How do I effectively fight large Ork flyer formations? Given that the non-fixedness of Ork Fighter-Bomber guns makes them impossible to intercept - they shoot before the interceptors, and since thunderbolt squadrons are limited to two, where the orks can field *nine* in a formation, interceptors will get shot down before getting a shot off?

Well your TBs have a 30cm AA with their Multilaser. It's not much given there's only 2 of them but you can hitthem outside their Flak defense. Fly a couple of TB squadrons and then you have 4 Multilasers hitting on 4+ for intercept The Orks'll get at least 1 turn of attacking but then the BMs will start to add up with casualties and shots fired at them and it'll be harder for them to come on the board again.

If you're using Marines throw in a few Hunters for a 60cm AA umbrella too. If IG, then Hydras etc.

You are not going to stop a large Ork Flyer formation from attacking when they have no BM's, you have to either ignore them or attempt to place enough BM's to stop them from coming on in the following turn thus making an expensive enemy formation useless for a turn.

You need to have ground AA spread so you can put a BM on the flyers on the way in and on the way out, I personally wouldn't CAP the formation I usually try to intercept them to place an extra BM (when CAP is used only 1 BM is placed in conjunction with ground AA firing, when intercepted an extra BM is placed for coming under fire).

As Dobbsy has already stated you can stay at 30cm range and just hit the formation with 2 attacks, I personally would get within 15cm of 1 of the Ork fighters and risk only 1 getting shot down then hopefully get all 4 attacks but that's down to how much you need you T/bolts to keep in the game.

The thing to remember about intercepting or CAPing is to only fly within 15cm of 1 of the flyers your attacking, this will limit the return fire to only 1x 5+ AA attack back. You don't have to fly in range of all the Ork flyers.


I usually have 2 flights of T/bolts so hopefully I would have placed 4 BM's (1 on way in, 1 on way out both from ground Flak and 2 from intercept actions).
On top of that you'd hopefully expect to shoot down a couple of fighters to place more BM's.
This should put enough BM's on the formation to make it miss a turn.

So what I'm reading here is basically "there is no way to effectively combat large ork air formations"? Effective = I kill them, they do little or negliable damage to me. I guess what perplexes me most is a) that orks can field such enormous flyer formations compared to others, and b) that ork fighter-bombers do not have a fixed arc, and c) that intercepted aircraft fire *before* the interceptors.

for that to be balanced you'd have to be throwing significantly more points worth of stuff into the problem then they're throwing at you (since balanced forces you might expect to loose all your men to kill all of his or some variation thereof)

3 fighta-bommas is 150 points yes? so 9 is about 450 points? so how many points do you want to dedicate to anti-air to be able to kill his entire expensive formation with little or negligible damage to you?

Personally I think the sensible option here is as dptdexys suggested - defeat the ork through cunning, not a frontal assault. With him collecting a BM everytime he comes under fire and another everytime he looses a single (fragile) aircraft his big formation will have difficulty coming back onto the table. And unlike a broken big formation of boyz, they can't do anything to support in that situation.

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There's always a way to counter any formation, especially if you know what's coming, but you then usually find you've tailored your army so much as a counter you find it hard to win the game or your opponent suddenly starts to bring a completely different army to what you expected.

You could bring 8 formations of hydras to shut down the Ork flying circus but you will probably lose the game because most of your formations are too fragile to survive.
Or play Eldar and bring 3 or 4 formations of Falcons with 2 Firestorms each and a formation of Nightwings which have a total of 6x 4+ AA attacks at 30cm when CAPing.



a) those enormous and expensive flyer formations cannot claim any objectives/goals and can only attack 1 of your formations per turn (if they come on the table).

c) Those are the rules but you don't have to let them all get their AA shots off, as has already been explained, either stay out of their range (and they get no AA shots at you) or only fly in range of 1 of them to get your 15cm attacks at them (the 450 formation will only get 1x5+ AA shot in first).

Absolutely concur with dptdexys and madd0ct0r! AA rarely manages to destroy incoming aircraft (Eldar are perhaps the notable exception), so in practice it is actually used to place BMs on the A/c formation. This can help you defend against an air assault and is likely to limit the time that the formation appears on table. To that end, you should think of destroying enemy A/c as a bonus rather than the main objective of AA.

My common mate plays orks with landa, and up to nine fightabommas.

My counter are a Minimum of 6 Hydras and one T-Bolt Squadron with my Minervans.

As mentionet, CAP, then keep outside 15cm and shoot them slowly down. Hydras have 45cm range, should also be able to shoot.