Fighting orcs

Hey fellow Archons,
A friend of mine is a very good gamer and I recently lost due to two lootaz orc units. The one with D3 S7 guns. He simply puts them behind an Aegis and goes to ground for an 2+ cover save and snap shooting afterwards. He got so many dice, it doesn't matter that he only hits on 6. I used a list with 5 venom and two razor wings and one six reaver squat. I'm painting up several raiders and constructing a unit of grotesques and two scourges. Any advice against orcs? The rest of his boys was in transports.

One thing you need to remember with Orks is that their Ld is garbage and their melee is lackluster when being charged. Force as many Ld checks as thus mob rule checks to cause assitional casualties as you can.
Since everything is meched up, you can focus the Venom fire on the Lootas behind the Aegis. They will take enough casualties to force an Ld check. I mean, there is little else you can shoot with poison T1.
Demeching him fast is also important, seeing as they need to pass a pinning check and possibly another Ld check if the explosiin kills a few.
I wouod.deploy with everything. Orks are not known for their long ranged dakks. You can essentially get one free shooting phase. When you set up in cover, Nightshields give you can obnoxious 3+ save with Raiders and Ravagers. The only long ranged dakka they bring are Lootas and Mek Guns, but their ignore cover.

In short, force Ld checks and demech him fast, focus Lootas and Mek guns T1 with all much long ranged poison as you can muster. Make.good use of cover

If he's in trukks, forcing Ld checks is your best bet, as the new mob rule really hurts small squads (if they fail they basically kill a number of models equal to how many they lost the test by). As for the lootas, I would think a venom filled with medusa and a WWP Archon should sort them out pretty quickly, as the templates ignore their cover.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

(if they fail they basically kill a number of models equal to how many they lost the test by)

??? Might want to take another look at the mob rule. They lose 1d6 orks worst case scenario, which is one reason a lot of people run hardboys in the trucks as they still get their armor save.

My suggestion is to second the medusae for one, and to charge them for two. If the lootas go to ground they can't over watch, so put some rounds at them to get them to duck...then cut them apart. Grotesques are particularly funny when charging orks. Rampage plus the ork player now needs 6s to wound for whoever's left.

Coven supplement grotesques are even more fun with most ork units testing fear on LD6 because of freakish spectacle.

So a cheap wwp Archon with two or three Medusae and a raider with grotesques and an Archon. And several raider or venom and scourges. Two bad we don't have anything with sky fire to cope with his dakka jets.

How do I edit my entries using a phone to avoid double posts? I put an army list into the army list section.

This is also a good time to bust out the Armor of Misery for that WWP Archon, since orks have bad leadership as has been said.  Combined with a Grotesquerie Unit, this can make them run quick.

Also, as has been said, focus on taking out the Loots with as much poison as possible.  Something to look out for in case he's not doing it yet (He most likely will at some point), is him getting the Gaz Supplement and running "Green Tide" with the Big Boss Poll that gives them fearless, and about 100 Orcs.  The problem is if he takes a large number of orcs like this, and then uses a CAD to get a Warboss with "Da Finkin Cap" which gives him 2 Warlord Traits.  He then tries to get to infiltrate that 100 orcs by re-rolling the trait he already gets and manipulating the table.  Also, it's a bunch of small units that count as one big blob, so he's going to pack as many claws in there for the vehicle/character murder as possible.

Granted, Dark Eldar Poison does better than most against it, but even so, 100 Orcs with infiltrate and another of the Warlord Traits hurts, and keep in mind that's not the entire army (Still have to worry about Looters and whatever else).  Regardless of the list, try to kill the Lootas and out range /move everything else.  

Last thing...don't underestimate Ork Shooting.  It's very bad, but there can be so much of it that it hurts in volume (And I'm not even talking about Lootas).  Regular Orks for 1 point more get the shoota, and can screen them with 10 man units of grots that are cheap, then march up and fire buckets of shot at you, then charge and crush things with Power Claws.  My main opponent is Orks, so that's what I'm drawing from on all this.

He got two units of lootaz those small missile launcher trucks and a jet that hits on 4+ with a ton of dice. As I said: shooting the lootaz with poison is irrelevant because of his 2+ cover save. But I'll try to charge him afterwards so that may help.

Yeah, I have no idea why people are advocating poison...

The jet might be a little rough, as the normal answer is bolters or the equivalent. Enough disintegrator cannons should do the trick. One of our own fliers should probably murderize it all over the place.

