Astro Winnipeg 2012: Army Analysis

I feel its very important after a tournament to perform a post-con army analysis. It's important to review your choices in army selection to figure out what worked and what didn't.

The obvious thing to look at is the 'useless' factor. Did you have any units in your army that were useless the entire tournament? Or alternately did you have any units that were great in only a handful of games?

Next is the 'lacking' factor. Did you feel your army was significantly lacking in any particular area? Like anti-tank or assault punch or perhaps scoring units?

Lastly is the 'efficiency' factor. Is there any unit in your army that performs a role poorly, that could be performed more efficiently by another unit?

So lets analyze my army as an example.

Warboss - Power Klaw, 'eavy armor, Cybork Body, Bosspole

Tankbustas - 6x, 2x Bomb Squigs
Mekboy Junka - 3x Big Shootas, Reinforced Ram, Grot Riggers

Trukk Boyz - 11x, Rokkit, Trukk w/ Rokkit, Grot Riggers, Reinforced Ram
Trukk Boyz - 12x, Rokkit, Nob w. Power Klaw, Bosspole, Eavy Armor, Trukk w/ Rokkit, Grot Riggers, Reinforced Ram
Trukk Boyz - 16x, Big Shoota, Nob w/ Bosspole, 'Eavy Armor
Mega Nobz - 5x
Grot Mob - 10x, Runtherd

Wartrakks - 2x Twin-linked Big Shootas, Wartrakk upgrade
Wartrakks - 2x Twin-linked Rokkit Launchas, Wartrakk upgrade

Battlewagon - 2x Big Shootas, Grot Riggers, Reinforce Ram
Looted Wagon - 2x Big Shootas, Grot Riggers, Reinforced Ram
FightaBomba

Now let's go through each unit and build some conclusions on there overall effectiveness.

Warboss - Despite being a close combat monster, the warboss proved to be less than effective in most games. The simple fact is, whenever compared to the units that he is inevitably forced to deal with in HtH he always comes up short. Usually dying before getting a chance to swing with that power klaw. It's foolish of me to send him against a Dark Eldar Lord or a space marine commander. But even against normal power armored marines he still dies far too often. The 4+ save is what is killing him. Once you get a couple wounds on him, it's only 50/50 to keep him alive and the 5+ inv save isn't good enough to protect him from power fists and dreadnought close combat weapons.
Conclusion: Spend less points on my HQ and give him the 2+ mega armor save to increase his survivability.

Tankbustas - I do see the tankbustas in my army as a bit of a crutch. The Ork army in its current form is significantly lacking in the anti-tank firepower department forcing us to rely on HtH based attacks to kill tanks. The tank bustas are the best bang for the buck IMO, especially in a mobile army because there weapons are 'assault'. The downside being that they never hit consistently (Ork BS 2) and the glory hogs rule severely limits their effectiveness. A couple times at Astro I had 6 tankbustas standing an inch from a nemesis dreadknight but they couldn't shoot at it or assault it because there was a rhino somewhere off in the distance, well out of range but within line of sight.
Then of course when I lost them I would lose the majority of my anti-tank capability.
Conclusion: Find a way to add more anti-tank firepower to the army and reduce dependance on tankbustas.

Mekboy Junka - I have to admit my Huey performed remarkably well. Its Big shootas put down alot of fire and it was more than adequate transport for the tank bustas. The only downside was the one game that it wouldn't stop immobilizing itself due to its overcharged engines. But you can't blame a unit for bad dice rolls.
Conclusion: I will continue to use it but I may swap out its contents.

Trukks Boyz - My Trukk boyz mobs are incredibly fragile. They were effective meat for the army but all too often they would charge into HtH and being the awesome HtH army that the Orks are, I would lose a bunch of Orks before I got to swing, would swing back and kill 1 marine, and then I would lose the squad to a failed morale test and get run down due to crappy Leadership and initiative stats.
The gambit of 16 man shoota squad paid off, it was nice to have that much firepower in one package. The basic squads were also fairly effective but they could have been better.
Conclusion: The std Ork boy is garbage, which is why every upgrade in the codex doubles or triples an Orks points value. I feel I need to take a character in each squad just to keep them alive long enough to be useful and I can't take larger squads due to the transport capacity of my trukks.
I'm almost tempted to take nothing but shoota boyz in my trukks because they will be statistically better in this edition.
I hate to say it but I need to keep the boyz squads as cheap as possible so that I can take more effective units. They are near useless in HtH against all but basic infantry now and the firepower they add to my army is negligible. There only saving grace is that they're cheap! but ultimately the upgrades I need to give them to make them more effective cost more than the boyz themselves.
I should up the 16 man unit to 20 and fill the battlewagon to get the 2nd big shoota.
I should consider a cheap nob, just a dude with a bosspole, for the 11 man squad.


Grot Mob - In a word 'useless'
I took them to fill up points at the last minute and they and there transport are very cool models. But a cool model does not an effective unit make.
The plan was to use them in objective missions. I could sit them on an objective in cover and go to ground, using the 3+ cover save and the Ld re-roll to force my opponent to sink firepower into them to make them die.
Ultimately though I had 1 objective mission and 5 VP missions and in the objective mission there was zero cover they could use.
Conclusion: Waste of points. The only effective part was the big shootas on the transport and there are much cheaper ways to add some to my army.

