Ork Fast Attack Choices

Hey guys,

I’ve been starting pretty much every article with these words … this blog needs more followers and especially more female ones. So go out in the world and find people following this blog ;)
But enough with this and let’s go on with my current series of articles about the Ork codex. Only two possible choices are left over, those are the Fast Attack and Heavy Support choices. Today we’ll take a closer look at Fast Attack units.

The Ork codex offers four different Fast Attack choices for us and opposite to our Troop choices we got no opportunity to field another unit as a Fast Attack choice. First up there are Stormboyz. Stormboyz are basically normal Ork boys that are equipped with (some kind of orky and therefore “improved”) jumppacks. Being equipped with jumppacks (or Rokkit packs as the codex names them) the unit type of Stormboyz is, of course, jump infantry. So they can move up to 12” with their packs, but always roll a D6 and can additionally move the amount rolled in inches, whenever they score a 1 this way, one of the boys dies (but hey, it’s just an Ork, you normally have plenty of them). This brings us to the interesting question how large a unit of Stormboyz should be. We have to buy at least five of them and may buy up to 15 additional boys. In my opinion the unit should be as large as possible. This is because of how I would tend to play such a unit, to be honest I haven’t tested them buy now and am just thinking what I WOULD do with them. Either I would field them and play them as aggressively as possible, so that the opponent is forced to shoot at them and I can advance with the rest of my army. This is especially interesting, if you play without an KFF Mek and try to spread them out before your army to get cover saves for your units behind the Stormboyz. The other way to play such a unit is to let them deepstrike (they can do this of course, because they are equipped with jumppacks). If you want to play the unit this way you must play a larger unit, because after deepstriking they aren’t allowed to attack and therefore will get shot the next turn. Or you play them led by Boss Zagstruk, this way they are allowed to attack the turn they deepstrike. If you fear to deepstrike too far away from the enemy, you should save up your Waaagh! for the turn they arrive. This way they can run and attack afterwards, meaning they get a charge range of 7-12”, combined with a rather large unit (always remember to build circles towards the enemy when deepstriking) you will most certainly be able to attack the turn you arrive. Remember, however, that Zagstruk kills D3 of your boys when he deepstrikes and you should have a unit that is still able to fight even after losing three boys. If Zagstruk is too expensive for you or named characters are forbidden, you should at least buy the normal Nob with a power claw (same reason as in other Ork units, power claws are just too good to leave them at home). To sum it up: Stormboyz are an interesting unit and sooner or later I will find a list to test them, always try to buy large units of them, because they are still just normal Orks.

The second possible Fast Attack choice is my beloved Warbuggies unit. Every unit consist of up to three Warbuggies and they are already equipped with twin-linked big shootas.  Twin-linked weapons are always a great choice in an Ork army, but in this case I strongly recommend buying the upgrade to twin-linked rokkit launchas. Of course, we lose some shots, but on the opposite we can do some real damage to vehicles, monstrous creatures or whatever you are shooting at with this unit. Three Warbuggies with rokkits are extremely cheap with only 105 points, quite a fair deal. With the help of cover or a KFF Mek the buggies tend to last for at least one or two turn, before being blown apart, AV10 and being open-topped doesn’t real help with staying alive. The other possible weapon upgrade is a heavy flamer. This option is somehow strange. On the one hand we can deal good damage with these, because we can move up to 12” before firing the weapon, but most of the time we will have problems to find targets, which are worth to shoot at. What was already true for Burnaboyz is true for flamer-buggies as well. If you are having problems whenever you face horde armies buy them, otherwise leave them at home. The remaining options are sometimes not really valuable for us. Moving 1” more per turn is nice, but not that important, because buggies are no transport vehicles and are already fast. Being able to ignore shaken or repair immobilised results doesn’t help us at all, because in most cases the buggies work as a squadron and either ignore it this ways or are destroy, before they can attempt to repair themselves. Only the last upgrade is worth talking about, for 5 points we are allowed to buy some kind of dozer blades for our buggies. The question here still remains, if it is worth the points, but this can’t be answered by me, it’s up to you and your playstyle to make this decision ;)

Next up we come to Warbikers. Those are basically Nobbikerz, but a lot worse ;) With the help of Wazdakka Gutsmek those units can be taken as Troop choices, but in my opinion they are far too expensive for that. The bikes of this unit work the same as the Nobbikerz, but per squad we can only buy a single power claw, have no FnP, no woundgroups and only one wound per model. The only thing these guys can do (as I see it) is to turboboost and provide cover for our remaining units and charge early, because they can’t be shot down that easy thanks to their coversave and higher toughness. If you really want to find out what to do with them, I can only suggest to ask the American ETC team, because their Ork player played a huge unit of these guys. In my opinion this unit is just too expensive for what it can do and will therefore not be played in any of my armylists.

This brings us to the last possible Fast Attack choice: the Deffkopta. The Deffkopta is the orky version of a Jetbike and we can buy up to five in a single unit. With two wounds we could really do this, because we are able to build woundgroups in this unit, but again this is too expensive for the effect we get. There are basically two versions to play Deffkoptas and in both cases I would play single Deffkoptas (always keep in mind that these will be easy killpoints for your enemy). The first version is the Deffkopta with a buzzsaw. If you like and have the spare points you can even equip it with rokkits. With this setup the Deffkopta can either outflank or scout move (if you have first turn) and shot at a vehicle and charge it with a S7 fist. When the vehicle was not able to move beforehand you have at least a good choice to damage the vehicle. After this action the Deffkopta will most certainly die :P
The other setup is a naked Deffkopta or at least equipped with rokkits. In this setup the Deffkopta will be held in reserve and move flat out all of the time and contest mission objectives in the last turns of the game. This is basically everything I would play Deffkoptas for, but always keep in mind that a Deffkopta with rokkits and buzzsaw already costs the same as two rokkit-buggies, so quite a tough choice what you prefer to play.

Normally my Fast Attack slots are filled up with rokkit-buggies (1-2 units of these most of the time) or left blank, because the rest is either too weak or fat too expensive for my lists. A unit of Stormboyz will, however, be tested by me some time, but Warbikers will just not make the jump into my lists.
That’s all I can tell you about Ork Fast Attack choices, if you read all of the articles before you can see that only the Heavy Support choices are left over and these will be the topic of my next article.
When I’m done with the Ork codex I need to find something new to write about, I’m open to suggestions, because I haven’t found a new topic by now.

Cheers Cleutin