a little background: me and a friend play this game regularly, and it's great fun. that being said, i lose pretty much without fail. i run ghazghkull's list, and he usually runs a traitor list, usually vraks. i was hoping for some help in dealing with this thing, because i'm out of ideas as to how to win. i'm not calling my list OR his list broken, but it seems there is almost nothing i can do to beat him and it grates on me.

i guess the fundamental problem is that "whatever can catch him, can't kill him, and whatever can, never makes it there." the main problem are his tank formations with 4+ reinforced and some silly number of ranged weapons. pretty much everything i can throw at them fails utterly to break them, whether i try for the kill or merely the rout. regular footslogging nobs or boys never make it there alive. if i put them in battlefortresses those get shot to death. if i deliver them by planetfall they don't make it there until turn 3, where i have usually begun to lose already and however many i deliver doesn't help. likewise, orbital artillery DOES kill them, but it's basically random. unless i'm reading this wrong, i have to choose where it falls before he even deploys, and it only starts shooting on turn 3. Kans and Dreds can kill the tanks with the EA+1 MW attack they have, but you can't transport them by battlefortress so it's pointless to add them to a fortressmob that they will only slow down. stompas are great, but the melee version won't make it to melee before being focus-fired and broken, and the ranged ones can't break the tanks they are shooting at without macro or ridiculous luck. supas and gargants are probably the closest i can get, but it seems like it takes a ridiculous amount of fire from a supa-stompamob to kill one, while an 'uge formation of them is 1400 points, his tanks are 600. i don't know, maybe i just suck at this game. anyone have a solution?


things i have tried:
gargant+supastompaswarm (managed to smash alot of stuff, got shot to death)

infantry swarm, with and without battlefortress transport (sometimes gets shot to death, sometimes makes it to melee. boyz and nobz seem REALLY effective, but most of the time they don't make it, and the rest of the time they manage to assault one squad and then die to artillery and tanks afterwards)

supazzap gunwagons (got shot to death by the tanks they were supposed to hunt)

planetfalling boy mobs with dreds and kans (planetfalled, assaulted something, immediately shot to death)

big gunz mobs with supazzaps or soopaguns (just gets artilleried to death pointlessly. no armor save makes them impossible to keep alive after turn 1. will be strafed by planes, too.)

things i have not tried (that i can think of)

fighta bomba swarm (seems like it would just get shot down by his silly effective hydra and helltalon AA. tankbusta rokkits don't seem that great at AT4 non-macro against anything that has armor. at least IME)


planetfalling 90% of my force (might work?)


gunfortress blobs (too few supazzaps, IMO. you can have a bunch of big guns, not sure if it would kill russes very well, and has to be inside the battlecannon+vanquisher+artillery range at all times, very dangerous)


anyone willing to help me out?

The Supa-stompa Macro-weapon Barrage is great for denying reinforced armour. Max out on Fighta-Bommers. At least two formations, one of them at least six strong. Laying BM:s on Russ companies greatly reduce their effectiveness. If you get one kill, it is effectively a reduction of three units' worth of firepower (one dead, 2 BM). Guards are not Marines, and BM:s tend to stay on bigger formations unless he marshalls or holds, in which case he is not shooting at you anyway.

I also hate facing a big boyz mob with two Oddboyz Big Guns on Garrison. 4 BP Macro-weapon on Overwatch restricts your opponent.

/Fredmans

Posting both of your lists would be really helpful on this one :-)

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are you suggesting i mix up some soopagunz with a regular boyz mob? i never thought of that.

I play also play orks every now and then. I too struggle with RA stuff. My answer has been to go heavy on the soopagunz. I like to go with one big gunz mob (or sometimes a big boyz mob for added assault surviveability) with 2 soopas and one nobz unit if pts allow. This formation gets garisoned centrally/somewhere with nice line of fire on overwatch.
I then usually play with a supa-stompa too.

You should put the big gunz in some sort of terrain so they get a cover save.

Don't be affraid to try and sustain fire with your soopagunz. I do it a lot. Even if you fail the order you still get to shoot (without the -1 you'd have if you doubled).

I usually add a few bliz brigade zaap gunz as well. Like Fredmans said, shooting at LR company makes a big difference even if you kill only one. That's 3 less tanks fireing back.

Basically go oddboy heavy. A boyz mob in a landa can be very helpfull. A weakend LR company will die to assault resolution, since they're not fearless.

