Detachment Focus: Da Big Hunt

In this series of articles we take a deep dive into a specific detachment for a faction, covering the faction’s rules and upgrades and talking about how to build around that faction for competitive play. In this article, we’re covering the Da Big Hunt Detachment from Codex: Orks.

The Tenth Edition release of Codex: Orks gave the faction six Detachments to work with and while most of them focus on the more classic versions of Orks, from Boyz to Meganobz to Vehicles, Da Big Hunt focuses squarely on the more recent Beast Snagga units which first saw release in Ninth Edition.

Detachment Overview

The Da Big Hunt Detachment is all about Beast Snagga units, with rules and Stratagems which only affect those units. That means it’s very melee focused (though really, so are all the other Ork Detachments), with an emphasis on being able to take down VEHICLE and MONSTER targets.

Detachment Rule: Da Hunt is On

At the Start of your Command phase, pick one MONSTER, VEHICLE, or WARLORD unit from your opponent’s army. If your opponent does not have any of these on the battlefield (or embarked within a TRANSPORT which is on the battlefield), you can pick one CHARACTER instead. Until the start of the next Command phase, that unit is your Prey. BEAST SNAGGA units can re-roll Charge rolls when charging that unit, and they improve their AP by 1 when attacking it.

This is very powerful in plenty of matchups, at the price of occasionally being extremely dead. Orks don’t have much in the way of high-AP weaponry, so having the ability to push lots of your units at once from AP-1 to AP-2 as you go through key targets is excellent, especially as Snaggas will often have Anti 4+ against these targets. Re-rolling charges is also never a bad thing for Orks to have access to, but clearly not the main draw here. It’s also notable that this applies to shooting attacks as well, as it makes it great with Kill Rigs, who can enjoy throwing out AP-4 auto-hit shots from the Wurrtower.

The main caveat here is that there are a small number of games where this will do almost nothing for you. Armies that go hard on elite infantry or Mounted stuff which can afford to hold their Warlord back largely no-sell this, while Monsters like C’Tan or the Daemon Primarchs will take a 4+ invulnerable save anyways. The good news is that there’s enough other stuff going on in this detachment that you can build a proactive plan even without this, and it’ll be dynamite into something like Dreadknight spam.

Enhancements

This detachment really wants you to smash Squighogs into the foe, which is good because that aligns with your goals perfectly. These are all pretty great, making the only problem that you’ll want to take all of them but doing so will run you 90 points.

• Glory Hog (30 points) – Beastboss on Squigosaur only. Models in the bearer’s unit have the Scouts 9” ability. This is brutal. 9” is enough to mess with enemy firing lines quite a bit, and a serious Turn 1 Charge threat even without a Waaagh, so this is obviously great. Even at 30 points, it’s a must-take in the army.
• Proper Killy (15 points) – Add 1 to the Damage characteristic of the bearer’s melee weapons. This lets you basically build your own discount Mozrog on a Squigosaur boss, which can certainly be fun if you need to shave points or want a second Moz, but this is also great on a regular Beastboss, giving you an even better spike of anti-tank brutality that can be staged in a transport.
• Skrag Every Stash! (25 points) – At the end of your Command phase, if the bearer is within range of an objective marker you control, that objective remains under your control until an opponent controls it. Being able to sticky an objective is always good, and it’s cute to have this as a way to give Snaggas an ability which normally only Boyz have but here’s the thing – you can still just take one unit of regular Boyz and not bother with this, and you’ll get more value out of the Boyz.
• Surly as a Squiggoth (20 points) – Beastboss on Squigosaur only. While the bearer is leading a unit, if an attack is made on the unit with Strength higher than the Toughness characteristic of the unit, subtract 1 from the wound roll. On models with T7 this is going to end up working like perma-Transhuman a pretty decent chunk of the time, and leaves them extremely painful to clear. 

Skrag Every Stash! Is likely to be the odd one out of this group, merely by being kind of superfluous sometimes. If you’re running this detachment you’re essentially always starting with a Squigosaur stack each with Glory Hog and Surly.

Stratagems

Da Big Hunt has some pretty great Stratagems, and two provide an extra bonus when you go after your Prey target. They’re all exclusive to Beast Snagga units.

