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Wondering what a neat addition to my CSM force would, I looked up the allies possibilities.
I do not want Necrons (flying cheese ain't my thing).
Next up were Orks.

For 6 points, you got an Ork boy. Tough, 2 base attacks, come as a horde, can be thrown on cheap assault vehicules.
Then I saw the Nobz. These guys just plainly rock, and are dirt cheap for what they do.

So, as an addition to a CSM force (mainly PM as troops), I was wondering what you were thinking of these options :

1. Cheap
1 Boss, mega armour.
10 boyz (nob with PK, 2 burnas, truck) - I can put the WB in this one.

2. Less cheap
1 Boss, mega armour
10 Nobz (medik, 2/3 PK, maybe waaagh banner, truck)

3. Options
3 Kopters
3 Kans
More boys !

The basis of it is having cheap but hard hitting troops in the face of your opponent ASAP. PM are ideal to control mid-field, but I'd rather have Boyz/Nobz in my opponent DZ.

What do you think ?
What are the things I HAVE to think about when adding Orks to my CSM?

Cheers for your enlightment seasonned War Bosses !

I don't have the Ork codex, but can you get 30 bodies for 140 points? Because for me, Cultists are worth it for board control and cover saves rather than actual fighting ability!

I believe the biggest thing to consider with Orks and Chaos is they are not Battle Brothers. I think why you see big Cultist blobs is because you can have the cheap Cultist Champion (who accepts and issues challenges) and put in a Chaos IC that will make them Fearless and can hit hard in assault (which will inevitably occur).

Otherwise, I don't see a big issue.

@Seb: Boyz units cannot take burnas.

A 30 strong boy unit is fearless anyway,

question I have though, can the alied orks waagh with a warboss present?

The trukk full of nobz works quite well. I don't use such a big unit in my ork army but do intend to use it as allies to CSM. Mainly because it can get 24" across the board in the first turn, support any thing Huron has infiltrated and the best bit is the trukk counts as an assault vehicle so the nobz will probably get into combat before most of the chaos marines. Stick with less power claws and throw in a few big choppas. A couple of less lets you invest in cybork upgrades to give you the two 5+ saves.

Kans are a cheap way of soaking up anti-tank fire and can get the iniative on powerglove wielding terminators; I tend to field 3 with big shootas just for more weight of fire. The AV makes it difficult for crack grenades to glance / penetrate so if a marine unit has gone down to 6-7 strong you should be able to roll them in a combat (eventually as it is difficult for you to hit!)

One thing to consider are lootas. On the assumption that you will have some cover in your deployement zone, suddenly the 1-3 deffgun shots per turn S7 do come in very cheaply. The unit needs to be small enough to hid in the cover but large enough to make the guns count. 7 Lootas would work out at 105 points and makea better job of taking on enemy flyers than 115pts of autocannon havocs would.
You could go uber shooty and add a bigmek with a shokk attach gun, but you would have to lose the warlord and nobs coz of the FOC.

I use my blob of cultists and a meat shield to get Abaddon into CC, along with any cultists that survive the march

Your correct.
2 squads of 30 shoota boys with big shootas and a warboss is an excellent investment. The warboss in mega-armor is suprisingly good for his cost.

I would keep the investment at that. It gives you two excellent scoring units, one of which you can use aggressivly and the other for backfield camping.

Seems like Orks are a good idea. Which is great since I have some left from the 5th starter box.

But it seems like the options are :
-> Truck full of Nobs
-> Truck full of Boyz
-> Big units of walking boyz

I guess all options works, and I am happy that the mega armour boss is good (I like the mini!).

Since I have the codex in French, I think shootas are boyz with the rifles?
Why them since the cultists with autorifles would be more efficient at shooting?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lunarman wrote:
I don't have the Ork codex, but can you get 30 bodies for 140 points? Because for me, Cultists are worth it for board control and cover saves rather than actual fighting ability!

Orks are 6 points / boy, better WS, T, +1A. Nobz (i.e. "champions") are actually good at fighting and can take a PF equivalent.
A 10+ horde is fearless.

So yes, they are worth it better than cultist for board control, because you do not want to get in CC with them.

