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Author Topic: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun  (Read 2155 times)

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Offline zachay2000

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My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« on: July 10, 2013, 11:35:31 AM »
About a year ago I moved to NYC and have been playing at the games workshop near NYU. Because I now have to carry my army on my back my orks have been neglected in favor of chaos space marines. This was until I finally figured out that orks are a great army to ally with.

For anyone that has never used a sag before, try it. Its random craziness took out 7 grey knight terminators turn 2 and with that led me to victory. What's also nice is that the sag lets you bring a deft dread as the troop and another in the heavy so your ally detachment is only 3 very scary models.

My main army right now is thousand sons and I couldn't be happier with the ork ally. Today I'm trying out the warboss on a bike with nob bikers as the troop all with power klaws. Its fun being able to run orks again. And that sag so far has been a greater threat to my enemies than my flying demon prince!
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Offline adamscurr

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2013, 08:34:12 PM »
Excellent...  I'm glad you are having a good time with the SAG...  One question though...  How are you keeping your SAG Mek safe...  It seems to me a random Lascannon shot would end him...

Adam


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Offline zachay2000

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2013, 10:52:25 PM »
The short answer is that the chaos space marines give higher priority targets. My allied detachment of orks in my 2k list consists only of the sag and two deft dreads (1 as troop the other as the heavy). I back this up with a a squad of thousand sons on an aegis defense line with an icarus lascannon and put the sag behind the barrier. Last game I played the sag didn't even die but a lot of grey knight terminators did. :)
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Offline OD from TV

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2013, 10:33:39 AM »
Well zachay I'm glad to hear your getting your greenside back on.  With having to transport an army in a backpack, Orkz are a bit harder unless your utilizing a low model count build like an Ork DeffWing.  The SAG is one of those great high risk high reward models that makes Orks unpredictably fun.  On a bad roll it's bad, but with a statistical likelyhood of 7 on the roll it's very nice.

As for Orkz as Ally Detachments, their benefits always are dictated by what the core army is.  For example if the core army is IG then Ork hordes are not as beneficial as the IG already has lots of big blobs of Infantry and can actually put out a larger Infantry squad than Orkz!  Personally given the nature of Blood Axes (who readily maintain ties to the Imperium and are always willing to sell their services), Freeboota Pirates, and other random Mercenary elements, I think the Orkz should be allowed to ally with every army (excluding Black Templars who fluff-wise hate all xenos with a passion, IG armies led by Yarrik whose famous in anti-Ork doctrine, and Nids because, well they're nids).  Of course that's just my opinion.

I agree with Adam's analysis that the SAG is rather worrisomely unprotected.  Sure you've been lucky so far with your opponents choosing to aim at the rest of the army, but once they start getting annoyed by SAGs enough they move up the target priority list pretty quickly.  I've always found that the best protection for a SAG is actually the cheapest point cost unit Orks have, a small Grot unit.  I usually go for 19 since that's how many you can grab without a second Herda, and if you deploy the unit in a nice backfield terrain piece like a ruin with a nice vision of the battlefield, with the Mek they are a surprisingly durable unit that rarely dies due to enemy action (usually if the SAG annoys enough to warrant Deep Strikers, or if the SAG blows the unit up.  It's also somewhat fluffy to have a Runtherda and Grots nearby a SAG, not that fluff reasons should necessarily dictate gameplay, but I always like those tie-ins.

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~OD
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Offline zachay2000

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2013, 12:02:43 AM »
I'll post my 2k list in the morning. But the one thing I will say is that if you want to lower the threat of your sag. Have something scarier than a sag on your side. You know something small and wholesome like a lv 3 psychic demon prince of tzeetch with wings and power armor that has a torrent flame weapon that eats spacemarine armor. I was thinking about my deathskullz army I want to work on and you will see two sags and at least 1 troop of grots in that list.
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Offline angel of death 007

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #5 on: July 16, 2013, 12:18:22 AM »
I have mixed luck with SAG Mek the first time I ever used him he blew himself up and the blast claimed a whole squad of shoota boys he was attached with yet in my last apocalypse game he took out the majority of 3 marine squads

Offline AXEBLADE

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #6 on: July 16, 2013, 06:32:21 AM »
I played a SAG mek in tournament this past weekend.
He managed to scatter off his targets all but 2 times.
His first hit was at S9 and wiped out half a dev squad (unfortunately mostly mooks)
His second hit was a direct hit on a tac squad holding an objective in the last turn of the game. And I got double 6's to evaporate them off the table and win me the game.

