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I'm looking for some advice. I'm getting back into the tournament scene. The last time I played tournaments was really 5th edition. I'm running Orks and am wondering how to defeat the Astra Militarum / Castellan lists out there. Does anyone have any advice?

Try using Da Jump to keep feeding boyz into the AM units. Even basic Ladz will mince regular humies in assault but the real points is to tie up as many units of them as possible to cut down on their shooting.

As for the Castellan, I am not sure it is even worth trying to kill it. It can't claim objectives by itself so kill the Guard and try to get the objectives. Castellans are built to kill tanks and elite infantry. Even if the Castellan shoots all game, it will struggle to make its point back by shooting regular infantry.

So play a horde army and make sure you sacrifice Gretchin wherever possible. Make your opponent weep at the wasted potential whenever his relic plasma obliterator kills another grot while you drown his regular forces under the green tide.

Orks can one-shot a Castellan fairly easily, using Lootas or Tankbustas.

In either case, Mob Up a 10 man + 15 man group. Then use Da Jump to jump the Tankbustas within 24" of the Castellan if using Tankbustas. Then use More Dakka to trigger extra shots on 5's and 6's. Then use Showin' Off to shoot twice to finish it if it's not dead.

VERY expensive both points wise and CP wise... .but they'll one hit KO a Castellan.

 Horst wrote:
Orks can one-shot a Castellan fairly easily, using Lootas or Tankbustas.

In either case, Mob Up a 10 man + 15 man group. Then use Da Jump to jump the Tankbustas within 24" of the Castellan if using Tankbustas. Then use More Dakka to trigger extra shots on 5's and 6's. Then use Showin' Off to shoot twice to finish it if it's not dead.

VERY expensive both points wise and CP wise... .but they'll one hit KO a Castellan.

No, they won’t one shot a castellan, even the full loota bomb will definitely stuggle. Also if this AM/Castellan player is worth their salt then they have taken the 2+ saves relic and the ignore ap -1 in this match up anyway. So not a viable tactic, if they do take those two buffs, then a full loota bomb would need 9 rounds of shooting to kill a castellan. (Real math, factoring in more Dakka!!!)
I’d say orks best chance would be getting a biker boss in there and fighting twice w/ relic claw and brutal but kunnin

Straight_Memer wrote:

 Horst wrote:
Orks can one-shot a Castellan fairly easily, using Lootas or Tankbustas.

In either case, Mob Up a 10 man + 15 man group. Then use Da Jump to jump the Tankbustas within 24" of the Castellan if using Tankbustas. Then use More Dakka to trigger extra shots on 5's and 6's. Then use Showin' Off to shoot twice to finish it if it's not dead.

VERY expensive both points wise and CP wise... .but they'll one hit KO a Castellan.

No, they won’t one shot a castellan, even the full loota bomb will definitely stuggle. Also if this AM/Castellan player is worth their salt then they have taken the 2+ saves relic and the ignore ap -1 in this match up anyway. So not a viable tactic, if they do take those two buffs, then a full loota bomb would need 9 rounds of shooting to kill a castellan. (Real math, factoring in more Dakka!!!)
I’d say orks best chance would be getting a biker boss in there and fighting twice w/ relic claw and brutal but kunnin

Admittedly I didn't do the math on lootas... it's complicated :-/

Having been on the receiving side of the Tankbustas though, THAT one I'm SURE will one-shot a Knight through a 3++ save.

Having a bike boss around with the relic klaw, brutal but kunnin' and the fists of gork power will reliably kill a knight in one turn without any CP assistance (and if the dice gods hate you there is the option to swing again as you die). If you can support him with, say some evil sunz stormboys or a badmoons shootaboys unit thrown in via da jump, you'll pretty easily strip away screens, eat overwatch with the stormboyz then knock the knight out nice and quick. Additionally this group of units is pretty versatile.

I'm kind of moving away from the lootabomb. It's great against flyers, light vehicles and any sort of infantry but it will just bounce off a knight and requires so many resources and a lot RNG to work.

25 lootas getting max shots and doing more dakka and shoot again cannot 1 shot a knight on average.

Castellan will have more wounds and a better save, so it is even worse.

 Horst wrote:
Orks can one-shot a Castellan fairly easily, using Lootas or Tankbustas.

