Ork Op Ed: Toys before boys.

There is this view of the Ork army, a view of a endless green tide of Orks that run forward with the idea that I have more bodies then you have bullets. That I will decent upon you with a ferociousness and exuberance to fight.

The 4th edition codex, you could actually do this.

The 7th edition codex, not so much.

You have to have SOME sort of survivability, especially if there is terrain on the board.  Even more so if the opponent has a noticeable amount of blast weapons. The old KFF actually did this pretty well, against most armies anyway.  It really was a must have if you played infantry or mechanized, shooty or assaulty. Combined with the mob rule, where the Orks were fearless until they were almost wiped out meant you didn't have to care how many bodies you put in your dead pile.

The 7th ed codex has taken both of those away, so the mass of cheap boys no longer has any chance of making it across the table.  You must instead spend points to buff up the individual Ork, resulting in fewer models at the same point level.

In other words, toys before boys.

Don't get me wrong, it WORKS.  Units of 30 'ard boys with FNP are just absolutely fantastic and provide a level of survivability that even the old KFF couldn't match.  The combination neuters the Orks usual nemeses such as flamers, SMS, Thunderfires and Wyverns.  Add in the fact that every unit of boys can now take 'eavy armor means you have a very tough army.  The same combination also means damage from the Mob Rule table is almost non-existent.

It's just not very..well, Orky.

Is this guy really worth 3pts less then a Space Marine?

The 'ard shoota boy is 11 points. That's 2-3 points less then your average space marine.  Then you add a 50pt painboy to the unit. 

Those points add up quick. 

I don't like it.  However, despite how much I don't like it, it is actually far superior to the old codex.  FAR superior. I might even consider going back to units of 20 instead of 30, that's how survivable they really are.  Oh, I also forgot to mention that they can go to ground, so being able to hide in terrain adds yet another level of survivability boys didn't have before.

In the end, you'll end up using half the army you use to take.  But you will end up with far fewer of them dying over the course of a game.

Next month is 1850 Maelstrom missions, so I need to run Combined Arms detachments to gain objective secured.

Primary: Combined Arms detachment
HQ: Warboss, heavy armor, pk, bosspole, Da Lucky Stik

HQ: Painboy

Troop: 30 'ard slugga boys, Nob w/PK&BP
Troop: 20 'ard shoota boys, 2x rokkit, Nob w/PK&BP

Elite: 12 Tankbustas, Nob w/BP

Heavy: 14 Lootas, 1x Mek
Heavy: 5x Lobba, 4x Ammo Runt

Combined Arms detachment
HQ: Painboy

Troop: 20 'ard shoota boys, 2x rokkit, Nob w/PK&BP
Troop: 20 'ard shoota boys, 2x Big Shoota

Fortification
Aegis

So that's one unit to sit back and take objectives, and 3 units to be way aggressive.  We'll see how it goes.

Holy crap the Mek guns are finally built!!

Tonight I finally finished all the construction on my Mek Guns.  All 6 power packs, all 6 sets of tracktor cannon bits. All of it.

I also finished the rust effects on the chassis.  I need to get some more masking tape before I can get the camo pattern sprayed. I'll also do a little bit of hair spray chipping.

I also picked up a new plastic Painboy. I was worried he would be too weedy, but it turns out to be very substantial especially with the swiss-army hand.

The painboy will be next on the paint queue..probably.

Yet another Mek Gun update...

Holy crap these things are just consuming so much of my time.

However I finally see the light at the end of the construction tunnel. Painting them will go pretty quick, I hope..

All the chassis are primed, the kustom mega-kannons are primed, the smasha guns are primed.  The tractor kannon conversion bits are halfway done, and need to finish the last 2 battery packs.

Got some leadbeltcher down on the chassis and kannons.  Yes, I have 3 actual kannons as well..but will probably never use them.

Control panels on the back of the kustom mega-kannons.

Control panels on the back of the Smasha guns/tracktor kannons.

Tracktor kannon bits in place.

I've spent the better part of every spare hour I've had over the last 2 weeks on these things.  I really want to get them done.  The base coats will probably be on soon, but then I'll have to wait for a day off to grab the airbrush and do the colors.

