Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Ork HQ Choices

Hey guys,

right now I’m sitting in a small café near the university and have nothing to do. So what could I do with my spare time? Right, I could log into Facebook and do random stuff, BUT right now the Facebook- chat seems to be broken. Because of that I will just write a short update for my blog instead.

During the last month I wrote some, even quite longer, articles for the blog, but there is always this one guy, who is never satisfied with the amount he can read and always wants to have more (Yes, I mean you, I know that you read this ;) !!). Well, never mind, I actually really enjoy writing and painting for the blog, but I am somehow short of new ideas I could write about. With no real idea of what to write, I’m going to start a small series of articles of my recently played army: Orks. I really spent some time by now reading the codex and thinking about lots of units and possible combinations. In the upcoming articles I’m going to give you some ideas about different units of Orks and whether I would play them or rather leave them at home. I’ll also show and explain the list I am currently testing (up to now with pretty good results). If this works out good I’ll maybe continue this kind of articles for other armies, but that will take some while, because I do not have that much time to play and test new armies. But today I’ll start with a small article of possible HQ variations for different Ork armies, so lean back and enjoy.

Taking a look at tournaments and even games between friends we will see that most of the time special characters are banned from the game and because of that I am going to ignore them for now. I have just not had the ability to really test them in games.

As an Ork player we have three different HQ choices in our codex. Opposite to many other armies, especially any kind of Space Marines, Ork HQ are really cheap and therefore we often can play two of these. Our choices can be: the almighty Warboss, the Big Mek (the real star in our ensemble) and the Weirdboy (yes, he is really as weird as the name says). The combination of these can bring some powerful builds and some have already become relative standard.

If you think back to the article of my Nobbiker list, you can see what you could do with the possible combination of two Warbosses. Taking two of these guys gives you the opportunity to buy units of Nobz or MANz (Mega-Armoured-Nobz) as Troop choices, giving you some really powerful scoring units and leaving all your valuable Elite choices free to be filled up with crazy stuff like Lootaz or Tankbustaz. You could even mount your Warbosses on bikes and play them as onehit wonders for the enemy to deal with, while their Nob units do something completely different, because they needn’t be mounted on bikes as well. Typically I would equip a Warboss with bike+powerclaw, Megaarmour or (if you do not have the points) just with a powerclaw. BUT always by the cybork body and the bosspole (the pole is especially important if you field the WB with MANz, because the unit itself cannot by one).

The setup I play the most is a combination of a Warboss and a Big Mek. The Big Mek can be equipped with a KFF (KustomForceField) for only 85 points. With the help of the field he generates a cover save for all of your units within 6”, meaning that you can place him in a Battlewagon and expand this range a lot to protect nearly all of your vehicles from enemy fire. This is not good, no it is by far better than that. Ork vehicles should always be played as opentopped vehicles and are therefore always easily destroyed and because of that you will just love this little bastard for every cover save he grants you. The second HQ slot is mostly occupied by a WB in Megaarmour, I just like the fact, that he gets a 2+ armoursave and a powerclaw for free for only 40 points. I typically play this guy in a unit of 3 MANz and equip him with a bosspole and a cyborkbody (nothing worse than this unit just running away …). I get those two HQ choices for exactly 200 points, this is the same a Marine player pays for two of his HQ choices, but mine are already perfectly equipped :P

It is of course possible two combine two Big Meks in an army, but I just do not really see any advantages over the WB+Mek combination. Well, I could play two KFF-Meks, but if you know what you are doing with your army, you will never need two KFFs. The only other equipment the Big Mek can buy that is not available to the WB is the SAG (Shokk Attack Gun). Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh … I would never argue that the weapon is not funny and really fits a crazy Ork, but is it worth its points and the valuable HQ slot? I really doubt that. I have to admit that I never playtested this weapon, but this is only because I see no good reason to do that. I am just not that keen of weapons that can misfire at my own units or teleport my Big Mek right into nowhere (or CC). If you want to test that weapon feel free to do so and please please please tell me what it really does and if it is worth its points. Maybe I’ll test it then, too. But so long I will not touched this model ;)

