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Well, if you are planning to get in close anyway, a kombi-skorcha also mitigates the BS issue. May be worth taking one or two.

 kurhanik wrote:
So I'm finally dusting off some Ork Nobs that have been in my "to do" list for...a long time, and plan to build them based on the 4th edition codex. Any thoughts on fun loadouts for them? I don't need min maxed optimal, but I'd also rather not build it out to be complete trash either.

The 4e codex was pretty good for making many different types of ork lists viable, at least against the other early-mid 5e codex line-up.

Bikes were the most popular of course but for infantry nobz IIRC Painboy, powerklaw, bosspole, and the occasional waaaugh banner.
Under 5e wound allocation rules it was common to throw in the odd suit of eavy armour, a big choppa or two, and so on purely for the purpose of spreading wounds around but that isn't a consideration for other wounding rulesets.

Notably 4e nobz could take battlewagon transports so you'd also see them as part of the 'meme' battlewagon-wedge lists. Five tooled-up red-painted battlewagons placed wheel to wheel (so that only the flanking vehicles could take hits to the side armour) and they'd just roll up the board like a hammer with death rollas and boarding planks beneath a kustom force field - with a few deffkoptas, lootas, and grots filling the list out.

Some days you'd get manticored right off the line, other days you'd land like the foot of an angry Gork (or possibly Mork). Certainly something you'd want a goff rocker and kitbashed ork 'party wagon' for.

I’d keep some Nobz fairly bare bones. As a unit they’re quite potent, so are going to drawn inevitable firepower. So packing in some ablative wounds makes sense. No point giving them all a Power Klaw when you can’t guarantee they’ll all survive the initial couple of rounds.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’d keep some Nobz fairly bare bones. As a unit they’re quite potent, so are going to drawn inevitable firepower. So packing in some ablative wounds makes sense. No point giving them all a Power Klaw when you can’t guarantee they’ll all survive the initial couple of rounds.

One per squad was probably enough, otherwise there were meganobz.

Depends what you want them to duff over.

Given Orks had pretty low Initiative, going last due to a Klaw wasn’t the handicap it was for others.

Yeah, I was planning on going for 1, maaaaaybe 2 Klaws, for the exact reason of it being so expensive fast to just go klaw swarm. I can see the point on taking a couple barebones in the group as well to be wound soakers.

Good point on the skorcha, throwing one into the squad could help with the bully nature of it, soften up some lower armored enemies before the charge.

I was thinking, since I've got 10 of them due to grabbing 2 Start Collecting sets on sale waaaay back in the day (plus looks like some barebones slugga + choppa ones from the short lived Vedros set), of going 2x Klaw, 7x Big Choppas and a Painboy. Maybe throw in 1-2 Kombi Skorchas or Twin Linked Shootas (not both), since all the melee weapons remove the bonus attack for ccw + pistol anyways. Worst comes to worst, can turn it into two squads using the Vedros Nobz as damage sponges.

I am actually surprised at how many Orks I have, just idly counting up the points I have between 1,000 and 1,250 points in various states of being built, albeit that includes some rogue trader, 2nd edition, and normal ork boyz. Now mind you, it would be a TERRIBLE list - its a random assortment of shoota boyz, slugga boyz, a single deff kopter, 2 deff dreads, a group of nobs, and apparently 20+ kommandos (some of which are 3rd party). I'm just surprised I have collected that many over the years.

As for other stuff, I don't have any Battlewagons, and probably won't be grabbing anything else for the orks until such a point as I at least build what I have on hand (and ideally get a few more of them painted up).

 kurhanik wrote:
So I'm finally dusting off some Ork Nobs that have been in my "to do" list for...a long time, and plan to build them based on the 4th edition codex. Any thoughts on fun loadouts for them? I don't need min maxed optimal, but I'd also rather not build it out to be complete trash either.

