Orks in 8th Edition: Command Points & Stratagems

OK, I said that I might write a bit about the newish Ork codex, and here we are. MUCH LATER. Let's start with one of the big ones, Command Points & Stratagems. I must confess I'm a late comer to this entire concept, Orks having extremely limited options until the new book. For the unfamiliar, Command Points (CP) are a resource generated by building your army in a specific way, which can be spent on special rules, Stratagems. Think of them as a hand of cards you can play(1), interrupting the normal turn sequence to affect the game. Orks can do rather well out of Stratagems, because our low cost units can enable a lot of them, granting flexibility to your forces. I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow of those available to Orks, these are fairly self-explanatory, but I will talk about a few highlights and how best to get them. 

The Basic Idea

The stratagem holy trinity is probably Teleportas, Ramming Speed, and Unstoppable Greentide. Basically everything choppy benefits from being teleported in, but it's a gorksend for your Deff Dreads and walkers. This has synergy with Ramming Speed, which can make the teleported vehicle a nasty surprise for people, as well of being handy for the new Speed Freek units. These two allow for what every ork force ultimately wants to do, getting in your opponent's face on your terms. Factor in Da Jump, and you can get a metric ton of stuff in the enemy deployment on turn 2, and this is where Unstoppable Greentide comes in. Not only do you get models back for free, you can redeploy the unit. While it is extremely predictable, a typical Battle Forged Ork force will start with these three stratagems in mind. However, you need CP from somewhere, and a lot of people start with something like this:

HQ

Weirdboy with Da Jump

Weirdboy with Fists of Gork

Troops

10 Gretchin

10 more Gretchin

Another 10 Gretchin

This basic battalion is and easy plug in for an existing force with an infantry element, and is a decent example of how to work more Command Points into your force. It only costs 214 points, grants 5 CP, and while grots are famously crap at actual fighting, even they have a use. The Grot Shields Stratagem allows them to protect other infantry like the famously bullet-prone Lootas, and if not, they can do the boring stuff like hold objectives. The Weirdboyz are also inexpensive, and bring two useful powers, and can Smite stuff in the absence of better ideas. This battalion is obviously not self-contained, and would require there to be a big unit of Boyz or similar to work properly, but it really wouldn't be difficult to add one, and then do exactly what you want with the rest of your points. Alternatively, a more self-reliant battalion might look like this:

HQ

Weirdboy with Da Jump

Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun

Troops

30 Shoota Boyz, including a Nob with a Big Choppa

10 Shoota Boyz, including a Nob with a Big Choppa

10 Gretchin

This battalion is about footslogging and doing unglamorous jobs like supporting fire and holding objectives. There are two Stratagems you can use here, the aforementioned Unstoppable Greentide, and Mob Up. These are mutually exclusive, so don't mix them up, but using Mob Up to nail two units together and then jumping them somewhere is well-worth considering. Remember Ork units usually work best as big as possible. That said, clan kulture starts to make its presence felt here, requiring some tweaking. Goffs would definitely want to go the Skarboy route here, for example.

Going Further

OK, so you got a battalion, do you need more that? Possibly. Going for 2 battalions gives pretty much all the slots you'd need at under 2000 points and 10 CP, assuming you don't mind taking the mandatory Troop units and HQ. I come from the school that believes ork armies should have at least a hundred models in them, so I don't. This may not however be the case. One thing that tends to turn up a lot in the discourse is the idea of small formations of differing clans, maximising their speciality. Badmoons or Freebooters would like the Spearhead detachment, Evil Sunz would like Outriders, and so on. These do suffer from fairly minimal CP, so variants of the grot battalion seem more popular. Alternatively, if you are a clan purist(2), there's always the brigade. This grants more CP than 2 battalions, and requires one less HQ, but asks that you take a lot of everything. Fulfilling that requirement is tricky, but there is an inexpensive unit for each slot. Unfortunately, Orks don't do the whole “Multiple Small Unit” thing very well(3), so this really isn't sensible below 2000 points. Here's an example of what people are trying.

Bad Moons Battalion

HQ

Weirdboy with Da Jump

Weirdboy with Fists of Gork

Troops

10 Gretchin

10 more Gretchin

Another 10 Gretchin

Heavy Support

15 Lootas

10 Lootas

This is a culmination of what we've talked about so far. You Mob up the 2 Lootas, have them shoot, and them use the Bad Moon specific stratagem “Show-Offs” to make them fire again. Tactical Rerolls and More Dakka also have applications here, to maximise the Dethguns, and Grotshield will protect them from the inevitable attempts at revenge. Of course, this eats CP like me at an all-you-can-eat buffet, which is another reason why this is a battalion.

Wrapping Things Up

This concludes our brief look at the matter of Ork Stratagems. TL;DR try to have as many as possible.

Foot notes

1. Literally, in that you can buy them as cards.
2. Dodgy wording alert!
3. Possibly Deathskulls, but its a push.