I ran mine with a unit of 19 grots and a runtherder. Sit the grots on an objective and give your opponent enough to worry about with the rest of your army and I find the mek tends to get left alone.

Offline adamscurr

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #7 on: July 17, 2013, 11:38:20 PM »
Well...  With all the love this guy is getting...  I might have to give him another chance...  I bet he would do great behind an aegis line with 19 grots and a herder! lol  Specially since the grots could fire the aegis line! lol


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Offline zachay2000

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #8 on: July 20, 2013, 10:14:34 AM »
Update: I played a game on Thursday with the sag. I targeted a predator and rolled double sixes. It scattered 2 inches to the left. Letting me get the orginal still and another one. I got the explosion result off of both of them and took out some space marines around them. I am now working on a double force org that lets me take 4 of them!
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Offline Nobbla

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #9 on: July 23, 2013, 04:20:37 AM »
Regarding how to keep the SAG Mek safe, what about putting her in an artillery unit?

Offline OD from TV

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #10 on: July 24, 2013, 10:31:29 PM »
While nothing is stopping you from putting a SAG Mek with a unit of Big Gunz (or really any unit as he is an IC), there are two main things to consider; Effectiveness and how high of a threat will it be interpreted as.

So lets take a look at Kannons, the basic Big Gunz artillery unit.  At first glance this looks to be a good choice as Kannons are going to usually be aiming at Vehicles or blobs of Infantry should they be a juicer target.  Sure the statistical average of a SAG is Str7, which isn't bad at AT if you're aiming at anything less than a Land Raider or Monolith, but it's random and an Ammo Grot doesn't let you reroll Str, only the pieplate placement.  Should the Kannons be aiming at AV 13 and you roll under the statistical average, you've pretty much wasted the shot, unless of course you get a nice Scatter and hit something nearby.  But then you also have to consider the chances of rolling doubles, such as a Zoink which would teleport the Mek into Base Contact with the Tank in question.  Or the worst case scenario of Boom which would remove your entire Artillery unit, a loss of roughly around 150+ points due to a bad roll (of course options alter the points, which I'm approximating anyway).  With the Mek attached it also becomes a much juicer target, especially if your playing the mission where Heavy choices are Scoring Units.

And yes, there are two other two options of Ork Artilery, but I don't think you'd want a SAG with Lobbas since the point of Lobbas is indirect fire, with which a SAG couldn't contribute, and Zzaps are already notoriously unreliable that adding another variable Str weapon to the unit seems insane.

I'm not personally a fan of adding a SAG to Lootas for many of the same reasons, it just becomes too tempting of a target for the enemy, the SAG can self destruct the entire unit any time it fires, you usually want to aim the Lootas and SAG at different targets, and unless you have a large central ruin in your Deployment Zone that can see the entire battlefield, you're better off with placing them in different areas to have a better field of vision for your Long Range Dakka.

Now I'm just giving my personal perspective, and I'd like everyone to know that they are perfectly free to debate against my personal standpoint, but I honestly feel the best choice unit for a SAG to run with is Grots.  I've already said why, but to reiterate in a simple list format...
  • Grots are by far the lowest priority unit in the eyes of both Ork and non-Ork players, due to their all around low skills and lack of an armor save.  A SAG attached to them, does raise their profile, but usually isn't considered as high of a threat as a couple full strength Boyz units running at the opponent, or Battlewagons zooming at the opponent, or even a unit of Kans moving up the field.
  • Grots are able to hold Objectives in any game, and should you have one that you place on your deployment zone nothing says you can't place it close or even on a terrain piece such as a Ruin that would give the SAG a good view of the field to fire his Long Range weapon.
  • In the event that the SAG does self destruct (even on the first turn), all you lost was Grots, not an incredibly huge loss in the end, whereas any other unit would be a much larger loss and damage your overall effectiveness
  • Grots are cheapest point cost ablative wounds for a SAG
  • It's kinda fluffy to have a Runtherda with invisible Snotlings nearby a SAG, I mean it does fire live ammunition supplied by a Herda.