If you’re taking a 10 man squad in 4th ed style you want anywhere from 4 to 6 klaws, zero ‘uge choppas, and no combo weapons. You also want a pain boy and to be bikers.

The reason is that a nob with a klaw costs as much as a mega nob but is significantly easier to kill, so you want about half the squad to be “extra” nobz who are there to die to protect the klaws. You don’t want to give those ones ‘uge choppas because one they’re meant to die, two you’d be paying points to make them no more deadly against most targets (they already have furious charge to put them up in strength on most targets toughness; and the trade off of bonus strength at the cost of your extra attack for choppa + slugga is a wash), three you’re packing enough klaws to one-round krump carnifex, terminators, monoliths, or anything tough you’d actually come up against. You don’t take gun upgrades because this is an expensive melee unit and 4th ed had fixed charge ranges, so spewing out some powerful shots gave your target the opportunity to remove models closer to you and lose yourself the charge. You want bikes because it makes your nobz immune to most forms of ID (str 8) ineffective, meaning your nobz get to soak better and the pain boy gets to work. Most importantly taking bikes actually allows a unit of nobz to not just be mega nobz but worse for more points, as it gives you the speed to engage desired targets in addition to a significant durability upgrade.

Kombi weapons and armor start to come into play once you hit 5th ed and their allocation shenanigans (but still not really for shooting), while kombi flamers become an okay choice (if you have extra points) in 6th ed with Wall of Death.

Bikes specifically did not raise the ID threshold, which is why the T was listed as 4(5). Makes 'em much tougher against small arms though.

 Haighus wrote:
Bikes specifically did not raise the ID threshold, which is why the T was listed as 4(5). Makes 'em much tougher against small arms though.

Smoke cloud.. Don't ever forget the smoke cloud.


biker nobs were mean, basically capable of turning basically every single fight into an highspeed bar brawl and with the capabilities to win said brawls by sheer toughness and punch.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Smoke cloud.. Don't ever forget the smoke cloud.

And the armour - warbikers were had 4+ saves on top of their 4+ cover, and of course the dakkaguns, and scoring, and feel no pain, and WS5 with the banner, and the strength 10 powerfist wielding warboss out front...

Cost an arm and a leg but you certainly saw your investment in action.

I just got the foot slogging nobz so unfortunately no bikes, though man I've heard the legends of how tough the bikers can get.

Gonna go with a couple more klaws than planned, and fewer big choppas. Its sad that big choppas seem not the best, as I rather like the looks of them.

The 4th ed codex is great! we use it in our oldhammer 5th ed centric games. we use the old 4th ed wound allocation so the wound shenanigans of 5th are not a problem (wounds are allocated by the owning player and wounded models must be removed first). in my current experience fighting them, i would recommend lootas, and storm boyz led by zagstruk. i once faced an army of boys where the guy took mad doc grotsnik and spent a bunch of points cyborking all his orks.....made them stupid hard to kill.

For funzies i recommend acquiring the old FW imperial armor book "the raid on kestral novum" for even more fun silly ork units.

The dark eldar player came back with even more stuff. apparently his excitment over playing 5th ed again has led his down the rabbit hole of ebay rescues to get his hands on come classic metal minis.

I was reffing this game to refamiliarize the players with the rules.

This time out it was 2k game end to end with 3 objectives VS imperial guard. both players were running infantry hordes. this was a slog of a game with only one immobilized raider left out of the vehicles in the game. the game went 6 turns with the guard nto having enough dakka at the end to kick the eldar off the center objective. eldar win 2/1

big highlights-the dark eldar archon failed his 2+ invul save on a S6 attack and got instant death for his troubles. the lord commissar charged a squad of calabite warriors and beat them enough to make them flee.....only to get himself gunned down in the next turn.

A before and after shot including the craters of dead vehicles.

 kurhanik wrote:
I just got the foot slogging nobz so unfortunately no bikes, though man I've heard the legends of how tough the bikers can get.

