Tournament in Iserlohn Part II

Hey guys,

as I promised in my last post, I’ll take a bit about the games played in the tournament and the lists other players fielded against us.

Let’s get started with: Game 1!
The mission played was Seize Ground with a fixed number of five objectives and armies were deployment like in Spearhead.
Once again I had to play against my brother in the first round of a tournament … this is getting rather strange! He didn’t intend to play and was just asked to play for another player, who didn’t show up and so he borrowed a Grey Knights army from the store and teamed up with a Wolves player. There lists were as follows:

***************  1 HQ  *************** 

Ordo Xenos Inquisitor

- 3 x Servo-Skulls

- Power Armour

- Ulumeathi Plasma Syphon

- Rad Grenades

- Psychotroke Grenades

 - - - > 82 Points

***************  1 Elite  *************** 

Purifier Squad

9 Purifiers

- 5 x Nemesis Force Halberd

- 1 x Nemesis Daemon Hammer

- 6 x Storm Bolter

- 2 x Psycannon

- Psybolt Ammunition

+ Upgrade to Knight of the Flame

   - Nemesis Daemon Hammer

   - Storm Bolter

+ - Rhino

   - Searchlight

   - Dozerblade

 - - - > 322 Points

***************  2 Troop  *************** 

Grey Knight Strike Squad

5 Grey Knights

- 3 x Nemesis Force Sword

- 3 x Storm Bolter

- 1 x Psycannon

+ Upgrade to Justicar

   - Nemesis Force Sword

   - Storm Bolter

+ - Razorback

   - Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter

   - Searchlight

   - Psybolt Ammunition

 - - - > 161 Points

Grey Knight Strike Squad

5 Grey Knights

- 3 x Nemesis Force Sword

- 3 x Storm Bolter

- 1 x Psycannon

+ Upgrade to Justicar

   - Nemesis Force Sword

   - Storm Bolter

+ - Razorback

   - Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter

   - Searchlight

   - Psybolt Ammunition

 - - - > 161 Points

***************  2 Heavy Support  *************** 

Dreadnought

- Twin-Linked Autocannon

- Twin-Linked Autocannon

- Psybolt Ammunition

 - - - > 135 Points

Dreadnought

- Twin-Linked Autocannon

- Twin-Linked Autocannon

- Psybolt Ammunition

 - - - > 135 Points

Summed up: 996 Points

***************  1 HQ  *************** 

Rune Priest

- Living Lightning

- Jaws of the World Wolf

 - - - > 100 Points

Rune Priest

- Boltgun

- Living Lightning

- Murderours Hurricane

 - - - > 100 Points

***************  2 Elite  *************** 

Wolf Scouts Pack

5 Wolf Scouts

- Meltagun

 - - - > 85 Points

Wolf Guard Pack

3 Wolf Guard

- 3 x Combi-Melta

- 3 x Powerfist

 - - - > 129 Points

***************  2 Standard  *************** 

Grey Hunters Pack

8 Grey Hunters

- Meltagun

+ - Rhino

 - - - > 160 Points

Grey Hunters Pack

7 Grey Hunters

- Meltagun

+ - Rhino

 - - - > 145 Points

***************  2 Unterstützung  *************** 

Long Fangs Pack

6 Long Fangs

- 5 x Missile Launcher

+ Upgrade to Squad Leader

 - - - > 140 Points

Long Fangs Pack

6 Long Fangs

- 5 x Missile Launcher

+ Upgrade to Squad Leader

 - - - > 140 Points

Summed up: 999 Points

Our deployment of the Orks from the side ...

... and from the top, with the CSM.

Enemies' deployment, everthing seems to be hidden.