The last thing I have on the SAG at the time being is that I wouldn't put him around or in Fortifications.  This is due to the mild ambiguity of the Boom result, and people arguing that a Bastian would or would not be a possible "model" to be removed from play.  Personally I think the RAW (read as written) is quite clear and would include a Bastion a SAG is hiding in/around would be removed from play, but with the lack of a FAQ on it, I can see players arguing over this one long into the night.

Peace
~OD
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Offline Nobbla

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #11 on: July 25, 2013, 03:39:42 PM »
@OD from TV
Good and interesting comments! One thing thou, it felt in your argumentation that you are not aver that an independent character does benefit from  the artillery's toughness and save.

Offline OD from TV

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #12 on: July 25, 2013, 04:31:11 PM »
Hmm, I thought I had written that benefit down, woops looks like I have an error of omission.  It would seem that I had at least one more of those little errors though, as I thought that I stated that IC's can never operate Artillery, making IC's in my opinion a less attractive possibility, but there you go.

I also feel the need to apologize if I sounded stand-off-ish in my last post, naturally everyone is welcome to play the army however they feel fit, I was simply giving advice from my perspective on how to maximize the army's potential with who the SAG should stick with.

I have always felt that Experience is the best teacher, and my experience has shown me that Grots are the way to go, but that doesn't necessarily mean your experience will teach you the same thing.  So if you want to, play some games with the SAG attached to your favorite Big Gun unit.  I think if/when you get that Boom result though, that you'll regret that choice, but that again is just an opinion.

Peace
~OD
Truly beautiful work. That's the kind of stuff that makes a true mekanik cry tears of joy.
OD, you once again prove that your are still the freakin Da Vinci of plasticard

Offline zachay2000

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #13 on: July 27, 2013, 07:29:32 PM »
UPDATE ON SAG EXPERIMENTS: So I have played more games with the SAG, to the point where the players at my store have a right to fear it. I've noticed a couple of things.

1: More than 2 SAGS = More problems, This means don't double force org SAGS. While they are powerful and a cheap artillery HQ, they suffer from diminishing returns i.e. once all of the targets are out of line of sight then you have no targets. I'm finding limiting the number of sags to 2 is best.

2: Put them behind an aegis defense line! Give them the cover save because its awesome it's reliable terrain that you can put down on your terms ever time.

3: They are IC for a reason. This one is going to seem weird but running them close to but not in a unit tends to confuse opponents and lets me get more shots off. This also lets the unit that it is close to fire at other things, i.e. if they are close to a unit of grots that are manning the icarus lascannon. They can fire at two different things!

4: For some reason they are always a low target priority. All of my opponents have tried to avoid the shots and focus on other targets. This has always been their downfall.

5: Deff Dread as a troop is a nice bonus. Strong troop choice when you consider that the SAG can take out most Anti Tank. The only things I've had problems popping are Land Raiders and Mark of Tzeentch Oblits.

I'll post other observations later but so far I'm very happy with the SAG.
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Offline Ork E Nuff

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Re: My summer love of the Shokk Attack Gun
« Reply #14 on: July 29, 2013, 04:05:03 PM »
Well, I might as well put my 2 teef in before this thread becomes old...

I love the SAG!  I've always used it, since it's inception into our lore and army lists...I even used it when others thought that it would be more worthwhile to use the KFF.  I love the unpredictability, the range, and the possibilities of opening a hole in reality that no one can survive.  How do I protect it?  Well...since you can add a dredd as a troop choice with your big mek, I use him.  Nothing causes an enemy to pause in a charge more than a dredd armed with a scorcha and KMB and 2DCCWs.  If that doesn't work, I will try to keep him in close to a big mob of boyz.  Does this always work?  No...does it matter to me?  No...it's the spirit of the thing!  Take a risk and it pays off, you're the best general on the table.  No pay off, lot of head shaking and "Dude" comments...Best experience?  Shooting myself across the table into close combat with a Necron Lord.  Always take the PK...bit of advice...
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