40K Friday: October? Orktober? Chaostober?

 Looking back at the last few months' effort it was mostly Grey Knights, then Dark Angels & Blood Angels in late August, September was Blood Angels & Custodes, and for the last week or so I've been going though my ... Chaos Knights! Yes, another small elite army! Yes another mostly-painted-but-not-quite-finished army!

Battletech Terry (not that surprising really considering) brought up 40K knights a couple of weeks ago and sent me down a path.I counted it all up and I have roughly 3000 points of the things and a bunch of it is magnetized and so ridiculously flexible. I only rarely use magnets as I'm more of a "commit and learn to use it" kind of guy but this was done before I acquired them and I admit it does make a huge difference, especially with an army like this. I "only" have six war dogs but I have enough magnetized weapons to build them pretty much any way I want, with at least 3 sets of everything. I can't see myself wanting to use more than that really as much like some other armies* I didn't get a Chaos Knight army to play baby knights - I got into it to play the big boys. The 10 little ones + a single big knight is just not something I'm interested in playing. 

So they are totally playable now but there's work to be done as they are not nearly as pretty as they could be. I am starting with the smaller ones to work out paint schemes and then I will dig into the bigger types. With all of the magnets I have to paint more arms and weapons than bodies so it will be interesting. I may add one more abominant chassis to accommodate some more options. I'm also looking at aftermarket heads and parts to see if anything catches my eye. For now though the focus is to gwt what I already have closer to "done".

As far as the other mentioned armies ...

• The Dark Angels are kind of set aside for now. I know what I want to do and I have most of what I want but it's going to take a while to get it all built and painted. I'll come back to them down the road. 
• The Blood Angels are still on the desk and I will work on them as an alternative to the knights. I'd like to finish up a few more units for them and they are 2nd or 3rd priority for now.
• The Grey Knights have seen a lot of progress this year so I'm taking a break. I will go back to them , mainly to finish their vehicles up, but it'll be a little while.
• The Custodes are in great shape with a few new additions. I have less than 20 models to build/paint to complete everything I have 4000-ish points of them and while there are a few gaps - especially with the new stuff coming out now - I'm pretty happy with the mix of units I have. I'll keep my eyes open for a few things but I'm not feeling much urgency to add anything here. 

Finally there are the Orks, who I have been fooling around with in the background these last few months. There is a pretty big pile of "to-do" and having the new codex means I can settle down and commit to certain unit types and sizes without the uncertainty that's been hanging out there for months. A lot of the new stuff will be revitalizing my Evil Sunz contingent but some of it is going to the Goffs so neither will be left out. There's just a lot of it and I need to at least build it in complete units. Ideally I'd like to paint it that way too but we will see.  

40K Friday: Orks, Grey Knights, and Dark Angels

 

The focus has not been super-strong lately but I've accomplished a little bit. 

The Grey Knights have been one main area and, feeling that I have enough infantry to play something fun for now, I have mainly been working on the Dreadknight situation. This is mostly because I have 3 of them sitting on the table not-finished and 2 more in boxes waiting to be built as shiny new -Grandmaster- Dreadknights with some of the new bits. It's been a fight in trying to figure out how far I want to go with each one versus what is "good enough" to call done and move on - and this army needs a lot of that last part. Hoping to get at least 1-2 of them into the case this weekend and then knock out the rest soon. That will make for a somewhat top-heavy force but I still have some Purifiers, Purgators, and Terminators/Paladins to build so it will even out. The real question is "how much of this can I get to DONE before their codex comes out and changes up a bunch of stuff?" We will see.

These heads are perfect for what I was thinking but once they are on ... man ...

The Orks were getting a fair amount of attention before and now with the Armageddon set having arrived they've been getting a strategic rethink. As I mentioned here I've been contemplating making a new separate Blood Axe force with a mix of older and newer models. I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to use in it - most of which I already had - so with a theme and the units it was just a matter of building some of the parts. I started sticking my 3rd-party heads onto my older boyz torsos and ... I do not like the way they look ... at all. It's rough. The alternate heads make the hunched-over ork boyz look even more off-kilter. I'm going to try building some from scratch and see if I can make them look better as I was adapting some already built models. I'm also going to see if I can make the heads work with the older monopose boyz or with the Armageddon monopose boyz as some of them have separate heads. If that doesn't work then the Blood Axe heads may get set aside into the Ork Bits box and used for vehicle riders or drivers or something and they all get rolled into the Goffs. It's disappointing but not every plan works out.

