E-Mail In : Help with School League Orks.

E-Mail In :

Hey Gmort.
 
Just wondered if ou were up for a challenge and felt like helping me come up with a nasty ork list following the school league rules? The local group I play with has had an influx of gamers from a local school and as a way of helping them get themselves ready for the next season (next year I believe) we're running a few 600 point leagues. 
 
The FOC is as follows:
1+ HQ
2+ Troops
0 -1 Elites
Either 0 -1 Fast Attack OR 0 - 1 Heavy Support.
 
As you can see its a very restrictive FOC and I have had no problems designing lists for my power armoured forces but I want to run an ork list now. I would prefer an infantry based Goff list, though I'm not adverse to meching up the list. At the moment I'm thinking of the following:
 
Big Mek - 85Pts
Kustom Force Field
 
20 Boys - 180Pts
2 Rokkit Launcha's
Nob - Power Claw, Boss Pole
 
20 Boys - 180Pts
2 Rokkit Launcha's
Nob - Power Claw, Boss Pole
 
That leaves me with 155 points and I dont know where to spend them. I could go with stormboyz with a Power Claw Nob, Burna's or even a couple of units of 20 Grots. 
 
I've also designed a mek based dread mob list which fits the rules, basically 2 Meks, 2 Dreads, 3 Kans and 2 units of 10 Grots.
 
Can you help?
 
Regards
 
Dan


Reply :

I'll see if any of the Ork players who look at the blog can help you. If they can't then I'll give it a go myself.

Well any Ork players up for the challenge???

E-Main In/Request for help - Orks

After having his Ork army dismantled neatly by a load of Salamanders, a young player at my FLGS started asking for help from various of the people there...

Firstly he had a minimal amount of trukks which meant they required the minimum amount of anti-tank fire to take out leaving the rest of his opponents fire-power free to kill whatever it damn well pleased. He didn't have the Ork unit prerequisites of Nob with Power Klaw or Boss Poles amongst many other little mistakes which combined to make him extremely easy to wipe-out.

Unfortunately the young man in question likes Trukks, fortunately (I suppose) he likes Bikes but he also likes warbuggies and wartrakks. With these practical limitations in mind I'm attempting to help him out.....it's not easy to make a good Ork list at the best of times but with these limitations I'm not sure we'll be sending him off to tournaments but at least he might win a game or two.

His personal preferences seem to lend themselves to the 'Speed Freak' theme so taking his personal requirements of Trukks, Bikes and Buggies I thought this might be a bit better than what he's using currently,


1500 Pts - Codex: Orks Roster - Orks for Josh

HQ: Wazdakka Gutsmek (1#, 180 pts)
   1 Wazdakka Gutsmek @ 180 pts

Troops: Warbikers (8#, 240 pts)
   7 Warbikers @ 240 pts
      1 Biker Nob (Bosspole; Power Klaw)

Troops: Warbikers (7#, 215 pts)
   6 Warbikers @ 215 pts
      1 Biker Nob (Bosspole; Power Klaw)

Troops: Boyz (13#, 162 pts)
   11 Boyz @ 162 pts (Rokkit Launcha x1)
      1 Boyz Nob (Bosspole; Power Klaw)
      1 Trukk (Reinforced Ram)

Troops: Boyz (13#, 162 pts)
   11 Boyz @ 162 pts (Rokkit Launcha x1)
      1 Boyz Nob (Bosspole; Power Klaw)
      1 Trukk (Reinforced Ram)

Troops: Boyz (13#, 162 pts)
   11 Boyz @ 162 pts (Rokkit Launcha x1)
      1 Boyz Nob (Bosspole; Power Klaw)
      1 Trukk (Reinforced Ram)

Troops: Boyz (13#, 162 pts)
   11 Boyz @ 162 pts (Rokkit Launcha x1)
      1 Boyz Nob (Bosspole; Power Klaw)
      1 Trukk (Reinforced Ram)

Fast Attack: Warbuggies (2#, 70 pts)
   0 Warbuggies @ 70 pts
      1 Warbuggy (Unit Type: Vehicle (Fast, Open-topped); Twin Linked Rokkit Launcha)
      1 Warbuggy (Unit Type: Vehicle (Fast, Open-topped); Twin Linked Rokkit Launcha)

Fast Attack: Warbuggies (2#, 70 pts)
   0 Warbuggies @ 70 pts
      1 Warbuggy (Unit Type: Vehicle (Fast, Open-topped); Twin Linked Rokkit Launcha)
      1 Warbuggy (Unit Type: Vehicle (Fast, Open-topped); Twin Linked Rokkit Launcha)

Fast Attack: Warbuggies (2#, 70 pts)
   0 Warbuggies @ 70 pts
      1 Warbuggy (Unit Type: Vehicle (Fast, Open-topped); Twin Linked Rokkit Launcha)
      1 Warbuggy (Unit Type: Vehicle (Fast, Open-topped); Twin Linked Rokkit Launcha)

Total Roster Cost: 1493


Not the most optimised list I've ever done but it at least makes the best of the things he has. It has 6 scoring units for objective games. With two of the scoring units being a decent threat in close combat.
10 rokkits for anti-tank with 6 of them having the all important (for Orks anyway) Twin-Linked rule. And a fair bit of anti-infantry fire-power from the bikes (3 twin-linked S5 shots per bike).

Hopefully I can persuade him to gradually change this list for something a bit more optimised at a later date ;-)

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

List Design for Beginners - Part 3(c) - What Army to Choose?

