Dave was the victim of an onslaught of clipping assaults when we first started playing.    I didn't realize how deeply I scarred him until now though.

Sorry, amigo!

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

The clipping grot assault was truely horrible, didn't how many you killed, they don't count  

Pardon the EA n00b question, but what is a "clipping" assault?

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WAAARGH!!
The Lost & the Dipped

A "clipping assault" is one in which you only engage a small portion of an enemy formation after having set up favourable support and Blast marker conditions on the target.

So a big Imperial Guard Company might be attacked on an edge that only allows 3 or 4 of them to fight against an entire Tactical Company so that there's almost no chance of Marine casualties while the Guard will go down and Blast markers and casualties will compound to break the Guard.

I'm sure someone has a battle report where it happens to give a solid example.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Indeed, it usually works best with good FF troops. They're kind of like flanking.

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Dave

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In general, Clipping means Engaging at extreme range, at or just under 15cm.

Usually, the idea is to barely engage so that the kills have relatively little effect on the assault resolution modifiers.  Good FF is obviously a plus but not mandatory.  You can control BMs, outnumbering (mostly) and Inspiring.  Actual kills can throw a wrench into things.

Orks can do just fine in FF using this due to their grots.  For example, a Big Warband will almost certainly get double outnumber bonuses even after being shot up and with 4 Nobz there's a very good chance that there will be no BMs.  So, let's say the Orks catch a formation of 6 Dire Avengers (the remains of an air assault, maybe) off-guard with ~16 Orks - 2 grots, 12 boyz, 2 Nobz.  The Orks move just enough units within range of the DAs that only 3 DAs can countercharge into range.  The Orks get the 2 Grots and 2 Nobz into range.

DAs average 3 hits.  The Orks average 1 (woot!).  2 hits on the grots don't count and the hit on a Nob saves at 4+ while the hit on the DA saves at 5+.  Let's say the Nob fails and the DA lives, just to make it more interesting.

Outnumbering (13 to 6): +2 to Orks
BMs:  +2 to Orks
Inspiring:  +2 to Eldar
Kills: +1 to Eldar
Net: +1 to Orks

So, as you can see, the ~300 points of very poor FF Orks stand a decent chance at winning against ~250 points of very good FF Eldar (even with bad luck on armor saves) because their "clipping" assault relies on the innate modifiers of the situation while limiting the effect of kills.  Better armor saves or getting a lucky kill on an Exarch and it's no contest.  On the other hand, if they had charged in closer, the DAs simply would have overwhelmed those modifiers with FF kills.


The other option for a clipping assault is just to use monster FF troops.  Pack them in at max range to limit the enemy's ability to countercharge as above and just lay waste with FF - Eldar love this one.  It obviously makes use of kill imbalance as well.

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Neal

Actually, that was dubbed a "token" assault because the actual assault only committed a token force (often a suicide force) with the purpose of drawing in massive support fire.  There is some overlap in how they can work and the best setups to make them work, but token assaults were considered an unintentional mechanics-result game tactic, whereas clipping as described above was considered a legitimate simulation of an old-fashioned "rolling up the flank" maneuver.

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Neal

ok, so im prolly gonna start off with 3 of the largest mobs of orks, i dont mind running hordes, its actually a good foil to my infantry-less minervan/ATML list

For an Ork infantry wave, you have to walk a balance between maintaining a coherent battle line to "herd" the enemy and picking targets of opportunity, which will be few because of your slow speed.  If you get too aggressive, you can open up a hole the enemy will exploit for crossfire, clipping assaults, rushing to objectives in the rear and so on.

Another required trick will be trying to keep broken infantry formations far enough back to be out of danger, but close enough they can get back in the fight.  Once broken an assault loss destroys the entire formation so you have to pull them back far enough to be out of range and/or protected by other formations (behind the rest of the battle line, for instance), but if you pull them back too far, their slow speed means they can't respond effectively.  Basically, you have to balance force preservation versus putting pressure on the opponent.

That said, if you work it right and successfully maintain mass and coherency it's possible to lock down the opponent so the infantry can assault effectively.