Digging through the Armageddon box also got me to thinking about the Marine half. For the first time in a while I really had few specific plans for that side of a big box. I figured the heavy bolter guys would probably go into the Crimson Fists because that's a thing with them but otherwise it was pretty open. I'll find a home for them eventually but there wasn't really any urgency about it. 

The intercessors in the box are especially ... mundane. My core, modern (meaning primaris-updated) forces are the aforementioned Fists, my Blood Angels, and my largely-unbuilt-but-always-in-the-back-of-my-mind Black Templars. Team Blue and Team Red already have multiple intercessor squads and Team Fanatic doesn't really care about them as I prefer to focus on Crusader squads as a unique Templar thing. So what was I going to do with a squad or two of a unit with no obvious home?

I thought about whether I could convert them to something else but that's more challenging with the monopose stuff. Even making them additional Sternguard could take some work to make them look right.

Then the wandering mind pulled down my Ravenwing box while moving stuff around and a new virus took hold ... 

"At one point you had an active Dark Angels army ... earlier this year you  set up a Ravenwing force and counted up enough terminators and Deathwing Knights to make a Deathwing army ... why not fill in some Greenwing units and just Primais-ize your Dark Angels?"

I mean ... I have the other stuff already - built and basecoated - and I wouldn't be buying anything new since the Armagedodn box was a done deal ... sure, it could actually work ...

I think they will look good in black. I like to use power swords in my DA army anyway so these will fit right in.

So now the latest distraction for 2026 is tweaking the kinda-sorta Dark Angel "wing" elements and bridging them with "regular" space marine pieces. I was also trying to figure out what to do with the Vanguard Vets as I don't really want them in the Fists and my Blood Angels are already well-supplied with jump assault squads of various types - where could I put them that they would make a difference? Well, they would make for a nice flexible element for a reborn Dark Angels force now wouldn't they?

Then of course the next thought is "maybe I should get another squad too while they're cheap - NO!

Regardless I already have a bunch of older characters in the Dark Angel box, plus some modern dreadnoughts, plus these new models, plus some other uncommitted newer units (Hellblasters?) and suddenly that's a pretty solid army. I'll save the potential structure for another post but it feels good to find a way to actually use some of the new units I was undecided on. Fortunately my Dark Angels paint scheme is pretty simple too so I might be able to get them painted up fairly quick - well quick for me anyway.

More next week as I chronicle this poorly-focused journey into hobby madness.

40K Friday: Armageddon Updates

 

I found myself forced to the sidelines here for most of June thanks to some hospital time - there's a first time for everything! - but I am getting back into the swing of things. I'll focus on the miniature stuff today and talk about the rest in another post.

I did manage to order and receive the new big box set while I was entangled. It's good but I do have some comparisons and some thoughts. On the marine side - there is always a marine side with these - it's not as exciting as the past few sets. 

• 8th edition brought us the initial wave of primaris stuff which were all new models and units, even if some of us were not entirely thrilled at this approach to a marine update.
• 9th edition (Indomitus) brought us some cool characters and new units which were pretty well-received:
• 1 Primaris Captain (Sword and shield captain)
• 1 Primaris Lieutenant (Pistol and shield lt.)
• 1 Primaris Chaplain (first primaris version)
• 1 Judiciar (new character type)
• 3 Bladeguard Veterans (new unit)
• 1 Bladeguard Ancient (new character type)
• 3 Outriders (first primaris bikes)
• 3 Eradicators (new unit)
• 10 Assault Intercessors (first primaris assault marines)
  
  Nothing here was a straight-up rehash of an existing model or unit. They all either brought things into the new Primaris Era or added interesting new options, or both. It was a great box.
  
