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Submitted By: Azonalanthious Date: January 26, 2011, 04:20:06 PM Views: 1599 | ||
Summary: A look at all the many options allowed on Ork Nobz. | ||
Sos, you fink you wanna play some dedd 'ard, dedd killie Nobz? Well good fer you! You kame to da propa place fer it. Ok, to be serious and to preserve my brain (I'm not too good at talking Ork, I'm ashamed to admit), time to drop the accent. It feels like I've been rambling about Nobz in a fair number of posts recent and I figured, time to give something back, hey? So here I'm going to take a look at our beloved Nobz. I'm not going to tell you HOW to use Nobz. You're the Warboss, that's YOUR job. But I want folks to have a clear understand of what their strengths and weakness are and WHY they might want to use them, so they can make good choices on that how. So 'ere we go! General Rule 1: The best upgrade to Boyz is more Boyz. What does that have to do with Nobz, you ask? Well, it doesn't directly. But I think its worth pointing out that if you spend an equal number of points on Boyz and Nobz (and they are all still alive, which is where rule 2 comes in), against almost every possible foe, the Boyz will both do more damage to anything they can wound and will be able to take more damage before losing the unit. So keep that in mind. Rule 2: Nobz is ded 'ard. Now, by this, I don't mean they can be hard to kill, though they can be. But what I really want to highlight is they way Nobz hold onto their offense power. Let's start with a very simple example: 10 Nobz with no extra gear at all vs 20 Slugga Boyz. Same number of wounds, same toughness, same armor save (though the Boyz are cheaper, which is where Rule 1 comes in). Each unit takes, lets say, 3 unsaved wounds. The Boyz have now lost 3 Boyz, which is 15% of their offensive power. The Nobz, however, have lost only 1 Nob, or 10% of their power. This will be true any time the units have taken an odd number of wounds -- the Nobz will be in better shape in assaults then the Boyz. Then we start adding the many fine Nob upgrades and start wound allocating and we can have a unit that can take enough damage to easily kill an entire squad of 30 boyz or more... and between Feel No Pain, better saves, and Wound Allocation, can STILL BE AT 100% of its starting offensive ability. Make no mistake; it is this ability right here that makes Nob units such a useful and powerful addition to an Ork army. Rule 3: Wound Allocation. Mhh, smell the cheese. Honestly, I used to be very against these type of tactics and they still aren't the type of thing I would take to a for fun game over at a friend's house. But as other armies have gained similar abilities (take Thunder Wolf Cavalry for a shining example) I feel far less bad about using such tactics then I once did. For those not familiar with the concept, they way Wound Allocation works is to make sure each model has different Wargear. This allows you to assign and roll each wound individually. This in turn means with a little care and just small amount of luck, every Nob in the squad can take 1 wound before any of them has to take a second and be removed -- up to 10 wounds total in a full sized squad. This works hand in hand with Rule 2 to make the Nobz the nasty unit we know and love. Wargear Offensive
a) expensive, and b) slow On paper each Power Klaw adds a significant increase in the total killyness of your Nobz. In the 'real' (made-up real?) world, each one weakens the rest of your army as you pile more points into a single unit and increase the odds of the Nob being killed before he can use the Pk. So it’s important to find a balance on just how many to take. The rule of thumb I've found to be useful is 1 Power Klaw per 3 nobz, rounding down. So a 5 man squad would have 1, a full 10 man squad would have 3, and say a 7 man squad would have 2. I find this to be a good balance between keeping the squad at a reasonable point level, keeping enough buffer models to keep your Pk’s safe, and still being very killy for the size. If you want a higher ratio of Klaws then this, I suggest taking a serious look at Meganobz instead, which give you not just a Klaw but a 2+ armor save and a Twin-Linked Shoota for 5 points less then a regular Pk Nob (even if he has no other upgrades!).
While I wouldn't call them required, I would never call points spent on Big Choppa's wasted and they are always worth serious consideration. These bad boyz are really nifty weapons for hunting dreadnoughts, non-AV 14 all around armor, and for inflicting a lot of wounds at initiative to power through the saves of things like terminators.
