My Waaagh

[tvih]

The Waaagh expands even while I still haven't even gotten a test game in with the new codex. As is I bought a Mek Gun (just the one, as I'm lame) and a box of grots. Also ordered a second grot box (as they only had one on the shelf), a weirdboy and tankbustas. I now have a brigade planned for when the models all arrive. The troop situation is quite sad though, three grot squads with 12 grots each (extra two grots each will be repurposed ones from the mek gun kit), one 10-man boyz squad and two 20 boys+nob squads.

 

But I'm finally gonna try to get a test game done next week, naturally it won't be this brigade since I won't have lal the stuff for it.

[tvih]

The kill team campaign I was taking part in came to a close. Sadly my participation was far lower than I would've liked. Here's all the models used in the four matches I did have for my kill team called "Da Krumpin' Kroo-zeid."

[tvih]

About 7 weeks later than intended, finally got the first game of 8th (and first game in general since the few small mixed lists back in 6th) in with my Orks. I was hoping to get two games, but ended up without a pair in the first round. Typical.

Ended up against Alaitoc Eldar. My iist was basically what I had painted (most of the boyz are still just skin and some weapons painted though, ugh, and haven't been painting anything new either). Not exactly a top notch list, consisting of a single battlation detachment: Wartrike (Warlord), Big Mek with Mega-Armour and KFF, Warboss, 7 Nobz, 6 Nob Warbikers, 3 meganobz, 29 Boyz with Nob, 17 Boyz with Nob, 10 Gretchin, bone-stock Bonebreaka (ho ho ho), 4 Lootas with Big Shoota Spanner, 3 Killa Kans, Dakkajet, Burna-Bommer.

My deployment. In retrospect a terrible pic, because the enemy forces are not visible. On the right behind the back blob was a flyer with some sorta S14 flamer - sorry, not really familiar with Eldar units in general - and he also had a Wave Serpent and three Fire Prisms. It wasn't looking particularly jolly for my vehicles. My bigger Boyz squad was left behind in the Tellyporta.

Naturally due to me winning the deployment roll he got to go first. Makes sense.. bleh. Luckily casualties were relatively light. The Fire Prisms blew up my killa kans, poor things never stood a chance. Lost one nob biker. Bonebreaka carrying the big mek, warboss and foot nobz took some nasty fire, but the KFF proved its worth after some lucky rolls - saved at least against two D6 damage shots and one shot of flat 3 damage. Phew! I think it did take one wound from something though

Then it was my turn. On the right, the wartrike and nob bikers moved up against a warlock and some infantry. Bikers killed a few snipers with shooting while Wartrike got triggerhappy and killed quite a few troop infantry (I think) with its shooting. Bikers charged and killed the infantry, while Wartrike did the same for the warlock.

In the middle, truck moved up with its meganob cargo, but forgot to advance and didn't really do anything. Bonebreaka unloaded its passengers and then both proceeded to charge the enroaching Wave Serpent.

Wave serpents being a proper pain in the butt with their halved multi-wound damage, it took all my deffrolla, klaw & big choppa attacks to kill the darn thing after shooting did nothing as far as I can recall. Then it of course proceeded to blow up in my face, killing a nob, wounding both characters and also taking three wounds off the Bonebreaka. Bah!

On the left, my smaller boyz mob moved up. Lootas remained in place in the middle achieving nothing, and grots moved to an objective. Scored 3 points for the turn from the close combats.

On their turn, the Eldar Fire Prisms slaughtered my poor nob bikers who just wanted to have fun. How unfair! The smaller boyz nob took some nasty dakka, losing 12 models out of 18. Trukk took some wounds too, but not much else happened. The Wave Serpent's passengers ran away scared. The planes were mainly being weird in front of the lootas:



Speaking of the lootas, they again failed to do anything of note on my turn. No surprise since it was such a small unit, I guess. Wartrike moved along the enemy deployment zone, charging the right-most Fire Prism along with a trukk. The trukk charged first, which was good because it got hit for 4 or so damage from overwatch. Wartrike put some wounds into the Fire Prism, 4 maybe?

