Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hiya all.
I've played for Space Marines and Tau for many many years and whilst I enjoy the heavy armour & powerful shooting of the Marines and the mobilty & versatility of the Tau ... ... The calling to collect a fun to play green tide Horde army is too much to ignore.

My Marine army is a very fast attack army with powerful backup support, and my Tau are a highly mobile backline army.
So I'm wanting my ork army to be a Horde army in every sense of the word, relying more on trukks etc to transport across the battlefield and not so much on a large bike or jumpacker squads. I do own a few bikers as they came in the boxsets I bought and they will be included in my army, I just want to avoid using too. many.

The mistake i made with the above armies is I bought lots of things without knowing how they worked thereby wasting money as they didn't suit my play style and no longer see the battlefield. I want to avoid doing this with Ork by asking for advice from the Dakka krew on which units would work well with a horde army. ("EG. horde armies don't work well with a looted tank" etc)

I have already bought
2x battleforces box sets (before the new ork codex etc was released)
2x Killer Kans
1x Ork Warboss
1x Box of boys
(I also have spare Marine tanks, Dreadnoughts and bikes if needed)

In Short...
1. What type of units complement a large Horde army?
2. Is the HQ Grazthrakk charactor for this type of army good choice to take or are Warboss's better?
3. Do I really need lots of bikers? (I'm hoping to avoid a large fast attack army and use trukks instead for rapid deployment, something my other armies don't use)
4. What ratio of Slugga boyz to shooter boyz works well for most people in a horde army?
5. I love the look of the Shock attack gun but its drawbacks seem as though they are more problematic for a Horde army than a smaller ork army. Am I barking up the wrong tree?
6. Any specific charactors or units you would recomend for this type of army?

Thanks for your patients in reading my ramblings, Any advice would be very helpful, if there's something above I haven't written or explained clearly then I'll be happy to explain further. I'm still getting to grips with the new Codex as its HUGE hehe

The first question is: Do you want to be entirely footslogging or mechanised? I think the list is stronger if you go all out one way or another. A combination approach could work, but you'd be thinning the horde aspect.

If you are going for a trukk horde, Sluggas are a good choice. You probably want at least 4 trukks, I favour 6.
Power claws are pretty much essential on every mob. in this army build I would go for a power claw warboss on a bike.[Edit: Oookay, now it's letting me edit...]
I've had a lot of success with this type of army so far- 6 easy wins and only one loss. There's not much your opponent can do to stop the boyz reaching his lines, and your speed and fragility makes for a tactically interesting army to play.
I don't think the bikes are that great, but that said I haven't tried them. There could be some merit in a tough as nails nob biker unit.
If you are going for an infantry horde, I suggest going all infantry. This has two advantages: It denies your opponent juicey targets for his antitank units, and it means everything (pretty much) will be on the table at the start of an escalation mission. I also would reccomend squads of 30 models. This is because they need to be able to absorb a lot of fire on the way in.
In this build, big meks with kustom force fields are very useful, as is the biker boss. Ghaz is alright, but he will slow down whatever unit he's with. The bonus is that everyone else will get there faster because of his "Waaagh".
Both sluggas and shootas have their place in this sort of horde, but on balance I prefer shootas- they extra threat range is just too good. They're still pretty tough in close combat. If you are bringing Ghaz, or Warpheads, sluggas might be pretty good, and with the new fifth ed rumours they might be able to run every turn, which would be savage. I suggest making both.
I've played only two games with the horde. The first one, I had only 20 strong mobs, and I got blasted off the table. The second, I went for 30 strong. I won. But it wasn't as fun as the trukk army for a couple of reasons:
1. Moving 150+ models every turn is a pain.
2.Everything ends up in difficult terrain.
3.Trying to keep everything spread out to avoid templates is really tedious.
4. Enemies can effectively use refused flank tactics on you.
5.The game boils down to move, shoot, move, shoot, move, fleet, assualt.

So I prefer the trukk horde. But you may prefer the infantry idea, and that's cool.

Units:
Apart from your boys mobs, which are the heart and soul and are very good, there are a few other great units:
Warboss: Equipped with a power claw and sitting on a bike he's great for dealing with armoured vehicles. Alternatively, you could put him in a trukk with some boys for the same job.
Big Mek with Kustom Force Field: Great at keeping the boys alive in a foot horde.

Lootas: The single best fire support unit in the codex. Brilliant at taking down enemy infantry and tanks up to AV13. Vunerable to being shot though, so put them in cover. Also, remember that the more mobs you take the less likely you are to find cover for all of them.

Kommandos: Same as the old codex- sneak up, ambush something, kill it dead.

Stormboys: Really handy in the foot horde because they are so fast, watch out for counter assualt units nailing them though.

Battlewagons: AV14 pie plates for the win! These also make some less cool units (like burnas and tankbustas) better by providing them with a sturdy transport option.

Sorry, can't seem to edit that post, but when I was talking about the trukk horde, I should have written "ork warboss on a bike" rather than on foot.

