Kustom Force Field, worth it?

I would rather have the shokk attack gun than the KFF. I have tried 3 times to use the big mek KFF with my footsloogers and I swear the big mek forgets to turn that thing on. I never seem to make back the points that I invest in getting the Mek with the KFF.

Terrain is also a problem as trying to keep 50+ boyz around the mek and get them into shooting range. This many orks group together will draw a lot fire power so you could lose a big chunk of your army if several rolls are failed. The big mek will also draw sniper or assassin fire because if he dies the save is gone and you now have 3 mobs close to each other that can be pie plated to death.

I don't use KFF's for this reason I have just gone with swamping them with boyz. I would say try out the KFF in a game or two. I know several players that won't leave home with the KFF and swear by them. For me it was 3 complete wipe outs by turn 4 with the mek and KFF that it wasn't for me.

Sheshonk said:

As a fledgling Ork player I would love to know why you decided not to use vehicles.

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Ork vehicles are highly vulnerable to shooting. Even with the ramshackle rules for trukks they just aren't worth it IMO, because if they get a penetrating hit (very easy to do) that doesn't destroy them, all your boys pile out and on average 5 out of the 12 that were riding in it die. Even some of the ramshackle table will result in enough deaths to make your squad useless as well. 12 Boyz is also really too small a number to really hit your opponent. Against basic CSMs they will probably lose the cc terribly. SM/CSM rhinos can transport 150 points worth of basic troops for similar cost as a trukk that can transport 72 points of basic troops.

So I dislike trukks. For my quick element I like kommandos (especially with snikrot), stormboyz, and warbikers (recently got rid of the warbikers in favor of the stormboyz. We'll see how that plays out. Warbikers are tougher after factoring in cost but when they assault into cover 1 in 6 die due to dt tests.)

The orks do have access to some armor 14 transports, the battlewagon. If you like meganobz those are a must. However, taking 1 of those as your only vehicle is bad as it will get shot to hell because it's the only armor target your opponent has. Taking 3 is a viable option especially with deff rollas and things of that nature. They can also transport 20 boyz, which is enough to be an effective mob. If they're all shoota boyz (except the nob), you can move the transport 13" with red paint and then have them all fire - 34 shoota shots, 6 big shoota shots, and 1 slugga shot. You can also disembark after moving that far, shoot all that stuff, and then charge. Sexy. It is expensive, however, and vulnerable to good anti-tank weaponry.

If you wanted to do a mechanized ork force, go all the way because you need to have more vehicles than your opponent has shots. You've gotta figure on them being able to take out 3 or 4 trukks in one round of shooting at the 1500 pt. level. They're probably only going to get one round, but that's a lot of dead trukks. Some opponents may not be able to kill that many but you have to plan for the worst. So you'd need at least 8 trukks full of boyz (so enough survive that you can throw 2 boyz mobs into each MEQ squad or 1 into each IG/tau squad), and some battlewagons probably with meganobz, nobz, or lots of shootas. Hopefully some of the battlewagons will make it to enemy lines and then start tank shocking for 1d6 str 10 hits on squads that teh boyz haven't gotten to yet. Kans are really better in a footslogging ork force, but since footslogging ork forces don't have vehicles or many vehicles, they just die on turn 1. The only problem with a mechanized ork force compared to a footslogging horde is that you face problems when you get to an enemy that wants to assault you or that is mobile like eldar. The speed advantage gained by the trukks goes to waste and you're left with small mobs of boyz that are more easily taken apart than a giant mob of 30. Not to say you couldn't win that game as well, it would just be harder.

EDIT - Forgot to add that escalation will rape you sideways in a mechanized ork force.

The usefulness of the KFF really depends on your army make-up and what sort of tables you're playing in.

If you're planning on running a 120+ model horde then yes, giving that 5+ save even when out in the open is attractive.

Or if you're planning on taking 3 squads of Lootas then the KFF is the ideal way to get them a reasonably-viable save without having to put them into cover (thereby potentially limiting their LoS).

However.

It's only a cover save. So flamers/heavy flamers/all CC attacks completely ignore it.

It's only 5+, so it won't be anywhere near as effective as sticking them into some ruined buildings/similar terrain.