In either case, Mob Up a 10 man + 15 man group. Then use Da Jump to jump the Tankbustas within 24" of the Castellan if using Tankbustas. Then use More Dakka to trigger extra shots on 5's and 6's. Then use Showin' Off to shoot twice to finish it if it's not dead.

VERY expensive both points wise and CP wise... .but they'll one hit KO a Castellan.

A) most common relic is cawl's wrath
B) it is going to have 4++. Then 25 tankbusta indeed will one shot it
C) that's why when you shoot it it's going to take 3++ making tankbusta ap meaningless and not one shot it
D) with 25 lootas vs either 2+ save(super unlikely) or 3++ you average 12 wounds firing twice so 2 turns and not yet dead

Melee kills knights, no invul in melee, some of the FW knights can get a better Invul in melee (4+ if i remember) but a Castellan wont.

When against a Castellan or Crusader, heck even 3 Wardens, you WILL take lots of damage, so you have 2 options

1) Kill everything else and win on points
2) Kill the knight fast enough to not cripple you

Not every army/list can do option 1, and not every army/list can do option 2.

Pick an option and stick with it, whatever your army/list is best at, do that.

For me i just kill them, i have killed 2 knights on turn 1 multiple times in actual tournament pay, but i play Ynnari, so thats different. With my Nids i kill everything else and win via points.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS, i honestly think the meta will go towards 2-3 smaller knights with shooting and melee, it counters large knights and hordes at the sametime with Admech and house rules. 2 Wardens and 1 Crusader is very strong.

Each Loota, if hitting on a 5 and 6 and generating an extra shot from each hit, does the following per shot:

1 shot
4/9 hits
4/27 wounds
2/27 against a 4++, 4/81 against a 3++
4/27 damage (.15), 8/81 damage (.10)

Each Tankbusta, if hitting on a 5 and 6 and generating an extra shot from each hit, does the following per shot:

1 shot
4/9 hits
2/9 wounds
1/9 against a 4++, 2/27 against a 3++
1/3 damage (.33), 2/9 damage (.22)

Edit: IGNORE TANKBUSTA MATH! I FORGOT THEIR REROLLS!

In other words, against a 4++ Dominous Knight, you need 187 Loota shots or 84 Tankbusta shots.
Against a 3++ Dominous Knight, you need 280 Loota shots or 126 Tankbusta shots.

I'm not doing the math against a 2+ Knight with the Ignore AP-1 trait, since no one uses that.

So, can 25 Lootas do it?

Math says not nearly reliably enough.

 JNAProductions wrote:


Each Tankbusta, if hitting on a 5 and 6 and generating an extra shot from each hit, does the following per shot:

1 shot
4/9 hits
2/9 wounds
1/9 against a 4++, 2/27 against a 3++
1/3 damage (.33), 2/9 damage (.22)

This seems low. If you shoot 18 times you should get 6 hits, 12 misses on first round. Reroll 12, get 4 more so 10 hits. 10 hits for new shots, 3 hits more, 7 misses so reroll, 2 more(rounding down here). So total of 15 hits.

15 hits out of 18 shots is bit more than 4/9 I think...Think you forgot tank bustas reroll hits vs vehicles.

Against castellan with 4++ you thus need 21 tankbustas and bit more(so round up to 22 shots). 33 for 3++. This is you are double firing them with bad moon strategem.

I forgot that Bustas reroll failed shots against Vehicles.
That's my bad.

I have work in just a few minutes, so I can't redo the math at the moment, but thank you for pointing out my error.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Melee kills knights, no invul in melee, some of the FW knights can get a better Invul in melee (4+ if i remember) but a Castellan wont.

I could be wrong here but I'm fairly certain that the "cannot move next turn but 5+ invulnerable within 6" of the knight" stratagem effects the knight as well, so it can have a 5+ in melee

They don't.

Your sole chance is to get a Warboss on Bike w/ Relic PK into combat or a Ramming Speed Gorkanaught tellyporting in. And before that you'll need to deal with screening units and burn all your CP for stratagems.

The Tankbuster Wombo Combo burns like 8+CP and won't scratch a 3++ Castellan.

drogers66 wrote:
I'm looking for some advice. I'm getting back into the tournament scene. The last time I played tournaments was really 5th edition. I'm running Orks and am wondering how to defeat the Astra Militarum / Castellan lists out there. Does anyone have any advice?

Well my list has 4 Rokkits in each boyz squad. So thats a start. 15 lootaz ready to go will get the party started. 6 Traktor Kannons added to that? seems legit. i did that.