All infantry armies need some fast unit to take the heat off the slower elements. Take either trukks, stormboys, or both to fill this role.

Snikrot complements a Slogger list really well because he can force opponents away from the board edge into the open, preventing a refused flank to some extent.

Lootas are the best cover fire any army could ask for. Even if they do get shot, that still takes heat off the elements that are moving forward.

Battlewagons are only good if you are using them as cheap transports to get Tankbustas or 'Ard Boyz somewhere safely on the first turn. After that they serve little use.

As said before, either take lots of something, or enough that you can hide it.

Well to be honest I would start with

Bike Warboss w/ PK
2x30 Shootas, Rokkits, PK Nob
Snikrot & Kommandos
1x20 Stormboyz, PK Nob w/Bosspole

Those are the best buys imo. As your force increases in size just add another warboss, more shootas, more stormboyz.

I love dakka.... all of this advice you've gotten so far has been dead on... No disinformation to sift through here.

i thought I might hijack this thread to ask a follow-up question.

It seems like the foot slogger list should be a combinatin of big meks, warbosses, lootas, shootas, and stormboyz. that makes sense in my head, the lootas have 2-3 turns to shoot, before they are dead or all their targets are locked in CC. the stormboyz and warboss provde the pressure, and the shootas provide the bodies and the late game power klaw cleanup. Seems like that just works like a charm in my head.

If you are running a 6 trukk list with a bike warboss, do lootas lose some of their usefulness? It seems like you'd have to deploy them in an area where your trukks won't block their LOS. All trukks that don't get popped are going to give the orks a turn 2 assault. That gives the lootas a very limited window to provide fire support before even more lanes of fire get blocked with CCs. Are there ways to provide an ultra-mobile speed freak army with fire support that is also mobile, and able to hunt better than lootas? I will be playtesting bike units this month. 9 man bike units seem to have a decent enough leadership to remain in play for some pivotal shooting turns. (rear armor skimmers, infantry) Also smaller bike units with the leadership 9 warboss would also have adequate leadership. With 6 trukks in play, i would hope most modern VP denial armies would be hard pressed to bring down a 4+ cover save T5 unit and fight off all of the turn 2 power klaw charges it was about to eat.

Are there any other mobile fire support units that can keep up with the speed freaks that you guys think are worth testing out? Are lootas essential even to an all trukk force, to protect them from skimmers and infantry?

one other quick question... What upgrades are you all taking on your trukks for 4th edition?

I have found the lootas to work better with the trukk mobs. The reason being that your opponent generally can't afford to waste any shots on them as he's got a whole bunch of trukks bearing down on him. In almost every game I've played they've made it through pretty much unscathed due to target saturation.
Cover for them is easy, since your trukks are deploying behind area terrain if at all possible while they deploy in it, or best of all, on top of it.
Tankbustas seem like they might be good in a battlewagon, but I haven't tried this out yet. Burnas work really well against infantry, but you're leaving a hole in the list where skimmers are concerned if you take too big a unit.
I take red paint job and a rokkit on all my trukks, to get some extra antitank and keep the cost relatively low.

I too like the lootas in conjuction with a trukk based army. Placement is key of course, ensuring that you don't block your own LOS.

Generally the trukks I take have RPJ, rokkits, stikkbombs and reinforced rams. I may drop the stikkbombs as my opponents have learned that it's better to not be in cover when they get assualted. But of course that just means the lootas have a field day.

I take the rams because people often don't think you will be willing to drive through a forest to get to you. The rams also make it fun to do tank shocking after the boyz are delivered.

Tankbustas: i've only taken them in one game and I knew that I was facing nids, so glory hogs didn't come into play. That unit accounted for 2 elite fexes, 2 zoanthropes and knocked off a few wounds of a dakka fex also. And they were still scoring by end game. Vs nidzilla they were golden. Against all other I'm not so sure.

little late to this discussion but I can add some relevent feedback.

I'm not a fan of footslogging orks. the trukks will reliably drop 12 boyz into someone's face.. if you have a squad of 30 thats been shot to that level they're not even scoring anymore.

I've only ever played KOS , with 4 trukks in 1500-2000 points (I find 6 to be too many.. I might go to 5 though)
right now I run
warboss on bike
big mek w/ SAG
15 lootas
trukk of nobz
trukk of sluggas
trukk of sluggas
trukk of shootas
20 stormboyz
battlewagon
depending on points I add in a squad of bikes

now the lootas and mek will usually have good amount of targets.. especially light tanks and such. I rarely find my trukks getting in the way and the firepower is too damn good to pass up.

the trukks are always loaded out with RPJ , rokkits, stikkbombz, rams. it is a definately good way to set trukks up. I also run a rokkit in every squad that I can, to double up on the anti tank.

why the shootas in trukk? so that you can move 13" and then unload a bunch of 18" shoota dice w/o getting out of the trukk. I do this with the slugga squads to so that you can fire the rokkit off of the trukk and the rokkit in the squad at 37" away for a realistic shot at popping a tank or whatever.

tankbustas are pretty weak compared to lootas but I've heard they've been good for some people.