Gonna go with a couple more klaws than planned, and fewer big choppas. Its sad that big choppas seem not the best, as I rather like the looks of them.

If you mean the multi part plastic nobz that dropped in 5th or 6th, they’re great bikers. Their legs and stance look literally perfect when you stick them on a warbike (or looted Marine bike) and it’s easy to line one bike arm (holding the handlebars) up to them.

 aphyon wrote:

big highlights-the dark eldar archon failed his 2+ invul save on a S6 attack and got instant death for his troubles.

That is just how shadowfields worked. It will bounce every hit except strength 6 which it will fail the first time.

Jbz` wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

big highlights-the dark eldar archon failed his 2+ invul save on a S6 attack and got instant death for his troubles.

That is just how shadowfields worked. It will bounce every hit except strength 6 which it will fail the first time.

Indeed, just like characters dying to massed lasgun fire. but that is one of the great things about classic 40K epic things happen, when guardsman #36 kills a named character or an HQ in this case an archon..... the players have a a bit of fun ribbing.

My recent battle on the admech table was understandably my admech force with witch hunter allies VS a demon hunters inquisitorial strike force.

The game
2k points
12" deployment
1 center objective

The game went a full 7 turns with the center objective swinging back and forth that ending up being contested.

my callidus assassin and my sicarian infiltrators both came in on the wrong end of the table and ending up fighting tanks.


I managed first blood and line breaker to pull off a victory.

the up ended drill was being used as a drop pod for his dreadnought as we all forgot ours.

I forgot to take pictures from last week’s game but World Eaters vs Dark Eldar was a seriously fun back n forth. After my Defiler got blown up it was curtains for me though.

Highlights:
“Why aren’t you running your cultists AROUND the dangerous terrain?”
Cause they are dumb Khorne cultists.. straight line!

Said dumb cultists making it through the forest to surround, frag and blow up a transport, only to ALL die in the ensuing explosion. LMAO

The Helldrake being an absolute boss with it’s baleflamer till it’s death

My opponent learning what happens when a Rhino with dozer blades makes a suicide ram at his squads.



Playing World Eaters by leaning into the lore is fun.. I don’t need to make “wise” tactical decisions, just go for more blood and skulls!

You forgot Kharn being BOSS as always, and even better the rhino finally got to use it's destroyer upgrades.

Great fun to watch, i think Khorne was pleased

The 'Dozer blade on the Rhino is cool.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The 'Dozer blade on the Rhino is cool.

I am sure I've seen a 3rd party seller with that (or a very similar) plough. Can't think where though.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The 'Dozer blade on the Rhino is cool.

I found it online and my son printed it out.

It was a big 40K game night this weekend there were 4 games of classic 40K involving necrons, blood angels, guard, chaos and my admech.

My game was 2k points, 4 objectives end to end deployment against an imperial guard armored company.

turn 1 we both basically rolled in vain as nothing really happened other than some stunned vehicles. inquisitor lord karamozov died mostly to small arms fire (as it always happens being only a T5 monsterous creature) and my dune crawler with the ikarus array finally managed to take down a flyer. it ended up being a really close game with a 2 VS 1 objective swing that came down to a single kataphron breacher not loosing his final wound. victory for the admech.

What are those mini-tanks up the back? The pair of them?

He is running them as armored sentinels, he wanted a themed all tracked army so he had somebody 3d print his custom designs.

The admech needed a break after about 6 months in the battlefield.

It is time to break out my salamanders DUY chapter again.

This time around i went for a very aggressive assault themed force.

.breyarth ashmantle/lucius pod
.terminator lybrarian
.scouts in a land speeder storm
.ironclad dread talon
.assault squad
.storm eagle gunship
.death storm drop pod assault cannon variant

I was up against an armored company list with veteran and storm trooper infantry support.

i pushed hard in the beginning and took heavy casualties. breyarth and the storm eagle came in turn 3 and really turned things around. giving me a very close win. it would have been a tie that went in his favor with slay the worlord and first blood, but he decided to risk a hope for turn 7 and moved off his objective to attack one of my units.

