Culler's How to Build an Ork Army 6: Heavy Support

Here is another edition of How to Build an Ork Army from Culler:

-Battlewagons are best used as transports. Battlewagons with killkannons are expensive for what they do, but then again the Ork army lacks low AP weaponry, so you’re paying a premium for a rare ability. It’s easy to put too many upgrades onto a battlewagon, so choose its role carefully and gear towards that. There are plenty of battlewagon tacticas floating about though.

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-Looted wagons make decent transports in a pinch but I don’t recommend it. Looted wagons with a boomgun and ‘ard case are pretty decent for providing low ap large blasts, but only if you’ve got other vehicles because if they’re alone they will just get quickly destroyed. They’re still probably high priority to kill for most opponents. Compare a looted wagon to a leman russ and you get an idea of how much you're paying for how little as an Ork.

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-Killa Kans are pretty amazing, one of the underdogs of the Ork codex that most people write off. They’re incredibly cheap and for their points are extremely tough. The grotzooka is an amazing weapon for killing infantry and light vehicles and with their bs of 3 their other weapons have a decent chance of hitting too. Kustom mega-blastas are a little too pricey to be worth it though. A squad of 3 gets 9 str 10 power attacks on the charge too. Sure they’ve only got a ws of 2 but they still hit ws 4 troops on a 4+, same as dreadnoughts or deff dreads. Keep them lean, there really aren't any upgrades worth giving them since their cost is so low to start with.

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-Deff dreads are a suboptimal choice and generally not worth taking over killa kans, IMO. Their ranged ability is laughable until they get within template range, at which point a deff dread becomes about as effective as a pair of grotzooka kans are from 18” away. 2 AV 11 vehicles are tougher than 1 AV 12 vehicle too. The kans get more attacks than a deff dread unless it takes 2 DCCWs, at which point the kans outclass it at range completely and still have the same number of attacks on the charge. They both hit on the same number against ws 4 stuff and that’s most of what they’ll be fighting in any combat that’s not going to be utterly one-sided anyway. If your heavy support choices are full and you’ve got a big mek it may be worth taking a deff dread as a troops choice but not usually.

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-Flash Gitz are another suboptimal choice and usually not worth taking when compared to other units. Too many points for too little output that’s unreliable anyway. Flash gitz have the stats of 'eavy armor nobs with a better ranged attack, no extra ccw, and no options for upgrades like powerklaws. They're not very good fire support for their points and not a very good melee option for their points, but they can do both roles to some degree. If you want to use them take a painboy and/or put them in a battlewagon. The more dakka and shootier upgrades are both good if you do take them though. However, you're much better off getting your anti-infantry firepower elsewhere. For 30 points you could have either a flash git with 2 str 5 shots with 24” range and bs 2 or you could have a warbuggy with 3 str 5 shots that are twin-linked at 36” range. You're basically paying a premium for nobs that sacrifice some cc ability to get a lackluster ranged option.

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-Big Gunz are decent ranged support, especially kannons. Zzap guns are too unreliable for killing tank (average penetration strength is 10.5 to kannon shells that are average penetration strength 11.5 and are cheaper) and zzap guns are also expensive to be shooting at even the most heavily armored infantry. Big Gunz are also fragile, even a single heavy bolter has a good chance of killing crew and forcing them to run or wrecking the gun. They do ranged support well though, something Orks generally lack. Most people consider them too fragile to be relied upon and I’m inclined to agree. Generally deffkoptas or warbuggies do the tank hunting thing better.

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WAAAAAAAGH!

Ere we go! Culler's How to Build an Ork Army part 5: Fast Attack!

-Old School here, with another addition from Culler's How to Build an Ork Army Tactica:

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-Stormboyz with a powerklaw nob are a good choice. The bosspole is pretty much required due to their max size being low and them being a prime target.

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-Warbikers are another good choice. A nob with powerklaw and bosspole is pretty much required. I prefer them to stormboyz since they have a devastating shooting option as well as being able to fight well in CC. Stormboyz do a little better in assault though, and are half the cost albeit not as tough and virtually no save to the warbikers’ 4+ cover and 4+ armor and 3+ cover when turboboosting. Stormboyz can charge into cover without dangerous terrain checks though. It comes down to preference.