  
• 10th edition (Leviathan) was another great box full of new or newly-primaised units:
• 1x Captain in Terminator Armour: new upsized version of a popular character type
• 1x Librarian in Terminator Armour: ditto
• 1x Lieutenant with Combi-Weapon: yet another primaris lieutenant but with a new ability
• 1x Apothecary Biologis: Not a normal apothecary and with some useful abilities
• 1x Ballistus Dreadnought: New type of dreadnought
• 5x Terminators: Upsized to fit the new scale but otherwise the traditional squad we all know and love
• 5x Sternguard Veterans: upsized version of a popular squad type
• 10x Infernus Marines: a new squad (or two) of flamethrower specialists 
  
  So there was not as much pure new stuff in this one but it was still well received because of the new terminators and dreadnought. This was also the "shooty" batch of marines to balance out the melee-heavy group from 9th. 

Old non-primaris Librarian

• For 11th now though it's a little different. This one is not mainly ranged or melee it has more of a balance of the two but it also has the first duplicates of existing primaris units which is not really anything anyone was crying out for:
• 1x Captain with Relic Shield: It's another sword & board marine captain ... we just had one of those in the 9th edition starter set. I like it but it seems a little soon to do another one.
• 1x Librarian: This is another walking-normal-power-armored libby and while I love the pose - a callback to a prior librarian model - there is an existing primaris librarian that hasn't been out that long. 
• 1x Chaplain with Jump Pack: I've loved the idea of the jump-chaplain since the RT days and one of my first "finished" models was an old metal chaplain with an old metal jump pack. This guy looks good and I'm happy to finally have one officially updated to the newer scale.
• 1x Ancient: We just had an ancient in the 8th edition box - granted that's not new - but there is also one available in a standalone character box and another one available in the "company heroes" box and probably a few others I am forgetting. Did we really need another ground-ponding banner guy in normal power armor? 
• 10x Intercessors: This is where it really feels like filler. Sure every box like this needs some basic shooting marines - though 9th didn't and 10th didn't so much - but these look very much like what we already have and they have no special loadouts or new equipment options. They have a few different pieces here and there like a helmet or a breastplate but we had the first intercessors in the 8th edition box and then we had the multipart kit later in that edition and those intercessors have been packed into many if not most of the combat patrols and battalion boxes and starter sets ever since. No one playing today lacks basic intercessors. I know this unit was expected but it feels dramatically uninspired.
• 5x Vanguard Veterans with Jump Packs: They're fine but the old Vanguard Vets were know for versatility and having options for a bunch of different melee weapons. Now we may lose that in this edition (like we did in 10th on the old kit) but even if we do from a modeling point of view "everyone has a power sword" feels a little dull. I think we are all hoping the inevitable new multi-part kit will have more choices.
• 3x Eradicators with Heavy Bolters: Sure, ok. Eradicators came out with the 8th box with melta weapons and heavy bolters are pretty widely available in a marine army but they might have some utility. Their special rules are kind of ridiculous. The models do look good so I'll give them that.
• 1x Land Speeder: This is the one I like the best. I was always a fan of the Land Speeder going back to my metal RT speeders and I was disappointed to see the basic super-versatile model disappear awhile back. The heavy speeders felt like they were a little much for a fast scout and strike vehicle. This one though is a genius creation coming in a smaller size more like the old versions and packing all of the weapon options onto a single chassis! I think this is a great unit that almost any army can use and I plan to end up with multiples of them.

New Librarian! What a refreshing new design!
(I do love this pose for these guys though)

• The only really new thing here is the speeder with half credit for the eradicators. The chaplain and vanguard vets are a scale update and everything else is a new primaris update of an existing primaris model. There's a reason people were calling this part of the box "boring" and they are not wrong.

The Xenos half of the boxes has usually been interesting at least:

• 8th edition gave us a major Death Guard refresh that gave us updates to old models and a bunch of new types, expanding the army to the point it became its own force with a separate codex for the first time. It was a very cool set. Maybe someday I will finish painting mine ...
• 9th edition gave us a major Necron update with refreshed warriors and scarabs and some characters both new and refreshed, and a new unit type. It was great for them and I did manage to finish painting mine a couple of years ago.
• 10th gave us a major Tyranid refresh with some redesigned models and a bunch of new ones, units and characters alike. It was also a great set and no, I have not even finished building mine. 

