't claim he was poor either. But he certainly isn't 'broken' and to suggest such is really, really naive and shows the level you're playing at, in my opinion.

PiñaColada wrote:
I'm still giddy we got this many top 10 placements. I'm a bit surprised about that, I'll admit. The different ruleset does matter of course but Orks have a lot of good players piloting them ATM so obviously there's upside to the army. I also think a lot of players really like Orks so they break them out now when they're actually good, unlikely many previous editions.

The only thing that is somewhat of a wory for me about these results (which might be a non-issue) is, is there any way of knowing how many rounds every game went? There weren't any chess clocks present AFAIK and nothing sours me on victories more than stalling for victories.

Pampreens list is real interesting to me since it doesn't even have lootas so I'm not even sure what he's using all those CP's on. Super buffin and double shooting the supa SAG every round?

Also Jidmah, should we put up Pampreens list on the first page? EDIT: Actually looks like this list is incomplete, I only tally it up to 1852 points. Did he have some lootas in there as well?

Spoiler:

++ Battalion Detachment (Orks – Bad Moons) ++
HQ: Weirdboy: Da Jump, Weirdboy Staff (62)

HQ: Weirdboy: Da Fist, Weirdboy Staff (62)

Troops: 10x Grots (30)

Troops: 10x Grots (30)

Troops: 10x Grots (30)

++ Brigade Detachment (Orks – Deff Skulls, Vigilus) ++
HQ: Big Mek on Warbike: KMG, KFF (110)

HQ: Big Mek on Warbike: KMG, KFF (110)

HQ: Big Mek: Grot Oiler, Warlord: Sniping, Relic: Souped-up Gun (84)

Troops: 10x Grots (30)

Troops: 10x Grots (30)

Troops: 10x Grots (30)

Troops: 10x Grots (30)

Troops: 10x Grots (30)

Troops: 10x Grots (30)

Elites: 5x Kommandoes: 5x Big Shoota x2, Tankbusta Bomb (50)

Elites: Mad Doc Grotznic (86)

Elites: 5x Kommandoes: 5x Big Shoota x2, Tankbusta Bomb (50)

Fast Attack: Deff Koptas: Twin Big Shootas, Big Bomms (40)

Fast Attack: Deff Koptas: Twin Big Shootas, Big Bomms (40)

Fast Attack: Deff Koptas: Twin Big Shootas, Big Bomms (40)

Heavy Support: Mek Guns: Smasha (31)

Heavy Support: Mek Guns: Smasha (31)

Heavy Support: Mek Guns: Smasha (31)

++ Battalion Detachment (Orks – Bad Moons) ++
HQ: Ork Warboss: Relic: Powerclaw (78)

HQ: Weirdboy: Weirboy Staff (62)

Troops: 10x Boys: 10x Shoota, 1x Tankbusta bombs, Big Choppa (75)

Troops: 30x Boys: 30x Shoota, Big Choppa, 3x Tank Busta Bombs (215)

Troops: 30x Boys: 30x Shoota, Big Choppa, 3x Tank Busta Bombs (215)

If the list isn’t missing lootas then what are the bad moon grots there for ?