My team won the roll off to place the first marker, which gave us the ability to place three out of the five objectives and we decided to put those pretty close to each other, so that my large Ork units could claim several objectives at once. To make it even better for us, we even won the roll off for the first turn and decided to go first, this way we were able to choose a quarter with several interesting ruins for our Obliterators, while we left the enemy armies with only one large LoS blocker, but practically no other cover and in addition to this even only one good position for the Longfangs.
I set up my Nob Bikers quite offensive and Michael kept his Chaos Marines mostly in cover, because we wanted to protect the Rhinos and Daemon Prince. My Boyz were intended to move into the open right from the beginning in order to claim as many objectives as possible. Our opponents tried to get the most out of their LoS blocker, fearing the power of our Obliterators. Right at the moment, when I wanted to start moving my bikes about 24” into the direction of the Longfangs to put on some pressure, our opponents seized the initiative!

Seizing initiative and directly moving into shooting positions.

That meant lots of S8 missiles and autocannons would shoot at my nobs, there wasn’t much I feared, but this was definitely one of the worst things that could happen, because I had no chance to turboboost beforehand. Luckily the shooting was not very successful and I was able to save every shot and didn’t lose a single model. In addition to this our enemy’s large number of Rhinos and Razorbacks stood in each other’s way and couldn’t move around freely. In our turn I boosted the bikes, moved the Boyz and the CSM started to shoot at the annoying Dreadnoughts.

All of the Orks start moving out ...

... and the Boyz secure some objectives.

Over the next few turns we were able to destroy both Dreadnoughts, one unit of Longfangs and nearly every transport vehicle. Sadly, I lost my complete Nob Bikers, but at least they soaked up loooooots of fire and killed one unit of Longfangs and one of the Dreadnoughts. The large unit of Boyz did exactly what it was supposed to do. It secured two objectives and killed a complete unit of Greyhunters, which attacked them.

The Boyz stop the Grey Hunters.

The other Greyhunters and Grey Knights were threaten by our Obliterators and couldn’t reach any objectives that way. The normal CSM camped our home objective and defeated the Wolfscouts and the Plague Marines shot at them Rhinos with their meltaguns. All in all worked our initial plan pretty good, because the table had a large area without any cover right in the middle and we had been able to place most of the objectives there, so that our Obliterators could control everything in the late game. In the end we scored a 15-5 with 3-0 objectives and no real difference in victory points.

The Prince stops some tanks (and lots of dead Orks on the right).

In the next post I’ll tell more about game two and three (which was quite fast). For the second game there are only two or three pictures and in the last game we forgot to take some at all, sorry for that.

Cheers Cleutin

Tournament in Iserlohn

Hey guys,

on Saturday November 5^th 2011 I went to Iserlohn in order to participate in a team tournament with my fellow Michael. A few weeks earlier my brother and Michael had taken part in another team tournament, which was very similar to this one and so we had very early some good ideas for a team setup.
With a total of 76 tournament points in which only 60 points could be achieved throughout the three games and the remaining 16 points were given for painting, we decided to opt for a fully painted army, because we didn’t want to lose 4 or more points due to painting. In addition to this we hoped that not every team would be fully painted, which would give us an edge in the final rating.

Keeping this in mind, we already had a rather limited possibility of different team setups. First of all I’ll give you a quick overview of the tournament’s rule set and later on will argue why we choose certain units for our armies.
A complete team consisted of two players, which played together on one table as ONE army. But any army specific special rules couldn’t be transferred to the partner’s units. Every player had exactly 1,000 points to spend for his units and any remaining points couldn’t be transferred into the partner’s army. In addition to that, every player had a limited FOC to build his army, which looked like the following:
1 HQ
2-4 Troop
0-2 Elite
0-2 Fast Attack
0-2 Heavy Support

The limitation of several important slots to only 2 per army (not per team) and the necessity to play only painted models, made it difficult to find a suiting army. So first of all, we took a look at the missions played, which were only the three rulebook missions, which meant that we would play objectives twice and killpoints once. Very soon we discovered that Orks and CSM would probably make a good combination, both armies could easily include Troop choices, which are able to deal with some enemies, and could easily combine strong CC power with some decent shooting.
In the end I decided to play the Ork part of our army and our final lists looked like that:

