Journey of a Boy

Journey of a Boy

Orks were my first army and have gone through a lot of changes since I've started with each new edition and the codex update.  It seems that with each iteration, the optimal way to use boyz has changed significantly

2011 5th edition

I used slugga/choppa boyz in battlewagons backed up by smaller squads of shoota boyz.  It was fairly effective and I had a lot of luck right away.  I struggled with high armor values (AV13+ with Necrons and multiple land raiders), highly mobile armies (mostly DE), and real melee units (Paladin star, but then again, who didn't struggle with this dull deathstar).  I had enough scoring units and 3 squads of lootas to at least go toe to toe with fully mechanized forces.

2012/2013 6th edition

Wholesale switch to shoota boyz.  Hull points diminished the durability of battlewagons, plus the changes to movement, assault, and charge range killed it for me.  Instead, I used large, cheap blocks of 30 shootas w/optional big shootas. They could assault reasonably well and helped with board control.  The real hammer unit was the nob bikers, now at T5.  I backed these up with lootas and artillery for solid dakka overall.   Orks were considered a low-tier codex, but I had a lot of success with this list.  The codex overall was pretty terrible, with only a few viable units.

2014 to the present 7th edition, new codex

A points increase and change to mob rule all but killed the shoota boy.  Now, it's all slugga/choppa boyz.  The superior choice is actually biker boyz, but those are cash expensive.  I can get a 30 man squad of boyz for about the same cost as 3 biker boyz, due to availability on ebay.  With the move of lootas to heavy, the dakka build lost it's teeth, now we have to come up with a whole new build.  More units are viable, but they are hard to make work cohesively.  I feel like there is a lot of potential to still explore.

The Green Tide formation is 10 squads of boyz joined as one.  I can see how it works, but seems like a chore to play.  It is a possibility I would like to explore at some point.

A Boyz journey to the present

Towards the middle of 2013, I won a few ebay auctions and acquired 60 boyz.  Now at this point, I already had 40+ slugga/choppa and around 80 shoota boyz.  However, as a proper ork player, you can never have enough.  So the squad was going to be split into 18 slugga/choppa and 42 shoota boyz.  The actual mix was 20 shoota and 42 slugga choppa from the assault on black reach set.  Unlike more recent box sets, these are not the actual kit, but rather snapfit with arms molded onto the body.  Therefore, I had to snip off additional arms and use cheap shootas acquired from ebay to turn them into proper shoota boyz.  They were primed, but never painted, because I didn't actually need that many.

Fast forward to 2014.  I'm started to use Orks again and realize that shoota boyz are not optimal.  I paint up the primed slugga choppa boyz so that I at least have 2 full squads of slugga choppa boyz to use.  However, I still had 42 shoota boyz sitting in a shoe box in my closet.

So what do I do with them?  I have tons of bitx sitting around, so a few weeks ago I decided to convert some of them back to slugga/choppa boyz.  So far, I've got 28 converted back, which should give me another full squad of 30, plus I now have 88 boyz, which I can use for a green tide formation.  Just so we're clear, there are AoBR boyz that were clipped and converted to shoota boyz, then had their arms ripped off and converted back to slugga/choppas.

This leaves me with 14 shoota boyz.  Let's keep going. I have the bitz to convert 8 of those to more tankbustas, a ramshackle group anyways.  I just need a few more bit to make them complete, but that will give me 2 squads of 8.

With the 60 boyz, I also received 5 big shootas.  Now that rokkits are the same price, they are the superior choice.  Plus the tankbustas can be used as regular rokkit boyz if needed in the green tide formation.

I've been heavily considering running Zhadsnark.  Unfortunately, he doesn't allow big guns.  The only positive is that I can go with 3 squads of  lootas. I currently have 30 painted another 7 primed.  What the hell, let's max out at 45.  I'll take the 5 big shootas and 3 of the remaining shoota boyz and make them 'proppa lootas' using bits leftover from space marines, tau, grey knights, etc.

So I'm down to 3 of the shoota boyz.

Summary
42 shootas, 5 big shootas
-->28 Slugga/Choppa boyz
-->8 tankbustas
-->8 lootas
-->3 spares

End result
88 Slugga choppa boyz
78 Shoota boyz
16 tankbustas/rokkits
45 lootas

Of course, silly me -- I won another ebay auction for 2 boxes of boyz new on sprue.  Whereas the loota box only has 4 lootas and a mostly useless mek model inversely the boy box has 11 models including the Nob.  While, I don't need the nob it really gives me 22 models.  So that leaves me with 25 models to figure out how to build.

I'm leaning toward building 20 of them as slugga/choppa boyz.  I could then take 4 full squads of slugga/choppa boyz (with nobs and a couple of rokkits) or a green tide.  I could also magnetize them so I can attach my death company back packs so that they can be impromptu stormboyz.  The won't match the current stormboyz, but so what.  This will give me some flexibility.

Other conversions

Almost all my nobs are sporting slugga and big choppa or power klaw.  No sense in that now that a shoota is a free upgrade.  I can mostly get away with just adding a shoota barrel, of which I have dozens sitting around, already primed.

I also need a Kommando Nob.  There aren't many good options for this.  My Kommandos are bare chested, but there is no comparable option without ordering expensive parts from Poland.  I'll make do with one that's partially built. and just repaint him.

Since I have plenty of nob bodies, I can build two tankbusta nobs.  For only 15 points, they become more survivable and resilient to morale.  Although in that squad, the nob inflicting D6 Str 4 hits is going to kill a couple of expensive models and not just 6 point boyz (damn you mob rule and army wide Ld7, can't the nobs be at least Ld8).

I also don't have 10 PK nobz for the Green Tide, but a simple arm swap will suffice.

I've already converted most of my Nob bikers to have a swappable army so they 'count as' regular biker boyz, though I'm not sure who would be that pedantic.

I'm also in the process of building 6 Traktor Kannons (1x5 or 2x3) and 5 Kustom Mega Kannons.  Lobbas are great, but do jack squat against flyers, 2+/3+ armor saves, and most vehicles.  Flyers are still really big around.  Flyrants are terrifying and this is the perfect counter unit to them.

Sorry for a lack of pictures