On the left I had used 2CP to prevent the remaining boyz from being wiped out by auto-passing morale test. I ended up using a further 3CP to bring them back to full strength. That's 5 out of my total of 8 command points used on that squad Well, they managed to make their longer-range-due-to-redeploying charge, charging a unit of 10 infantry with some gun carriage, like the one the warbikers and wartrike had wiped out on the right. Bonebreaka charged the same unit. And in fact the Bonebreaka got crushy-happy, killing 8 models with its maxed 12 attacks. The boyz took care of the rest.

Nobz charged a jetbike that had zipped to an objective past them. I expected them to kill it, even with 4++ and 6 wounds... but pfft, only did a single wound! Warboss and Big Mek were left twiddling their thumbs in the meanwhile. The bigger boyz mob landed and managed to multi-charge a warlock, a Fire Prism and a 4 dire avengers that had come from the wave serpent. Could've charged the other dire avenger group too had I realized where it was. End result, dead warlock and dire avengers, can't recall if I did any damage to the Prism.

Sadly that's where the match ended as my opponent had to leave. The score was 6-6, as I managed to get points from killing a psyker and two objectives, one held by the lootas and the nobz stealing the other one from the jetbiker despite the failed "assassination". Had the game continued I was in a notably stronger position, with two Prisms caught in combat and and well over half of the enemy infantry dead.



In the meanwhile after my boyz respawn I had only lost one nob, three boyz, the killa kans and the bikes, everything else was still on the table. Well, the Meganobz actually never even got out of their trukk. Ugh. Could've used boarding action with my last CP to hit the Fire Prism had I thought about it, since the game was ending anyway.

One thing I didn't comment on yet was my flyers. They didn't really do much. Dakkajet killed on model on the first turn, some nasty infantry with 2+ and nasty S8 guns? Second turn it shot at the right-most Prism, no damage as I recall. I forgot to shoot with the Burna-Bommer on the first turn, on the second it bombed 3 infantry and shot a fourth. Not much to write home about. In general I'm thinking the flyers will be among the first things to get replaced with other units as I get stuff painted. The S6 dakka doesn't seem to do much and the bombs are fickle to get effective use out of considering you apparently can't even leave and re-enter the board with a flyer anymore (annoying, that).

So, overall the game went well, despite being cut short. A bit of a bummer spending ~8 hours at the gaming location and only getting to play two turns, but such is life. There's a tournament coming next month that I've been contemplating. My Imperial Guard might be a better list for that but it seems unlikely I'll have enough infantry painted for them, so if I participate it might be with the orks. By then I should have the weirdboy and tankbustas, if I can get them painted.

Edited December 26, 2018 by tvih

[tvih]

Sumfink weird be goin' on 'ere, boyz... ow, it be jus' da kray-zee ol' Grokkh Grotflinga, never mind, ladz.


Took me 12+ hours again. I'm beyond salvation with this stuff.

Edited January 17, 2019 by tvih

[tvih]

Well... suffice to say that for now in the first game the model was certainly not worth the effort, it blew itself up in two turns, causing something like 10+ mortal wounds to the units around it 

[tvih]

For a bit more info, the game was against Genestealer Cults and some Tyranids. Almost nothing about it went well. The lone exception - Bonebreaka. Like I suspected beforehand, I love the thing. On turn 2 it charged and, thanks to a roll of 6 on the extra deffrolla attacks - one-shotted a shooty Carnifex. It then consolidated into a second Carnifex, and took of 5 or 6 of its 7 wounds in the next two turns, 5 stormboyz taking the other 1-2. My HQs did absolutely nothing but die, all three of them. Nob bikes were like last time, charge on turn 1 and then die before I get to do anything more with them. The total of 48 boyz killed a total of 2 cultists and maybe 2 genestealers, I think. Nice. The full squad was chewed into bits by the shooty carnifexes after I failed my post-jump charge on turn 1, the smaller one was torn apart by deepstriking genestealers. Meganobz killed maybe 3 genestealers, then died. About the same for regular Nobz. And so forth. Entirely inefficient all around but for the Bonebreaka.

 

I really need to get my brigade list done before next attempt, as the 8CP just doesn't cut it, especially as I already pre-spent 2CP on the suicidal Weirdboy. Problem with the new list plan is that while we played only three turns, it took us 4-4½ hours as it is, and the brigade adds another 40+ infantry compared to my current battalion. Not really fun for either player when the game drags on for so long.

