In our Hammer of Math series we look at statistics in Warhammer and other games, tackling key topics and looking at how probability can affect outcomes. In this week’s Hammer of Math, we’re looking at the new More Dakka! Detachment for the Orks, how it works, and how it impacted last weekend’s events.

We had a general idea that the Taktikal Brigade Detachment was going to receive some kind of nerf in the March 2025 Balance Update, but after seeing the More Dakka! Detachment we didn’t think it would matter – the new Detachment just far outstripped anything you could do with Ork orders, and was likely to be a menace at competitive events… and we were right.

Today we’re going to look at the Detachment, why it’s a menace, and what happened with last weekend’s events. This week I’m also joined by Jeremy “Curie” Atkinson from Stat Check, who has some thoughts of his own to share on this past weekend’s event results.

The More Dakka! Detachment

The big focus here is the Detachment rule, but there are a number of additional things we’ll have to look at. Let’s start with that rule:

Dakka! Dakka! Dakka!

In your own Shooting Phase (so importantly, not Overwatch), your INFANTRY and WALKER units have Sustained Hits 2 on their guns. In addition, during a WAAAGH! INFANTRY and WALKER units get Assault on all their guns.

To someone who hasn’t played against Orks in a while, this doesn’t seem so bad. “Ork shooting?” you say, scoffing. But therein lies the rub: Orks actually do have some pretty nasty shooting units, and they tend to balance having very poor Ballistic Skill Characteristics – often 5+ – with having a large volume of shots. This means that they’re more likely to trigger those Critical Hits, particularly in large units. Let’s look at the three principal Ork Infantry units that make up their shooty core:

Lootas

This is the big one – you’ll see three units of these in every More Dakka! list, and you may see one accompanied by a Big Mek with Shokk Attack gun, though they’re more likely to pair with Tankbustas. In a competitive list, this unit will run ten models: Two Spanners armed with kustom mega blastas and eight Lootas armed with deffguns. The unit special rule here is Dat’s Our Loot!, which lets them re-roll hit rolls of 1 with ranged attacks, or all hit rolls against enemy units on objective markers.

• Deffguns have 48″ range with 2 shots each, hitting on 6+, with S8, AP-1, and 2 damage, plus they have Heavy and Rapid Fire 1. You probably aren’t keeping them still, however.
• Kustom Mega-blastas have 24″ range, 3 attacks each, hitting on 5+ at S9, AP-2, and D6 damage, but with Hazardous.

Before we apply any other buffs, it’s easy to see that this is a 3x increase in damage output for the unit, at no additional charge – every time you hit with a Deffgun, you’re getting two additional hits that you weren’t getting before, and with a gun that does some real damage. Even at more than 24″ away from your target, your 16 deffgun shots will score an average of 9.3 hits, which is enough to evaporate 4 standard space marines, on average. If you are instead shooting at a unit on an objective within 24″, well now that’s where things get eye-wateringly nasty: you’re now putting out 24 deffgun shots, re-rolling all of your hits, and that will give you an average of 22 hits, since every time you hit you’re scoring two extras. Your Kustom Mega-Blasta will contribute an additional 5-6 hits. That will, without any external buffs, lead to the deaths of an entire unit marines, on average. Or if you’re punching up into a heavier vehicle and wounding on 5s, you can expect to drop 11-12 damage if it has a 3+ save.

Flash Gitz

Let’s move on to the second part of our murderous trio of units. Flash Gitz come in units of five or ten models, though in competitive lists you’re likely to only see them in groups of five. Each model comes with a snazzgun and you can give the unit an ammo runt. That Ammo Run token can be used once per game (discarded) to give the unit [LETHAL HITS] for a single phase. Snazzguns have a 24″ range, hit on 5+ with 3 attacks each at S6, AP-1, 2 damage. They have Heavy and [SUSTAINED HITS 1]. The unit ability is Gun-Crazy Show-offs, which gives them 4 attacks instead of 3 if they shoot the closest eligible target.