I've been considering a chaos army as a second project.
Orks do seem like a good option, I must admit.
They add greatly to the viability of predominant foot armies by adding huge mobs of decent infantry for cheap.
They're also just so, so friggin cool!

 Jasper wrote:
One thing to consider are lootas. On the assumption that you will have some cover in your deployement zone, suddenly the 1-3 deffgun shots per turn S7 do come in very cheaply. The unit needs to be small enough to hid in the cover but large enough to make the guns count. 7 Lootas would work out at 105 points and makea better job of taking on enemy flyers than 115pts of autocannon havocs would.
You could go uber shooty and add a bigmek with a shokk attach gun, but you would have to lose the warlord and nobs coz of the FOC.

IMHO, CSM are better at shooting stuff than orks. Flyers are not a concern with Heldrakes and FMC.

 labmouse42 wrote:
Your correct.
2 squads of 30 shoota boys with big shootas and a warboss is an excellent investment. The warboss in mega-armor is suprisingly good for his cost.

I would keep the investment at that. It gives you two excellent scoring units, one of which you can use aggressivly and the other for backfield camping.

and the warboss in mega armor is without fail an awesome model to convert and paint.

 lunarman wrote:
I don't have the Ork codex, but can you get 30 bodies for 140 points? Because for me, Cultists are worth it for board control and cover saves rather than actual fighting ability!

If you don't mind crud for range, you can get 33 bodies for 120 pts,

30 Grots, 3 runtherders.

The RH aren't that bad in CC either, and i've seen grot mobs roll units that underestimated them with shooting and in CC.

Downside is, they aren't fearless. The runtherders can force a reroll of the morale check though by killing a few grots..

lunarman wrote:I don't have the Ork codex, but can you get 30 bodies for 140 points? Because for me, Cultists are worth it for board control and cover saves rather than actual fighting ability!

30 Boyz is 180pts, waay better than 30 cultists, more attacks, higher toughness, fearless (til you get to near the end), more (better is questionable with bs2) shooting (assault 2 18" Str4)

crazyrossboy wrote:A 30 strong boy unit is fearless anyway,

question I have though, can the alied orks waagh with a warboss present?

You can call a Waaagh with or without a warboss, there's no mention of him being mandatory for a Waagh in the rules section.

I have to agree a mob of 30 boyz wins out over 30 cultists for any actual fighting. Cultists end up costing slightly more if you give them MoN to match the orks T.

Naked cultists are cheaper though if you need to babysit a backfield objective.

12 boyz in a trukk are too vulnerable unless you spam a ton of them.

 Exergy wrote:
and the warboss in mega armor is without fail an awesome model to convert and paint.

Agreed.

I see a lot of people talking about KFFs in this edition, but the mega-armored warboss really has what it takes to delivery massive amounts of punishment. They have the key things required to crush opposing ICs in challanges

* 2+ armor save so ICs with power weapons bounce off
* High STR PK attack, enough to ID ICs without T6 or EW.
* Inherent T5 to avoid ID attacks from S8 power fists
* Access to cheap 5++ save
* Lots of attacks (base 5 with attack squig)

That entire package costs 125 points. Put it next to any IC from the DA/BA/SW book and watch them cry. Point for point its amazingly effective.

ers126 wrote:


12 boyz in a trukk are too vulnerable unless you spam a ton of them.

And if you think about 12 boyz in a truck with a rhino full of PM on either side..?

why would you do this without them being battle brothers though? they have cc and autogun guys so slugga and shoota equivelent. go with cultists, youre chaos for a reason

 crazyrossboy wrote:
A 30 strong boy unit is fearless anyway,

question I have though, can the alied orks waagh with a warboss present?

[/quote

It is not difficult to take them down in a single assault to where they are not fearless.

Why is nobody thinking about using Battlewagons for some sweet deffrollin' ?
It takes a bit more points of course, but you could go with a Warboss, a Nobz unit in a dedicated BWG+Deffrolla, a boy unit (walking or embarked) and a Heavy Support BWG+Deffrolla
If you want to spend a few more points, you can include Green cheap Mutilators (Meganobz) in the second BWG

ers126 wrote:
Naked cultists are cheaper though if you need to babysit a backfield objective.