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-Deffkoptas are somewhat of a wild card. You can turbo-boost them in front of everything in your army to have them soak up a round of shooting from your enemy. 2 wounds each, T5, and a 3+ cover save is pretty solid. On the other hand, they’re surprisingly weak in CC. Tough yes, but only 2 attacks each base at strength 3 unless they charge. They’re decent vehicle hunters, though expensive. Each basically has a 55% chance of hitting with each shot they fire. For anti-infantry there are better options (like warbikes). As far as upgrades go, there are many different ways to equip them for whatever you want them to be doing. The only upgrade I strongly discourage is the kustom mega-blasta. It's pricey and not twin-linked like the other weapon options, so you won't hit the broadside of a barn with it.

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-Warbuggies are decent if you have a bunch of vehicles. Because in a list where they’re the only vehicles they are too vulnerable to survive your opponent’s focused anti-tank for long. They can’t outflank like deffkoptas or ignore terrain like deffkoptas and can’t tie up ranged specialist squads like deffkoptas but are pretty tough for their points if you have other vehicles as well. Their optimal role is probably tank hunting in a mechanized list, though skorchas can pull off some pretty great stuff now and then in a mechanized list. Giving them big shootas is a good option if you’re hurting for anti-infantry ranged firepower. Keep them as low points as you can though and don’t worry about upgrades.

Culler's How to Build an Ork Army 4: Da Boyz

As promised, more from Culler's How to Build an Ork Army Tactica.

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Troops:

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Boyz:-If they’re in a transport, they’re better of as slugga boyz, especially if they’re in a trukk because the trukk is liable to die at any moment and you want to get them out asap (only point in shootas in a transport is to stay inside and shoot.) I’ve seen shootas in battlewagons and that works alright too.If the boyz are walking, they are generally better off wielding shootas. This allows them to be within effective striking distance a turn earlier, sometimes two, gives them a way to deal with dedicated CC units that isn’t playing to those units’ strengths, and takes very little away from their CC ability. They will still stomp most units into the pavement. It is sometimes also useful to take a mix of slugga boy mobs and shoota boy mobs if you’re going green tide to cater to your opponent’s units’ weaknesses (a 2 shoota mob to 1 slugga mob ratio is good.)

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-Always put a nob with power klaw in with your mobs. I recommend a bosspole too. The power klaw is generally very tough for your opponent to ferret out and is a lifesaver against models with good saves, T4 and multiple wounds, high toughness models, and vehicles. A big choppa doesn’t really do much that the boyz mob couldn’t already do.

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-‘Ard boyz are almost never worth it except in transports where space is limited so paying for overly expensive upgrades isn’t a bad plan. The fact that the 4+ armor save costs almost as much as another Ork boy makes it really not worthwhile most of the time. Sometimes a big unit of boyz with 4+ armor is really nice for holding up against berserkers and the like in CC so you don’t lose combat as hard. 10 berserkers assaulting a unit of boyz can wipe it out with few casualties if they don’t have something making them a little tougher.

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-Stikkbombz are never worth it for boyz. You still strike after marines even with the charge and imperial guard and tau aren’t going to put up much of a fight in CC.

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-Rokkits are also pretty much never worth it for boyz. You want your boyz to be running towards the enemy or shooting infantry in the shooting phase and using rokkits as anti-tank weapons prevents both of those for the chance to fire a few shots, most of which will miss. You’re paying a premium in points to prevent your mob from doing what they’re good at to do something they’re terrible at. Just not worth it. Powerklaws work great for taking out vehicles. Big shootas are a nice addition to shoota mobs (place them near the back to make the make the most out of their range) but rarely needed for slugga mobs who will generally be running and may not shoot altogether for fear of the enemy sacrificing models that will prevent you charging.

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-Boyz mobs are always the backbone of any Ork army. They’re versatile and tough, don’t skimp on them.

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Gretchin: Best taken with as few runtherds as possible (19 gretchin and 1 runtherd is optimal IMO). They’re probably the best objective holders in the game for their points against shooting, but have little firepower and tear like wet paper in CC as they’re going to lose combat by a ton and get mowed down as they flee. A unit of 20 models with 4+ cover saves (if you stick them in cover) is crazy for 67 points though.

