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

[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.

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...."

[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.