Adam, a dedicated Ork player, gives his first impressions on Orks in 7th ed 40k.
I Have No Idea
I’ve been getting a lot of folks asking me how I feel about the Ork codex so far. I’ve only read it and not played a thing. My initial reactions are that I am very confused. I am honestly not sure how I’m supposed to use this book. I’m assuming the answer is “However you please,” of course, but that’s not really good enough for me.
WAAGH! Drillteef is a Brainboy-Heavy force which uses lots of vehicles and dabbles in Warp manipulation and tactical legerdemain. I think this Codex is going to do a lot for my army from a fluff perspective. I believe I can use this Codex to build an army which very closely reflects what WAAGH! Drillteef would look on the battlefield.
Multiple Combined Arms Detachments or Self-Allying
I think the new Ork Codex is a pretty good example of why we should be allowing players to take multiple Combined Arms Detachments or, in lieu of that, simply allowing them to ally with themselves. I think these lists should really shine when you allow them to put more HQs in the squads to make them more survivable when they start taking these horrible Mob Rule checks.
Brainboy HQs
I love what I can do with Meks now. Truly, this is my favorite part of the book. Only in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be able to pick up extra Meks to distribute throughout the army. This allows me to truly make WAAGH! Drillteef into the Mek-led force I’ve always wanted it to be. From a storytelling perspective, this is a huge win for me.
Being able to move the Painboy from unit to unit is a great boon. I’m excited that Mad Doc Drillteef will have some cool assistants to help him fix up da Boyz during a battle. I can’t wait to try a list which brings Mad Doc, two Painboys, and a Big Mek along with four Meks in two detachments. I’m thinking this will help mitigate a lot of issues with Leadership, staying power, and flexibility in the average Ork list.
Dedicated Transports
The inclusion of Dedicated Transports for units of Burnas, Lootaz, Tankbustas, and Flash Gitz is a huge improvement. You no longer need to bring Battlewagons from the Heavy slot to protect them from an alpha strike. Also, really, shouldn’t these units, above all others, be able to rig together a vehicle of their own?
Trukks are Fast Attack
It might be advisable to bring an extra Trukk or two to the battle if you’re finding yourself not using your Fast Attack slots. It might be nice to leave them in reserve and use them to hunker down in later in the game.
Buggies Seem Awesome
At the low-low price of 125 points, you can add a squad of 5 Rokkit buggies to your army. I dunno about you folks, but this seems like quite the steal. They have pretty good range and have the added bonus of being a wall of dangerous terrain if they’re wrecked by small arms fire. They can also fairly reasonably shoot down a flyer with 5 twin-linked Strength 8 shots. At 125 points and 10 hull points, and with that maneuverability, I’ll take that over a Psyfleman Dread any day of the week.
Some Obvious Winners
I think Mek Gunz and Meganobz will be some very popular choices. Mek Gunz are going to be really nice for plugging holes in a list. If you’re finding yourself unable to deal with a specific kind of unit, the Mek Gunz have a solution for it sitting on the backfield with Toughness 7.
As for Meganobz, they simply do not care about the Mob Rule table. Their 7 Leadership was always a pretty bad detriment to them and now at least they have a chance of staying in the fight. Meganobz are the one unit that Mob Rule actually improves.
Additionally, I’m going to be turning into quite the Ork Hipster. I’ve taken Mad Doc in almost every game for the past 3-4 years. Now that he’s one of the cool kids on the block, I’m not going to be alone and I will not hesitate to point every opponent who balks my use of him to this Blog to set the record straight!
Mob Rule and Boyz
I’m not sure what to say at this point. Below 10 models, it gives you hope, but losing fearless while not receiving a points adjustment does give me pause. I have concerns. I must say that the very concept of 30 Boyz having to take a Leadership check for anything (and this is just real talk here, so please bear with me), well, it kind of pisses me off. I can’t imagine a giant Mob of Boyz caring one whit about the scary Chaos Space Marines they are assaulting. I can’t imagine them caring at all about the 8 Boyz lost in shooting… they’ve still got 22 others!
I’m very leary about taking things just to mitigate the table. A Stompa or Gazghkull would do wonders for this, but do I really want to bring a Lord of War to every battle? I don’t think so. I’m going to, instead, be looking for ways of using deployment, unit composition, challenges, and wargear to mitigate these issues.
Possible Game-Changer
Mad Doc has both Feel No Pain and also Feel No Pain 6+ for no reason. I sent GW a question about this and if Cybork Bodies gets upgraded to a +1 FNP instead of a 6+, this could be a pretty nice game-changer for some units.
Well
I need to play the Codex for a few weeks in order to really give an assessment. I’m sure I’ll find things to enjoy. I hope it’s fun!