Flash Gitz already had Sustained Hits 1, which at 20 shots for five models was giving them an average of 3.3 additional hits. Doubling that to 6.7 improves their output by about 33%. It’s not as eye-wateringly good as the Lootas, but it’s a very solid bump for an 80-point unit, and that’s before you add in the Ammo Runt and any Stratagem boosts.

Tankbustas

Even at their increased costs, Tankbustas are a must-take in the army, and competitive lists from last weekend often ran three units. Tankbustas come in units of 5 models with a Rokkit Launcha, a 24″ gun which shoots D3 shots hitting on a 5+ at S9, AP-2 for 3 damage with Blast. The Boss Nob has two rokkit pistols, which are the same profile but 1 shot each at 12″ range. The Tank Hunters rule gives them +1 to hit and wound against MONSTER and VEHICLE targets. The expected result of a D3 is 2, so on average these guys put out 10 shots when they fire as a unit before you factor in hits from Blast. Normally you’d expect that to turn into 3.3 hits against non-vehicle/monster targets, and 5 against those bigger threats. But with [SUSTAINED HITS 2] you can expect to score an additional 3.3 hits each time you fire, doubling your output against smaller targets and improving it by 66% against bigger targets.

So what does this look like? Well, if you’re firing at a unit of Terminators with 5 models within 12″, that’s going to be 3 shots each for your blast weapons, for an average 14 shots that translate into 10 hits with Sustained Hits 2, and averaging 3 dead terminators per volley. If you’re a vehicle then Blast won’t be an issue but you can expect to take 6-9 damage if you’re T10 or better, or 9-12 if you’re at T9. Don’t forget that this is likely to happen after you take D3 mortal wounds from a Bomb Squig.

Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun

The ringleaders of those aforementioned Tankbustas and Lootas is the Big Mek with Shokk Attack gun. Ability-wise, he doesn’t do much for the Lootas – the Big Mek with Shokk Attack gun gives his unit re-rolls to hit of 1, and the Lootas already have that on their Datasheet. On the other hand if he joins a unit of Tankbustas, his re-roll 1s to hit ability will be much more relevant, and turns them into a much nastier threat – doubly so if you add in the Dead Shiny Shootas Enhancement.

What the Big Mek really brings to the table with Lootas is his Shokk Attack gun, a 60″ gun with D6+1 shots (and blast) that hit on a 5+ with S9, AP-4, and do D6 damage. The expected value of D6+1 is 4.5, and if you factor in a once-per game re-roll of 1-3 using the Grot Assistant, that will jump to 5.25.

With 4.5 shots (re-rolling 1s), you can expect to land 1.75s normally. But with [SUSTAINED HITS 2] that jumps by 1.75 shots to 3.25. If you’re re-rolling everything against a target on an objective thanks to your unit of attached Lootas – and you should, including fishing for 6s – your hit count jumps up to around 4.5.

There are three upgrades you’re liable to take on your Big Mek in this Detachment which can affect their output:

• Targetin’ Squigs gives your unit +1 to hit with Ranged Attacks. It’s the least essential option here, and the most likely to be redundant with units that can get +1 to hit in other ways. It also just doesn’t matter as much when your primary goal is rolling unmodified 6s to hit. That said, you’re rarely going to want to stand still to get +1 to hit from Heavy.
• Da Gobshot Thunderbuss gives your Shokk Attack Gun Devastating Wounds and Hazardous, where you’re liable to score a dev wound here and there to push through D6 damage.
• Dead Shiny Shootas is the option of choice for a unit leading Tankbustas, as it gives the unit’s guns Rapid Fire 1. This means that if you get within 6″ of your target with the Tankbustas you’ll be putting out 16 shots before you factor in Blast for targets with 5+ models.

There’s also Zog Off and Eat Dakka! to fall back and shoot, and that’s a worthy mention here as wel, though it doesn’t affect your actual damage output.

The Stratagems

Finally, we have the Stratagems. The ones to watch out for here are Long, Uncontrolled Bursts and Speshul Shells. Long, Uncontrolled Bursts gives a unit the ability to Ignore Cover against a single target, essentially letting your units operate as though they have +1 AP against most targets. Speshul Shells on the other hand gives your unit +1 AP when shooting the closest eligible target within 18″. Getting your shooting units to an effective AP-3 removes the final barrier to them doing insane amounts of damage, and ensures that your Lootas or Tankbustas will just kill anything you’ve pointed them at.