I still ignored one of the HQ choices?! No, I’m sure I’ve talked about everything … oh … yeah well there is still this guy … the Weirdboy. So let’s see! He comes naked for 55 points and can be made safer (does this expression exist for an Ork psyker?) for an additional 30 points. No weapon upgrades or something else possible, so I should keep him away from CC? I am just never sure, what I can do with him. He can fire two different psychic powers (if I roll those), but still has just a BS of 2!! He could generate another Waaagh!, but this is better than it sounds, because the whole army can run in the current edition, so that I usually only need one Waaagh! per game. And he can randomly deepstrike with his whole unit or generate a bonusattack (typically the best of his powers). The main problem I have with him is his unreliability, I can never know what he does or if he just shoots at himself. Because of all this I can see no really place in my armies for this guy. Maybe I’ll one day test him with looooots of footslogging boys and hope for lots of Waaagh!s and bonusattacks, but otherwise he will always be there, where the SAG Big Mek is, faaaaaaar away from the battlefield.

As you can see there are three HQ choices, but personally I would always stick to the standard way of a KFF-Mek and a WB (of any kind). The Big Mek even allows us to play a single Deff Dread as a Troop choice and I tested that, but I am just not really kind of this unit itself. I would love to be able to field Killa Kans as Troops instead and be able to field Battlewagons in Heavy Support and Kans as Troop Choices, this would give some really sick lists. But all in all the Big Mek is already great as he is and I do not want to moan about his special rules.

So we come to the end of today’s article, I hope you enjoyed reading it and will upload some CSM and terrain pictures at the weekend, so as always stay tuned for the next posts ;)

Cheers Cleutin

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Lash anyone?

Hey guys,


sitting in a train, I've got lots of spare time and decided to use this by writing a short article for my blog. Last time I gave a quick look into the ideas of a Nobbiker list and spoke a few words about how to play such a list on a tournament. This time I'll show you the CSM list I am currently working at. Once again it's a list that is mostly designed to be played at tournaments and bears huge frustration for your opponent, depending on the list he is playing. I am talking about the classic 2/9 list (well, in my case it is more a 2/8 list, because my list only features 8 Obliterators).

After taking a look at the ETC 2010 lists, I decided to go with the list, which was played by the German team. The list looks as follows:



*************** 2 HQ ***************


Daemon Prince

- Wings

- Mark of Slaanesh

- Lash of Submission

- - - > 155 Points


Daemon Prince

- Wings

- Mark of Slaanesh

- Lash of Submission

- - - > 155 Points



*************** 2 Elites ***************


3 Chaos Terminators

- 1 x Chainfist

- 3 x Combi-Meltagun

+ Chaos Land Raider

- Dozer Blade

- - - > 345 Points


3 Chaos Terminators

- 1 x Chainfist

- 3 x Combi-Meltagun

+ Chaos Land Raider

- Dozer Blade

- - - > 345 Points



*************** 2 Troops ***************


5 Chaos Space Marines

- - - > 75 Points


5 Chaos Space Marines

- - - > 75 Points



*************** 3 Heavy Support ***************


3 Obliterator Cult

- - - > 225 Points


3 Obliterator Cult

- - - > 225 Points


2 Obliterator Cult

- - - > 150 Points



Summed up: 1750 Points


Opposite to many other 2/9 lists, this list only goes with 8 Obliterators and does not include any Plaguemarines as Troop choices. Instead there are two units of Terminators that can be sacrificed and each of those units comes with a LR. Those LRs, of course, given to the normal CSM in the Troop section, giving these units a really good shield on the one hand and on the other hand making them mobile and able to tankshok enemies away from objectives, if this has to be done.