Nothings as cheap as a grot, 3 points each!! for 40 points you get 10 grots and a runtherd to sit on a home objective and be invisible cos they're tiny models...

or get an aegis quad gun for them to sit behind and get 4 bs3 tl shots...points well spent!

Don't forget that grots also can reroll failed LD tests by using the runtherder.

Cultists just sort of ... well ... run...

One thing you may want to watch out for is the fact those Orks are not scoring.

Allies of convenience are treated as enemy units and thus you cannot claim the objective with them or while they are too close to your own troops. They will serve as a denial unit but you will still need to be holding objectives with your own Primary detechment.

Cultists while inferior combatants have no such issues and thus in the objective heavy world of 6th are the superior troops in my book.

 Dunklezahn wrote:
One thing you may want to watch out for is the fact those Orks are not scoring.

Yea....maybe....

Check with your local TO before you assume that ruling.

Yakface seems to think that its pretty clear that AoC Troops units can score for you. I agree with him.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/507154.page

I agree you should check with your TO as the logic in Yak's thread is entirely dependant on an artificial insertion of a line between your units and how your units see the enemy.

If they don't make that distinction then those Orks are an enemy denial unit within 3" of the objective. As such they claim the objective as scoring troops but then also are an enemy denial unit and stop themselves scoring. They are one of your units and your units treat them as enemy...

Just something to watch out for.

 Dunklezahn wrote:
I agree you should check with your TO as the logic in Yak's thread is entirely dependant on an artificial insertion of a line between your units and how your units see the enemy.

There's no artificial line at all. Checking who has models within 3" of an objective is not an action taken by your units, therefore the AoC rule doesn't apply. Your units don't "see" an enemy unit nearby and stop claiming, the players together total up who has claims on the objective and decide which unit gets assigned control of it. RAW is perfectly clear, AoC units do not deny your scoring units.

And of course RAI is even more clear, if GW ever gets around to releasing an FAQ about the subject it's a safe bet that they will rule that AoC units do not deny your scoring units.

I'd take ork's over cultists.

I'd take plague zombie cultists, over orks.

Plague zombie cultists, are fearless, feel no pain, and cheaper than ork's. Sure, they are not as killy, but that's not what these big blobs are for, they are primarily for scoring.

Not that an ork boy squad isn't well killy'. But cheaper, and fearless down to the last model, is hard to argue with in my opinion.

Evileyes wrote:
Sure, they are not as killy, but that's not what these big blobs are for, they are primarily for scoring.

Not that an ork boy squad isn't well killy'. But cheaper, and fearless down to the last model, is hard to argue with in my opinion.

Zombie cultists are good, but I would rather have 30 boys.

30 boys bring 56 STR 4 shots at 18" (though not all will get in range), and 9 STR 5 shots. 30 boys can run. 30 boys can go to ground when needed.
Zombies are fearless but they can be crushed in combat. T3, 6+ save/5+ FNP just does not survive to lots of attacks. It might take a squad of TH/SS the entire game to grind through them, but 6 wraiths will make short work of them.

 labmouse42 wrote:

Evileyes wrote:
Sure, they are not as killy, but that's not what these big blobs are for, they are primarily for scoring.

Not that an ork boy squad isn't well killy'. But cheaper, and fearless down to the last model, is hard to argue with in my opinion.

Zombie cultists are good, but I would rather have 30 boys.

30 boys bring 56 STR 4 shots at 18" (though not all will get in range), and 9 STR 5 shots. 30 boys can run. 30 boys can go to ground when needed.
Zombies are fearless but they can be crushed in combat. T3, 6+ save/5+ FNP just does not survive to lots of attacks. It might take a squad of TH/SS the entire game to grind through them, but 6 wraiths will make short work of them.

you dont even need wraiths. Assault marines will make short work of them, and we all know how great assault marines are.

30 boys can't GtG, because they're Fearless. They can once they get under the Fearless threshold, though.

I agree that Boys are an awesome substitute for or supplement to Cultists if you're interested in allying Orks. They have MUCH more offensive potential, are substantially more durable, and don't cost much more.