Welcome back to Fury of da Beast, the 40K cooperative play supplement where you and your friends battle against invading Ork hordes. Today, a much-requested post on writing Ork army lists suitable for playing against in co-op, as well as some design commentary Ork shooting.
Accessing the Rules
You can access the rules here, or by clicking on the choppa below. The rest of this post covers what’s been added, how you can get involved, and what’s coming down the road.
The Roadmap: Staying on Target
The end of the road draws near – just two posts left! Last time I mentioned that there’s been a sudden loss in my wife’s family, and this has of course had an impact on my productivity, which means that as I write this I’m absolutely grazing up against the deadline by which I need to send this post out, but I do not currently anticipate delays in the release of future posts. It’s just used up all of my wiggle room.
15th April
Fulcrum mission Hold the Line (can also be played during Rokfall and Evacuation) and Fulcrum mission: The Hunt for Red Orktober.
29th April
Nemesis system, PDF of the rules. Version One complete.
Design Commentary: Ork shooting
I suspect the thing players might find the most surprising is the adjustments I made to Ork shooting: Orks in Fury of da Beast have BS4+ (or Sustained Hits 1 if they already had BS4+).
This is in direct contravention of a cow that became sacred way back in Warhammer 40K’s third edition. BS5+ is a great way of evoking the wild, careless way Orks spew bullets into the environment around them. It also makes them more swingy and unpredictable, which is perfect. Unfortunately it simply doesn’t work in a D6-based ruleset where you can suffer a -1 penalty to hit, since it has a disproportionate impact on their firepower, both in average hit numbers and in swingyness. Going from hitting on 5+ to hitting on 6+ halves your firepower, whereas going from 4+ to 5+ is reducing it by a third instead. Meanwhile BS3+ units only have their firepower reduced by a quarter.
Games Workshop recently created the More Dakka! Detachment, giving ORKS INFANTRY and ORKS WALKER models Sustained Hits 2, and when on the Waaagh! they also gain the Assault ability. This significantly buffs Ork shooting, but it creates the opposite problem: the Orks’ enemy has no way of interacting with that by popping smoke or whatever else, since all those extra hits trigger on 6s and won’t be affected by a -1 to hit. The impact on the 40K tournament scene was immediate and pronounced.
With BS4+, you get a solid boost in reliability, whilst still enabling players to inflict penalties to hit on the Orks without breaking the game. The problem is that people may feel that Orks having the standard Ballistic Skill runs contrary to the narrative.
That’s understandable, and if this were a D10-based system I’d love to see Orks with a worse than average Ballistic Skill. I just don’t think you can have have a D6-based system which also allows negative hit modifiers if you’re going to have BS5+. Getting rid of modifiers for the whole game would clearly be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so this is a compromise, but I think the best available one. Orks have so much firepower that they should present a ranged threat, and in my experience, that’s not the case at BS5+.
Another change I made to the rules was to make any weapon with a damage of 3 gain +1 damage. This is a straight-up kludge. Orks struggle to hurt vehicles, so when they get a hit in, it needs to count, particularly in co-op play. Units like Deffkoptas and Killa Kans suddenly become a significant threat, and this deepened the gameplay. In general, the design intent is for you and your mates to feel like you’re constantly on the edge of losing, all while making it possible for you pull out a win at the last minute.
Writing Player and Ork Army Lists in Fury of da Beast
When picking your forces for cooperative play, the main difference isn’t the rules, it’s your goal. This will be quite the conceptual shift, particularly if you’re used to Matched Play, or tournament-style gaming where the goal is to bring the most potent army you can, and then use it to sportingly demolish your opponent’s army.
In cooperative play, you don’t have an opponent. You are curating your own experience, so the choices you make when choosing the armies involved will go a long way towards defining the difficulty level. If you deliberately build a weak Ork army and a strong Player army, you’re in for a boring game!
Choosing Player Forces
Most of the advice I gave on this subject for Fury of the Swarm is applicable to Fury of da Beast, and you can find that original post here.