Now for 11th the OpForce is Orks and it is a big refresh for them too:

• 1 Warboss: An important unit in an Ork army and as much as I love the previous version it has been a while. This guy looks great and he's a fair bit bigger (on a 50mm base now) plus we know there's a multipart kit coming too so we will have some good options here.
• 1 Bannernob: Orks have had these for quite a while (they were metal before) but they pulled them out of the list in either 9th or 10th. This unit looks good and thankfully means we get our banner unit back in the army list.
• 1 Bigboss: These have been gone for a while too but they were a well-known unit a few editions back. Glad to see him return and fill the "Ork Lieutenant" niche.
• 1 Painboy & 1 Grot Orderly: We do have models for these already but it has been awhile since they came out. Still not sure about the look but at least if you want more than one the old and new should mix together fairly well. 
• 1 Weirdboy: Not a big fan of this mini but at least we do have a new model. 
• 20 Ork Boyz: Well, they had to be in this box and they do look good. Not sure how customizable they will be as I haven't started in on them yet but more boyz is not a bad thing.
• 10 Gretchin: OK, sure. Did they really need to be in the big box though? I know the whole thing is a tribute to the 2nd edition starter set but I feel like these could have been something more interesting and I don't know of any Ork player that lacks for grots.
• 1 Wartrakk: This ... yes! A longtime staple of Kult of Speed lists finally returns after a few editions away, and it looks amazing! I've already ordered a couple more and dug my old ones out of storage.
• 1 Big Mek Dakkarig: The one truly new unit here. I had mixed feelings about it on first sight but it has grown on me. It leans heavily into the dakka side of things with limited melee capability but that may be OK. It looks a lot like a looted and upgunned imperial guard sentinel but I think I'm ok with that too. It's supposed to be driven b a Big Mek but it has no repair or leadership type abilities, just a 5+ inv save to represent a force field of some kind I suppose. It's taken a while for me to warm up to it but now I think I do like it.

Now to build it all. It's going to take a while but hopefully I can get the parts I like built and basecoated and into action soon. 

40K Friday: More Orks

 

Progress was slow this week but I have another Grey Knight Terminator squad almost ready to go in the case. I'm still fighting the stupidly fiddly nature of the "almost done" model where the last 10% of finishing it takes as much time as the entire process before that. It's why getting to that clearcoat & flocking stage feels so good.

Most of the time however went to Orks. I am trying to maintain focus on them right now. There is some finishing happening here too - mainly the Morkanauts - but there is a fair amount of building happening too as I try to finish out stuff they should have had years ago. The goal is to get it to a certain point and then see what the new edition brings, knowing full well I will still be building as the new edition starts too. 

They look good painted up - this one is obviously not mine

The other wild idea that has crept in is the one I mentioned last time about a potential Blood Axe force in half track-ish looking vehicles. It's been in my head for a few years now as the ork battlewagons look like a half track of some kind if you leave off the top. Some head-swaps for the boyz riding inside and suddenly we have a old-school-looking new force using mostly stuff I already had. I might throw in some of those new guard vehicles as trukks and a looted Russ or three as tank support. It would be far more sensible to not do this and instead roll it all into either my Goffs or my Evil Sunz but I'm really feeling this as it's own sub-force that I could use on its own or team up with other parts.  

I mean it -is- a halftrack technically anyway already!
(Imagine this in a kind of camo grey scheme) 

So now the question really is do I compile the parts to do this but save it for later once I have finished more of the stuff I have started? Or do I work some of it in too and just make a mess of it - though it would still be "working on orks" which at least sounds better than switching over to Guard or Dark Eldar or something else. 

More to come.

40K Friday: Orks!

 

I am still working on the GKs part of the time - got to move a terminator squad and a dreadnought into the "done" case last week - but as 11th edition draws closer I decided I ought to take a serious look at my Orks and try to get them into shape/fill in some gaps/grab some units that may be disappearing or getting replaced soon.

On the Replacement Candidates front it matters because I like some units to fit together, to look like they go together, and while it matters less with orks than with some other armies it does still matter. I assume anything new will be bigger and a least slightly different style-wise. I like most of what I see in the new box for orks though I am not a huge fan of that new weirdboy. So if I am going to fill in some units alongside some existing units I am inclined to pick up more of the existing kits and use whatever new stuff comes out for something new. Also - parts! I am not sure that some of my alternate ork heads, for example, will fit right or look right on the newer boyz or whatever they end up doing with nobz so I need to make sure I have enough heads and bodies that are compatible with each other before these old kits go out of production. 

