FAQ Spring 2019 Aftermath

[toaae]

The Ork FAQ, if you want a link

Here's all the changes:
 

1. Shock Attack Gun changed to rolling for strength when the unit is chosen to shoot with
2. Megatrakk Scrapjet only gets 1 of its two big shootas with +1 to hit from Grot Gunner
3. Lootas changed to rolling for number of shots when the unit is chosen to fire, and no longer persists through the phase.
4. Flash Gitz Kaptin is leadership 7.
5. Mob Up only applies to Boyz units.
6. Warphead can only be used on each weirdboy once.

And some stuff from the general FAQ that applies to us:

• Wholly Within (IE, for KFF) finally clarified to require every model to be wholly within
• Flyers can't block movement entirely
• Overwatch is now "as if the shooting phase", and you can't use stratagems when it isn't the phase

 

So, there's an obvious nerf to Mob Up, but I think that was both expected, and not too bad. It sucks for non-loota units to be affected, but considering the other directions they could have gone to nerf stuff, I'll take it. Other than that, not much is a direct nerf.

One thing to note is that we can now determine the SAG's strength, and the Loota's shots, before choosing a target. That seems like a pretty good quality-of-life change to me. No more shooting infantry at S10 and Knights at S3.

[FlamingDeth]

Were people using the warphead strategem more than once per weirdboy? Was that actually a thing? I guess someone had to do it or they wouldn't have had to put that in the FAQ.

[toaae]

Were people using the warphead strategem more than once per weirdboy? Was that actually a thing? I guess someone had to do it or they wouldn't have had to put that in the FAQ.

 

I hadn't even considered it, and I've never seen it mention. It must have come up, but it wasn't a common thing. They probably just wanted to get ahead of it ever being a problem.

[Gederas]

Were people using the warphead strategem more than once per weirdboy? Was that actually a thing? I guess someone had to do it or they wouldn't have had to put that in the FAQ.

I hadn't even considered it, and I've never seen it mention. It must have come up, but it wasn't a common thing. They probably just wanted to get ahead of it ever being a problem.

I'm guessing it must have been common enough for someone to email GW about it, or GW's rules team saw it happening and was like "That's not how that's supposed to work..."

 

The thing I'm still a little annoyed about is Index units that SHOULD get Dakka Dakka Dakka still don't have it. Especially annoying since they FAQ'd the Chaos Marines codex to specify CHARACTER units get Legion traits (meaning all the Lords on Daemonic Mounts), whereas my Mega-Armoured Warboss can't Dakka Dakka Dakka :/

 

That's especially annoying since they Errata'd the Forge World Imperial Armour Index: Xenos to SPECIFICALLY ADD the Codex rules to the units there.

[Warhead01]

That killed every useful mob up.

So tired of this constantly changing rule set.

[PiñaColada]

Wait, y'all telling me I can no longer use my zoggin' amazing warphead that threw out every single waaagh discipline spell and smite every psychic phase? Seriously I'm a bit sad that I for one never considered this and 2, that they removed it. Look it's the orkiest thing of all time and it'd never be worth it anyways since he'd peril himself to death by the fourth spell. Also, even if he didn't he's still just a 4W T4 character with a 6+ that you're spending a bunch of CPs on.

Goodbye you magnificent bastard, I never knew I'd miss ya.

 

(Other than that this ended up being pretty close to what we already speculated and I'm fine with everything in here)

[toaae]

(Other than that this ended up being pretty close to what we already speculated and I'm fine with everything in here)

 

 Yeah, I'm overall pleased. A shame the FAQ didn't do anything (for any army) for our worst-off units, but in the end, nothing changes for how I play. I'll take it.

 

 

That killed every useful mob up.

So tired of this constantly changing rule set.

 

It is a shame other units had to pay for the Lootas sins. But I don't know how else they could have made this effective change without neutering lootas. And while no other unit was OP with mob up, I also don't think mob up was the crutch other units needed to be useful.

 

And sorry that you're not a fan of regular balance passes. I still think there's a lot they could do better, but I'll take this over what we had from 5th-7th any day.

[PiñaColada]

I did have another suggestion in that other, pre-FAQ ork thread in regards to mob up. That mob up works on everything but can only bring boyz above their datasheet starting strength. Meaning you could still rejuvenate two battered units into one, but lootas would never be able to go above 15. If that happened (or even now IMO) the restrictions of "mob up" should be loosened to that one unit needs to be 10 or less and the other unit size doesn't matter. If I want to bring 6 boyz back into another unit, consisting of 8 boyz, for whatever reason then why shouldn't I be able to?

 

Orks will still be strong after these changes and they won't affect most non-tournament players too much. What we can hope for now is point fixes for the truly overcosted stuff in CA 2019

[toaae]

Nick Nanavati wrote an article about how he expects the FAQ to change tournament play, and he included a paragraph on what he thinks on Orks:

 

 

 

Let’s look at it from another perspective now. Orks just got hit really hard, losing the ability mob up anything other than boys, and losing the ability to mob up with units that arrive as reinforcements that turn. This isn’t a nail in their coffin, but trying to run an Ork horde that doesn’t make use of any of these options it previously had is probably just not going to be strong enough to compete. That means Ork armies will have to shift direction. I know some players have had success with a type of gun-liney Ork list, so that is one option. Alternatively, I think a very underutilized build for Orks is a vehicle heavy one. Whichever path you choose with your Ork army, you just can’t get away with playing a mass horde anymore. Furthermore, Chaos as a super faction has moved away from mass cultists as their only viable build. We’re seeing a lot of opportunity for innovation there with the new codex update and vigilus detachments, none of which are horde based.