The list clearly has a problem with lots of objectives, because there are only two Troop choices and these are not able to hold more than one objective at a time (compare this to the Nobbikers). Taking only a quick look, this could be seen as a major problem, but the list can deal with those kinds of problems really well. First of all the Obliterators in combination with the LRs pack lots of long range firepower, be it vehicles or more or less armoured enemies, those guys can take out everything you throw at them. If the enemy is able to reach your lines, you can still counter them in CC with your Demon Princes, these beasts can easily stop small enemy units all on their own. Slaneesh even boosts their initiative further, so that they normally strike first and can therefore deal lots of damage. Being equipped with wings (working as jumpinfantry) they normally are wherever you want them to be. But they have a weapon that makes them much more lethal than they are already. Both of the Demon Princes have the Lash of Submission psychic power. This allows them to move a single enemy unit 2D6” in any direction. With this psychic power you can ball up enemies to shoot them with plasma cannons, move them away from your units or from objectives or do other funny things with them. In addition to this the moved unit has to take a pinning test and can therefore maybe do nothing at all for a whole turn.

The Terminators are equipped with combi-meltaguns in order to deepstrike and shoot at everything you want to have killed (e.g. LR especially filled with TH/SS Termis, or anything you like).


As you can see this list can clearly win games that are based on objectives quite good. But not only games with objectives can be won with this, in killpoint missions this list only has 11 KPs that can be taken and besides the Terminators none of these are really easy kills. On the other hand the list itself can fire up to twelve lascannons per turn.


Of course also this list, as every list out there, has problems with certain lists. First of all there are Eldar , SMs or especially SpaceWolves. All of these armies can counter the use of our Lash and make the game for us much harder, because we normally rely on it. Armies that are fast at moving and can deals lots of damage in CC, like Nobbikers, TW-cavalry or stuff like that can not always be moved far enough by the Lash, before they crush into our units. And last bot not least there is of course the IG. Every shooty list will have to fight it further or later in a shootout. This fight is normally decided with the duel between our Obliterators and their Vendettas, whoever goes down first, normally looses the battle.


Of course, this is not the “perfect” 2/9 list, I would never claim that. There are lots of different alternatives to play this list, as long as the main concept stays unchanged. You will always need to Demon Princes or Chaos Sorcerers equipped with the Lash and as many Obliterators as possible, to make good use of the Lash. Some tournaments do not allow to take three times the same Heavy Support choice, for this case I would normally change one unit of Obliterators for a single Vindicator. This may not be the best change, but at least I get another unit that likes to shoot at balled up enemies ;)

Other builds of this list often feature Plaguemarines in Rhinos, those units are often accompanied by Sorcerers, who lash out of the Rhino. Sometimes the Sorcerers are also equipped with wings, but personally I wouldn't do this, because in my opinion it makes my Lash to vulnerable.

The equipment of my Terminators could, of course, also be debated. Most of the time I make good use of the meltaguns, but if I know that there will be less LRs on a tournament, but lots of Terminator-walls or monstrous creatures, it could be a good idea to exchange the meltaguns for plasmaguns, in order to deal more damage to those units. If you like you can of course also add a Reaper Autocannon, if you can find the points somewhere, but somehow I can never find the points to do that.


To complete the list I only need a second LR (which I can at the moment borrow from a friend, thanks for that) so that I could actually play the list, if I painted all of the models. At the moment I already finished the first squad of Terminators and Obliterators, picture of these models will follow in my next post. Over the weekend I'll try to finish the second squad of Obliterators as well, let's see, if I really do this ;)


So, nearly reached my destination and so this has to be enough for today, as already mentioned, the next post will be a pure picture post with the beginning of my 2/8 list.


Cheers Cleutin

Monday, March 21, 2011

A little more conversation?

Hey guys,

“A little less conversation, a little more action”, a famous singer said once. Today there will be a little more conversation, a little less action. Nearly no new pictures today, but some information to the army list I posted yesterday.

I'm not going to post the list again, if you are interested, just have a look into yesterday's posting. The main principle of the list seems to be rather clear. There are two large units of Nobbikers that should be able to crush nearly every enemy in CC they charge. In addition to this these squads are troop choices thanks to the Warbosses and are therefore able to seize objectives and quarters if this is necessary to win. Beside this, the list only gives away seven killpoints and is therefore had to defeat in a KP mission.

