Ork Heavy Support Choices

Hey guys,

this will be the last article in my series of articles concerning different choices of the Ork codex. After this one you will know all I think about these choices and where the advantages and disadvantages of different units lie. So we’ll just start right up with the Heavy Support choices.
In the Heavy Support section we have (like in the Elite section) the choice between six different types of units, making it a really tough decision what we want to hit the battlefield with.

The first choice the codex offers to us is in my opinion already one of the best we can take: the Battlewagon (BW). With a front armour of 14, intelligent positioning and a KFF Mek those vehicles are really hard to take down for our opponents, well of course meltaguns are still a problem. But being hard to destroy is not the only thing that makes the BW a great choice for many Ork armies. In addition to this (at least for an Ork) strong armour the BW is allowed to transport up to 20 models and being open-topped means they can always charge out of it. The BW is therefore a really good way to transport your Boyz or Nobz right into battle, I often combine an attack of two of those, one filled with Boyz and one with MANz, this way I can compete with nearly everything I run into. The BWs themselves are most of the times equipped with deff rollas and can with this upgrade easily crack open transports so that my Orks can attack what was inside.
Another good idea is to use the BW as a safe place for your Lootas, this is because it has no firepoints and every Loota can shoot as long as the vehicle has LoS to an enemy. You just have to watch for enemies shaking or stunning your BW, because your Lootas will not be able to shoot in this case.
The BW comes with a whole lot of possible upgrades. I’m just going through all of it rather quick:
-killkannon is too expensive for what it can do and we lose transport capacity
-‘ard case is just crap, we WANT to be open-topped
-deff rolla is always great if you have the points (and I always find points for this somewhere)
-red paint job can be interesting, if you use your BWs for quick attacks and tend do drive a lot
-grot riggers are one of the best upgrades, only the KFF Mek BW doesn’t get them, but every other BW always gets those
-stickbombs CAN be played, but I often do not buy them
-armour plates could be worth the points, but I normally do not buy them for Raiders and so there is no reason for me to buy them for my BWs
-boarding plank, wrecking ball, grabbin’ claw have been played before the FAQ ruled the deff rolla in our favour, now they are normally just wasted points
-big guns are never bought by me, but the lobba could be useful, some player tend to play it a lot
-one or two big shootas MUST be bought, otherwise your BW is too often immobilised
If you don’t have the spare points to buy a deff rolla, you should at least always buy a reinforced ram to be allowed to reroll dangerous terrain checks, believe me you WANT this ;)
To sum it up, I think the BW is a really really great choice and it has nearly infinite possible uses in your army. What is great about it is that you can even buy it as a dedicated transport for your Nobz and MANz and I strongly recommend doing this, because this way you can either play more of them or get free Heavy Support slots for other gimmicks.

The next of these gimmicks would be the Deff Dread. The Dread is basically a Dreadnaught with two CC weapons and has to buy two additional weapons. I would in this case buy either two big shootas or two skorchas, because these are the cheapest weapons. When you add grot riggers and armour plates you get a Dreadnaught with two heavy flamers at the cost of 100 points. Not a bad deal at all in my opinion, but most of the times I just don’t have 100 spare points in my lists. The only really good use I have found for this unit so far is to protect Gretchin on your home objective against outflanking units, many Marines do this with a Bot, but that one can at least do some damage to vehicles with long range firepower and our Dread just can’t do that. So sadly he is often left home by me. Maybe I’ll find some lists where it is really useful to play one or two of them, because thanks to the Mek I can at least play one of them as a (not scoring) Troop choice.

Right after the Deff Dread the codex gives us the opportunity to buy three smaller Dreadnaughts as a single choice: Killa Kans. A good deal? I really think so. Each of those already has a CC weapon and has to buy a shooty weapon. I normally buy grotzookas for my squads, because with 2 S6 blast templates per model I get something really useful against horde armies without having to buy Burnaboyz or stuff like that. But with 6-9 S10 power attacks in CC I get something useful against vehicles as well. Besides the grotzooka you could either buy skorchas because they are cheap or rokkits, with BS3 the Kans at least can hit with those. Other upgrades are grot riggers and armour plates, remember what I told you about this concerning buggies? The same is true for Killa Kans, man those are squadrons, why should I buy this stuff?!?!
A standard unit of Kans in my army only costs 135 points, and will most often do a lot more than a single Deff Dread, I think you realize which of these units are preferred by me.