Wow. He thinks Orks are much more affected than I do, and since he's the multi-major-tourney-winning player, and I've played 9 tournament games with Orks since the codex dropped, I'm going to err on the side of caution and assume he knows what he's talking about. At least when it comes to top-level play. I suppose he was making use of mob up to get shorter charges on reinforcement units, and he was still running more than one mob of lootas. The first thing I've never really tried, so losing it isn't a big deal to me, and I've already stated that some Ork players have already been moving to one unit of Lootas.

More interestingly, however, is what else he thinks we could see from Orks. Gunline orks? I assume that's the unit of lootas, a bunch of Mek guns, Big Meks with SAGs, and... I don't know. Still seems like you'd take a bunch of boyz for board presence. And vehicle heavy orks? Oh boy, I could see that coming. In fact, I've stated in the past I think that could be a direction we see Ork armies going. I'd love to see that.

Regardless, I'm into Orkz because I like the horde nature, so I'll still be running 150+ models for quite awhile, I think.

[Warhead01]

The change to mob up is huge. I feel it was a very poor change and very lazy. When we first got it I sat around dreaning up all the ways I woulse it. I feel they should have cleaned up the abuse the long way around instead of just limiting it to boys.

I get that mob up stacked with reserve units was, possibly, too good. It worked in my kommando list prior to the rule of 3. I can see why they did that.

But really it feels like GW has no idea how their game works.

If this was for to help clean up tournaments rhen I din't think they should have bothered. There is nothing stopping largeevents from putting in there own house rules.

 

Can't get the quote to work from my phone.

Regarding an alternative fix to the "loota bomb combo issue" ( as I understand it.)

I think all 3 stratagems shouldhave need changed. Some language preventing a degree of stacking. So, for example, a mobed up lootas could have either shoot twice or use more dakka. But not both at the same time.

The flip side would be that a lootas mob that hadn't mobbed up would still be able to use both.

 

I would probably have less issue with updates if I played more than I get to. As is the game changes every 2 or 3 games for me and that creates a bit of frustration.

[toaae]

I've been trying to think what a "vehicle heavy" Ork army would really look like. Battlewagons with Deffrollas are strong units in CC on their own, but what else supports them? What do you put them them? How many boyz do you take? Morkanaught? What clan? I assume Deffskullz. What is your anti-infantry? Dakkajets? BoomDakka Snazzwagons? Are trukk boyz any good? Maybe yes, because of Deffskullz.

I don't have the vehicles right now to test, but I am just so curious. With ETL coming and me planning to focus on vehicles, I'm tempted to pick up more.

[FlamingDeth]

Vehicle heavy is tricky just because the points on them add up a lot quicker than infantry, and I'd still want to have a solid core of boyz on foot, probably at least 50-60, then some trukks boyz on top. I found it a little easier in previous editions.

[toaae]

That's the issue I keep running into, as well. I'm wondering if we just abandon boyz on foot. That just seems crazy to me, but who knows.

[PiñaColada]

I often run lists with 0 boyz in them. Basically I just run a minimum amount of grots for CPs and backfield objective holding, since a singular 30man ork boyz blob in a speed freeks list is just an expensive paperweight. All the enemy anti-infantry firepower going into a single target of 6+ ork boyz kills them off way too quick. Of course you can still deepstrike boyz but I'm generally not running enough detachments for it being worth spending 2CPs doing that I think.

But this is sort of the issue with orks in general IMO, too many options are overpriced so you need to specialise way too much to "earn" some of that durability back by making a lot of your opponents firepower become ineffective by firing at targets they're not made for. 

Regarding some differnt type of lists, Ben Jurek has had some pretty good success with his quirky-looking freebootas list:

Air Wing Detachement: Orkz, Freebotterz (457p, 1CP)
1 Dakkajet: 6 Supashoota, 148p
1 Dakkajet: 6 Supashoota, 148p
1 Wazbom Blastajet: Wazbom Mega-Kannon, KFF, Smasha Gun, 2 Supashoota, 179

Battalion Detachement: Orkz, Freeboterz (450p, 5CP)
1 Warboss in Mega Armor: PK, Kustom Shoota, 122p
1 Weirdboy: 62p

28 Orkboyz: Nob, Big Choppa, Choppa, 19 Shootaz, 2 Tankbusta Bombs, 201p
10 Grotz: 30p
10 Grotz: 30p

Spearhead Detachement, Orkz, Freebooterz, Vigilus Defiant: Dreadwaaagh (1074p, 1 CP)
1 Big Mek with SAG: Grot Oiler, 84p
1 Weirdboy: 62p

1 Gorkanaut: Deffstorm Mega-Kannon, Klaw of Gork, 2 Rokkit Launcha, 2 Skorcha, 2 Twin Big Shoota, 311p
1 Gorkanaut: Deffstorm Mega-Kannon, Klaw of Gork, 2 Rokkit Launcha, 2 Skorcha, 2 Twin Big Shoota, 311p
1 Morkanaut: Kustom Mega-Zappa, Klaw of Gork, KFF, 2 Rokkit Launcha, 2 Twin Big Shoota, KMB, 310p