The key point made in that post is when you combine the Players’ forces, you collectively make up a balanced army, with a good core of BATTLELINE units, with a spread of more specialised units that can attack the Orks’ heavy vehicles, light vehicles, and elite infantry. It might be that you bring a core of Space Marine Intercessors and a Captain to lead them, while one friend brings some heavy Imperial Guard tanks to engage the enemy elites, and another friend brings some fast Aeldari units to swoop over the Orks and claim objectives right in their backfield. Between the three of you, it’s a balanced army. Equally, each player might bring a small self-contained army; it’s really up to you.
As an example, here’s part of my own Space Marines force, with a mix of weapons and units draped around a core of 25 Intercessors:
Obviously an individual player wouldn’t get to use a force of this size in any but the largest of co-op battles, and it’s got more characters than I’d actually use in a game, but the key point is that while I’m fairly sure you wouldn’t see this army on a tournament table, this kind of mix of units will do well for narrative gaming.
I played a small game of Beast last night with my friend Andy. We were both playing as Heretic Astartes, but I was entirely reliant on his Obliterators for decent anti-armour firepower. That honestly added to the co-op aspect, as I needed to provide those Obliterators with cover from the swarms of Ork infantry threatening to bog him down.
Selecting da Ladz
Totting Up Points Easily
Since the Ork force is often split into separate Warbands, it’s helpful to create your army list in a format that helps you see the Orks’ total points and also the points total of each Warband. I made a Google Sheet to do just that for my own Ork collection, and formatted it to fit comfortably on a smartphone screen for easy remote access. Now I can just tick/untick units, and the points totals adjust accordingly.
You can of course simply use the Warhammer 40,000 app, and this will also give you all the rules you need. I went a step further, keen to make life easy for the playtesters, and made some colour-coded summary sheets containing all the rules for my Goffs, Evil Sunz and Snakebites, and got them printed on card stock. Needless to say I can’t share these, as that’d be replicating official rules. Besides, it’s for the units I happen to have in my own army, so wouldn’t necessarily be that useful for other people!
Which Ork units to Bring?
Some general advice on choosing the Ork forces is given on page 3 of the Fury of da Beast rules. When purchasing kits for Fury of da Beast, here’s some advice:
- It’s impossible to own too many basic Ork Boyz, but you don’t actually have to paint loads for this to work.
- Things with rokkit launchas are your friend: Deffkoptas, Killa Kans, and Tankbustas are all useful.
- Units have three broad niches:
- Anti-infantry (lots of attacks with low strength, AP and damage)
- Anti-elite infantry and light vehicles (strength 7-9, some AP, damage 2+)
- Anti-tank (strength 9+, AP -2 or better, damage 2+)
- Get some fast stuff (buggies, bikes, trukks, squighogs) to put pressure on yourself early.
- Gretchin are adorable miniatures, and useful in normal PVP games, but tragically pointless for most Beast missions. They can at least be entertaining in missions like Resupply Run where they can steal your supply trucks whilst leaving the Orks to punch you in the face.
Sample Ork Warband Army Lists
In theory Warbands can be any size, depending on how many Orks you own. When starting out, I think it’s best to work towards 500 point Warbands that have a fun theme, but that have the ability to damage a variety of enemy units. You can then expand these Warbands later.
The good news is that, unless you’re a tournament player, collecting a force to fight against for Beast will absolutely result in you also owning a nice playable army of Orks for normal games of Warhammer 40K. As factions go, Orks are probably towards the more expensive end to purchase, particularly the more niche units, where in some cases you can spend about £40 and get a 50 point unit for your trouble.
For the most part, the recommendations I’m going to make here are not particularly taking budget into account when making decisions, but I will make a point of giving the current GW price, as a total in UK Pounds (£), at the top of each Warband.
Sample Warband 1: Da Klassik Goff (£160, 505 points)
You could collect multiple copies of this warband, and the game would work. You’d go mad, of course, since variety is the spice of life and the Orks have a varied and delicious roster of units, but still. It combines good all-round boyz, some nobz for threatening heavy infantry, and 5 tankbustas for threatening anything bigger. Currently this clocks in at 505 points, and who cares about being 5 points over when you’re playing co-op, and when points values change all the time anyway?