Other than to get the court I wouldn't advise an archon. It wasn't on the list of stuff you mentioned, but I know MANz are a competitive choice for orks, so a glaive wielding succubus would likely be much better. And even if there is no 2+ armor the succubus is the better combatant.

If lootas behind a defense line is your main concern, just fill up a Raider with poison, buy a rack, and leave room for a WWP HQ. Deep strike behind them T2 and watch them die a painful death.

So your list consists of venoms, razorwings, reavers, eventually scourges, raiders, and grots correct?  Other than poison, what else exactly do you have in that list that won't be actively needed against other things?  I wouldn't waste grots against them when there's other things that you need them against, razorwings will be needed to kill lots of boyz, and you want to kill as many lootas as possible before your razorwings come on the board anyway.  Ork lists that don't know they're facing flyers often times bring lootas to deal with multiple threats in units of 15.  You didn't mention how big the units are, are they 15 Orks a piece?  

You also said yourself, "He got so many dice, it doesn't matter that he only hits on 6."  Enough poison will still kill them, especially if you're attacking from a WWP behind him.  

I'm sorry Fraust, but I don't think it's a good idea to throw a Succubus, especially your warlord, against MANZ, even if she has the possibility to get them, she's gonna get crunched.  Especially against bully boyz or if the War Boss is in that unit.  

Ironically, this is one of the few lists the Archon will be good against.  The WWP is useful, as has been pointed out, and he can pick on Lootas, especially with -2 Leadership Armor.  Also, a Medusa in his court could hurt them, badly (This was also pointed out).

The webway portal is useful...the succubus can get one.
Armor of misery is good...the succubus can get that.

Other than the court, which if you're not using your second hq choice you can get also, what is the archon bringing to the table?

Out of curiosity why would you not use the succubus against MANz? What I'm thinking, which granted I didn't specify, is a suc in a unit of grots. Aberration is there if you have any worries about challenges...grots will absorb a good amount of damage and has enough attacks to take out a couple MANz themselves...what am I missing here? Short of incubi I'm not seeing a good way to really kill them. Drowning them in poison is a nice thought till it comes to how many wounds they have...disintegrators are ok, but again the two wounds becomes an issue.

Sorry, MANZ are Orks in MegaArmour (2+) ?

Lord Mal wrote:

I'm sorry Fraust, but I don't think it's a good idea to throw a Succubus, especially your warlord, against MANZ, even if she has the possibility to get them, she's gonna get crunched.  Especially against bully boyz or if the War Boss is in that unit.  

I don't think so, succubus with grots has T5, if there is an abberation to do the challenges, the succubus is T5 unless there is no grot left.
In fact, I think the Succubus with Grots (Abby maybe with scissorhand for rending) is a good match for meganobz ... but to be honest, it's a long time since I played against ork the last time.

I played vs orcs week ago

There was soooo many of them. Bikes, coptas, lootaz, boys...
I`ve got about 40 models in my army. He`s got like 40 models per squad.
Just don`t have enouth firepower to deal with it

Fraust wrote:

The webway portal is useful...the succubus can get one.
Armor of misery is good...the succubus can get that.

Other than the court, which if you're not using your second hq choice you can get also, what is the archon bringing to the table?

Out of curiosity why would you not use the succubus against MANz? What I'm thinking, which granted I didn't specify, is a suc in a unit of grots. Aberration is there if you have any worries about challenges...grots will absorb a good amount of damage and has enough attacks to take out a couple MANz themselves...what am I missing here? Short of incubi I'm not seeing a good way to really kill them. Drowning them in poison is a nice thought till it comes to how many wounds they have...disintegrators are ok, but again the two wounds becomes an issue.

So for example, 4 Manz, with a Warboss, because if the warboss is in there, that Aberration will be insta dead, and then he's munching through your unit.  The Warboss has x4 Str 10 Powerclaw attacks at AP2, 2+Rerollable armor, x3 re-rolls from lucky stikk, and can re-roll one attack from squig each turn.  In this format they'll probably be rolling at you out of a battlewagon with boarding plank, and they have WS5 with the Lucky Stikk.  So just the unit will have WS5 x12 Str 8 attacks from Power Claws (Could have Furious Charge).  So the succy will be hitting on 3+ with her 4 attacks, but wounding 4+ to the manz, who each have 2 wounds.  So lets say you take one down with her.  