There are two major aspects the player has to be able to do in order to be effective with this list. The first one should be really easy and is to contest or even seize more than just one objective at a time. When the unit includes a WB, there are eleven models on bikebases. This unit can cover large areas on the battlefield and is therefore able to be near several objectives. Because of this aspect it is crucial to check with the tournament rules if this is allowed (which should normally be the case). Otherwise this list could end a bit short on objectives, because Gretchin are not well known as very fast units and do not have any kind of transport vehicle in this list. If every unit can only seize one objective, the Gretchins have to be played rather aggressively and need to run nearly every turn in order to seize objectives in the middle of the table. It is crucial to protect them with one of the biker units, because Gretchin tend to die really, really fast …

Normally I would always leave all three units of Gretchin in reserve in order to hit the table rather late and just to grab some objectives deep in my own deployment zone, indeed they do not have other things to do in this list.

The second crucial ability the player of this list needs is to be able to do multi-charges. Against some (mostly MSU lists) it is not enough to attack one unit every turn, but you will need to destroy several small units in one turn. So you should really train this, before playing a tournament with this list (or just do it the way I do and do learning by doing during the tournament :P). Again the fact that the squads and there bases are rather big, make it easier to achieve this goal. You will often be able to block the way of your own models by turning other models at 90° and using the length of their base to block any way to get through. In this case you just have to move into 2” or, if this is impossible, to stay in coherency, meaning that you can freely move in any direction and attack another enemy unit.

When you get attacked yourself just stay cool, having eleven wound groups with at least 2 wounds and FnP the Nobbikers can take lots of damage before getting killed. (In play tests one of my squads was charged by a unit of Genestealers and a Trygon, after two round of combat I nearly used up all of my wound groups, but killed both units and was free to move on.) You should, however, make sure that your power claws are in the middle of your squad and can therefore not be bound by your enemy. In this case you can decide where your most powerful weapons will be able to attack and can even autokill some ICMs that are hidden within enemy units.


Most lists have to act rather different against different enemy lists. This is not always true for Nobbikers. Against rather shooty lists it is important to always use your turbo boost. That way you can claim your 3++ cover save and reach enemy lines rather fast, because you can move up to 24” every turn. Shots from missile launcher, lascannons or other weapons that could autokill your normal Nobz should be allocated to your WBs, because they have a toughness of 5 already in their profile. The remaining wounds are allocated until every Nob has one wound. It is important to save your power claws and the Painboy as long as possible, because those are the one's doing most of your damage and keeping your unit alive.

Lists that tend to go right into CC like Tyranids and stuff like that you always should try to get the charge or to force your enemy (especially Tyranids) to attack through terrain so that you can strike first. And never forget to use your guns against large units of infantry, I know that those are just Orks, but 33 twinlinked shots at S5 can do lots of damage to badly armoured enemies and can even cost monstrous creature one or two wounds, making the upcoming assault phase a lot easier.

And last but not least always remember that your WBs do not need to stick in the biker units. They are always free to leave their units which can come very handy when it comes to contesting objectives in the last turn or to kill small enemy units, because a single WB on bike with power claw has T6 and 5 armour ignoring attacks with S10 which is more than enough to kill lots of small units. You could even combine both WBs to a single unit if this seems to make sense to you in certain situations.


In the end I will take a look at the nemesis for this list: TH/SS-Terminators are for sure one of the worst things that can happen to this list. Because nearly every Marines has at least one squad of these, there are very few Nobbikers seen today. Their 3+ invulnerable save combined with their S8 attacks that can autokill our Nobs makes them to a real threat for our units. When this unit is also mounted in a LR we cannot even shoot at it and they will sooner or later be able to get an assault, because it is nearly impossible to hid a unit as large as eleven bikes anywhere on the table. As soon as there are two TH/SS units mounted in LRs in your enemies army, you can called it a 0-20, because there is nearly no way to win this battle.

A single unit can be killed by one of your units or a combo-charge, but it is always a matter of luck to pull this off (it is even worse, when we talk about BloodAngels with FC and FnP). When the enemy does not field a LR it is possible to outrun the Termis and you should try to shoot as much at them as possible, because sooner or later some of them will die, making them weak enough for you to attack them (still talking about units of 5 TH/SS, don't even think about attacking a unit of 6-8 of these guys). When I played against 10 of these guys with FC and FnP, I circled them with my bikes and killed everything of the remaining army (a large area terrain in the middle of the table helped me much with this) and in one of the last turns I sacrificed one of my units to lure them into his own quarter and was able to seize all of the remaining quarters and win the game, but this will not always be possible.


Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this little article about Nobbiker and to come to an end, I'll show you some pictures of my finished Deffkopta.

Cheers Cleutin

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Beginning of the Waagh!


Hey guys,

as mentioned before, here is the next update for my blog. Today it's all about my Orks. I'll start off with some pictures of my NobBikers.
The list I'm currently aiming at is as follows:

*************** 2 HQ ***************

Warboss
- Power Claw
- Warbike
- Cybork Body
- Bosspole
- - - > 140 Points

Warboss
- Power Claw
- Warbike
- Cybork Body
- Bosspole
- - - > 140 Points


*************** 5 Troops ***************

10 Nobz
- Nob Bikers
- Stikkbombz
- 3 x Big Choppa
- 3 x Power Claw
- 2 x Shoota/Skorcha Kombi-Weapon
- 3 x Bosspole
- 1 x Waaagh! Banner
- Painboy
- Grot Orderly
- Cybork Bodies
- - - > 675 Points

10 Nobz
- Nob Bikers
- Stikkbombz
- 3 x Big Choppa
- 3 x Power Claw
- 2 x Shoota/Skorcha Kombi-Weapon
- 3 x Bosspole
- 1 x Waaagh! Banner
- Painboy
- Grot Orderly
- Cybork Bodies
- - - > 675 Points

10 Gretchin
- 1 x Runtherd
- - - > 40 Points

10 Gretchin
- 1 x Runtherd
- - - > 40 Points

10 Gretchin
- 1 x Runtherd
- - - > 40 Points


Summed up: 1750 Points

I already own all of these models and have started to build the whole army by now. Painted by now are:
- Both Warbosses
- 30 Gretchin (only 1 Runtherd up to now)
- 19 Nobbiker (second Painboy is still in work)

As you can see, nearly all of the army is done already and this is why I moved on to work at my CSM army (shown in the upcoming posts). But for today just enjoy some pictures of the army, including the WBs, one squad of Nobz and all of the Gretchin ;)
Once more this has to be enough for me and I'll go back to my workbench and throw some paint onto my CSM.

Cheers Cleutin

My Waagh!-Banner
Warbosses on bikes
Regular Gretchin

Oldschool Gretchin and ...
... some guys who like to be Orks or at least Gretchin ;)

Friday, March 18, 2011

More armoured Salamanders

Hey guys,

I'm back again, like a recurring nightmare or german nuclear powerplants :P
Well, finally my first post in 2k11. I know that its already March and I could tell you that I've been busy with learning for university, writing term papers and doing lots of other veeeery important things. But, to be honest, I have mostly just been too lazy to post updates and know hope to be more constant in blogging again.

To get this blog back to live I'll start off with some picture of my Salamanders army (one of the reasons I started to play 40k again). I already finished the Dreadnought and you have seen it before, but this time it received its base, too.

A picture of the Dreadnought wouldn't of course be enough for this post and because of that I added some pictures of my 6 man strong CC-Terminator squad. As always they come on my selfmade lavabases and received lizardmen shields to stick to the lizard scheme of their chapter.
The scales between their legs and on their right shoulders were sculpted by my brother (thanks @lot Bro). He does all of the conversions I need and does some really crazy things with green stuff, I wouldn't be able to pull the models off the way I do, if it weren't with his help.
Some of his other sculpts can be seen in the upcoming posts, stay especially tuned for my CSM army, which I am currently working on.
Another good sculpter has joined our gaming group and he's doing lots of amazing pieces of terrain for our gaming tabels, as soon as I get pictures made by him, I'll add them here as well, so that you can see what he is doing. Speaking of gaming tables, my brother and I started to finally build one on our own, to improve the quality of our games. Maybe I'll add some pictures of the table itself later on, we will see ;)

This has to be enough talking for today, now just enjoy the latest pictures of my Marines and stay tuned for whatever will come next on this blog.

Cheers Cleutin