The Big Mek himself is easily killed. He's an IC so can be (and will be) singled out in combat, and with the number of infiltrators/jump infantry/mind-warring Eldar/etc around it's not hard to get into combat with him or kill him through other means.

Finally, the KFF goes completely to waste if the board is densely terrained since you'll be getting 5+ or better cover saves anyway .

As long as you keep the above in mind, the KFF is a useable choice. But I wouldn't recommend you base your entire army around it since it's too easily negated.

As for the other topic this thread branched out into, Cullen is right - you only usually run a mechanised force if you're putting 8+ vehicles on the table when it comes to Orks. Minimum of 4 trukks (preferably more), a battlewagon, a pair of dreads, and a few Kans will give you sufficient targets that something will survive the first few turns of shooting, but if you only include 2 or 3 trukks/dreads, they'll get blown off the table in turn 1 or 2.

The only other way around the fragility of Trukks is to take a pair of biker Warbosses and a unit of 6 Biker Nobz (with cybork bodies). Although they aren't vehicle units, they absorb a massive amount of enemy firepower because they're so incredibly deadly. Just today this combination soaked up most of the firepower of an IG army (2 LRs, 1 Hellhound, multiple las/plas squads, 2 chimmies, 3 Sentinels) for 2 turns, made it into combat, killed 400+pts worth of Guard (including an Eversor Assassin), and most importantly allowed 2 trukk units and a stormboy unit to make it into combat since my opponent just ignored them to concentrate on the bigger threat.

Specifically regarding Trukkboys, you absolutely must have 2 units now rather than 1. Furious charge does not in any way make up for the lack of I4 and Choppas when it comes to trukk boys. The fact that your boys are now only I3 on the charge means they will always take casualties before they even get to swing vs MEqs, and every dead boy is 4 less attacks. And that's before you even go into the 33% less casualties caused by no longer having choppas.

KFF is boss. 5+ save, while not great, means 1/3 of your orks don't die. Put him in a squad, in the middle, and all you worry about is Assassins and Mind War. If the Assassin shoots, you lose him, but who plays assassins? If you get mind warred, then that is one dead Eldar (either way. It's a total 50/50, as you use LD 10 for the test, just like the far seer. Half the time you'll shrug it off and laugh.) If your KFF goes down, you just pull back if your shootin and charge if your not.

My favorite tactic and really the best I've found so far is shoota boyz +lootaz+ KFF. The lootahs poind enemy lines, while the shoota boyz can sit back. If the enemy wants to do serious damage, they need to get around your cover save. Flamers? You charge them before they get range, or blow them to pieces. CC? Against ork? Are they insane? YOU get the charge, YOU have the power klaw, YOU have 60 boyz. They lose. IF they don't come at you, laugh as your lootahs wipe the board of big units while they snipe 18-30 pts of ork a round.

On a side note, ork vehicles kinda suck. Low armor, even on the battle wagon, and all open topped if it's worth anything. Warpheads make better transports, and they can do 30 boyz (or a bunch of meg nobz!) in one 5, along with a bunch of other sweet crap. They actually bust tanks better than most ork tanks with the Zzap. Ork armor is really just sub par, especially with so many friggin infantry options from hell floating around.

purepolarpanzer said:

KFF is boss. 5+ save, while not great, means 1/3 of your orks don't die. Put him in a squad, in the middle, and all you worry about is Assassins and Mind War.

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culler already did the math about how many boys need to be saved for just 1 KFF. With 2, obviously you need to save twice that many boyz. You generally won't take that many cover saves before you hit the enemy lines .

Apart from that: Mind War and Assassins are not the only things that can take out the Big Mek. Any ordnance whatsoever, infiltrators, anything with jump-packs/fast transports/deep strike capability. In short, roughly 1/4 the stuff you see fielded against you can take out the KFF-wielding Mek .

purepolarpanzer said:

If the Assassin shoots, you lose him, but who plays assassins?

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Anyone playing Inquisition will usually have an assassin (unles they're playing pure GK/pure SoB), and many IG and Marine commanders have taken to using them too.

purepolarpanzer said:

If you get mind warred, then that is one dead Eldar (either way. It's a total 50/50, as you use LD 10 for the test, just like the far seer. Half the time you'll shrug it off and laugh.) If your KFF goes down, you just pull back if your shootin and charge if your not.

