How to fight an Ork horde

The title is the clue
Any ideas how to fight a horde that is immune to morale?

I would say poison. It's a reasonably effective against high toughness, minimal armour. so Kabalite Warriors gunning them down is, in theory, quite cost effective.

Wracks might be our best melee counter to an ork horde, but I think that avoiding melee with orks should be our go to tactic.

Depends on the horde.

Is it playing Mad Max orks or Greentide orks ?

Against Greentide, the problem is the spam of Painboys. You can counter that a bit with Hellions, they are quite good against orks (the D2 counters the FNP ability).

Mad Max orks requires a ton of dissie cannons. That's it.

Orks aren't totally immune to morale, unless they have multiple 30 strong units of Boyz close to each other as far as I understand. If you find a squad of 30 that isn't within range of another large unit and kill 20 then they are going to be destroyed by morale.

Our best tools against Ork Boyz are Mandrakes, Hellions and Khymerae. All of those options need to get stuck into melee for maximum effect, and be backed up with lots of splinter fire.

Still a tricky matchup for us to put enough of a dent in their numbers before they destroy whatever they reach in melee.

The problem with hellions is the points, they die faster then the orks, and fight worse and cost nearly triple the points.

Hellions are great miniatures but against orks I find they are a risky option at best. Ork spam often has enough command points to interrupt and that means one or more units of us die as well each time we assault.

Orks can have a nob or warboss deal d3 mortal wounds to ignore morale as well.

A normal squad leader can do that??

No not the normal squad leader, only the nob squad and/or the ork warboss. I am unsure if one of them or both.

FuelDrop wrote:

I would say poison. It's a reasonably effective against high toughness, minimal armour. so Kabalite Warriors gunning them down is, in theory, quite cost effective.

Wracks might be our best melee counter to an ork horde, but I think that avoiding melee with orks should be our go to tactic.

Yep, ranged is the strategy I've found that works best against Ork hordes. Kabalites in Venoms are particularly effective - that -1 to hit is huge against units already starting with a 5+ to hit.

We quite simply don't have any melee units that are strong enough and cheap enough to handle 6 point models with 3+ to hit, S4, T4 and 3 attacks.

|Meavar wrote:

Hellions are great miniatures but against orks I find they are a risky option at best. Ork spam often has enough command points to interrupt and that means one or more units of us die as well each time we assault.

Countercharge only works if you charged with more than 1 unit this turn. Pro-tip : don't do that ^^

If you're going against a footslogging Boys list, try 1 squad of 10 hellions. If you get them into a Nob squad (or a Biker squad, or a Helico squad, but those are less popular), they are almost guaranteed to earn their points back.

Hellions suck for 1 reason (more actually, but that's the most frustrating one) : no AP. Against orks, this is not a problem, so they can do what they always dreamed to do : elite hunting.

Mppqlmd wrote:

Countercharge only works if you charged with more than 1 unit this turn. Pro-tip : don't do that ^^

If you're going against a footslogging Boys list, try 1 squad of 10 hellions. If you get them into a Nob squad (or a Biker squad, or a Helico squad, but those are less popular), they are almost guaranteed to earn their points back.

Hellions suck for 1 reason (more actually, but that's the most frustrating one) : no AP. Against orks, this is not a problem, so they can do what they always dreamed to do : elite hunting.

I usually charge with most of my army in a turn, since 1 unit can rarely kill enough orks to not die on the return strike.
Yes hellions are a bit more usefull against orks, unfortunately, against nobs, even a 10 large squad will never make it into combat unscathed. I will usually lose about 2 or 3 models during the overwatch. Then I can deal about 6 or so wounds which means mostly dead gretchen (which still use the t of the orks), maybe if i already shot them before 1 or 2 nobs (usually since he will allocate some shooting wounds to a nob if he knows I will charge with hellions), but the other 5-7 nobs will kill the remaining hellions.
Against bikers it is a lot better, although bikers do have a larger charge range then we do, so it is often very difficult to charge them without also going in the middle of the ork horde/ without losing bait units to them first. Although against them it is often worth it because with 6 s5 shots each even with ork aim they are a danger to my vehicles. But in both cases I might wish to charge with more then 1 unit just to soak overwatch.

