Ork Troop Choices

Hey guys,

last time I’ve been talking about different HQ choices for our Ork army. The codex tells me that the next I have to talk about is the Elite section, but I prefer to deal with the Troop choices before (it is just easier, because there are only two possible choices rather than six). So here it comes.

Taking a look into our codex we can see that there are basically two different units we can choose for our army. The first of these are the standard Boyz that normally most of the Ork armies include. Those guys are rather cheap for only 6 points and already bring a WS and T of 4 and (with their FC) often also a S of 4. With two attacks in the profile they can deal quite some damage in CC and boost this further by their pistol+cc-weapon equipment. A squad size of 10-30 gives quite some freedom in determining how large our units should be. Typically my squads are 12 Boyz (to fit into a Trukk), 19 or 20 Boyz (to fit into a Battlewagon, sometimes with a character) or as large as possible, if I use them to run over the table. But what exactly can this squad of Boyz do now? To answer this question we have to take a closer look at the options we can buy for the unit.

First of all we are free to buy stikkbombs (being offensive granates). With a mighty initiative of 2 (or 3 with FC) I wouldn’t recommend to spend points for such an upgrade, but whoever likes to do that should feel free to do so. The next option allows us to throw away our pistols and take shootas instead. Basically this means that we lose an attack in CC and get a longer range and one more shot with our weapon. In my opinion this is a really tough call. At this point there are normally looooooong discussions about what is better in which situation and I for myself cannot answer this question clearly. Often I play a combination of both kinds of Boyz and get along really well with that, but I wouldn’t tell anyone that it is plain wrong to play only the one or the other kind. Here it really comes down to personal style of play and what you think will fit yourself best. So just go for it and try it out, because this is normally what I do in those situations. The next choice we can make is to buy a “heavy weapon” (nearly all heavy weapons in the Ork army are indeed assault weapons) for every ten Orks in the unit. Let’s be clear about that: I think those are just a waste of points. I wouldn’t want to have rokkits in thr unit, because then I have about 20-30 Orks shooting at vehicles without the chance of damaging them and the two or three rokkits will most certainly not even hit the target. The big shoota might work well with normal shootas, but two or three shots more are not worth the points of another Ork, which himself brings two shoots. So once again, play them if you want, but I won’t do that. And last but not least … well last AND least we get the upgrade for ‘Ard Boyz. We are allowed to buy a better armour save for one of our Boy squads. I normally have a KFF or get in fifth edition everywhere a coversave of 4+, so tell me why should I buy an armour save of 4+? I just do not see the reason just to have an armour save in CC, this might be the reason, but then it is just far too expensive. My advice is to buy this only in case you want your Boyz to be better armoured in your vitrine ;)
After all of these options we can buy our sergeant. As always we get +1A but no +1Ld for 10 points, but Orks are great and also get +1S and +1W. With three attacks in his profile the Nob is just the perfect choice to wear a power claw (hidden power claw anyone? If you want to kill him, slay 20 other Orks before :P). Besides the claw I normally buy a bosspole to make the unit stay longer in combat. Some people tend to buy the Nob the armour to lays wounds onto him early and be able to save them, but I normally save the points for other gimmicks in my army.
That is basically all you have to know about the use of Boyz in your armylist. It is important to always remember that these guys are great in CC and want to be there, but can easily be killed by “real” CC units and you sometimes need them alive to capture mission objectives, so try to keep them alive.

Our second Troop choice is the almighty Gretchin unit. Of course I could tell that my Gretchin killed Sanguinary Guards, nearly beat a Swarmlord in CC and stuff like that, but to be honest those CAN happen, but WILL most of the time not happen. These guys are what they look like in the codex, weak but cheap. There are not many other armies that can field scoring units with eleven wounds for only 40 points and this is exactly why I love them and what I play them for. They sit on my home objective and go to ground every time an enemy only looks at them.  The only unit sizes I would play is the standard 10 Gretchin+Runtherd or 19 Gretchin+Runtherd. I would never play more, because then I would have to buy a second Runtherd and this is just too expensive. But normally I just stick to 10 Gretchin, this is normally enough (and more of those can’t do anything better …).

Those are the two different units that can be found in the codex as Troop choices but as already said we can play Nobz or Deff Dreads as Troop choices if we choose the right HQ choices. To make it short: the Deff Dread is not any better as a Troop choice than as a Heavy Support choice, because he is still not a scoring unit. The only advantage you get is a basically “fourth” Heavy Support slot, but normally I just do not want to play this unit, so the effect is quite small for my armies. But if somebody really loves to play bots he can field up to five Deff Dreads that way or just two of them, supported by up to nine Kans. This is of course possible, but not the kind of army I want to play.
Nobz as Troop choices are far more popular and this has two reasons. First of all they are infantry (or bikes) and are therefore able to claim objectives and scoring units are always important for an army, especially when our Boyz died somewhere in a combat. Nobz are just great for this, because they are great in dealing damage, but can also suffer lots of wounds, before they die. The other reason is that in our Elite section there are several really important units that we want to play, but interfere with the Nobz, because we can only choose three Elite units.

So, I hope I could give you some impressions of different Troop choices for Ork players and you enjoyed reading the article. Next up there will either be Elite or Fast Attack choices, whatever I like to write about ;)

Cheers Cleutin