shootas or choppas?

[El_Davo]

so a friend of mine is starting orks. when building their boyz they asked which is better?
boyz with shootas or boyz with choppas?

so how do you build your boyz?

personally i build mine as such

20 boyz with slugga and choppa
2 big shootas
nob w/power claw.

then out of the heavy section i buy them a battle wagon that runs as such:
battle wagon
4 big shootas
extra armor

i run the boyz in the wagon until i'm in range for a smart assault or the wagon is destroyed. but either way thats 6 big shootas coming out of that wagon.


so how do you run yours?

[Mr.Pickelz]

it depends on what you want the unit to do, if you want a pure melee element, then choppas. if you want a balanced unit that can get more shots off, then shootas. personally i prefer 30 man units with choppas, but that's just me :cool:

[blackarmchair]

Well I play Wagon Orks so I like to put choppas in my wagons and a single 30-man shoota boy squad on foot.

The shootas are nice for hordes or just for softening something up for a charge.

In general I advocate for both. 1-2 squads of shootas is nice but make SURE to take plenty of slugga-choppa otherwise you will miss the extra attack.

[Mr.Pickelz]

also, avoid stickbombs upgrade unless your taking small squads as it isn't worth the points in bigger mobs, your already goin last against meq's (Marine EQuivalents) no matter what. your biggest strength comes from numbers, you ability to bring tons and tons of attacks/shootin dice to the table...mainly because alot of them will miss.:rolleyes:

if you want a more mechanized style, stick with battlewagons over trukks. Their alot more reliable then trukks and if you plan to assault out of them keep the roof off, you pretty much got the gun wagon figured out, just expand a little on it. The more dakka(guns) you can get the better, also look into warbuggies, their cheap twin-linked goodness and they take up fast attack, which isn't something you will normally fill up fast.

if you want a pure horde army (mine) then try this list: 1500 pts. Green Tide
HQ:
Ghazkull Thraka (dreadnought base and size for counts as)

Troops:
5x (30man) boyz mobs with Nob upgrade and give the nob a Power klaw
1x (30x) boyz mob with nob, however this one gets a boss pole and a big choppa (points issues )

That's 181 orks in total, and so far, i've had BT, nids, Eldar, vanilla SM, etc... players all just drop their jaw, and the first comment i hear is " That's a lot of Orks...." :cool:

[Gobstoppa]

I Accually like shoota boyz. Nothing makes a deamon player cry then lots of shoota hate. But there have been tons of times that I wished I'd had the extra attack. For ground pounders I would run 3x 25 shoota boyz with rokkits nob, pk and boss pole. Then 2x 25 or 30 whatever you are feeling at the time slugga choppa squads with nob pk and boss pole. Oh and lootas, lootas, and more lootas. There just good.

[SotonShades]

When I use my normal orks (not the kopta force) I like to have a small-medium sized shoota boyz mob for sitting on my home objective, hopefully in cover, just on the off chance something gets close enough for them to miss wildly with every shot the shootas have... still, seems to do the job quite nicely. The rest of my boyz are either in trukks/wagons with choppas (so again, small mobs) or as a massive blob mob with choppas as far as the eye can see. I don't like to rely on any ork shooting that isn't twink-linked, so mostly bikes and deffkoptas. This philosophy doesn't lend itself to shoota boyz much.

[Lemt]

Boyz have BS2. 30 Boyz with shootas will get to kill 3-4 MEQs with shooting, to the 1-2 MEQs if they just have pistols. This doesn't seem like much, but imagine against other units such as Banshees (6-7 or 3-4), Genestealers (5 to 2-3, except you probably won't be able to shoot them with pistols), or other CC enemies. Now, 30 boyz with shootas have 90 attacks on the assault, against 120 if you don't have shootas. With so many rolls, the extra melee attacks aren't that important, I'd go for shootas even if you go on vehicles to war.