Next up are Flash Gitz. Flash Gitz are the only unit in this codex where I have absolutely no clue what to do with them at all. They are basically Nobz equipped with random shooting weapons, but without any other upgrades that are normally allowed to Nobz (besides the Painboy and cybork bodies). If I want to upgrade the weapons of this unit to have more shoots (always remember, more shots are good at BS2), I have to pay at least 150 points for the smallest possible unit. I just can’t see where this will ever be a good deal for me. Wondering why I’m not telling more about this unit? Well, there is nothing more to say, they CAN buy Kaptin Badrukk as a Nob, but not really interesting, because I will never ever buy this unit in any of my lists.

Coming back to something more useful we find Big Gunz as our next choice. We can buy up to three guns as a single choice and can buy additional crew member, ammo grotz or even a Runtherd (the last one is rather expensive, but sometimes you may want to buy it, because it can keep your Big Gunz on the table with his improved LD). For about 60 points we can buy three (short range) missile launchers that at least have BS3. Not the worst we could do with our spare points. The main problem for Big Gunz is still that they are a Heavy Support unit and I tend to buy lots of BWs and Kanz in this section. The other two possible upgrades for the kannon are either a lobba (waste of points and BS in my opinion) or the zzap gun. Zzap guns are somehow funny, because they have an AP of 2 and each time roll for their S. They CAN deal lots of damage or do nothing at all, always remember it is an Ork codex after all ;)
Big Gunz are at least not our worst unit and you can always feel free to buy them especially in games with a smaller point limit.

The last unit in our codex are Looted Wagons. At the first time I saw them I thought they were some kind of smaller BWs (like Dreads and Kanz), but I soon realized how wrong I was. Looted Wagons can only transport 12 models (that can even Trukks), have front armour of 11 and can buy no deff rollas. Everything that really makes the BW a great choice is either missing or just really bad. Looted wagons can’t even be bought as a dedicated transport vehicle by any unit throughout the complete codex. I don’t know if this is by purpose or someone made a mistake but this makes the Looted Wagon a really unworthy unit. I could compete with Trukks as dedicated transports, but has no chance to compete with a BW as a Heavy Support unit. I’ve seen people playing Looted Wagons equipped with boomguns, because they just use it as a weapon platform instead a transport vehicle. If I would do this I’d have to buy the Wagon, the gun and the ‘ard case to keep it alive. This way I’d pay 115 points for a boomgun?! My standard BW with deff rolla and grot riggers only costs 125 points and will do much more throughout the game. So all in all Looted Wagons are not bad at all, but should be played as transports and therefore should be allowed to be bought as dedicated transports. But because this is not the case, I don’t play them at all.

In my armies I often play 2x BWs and 1x Kanz or 1x BW and 2x Kanz, because for the way I play those setups are just great. I strongly recommend trying out a lot and playing around with different possible setups for you.

That’s basically all I can tell you about this codex. Next time I’ll show my current list and explain why I chose different units in there, but after that I’m out of topics. So once again, make suggestions ;)

Cheers Cleutin

It's Finally Done

Hey guys,

as promised I've finally finished my gaming table and I must they that I'm really proud of myself. It came out quite good and will look even better with all that great terrain that we already have. At the moment the table is in my garage and because of that the lightning is really awful and the pictures didn't come out as I'd liked. But they are still good enough to see what it looks like and so here we go ;)

So, just some snaphots from different angles to give you some impression. Somewhen between June and July I'll be able to make some more games on this table and will seize this opportunity to make some better photos even with terrain on it.

Cheers Cleutin

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

Ork Elite Choices

Hey guys,

once more I’m sitting in the train and therefore have some time to write something for my blog (sometimes travelling by train has its advantages).  I’ve already told you something about possible HQ and Troop choices for an Ork army. This time I’m going to talk about the very important and interesting Elite slots. Opposite to many other armies the Orks have a quite great amount of playable Elite units and it is very important to make the right choices here. To help you finding those units that fit your personal playing style the most I can only suggest to proxy all of these units and just find it out by playing with them. This is at least what I often did and by now I get a really good idea which units are valuable for me in decent army lists. But now let’s jump right into the action and take a closer look at the units themselves.