Finally, remember that any army running these is likely running three units of each, essentially running the entire army at 2x-3x efficiency.

The Results

At Goonhammer, we’ve built our own internal tool for tracking and aggregating tournament results across the globe for different games and pairing apps/systems. The tool, called Dataslate, is also where we manage UTC event submissions. It’s a helpful tool for us to look at lists and updates every Monday with the weekend’s results so we can push those into Competitive Innovations. Let’s take a look at this past weekend’s results for GT-level events in Dataslate:

Oh.

Oh no.

Over the past weekend, 57 players picked up Orks for events with 28+ players and 5+ rounds, and if you remove mirror matches, they won 62.5% of their games. About half of the players going into round 4 with Orks were 3-0 in those events, hence the 3.0 Average First Loss score, which is insanely high. If you restrict that to just More Dakka! Players, it jumps to 3.4, and if you take out the lists which ran Gorka/Morkanauts, their win rate jumps to 71.5%. At the South Coast Super-Major, three of the top four players were running More Dakka!, and the same was true for the Rocky Mountain Open. More Dakka! lists won four events this past weekend – though it’s worth noting that adoption rate for the new updates was not yet at 100%. A Taktikal Brigade list was still among the weekends’ TiWP lists, for example.

Some Thoughts From Stat Check

Alright, Curie from Stat Check here – I’m gonna cover a couple other problematic aspects of the Detachment as well as a quick discussion on early performance indicators. We’ll start off with the stratagem that can sometimes be overlooked in light of the army’s shooting output – Get Stuck In, Ladz!

This stratagem costs 1 CP, and accomplishes the absolutely amazing – it puts any Orks unit into the Waaagh! in the Ork player’s command phase. On-demand Waaagh! means that they can selectively activate things like Zodgrod’s Special Dose leader ability, giving the Gretchin unit he’s an additional 6″ of movement along with the Waagh! 5+ invulnerable save and the ability to charge after advancing. This is a very effective tarpit unit for Ork players in the first turn, and going first can be backbreaking for many other armies as by the time they’ve cleared out the “super grots” unit the Tankbustas and Lootas have established solid staging to rain down punishment the next turn. Another problematic element of this is when Ghazghkull Thraka uses it when accompanied by a bully squad of Meganobz. The Meganobz give the unit a 5+ Feel No Pain during the Waaagh!, while Ghazghkull gives them Critical Hits on a 5+ in melee alongside Makari’s banner that has a 12″ Aura of Lethal Hits in melee.

Now let’s have a quick chat about the early indicators of army performance. Stat Check looks at much of the same data as Goonhammer, and has sufficient historical data to draw some quick parallels. The army that comes to mind for me when looking at the rapid rise of More Dakka! (yes it’s only been 1.5 weekends but the cracks in the meta are showing) is Harlequins at their release in March of 2022 during 9th Edition.

Harlequins burst onto the scene and in the first few weeks of that meta rose to a peak 4-week averaged win rate of 76% – and resulted in the insanity that was Adepticon 2022 where the top end of that event was just Harlequin mirrors. More Dakka is quickly approaching those numbers, as laid out earlier in the article. I fully expect that if this isn’t adjusted quickly and effectively by Games Workshop the meta will look eerily similar to that time.

What’s Next?

Well, what’s next is that we expect it to get worse as more events incorporate the latest datalaste and players assemble and paint the remaining Tankbustas, Lootas, and Flash Gitz they need to run the army. More Dakka! lists combine cheap unit costs with an insane amount of high damage output but in a way that seems fairly easy to build and field as an army. Tell someone they need to paint 30 Possessed or 120 Acolytes and they might balk. Tell someone they need three each of Lootas, Big Meks, Tankbustas, and Flash Gitz and they might tell you that’s super reasonable, especially for Orks. The fact that this also buffs Gretchin and that your standard Boyz are still pretty good and able to hold objectives doesn’t hurt, either. This Detachment is a real problem and it’s not going to get better any time soon.

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