Da Orks Gots New Toyz: Ork codex Review

Hey you little gitz I’m here to tell you about Orks! This past weekend on November third GW released Orks! And I was worried they weren’t going to release it during Orktober as promised… It’s ok though, this codex is probably up there with Dark Eldar and Harlequins as far as how GW designed it. The flavor and feel to it is incredible. They did a fantastic job capturing the kulture of Orks from a thematic point of view, and they made nearly every unit viable in some capacity. But that’s enough stroking of GW’s squig, lets get into the nitty gritty of Orks.
Orks are unlike many other armies because of the sheer amount of viable builds and options they have available to them. The army almost feels like it has an Eldar amount of tricks and shenanigans while still maintaining the famous Ork brutality aspect. With that said, I’m going to go over a few Klan cultures, warlord traits, and concepts that I think are good enough to be built around. Then talk about some interesting and powerful combination I’ve come across on an initial read through. Finally, I’ll sum it up with a sample list for you guys to see how it all comes together.

Evil Suns– This klan is all about speed, a unit with this culture adds 1 to its speed, its advance roll, and its charge rolls. This brings regular Orks to a healthy speed 6, and when you factor in a Warboss nearby to allow them to advance and charge you can get silly fast. If it helps you visualize how fast that is think of them as a unit that moves 8″ and charge 3d6″. Furthermore, it allows them to launch 8″ charges off of a deep strike or a jump move. 8″ rerollabe charges with a CP reroll to reroll just the 1 if you roll say a 6 and 1 are roughly ~83%. That’s one of the most reliable charge rates off deep strike that exist in the game, and you can bring multiple units to bear with this, so you’re all but guaranteed to make one. What’s more is this klan get access to a WL trait which allows your WL and all units within 6″ of him to fall back and charge. That’ such an amazing ability for an assault army I don’t even know where to begin!
Bad Moons- Overall I’m really unimpressed with Bad Moons in general. There’s a lot of hype going on right now about shooty orks from the new dakka dakka dakka rule. In general, auto hitting on 6’s with reroll 1’s to hit isn’t that great even when 6’s trigger extra attacks. That said, the More Dakka strat allows you to trigger the dakka dakka dakka rule on 5’s, which means you can make an Ork unit hit on unmodifiable 5’s and every hit will trigger an extra shot. So, you might ask why did I put this in the Bad Moons section? Well, because Bad Moon have a 2cp stratagem called Showin’ Off which lets them fire twice. This can be exceptionally powerful on things like shoota boyz, tank bustas, and lootas.

Thus far, my favorite combination for all this is taking two units of lootas, one 10 man and the other 15. You can deploy these incredibly safely and far back out of harms way as insurance in case you go second. Next, on turn 1, you spend 1cp for the mob up stratagem to combine the unit to a full 25 man. Next, you cast da jump on it to teleport it to wherever it needs to get to for line of sight and range. Pop the More Dakka strat so they essentially ignore hit modifiers and hit on 5’s which trigger more to hit rolls. If need be you can use a CP to reroll their number of shots on their d3, but let’s just take the average of 2 shots each. The unit will on average put out 50 auto cannon shots and average 27 auto cannon HITS on whatever its shooting. Then of course it will be able to do that again because Bad Moons like to show off. Almost nothing in the game can survive 54 auto cannon hits, and there are very few places that units can hide from the lootas when you combine this with da jump. Also, few units will even be able to retaliate effectively since this all happens from 48″ away. The only thing keeping this in check is that all said this is a 4-5cp combo and over 400 points, but essentially this is the Ork version of a castellan, and we’ve all seen how devastating those can be.
Grot Shields– Grot shields are such a fundamentally game changing strat they earned an entire section in this article. Essentially, this means that for 1cp you can have grots eat wounds for orks provided the grots are closer to the enemy and they are the same klan. This open up world of opportunities as you can essentially make 1 unit per turn immune to shooting damage provided there are enough grots in front of them. Big users for this strat will be things like Nobs/meganobs, Storm boys, and Lootas.
Conceptually there are a lot of ways to build an Ork army. Gone are the days of forward being the only answer. Now Ork players can rejoice as they have a truly dynamic army with options.
Bum Rush Them Gitz- You can make an army that’s designed to apply insane pressure onto your opponent turn 1 and completely overwhelm them. Taking an army of Evil Suns speed freaks and fast units it is incredibly easy to charge your opponent with upward of 1800 points on turn 1. Yes you read that right. 90 Storm Boys moving effectively 20″ and charging, who knows how many bikes/nob bikes moving and charging essentially 16 + 3d6″, and jumping a big unit of boys or mega nobs up too can really just rush someone off the field. I mean who can really handle 1800 points of orks in their face turn 1. Even if you do eventually fight your way through it, you will likely have spent the entire game in your deployment zone not scoring objectives at all while the Ork player casually just litters 100 grots about the “back field” aka the whole table. Another great boon to this style is Kunnin’ but Brutal WL trait which will enable the Ork player to redeploy directly across from the enemy.
Run ’em Over!– Battle Wagons and their variants are all actually oddly very good in combat, and they’re very tough to bring down too. Boasting T8 (with an ‘ard case), 16 wounds, and a 5++ invulnerable from a KFF these things will be no joke to bring down. When equipped with a deff rolla each one puts out 6 attacks (more for a bone breaka) that hit on 2’s, at S9 -2ap and 2 damage. That’s the combat effectiveness of a S9 daemon prince. These guys definitely want to be Blood Axes from what I can tell. Backing out of comabt to just roll something else over, as well as benefiting from cover are both great boons. Loading 3 wagons and 3 bone breakas up with ~90 orks for ~1500 points could literally just run people over.

Telpeorty Jumpy Punchy Smash- This is a style I find really cool and hilarious at the same time. Here we’re going to take a ton of Evil suns again, but this time use it mostly for the +1″ to charge. You can run some characters, something silly like 10 mega nobs, a million grots, ~90 boyz  and a Gorkanaught. Only deploy the mega nobz, characters and grots on the table, and reserve the boyz and gorkanuaght. On turn 1, you can use grot shields so the only thing your opponent can do is shoot at grots effectively. Then on turn 2, deep strike in 90 orks, a Gorkanught and jump the mega nobs forward. You could (and probably should) hold some stuff back for turn 3, but where’s the fun in that!? The Gorkanaught can charge 3d6 and effectively hits as hard as an Ork gallant. The mega nobs and all the boyz will have a bunch of rerollable 8″ charges, and much like the Bum Rush them strategy from above you just completely overwhelm them.
Gork n Morks Sneaky Orks– This is the style of Ork list which I personally resonate with the most, and the one I offer to you in my sample a list below. A list that can do a bit of everything, and be flexible based on need. This is a style of list that will have some fire support from lootas or mek guns, some deep striking/teleporting Ork goodness, and maybe some tougher units like battle wagons or mega nobs all working in some weird orky harmonic waaagh!

Now that I’ve covered some different styles of Ork lists let me give you a sample list that I’ve been working on. It combines a lot of different concepts I talked about, and is a good toolbox for a more advanced player.

 
If you’re interested in learning more about how Orks work, or if you want some advice on your own personal Ork lists, check out Nights PRO. Along with personal coaching I also offer professional list advice as well!