***************  1 HQ  *************** 
Warboss
- Power Claw
- Warbike
- Cybork Body
- Bosspole
 - - - > 140 Points

***************  2 Troop  *************** 
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
- Cybork Bodies
 - - - > 670 Points

25 Boyz
- Shootas
- Nob
- Power Claw
- Bosspole
 - - - > 190 Points

Summed up: 1000 Points

***************  1 HQ  *************** 
Daemon Prince
- Wings
- Mark of Slaanesh
- Lash of Submission
 - - - > 155 Points

***************  1 Elite  *************** 
3 Chaos Terminators
- 3 x Melta-Combi Weapon
 - - - > 105 Points

***************  2 Troop  *************** 
5 Chaos Space Marines
- Icon of Chaos Glory
+ - Chaos Rhino
 - - - > 120 Points

5 Plague Marines
- 2 x Meltaguns
+ - Chaos Rhino
 - - - > 170 Points

***************  2 Heavy Support  *************** 
3 Obliterators
 - - - > 225 Points

3 Obliterators
 - - - > 225 Points

Summed up: 1000 Points

This way we got quite a number of scoring units (the Ork units being large enough to cover more than one objective and the Chaos units rather mobile and save due to the Rhinos), but also didn’t play too many units that could easily be killed in the killpoint mission. In addition to this we managed to field both armies with completely painted miniatures and didn’t lose any softscores in this way.

So much for today, in the next article I’ll write about the three games we played and provide some pictures and enemy army lists as far as I remember them.

Cheers Cleutin

Sample Ork Army List

Hey guys,

I’m still lacking some ideas, but once again I’m sitting in a train and have quite some time to think and write this way. So, as already promised I’m going to give you some ideas about the Ork army I’m currently playing most of the time. I’ll just start with the army list so that you know what I am talking about ;)