So that's a little over 16 wounds to the Castellan in one go against a 4+ invul save (degraded at least). It just means you gotta focus for a couple rounds Seems like you would have that much time to do it anyways.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

drogers66 wrote:
I'm looking for some advice. I'm getting back into the tournament scene. The last time I played tournaments was really 5th edition. I'm running Orks and am wondering how to defeat the Astra Militarum / Castellan lists out there. Does anyone have any advice?

How much you want to tool up specifically against knights btw? And does the AM have more knights than the castellan? If there are more knights(preferably questors) and you don't mind being bit inoptimal vs others...Howabout well obviously unit of tankbustas but then whopping _18_ kustom mega kannons?

Even vs 3++ castellan those KMK's will average some 21 wounds. Okay not dead but of course 15 tank bustas will finish it.

And here's the thing. You don't have any big unit that starts shooting. You declare one KMK vs castellan. Does he activate RIS? If yes well follow as above and kill it with KMK's and followed by tankbustas. OR you switch target. If he triggers for first KMK your 17 KMK's will average 40 wounds to questors so one dead, one half wound so degrades. Castellan is alive yes but he spent 3CP and might not even have saved even one wound with it(any 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 for save and RIS was meaningless). And here's another funny thing. KMK's are annoyingly tough targets for knights as they are so many units and knight weapons tend to overkill. Castellan arm weapons will kill average less than 2 KMK's. Maybe 3rd with shoulder cannon so he's looking at 3 KMK dead AT BEST with castellan...And I have rolled low for shots with volcano cannon or cawl's wrath failing utterly.

15 tankbustas with just two shots will average 21 wounds to questor. 26 if you use more dakka.

So if he has 2 questors and castellans you will easily kill both questors and hurt castellan that will then kill with good result 3 KMK. He has lost 800+ pts and wounded castellan. Tank bustas will likely die but if his AT firepower was concentrated mostly on knights I think the KMK's will win duel vs castellan in the long run. It will take over 6 turns for castellan to kill points back in KMK's.

Two issues with this is 18 KMK is lots of KMK's and you will be royally screwed against many more balanced armies. After codex upped price of KMK's they aren't quite as good as index when 18 KMK's was semi decent army.

tneva82 wrote:
How much you want to tool up specifically against knights btw? And does the AM have more knights than the castellan? If there are more knights(preferably questors) and you don't mind being bit inoptimal vs others...

Simply put, if you have not answered the Castellan question, the Ork Question and the (current) Ynnari question, then you are setting yourself up for tournament failure. It's truly that simple. You will do well...but not well enough... A LOT if you cannot answer those three questions.

Well yes but is the OP looking for winning tournament or kicking crap out of some castellan list that's giving him headache? Bit different. If he just wants to blow the crap out of say some 2 questors+castellan list that's different than trying to come up with tournament winning list(which with mono codex lists is pretty much fool's errand anyway)

The funny thing is people keep, focusing on the Castellen, which is part of this Astra Millicheese,Castellen lists power. Your focused on the wrong thing. Killing the Castellen doesn't actually remove the lists offensive power, which is actually dispersed through out the Guard 1400 points, the Castellen is esentially a distraction model, that hard to kill and has some damage output when fed the unlimited CP that the AM won't use.

Ice_can wrote:
The funny thing is people keep, focusing on the Castellen, which is part of this Astra Millicheese,Castellen lists power. Your focused on the wrong thing. Killing the Castellen doesn't actually remove the lists offensive power, which is actually dispersed through out the Guard 1400 points, the Castellen is esentially a distraction model, that hard to kill and has some damage output when fed the unlimited CP that the AM won't use.

Luckily really the only threat to an infantry-based ork list that the castelan actually poses is the shieldbreaker missiles. Other than that, it's killing like...10-12 orks per turn maybe, depending on what defenses you've got up?

The real threat is definitely the 1400 points of guard, at least to orks. Luckily, chewing through guardsmen is something orks are far better at doing.

The struggle for ork lists in the current competitive meta is that our list setup that's good at killing ynnari is gak at killling imperial soup, and our list that's good at killing imperial soup is gak at kililng ynnari.

To be fair both current meta lists are guilty of fundamentally breaking the game, hence no other codex, really has and answer and to some extent they really shouldn't, as they would have to be OP to compete. It's esentially 2 separate games in many ways, your either soup or fighting uphill.