All in all there are six(!!!) possible choices we can buy and in the right list every single of these is playable. First up there is the already well known (by my Nobbiker list) Nob squad. We have to buy at least three of these guys and may buy up to ten getting a rather big and scary, but also expensive, unit this way. Interesting in this unit are several options we can buy. Of course, we can buy loooooots of power claws in this unit and we should always include three or four of these things, because they strike with 3 (4 in an assault) attacks at strength 8 (9 with FC) that ignore armour saves and because they strike at I1 the enemy is not able to stack them on single models. This directly brings me to a rather important option, namely Stickbombz. I would always recommend to buy them, to strike in initiative order when attacking through terrain, I explained you already the reason for this ;)
No matter how big your units of Nobz actually is, always try to maximize on woundgroups, to get the biggest effect of having two wounds per model, otherwise you are just wasting points in this unit.
Basically I would tend to two different versions to play this unit, either as Nobbikers (you already know the setup for this unit), in this case the unit does not always have to count ten models, but sometimes even 5-7 of these guys are more than enough and way cheaper. The other way is a squad of 6-8 Nobz mounted in a Battlewagon. I would always recommend buying the Painboy upgrade for both units, because this way you are able to buy invulnerable saves for the unit and get the very important FnP special rule, which will keep your Nobz alive much longer.
Nobz are a really powerful unit, but cost us lots of points and struggle against several enemies (to be named TH/SS-Termis and SpaceWolves with Jaws), but what makes them really valuable is the fact that we can often buy them in the Troop slot, making them a scoring unit. Besides this we can buy a Battlewagon with them and save a Heavy Support slot this way, both are good reasons to buy Nobz, but normally I prefer them only to buy a squad as a Troop choice and stick to other Elite units.

The second Elite choice we can buy are MANz (Megaarmoured Nobz or shorter Meganobz). Those guys already come with Terminatour armour without the invulnerable save but at least with a power claw. This fact makes them of course way more expensive than normal Nobz. We only have the options of different shooty weapon upgrades and normally I buy just squads of three MANz with maxed woundgroups for 130 points. Without an invulnerable save they tend to die rather fast and are just too expensive to buy them in larger units. I tend to support them with a WB to have someone with an invulnerable save, T5 and a BOSSPOLE (why can’t they buy at least this one?!) in the squad. In this setup the unit stays relative cheap and normally brings its own Battlewagon along (same option as the normal Nobz).
When I have decide whether I want to play Nobz or MANz I often take a look at the points and buy MANz if I need a small unit and Nobz if I need a larger unit. Always remember that the unit needs to fit your style of play and has to fit into your lists, there are people, who will never play the one or the other, but I tend to decide from situation to situation what I need. Of course, MANz can also be bought as scoring Troop choices, what makes them even stronger than a normal Elite unit and that’s what I normally do, when I do not buy normal Nobz.

The four remaining units share a huuuuuge problem (ok, the Kommandos mostly ignore this problem by outflanking). None of these units can buy a dedicated transport, which means that we mostly have to buy Battlewagons for them to be mobile or they have to run (not always a good idea). When you play one of these units you should always keep in mind that they most often want to have a transport and you will always loose a Heavy Support slot this way.

The first unit that doesn’t consist of Nobz are Burna Boyz. Basically these are normal Ork Boyz, which are equipped with flamers. Those weapons can be used as power weapon, as long as you haven’t used them as flamers in this turn already. Up to 15 boys are allowed per unit, but I think that normally 10-12 boys do the job as well. The main reason I would buy such a unit is to put them into a Battlewagon, tankshok a unit to ball it up and then lay lots of templates on it, dealing lots of damage this way. I did this sometimes against Tyranids and it’s a great way to kill large units of Symbionts or stuff like this. But to be honest I don’t think that this unit will often find its way into my army lists. The current 40k edition sees lots of vehicles and against vehicles of any kind this unit does nothing at all. If the meta takes a shift towards horde armies, the Burna Boyz might make a comeback, but I don’t really believe this. So it is a funny unit and if you need something against hordes at short range you should buy them, but otherwise stay away from them. I nearly forgot to talk about their options … just ignore them ;)