So wait… The unit has Feel No Pain 5+ and 6+? Haha that is super silly. Does it let you reroll after you fail on a 5+ to try to hit a 6+
FNP used to say to use the best value and ignore other counts in 6th but that appears to have been removed for 7th
For Shield breaker shot from vindicare assassins
Could be wrong but aren’t the wreck markers gone now?
Yeah, no more craters if you explode. You leave the vehicle if it is a wreck, though.
Cybork body gives a 6+ FnP to the bearer but Painboys give the normal USR FnP to the unit.
I am also sad I have to snap all the Big Shootaz and Rokkits off my Nobz. LOL.
I’ve got a couple of games in with the new orks, my first impression was wow you can build some interesting lists. After a couple of games though…
I was seriously underwhelmed by the warboss, the loss of the cybork 5++ is a huge reduction in power.
The only ways I can see orks working is gun line which wont out shoot a true gun line army, and a maximum threat style list where you get so many units in transports in your opponents face they can’t kill them all – which falls down if your going second and have to endure two Tau ignores cover shooting phases before you charge at which point they do kill them all as I found the hard way in my last game:(
The loss of the old ramshackle rule combined with the new mob rule has really done a number on on truck boys, which I already found underwhelming in the previous codex.
Having the vehicle explode killing about 5 boys on average, then taking a pinning test and failing, loosing another 3 to mob rule then taking a morale test due to losses at the end of the phase, failing and loosing a couple more to mob rule and on top of that running away due to the mob rule roll, only to realize your now under 25% and testing on snake eyes to rally just isn’t my idea of fun!
Sure my opponent killed the truck fair and square, but loosing the unit inside entirely simply as a result of a combo of rules interactions and some slightly sub par leadership rolls (only slightly to) is just silly if you ask me.
I’m sure we’ll find builds that work, but at the moment all I can see is every list taking the mad dok to get at least one survivable unit due to fearless and feel no pain.
So, GW has changed everything about the Orks, forcing new and existing players to trial and error, which takes time, in a blatant attempt to stop the Interwebs from breaking the Codex.
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Not Rokkit science…..
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Who has that kind of time, or money, to try and figure out if an army is good at doing anything or if certain units are god/bad?
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I have a Bin of Orks that basically sat out 5e and 6e, guess they will sit out 7e as well…..
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Orks anyone?
Most wargamers??:P Don’t we just spend time and money on the game working out what units we like and how to play them…. then also play other people to see how best to play against different armies.
you kinda listed all the things I love about a new codex:)
lol, where did I put “most wargamers” ??
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No, players do not “waste” money, USA is still in a recession, as is the rest of the world, so no, time on the other hand, yep, players waste tons of time gimmicking the gimmick of the regimmick.
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What once was good is bad and what once was bad is good, was typical GW marketing, the Ork Codex is just a different approach to this tactic, change everything and make players start the testing all over again.
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Players play games to relax, trying to figure out craptasticly written Rules and Codices in order “just” to play is not fun for most.
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Again, not rokkit science, it is marketing 101.
I think you’ve got a point here rex, what the trend with 6th and 7th ed codexes has been so far has been pretty extreme one way or the other: you’re either really powerful or pretty underpowered.
This is bad for 40k in general because it has a chilling effect on purchasing. I have nothing but personal experience to back this up. But I waited out the most recent releases where I may have picked up new units just to see if they would be nerfed beyond recognition in the new rules…because that was happening.
Making sweeping changes to special rules books rely on makes swathes of the books unusable or unfun.
Maybe they compensate by selling gobs of the new models, maybe people really don’t care what’s nerfed and buy the models anyway, just speaking from my personal experience, shaky rules makes me spend less and wait longer to do it.
I ran the numbers on charge range for Orks. This assumes a minimum charge distance needed to qualify. It is a lot simpler than Fleet, since you can only ever re-roll one die, so you always re-roll the lowest and don’t have to calculate the probably of both dice when deciding to roll one or both.
First up, ‘ere we go range, re-rolling 1 die
2″ 100.00%
3″ 99.54%
4″ 98.15%
5″ 94.91%
6″ 89.81%
7″ 80.56%
8″ 68.06%
9″ 52.31%
10″ 35.65%
11″ 19.91%
12″ 7.41%
Short charges are much more reliable. The 10 inch charge for the Ork horde detachment to get HoW is about 35% although in practice will be less because you’ll want to ensure you make the charge rather than get the HoW hits (e.g. 9″ away, roll a 4 and 5, unlikely to reroll the 4 for a 1/3 chance to make 10″ but 1/2 time fail altogether).
Waagh charge range probabilities, D6 run, 2D6 charge re-roll one die
3” 100.00%
4” 99.92%
5” 99.61%
6” 98.77%
7” 97.07%
8” 93.83%
9” 88.50%
10” 80.63%
11” 70.22%
12” 57.72%
13” 43.98%
14” 30.56%
15” 19.21%
16” 10.49%
17” 4.55%
18” 1.23%
The numbers may not be perfect, but I did my best.