Yannari is obvious as free activities in a fixed length game is always going to be strong, definataly too strong for what they pay.

AM castellen, like seriously GW building the codex with the most rediculous CP generation then "balancing" that by making the strategums not worth playing was always going to end up in those overly cheap CP being funeled into another codex's strategums, first it was custodes, then Blood Angels, then Knights

The biggest issue I find with the ork codex is not that we can't accomlish things, it is just that we have to somehow accomplish a lot of things with inferior tools. You can make a list that will do well against the AM/Castellen, but good luck vs those Ynarri lists. Funny enough I think GW could sell a bunch of models and fix orks, tau and Necrons weaknesses by just adding keyword Xenos and allowing them all to ally together.

If you want to ally Orks, Tau and Necrons, play narrative play. That's LITERALLY what it was made to do.

Matched Play is a botched attempt at reintroducing some semblance of factional structure to the game.

 G00fySmiley wrote:
The biggest issue I find with the ork codex is not that we can't accomlish things, it is just that we have to somehow accomplish a lot of things with inferior tools. You can make a list that will do well against the AM/Castellen, but good luck vs those Ynarri lists. Funny enough I think GW could sell a bunch of models and fix orks, tau and Necrons weaknesses by just adding keyword Xenos and allowing them all to ally together.

I mean every army has a defining way of doing things. I see no reason orks should be an exception. And I play orks.

I like Orks and they now have the tools. Thats a difference between 8E and previous ork editions where you had the tools against...most things. But hard counters existed. they just dont anymore. You can hit an enemy 80 times in one round with STr 7 -1 AP weapons now, in a single round. So. I'm not really seeing how we are lacking anything.

We are more prone to bad luck. You gotta' plan for that. Missed charges absolutely are bad for us. But we have 'Ere we Go. Can't ask for much more. Dont even need a character to do it. We move 5" but we can advance and charge which is a big deal. Makes us FAST without needing to pay for vehicles. We relied on vehicles befor to an extent. We can now ds to locations or outflank to locations etc... So mobility is no longer the killer it was for us.

Castellans are broken. Comparing yourself to soemthing that never should have been in 40K is not the right approach. EVERYONE hates it who faces it. But if 80 shots at -1 AP STR 7 isn't enough "tools", then by that definition, no one has them. Lol.

Ynnari are as broken as the Castellan and have been since they arrived in 7E. Its that simple. Auto-hitting weapons and/or the 5's and 6's stratagem both are tools to handle them as are artillery barrrages for when they kill a unit and zoom away like cowards! Wont be a fun game, but thats not because you're orks. Its because they are Ynnarri and by definition no fun to play against.

Orks are really good. They didn't perform poorly at LVO. Not winning a 660 person tournament is NOT an indicator that everyone who didn't win "sucks". We just have two boogeymen in our world right now. Fix them and you will see orks are as good as anyone.

 Jancoran wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
The biggest issue I find with the ork codex is not that we can't accomlish things, it is just that we have to somehow accomplish a lot of things with inferior tools. You can make a list that will do well against the AM/Castellen, but good luck vs those Ynarri lists. Funny enough I think GW could sell a bunch of models and fix orks, tau and Necrons weaknesses by just adding keyword Xenos and allowing them all to ally together.

I mean every army has a defining way of doing things. I see no reason orks should be an exception. And I play orks.

I like Orks and they now have the tools. Thats a difference between 8E and previous ork editions where you had the tools against...most things. But hard counters existed. they just dont anymore. You can hit an enemy 80 times in one round with STr 7 -1 AP weapons now, in a single round. So. I'm not really seeing how we are lacking anything.

We are more prone to bad luck. You gotta' plan for that. Missed charges absolutely are bad for us. But we have 'Ere we Go. Can't ask for much more. Dont even need a character to do it. We move 5" but we can advance and charge which is a big deal. Makes us FAST without needing to pay for vehicles. We relied on vehicles befor to an extent. We can now ds to locations or outflank to locations etc... So mobility is no longer the killer it was for us.

Castellans are broken. Comparing yourself to soemthing that never should have been in 40K is not the right approach. EVERYONE hates it who faces it. But if 80 shots at -1 AP STR 7 isn't enough "tools", then by that definition, no one has them. Lol.