[L192837465]

Boyz have BS2. 30 Boyz with shootas will get to kill 3-4 MEQs with shooting, to the 1-2 MEQs if they just have pistols. This doesn't seem like much, but imagine against other units such as Banshees (6-7 or 3-4), Genestealers (5 to 2-3, except you probably won't be able to shoot them with pistols), or other CC enemies. Now, 30 boyz with shootas have 90 attacks on the assault, against 120 if you don't have shootas. With so many rolls, the extra melee attacks aren't that important, I'd go for shootas even if you go on vehicles to war.

This x2.


With 3 attacks apiece on the charge, it won't matter. You either kill everything, or you don't. those 30 extra attacks would be better used in the form of another unit.

[RIGHT-Titan]

Except that 30 boys don't fit in any vehicle. The most you'll fit is 20 in a battlewagon or 12 in a truck. The difference between 60 and 80 attacks is not as huge although still statistically significant if you're dealing with MEq and their wretched 3+ armor save. But the differnce between 36 attacks and 48 attacks can be really big.

Hence I would advise you to go sluggas if you're gonna truck or wagon it. And shootas for the boys on foot.

Ultimately it's up to you though. I find the slugga boys give me the ability to charge a bit more than I normally can and I run a fair bit anyways to get that waaagh off so I find shooting less effective. However most people should agree that boys are mostly a Klaw delivery system. And what will win you the fight is killing enough with the Klaw. If you are facing hordes or weaker fighters it won't matter much what you took if you get into close combat and I'd rather be in a vehicle and then combat and not getting shot at.

Also. The extra attack can be handy against marines who have ATSKNF. Beating them and having them stick in combat means I'd like them to take either a) more fearless wounds or b) have more attacks in subsequent rounds when I'm not getting my +1 st and might need more dice woundin on 5s than I otherwise might if it were 4s I needed.

[El_Davo]

Nothing makes a deamon player cry then lots of shoota hate
haha good point although i'm pretty sure every army does that.



don't like to rely on any ork shooting that isn't twink-linked, so mostly bikes and deffkoptas
yea! i love deffkoptas too!i like to run mine with big shootas. pretty vinilla.
but a 30 man boyz unit w/shootas is still 60 shots. i'm not any good at math hammer but will a dakkakopter unit kill more meqs than the shoota boyz?


Oh and lootas, lootas, and more lootas. There just good.
yea i like lootas too, but i'm a real big fan of burna boyz. i think theyre a great counter assault unit. i had a 15 man unit take down a trygon that just finished killing all my lootas lol.


sweet well thanks for all the advice.

[Lemt]

Except that 30 boys don't fit in any vehicle. The most you'll fit is 20 in a battlewagon or 12 in a truck. The difference between 60 and 80 attacks is not as huge although still statistically significant if you're dealing with MEq and their wretched 3+ armor save. But the differnce between 36 attacks and 48 attacks can be really big.

Hence I would advise you to go sluggas if you're gonna truck or wagon it. And shootas for the boys on foot.

Ultimately it's up to you though. I find the slugga boys give me the ability to charge a bit more than I normally can and I run a fair bit anyways to get that waaagh off so I find shooting less effective. However most people should agree that boys are mostly a Klaw delivery system. And what will win you the fight is killing enough with the Klaw. If you are facing hordes or weaker fighters it won't matter much what you took if you get into close combat and I'd rather be in a vehicle and then combat and not getting shot at.

Also. The extra attack can be handy against marines who have ATSKNF. Beating them and having them stick in combat means I'd like them to take either a) more fearless wounds or b) have more attacks in subsequent rounds when I'm not getting my +1 st and might need more dice woundin on 5s than I otherwise might if it were 4s I needed.

The reason I think shootas are better is because, against assault specialists, you'll want to soften them up. I agree that if your meta is mostly SMs and IG, or mostly shooty, then the extra melee power is good. But if you fight things with lots of attacks and a higher initiative than you, you want to soften them up before the assault.

[Uncle Nutsy]

To OP:

Tell your friend to kit all your boyz out with shootas. in a 20 man squad, you should be able to just bury an opponent in lead. Don't bother throwing on the armor and run Mad Dok and a PK'ing Nob with that group.

