Putting a thorn in the side of the metagame.

If you ask someone what is 40k 5th edition all about, the first and obvious answer is "mech". Mechanized armies, with all of your units in transports and support tanks. The reason for this is that transports are very survivable and all vehicles can move and shoot. Combined with some price drops in the last few books and/or undercosted vehicles (130pts for a vendetta? really? wtf?) and you have a lot of armor on the table.

The obvious response to this is more anti-tank, both melta for short range and volume of fire for long range. Not to mention both of these help tremendously against TMC's, so much so that the Tyranid book never really excelled.

So how do orks play into this? First, our transports (like eldar) are horrendously overcosted compared to newer armies, lack any form of real firepower (unlike Chimeras) and are very susceptible to competitive builds - Manticores are the end of battlewagon spam. Trukks were decent compared to 50pt rhinos. Compared to 55pt las-plas razorbacks, however, they are just junk.

The question becomes how do we deal with this? The answer is to de-mech, and I don't think any army can do it better then Orks (except maybe missile launcher spam wolves). Kan walls are great, but are slow and almost require 2 KFF meks which mean you leave a lot of power off the table in the form of either Ghazzy or a warboss. Nob bikers are still amazing, but a bad round of cover saves and they evaporate to melta fire so they require great care to use.

Having your opponent use a lascannon to kill an ork boy is pure win for the Ork player. Torrent of fire has lost some of it's luster with lots of armor, T6 TMC's and FNP blood angels at every turn and is being replaced with Ap2, which is a good thing for Orks.

So lets look at a couple units and how they help de-mech while taking on mech. First and most obvious is the lootas. Lootas are starting to lose some effectiveness over time as more AV12 and AV13 comes into the scene. however I'm not really too concerned with taking out vehicles as much as I am about stopping them from shooting and/or moving. A stock chimera can deal out 3 S6 and 3 S5 shots a turn, with 4+ of them over 2-3 turns adds up to a lot of dead orks. Manticores..ugh I fucking hate manticores lol. Shaking a couple vehicles a turn can help you get across the table which is where you want to be. Lootas, like everything else in the Ork codex are not reliable but are completely devastating with a couple good rolls.

The next unit I love for this, especially against IG, is the lobbas. Yes, lobbas. If you're not using battlewagons or kans, you have 3 free HS slots which can be filled with super cheap guns that simply rock. And if you have a game where they do nothing, then they are so cheap you've lost nothing.

The main points about lobbas is they are barrage, which means they always hit vehicles on the side armor. Being S5 means they can pen any IG artillery or chimeras, and glance predators/vindicators/rhinos. Barrage also means taking away normal cover saves, so the IG player can't hide the Manticore behind other tanks for a 4+ save. Also against IG if you do blow up a chimera with the lootas then the passengers (unless they have carapace armor) are sitting ducks to lobba fire...remember vehicle craters are cover (defined as difficult terrain), but NOT area terrain so cover against barrage. Lastly, as barrage they cause pinning. Sure against MEQ there isn't a great chance to pull it off, but it can happen (especially with LD8 combat squads or leaderless Long fangs). Lastly, they don't require LoS so they can be hidden behind almost anything.

Again they are so cheap that a single good action..shaking a manticore for 1 turn or a single pinning of a long fang squad ...means the lobbas have earned their slot. For 84pts a unit (with 3 ammo runts) they are just phenomenal. Ammo runts..3 pts for a re-roll? how can you beat that?

I was playing my cousin against his blob IG, and a single round of lobba fire killed 16 guardsmen. 16! They suddenly went from an ignored unit the the top target.

So that ends part one of De-meching with orks. Next time I'll get into the possibilities behind a resurgence of tankbustas and some army lists to test out.