The grot attacks will then all bounce off the armor.  Then the MANZ hit back, hitting the Grots on 3+ with the lucky stikk in the unit, then wounding on 2+ thanks to the power klaws.  So now it's 9 Str 8 attacks.  Lets say conservatively, that they manage to kill just one grot.  The Warlord kills the Abberation in the challenge, Mushkilla crunched the numbers on an Abberation rolling with Scissorhand, and it wasn't good at all.  Next round, that Warlord will rip apart that unit until there's nowhere for the Succy to hide. Depending on the grot size, once either the Warlord or MANZ kills more than half, her Toughness drops back down to 3 like Cinderella.

The other way for MANZ to be run, is in 2 small groups of 3 in Trukks, but they typically then support that unit with something else, and the Warlord is elsewhere ripping things apart.  This unit, assuming they're not running in tandem, could be picked on assuming the situation is right, and then you could probably throw a Succubus in Grots at them, assuming you have enough grots.

And how do you kill such MANZ = Orcs in mega Armour unit if you don't got the models for Disintegration Ravagers?

CptMetal wrote:

And how do you kill such MANZ = Orcs in mega Armour unit if you don't got the models for Disintegration Ravagers?

Corpsethief Claw! Hip hip, hip hip, hip hip,

IIRC MANz are T4... 2 wounds, 2+ armor T4 expensive units...

Dark lances anyone?

Lelith hesperax in a grot squad, maybe? But you need to do some damage first turn, because the strike back will hurt.

CptMetal wrote:

And how do you kill such MANZ = Orcs in mega Armour unit if you don't got the models for Disintegration Ravagers?

Well, you're not going to like the answer since you're low on a lot of models, but if you're not, Massed Dark Lances or Haywire Scourges to take down the transport, then dissies. If that doesn't work because of bad dice rolling, then pick all the other things off and avoid the MANZ w/Warlord as much as possible (Without the transport, they are slow). Sending anything other than some of the tankier stuff from the Coven's List is mostly just going to get it torn up. That Warlord build is difficult to take down in any Unit, and he can tank a lot of fire from a lot of armies.

Dark Artisan might be able to tank it, at least in theory...I'd like to see Corpsethief Claw run into it. The one nice thing about facing "Ork Stars", is that typically (not in every case) Ork Players tend to want to fight you anyway with everything except for Lootas and Mek Gunz, so they don't really try to avoid your hardest targets (Although they do tend to shuffle about to get the charge).

This also seems like a great place for a Scarlet Epicurian Warlord to run head into lol. If you can get the Ork to commit with his big unit (Like I said, most Ork players seem to be okay with this), then they're tanky enough to tarpit them for a round, and then you get bonus points when he eventually kills your Haemy. Ossifactors would also be nice against it, although obviously it's more about having Osifactors plural since you're counting on 6's to wound.

The take away, is that you want to disable the transport by any means necessary so that they have to walk the whole match. Otherwise, they hurt a lot.

What's the corpse thief thingy? I don't use the coven supplement.

A unit of five scouting talos that gets additional VPs for killing units in assault.

Lord Mal...fair enough on some of it, though I think there are a number of variables that haven't been accounted for. What turn is it/where are we at on the power from pain table? What did we roll for combat drugs? What did we roll for latest experiment? Who is getting the charge? Are they bullyboys or just regular MANz?


And yeah, I totally brain farted dark light weapons. The few times I've fought MANz with my DE the most damage I've done has been blaster/dark lance born and hornets. Granted, the player wasn't exactly at the top of his game and could have played them a lot better....

Fraust wrote:

A unit of five scouting talos that gets additional VPs for killing units in assault.

Lord Mal...fair enough on some of it, though I think there are a number of variables that haven't been accounted for. What turn is it/where are we at on the power from pain table? What did we roll for combat drugs? What did we roll for latest experiment? Who is getting the charge? Are they bullyboys or just regular MANz?


And yeah, I totally brain farted dark light weapons. The few times I've fought MANz with my DE the most damage I've done has been blaster/dark lance born and hornets. Granted, the player wasn't exactly at the top of his game and could have played them a lot better....

Well, I think you're absolutely right if the Manz is a 3 or 4 man unit without the Warlord in it. Those variables would definitely matter. But our fully kitted out combat unit vs theirs...I just don't see many of those variables mattering unless the dice are just really in your favor (which does happen). The reason why (Other than the Warlord build being a beast), is the extremely high Strength, Armor, and Weaponskill from the Lucky Stikk that confers it on the entire unit if the warlord is in there.

If you fluff your attack roles in just one round, those Power Claws are going to tear them apart. If the Orks fluff, they still have armor protecting them, which only one model in the unit can really crack on a regular basis.

Next time you fight them though, try that unit against them and see how it goes (How many does your opponent usually take and in what transport?). As I said though, it does make a difference if the Warlord is in there or not.