Tankbustin' Orks

It is always strange when people argue that Orks have decent anti-tank capabilities... even weirder when they say they have great anti-tank...

The orkses have some of the very best weapons in the game to kill tanks, the only problem is you have to get into base-to base with the enemy. But ... it is very very hard to stop two force-fielded battlewagons.

Death Rolla gives d6 auto-hit S10 attacks. Warbosses and Kanz have loads of S10 attacks and klaws (including meganobs) have S9 on the charge.

Typical ork assault is to ram the battlewagon into a LR (d6 S10 auto-hit), at the same time as the boss swigs 6 S10 attacks from the boarding plank against a dread, then the meganobs charge out. That is some serious anti-tank! At the same time, those nob bikers have their way with you, and after some turns the killa kan mayhem arrives. Not som many tanks will survive in my experience.

- Henrik in this discussion on YTTH

And Stelek's reply...

That's certainly an interesting viewpoint. More like a looney viewpoint.

I'm curious how you get across the table to deliver this crushing blow upon the enemy? By driving his expensive pseudo-melta weapons towards all of your real melta weapons.

I don't think it's that difficult to stop two battlewagons, but I usually run lots of meltaweapons and/or lots of mobile units. So for me, dropping enough melta shots or side shots at range isn't that difficult. Given your description, it's not that difficult to blow up open-topped transports (which is what those seem to be).

I'm curious though, have you ever had someone do this to you? (This is how I stopped the force-field BW army myself, and I haven't seen it since.) Zip some fast units up so they are about 16" away from your BW. If they are fast, dropping them right in your face is best. Blocking movement is the idea.

See, the tank shock rule seems fairly clear to me--the tank ram itself must clear the enemy out of the way, or you can't keep moving. Which is all I want myself, so I can spend a turn zapping the BW support elements to death.

Once I've done sufficient damage and you are done blowing up my sacrificial vehicles, sure we can play. I'm pretty confident that if I strip out your support elements, two BW aren't going to stop me. Have you noted how effective enemy CC troops are at taking down BW? Even a tactical squad has a good shot at it, especially if the vehicle is immobilized (happens quite often with open-topped vehicles, even if they have a 4+ cover save). That rear armor 10 isn't protected by cover saves, so if you aren't moving fast...it's still a bad time.

A most common enemy (that Orks really don't have a good answer for) are Thunder Shield Terminators led by Vulkan. 15 S8 attacks with re-rolls is enough to smack down even a BW moving over 6".

Anyway, I don't doubt that gangplanks with a 2" range are effective around your area; I think around here I'd call them "fun". Just not good enough in my view.

- Stelek in Orks are Tank Bustas?? 

At this point I would normally say read the discussion for further ideas. But this was a pre-FAQ discussion. So it ended up being a discussion of whether Deff Rollas are able to Tank Shock. So just read the first three posts and feel free to ignore the rest.