Culler's How to Build an Ork Army 3: Elites

Elites:-Nobs are good but are more effective in a transport (battlewagon over trukk) or on bikes. Always take a painboy and as many nobs as you can afford in the squad. Take 1 powerklaw per 3 or 4 nobs to deal with tanks and heavily armoured infantry. Equip your nobs with a variety of different wargear loadouts to spread wounds around the squad without removing models. I also recommend cybork bodies for the whole squad, but not necessarily ‘eavy armour. Feel no pain and cybork body together is the equivalent of a 3+ save against normal wounds but you still get a 5+ invulnerable against wounds that ignore armor. ‘Eavy armour only buys you 9% fewer wounds taken from regular sources if you put it on top of cybork. It’s helpful certainly but not necessary if you’re looking to save some points. All of their upgrades are decent, though twin-linked shootas are best left to walking nobs. Equipping a nob with a bosspole is pretty much necessary because of their problems with leadership. Leading them with a warboss is a great idea too to keep their morale in line and also to allocate strength 8 or 9 wounds to the warboss to prevent instant death for the nobs.
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Nob bikers are pretty strong, albeit costly. Building them goes much like the guidelines for other nobs except you definitely want cybork for them all instead of just being recommended. The higher points invested in them is worth protecting.
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-Meganobz are nice, but only in a transport. If you’re doing the nobs in transport thing, meganobz are typically a better choice than nobs.
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-Burnas are nice in a transport, especially a battlewagon, but are otherwise fragile for their points. In the battlewagon you can just roll around spewing templates out the side, which is pretty good albeit expensive.
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-Tankbustas are rarely worth it due to Glory Hog making them act like morons. They can’t hit the broadside of a barn anyway and are also fragile for their points. Tankbustas in a battlewagon are pretty decent because they can get close to a vehicle faster and launch all their rokkits from the comparative safety of the vehicle but this option is expensive not very effective for their points. Gear them to fight at range or in melee. For ranged a nob is not necessary but is helpful for morale with the bosspole. For melee taking some tankhammers and a nob with powerklaw is nice but a regular slugga boy mob is going to be better at fighting infantry and generally handles tanks just fine and costs much less.
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-Lootas are good at what they do and what they do is something the Ork army needs: long ranged firepower. They can take down light vehicles with ease and are decent at killing infantry at range. Make sure to deploy them in some cover as they don’t deal with morale checks well. They also still have 2 attacks each and furious charge, so in a pinch can mix it up.
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-Kommandos are great for showing up and charging on the same turn. Snikrot especially helps with this and I highly recommend him. They don’t deal with dedicated CC specialists that well, being essentially slugga boyz, but the Nob or Snikrot does well against tanks and the unit does great against vulnerable rear line units. With a regular nob leading the squad there’s a chance that the unit will come in some place where they will be utterly ineffective, that chance is much lower with snikrot. Don’t bother with big shootas or rokkits for kommandos, for the same reasons you don’t bother with them for slugga boyz (below). Burnas are really good for them though.

Culler's How to Build an Ork Army 2: Da Bosses

Here is the second article in the How to Build an Ork Army tactica by Culler from Heresy Online. This article explains his thoughts on the HQ choices available to the Green Skins. Enjoy,

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Culler said - HQ choices:-Every HQ in the Ork codex has a role to play except for one.

Weirdboyz are unreliable and almost as much a threat to the mob they’re in as a boon if you’re playing an opponent with blast weapons (due to deepstriking). If you use one I recommend the warphead upgrade to prevent as much poor rolling as possible.

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-Warbosses are solid CC monsters. I always recommend power klaw because the rest of the Orks can handle things with poor saves so the army needs all the power klaws it can get. Using a big choppa to strike before marines is all well and good but it only nets you a third as many dead marines as a power klaw and against things like carnifexes and hive tyrants the big choppa gets you almost nowhere. Most importantly the power klaw gives you a strength 10 weapon to employ against vehicles like monoliths and land raiders, which gives you an effective way to kill them since the Orks typically have trouble with those kinds of targets because they get no other strength 10 or Melta weaponry. If you have a warboss and you take nobs or meganobz, always take them as a troops choice so they can capture objectives. -The kombi-weapon options are pretty good for the warboss. The skorcha is excellent and the rokkit is alright if you give him an ammo runt to reroll his inevitable miss. The problem with the rokkit is that the unit he’s with is rarely going to want to shoot at a tank. The twin-linked shoota is decent if he’s on foot, but hardly necessary.

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-Cybork body is pretty much a necessary for the warboss. He often runs into power weapons and the save is very helpful to keep him surviving until he can use his power klaw.-There are basically 3 versions of the warboss: bike, ‘eavy armour, and mega armour. The ‘eavy armour warboss is cheap and you can basically put him anywhere. The bike warboss is more expensive but is basically a carnifex on wheels. Don’t worry about putting him in a regular walking boyz mob to have him shoot out to engage vulnerable targets once the mob gets within 18”.