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

Warboss

- Mega Armour

- Cybork Body

- Bosspole

 - - - > 115 Points

Big Mek

- Kustom Force Field

 - - - > 85 Points

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

15 Lootas

 - - - > 225 Points

9 Tankbustas

- 2 x Tankhammer

- Nob

- Power Claw

- Bosspole

 - - - > 165 Points

9 Tankbustas

- 2 x Tankhammer

- Nob

- Power Claw

- Bosspole

 - - - > 165 Points

***************  4 Troops  *************** 

3 Meganobz

- 1 x Kombi Shoota-Skorcha

- 1 x Kombi Shoota-Rokkit Launcha

+ Battlewagon

   - 2 x Big Shoota

   - Deff Rolla

   - Grot Riggers

 - - - > 255 Points

19 Boyz

- Nob

- Power Claw

- Bosspole

 - - - > 154 Points

19 Boyz

- Shootas

- Nob

- Power Claw

- Bosspole

 - - - > 154 Points

10 Gretchin

- 1 x Runtherd

 - - - > 40 Points

***************  1 Fast Attack  *************** 

3 Warbuggies

- 3 x Twin-linked Rokkit Launcha

 - - - > 105 Points

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

3 Killa Kans

- 3 x Grotzooka

 - - - > 135 Points

Battlewagon

- 2 x Big Shoota

- Deff Rolla

 - - - > 120 Points

Battlewagon

- 2 x Fette Wumme

- Deff Rolla

- Grot Riggers

 - - - > 125 Points

Summed up: 1843 Points

As you can see this is roughly a list for 1,850 point games. There are some spare points and if I want I can even get additional free points by kicking a Loota or getting rid of some of the big shootas on the Battlewagons. To get down to 1,750 I can either kick the squad of Warbuggies or instead buy a second squad that consists of 2 Buggies and kick one of the Tankbusta squads completely. Now let’s take a closer look at the list itself.
In the HQ I chose a combination of a Warboss and a Big Mek because in my opinion this is one of the strongest setups. With three BWs in this list I really want to have access to a KFF, but do not really need two of them. The Warboss allows me to buy a squad of Nobz as a Troop choice and this way I can play four scoring units in my list and I’m still able to max out my Elite section.
In the Elite section there is only one large unit of Lootas. Of course I would rather play two squads of 10 Lootas each, but I often play against Tyranids and Marines and learned to love my Tankbustas with their AP 3 weapons a lot. So I stick to two mobile Tankbusta units. Kommandos and Burnaboys didn’t make it into my list, because neither of them really supports my style of playing Orks. A unit of Nobz would be far too expensive in this list and is therefore left out as well.
The first of my Troop choices is a unit of MANz (of course with maxed out woundgroups) in a BW. This way I can even field a BW in Dawn of War deployment if I want to. The Warboss often runs with this unit, in order to not slow down my units of Boyz. The Boy units are at 19 models, because this way I can put each of them into a BW and I am free to decide which of these squads protects the Big Mek. One unit is equipped with shootas so that I get some alternatives in playing these units. Last but not least I included a squad of Gretchins. It should be quite clear that this unit most of the time is kept in reserve and always hides and does nothing at all besides seizing an objective late in the game.
In the Fast Attack section I just bought a squad of Rokkit-Buggies. For 105 points they are just great to move quite fast over the battlefield and shoot twin-linked rokkits at everything that could be dangerous for me. Being fast vehicles helps them a lot in staying alive even though they are just AV10 open topped.
The Heavy Support section is quite full (with the BW of the MANz I got 4 units) and very important for my army. I bought two BWs in here what makes my army far more mobile and harder to kill than without them. In addition to that every BW in my army is equipped with a deff rolla, which helps a lot with dealing with highly armoured vehicles. D6 automatic hits at S10 can open LRs or any other vehicle that is annoying my army. It’s important to keep in mind that the BW is open topped, which means that the Orks inside it can even attack anything that falls out of a destroyed transport vehicle ;)
The last Heavy Support slot is occupied by a squadron of Killa Kans. Equipped with grotzookas they can kill hordes as well as better armoured infantry and with AV11 on the front they are quite good in blocking annoying outflanking units. If there is nothing like that to do I can even play them rather aggressively, because their S10 attacks make them also good at destroying vehicles. So they are a real allround unit in my army and can do whatever has to be done.

With 14 killpoints in this list it’s of course not that easy to win a killpoint game, but lots of these killpoints are rather hard to get for your opponent. As long as he doesn’t have lots of long range firepower he will have to get close to you in order to destroy your BWs and that’s exactly what you want him to do. As soon as he approaches you can unleash all of you power at once dealing lots of damage to his units. Normally I keep my army close together with lots of Boyz hidden in BWs. That way they can attack at a rather long range (with the Help of a good time Waaagh even further) and do not block the movement of my vehicles. In games like that I often use my Killa Kans to defend one of my flanks against everything that tries to surround my army, instead of throwing them in the middle of the fight. The Warbuggies very often annoy the enemy and block his movement by spreading out right before his army.
Playing with objectives I try to place one of the objectives very close to my table edge in order to get it with my Gretchin late in the game. The remaining objectives are ideally in the middle of the table close by so that I can seize some of them with my large units of Boyz and the middle of the table is exactly where I want to play most of the time. If there are only two objectives I can defend my own one with Gretchins and Lootas, while lots of my units attacks the other one. As long as I can hold mine and can at least contest the other one with any unit everything is good for me. If your enemy has outflanking units it’s often a good idea to let your Killa Kans defend your objective as well. They should be able to stop most of those units that are able to outflank.

That is more or less what I can tell you about playing with such an army. As always it comes down to playing and learning for yourself and finding your own style of playing. If you find out that you do not need two squads of Tankbustas, but are missing a second unit of Lootas then feel free to change it or play an at all completely different list :)
Just do what you think is the best for yourself and try out lots of different thinks. I hope this article helped you in finding an Ork list for yourself.
Now stay tuned for the next article, at least I do, because I still don’t know what I’m writing about :P

Cheers Cleutin

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

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