Ynnari are as broken as the Castellan and have been since they arrived in 7E. Its that simple. Auto-hitting weapons and/or the 5's and 6's stratagem both are tools to handle them as are artillery barrrages for when they kill a unit and zoom away like cowards! Wont be a fun game, but thats not because you're orks. Its because they are Ynnarri and by definition no fun to play against.

Orks are really good. They didn't perform poorly at LVO. Not winning a 660 person tournament is NOT an indicator that everyone who didn't win "sucks". We just have two boogeymen in our world right now. Fix them and you will see orks are as good as anyone.

Orks underperform. Plain and simple. Pure SM finished higher at LVO. Pure Tau finished higher at LVO. There are multiple mono factions that do better than Orks and I would argue any army able to soup is by definition better in a competitive sense.

Either way I look forward to you proving me wrong and winning major tournaments with Orks.

Lootas are leaving the meta, they are not the unit or the answer you think they are.

The best answer to this question is to simply ignore the Castellan, kill the scoring troops and take objectives. That has always been the Ork game plan and it always will be. Accept that we don’t have adequate tools to deal with the big robot and move on trying to win the game another way.

Lootas are pretty terrifying.

Lootas are just a super glass cannon.
They hit crazy hard but die to a stiff breeze. I really dont like using them because it is not that hard to kill them off, even with 40+ grots shielding them.
Realistically you will get to the 15 lootas before the 40 grots die anyway.

Martel732 wrote:
Lootas are pretty terrifying.

T4,6+ save. So scary. Plz help.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Lootas are pretty terrifying.

T4,6+ save. So scary. Plz help.

Well, maybe T4 5++ with around 20 ablative wounds is the usually seen state.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
The biggest issue I find with the ork codex is not that we can't accomlish things, it is just that we have to somehow accomplish a lot of things with inferior tools. You can make a list that will do well against the AM/Castellen, but good luck vs those Ynarri lists. Funny enough I think GW could sell a bunch of models and fix orks, tau and Necrons weaknesses by just adding keyword Xenos and allowing them all to ally together.

I mean every army has a defining way of doing things. I see no reason orks should be an exception. And I play orks.

I like Orks and they now have the tools. Thats a difference between 8E and previous ork editions where you had the tools against...most things. But hard counters existed. they just dont anymore. You can hit an enemy 80 times in one round with STr 7 -1 AP weapons now, in a single round. So. I'm not really seeing how we are lacking anything.

We are more prone to bad luck. You gotta' plan for that. Missed charges absolutely are bad for us. But we have 'Ere we Go. Can't ask for much more. Dont even need a character to do it. We move 5" but we can advance and charge which is a big deal. Makes us FAST without needing to pay for vehicles. We relied on vehicles befor to an extent. We can now ds to locations or outflank to locations etc... So mobility is no longer the killer it was for us.

Castellans are broken. Comparing yourself to soemthing that never should have been in 40K is not the right approach. EVERYONE hates it who faces it. But if 80 shots at -1 AP STR 7 isn't enough "tools", then by that definition, no one has them. Lol.

Ynnari are as broken as the Castellan and have been since they arrived in 7E. Its that simple. Auto-hitting weapons and/or the 5's and 6's stratagem both are tools to handle them as are artillery barrrages for when they kill a unit and zoom away like cowards! Wont be a fun game, but thats not because you're orks. Its because they are Ynnarri and by definition no fun to play against.

Orks are really good. They didn't perform poorly at LVO. Not winning a 660 person tournament is NOT an indicator that everyone who didn't win "sucks". We just have two boogeymen in our world right now. Fix them and you will see orks are as good as anyone.

Orks underperform. Plain and simple. Pure SM finished higher at LVO. Pure Tau finished higher at LVO. There are multiple mono factions that do better than Orks and I would argue any army able to soup is by definition better in a competitive sense.

Either way I look forward to you proving me wrong and winning major tournaments with Orks.

Lootas are leaving the meta, they are not the unit or the answer you think they are.

The best answer to this question is to simply ignore the Castellan, kill the scoring troops and take objectives. That has always been the Ork game plan and it always will be. Accept that we don’t have adequate tools to deal with the big robot and move on trying to win the game another way.

Skill matters. More. Look at the names. It wasnt some rando


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Lootas are pretty terrifying.

T4,6+ save. So scary. Plz help.

Ignoring the gretchen shield around 25 of them? Come now.