Next up are the almighty Tankbustas. A unit equipped with assault missile launchers sounds great, but of course they still suffer from having BS2. But still they WILL hit vehicles and do damage to them. If you play against armies without any vehicles at all you will have targets for them as well, normally everything that normally has FnP or is a monstrous creature tends to hate lots of rokkits flying towards itself.  The option to buy two tankhammers is always welcome to me, who does not like S10 CC weapons for autokilling enemy ICMs? The other option for the unit would be to buy Bombsquigs, those are basically one-shot rokkits that can only be aimed at vehicles and always hit on 2+, certainly not a bad piece of equipment, but I often do not have any spare points to buy some of those. What I always buy is a Nob with a power claw, this guy is good in nearly every unit and with his bosspole he keeps my boys where I want them to be. A unit of Tankbustas can consist of up to 15 models. I normally just play squads of 9 of them and this has two pratical reasons. First of all I try to save points for other units and they are not that cheap, the other reason is that I need to block lines of sight for the unit, because the always have to shoot at enemy vehicles when they can see any even if they are not within reach. So it is very important to only let them see what they should shoot or assault, the larger the unit is the harder it is to achieve this. Tankbustas are always happy to be in a transport, but I often play them on foot, because they are a great counter unit as well.

The fifth possible Elite unit are Lootas. Lootas are one of these units that are either loved or hated, normally loved by me and hated by my enemies. A unit of 10-15 Lootas can spit out lots of shots and whenever Orks shoot a lot even they are able to score hits. With S7 these hits even hurt whatever they are aimed at. Be it transport vehicles, monstrous creature or just infantry, everything can be taken out with these guys. Lootas are especially an interesting unit, because they come with a range of 48” and for an Ork this is really long range firepower. Options for this unit are to upgrade three boys to Meks … same option as for the Burna Boyz and again you should just ignore it. There is really no, I repeat NO good reason to do this. You just loose one of your best weapons for a shorter range, so why should I do this?
Lootas in a transport vehicle are fun to play, because first of all the vehicle has to be destroyed and as long as the vehicle can see an enemy unit ALL of the Lootas inside may shoot at it. If you do not have a spare Battlewagon for them, it is of course possible to play them without one, but you have to seek a good position for them where they can see enemies but are not seen by too much enemy fire, because they are just boys and therefore tend to die quite fast.

Last but not least we can buy units of Kommandos. Kommandos are the only unit in our codex that have the ability to infiltrate (and so to outflank, but Deffkoptas can do this as well via Scout). Kommandos basically do not need to buy a transport, because they are normally not deployed in your deployment zone and loose every advantage of being inside a vehicle this way. The common setup for such units is 8-12 Kommandos equipped with either two flamers or two big shootas (the cheap version and an option to damage vehicles from behind after outflanking). Whenever I play Kommandos I buy a boss with pole and claw for them or, if this is ok for my enemy, Snikrot as a boss. This way I lose the claw, but may decide where the unit enters play and this can sometimes be incredible valuable, because it destroys my enemy’s deployment strategy.

I for myself often buy a single unit of Nobz (or mostly MANz) as a Troop choice and fill the Elite slots with one or two units of Lootas and one or two units of Tankbustas. This way I get a solid firebase and units with rokkits that are free to move around wherever they want. Paired with two big units of Boyz as Troops I normally have more models on the table than my enemy and can spit out lots of shots and attacks, dealing massive damage this way. Of course there are lots of other possible ways to fill up your Elite slots and I strongly recommend playing around a lot, until you find out whatever is the best setup for yourself and the armies you most often play against.

Hopefully I gave you some ideas what to do with your valuable Elite slots for an Ork army ;)

So, now I really have to write new articles, because up to now I always already had the next article ready or at least some pictures on my computer to post something, but this time I'm really without reserves ... Let's hope that I'll find some time soon to write more ;)

Cheers Cleutin

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

First Steps with DarkEldar

Hey guys,

yesterday I playtested the more or less new Dark Eldar Codex for the first time. I played against a friend of mine and his CSM army. I didn’t take any pictures, because I had had to use proxies for all of my models, not yet owning any Dark Eldars. We played 1.850 points each and rolled for mission and deployment, ending up with Seize Ground and the Pitched Battle deployment. Army lists were the following:

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

Baron Sathonyx

 - - - > 105 Points

Haemonculus

- Webway Portal

 - - - > 85 Points

Haemonculus

- Webway Portal

 - - - > 85 Points

***************  3 Elites  *************** 

Kabalite Trueborn

3 Kabalite Trueborn

- 3 x Blaster

+ Venom

   - Splinter Rifle

 - - - > 136 Points

Kabalite Trueborn

3 Kabalite Trueborn

- 3 x Blaster

+ Venom

   - Splinter Rifle

 - - - > 136 Points

Harlequins

8 Harlequins

- 8 x Harlequin's Kiss

- Upgrade to Shadowseer

 - - - > 206 Points

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

Hellions

20 Hellions

 - - - > 320 Points

Wracks

3 Wracks

+ Venom

   - Splinter Rifle

 - - - > 85 Points

Wracks

3 Wracks

 - - - > 30 Points

Wyches

10 Wyches

- 2 x Shardnet and Impaler

- Haywire Grenades

+ Upgrade to Hekatrix

   - Agoniser

 - - - > 170 Points

Wyches

10 Wyches

- 2 x Shardnet and Impaler

- Haywire Grenades

+ Upgrade to Hekatrix

   - Agoniser

 - - - > 170 Points

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

Ravager

- 3 x Dark Lance

 - - - > 105 Points

Ravager

- 3 x Dark Lance

 - - - > 105 Points

Ravager

- 3 x Dark Lance

- Shock Prow

 - - - > 110 Points

Summed up: 1848 Points

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

Daemon Prince

- Wings

- Mark of Slaanesh

- Lash of Submision

 - - - > 155 Points

Daemon Prince

- Wings

- Mark of Slaanesh

- Lash of Submision

 - - - > 155 Points

***************  1 Elites  *************** 

3 Chaos Terminators

- 1 x Chainfist

- 3 x Combi-Meltagun

+ Chaos Land Raider

   - Daemonic Possession

 - - - > 360 Points

***************  3 Troops  *************** 

7 Plague Marines

- 2 x Plasma Gun

+ Upgrade to Plague Champion

   - Power Fist

+ - Chaos Rhino

 - - - > 266 Points

7 Plague Marines

- 2 x Meltagun

+ Upgrade to Plague Champion

   - Power Fist

+ - Chaos Rhino

 - - - > 256 Points

8 Khorne Berzerkers

+ Upgrade to Skull Champion

   - Power Fist

 - - - > 208 Points

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

2 Obliterators

 - - - > 150 Points

2 Obliterators

 - - - > 150 Points

Chaos Vindicator

- Daemonic Possession

 - - - > 145 Points

Summed up: 1845 Points

He basically played some kind of dual Lash, but loves to play his Plague Marines and Berzerkers and so always tries to squeeze them into his lists. But besides those changes to what I would play, the list is still a quite strong build.
My list was mostly built around the Baron and his 20 Hellion companions. In combination with some pain tokens these “friendly” guys can take and deal lots of damage and are there to protect my Haemonculi as long as those have not yet placed their Webway Portals. A closer look at this list and how it works will possibly be taken in another article.

Thanks to Baron Sathonyx I won the roll to choose sides and rolled a 6 for my combat drugs, giving a free pain token to some of my units. At the beginning of the game a spread out my Hellions in a long line to be able to deploy two portals at different spots in the middle of board to be able to threaten large parts from turn two on. Besides this unit I deployed all three of my Ravagers and one of my Kabbalite Trueborn in their Venom. The rest of my army remained in reserve.
He deployed his complete army, besides obviously his Terminators, who were intended to deepstrike somewhere they could do some damage. His deployed units mostly remained in one corner with his objective, which was directly opposite to mine.

In turn one I opened my two portals and advanced with my Hellion squad that already had the three pain tokens to make it strong against nearly everything. The shots of my Ravagers only destroyed one of the LRs lascannons, but were useless otherwise.
In his first turn both Demon Princes lashed my Hellion squad in order to ball them up, because he intended to shoot everything he had at them. The LR drove forward to throw his Berzerkers at the rests of my Hellions. Here he forgot to use the LRs smoke launchers and so I was able to destroy it in my next turn. The Vindicator nearly missed the Hellion unit and so only killed two of them, while he could easily had killed 6-8 of them. The Obliterators shot down one of my Ravagers and some of the Hellions died to the Plague Marines shooting at them, in the end the squad was charged by his Berzerkers and the units remained locked in combat. At this point I forgot to use my Hit and Run skill, otherwise I would have been able to kill the Berzerkers in the next turn, thanks to my shooting and FC.