• Drag it Down (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in the Fight phase on a Beast Snagga to give its melee attacks [SUSTAINED HITS 1], and if you’re targeting your Prey, you score Critical Hits on a 5+. This is great – it provides you a way of getting the extra oomph that War Horde gives you at a key moment, and is an exceptional bargain if the thing you’re hitting is your Prey. It’s especially great with a Proper Killy Beastboss, who suddenly kills most of a Land Raider all by himself.
• Unstoppable Momentum (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in the Charge phase, after one of your Beast Snagga units finishes a Charge. Pick an enemy unit within Engagement Range and roll a D6 for each model in your unit; for each 4+ you do a mortal wound (to a maximum of 6), and if the unit you’re targeting is your Prey, you get an extra three dice. Your Squighog units go up to 9 models with a Squigosaur, so this represents a big chunk of attrition damage into anything, and a huge blow into Prey. It’s also worth highlighting that unlike some similar effects, it just keys off the number of models in your unit, not the ones that make Engagement range, so it provides a fair bit of flexibility when multi-charging. If your Prey has already been chipped down to a handful of wounds remaining, you can use this to finish them off while pouring all your actual attacks into an alternative target.
• Dat One’s Even Bigga! (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Charge phase on a Beast Snagga unit – they can Charge even if they Advanced or Fell Back, provided one of their charge targets is your Prey. Access to Advance/Charge outside your Waaagh! turn, even a conditional version, is super strong, and you also don’t have to use this until your Charge phase, so you can conceivably hang fire on using it until you’ve seen how well your Unstoppable Momentum did on an earlier charge.
• Where D’Ya Fink You’re Going? (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s Movement phase, after they make a Fall Back Move. One of your Beast Snagga INFANTRY or MOUNTED units which is no longer in Engagement Range of that unit can make a Normal Move of up to 6”. This doesn’t let you trap things in combat, but has a few handy applications. Squigosaur bosses now provide a free Heroic Intervention, so one option is to use this to move them nearer where you think the next fight is likely to be, and using it to hide some Infantry behind a wall is also good. Where this is currently really going to shine, however, is that it doesn’t prevent you from Embarking in a Transport at the end of the move, so if you’ve got a Proper Killy Beastboss and his Boyz on a rampage, they can use it to duck back into a Trukk/Battlewagon/Kill Rig to dodge enemy reprisals. That’s pretty great.
• Stalkin’ Tactics (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s Shooting phase after they pick targets to give a Beast Snagga INFANTRY or MOUNTED unit that was targeted the Benefit of Cover against those attacks. Additionally your INFANTRY units get the Stealth ability. This is entirely fine – Squighogs only have a 4+ save, so they can always get some value here, and Infantry can use it in a pinch (getting Stealth gives it an extra benefit over Take Cover).
• Instinctive Hunters (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used at the end of your opponent’s Fight Phase on a Beast Snagga unit from your army that is not within Engagement Range of an enemy unit. You can pick that unit up and put them back into Strategic Reserves. This ability is pretty much always great, and has particularly good synergy with Prey and Squigosaur bosses, as the combination of +1” to Charges and a free re-roll pushes your chance of making combat immediately after arriving from reserves to a solid 66%. It’s also just generically useful to have available, and hey you can do it with a Kill Rig, why not.

This is a really nice set of tricks, all told, with the only real gripe being that you’re fairly limited in what you can use them on. In order to take full advantage of these Stratagems you’re going to need to spend at least 50% of your points on big Squighog units.

Playing This Detachment

Any version of a competitive list from this Detachment likely starts with 8/4/4 Squighogs with two Squigbosses and Moz, which immediately eats up more than half your points in a 2,000-point game. That’s a lot of points, but you get a lot of bang for your buck, with three units of T7 monsters who can both set up for turn one charges with Scout or stage for near-guaranteed turn 2 charges off a 10” move and a Waaagh! to Advance and charge. They’ll hit like a freight train in combat, and while they’re going to do their best work against VEHICLE and MONSTER targets you can tag as prey, getting 5 S6 AP-1 2-damage attacks each will also put a hurt on most medium infantry in the game – though watch out for the likes of Terminators, who can use Armour of Contempt to no-sell your attacks and then punch you to death.

Otherwise the idea here is to use your Scout unit to put heavy pressure on the opponent early and use the Surly Squad to torment opponents with its durability. Although Beast Snaggas are your primary damage dealers, don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re all you can use – there’s plenty of room in a Big Hunt list for a Trukk full of Boyz, Stormboyz to act as mobile action doers, Weirdboyz who can move a unit with Da Jump, and Snikrot. Beast Snaggas are the main event, but they need help from your more standard units to succeed.

Alexis Auld’s List – New Zealand Team Championship, 2024

Although it’s not a winning list, Alexis piloted this list to a 4-2 finish at the New Zealand Team Championship against tough competition. The list features Moz and a Beastboss and goes all in on Squighog Boyz, taking the full compliment of 24.

The list - Click to expand

There’s not a ton of mystery here – it’s a really fast list that can hit really hard. Everything here except the Gretchin (who sit on your home objective) has a ride – the Beast Snaggas can hop in the Kill Rigs and the Burna Boyz ride in the Trukk – meaning that when it comes to movement, everything’s going at least 10″. The Squighog Boyz here are your hammers – staging on turn 1 for a turn 2 WAAAGH! into the heart of your opponent’s lines – while the Beast Snaggas can either do actions for scoring or act as additional melee support while the Burna Boyz offer short range support and can help clear things off objectives. 

Final Thoughts

If you want to run Beast Snaggas, this is the Detachment for you. There’s a ton of value here and support for squighog units, and plenty of power left over for your standard Beast Snaggas and transports. It’s more limited than some of the other Detachments on offer in Codex: Orks, but even with those limitations Da Big Hunt is considered one of the four competitively viable Detachments in Codex: Orks, as Squighog boys combine great toughness with some nasty melee output and can cause opponent’s real problems with their ability to close the gap and deliver early-game charges.

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