[tvih]

Been a while again. In the meanwhile I've painted up a trio of Kromlech meganobz and played one victorious match against Blood Angels... it taking so long being a big problem again, basically the same deal as last time. Sigh. Being so slow at playing with orks to the point of opponents getting annoyed puts a dampener into getting anything more done with them, which sucks. But having lots of troops is after all a must given how crucial CPs are... and of course, Boyz are a very effective unit in their own right.

I'm not sure if there's an ETL  this year, couldn't find any info on it - last year it was announced by the end of April already. But if it is, I'm uncertain as to what faction to paint for. For orks I'd still have some stuff left to do if not for the aforementioned problem - completely unpainted are at least a deffkopta, a trukk, 10-12 or so lootas, deff dread, at least 5 nobz, three killa kans (that I'm still not sure whether to paint or not). Five tankbustas probably. Most of the rest of my infantry already have their skin painted and therefore ineligible for competitions.

Edited May 7, 2019 by tvih

[FlamingDeth]

Paint the kans! They're situationally useful and more importantly fantastic models. For maximum ETL impact I'd say the most important models are the kans, dread, and kopta, and if they're tooled up the nobz.

 

As far as playing, you have to be a little less precise with orks than, say, marines if you want to play faster. If your boyz are all bunched up most opponent's will let you measure the front rank and then just push the rest of them forward and if they don't the can't complain about going slow. Also make sure you know what you're going to do before your turn starts, don't plan during your turn, that's what the enemy turn is for. Batch roll dice as much as possible. If it's still going slow, mechanize. Eight trucks moves faster than 96 infantry.

[tvih]

I already have 3 kans painted (for the previous ETL), I'm just not sure it makes sense to run 6. The three haven't really been accomplishing much of anything in the games I've played so far.

 

I've tried many things to speed up the gameplay. But moving and rolling for mobs just takes a long time even so. In the previous games I even had the rear ranks in one messed up pile to try to make it faster... no such luck. If GW ever manages to re-release the Assault Dice app for Android, I might try that for faster rolling of larger amounts of dice.

As for mechanization, I can't justify buying more transports or much of any other models seeing how little I actually play and how many models I have, and also with orks trukks have the rather annoying problem of not having enough capacity for proper boyz mobs and being a bit useless once empty, and battlewagons end up expensive (and are also a bit useless empty at least without a deffrolla). As it is I've run about 50 boyz and 10 grots in my lists so far, but the "best" list I could make with my existing models would have those 50 boyz and 40 grots and more other infantry as well, so even slower!

One particularly annoying thing with orks that slows gameplay for me is Da Jump. Because you can't be sure it'll actually work, you have to move your target mob - generally the 30-strong one - in their normal movement phase, only to then move them AGAIN if Da Jump succeeds. And Da Jump failed in my latest game for example, had I not moved normally things would've gone worse.

[tvih]

For more show and less tell, here's those Kromlech meganobz I mentioned:

[toaae]

With the FAQ letting Killa Kans use the Kustom Ammo stratagem from the Dread WAAAGH! specialist detachment, I think 6-kan units could finally have a use. Not a great one, mind you, but still much more than they are base. Since you already have 3, I'd say get the other three up!

 

Also, it was pointed out to me that Deffrollas became damage 2 in the codex, and all things considered, Battlewagons are like Daemon Princes in CC. Not bad. What to put inside them is what I keep wondering about, and I've considered that maybe the answer is "nothing". That feels weird, though. 20 choppa boyz are cheap enough, and don't make me regret taking the 'ard case.

 

One particularly annoying thing with orks that slows gameplay for me is Da Jump. Because you can't be sure it'll actually work, you have to move your target mob - generally the 30-strong one - in their normal movement phase, only to then move them AGAIN if Da Jump succeeds. And Da Jump failed in my latest game for example, had I not moved normally things would've gone worse.

 

I actually always tell my opponent "this unit is moving. To save time, I'm not going to move them now, because I plan to jump them, but if the power fails, I'll then move them. Is that cool?" And I've never had anyone take issue with that.

[tvih]

I've run my wagon as a Bonebreaka so far, it's a lot of fun to charge with. But of course it loses out on transport capacity. Still fits nobz inside it though. As such both the trukk and Bonebreaka end up hauling around nobz, regular and mega variety. The big boyz mob gets Da Jumped and the smaller one ends up footslogging, and grots generally cower somewhere on an objective.