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A dead Eldar from what exactly? You probably will be able to charge a seer council if they've mind warred you, but actually killing them is something else entirely. They all strike before you do, they wound your Orks on 2s, and they have 4+ re-rollable inv saves to deflect whatever attacks you manage to get in.

As for shooting them, forget about it - I've seen Seer councils stand up to *vastly* more firepower than an Ork horde can put out .

Not to mention that if your Mek gets mindwarred, the units you were hoping to shoot/assault with are likely to be shot up by the rest of the Eldar army .

purepolarpanzer said:

Flamers? You charge them before they get range, or blow them to pieces.

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Anything with a transport + flamers. Anything with jump-packs+flamers. Ever heard of a Hellhound? Very nasty tank vs Orks.

And none of those units will be shot or charged as they're easily hidden until the time is right. Not to mention they could easily take out the Mek as well as stripping away the cover save.

purepolarpanzer said:

CC? Against ork? Are they insane? YOU get the charge, YOU have the power klaw, YOU have 60 boyz.

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You don't get the charge vs anything with jump-packs. You don't get the charge vs anything with fast transports. You don't, in short, ever get a charge with infantry apart from vs other infantry. And you certainly don't have 60 Boyz when your opponent comes into flamer/assault range, ignores your cover save, and assault you.

BTW, Boyz are not that good in assault. Shitload of attacks yes, but a *good* CC unit will wipe out the entire killzone if you have your models spread out, or most of the boyz in the killzone if you have them tightly packed. At the end of the day, they're still I2 models with paper maché armour.

purepolarpanzer said:

They lose. IF they don't come at you, laugh as your lootahs wipe the board of big units while they snipe 18-30 pts of ork a round.

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Except that Lootas don't have the range to cover the entire board, can't guarantee hitting a damn thing (rolling 1 shot each at BS2 is nothing to shout about), have crap AP, and of course enemy units are often hidden or at the very least in cover.

purepolarpanzer said:

Warpheads make better transports, and they can do 30 boyz

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'Ere we go?

Now I'm *certain* you're just talking theory rather than actually having tried this.

Deepstriking 31 models? Even with a "hit" on the scatter that unit has a massive footprint to try to squeeze in without losing any models. If they scatter at all, you lose a *lot* of boyz due to the deep striking rules.

Simply Put - A BM w/KFF can be a nice addition to the army.

But they have a lot of limitations, a few counters, and to get the maximum use out of Orks you do not want to go for the pure horde approach. You need Stormboyz/Kommandos/Bikes to take out/tie up key enemy units, otherwise your entire horde will just get picked apart piecemeal.

Big units=big footprints. Big footprints means that small, elite armies can concentrate their force vs small parts of your force and the boys are in the way of each other and cannot fully support each other. Stormboyz, Kommandos, Nob Bikers, Warbosses on Bike, can mitigate this. but it will take away some of those massive numbers.

In all honesty, I can only assume that all the people reporting "big wins" from shooty horde ork armies purely based on shoota mobs/lootas are playing on planet bowling ball vs static armies.

LoS resitrictions, range restrictions, having to move through difficult terrain, and the fact that you simply cannot bring that number of guns to bear on any 1 unit due to Horde unit footprints makes it incredibyl difficult to actually get mass numbers of shots vs mobile armies on well-terrained boards.

Now if people claimed lots of wins by using a few shoota mobs and fast support from stormboyz/kommandos/bike Bosses, I'd believe it. But 150+ Boys with shootas, a KFF, a Warphead, and a loota squad or two is simply not an effective army on a properly terrained board against a good army/good player. As I may have mentioned, I've been having fun using the new Ork codex, but the "shooty horde" just isn't all that good IMO.
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In 5th Ed (according the the leaked PDF and rumours), the CC horde becomes much more viable.

No need for the KFF since screening will buy your boys a 4+ cover save anyway for the cost of a Grot unit.

The "run" rule will allow you to close the gap faster.

Killzones are removed, making the Ork's I2 a bit of a non-issue.

At that point, a mass of footsloggers (supported by Stormboys) will start making a large impact on games rather than just shuffling 6" per turn and getting shot to pieces.

Right now, however, as much as I love the idea of 150+ Orks marching towards the enemy, it just doesn't work too well. The Horde is too vulnerable to fast, hard hitting armies that can take you apart piecemeal.