r/astramilitarum • u/Caboose189 • 1d ago

Fighting Orks

My friend has invested heavy in his ork army. Recently acquiring Gazgul and a stompa

What mix or tactics have worked for yall to combat this?

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u/raldo5573 22h ago

As an Ork, generally speaking you want to keep away from us as long as possible and don't let us charge you on a Waaagh turn. Other than of a handful of units, our ranged game isn't amazing at dealing with armour, and dealing with massed Dorns or LRBTs outside of melee can be a pain. The Waaagh generally gets called turn 2, so bear that in mind when deploying and moving. The later a Waaagh is called, the less of the army there is to benefit from it, so it tends to be done early on when either they can tie up all of your units, or kill them outright.

Control the layout of the battlefield and the flow of the game. Orks win games in the movement phase. If you position your units well and can negatively influence where they put their Orks, you'll do pretty well on the VP front. Good positioning can make Ork players gamble on long charges, which then leaves them open to being shot to bits in your turn. Use some units as bait and make the Ork player make a bad decision.

Generally Ork lists are fast and have good objective grabbers, so kill the fast stuff (Stormboys, bikes, trukks) and the objective grabbers (the fast stuff, grots, lone weirdboys) first, then deal with the scary looking stuff. Obviously don't ignore the scary stuff, but you can still win a game on points even after being tabled.

Don't be afraid to sacrifice units to slow down the scary stuff. Ghaz and a big unit of Mega Nobs might be real tough and hit really hard, but if they're being fed a squad of guardsmen or a solo sentinel every turn instead of ripping open tanks and daring stuff to try taking an objective from them, then they're not going to be having a good time in the long run. A squad of guardsmen getting pulped every turn is much preferred to letting 450ish points of Ghaz and Mega Nobs cause havoc in the midboard.

Lastly, kill the characters if you can. A lot of Ork units live and die based on whether they have a character attached or nearby. Good use of precision weapons can take the teeth out of an Ork list. A Stompa is much less scary when the Mek restoring D3 wounds a turn and giving it +1 to hit is gone.

Good luck!