20 shootaboyz and a PK Nob with FNP is just blerk. If anything you shoot at isn't dead by the time you drump 40 shots on them, they will be after you swarm them.

------------

Personally, I HATE mathhammer. With the passion of a thousand burning suns. Sure it looks good on paper, but when you put it in the game and it falls apart horribly you end up blaming it on the mathammer. A better way to go about it is just try something out and if it works for you, great! keep it and tweak it until you know it back and front.

If it doesn't, just try something else.

[DarkLink]

Personally, I HATE mathhammer.

Only because you, and most people, probably severly misunderstand it. There's a huge branch of mathmatics dedicated to statistics and probability, and it does work. Mathhammer just doesn't do quite what most people probably think it does, because most people don't bother to learn anything about statistics.

Kinda ironic, because of all the math out there beyond basic arithmetic, statistics is the one area of math that pretty much every single person in the modern world would be better off knowing and understanding at least the basics. It's not a commonly required subject in the USA, though.

[Lemt]

Only because you, and most people, probably severly misunderstand it. There's a huge branch of mathmatics dedicated to statistics and probability, and it does work. Mathhammer just doesn't do quite what most people probably think it does, because most people don't bother to learn anything about statistics.

Kinda ironic, because of all the math out there beyond basic arithmetic, statistics is the one area of math that pretty much every single person in the modern world would be better off knowing and understanding at least the basics. It's not a commonly required subject in the USA, though.

I get friends complaining SO often about people getting rolls slightly above or below the average. That's what "average" means. You get higher rolls sometimes, you get lower rolls sometimes. And rarely you go right on the average, if at all.

Good luck rolling 3.5 on a D6. :rolleyes:

[DarkLink]

Right. Depending on the dice roll, you have maybe a 1% chance of rolling exactly average, and a 49% chance of rolling below average, and a 49% chance of rolling above average. And with average mathhammer, you have no indication of the spread of dice. Mathhammer as most people use it only gives you the expected outcome, not the probability of a given result. That takes significantly more math to do.

[Brass Scorpion]

Choppas, mostly. I recently painted a Green Tide and there's only one 14-model Shoota Boyz Mob in the bunch, the rest are armed with Slugga and Choppa, including my 'Ard Boyz. Orcs excel by weight of numbers and swamping enemy squads in close combat. Some fire support as they head into close combat is helpful, but with the unreliability of Orcs let your Lootas do most of the fire support for you at range. Boyz will be Boyz and what they do best is with Slugga and Choppa.

[Uncle Nutsy]

Only because you, and most people, probably/SNIP


no, really? you don't say!

ain't you just special. you don't even know me and you take a swipe at me. I actually DO understand it quite well, but thanks for being judgmental.

A person can mathhammer all they want, but when they end up getting dicerolls that make probability and statistics evaporate in front of them, AKA the curse of the snake eyes, then a person will blame it on everything under the sun instead the way they're playing the game.

That's why I go with either the bucket o' dice approach (IE: in a seven pathfinder squad, three will hit) or plan it out so that dice rolls almost become irrelevant.

A person can mathhammer all they want and STILL lose.

[blackarmchair]

no, really? you don't say!

ain't you just special. you don't even know me and you take a swipe at me. I actually DO understand it quite well, but thanks for being judgmental.

A person can mathhammer all they want, but when they end up getting dicerolls that make probability and statistics evaporate in front of them, AKA the curse of the snake eyes, then a person will blame it on everything under the sun instead the way they're playing the game.

That's why I go with either the bucket o' dice approach (IE: in a seven pathfinder squad, three will hit) or plan it out so that dice rolls almost become irrelevant.

A person can mathhammer all they want and STILL lose.

Whoa there I don't think DarkLink meant any offense. He is one of those LEAST LIKELY to flame on this forum in my experience.

I don't think he meant to call you dumb, I think he was saying that most people don't understand how to properly apply statistics to this game. Judging from your quote above I think I agree with him; you say that "bad dice" make statistics seem irrelevant. What you have to understand is that when you're rolling your Space Marine's 20 attacks you don't roll enough dice to get a statistically relevant sample of dice so Mathhammer doesn't quite work the way you describe.