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-Big Meks are useful in 2 ways: kustom force field and shokk attack gun. If you use a KFF make sure that it’s worth the cost. Keep in mind that it only gives a 5+ cover save, so for it to pay for the whole mek in casualties prevented it generally has to be prevent wounds to 14 boyz which means granting a cover save that wouldn’t otherwise be granted to 42 wounds from shooting to boyz. It’s tough to adjudicate if that’s going to happen, so just go be the rule that you want him protecting at least 60 boyz, several vehicles, or a combination of the two. Big Meks with shokk attack guns are fantastic at engaging targets with good armor saves which the rest of the list traditionally does poorly but you never want to leave him alone. They’re incredibly pricey and fragile. There’s a good tactica for where to put them here: http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=34858 but basically you always want to put them in some other unit.

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-Wazdakka Gutsmek is pretty much there just to allow you to field a warbikers as troops. If you’re fielding warbikers he’s worth considering, but otherwise not all that great.

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-Mad Dok Grotsnik is very solid if you combine him with a full mob of slugga boyz (or a full transport of them), but that’s the only thing worth using him for. Meganobz shrug off regular attacks plenty well and Grotsnik helps them none against the AP1 or 2 or power weapons they’ll usually have to worry about. 4 more meganobz is much better. Though giving the meganobz cybork bodies if you have Grotsnik in your army is worth it.

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-Ghazghkull Thraka is pretty solid if he’s riding in a transport. His ability to automatically get a 6 for his WAAAGH! is pretty good combined with charging out of an open-topped transport. Don’t make the mistake of joining him to a unit of regular boyz and slowing them down.

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-Old Zogwort is pretty much there for fun. He’s rarely effective for his points but turning your opponent’s super incredible HQ choice into an irate squig is worth more than mere points can ever represent. Some opponents don’t even have independent characters though, some independent characters can just stay out of his range, and his other psychic powers are unreliable and have great possibility for harming your own troops.

To view the whole article, check out this link http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=39703

How to Build an Ork Army Part 1: Mobz and Vics Article by Culler

I read a lot of forum posts and tactica throughout the week and every once and a while I come across a post that is incredibly useful. I want to post Culler's How To Build an Ork Army post here as a series of articles each day focusing on a different FoC group. Today, I will introduce his post and with it his initial advice on vehicles and mob composition. He put a lot of time and thought and practice into it and I hope you Ork players out there find something in these posts that can be useful to you.

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If you would like to read the work as a whole, I will post the link at the bottom of this article. Now I turn the floor to Culler.

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Culler said -I’ve been building, playing, and critiquing Ork lists for a while now and many of the same things keep cropping up, so here’s some solid advice on pitfalls to avoid and ways to make an Ork army. This is less of a ‘what units to take’ guide and more of a ‘how make your army work with your style, how to gear and equip your units, what units are good for what, and what units to avoid’ guide.

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Mob size:-It is always better to max the squad size as far as possible. That allows the Orks to use mob rule and gives them enough durability to win CC against tough opponents and weather fire. Exceptions are deffkoptas (can’t get big enough to really matter) and gretchin mobs (though you still want at least 19 gretchin). Some units it just isn’t feasible to max out like nob bikers and especially meganobz, though they do perform better in larger units.

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Transports:-There are 2 styles of Ork army: mechanized and non-mechanized. Mechanized armies have nearly everything in a transport (either trukks or battlewagons.) There is no middle ground on this issue for Orks unless you’re using battlewagons as transports for some of your troops because battlewagons actually have the survivability to weather your opponent’s anti-tank fire.The reason this is so goes something like this: your opponent has the ability to take out say, 2 trukks a round. If you’ve only got 2 trukks, then they both die the first round. If you’ve got 4, then half your trukks survive past the first round. If you’ve got 6 trukks, then 2/3 of your trukks make it, and so on. Once a trukk is destroyed, it also tends to be incredibly bad for the Orks within, often effectively neutering an already handicapped squad (due to small mob size). Some units can take the punishment of a transport’s death like nobs and meganobz, but they’re better off in a battlewagon anyway.

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-Looted wagons make decent if unreliable transports.-Transports should be open-topped so your units can fire out or assault out of them at will. Extra armour, red paint job, and grot riggers are all good upgrades, but generally too expensive for trukks. When it comes to battlewagons they’re all excellent though. Reinforced rams are good for all transports tough for the ability to reroll dangerous terrain checks, allowing you to drive through terrain without worry (virtually). The ramming ability will rarely come up but allowing trukks to tank shock is handy.

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Vehicles:-Either go with no vehicles or plenty. Having just one or two in a large army means all of your opponent’s anti-tank will be aimed at them and they’ll not survive as long as they should.

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http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=39703