Loopy's Ork Wishlist

A lot of folks have compiled their Ork Codex Wishlists including Severus from over on the Twenty-First Legion blog.  I've had a long time to think about it myself and with the new fast-release schedule of the White Dwarf magazines, the rumors have been few and unbelievable, so we're very much in the dark about things.

I won't let that stop me from speculating or wishing for things which I believe will make the army more fun to play.

Update:  Ork Boarding Torpedoes

This would basically be a vehicle for which there won't be a model.  It's a 35 point upgrade to an Ork unit and has a transport capacity of 20 boyz.  You take a large blast template and put it over a unit and resolve it as a Str 6 AP - barrage.  Then, when you're done, deal Str 6 AP- hits to the Ork unit inside the Boarding Torpedo equal to the number of Orks inside.  The surviving Orks are placed in close combat with any units which were hit by the blast.

Leadership

An army is defined as much by its strengths as its weaknesses.  One of the weaknesses of Orks is their leadership.  They are only strong of heart when backed up by a mob of Boyz.  The army should certainly still be shaky when reduced to smaller numbers.  However, I also feel as if the Warbosses and Nobz don't have enough of an effect on Mob Rule as they ought to.  I'd love for a squad's Mob Rule to be equal to total wounds in the unit instead of models.  I think this would allow a squad of Boyz to hang on in assault that one more turn we often find ourselves in need of.

Mekboyz Similar to Crypteks

I'd love to be able to take squads of Mekboyz in groups of 5 and distribute them as Sergeants throughout my army.  This would lead to many great fluff and tactical possibilities.  If you add to this the ability for the Mekboy to take a Bosspole, you now have a Character who can wield a power weapon/flamer and grant re-rolls on Morale checks as well as repair vehicles.  This, of course, comes at the cost of strength and wounds in close combat.

Random By Choice and With Value

The 4th Edition Ork Codex does have a lot of randomness in a lot of the units.  The cool thing is that you can play a perfectly reasonable and reliable Ork army without so much as touching a lot of the crazy stuff.  Having said that, a lot of folks, myself included, go ahead and dabble in the stuff anyways because it's rad.  I'd love for this tradition to continue as long as the crazy random units have a points value to reflect their odd nature.  Much of the time, it's important to assign a points value for a unit based on the worst case scenario for your opponent.  Unfortunately, when the result of a random roll is very binary, the risk begins to outweigh the reward.  Instead, each result should portray a give and take between each other.  For example, with the Shokk Attack Gun, it would be more appropriate, in my opinion, if the "2" and "12" results were combined into one effect; the gun sucks all the nearby Orks into the Warp and spits them out inside the targeted enemy, destroying everyone.

Boyz

I really am not sure what to say here.  I think Boyz are fine as they are.  We don't want them to be too good or else they'll go up in points and I'm not sure they're worth less than 6 points.  Right now, in a 6th Edition environment, I'd go with 5 points per boy, but charge 1 point for the shoota upgrade and 3 points for 'eavy armor on any squad.

I'd love to see Battlewagons as Dedicated Transports expanded to include Boyz.  This would allow an Ork player to run the awesome-sauce Konvoy list they've always wanted... without taking Nobz!  It would also free up our much-needed heavy slots for Big Gunz or whatever else we may want.  I'd also settle for an update to the Looted Wagon; then we can just take that instead.

Updated Looted Wagon

Oh yeah.  Without a doubt one of the biggest wants of a lot of Ork players is an update to the Looted Wagon.  I have an old Ork Codex which talks about taking any other tank from certain Codices, Orkifying it, and running it in your list.  That sounds really rad and really Orky.  There would certainly have to be some very strict guidelines on something like this, but it would mean that Games Workshop could really save themselves a lot of grief and just tell Ork players to buy vehicles from other armies to fill their Heavy slots.  Basically, just strip out all the equipment except the weapons, set the Ballistic Skill to 2, and allow the addition of Ork vehicle upgrades and you're really cooking with fire.

General Points Adjustment or even Odd Points

Of course, an across-the-board adjustment is required for many of the other Ork units, particularly anything with a Nob stat line except Meganobz.  This would never happen, but I love the idea of doing odd points for Orks instead of divisors of 5.  That would be very Orky and also help balance some things a bit closer while allowing for  a bunch of fun, little upgrades.

More Grots and Squigs

Because reasons.

Challenges

The most difficult thing (for me anyways) with the Ork codex right now are challenges.  An Ork unit really relies on the Nob to do a lot of the work in an Ork unit and with challenges, it's almost impossible to bring a Power Klaw to bear on anything these days.  Even when you have an HQ and a Nob in the unit and you deny the challenge, often times, your opponent can crush the remaining Character with precision shots.  I would love for Mob Rule to allow for any model to accept a challenge.  This seems quite the pipe dream, though.

In closing

As much as I do love rumors, I am quite liking the fact that I'll be surprised up until a few weeks before the release.  Though I'm not really sure what to expect.  Obviously, some metal kits will become plastic and others will simply disappear.  We may lose a few superfluous entries in the codex, but at the end of the day, I think we'll still have a reliable and mobile Codex which can both shoot and assault with great numbers and win through attrition and board domination.

Oh! And don't forget to tune in to Episode 3 of Masters of the Forge!  I'm having great fun working with Snorre and Kamil on this podcast and I think we're really putting out some good stuff.