Part 3(a) can be found here and Part 3(b) can be found here.

And on we go,

Imperial Guard.

The quintessential Mechanised army. Cheap Transports, Squadron-able Heavy tanks, Vendettas and Valkyries combined with cheap troops should you feel your tanks need some bubble-wrap* make for a formidable wall of armour to have to wade through. Fortunately for your opponent the guardsmen inside them are (for the most part) crap.

*another concept we'll come back to later sometime after we've completed our codex overviews.

Mech - The obvious one really. Chimera's filled with scoring units backed by various tanks with Vendetta/Valkyrie Squadrons zooming about annoying the fuck out of your opponents. An army that works well is pretty easy to come up with using this aspect of the Imperial Guard codex, an army that will roll over your opponent without feeling the bumps takes a bit more work.

The Flying Circus - Valkyries and Vendettas in various squadrons filled with Veterans with Meltaguns can arguably be considered as one of the best Alpha strike armies there is.....as long as you go first. Armour 12 is not a great defence and once your on foot even Veteran Guardsmen are going to get boned by pretty much everything in assault and pretty much everything else when shot at. I'm not dismissing it completely as a competitive build but it certainly has some issues.

Infantry - Due to the cheapness of Imperial Guard troops it's possible to field hordes of infantry backed up by dozens of Heavy Weapon Teams. Large 'blob' squads of infantry will make a mess of pretty much anything (and I do mean anything) should a correctly configured one get the chance to charge an enemy. Such armies do have a number of weaknesses however the main ones are that Guardsmen will lose in a fight against almost anything that gets stuck into them and that having no vehicles has a major impact on your mobility.

Hybrid - Often the best bet. Lots of armour with infantry to get in the way of anything that tries to destroy them.

The Imperial Guard codex has gained somewhat of a reputation for being overpowered which it doesn't necessarily deserve. It's scary to be sure but is by no means unbeatable...

Necrons.

Another of the older codices that has trouble competing in the mechanised world of 5th edition. Due to the 'phase-out' rule which causes your army to disappear should the number of units with the 'Necron' rule go below a certain percentage you'll find that much of your army will be ignored while the aforementioned 'Necron' units get wiped out causing everything else to die with them.

Tri-Monolith - Monoliths are a bastard to kill, 3 of them are almost impossible to reliably get rid of for most builds. However I've only once lost to Necrons in all the years I've been playing and have also never even fired at a Monolith, I just destroy everything else and go for the Phase-out...

'Balanced' - I'm not sure there is such a thing for Necrons. Take enough Warriors so your army doesn't phase out after losing a unit or two and fill the rest of the army with killy stuff.

My opinion is to wait until they get their new codex (which should be sooner rather than later) when they'll hopefully have been bought up to 5th edition standards.

Orks.

Another army that many deem to be uncompetitive due to their lack of Melta, crappy vehicles and (somewhat ironically) poor performance in assault if a decent or semi-decent unit assaults them first.

Horde Orks - 180 Orks takes a lot of shooting to kill and a few of these armies did remarkably well in the early days. However a Mechanised opponent will outmanoeuvre you and it doesn't take many Flamers to put a dent in a horde army with saves as rubbish as most Orks have. Other more practical disadvantages are that it will take forever to paint and you'll be lucky to finish a 1500 point game in less than 2 hours, lol.

Battlewagon Spam - A wall of Battlewagons (well 3 could be a wall...admittedly it wouldn't be a very big wall...) filled with scary killy Orks is a common enough concept. Though armour 14 on the front is great, your more likely to be being shot in your side armour of 12 due to how narrow the 'official' Battlewagon model is. As Front, Side and Rear armour facings are decided by drawing an imaginary line across the vehicles corners Battlewagons are only armour 14 in quite a narrow cross section. These sort of builds also require you to use at least one HQ choice on a Big Mek with a Kustom Force Field in order to give your vehicles a 4+ 'obscured' save. There are, however very few armies that are unable to destroy three vehicles in a turn and from that point on your walking...

Kan Spam - Killer Kans can be taken as Squadrons of three and a single Deff Dread can be taken as a troop choice for each big Mek you have as a HQ. This gives you a wall of armour that the rest of your army can hide behind. The Meks (with the obligatory Kustom Force Field) will be giving a good portion (if not all) of this wall a 4+ save with the rest of it getting a save either from the KFF or from the big pile of tin cans in front of them. Two Meks with KFF's, nine Killer Kans and two Deff Dreads can be fielded for less than 800 points which leaves plenty for Troops and Lootas.

Dual Nob Bikers - The army that gave wound allocation such a bad name. Each Warboss enables you to take a Nobz unit as a troop choice. You then give the whole unit Warbikes and each model in the unit a slightly different war-gear load-out so you can spread any non-instant death wounds around the squad. You end up with an extremely mobile unit that takes a 4+ cover save with it wherever it goes and can kill pretty much anything it assaults with brutal efficiency. The downside is that two Biker warbosses and a pair of wound allocation optimised Nob Biker units is going to be the best part of 1500 points of your force and there are plenty of balanced army lists that can still kill them relatively quickly.

Hybrids - Your best bet for a consistently successful Ork army is to create a balanced force using the best bits rather than to opt for a 'Spam' list.

Orks are a fairly forgiving army for the beginner but you'll find them frustrating to use against more experienced opponents.

Okay that's another three covered. Space Marines, Space Wolves and Tau will be coming up next...