Greetings fellow Warbosses. Jason “Doc” Rogers here to talk about the new Mob Up stratagem for Orks. Check the Tactics Corner for more great articles.
With the release of Chapter Approved, like many of you, I was initially underwhelmed. However, now that I have had time to mull it over, I really like what I see. In this article, I am going to address how to use the Mob Up stratagem for an alpha-strike assault. For this tactic, you will need to have the ability to Charge after Advancing.
Mob Up – This is by far my favorite thing for the Orks in Chapter Approved.
Most people look at this as just a way to deny Kill Points to your enemy. I see this as a great way to increase your combat effectiveness, and not just because you get to add more models to a unit of boyz. If used correctly, it can dramatically increase your chances of making your charge rolls while also getting lots of boyz into combat. If played right, you can use it for a fairly consistent 1st turn charge/alpha strike.
Stormboyz are cheap, and because they have the Full Throttle ability, they are easiest to use for this example. Full Throttle allows Stormboyz to advance and still charge. However, if they do so, the unit takes a Mortal Wound on the roll of a 1, rolling 1D6 per model in the unit.
Say you have a unit of 15 Stormboyz, and two units of 10 Stormboyz that are 24” away from the enemy at the start of the game. 10 model units are ideal as you might be hard pressed to end up close enough to Mob Up your units if you take smaller units. This also allows you more choices on which units Mob Up as 10 is the magic number for this stratagem.
The biggest problem with Stormboyz is that they are a glass cannon. Many times, they lose models to shooting or overwatch before they can get into the fray. Move all your Stormboyz units towards the enemy and advance as you do so. Say your unit of 15 Stormboyz rolls a 1 for advance… bad news, you aren’t going to make the charge and now your big unit of Stormboyz is vulnerable to enemy fire next turn. Right? Not necessarily.
Make your advance rolls and move your other Stormboyz units, ensuring that each unit ends its movement within 2” of your 15 man Stormboyz mob. Now say one of your 10 man units rolls a 3 for advance and the other rolls a 5.
- All stormboyz started 24” away from the enemy.
- 15 man Stormboyz moved 13”
- 10 man Stormboyz moved 15”
- 10 man Stormboyz moved 17”
At the end of your movement, Mob Up the 15-man unit and the 10-man unit that moved 17”.
Now you have a 25 man Stormboyz mob that only needs to roll a 7+, (with a reroll), to successfully charge your opponent. You have extra models in the unit to absorb overwatch and you can pull casualties from the back. An extra Nob for krumpin’ the big nasties and vehicles never hurts either.
While this may not be what everyone was hoping for, it is certainly something that helps Da Boyz get into the fray.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
And here I was just thinking about glomming together units of lootas for all the dakka.
That’s a good idea, too. There’s a lot of cool ways to apply this strat.
Having a unit of Boyz in a Trukk get out using the extra movement disembarking gets you, connect them to a 30 strong mob of Boyz near a Warboss, the entire unit then goes for a long range first turn charge. Sweeeet! lot’s of fun stuff you can do.
I don’t understand why folks don’t find mob up to be amazing. “10 OR more” and “10 OR less” means you can combine any number of ten model units into one massive unit. This goes amazingly well with weirdboyz!
For example, say you have 1 unit of 30 boyz and 3 units of 10 boyz. You can use mob up to combine them into one unit of 60. Then hit them with the weirdboyz for +1 attack, and finally da jump them for a rediculous 1st turn charge of 60 buffed boyz! (Including 4 nobz!)
Plus, it can be used to nab CP. For example, instead of including 1 unit of 30 boyz, take 3 units of 10. It costs 2CP to combine them, but you gain 3CP from the 3 troop choices. (Assuming, of course, you are already running enough extra HQs)
Even if you replace a supreme command with a battalion this way, you end up breaking even on CP and get 2 extra nobz for free.
unless you’re playing open play you can only use it once a phase, which means once a turn.
so yeah, taking 12, 10 man units and combining them all would be amazing. sadly, it’s also illegal.
Yeah, it’s once per turn, but still super awesome.
Still, buffing and da jumping 40 boyz is better than 30 🙂
Yup! There’s a lot of great ways to use it. I really dig using it with Trukk Boys as Calle noted.
It makes trukker-boyz better as well. If you have at least 2 trukks (I would bring 3-4) with boyz or even a battlewagon with boyz + trukkerboyz you will create a mob of 20+ boyz for that bonus attack. Transports are much better for orks this edition as well compared to 7th when a trukk could explode after one shot and deal damage to half of the passangers + more dying of mob rule.
Yeah, I had someone write in using Kommandos with Mob Up to great effect. It’s a really useful stratagem and I am glad people are coming around on it as I was getting skewered for defending it at first, lol.
As an old ork player I think it’s really cool that we got mob up back after so many years!
Interesting with kommandos for 2 nobz and 4 burna-kommandos in one unit. Do you think Snikrot is worth taking for his buff and damage output?
I had some folks email in with the same idea. I think it certainly has merit.
I almost used this against Carmona in the FLG League recently. He had some Khorne Berserkers eating one of my mobs alive. My plan was to mob them up with a 30-boy unit, then Jump them all to the other side of the board to leave his dudes out in the middle of nowhere.
It went went great in my head… until he starting pointing guns at my Weirdboyz. *sad trombone*
But yeah, I actually dig this rule. Lots of clever applications. I super dig the ideas above. I will definitely steal them.
Haha, that would have been an epic save if you had pulled it off!