This guy is great, no complaints here

Right now I have a good-sized Goffs force that is the bulk of force. It's mostly infantry with walker support and I think I'm going to stick with that theme. So the first round of painting time went into improving the pair of black partly-painted Morkanauts I've had sitting around for a few years. They've been used but I've never been ready to call them "finished" so why not try to get them into that state? Plus it's a nice break to paint something orkish that doesn't come in batches of 20. A bunch of boyz, nobz, meganobz, dreads, kans, 'nauts ... i think this makes a great core ork force.

Not as crazy about this guy ... I like my weirdboys to have crazy hair, not Doc Ock tentacles

For a long time now the other part of my ork army has been an Evil Sunz force. Buggies, bikes, trukks, battlewagons - you know, vehicle heavy! There are some boyz here too, plus a unit of meganobz, and some walkers but the emphasis was on the speedy stuff shooting things up and dumping out smaller units of boyz here and there. I'm probably going to stick with that here but there are a lot of things that need to be finished - concepts are easy, building is pretty easy, but finishing things is clearly a stretch for me. 

There may be a third element lurking around now. For a long time I was thinking I might add a Bad Moons force, mostly big gunz, some lootas, probably some walkers and tanks here too, but it never really coalesced into "yes I want to do this now". Recently though I've been looking at how my official battlewagons are built and some of the custom ork heads I picked up a while back and I've been thinking a lot about a Blood Axe force. This would be 50-60 boys, possibly some burnas, packed into 3 battlewagons and then maybe a few trukks. Not sure what else yet but I'm really stuck on the visuals in my head for this and a lot of it is stuff I already have. If the Goffs are my ground pounders, the Sunz are my Recon in Force element, then maybe Blood Axes would work for mechanized infantry.

This just screams "Ork Trukk for Blood Axes" to me

Do I need this many orks? No. Would I ever let that stop me? Also no. Lord knows it hasn't so far ...

So anyway there's the update on the latest area of focus. Yes, I've jumped around a lot this year but I am actually getting things done with these armies so I feel pretty good about it. More to come!

40K Friday - Ork Horde Gathering

 

Not much playing around here lately but plenty of building. Even before the release of the Ork codex for 10th I was feeling like I needed to spruce up my horde. For one, I felt like it was finally time to upgrade the green tide to 32mm bases on the boyz so that's a project that really got rolling in May. Some of the units were in a playable-but-never-really-finished-to-my-regular-standards state so there is painting going on as well.

And yes ... my Goff army core is 120 2nd edition Goff boyz. What plays into the "faceless horde" more than 100+ identical miniatures? Each 20-man mob has a slightly different paint job and markings to make unit identification possible and then the nob for each squad is an old metal nob because they just fit together. 

Building this out for 10th I am also making sure I have 3 warbosses and 3 weirdboyz - all old metal units also - because that seems to ba the way to run a green tide army right now. Most of this I've had for years anyway so some of it is just reorganizing and touching up paint jobs. For example some of these were organized in 30-ork mobs for earlier editions and need to be touched up to make some new 20-ork groups. 

Rebasing also means trying to ensure that what I do now matches up with the basing I did back in the 90's. This actually hasn't been terrible as I used a lot of "Woodland Scenics" train flock back then and they are still around as are many of those same products. Adding a few modern touches like tufts here and there livens up the bases while being easily retrofittable to the stuff where the bases are already good.

Beyond this I am touching up my Battlewagons as that's how these will mostly be run and finally finishing up my Ghazghkul model so his current ridiculously huge version can lead the force while his old 2E models take over as Warbosses for individual mobs. Part of this will be building and painting the Meganobz that will serve as his bodyguard too. If I can maintain focus the old ork army will be looking pretty good.

40K Friday - 40K, Change, and The New Ork Codex

 

No I don't have a copy of it yet but there have been much sharing of the contents of the limited edition book that some people do have already. So we know how it's going to work.

