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I'd argue that a Warboss has a major interest in giving the lads a good fight.


See without a good scrap every now and then, orks fall into internal fighting. So a Warboss who doesn't provide ample fights for their horde will see it turn in on itself which could mean that they lose command.


OF course really smart Warbosses realise that they can do more than just seek out fights. They can engineer situations to result in favourable fights. Heck they've even saved favoured opponents so that their opponent can go away; rebuild and provide a fun fight later.


The more fights the bigger the waaagh grows
The bigger the waaagh the more fights it needs

Deliver and the waaagh grows; fail to deliver and it shatters.

Charax wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
The first sentence says 'select one of the battle sizes below'.

None of those are 500 points, so the game is telling you you can only choose one of those 3 point levels to play. It's not an inference, it's an instruction to pick 1000, 2000, or 3000. Those are your only points level options the game offers to pick from.

So you read the "select one of the battle sizes below" part and then just kind of lost interest after that, drifted off, had a snack or something? because it's immediately followed by:
"This will determine the total number of points each player can spend to build their army"

CAN

Not MUST

No minimums are listed, so if you are playing at 500pts, or 750pts, or 999pts, then you can use the Incursion rules
I mean hell, you can play 500pt games using Onslaught rules if you really want to, because the game size is the total number of points you can spend, not the number of points you must spend.

I have no dog in this fight, I was merely pointing out what the rules say.

I would say Can is being used as 'is allowed' to spend in order to avoid exactly the issue brought up about not having exactly 2000pt armies. That's deliberately legal language to prevent arguments over having 1995pts being illegal.


Ive no issue with it being used to evidence different points maximums for armies, but I will say the single use of can to open up what is otherwise pretty clearly written to describe the flat numbers emphasised in the graphics is about as poor a way to provide players that instruction as you can get, which is at odds with the legalese and nit picky way in which gw writes their rules these days.

I can't think of another rule in the game that would rest on the use of a single word to allow you to do something other than what they've specified in everything around that one word.

Maybe that's what it's for but I'd vote it as the absolute worst rules implementation in this edition. They could have written 1-1000, 1001-2000 and 2001-3000 to explicitly say this in a way that doesn't rely on the use of a single word without changing the graphics design at all.

The fixed battle sizes to me match their fixed unit costs in design aesthetics so it doesn't see at all odd.

 Overread wrote:
I'd argue that a Warboss has a major interest in giving the lads a good fight.


See without a good scrap every now and then, orks fall into internal fighting. So a Warboss who doesn't provide ample fights for their horde will see it turn in on itself which could mean that they lose command.


OF course really smart Warbosses realise that they can do more than just seek out fights. They can engineer situations to result in favourable fights. Heck they've even saved favoured opponents so that their opponent can go away; rebuild and provide a fun fight later.

That's just a regular warboss, they are way more intelligent than imperial propaganda gives them credit for. There is a reason why the Deathwatch keeps tabs on all the Waaagh!s out there.
A really smart warboss like Thrakka, Badrukk or Ufthak makes multi-stage long-term plans AND has the ability to make the other orks actually follow those plans.

Deliver and the waaagh grows; fail to deliver and it shatters.

It has been described to be more of a "fail to deliver, and someone might backstab you because they think they would make a better boss". These kind of back-stabbings than often result in mass front-stabbings because a bunch of nobz who were kept in check by one big boss suddenly think they should be the boss. Also more back-stabbings if bloodaxes are involved.
The novel "warboss" does a great job at describing what happens when the big boss sudden has a gargant's head dropped on it.

There is comando orks, so ork tactics are quite advanced when needed to be.

Aren't Kommandos looked down on though for being too sneaky? I remember reading in the 4th ed codex that Kommandos are seen as kind of odd by most orks for wanting to use stealth first.

Orks are a weird one like that.

Yes, on the whole they’re predictable and can be baited. But, they’re also wildly unpredictable. You can’t really cover all possible Orky Tactics, because they fight largely from instinct. But they also adapt rapidly to new ways of fighting demonstrated by their foes.

Kommandos work because standard doctrine says Orks don’t do sneak attacks.

I’ve previously speculated such Orky specialists are just particularly niche Oddboyz. Not as generally useful and essential to Orky Kultur as Doks, Meks and Runtherdz etc. But still an expression of Ork Society’s Self Sufficient Programming. A way to provide specialist troops so when specialist troops are Just The Ticket, there they are, ready to go. Even if their specialism is something most Orks find distasteful.

I'm a bit confused as to where the various strands of argument in the thread are going.

I guess to be objectionable, I'd ward against this idea that Space Marines and Eldar etc are somehow special, and that all games need to accommodate for this.

I mean yes, neither faction probably should fight a conventional trench fight engagement where thousands of guys are hurled into a meat grinder. (Although its equally easy to come up with scenarios where they'd do precisely that). Both should be launching some lightning assault to seize a strong point, assassinate a leader or hold a point while some wider strategic maneuver is taking place. But this effectively makes Marines and Eldar the "real armies", while other factions are NPCs that blunder around being maneuvered on. Which I'd contend isn't exactly fun in a two player game.

Its in turn why people hate move-shoot-move. You may think its the high point of skill - and indeed arguably it is. For your opponent however its just an exercise in frustration. If you "play well", they don't get to play at all. Which is fine versus a computer which doesn't have feelings (for now), but not so much a human player.

But it does suit them thematically if you view the game itself as part of a wider engagement. Then, the smaller, highly specialised forces are on a highly specific mission.

For Marines, it’s the old pressure point shtick. Their actions in-game can be translated as creating a gap in the enemy line for others to follow up, decapitation of enemy high command (however localised) and so on.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily matched by the actual missions. Which is a different issue. Or is it? I’m really not sure.

For the theatre of my mind’s eye, I’d prefer objectives to be something more than “just that spot there”. It should represent something tangible. An asset to be seized, a tool to be dismantled etc.