2 of our IG players were setting up for a 1,500 point game so i offered to be the opposition with my marines.

We ended up play X2 1,500 IG armies VS my 3K space marine for, i ended up having to use everything i brought with me to get to 3K. since we were playing above 2,500 points as per 5th ed rules there was no FOC it was effectively a classic apocalypse game.

That being the case one guard player ran a tank company including a hell hammer baneblade, a malcador and a laser destroyer super heavy tank.

they also brought along a master of the fleet that kept my reserves off the table till turn 4. fortunately for me the game went all the way to turn 7 and i went second. it allowed me to get 2 of the objectives and contest the 3rd of 4 giving me 2 to 1 victory. all 3 of my venerable hellfire dreads survived as did 2 of my ironclads. both my forge masters went down as did my land speeders. but i did manage to take out 2 veteran squads, most of a storm trooper squad a russ and both the baneblade and malcador. My terminator librarian died to las gun fire of course.

Did another game against the guard player, this time around i decided to give him more infantry to shoot at in the form of all my scouts. i reduced the vehicle section to X2 venerable dreads, an ironclad in a lucius drop pod and brey'arth in a lucius pod. with a storm hawk interceptor to deal with is air threats.

We had 5 objectives this time around and he did a better job of things, managing to kill all my infantry save the librarian terminator and half my dreadnoughts. in the process however he lost all his tanks (except his command chimera), and his command squad leaving him holding 2 objectives to my 3. with his vulture and vendetta being his MVP units.

In slightly different news, I had a trial test of "HexHammer" last night with a buddy.

What is this you ask?

Basically, this is playing 40k but using Epic Scale figures. We're using the ProHammer rules as a basis, but you could in theory adapt this to any 40k ruleset. I'll be working on getting the actual rules drafted up for this in a dedicated topic, but here's roughly how it works:

* Game is played on a Hex Grid (roughly 1" size hexes) where each hex represents roughly a 3" x 3" area of a normal board. So each hex represents 3" of range/distance.

* Uses epic-scale miniatures. Each hex has a stacking limit of up to 6 infantry sized models, 3 bikes/beasts/mounts, or 1 vehicle/monstrous creature.

* You use a record sheet (working on a nice template that we'll share) to track casualties on a base (you can also remove individual models from the base if that's your will)

* Rules work pretty well. Anything that asks you check a distance basically divide it by 3 to get the number of hexes to measure.

* We'll provide some details on things like how vehicle facing is determined/measured, when bases can count a cover bonus, etc.

* For our trail game, we used some old Battletech maps we had lying around, which actually worked pretty well! The idea is to create some multi-hex modular boards that we an arrange in various ways before each game.

* Played a mirrior match with space marines vs space marines. About 1,200 and we played in barely over an hour! It was..... Epic!



What I love about this idea is the following:

(A) It's cheap. You can build an 40k army using epic scale figures for a fraction of the price.

(B) It's portable. You can fit a map (and/or board tiles) plus your army in a really small box! The modular boards will make it easy to bring a ton of terrain with you "on the go." The footprint fits on like a 24" x 36" size matt very easily.

(C) It's fast. Not having to fuss with individual models, wobbly models, meticulously checking line of sight and distances, etc. makes it much snappier to play, without really looking much from a tactical decision-making standpoint in the process.

Super stoked at the success of our test game.

One of our regulars has decided to expand into chaos using the 3.5 codex in our retro 5th ed games so he wanted to try out a few ideas.

we did a couple 500 point small games that didn't go so well for him as chaos tends to really suffer at low points. so we bumped it up to 1K so he could bring some vehicles. i just tossed some silly stuff against him and while i put up a good fight he did a board wipe by turn 5. he learned a bit and has some new ideas to test out.