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