I recommend that you re-read what DarkLink posted and listen to what he has to say. To me, he seems like he might have something to teach us.

Or we can just start a flame war, if that's what you prefer.

[DarkLink]

Yeah, I'm not trying to call anyone stupid here. Just wanted to point out that mathhammer doesn't predict what will happen in any given game. It predicts where you should bet your proverbial money. And since mathhammer is really a very simple level of statistical analysis, it can only tell you so much unless you feel like doing a whole lot more math than just a few fractions.


It's actually the exact same way that casinos make their money. The odds in each game are slightly in favor of the casino. It's not a big margin, but it's there. Each individual person has roughly even odds of coming in and either winning or losing, since they're only betting on a few games so there can be a lot of variability on the outcomes. Someone may have lucky day and win a dozen hands of blackjack without losing one. Some people lose a dozen hands.

Overall, though, the casino has hundreds or thousands of people coming in and playing blackjack over the course of a year, and with that many games being played, the casino will come out in the end. The more iterations of the game you play, the closer and closer the odds converge. Just like how if you flip a coin 10 billion times, you're going to get about 5 billion heads and 5 billion tails.


Plus, you can't plan for luck. All you can do is say "ok, my genestealers will probably kill those tactical marines in cc, so I can charge them in there and be fine". Is it a guarentee? No. You might whiff and lose the genestealers. Sometimes the dice do that. But betting on those genestealers killing the marines is the smart move. That is what mathhammer does.

[Lemt]

Example of a whiff: I was playing necrons, my opponent SMs. He charges a unit of 10 Necron Warriors with 5 Terminators. All Terminators die, the Necrons have no losses.
But that doesn't mean assaulting was a bad tactical decision.

Speaking of tactical, what you CAN do is think about the best/worst possible scenario in each case. For example:
You are playing a game, and are offered the chance to assault an enemy unit. If you assault the enemy unit, there's a 85% chance of you winning the assault. BUT if you assault, you'll get away from an ojective, and another enemy unit will capture it, hence ending the game in a loss. However, you can choose not to assault. If you do then the enemy will assault you with multiple units, and there's a 70% chance your unit will be wiped out and you will lose the game.
The "odds" seem clear. You should assault! But assaulting has a 100% chance of losing the game, and NOT assaulting has a 40% chance of NOT losing the game.
TL:DR don't get baited. Or if you do, don't blame the game on the dice.

[Da Gargoyle]

Please bare in mind that I usually play 1500 to 1000 point games due to the limited space but I play eldar and had a series of games against an Ork player where only at the higher points end did I win.

From my experience I would recommend shoota boys over sluggas & choppas for the following reasons.

That was his preferred option and he used them in mobs of 15 with a nob, usually 2 mobs. He figured 2 18" assault shots was better than 1 12" shot. Also, he figured with furious charge things evened themselves out a fair bit. He also fielded 3 trukks with choppa boys one of which baled out the boys and picked up a Mek with forcefield and burner boys. He also fielded lootas with deff guns and commandoes as a specialist assault unit. Pretty difficult to deal with.

The one time he did field choppa boys he did come unstuck. My storm guardians got within assualt range and wittled down the numbers with a double blast from the flamers. Then a few shots from the pistols trimmed them down some more and he finally took a 12 man assault with warlock who enhanced their WS and I, (Though that didn't matter here). Even with my lousy dice rolls he didn't stand a chance in assault. And once you turn one flank it gets sticky for the orks.

Bye the bye you are looking at the exception that proves the rule in statistics. I am the reason they call it gambling. In my last game against IG I shot 3 scatter lasers, S6, against a sqdn of armoured sentinels, for 3 rounds, figuring the numbers would give me something. I never rolled better than 3 on the glancing hits I scored, so 54 shots had no effect. I game with the idea that overwhelming force is required for me to win and 1's are my reward for penatrating. No such thing as stat's in my game.