If you want to soak overwatch, charge with a vehicle first, then with Hellions. Activate the Hellions first. your enemy can, if he wants, spend 3 CP to attack before your vehicle. I doubt he will bother to do that, though.

I've always found "Counter attack" to be a very limited, very avoidable threat. Only really dangerous if you forgot about it and let yourself be surprized.


Now of course Hellions are not "Insta win" against Orks, but i thought it was worth mentionning that Orks are one of the few enemies against which they can really use their D2 stat without suffering too much from their AP- stat.

Mppqlmd wrote:

I've always found "Counter attack" to be a very limited, very avoidable threat. Only really dangerous if you forgot about it and let yourself be surprized.

Maybe it is just me, but I usually (expecially against orks) end up jumping 3 or so units in at least just to be able to kill the orks. Otherwise you are right they don't need counter attack since they will just strike after you and still kill you, or the unit next to them is not shot to death and thus will charge you and kill you in their turn.
Now don't get me wrong, I like fighting against orks and I usually come out on top. But I usually have at least 4 or 5 units charging each turn after the first 1 or 2 turns. (Incubi, wyches, hellions, reavers, mandrakes, beasts and then we still have characters added to that).

If I play against Orks they usually come in big CC blobs, usually like 2 Unist of Kommandos and 2 Units of teleported 30 boys squads, I have no place to outmaneuver, so my guess is to place a unit of 20 Kabalites or 12 Khymerae as outer defense line and make sure that there is no room to drop behind it. But I have the half Ork army almost immune to morale, too close and not enough firepower do kill them, and when they get in CC its over anyway.

@Dr.Morbid - I'm assuming that means 60 Orks have arrived at your front lines turn one, if they can get their psychic power off (very likely to happen). If you are using matched play, then you can't use a psychic power other than Smite more than once per turn, so only one big squad of Boyz could be teleported per turn.

You partly have the right idea with having an outer defensive ring and no room to drop behind, but don't put valuable units there. If you have a unit of 5 Kabalites in a line at the front of your defensive zone, spaced at unit coherency, they cover a width of 13". Leave a space of about 6" and then have another similar unit. Depending on terrain and deployment zones two or three units of those can provide the screening you need to cover your important units from being in charge range.

Their units have reroll charges, so they have just under 50% chance of making their charge and that is likely to have killed your expendable screen units (regardless of whether they are 5 or 20 Kabalites).

Behind that expendable screen a Farseer with Doom / Executioner and plenty of Kabalites, Mandrakes (potentially set up on the table instead of using deep strike) and Khymerae would be my recommendation.

Average damage numbers below (note this ignores any overwatch losses):

With Doom, 20 Kabalites will kill 16.67 Boyz if in rapid fire range (11.11 without Doom). They can add a little if they charge, but that is less important.

5 Mandrakes can deal 7.02 wounds shooting and 7.02 wounds charging with Doom. Without Doom that reduces to 4.44 + 4.44 wounds.

12 Kymerae can deal 15 wounds in melee with Doom, or 10 without Doom.

If you had say two units of 20 Kabalites plus some Mandrakes or Khymerae as a second line, then you should be able to repulse that initial rush of Orks.

First thanks for the advice. Well, I am a purist, I don't like to mix DE with other Eldar, (or the entire Imperium raisin picking sh.. thing).
True, only one unit can be teleported per round, I forgot that, but still a lot of orks coming my way.
I have to test it next time I play, I just hope not to bind to many units in my D-Zone.

But those 20 Kabalite squads will be dead. He'll just shoot them and attack the screen unit in front of them.

I generally see Ork Boyz with Choppa / Slugga, so if you have your screen set right they will be out of range of the large Kabalite squads. If they go Shootas then they could be 60 shots at you, which would be 20 hits, 40/3 wounds, 80/9 unsaved and 200/27 failed FNP. That is about 8 Kabalites down. That's hardly game changing.

Maybe the rest of the army is loaded with Big Shootas and they can focus down the big squads, but the deep striking squads are unlikely to have the firepower to make that work.