Thanks for running the numbers!
I have found the HoW to be pretty pointless so far, it is a nice little boost every once in a great while but nothing special.
GW seems to love HoW. Chariots, bikes, cavalry, walkers, jump packs, etc
On a str3 model, it isn’t very useful. It’s only effective against units you would annihilate anyways.
On jump pack units you’re almost always better off using your jump packs to get a better chance of charging
It’s ok as a nice little bonus, but not worth giving up OS in the detachment.
Exactly. ObSec is 100x better.
Can we please talk about how good the Ork relics are? Every one is useful and some are really stand out. I think this is the first dex that every single relic was functional.
Limited to Big Meks and Warbosses.
Da Finkin’ Kap is going to be default on my warlord. An extra trait for only 10 points is worthwhile in almost every match. I believe with a CAD you would get to reroll the result due to ideal commander. Night attacker seems good with bikes if you combo with turbo boosting and jink for a 2+ cover save.
The blitzbike adds a nice gun and 6″ when turbo boosting for only 10 points more. I feel like I’ll be jinking with bikes too much for this to be effective.
The killchoppa is better than I thought because at least it has rending. With warbosses being I4, it’s ok, but still 5 points overpriced.
Da Lucky Stikk is a good choice in megarmor. Only 5 points more than a standard banner. You could even reroll your Kombi shots. You’ll be impervious to anything that isn’t AP2, since you’ll always want to reroll those before you attack at I1. You can even reroll the KFF invuln, but it won’t help you in CC.
Da Fixer Upper is useful in a mek list when you ride inside a naught or BW.
Da Dead Shiny Shoota is TL 6 shot, average 3.33 hits, which is the equivalent of 5 shoota boyz. This is a must take for any warboss not on a bike or any Big Mek w/o a SAG.
The Killchoppa also has instant death when one rends. With 5 attacks on the charge, the warboss has slightly better than a 50/50 chance of insta-gibbing anything in the game that has WS4 or less and about a 41% chance against anything WS5 and up. He also gets to do this before smashing MCs (who only get one attack at S10 now!), so the only worry is wraithlords/knights. And, if he’s in a unit, they can’t single him out and with the changes in 7th they can’t just challenge and send him away.
Finkin Kap, Lukcy Stikk and Fixer Upper are amazeballs.
They are certainly standouts, but all the items are good and priced well.
I agree, they are all fantastic choices. Too bad you can only take 1 per guy as it gets hard to fit them ones in you want!
Blitzbike is awesome, too.
Argh, I’m at work, why are they limited to one per guy? I thought it was one per army?
Just checked, there is no limitation on a per model basis, just per army.
OK, looked at it again. I see the stipulation now. Convoluted stuff!
Yeah, bummer, right? It makes it a tough choice for some of these.
Under Gifts of Gork and Mork
Only one of each of the following may be taken per army.
A model can take one of the following:
Blargh. Ok I see what you’re getting at. Harumph!
Um, Call me crazy, but doesn’t the “…in two detachments. I’m thinking this will help mitigate a lot of issues with Leadership, staying power, and flexibility…” kinda just mean “legal cheating”? Armies have weaknesses. DEAL WITH IT! Making the super ubber kick all ass, have no flaws, beat all comers army based on rules manipulation is a weak way to play for a win. Frankly, (not Frankie) I am tired of that attitude. Put your army, as created based on the BRB & Codex on the table and play, as is. Allying with yourself, multiple attatchments, multiple FoC’s and such are ways to circumvent the rules. Last time I checked, that was called CHEATING!, or at the very least unsportsman like and childish. “Stacking the deck” is what a lesser player will do.
Derrick, multiple detachments are not cheating. It’s in the rules. LOL. Unless your play group is still stuck in 5th Edition, of course.
I’d argue that the Ork codex is even made with multiple Detachments in mind.
true for ,multiple attachments, I was mistaken. I see a difference between including/excluding rules for the betterment of the game and doping do for the betterment of an army
Please ignore the “multiple attachments”, in my post/rant as I was mistaken.
Multiple attachments (actually detachments) and multiple FOC are exactly the same thing; each detachment has it’s own FOC. And self-allying is a compromise that has been introduced in areas/groups that don’t like multiple detachments, not to mention just being a more restricted version of the same thing (i.e. less slots in the 2nd detachment).
So, really, all 3 of the examples you gave of “cheating” or “rules manipulation” are pretty much just playing by the rulebook rules…
On the “Armies have weaknesses. DEAL WITH IT!”, it seems like most of the newer books (primarily ‘nids and orkz so far) are designed with the use of multiple detachments and/or formations in mind. So yeah, armies have weaknesses that you have to deal with. Being bound to a single FOC and therefore limited in what direction you can take your list is no longer one of them when you play the game as intended.