Stepping back a bit there are 3 main ways an army changes in 40K

• The biggest overall change comes from a new edition. This resets everything from movement to terrain to combat rules to army structure. From 3rd to 7th edition the basic setup was an HQ unit + two troops. 8th edition changed that up by introducing a variety of options for building your force and it also introduced Command Points as a currency to spend on everything from more exotic force structures prior to the game to unit upgrades outside the normal point cost to dice re-rolls during the game. 9th kept both of these concepts but changed up both how CP's are acquired and the exact elements of each of the force organization options. 
• The other area that can change up an army is a new codex. This is the book that covers what your army is, what it can do, and how it does it. Unit capabilities, point costs, psychic powers, special rules for the force, special rules for smaller groups within that force - there are a lot of elements to an army and the codes pretty much defines all of them.
• The final channels of change in 40K are the annual Chapter Approved book and the bi-annual FAQ updates and the post-release codex FAQ. 
• Chapter Approved comes out once a year and lately has been updates to the matched play missions and the secondary objectives - these are both new to 9th edition.
• GW adopted a new FAQ policy a few years ago where they put out updates in the spring and in the fall to adjust any out-of-balance units or rules and to adjust points costs. This works quite a bit better than the old "random" approach or the old "never" approach - neither of which was something you could count on.
• They have also stated a policy of releasing an update about a month after a new codex comes out to address any big balance issues or errors in the book. This is a really nice approach that helps keep things clear with the newer releases. 

For Orks, while 9th edition has been out for over a year and people have mostly adjusted to that change we are now in the "new codex" phase and like most of the 9th edition books it is an extensive re-working of how the army works. Not so much in the units themselves - though there are a lot of new ones here - but in how the weapons work, how the leaders work, and how morale works in particular. I thought I would hit the highs and lows in general today:

• Downside: You can only take 9 mek gunz in an army now instead of 18. I don't care personally as I have never run them but some people are understandably upset. 
• Upside: Many guns are "Dakka" weapons now and get more shots than they had before. These tend to be the mainstay ork weapons like shootas and big shootas and the warbiker guns so it has a big impact across the army. This divides the gun into two ratings. At half maximum range or more the gun has the same number of shots as before.  At less than half the gun has 50% more shots. In general this is great as the closer you get (or they get) the meaner your shooting gets.  This is generally better than the old Dakka rule of an extra shot on a to-hit roll of 6 - it's more reliable at least and let's you plan around having that higher rate of fire.
• Downside: Many ork guns that went to Dakka used to be Assault. This let you move with an extra d6" and still shoot with a -1. Dakka guns can no longer fire if you advance and in a melee-focused army that definitely slows you down. 
• Upside: Orks are Toughness 5. That's a major change. It seems like it's been discounted in some quarters because this particular change came out first but it is definitely a big change. It is nothing but a positive and it demonstrates GW's willingness to "mess with the numbers" in this edition - finally! For most armies, most of the the shots you fire and the punches you throw are at Strength 4 or less. Putting all of those weapons at a 5+ to wound is a significant boost. There are a fair number of S5 attacks out there too, from heavy bolters to heavy flamers, and putting those to a 4+ to wound is also helpful. This is all good.

• Downside: Ork morale has drastically changed. For most of the last 20 years Orks could ignore leadership in large mobs because the effective leadership number = the number of boyz in the mob. In a game where leadership capped at 10 and ork boy mobs capped at 30 - and were often fielded as 30 - morale was only an issue for small bands and even then mainly after significant casualties. 
  
  That is no longer the case. 
  
  The old "mob rule" rule is gone and now orks take morale checks just like everyone else. That means with a leadership of 7, killing as few as 5 boys puts your mob in danger on a 3+. If that check is failed then you will lose 1/6 of your boyz on average. That would take a 30-boy mob down to 20 in one turn from light casualties. The only benefit orks now have is that they can ignore the "below half strength" modifier on those checks if they are near another ork unit that  is not below half strength. Sure, that helps, but it is a dramatic change from how orks have handled morale for a long time. Also, this change somewhat offsets the T5 boost - You will take fewer casualties from say a volley of boltgun fire, but you have a much higher chance of failing a morale test if you do take any casualties. 
  
  Now there is the generic once a game "autopass morale for 2 CP" stratagem that everyone has and there is an ork-specific strat that allows passing morale for some mortal wound damage on the unit as the leaders knock out the cowards and it can be used multiple times but it i still taking boyz off of the board so it may not always be a great choice.
  