Cheers

here's his list he ran in the last game http://pastebin.com/ymUgxshj

from memory i had two big warbands with battlefortress complement, a big stompamob, a stormboyz squad, a battlekroozer with 1 landa and another standard boyz mob with 2x killa kans riding it, and that's it i think.

he didn't manage total victory, but won by objectives and basically destroyed 80~% of my total forces, both melee formations, the stompamob, the landakrew. the only things i had left were some stormboyz just holding a point.
from memory he had most of his tanks left, including a leman destroyer and a malchador company. but was pretty much out of infantry (i somehow managed to assault it, and it went pretty badly for him, lel)

also: it was a 2500 point game

Btw have you read this thread on ork tactics? I found it useful when I started playing them.

thanks for the link, it's a great help. especially the part about hiding infantry behind stompas for cover saves, which i never thought of before. i think that will help a great deal. here's a question though:

Don't be in a rush to assault. Landas are great air support, especially against infantry. Also, you want to pick your eventual air assault location carefully. Boyz will have limited mobility once on the ground so make sure they can get someplace useful. It's okay to spend a turn with a loaded Landa just strafing the enemy. They are pretty tough and can take a reasonable amount of AA fire without being in grave danger. OTOH, don't be afraid to sacrifice them (again, attrition force - 3rd mention) if you can hit a high priority or juicy target. Just make sure it's worth it.

this seems to suggest that you can take landas that DONT planetfall, which i thought was impossible! so an ork kroozer is not required, which is news to me. if true, that will help a great deal.

apparently not only is this possible, it's the standard. i hope he doesn't read this thread before our next game, all those little annoying artillerypieces are going to get absolutely STOMPED (and then looted) hehehehehehehehehe

I did wonder why you hadn't gone down the landa route.... air assaults can make a real mess of guard!

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Yeah it's the most common way to use them. The drawback compaired to plantfall is of course that they're susceptible to AA fire when flying in, but like the author says, they should be able to handle some AA.

yeah. right now he has a few hydras mixed in to deter fighta-bommas, but a few landas with 5+ reinforced dc3 can easily shrug one or two. either he'll choose to turtle them up better or he'll choose 3+ nobs and MWEA+1 deff dreads dropping in the middle of his tanks :evil:

don't leave it to chance, use your large fighta formation to lay a few blast markers on the flak formation, then air assault leaving the hydras at the back of the formation to take the suppression

while dreds are good, I would think taking two boyz stands for the extra grotz is a better choice, if you can win the combat by 3-4, then you get the kills from hackdowns, every grot that takes a hit is one less BM....

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Air assaulting something like a big tank company is definitely the way to go, especially if you have an all scorcha kilt of speed sitting nearby lending support fire. Wen air assaulting, remember to get as many of his tanks into base to base to reduce their attacks to 6+ (your landa can land on up to 5 tanks and still offload models remember; the affected tanks get pushed to the edge of the landa's base). Make sure your 2+ grotz are in base to base as well so you can assign any hits you do take onto them, thus negating them for the combat resolution.

You should handily win the combat, routing his tank company and killing a couple more in Hackdowns.

Finally remember Orks always work better on large numbers. If your opponent kills your super zzapp blitz brigade, throw three more of them at him; they're cheap as chips and there's no real list restrictions in the Ork list.

Hi Cik: I don't have much more time to comment on for now but a quick look at your list leads me to think that you only have 5 formations on the table? That's a very low amount for 2.5k; I would suggest that the spacecraft is a waste of points and that you should concentrate on having a larger number of smaller formations...with the models in that list I'd suggest something like:

Incompertus, 1505 POINTS
Ghazgkhull Thraka's War Horde (Epic UK v100909)
==================================================

WARBAND [315]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz, Battlefortress

WARBAND [315]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz, Battlefortress

MEKBOY STOMPAMOB [475]
3 Stompa, Supa Stompa

STORMBOYZ WARHORDE [150]
6 Commandos

WARBAND [250]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz, 2 Killa Kan

LANDA [200]

================================

That gives you another 795pts to spend on stuff like blitz brigades with oddboyz and flakwagons, and maybe another warband with a zzap gun in it to sit on and protect an objective. Consider:

WARBAND [275]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz, Big Gun, Oddboy (Zzap Gun)

BLITZ BRIGADE (BIG) [350]
2 Oddboy (soopa guns), 4 Flakwagon, 4 Gunwagon

BLITZ BRIGADE [200]
2 Flakwagon, 2 Gunwagon, Oddboy (zzap Gun)

Which would take you up to 2530pts so you'd have to save 30pts somewhere but perhaps you could change the boyz mob with zzap gun into a mekboy gunz mob instead and spend the spare pts upgrading other formations. THat gives you 9 activations over his 7 so if you're careful you can save your hard hitting weapons till last.

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Just to chime in with something that hasn't been mentioned yet but Crossfire can also be your friend, I use Deth koptas to boost activations in my ork armies and hopping round behind a tank co before shooting with anything is very useful! Deth koptas are cheap and very fast whilst maintaining decent armour too, your opponent generally can't ignore them.