At the beginning of my second turn I rolled for reserves and got one squad of Wyches and my second unit of Trueborns without their Venom. Both units entered through the left portal to be right in the middle of the fight. In this turn I destroyed the LR and destroyed the weapon of the Vindicator, leaving it rather useless. The Hellions were assisted in their fight against the Berzerkers by the freshly arrived Wyches, but also with their help the combat did not come to an end.
In his turn the Vindicator left without its weapon tried to do a ram attack against the Venom filled with the Trueborn, but the Venom was able to dodge the attack. After some shooting and the destruction of another Ravager he used one of his Demon Princes and one squad of Plague Marines to win the still on-going CC. If he had used both of his Princes it could have worked out, but this way I was able to finally kill the Berzerkers and the Demon Prince lost two wounds due to being fearless. This time I remembered to use the Hit and Run skill of my Hellions and the Demon Prince was free to move away, because the Wyches were only locked in combat with the Plague Marines.

The next turn brought me the other squad of Wyches and a squad of Harlequins. I decided to throw the Wyches right into battle, because there were still some vehicles remaining and they were equipped with grenades. The Harlequins were sent in through the second portal, because they were able to around his rather unprotected side through a large piece of terrain without being slowed down. I shot down the already wounded Daemon Prince and realized that Wyches and Plague Marines can be locked in CC for nearly an endless time, because none of these units seems to be able to do any damage to the other one (Wyches with FnP are great by the way, but so are Plague Marines).

The rest of the battle wasn’t really interesting in the end and can be told quite fast. My remaining Hellions killed all of his Obliterators and the second squad of Plague Marines shot down the Trueborn Venom and killed the remaining Trueborn, only to be charged by the Hellions and the Harlequins. After this the Harlequins hunted down the second Demon Prince and defeated him in two rounds of CC. His Terminators deepstriked next to the Venom with my second squad of Wracks and destroyed it, but the Wracks were able to outrun the Terminators. The Vindicator tried to tankshok my other unit of Wracks away from my home objective, but I was able to immobilise it before and a unit of Wyches finally destroyed it in an assault. There was only one critical moment, when in my fifth turn his (still locked in combat) Plague Marines slayed one of the Wyches and my unit ran away. Because of this he was able to mount the unit in his remaining Rhino and controlled his own objective. If the game had ended there it would have been a tie after objectives. But the game continued and my Hellions and Wyches were able to contest the objective, so in the end I won 1-0 after objectives and something like 17-3 when calculated by the ETC matrix.

The game was quite fun to play and I can say that Dark Eldar are by far stronger than I expected them to be. Next time I’m going to try out Beast units, as I have strong faith in those (they just seem great, when they charge out of a portal). Maybe I’ll be clever enough not to forget the use of something vital like Hit and Run, that’s something that really annoys me … but it is a step in the process of learning.
Next battle reports and test games will take a rather long time, because university started all over again today and I’m not going to find much time to play, I think … let’s hope that I can find at least some time to paint and update the blog ;)

Cheers Cleutin

First CSM Models

  

Hey guys,

after having announced it now for quite some time, I've finally found some time to upload the pictures for this post. So I'll waste no time for words, but will just show you the picture I took of the Terminators and Obliterators that were sculped by my brother (can never thank you enough) and painted by me, enjoy!

First up the Obliterators:

 

Followed by the Terminators:

And in the end a comparison of these types of units:

That's it already for today ;)

Cheers Cleutin

Small Interlude for a Friend and his work

Hey guys,

today just a small update for my blog. As I already mentioned we have someone in our group, who builds lots of pieces of terrain for our gaming board and at the moment all of this stuff is at my place and so I took the opportunity to snatch my father's camera and take some shots of his work.
The models in these pictures were painted by me and are just randomly placed for you to get an impression of how large the individual pieces are. And yes, the first models of my CSM army can be seen in those, but be sure that you'll get better pictures in the following days ;)
So now just enjoy some of our terrain:

This is the largest piece of terrain he has built by now, I placed my Vindicator next to it, for you to get an impression.

Next up is just some small hill.

Followed by some kind of a ruin.

And last but not least, some minor pieces (featuring a wall, some ruins, etc).

After uploading these pictures I figured that I have to finish my gaming board and will try to do that until summer =)
That's it for today and stay with me, because in the next post I'll finally post some pictures of my CSM army (or won't I? :P)

Cheers Cleutin