  This morale change is 100% negative and is already forcing players to look at different approaches. I'm seeing a lot more MSU lists with ten-boy squads instead of massed 30 boy squads. I think there is still a place for big squads - strats hit a little harder, Da Jump is a bigger deal on bigger mobs as is Warpath ... but I think it will be interesting to look at popular ork lists in six months or a year and see how they compare to end-of-8th-edition-codex lists.

For me I'll have to learn to live with these changes over the rest of the year. My normal ork force is a bunch of goff boyz on foot or in battlewagons with deff dread and 'naut support so there are definite impacts here. I have no big take on the beast snagga boyz yet ... I'll probably try using my skarboyz as beast boyz at first. Part of the fun of a new codex and new edition, right?

BatRep of the Week: Orks vs. Orks

Steve the Mountain and a battle of Orks against Orks! It's a lot of fun.

BatRep of the Week: New Orks vs. Khorne Daemons

Something new here at the Tower. I watch a fair number of battle reports for the games I like so I thought I would start sharing them here on the blog.

First up: the boys from Scotland rolled out one of the first reports using the new Ork codex and it's a lot of fun -and- it's not ridiculously long. Stompa incoming!

40k Friday - Orks 8th Edition Prep

With 8th edition about a month away and the radical changes it seems to be bringing I am scrambling to get some of the armies updated/expanded/finished. I'm making this post to mark where the army is right now and what I am thinking as I work on it - partly to force myself to think through it as I put it down and partly as a historical document so a year from now I can come back and either  rejoice in my amazing foresight or wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Today - Orks!

Now I haven't played my orks in quite a while and there are a few reasons for that. I dove into the Eldar, Chaos, and Blood Angels for the past couple of years, Apprentice Red plays orks quite a bit so I try not to step on his toes, and frankly, that last codex (2014) just didn't seem to really fit how orks have played for most of the history of the game. The rules seemed like a bad fit and ork lists full of boyz became about as common as chaos marine lists full of Chaos Space Marines. Plus it was just less fun to play with changes to mob rule and deffrollas and how instead of breaking the "must have bikes" and "must have lootas" meta that had been around for years the last codex amped it up and added "must have tankbustas" to the list. There was a brief period where the very orky green tide formation was a hit but that disappeared too.

With a new edition and a complete reboot coming though, that should change! So what do I need to do? Let me run down what I already have and then talk about what I want to add or modify for 8th edition.

The core of my force is 100 Goff Slugga Boyz in 5 units of 20 orks each plus a nob for each one of those mobs. Typically these are mounted in Battlewagons. These are led by a mob of 10 Nobz and a Warboss in another Battlewagon or a Trukk depending on points and force org slots. This is the heart of the army.

Backing this up is a unit of 3 lobbas, a mob of 20-something grots, a mob of 20 Kommandos (who often end up playing as Shoota Boyz), a unit of 3 rokkit buggies, a unit of big shoota buggies, and various HQ units like painboyz and weridboyz and the like.

This is usually enough for most games. I like having a bunch of orks charging forward in armored vehicles then bailing out to assault the enemy. I can (and have) played it as a foot list too so there are some options even with just this chunk of the force.

When I first put these guys together years ago my concept was a Goff warband accompanied by some Evil Sunz / Kult of Speed types for the fun of it. The easiest way to tell which was which is the paint job - black stuff is Goff, red stuff is Kult of Speed. As I rework this for 8th I want to get back into a structure where this makes sense.

Goffs

• 100 boyz (2E starter set goff boyz)
• 10 nobz (2E metal skarboyz)
• 10 meganobz (RT/2E orks in power armor)
• 5 battlewagons (4 custom conversions + 1 different custom conversion)
• 25 grots (2E starter set gretchin)
• 2 trukks (old Gorka-Morka style trukks upgraded in various ways)
• 20 shoota boyz (2E metal Blood Axe boys)
• 3 wartrakks (that same plastic kit that's been around since Gorka-Morka but with custom crew)
• 3 lobbas (2E Pulsa-Rokkits)
• 20 kommandos (2E Blood Axe Kommandos)
• 10 tankbustas (2E metal Snake Bite Boyz + 2E metal Death Skull Boyz)
• 10 lootas (2E metal Goff boyz w/old metal Deffguns and RT/2E plastic plasma cannons) 