Meganobz - As I always say about 40k, the save is everything. If you have a good save everything statistically makes you a better unit. Meganobz are no exception.
They were highly effective in every game except the one where Mephiston killed all of them before they got to swing. But cheese mongering players aside... they were quite good.
The only problems I had with them was the lack of an invulnerable save, and no ld re-roll which is a flaw in the codex not my selection.
The one thing that limited them however was the high points cost. They are by far the most expensive single unit in my army and more often than not the scenarios gave penalties for losing your most expensive unit. Given that they are meant to get in the thick of it and die, this was problematic.
If they had been a bit cheaper (Cheaper than the plane) I would have gotten 3 or 4 more battlepoints overall! Definitely worth looking into.
Conclusion: Remove their dedicated transport so that they are not the most expensive unit in the army anymore.

Wartrakks - In the fire support role the wartrakks were only modestly effective. They would often suffer too much damage early on and would become ineffective as a result. However in the Line of Site blocking role they were excellent. Although I have relegated my wartrakks to being little more than a moving shield wall that can sometimes shoot, they are none the less a valueable part of my army.
I made a conscious decision to use Big Shootas and Rokkits on this generations wartrakks instead of the Skorchas. I felt my tactics had evolved to the point where I wasn't able to use flamer type weapons effectively anymore and I was right. The long range weapons lets them stay close to the other trukks where the can block LoS.
Conclusion: Modestly effective, points cost is low enough that I can justify sacrificing them in most games.

Battlewagon - The Battlewagon proved quite resilient, and even in the games where it died, it took a great deal of firepower to do so. With one exception but I consider that a lucky shot.
It doesn't have a great deal of firepower (only 2 big shootas) but given how I use it I'm quite satisfied. I always move it 6" unless I need to sprint so I can never shoot more than one weapon anyway. Keeping the points down was worth it.
Conclusion: Happy with the build of this vehicle. Will continue to use it

Looted Wagon - My looted wagon was ultimately the most effective part of my grot unit but as I said before there are much cheaper ways to get a pair of big shootas into my army.
Conclusion: I do feel I need that extra transport choice and its big shoota firepower but there are more points efficient and more survivable options.

FightaBomba - Oh the infamous plane... This is a perfect example of how someone can take something highly effective at the price of getting nailed on his sportsmanship.
Statistically speaking this is hands down the best unit in the army. It's very hard to kill, has tons of firepower and has the best anti-tank guns in the Ork army. Str 8 rokkits that hit on 2+.
However its also fairly mean being that its so hard to kill and like all planes you can't stop it from doing damage to you before you even get a chance to shoot at it. So I had more than one opponent cringe when they saw it.

Conclusion: I need to take it out and replace it with something new.


Overall Army Conclusions:
Overall I feel I was lacking in the anti-tank firepower department. All too often I would find myself face to face with a land raider and having a great deal of difficulty dealing with it. My HtH attacks are less effective than people make them out to be due to the abundance of skimmers (Imperial guard, Grey Knights, Blood Angels, Eldar, Dark Eldar and Tau all have them now) and my opponents were smart enough to move there tanks when I got close to make me hit on 6's.
My decision to take grot riggers on every tank as well as the reinforced rams was well validated though. As always Astro's tables tend to have alot of dense terrain and movement hindering scenarios, so it was nice to be able to effectively ignore most of it. The Grot Riggerz were more than just a saving grace to keep my trukks mobile. Since there were so many victory points missions this year, I was able to use the Riggerz to take away alot of points from my opponents by fixing my own trukks.
I partly regret my decision to take my meks out at the last minute. The ability to repair a tanks weapon destroyed and immobilized results could have won me some VP games. I think it is worth play testing some more.
However the 'Eavy Armor on the Nobz was not so good a decision. It was only 10 points but it was a useless 10 points. I did it in case I needed to do any wound allocation but ultimately it only came up once and it didn't save the nob. I'd be better off putting the points elsewhere.

So for the next army:

- Use more care in designing my most expensive unit
- More resilient HQ
- More Anti-tank Firepower
- More specialist units
- Playtest having meks in the army


I have to admit though I'm feeling quite disenfranchised with the Ork codex after Astro. Like most Xenos codexes right now it's suffering from Codex creep. Std Orks are awfully outmatched in HtH by just about every army that matters at this point and the sheer abundance of skimmers, armor 14, monstrous creatures,  over the top special characters and high strength anti-tank guns leaves us boyz in the dust.

I did the math on what the most effective anti-tank weapon was in the Ork codex out of curiousity. Low and behold it was the std Rokkit.

The Zzap gun, the ordnance weapons, Dakka Gun and everything else either couldn't punch through a land raiders armor or were statistically worse than the Str 8 rokkit.

It's sad really.

The only thing that is consistently better is the Deffrolla. Which I consider to be the most broken weapon in the game and hence don't take it.