- 1 Warboss
- 5 Nobz
- 20 Boyz (the older Ork Boyz kit can also be used, and is cheaper)
- 5 Tankbustas
Sample Warband 2: Da Snakebite on a Budget (£115.50, 470 points)
This Warband is the Combat Patrol box plus a box of Gretchin. From a power perspective, this Warband would be greatly improved by ditching the Gretchin and Beastboss, then adding a pair of trukks so that the Beast Snagga Boyz travel at a similar speed to the Squighog Boyz. Alternatively you could swap the Gretchin for 3 Warbikes, but like the trukks I avoided that here since Warbikes didn’t fit the Snakebite theme, and it’s not as cheap.
- Combat Patrol (1 Beastboss, 20 Beast Snagga Boyz, 4 Squighog Boyz)
- 10 Gretchin
Sample Warband 3: Evil Sunz, Fury Road Edition (£221.50, 485 points)
The theme to this Warband is pretty obvious, and lets you lean into the Mad Max angle: lots of cool things on wheels. The buggies mostly cost the same money and the same points, although the Megatrakk Scrapjet and Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy help you get closer to 500 points here.
- 6 Warbikes
- 3 Deffkoptas
- Shokkjump Dragsta
- Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy
- Megatrakk Scrapjet
Since there’s no Leader unit in this Warband, you may be wondering who the Boss is. In Fury of da Beast, if there are no leader units present, any unit containing at least one Nob can take the lead, so in this case, that’ll be the Warbikes. You could also swap out one of the buggies for a Deffkilla Wartrike for zero impact on either points or money.
Sample Warband 4: Da Bullitt-Mad Bad Moon Wiv Teef to Spare (£258, 485 points)
Certain units in Beast are called Dakka Ladz, and have slightly different rules than the other Orks, since they won’t charge things – they’re here to make loud bangs and laugh while experiencing toof-rattling recoil. The best way to approach them, therefore, is to lump them together into a Warband so that they stick together and can focus on doing what they do best. This Warband will ruin heavy infantry, and the Mek Gunz (beautiful kit, that) will make Player vehicles nervous, but are easy to deal with.
- Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun
- 15x Lootas
- 10x Flash Gitz
- 2x Mek Gunz w. kustom mega-kannon
Sample Warband 5: Deathskull Dread Mob (£164, 480 points)
Dread Mobs used to be utterly broken before the advent of 40K’s eighth edition, as it was simply too many vehicle hulls. These days it’s fine, though, and having a Mek and a cutting krew herding the walkers along is a fun Bit. You could make things extra klassik by swapping the Spanner and his Burna Boyz for a unit of regular Boyz instead, which would also give the Mek a unit to hide in (although he’ll get Lone Operative if he’s on his own, so it’s fine either way).
- 1 Ork Mek
- 5 Burna Boyz
- 6 Killa Kans
- 1 Deff Dread
Sample Warband 6: The Mechanised Brick to the Face (£171, 480 points)
Look, it’s a simple concept: stuff a load of double hard gitz into a Battlewagon and drive it into your own face. It’s got anti-vehicle power (the Meganobz and the Warboss in mega armour) and it’s got heavy infantry krumping (the Nobz and, to an extent, the Battlewagon). Optionally, you could replace the Nobz with 10 Boyz, and they’ll still fit, you’ll just find yourself with 50 points spare.
- Battlewagon (ideally with deffroller)
- Warboss in Mega Armour
- 3 Meganobz with kill saws
- 5 Nobz
In Conclusion, Paint Orks
Hopefully that’s provided some ideas that might germinate into little armoured murder mushrooms. If you’d like further advice you can reach me by emailing contact@goonhammer.com. The best thing you can do to help the project is to play games, and then submit a battle report form. You can also DM me on Instagram (@CharlieBrassley) or if you’re a Goonhammer patron, by tagging me (Charlie B) in the Fury of da Beast channel in Goonhammer’s Discord server.
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