That's not my style of play, so that's about the limit of my ability to comment.  When/if Jaldon comes back, he's the man to ask.  He's quite practiced at the battle-line style of play.  Several years ago he did a couple of battle reports that relied on ork infantry waves.  One was dominantly warbands.  The other was a mix of warbands and Stormboys to create massive area denial for drop pods, teleports and so on.

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Neal

how do you run orks neal? im eager to learn different strategies for them in epic.

Does anyone ever use oddboyz in warbands? Adding 4BP MW to a Large/Huge warband for 150 points looks pretty neat though I guess not really optimal as you're not supposed to stand and shoot with it.

Big Gunz also have a speed of 10cm... so that *really* hinders the Warband.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Oh right. Yeah, that kind of sucks.

I favor relatively shooty Bad Moon style of army.  My old 2700 point tourney list was something like:

Warband in 3 Battlewagons and 2 Flakwagons (Warboss)
Big Warband
Uge Gunzmob with 2 Nobz and 2 Soopagunz (BTS goal)
Warband + 2 Boyz/grots (Landa)
Landa
Big KoS
Big Blitz w/ 2 Zzaps (4 Flakwagons, 2 Gunwagons, 2 Zzapwagons)
6 Fightabommas

The Big Warband and the Gunzmob would garrison just far enough forward that they could be hit if the enemy was willing to risk over-extending.  They formed a pretty wide front and would slowly grind forward.  The fast stuff would "swing" off that base.  This could be set up as a hammer and anvil with the fast stuff being the hammer to the infantry anvil.  It could be set up as a denied flank with the KoS on the weak side and the mech Warband on the strong side.  Or it could be set up as a classic pincer with slow stuff in the middle and the fast stuff enveloping from each side.  The Blitz w/ Zzaps was usually kept centered and exposed as little as possible to just barely track LoS to the enemy's big stuff.

Normally, the setup was something like:

-------Gunz------Warband--------
----Warboss--Blitz-----------KoS

The Landa could either do a heavy strike or it could be used to fill in as needed.  By choice of placement, the Landa and Warband could easily convert that deployment to any of the basic strats I named above.

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A few general things for combined-arms army lists.  Infantry waves work a bit differently, as noted above.


Orks are an attrition army.  You will get chewed up crossing the board so get used to the idea, don't get discouraged and press on.  Orks are nasty once they get in close.  Being overly cautious will cause you to lose momentum.  Just don't waste troops.

Targets of Opportunity.  Orks are an attrition force (notice that's come up twice now?).  It's okay to take risks to do damage to the enemy.  It's okay to risk being out of cover or opening up holes in your battle line if it means you can take the fight to the enemy.  Swap units freely, as you have more and they become more dangerous the closer you get.  Basically, you'll want to take 2 and a half turns doing as much damage to the enemy as possible and the second half of Turn 3 worrying about objectives if you need to.

"Alleys" for infantry cover.  Try to pick deployment that provides a path of infantry cover across the board.  You want to be able to hop from cover to cover with each move, so 25-30cm apart is ideal.  Closer is necessary for the slower Gunz.

Landas.  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.  Those 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.

Fightabommas.  In larger groups these can brave flak and still hit a target.  I generally build a formation up to at least 6 before starting a second formation.  If I'm going air-heavy, I'll do a formation of 9 because it can drive through a huge amount of flak and still be nasty and a formation of 3 for activations and picking off lightly protected targets.  Due to expense, you should probably be a bit more careful with these but as with all things Ork it's sometimes worth it to sacrifice them to do damage.

Oddboyz.  Oddboyz are a massive boost to firepower.  ANY Ork formation that intends to be shooty at any point in the game should take them.  These are one of the few things you are concerned with protecting.

Grots.  Grots are made for assaults; think of them as expendable assault-boosters.  I used to keep them in front all the time, but nobz help remove so many BMs it's often not worth it to let the grots take the hits from long-range fire.  Grots should be close to the front so they can charge/countercharge forward during assaults, but it's probably best to keep a few boyz out front to take hits from shooting.  It can be worth it, but consider carefully whether to use them outside of assaults.

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Edit:  Also, if you like Bad Moonz style stuff, I wrote an article for Fanatic on how to build a Bad Moonz army.  It had notes on how to make a shooty ork army (especially Big Gunz formations) work.

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Neal