I haven't really looked at the Dread Waagh detachment or its stratagems before, but on a quick googling I get the impression that it'd take 1CP to even make the kill kans applicable for the Kustom Ammo, and then further 2CP to use it once? That really is too many CPs for not much gain. It'd have to be a brigade list to have remotely enough CPs to use, and I can't fit six killa kans into a brigade. Heck, in fact my planned brigades - only played a battalion so far due to lack of table-ready troops - have 0 kill kans.

I suppose to sidestep the boyz Da Jump setup issue I could also use Tellyporta on the 30 boyz and Da Jump the meganobz, instead of the other way around that I've been contemplating before, though to tellyport the Meganobz I'd need more than the 6 I currently have to make the most use of the CPs spent.

Edited May 9, 2019 by tvih

[FlamingDeth]

Kans still have uses even outside the specialist detachment. I run one in front of each of my boyz mobz so they can loot it if the opponent destroys it, and if they don't destroy it then it's still a fairly competent CCW in their back lines. I guess you don't need six of them for that though.

 

If you have three extra unbuilt kits though you can still use them for their treasure trove of bitz. I use a lot of their components when looting other things.

[tvih]

After a long time doing nothing for the orks, finally finished this Tankbusta nob over the last two days - even though it was supposedly half-done when I "started"... yet another miniature consuming about 10x too much time:



Now if only I could finish the other tankbustas. Only one of them is kinda finished so far.

Edited October 22, 2019 by tvih

[Kolgrim DeathHowl]

Excellent painting and conversions, looking forward to seeing more!

[rcoon]

Played my first ever game as Orks against... the new Iron Hands.

 

It did not go well, but I survived to Turn 5 and simply lost on VP. IH post nerf are still utterly terrifying.

[tvih]

Stick a jump pack on a Nob and call it a Stormnob, I guess:

Timed this one... 3 hours. Well, at least still a lot (2-3x) faster than the tankbusta.

[toaae]

He looks good, too! For a moment I thought he was standing on a dice. Still, good use of bits and converting to make a good Stormboy Nob.

[Kolgrim DeathHowl]

Excellent painting!

[tvih]

Some shooty boyz (and a less shooty one). Still gotta do the squigs and also three rokkit launcha boyz who probably need some accessories to look the part as well.

[ranulf the revenant]

Basing could use a bit more inspiration,but the models themselves are very nice ☺️...

[XIXWYRMEXIX]

Very nice looking! Your tank bustas definitely are more kitted out than mine! 

[tvih]

Basing could use a bit more inspiration,but the models themselves are very nice ☺️...

 

Yeah, they're basically low-effort, just to get people not bitching about undecorated bases I am in the process of adding some bigger rocks to break up the monotony at least a bit. I would add some flocking, but that stuff is annoying to apply since it wants to go whichever way instead of vertically like you'd want grass to be.

 

Though funnily enough I was just cursing myself for putting these guys on GW bases, because all the other 32mm ork bases are going to be on the MDF bases, like the stormnob. The two base types are kinda conspicuously different. Bad enough having the meganobz and such on different base type already 

 

My "converted" tankbustas project got sidetracked as I ended up touching up some old & new nobz instead (as well as their basing). Which in itself is now got sidetracked since I gotta work on some Primaris marines from which I got sidetracked into the tankbustas to begin with... 

[tvih]

Long time no waaagh. Didn't get around to finishing anything since the last post. A lot of people have been getting a lot of painting done since the lockdowns started, but for me it basically stopped even what little I was doing - if I know I can't play, I lose even what little motivation to paint I might've otherwise had. For some reason.

Well, now I finally finished the first of the converted tankbustas. Four more are WIP, but this was the fanciest one:

It's the first ork I used contrasts on (well, at least this kind of ork - I originally tested some red contrast paint on the bomb squigs). It's not all contrasts, but a balanced mix. Didn't help with the completion time any, took too damn many hours regardless. Even the pre-painting stage took some time, fiddling around with ideas and options how to get them even somewhat the way I wanted them. In the end it's just a fairly basic kitbash, though still more than I usually do. But as said, it's the fanciest of the bunch so the others are even more basic, though hopefully still somewhat identifiable as tankbustas rather than just rokkit boyz.

[The_Chaplain]

Nice job on the tankbusta conversion! I think he looks different enough from a standard rokkit boy, don't worry.