Defensive
Ok, to be somewhat seriously now, I really can only think of 1 possible situation where I wouldn't give a Nob squad a Bosspole -- if I was taking 3 with no gear at all purely to get another battlewagon in a list. Nobs are an expensive unit that will never hit the Mob Rule Fearless threshold. Keeping them from running away should always be a high priority. I've seen some folks take 2 or more bosspoles in a single squad -- this I don't quite understand. Your Bosspole should be on a model well 'back' in the squad so by the time you risk him getting killed off, you squad should be darn near gone anyways. Even for Wound Allocation purposes I don't see it -- there are other, better things for equal or fewer points that can be used for that.
Mixed:
The one real downside is a relatively high absolute cost, but the larger your squad is the more this cost is spread out and so the better value it becomes. In a full sized squad you are only paying about a third of the cost per model compared to a min sized squad, which is very, very much worth it. I would generally say take this in any squad 5 models or up, below that I would think carefully though it still sometimes has a place. Now the offensive aspect, a poisoned weapon! This lets your Painboy keep up with your klaws/big choppas when hunting high toughness models but it really isn't quite the same value as those weapons offer. However, an often overlooked aspect of poison is that if the attack's strength is equal or higher then the defender's toughness (so 4 regularly, 5 on the charge for a Painboy) it allows you to reroll to wound instead. Which means your Painboy actually has the best to wound rate of any model against T4(charging)/T3(not charging) models, beating even the Power Klaw (although the klaw will pull ahead after saves against models with good armor). The Painboy himself pulls off an extremely impressive wound rate of 97% against T3 models on the charge.
Bikes I felt the infamous Nob Bikers really deserved their own subsection rather then being lumped in with another upgrade. Adding bikes to Nobz bring a huge number of benefits. Built in 'Eavy Armor - nifty. Built in cover save - VERY nice. Extra Toughness - nifty. 6" extra movement every turn and the ability to turbo-boost - VERY nice. Ability to always move full speed through terrain (though at the cost of risking wounds) - nifty. Dakkaguns, the best darn gun in our entire codex (in my opinion) - VERY nice. Not being able to run -- I know this sounds a bit odd as a benefit, but it means you have a perfectly valid excuse to be firing your Dakkaguns regularly, which I consider a good thing. However, all that bikey goodness comes at a significant cost -- namely COST. The simple addition of a bike more then doubles the base cost of a Nob, making them more expensive the a terminator. By the time you have properly geared out your bikers, you are probably going to be sitting at an average of upwards of 60 points per model, or 3 times the base cost of a Nob, and 10 times that of an Ork Boy. Well built Nob Bikers are a nasty enough unit that they can actually be worth this high cost, but its something that you need to stay aware of and balance carefully. Transports By popular demand! First, general: Transports get your Nobz to where they can kill stuff faster. This is ALWAYS a good thing. I very rarely/almost never take a Nob squad that isn't either on bikes or in a transport.
However, solid arguments can and have been made for Red Paint Jobs, Grot Riggers, Armor Plates, Boarding Planks, and Reinforced Rams. And I could add in an argument for Stikkbomb Chucka's as well (see the point on stikkbomb's above). Heck, even the Wreckin' Ball has the 'cool, my Trukk has a close combat-esq' attack thing going for it. But all that stuff is a much larger debate beyond the scope of this piece. So I'll finish this up with this: Trukks work better in mass. A single Trukk in a list with no other vehicles WILL die turn one -- don't fool yourself. With other, non-Trukk vehicles or in a list with a lot of Trukks though, it has a much better chance of surviving long enough to do it's job (and if the Nobz's Trukk gets blown up, they can always kick some regular Boyz out of their Trukk and steal it!)
If your Nobz are going to be the only or one of only a handful of units in transports, take a Battlewagon (and sometimes take one even if everyone is in transports - they are fun!) because they aren't Trukks and so don't explode like popcorn. You want to get there fast -- take Red Paint. You don't want to double your chances of being immobilized -- take a Big Shoota or a Kannon. You are going to be racing towards foes, may as well squish something in the process -- take a Deffrolla. But don't take an 'Ard Case, you want to be able to pile out and assault. Conclusion Alright, I guess that's all I have to say on the topic of Ded 'Ard Nobz today. Questions, comments, and feedback always welcome and I hope this helps you aspiring new Warbosses out there. |
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Rating: by 11 members. |
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SKEETERGOD | March 10, 2011, 10:59:26 AM A Great Article, and I feel it is almost required reading for all ork players. |
The Ecclesiarch | February 23, 2011, 10:11:37 AM Great tactica, easy to read & very helpful, thanks |