That's it for now!

Change is in the air...

If you hadn't noticed, I now have the domain www.da40korks.com for my blog!  Sure it's not a big deal to some, but for me it's pretty cool.

This is mainly because I've never tried to do any self-promotion, never tried to really do more with this hobby then what I'm doing for myself.

My time will still be mostly spent on doing stuff for me and my own personal wargaming, but I think I want to expand my footprint a bit.

I haven't figured out exactly what that means yet, but I'm working on ideas that I can both manage and will be beneficial to the community.

Now you can contact me here. 

This should be a lot of fun!

Modified Ork Horde detachment list.

Over the last few games I've gotten a really good feel for how the first list plays.  So now I'm going to move on to a modified version that's going to be a bit different.

This is really a horde list, designed to run up as fast as possible.

Primary: Ork Horde Detachment
Warlord: Warboss, PK, 'eavy armor, bosspole, Da Lucky Stikk


HQ: Painboy
HQ: Painboy
These are the new KFF, for about the same price.

Troop: 30 Slugga boys, Nob w/PK&BP
'eavy armor

Troop 30 Shoota boys, Nob w/PK&BP
3x big shoota
'eavy armor

Troop 30 Shoota boys, Nob w/PK&BP
3x big shoota
'eavy armor

 Yes. 90 'ard boys.  yes, the shoota units are quite spendy at nearly 400pts each. I've learned without the KFF, boys just don't have much of a chance.  Sure there are things that will ignore the armor, but something is better then nothing at all.

11 pts per model.  That's A LOT. 

Elite: 12 Tankbustas, Nob w/Bosspole
Breaking out the tankbustas.  These guys should be awesome, especially with the Lootas moving to heavy.

Heavy: 5 lobbas, 5x ammo runt
Heavy: 3 Tracktor Kannons, 3x ammo runt
Heavy: 2 Kustom Mega-Kannons, 2x ammo runt

All 10 mek guns on the table at once.  That is a lot of T7 wounds and a lot of fire power to chew through.

Fortification: VSG, 2x extra Void Shields
More I play with this guy, the more I like it..

2000pts exactly

It will really depend on what army I face on if the 360pts spent on armor is really worth it, but no matter what it should pan out.

Ork Mek gun work in progress - Kustom Mega-Kanon

You want to know something? Scratch building is very, very time consuming.  I'm spending several hours at a spell just grinding through stuff and I don't seem to be getting very far.

Today I spent most of the night building boxes.  4 battery boxes and 3 more boxes for the control units of the kustom mega-kanons.  Then just building one mount for one of the guns was a lot of work.

But I have one..yes just one..kustom mega-kanon *almost* done.  Just almost. Still needs detail on the control box. 

I'm going to bed.  Just a quick pic of the first gun, with the power pack attached.

More Mek Gun work in progress - tracktor kannons.

These things are turning out to be a lot of work.

Sure, I've finished 5 guns for lobbas but I have not even come close to finishing the energy weapons nor even primed the other 5 chassis.. but that will be done very shortly.

The dollar store toy guns are great for smasha guns, and now I have 5 of them - need 1 more.  However I need to somehow distinguish tracktor kannons from smasha guns.  I have been taking my queues from the stock model and building a set of arms to magnetize on the barrel.

So far, so good. I like how they are coming out.  Just need to come up with a bit to stick on the ends of the arms.

I also came up with an acceptable idea for a power pack, again similar to the stock model that has a battery or whatever off to the side of the gun body.  I simply could not find the bit on ebay so I just did a press mold with instantmold and built a small box. It looks "worky" enough for my taste and will just magnetize on the side of both the smasha guns and the kustom mega-kannons once I make progress on those.  Again, I will need a total of 6 of these..

It's been very tedious work so far. I've gone one good mold to use for the battery pack so I can built at most one a day.  And I'm running out of greenstuff!

But now all the ideas for the energy weapons are in my head,  I'm going to get working on priming and painting the 5 chassis while also working on the Bloodthirster.

That's it for now.