Kult of Speed

• Battlewagon (old Armorcast Battlewagon)
• 20 shoota boyz (2E metal Evil Sunz boyz)
• 6 warbuggies (RT metal buggies)
• 2 skorchas (RT metal skorchas)
• Mek in mega armor (2E mega armor nob)
• Mek with shokk attack gun (RT shokk attack gun)
• Dakkajet (current kit)
• Bommer (current kit)

The idea is that the red force is mostly lighter faster units that can be taken when I feel the need. Plus it lets me paint something besides black for a change. Collecting orks for as long as I have also means that I have a pretty big pile of un-allocated and un-painted stuff too. At least another 60+ of the old plastic grots, a bunch of metal grots, 20 more plastic RT orks, a mob of madboyz,  a squad of boarboyz, a half-converted trukk, another 20 goff boyz - just a lot of stuff in the ork box that says "hey do something interesting with me" whenever I look in there.  Top of the list is converting some old plastic terminators into mega-nobz.

The biggest "uncommitted" unit I have is a group of ten killa kans and a pair of deff dreads. None of them are the current kit of course. I have 3 built from scratch years ago and used in many battles since, 6 RT ork dreadnoughts, and one 2E ork dreadnought. The dreads are Org Atrocitors from Demonblade which at the time were really big and beefy but they look a little small next to the current monster that is the plastic ork dread. I'm thinking about putting Goff bosspoles on all of them and just making them part of that force. They're a mish-mash of paint jobs so it's not like they look like a unified unit anyway. I need to finish these guys up for 8th for sure.

Now you would think a big pile of goff orks plus a smaller extra force would be plenty but you might also note that a lot of that stuff is pretty old. I'm kind of missing the chance to play with the current ork range. I don't really want to mix styles too much so I am thinking about adding a third element here of all new stuff and painting it as Bad Moonz. It's not like I don't know yellow! I don't have a particular plan for this group other than picking an choosing the current stuff I like the best - a battlewagon, a dread, maybe some big gunz, all alongside some of the newer style boyz. Like my Iyanden Eldar this would be a fresh start/new style units only force - the older stuff can stay with the first two groups.

Future Plans

• Stormboyz! The one ork infantry unit I really do not have and the one I really want to add on. "Jump pack orks" is a recipe for fun in games and I do need to add some soon.
• I do like the current ork dread and I am hoping the new rules will make it worthy of its ferocious look. Need to get one.
• One more jet painted up in Goff colors. Mine are not and that's why they're in with team red but I would like one for the boyz in black.
• I should probably look at Ghazgkull at some point too - Goffs and all that.
• Gorkanaut/Morkanaut! I thought the models were great and then I saw the rules and they were terrible. With the new edition hope is renewed and a big centerpiece model is definitely something I "need". In fact I may "need" 2 or 3 of them before I am done.
• Stompa! If we're talking about big centerpiece models, well, this is the big one for the orks. It's definitely on the list.

I definitely feel like I have enough of the regular ork units  - I am really only looking for the big centerpiece type models at this point. I'd like to spend the rest of this year finishing up the two forces I have and save the Bad Moonz expansion for next year's ork project. Even that's true to the fluff, right? As the Waagh grows more and more clans and units join in!

One obvious thing that's missing here is bikes. Everybody takes bikes in their ork army, mainly because they're one of the few units that's actually been effective for the last few editions and codexes. I don't hate them or anything but I don't think every single ork army should be centered around them so I do my part to even that out. I may add some someday but they're not even on the list right now. 

Unlike my Marine and Eldar armies I'm not feeling the need to add a bunch of character types. There are not that many named ork special characters anyway and they don't have those unusual types like the Avatar or the Sanguinor either.

Looking at 8th

When the edition comes out there are some specific things I want to try. A whole bunch of boyz on foot - does it work? How about boyz in Battlewagons? Trukk mobz? How are the psykers? How about a kan wall type list? With Apprentice Red also playing orks we should have the opportunity to try out a multitude of possible combinations and I am really looking forward to it.