Ork Blitza-Bommer Tactica

This is the third tactica in the new Ork flyer tactica series. Here you can find "Part 1: The Dakkajet" and “Part 2: The Burna-Bommer”. In this episode I'll look at the strengths and weaknesses of the Ork Blitza-Bommer.

The Blitza-Bommer:
This plane is carrying the Little Boy and The Fat Man for the Orks. Two massive bombs called “Boom Bombs” that each can only be used once per game.

Basics:
Unfortunately you can only take 1 plane per fast attack slot so that means you could have 3 planes max. This is ok but I hoped you could take them as squadrons of three leaving you with 2 more fast attack slots. Further more it is a Skimmer and it's Fast and follows those universal rules but there's nothing wrong with that for now but we'll probably see some major changes for flyers when 6th edition hits the shelves. The new edition is only one week away and from what I have heard flyers will be a lot harder to hit and that’s exactly what they need.

Special rules:
The Blitza-Bommer has a few special rules.
Aerial Assault: When you move at cruising speed(12") you can still fire all of your weapons.

Grot Gunner: You can select 1 of your guns and have a grot aiming that gun for you so it has BS3 instead of the basic BS2 for the plane. You have to choose if you want your big shoota or supa shoota before the game starts and it needs to be noted on your army list. It's a bit of a no-brainer that you put the grot at the trigger of the supa shoota because it's the better gun.

Supersonic: You can boost about on the battlefield moving a whopping 36" to get in or out of action.

Waaagh!plane: This special rule is great for a dakkajet because you can now fire all your weapons twice on the turn your Waaagh! is called but for the blitza-bommer it's not so hot. The Boom Bombs are "one use only" so you have the big shoota and supa shoota left. It's a nice bonus but it's just not that big a deal.

Weapons and options:
The main weapons of the Blitza-Bommer are the “Boom Bombs” and that’s what they’ll be feared for because once it has dropped those it’s practically nothing more that either a nice piece of scenery or an easy kill point (kill points will be dropped in 6^th edition).

The Boom Bomb is a crude and heavy weapon and when you manage to drop it on your target you place a large template over the units and and roll 2D6 on the “Screamin’Descent” table to see what happens. Now here’s the tricky part because there is a chance that things will go wrong and when they go wrong they’ll go horribly wrong. You either crash and burn(9% chance) or you will clip your enemy(18% chance) without dropping the bomb but instead you take a S9 hit! On AV10 that’s pretty dangerous. At least when you go down in flames you still drop a S9 AP2 Template on your enemy but you scatter 2D6.

But then there’s also the good results on the “Screamin’Descent” table, there’s 45% chance that thing go according to plan and you drop the bomb(large template) on the enemy scattering only 1 D6. And if you get even more lucky you have a 27% chance of shooting all your weapons on the same target as you have dropped your bomb. So all in all there’s a 28% chance things will get ugly but also a 72% things will go just right.
You drop the bombs in your movement phase but you can’t drop them if you have moved flat out. When you have dropped a bomb(or attempted to) in the movement phase you can still pick a different target with your Supa Shoota and Big Shoota in the shooting phase which is nice.

There’s also a chart for the Boom Bomb saying it is only S7 AP4 and just a small blast template but that seems to go against vehicles and you get to roll 1D6 extra for armour penetration. This seems to be the way you have to work it out when you drop it in the shooting phase instead of the movement phase and using the “Screamin’Descent” . To me this sounds illogical and I wouldn’t use it like this because with only S7 you might penetrate light armoured vehicles but chances against something better are slim and you don’t want your single use bombs to go to waist.

The Blitza-Bommer also comes with a TL Supa Shoota. The Supa Shoota has a range of 30" Strength 6 and AP4 and is an assault 3 weapon. Which is a nice bonus if you roll well on your “Screamin’Descent” table and you get to use your guns on the same target as your Boom Bombs for free. (you can fire them again in the shooting phase of the same turn).

You also get 1 Big Shoota as standard. It follows the normal Big Shoota rules and again you can fire it in the shooting phase and when you get a nice roll on the “Screamin’Descent” table but other then that it isn’t too much of a threat to your enemy.

Like the other Ork

Deployment Tactica:
I think you'll always want your Blitza-Bommer to come from reserves. You don't want your opponent shooting at it if he goes first or steals the initiative . The rumour is that in 6^th edition all flyers come from reserves anyway. The Blitza-Bommer only has an Armour Value of 10 so there's a lot of guns out there able to glance it or even penetrate it's fragile armour. A plane is very hard to hide so you won't get a cover save and since you don't want your new toy to go down in a raging ball of fire in the first round you keep it in reserve and you'll be able to shoot something with it at least once. You can get a Blitza-Bommer for 140points (incl RPJ) so it’s not as expensive as the Burna-Bommer but still…

Attacking Tactica:
When you come from reserve and move on the table you should probably aim for the closest enemy unit. Since the plane is only AV10 you want to drop the load as soon as possible.
The Boom Bombs require quite a bit of planning, luck and skill. The problem is that you have to fly over a unit to be able to drop you Boom Bombs, A good player will see this coming and will make sure you can't get over in your turn or makes you end your move in terrain so that you have to take a terrain test.

 Target tactica:
When you Blitza-Bommer is on the battlefield you must try to fly over something as soon as possible but that's unlikely to happen in it’s first turn. You might even be better off if the Blitza doesn’t come out of reserves until turn three or four because the enemy might have moved up the table closer to you and you don’t have to fly so far to use it’s main weapons. No use in going for heavy armoured vehicles so focus on infantry or maybe light armoured vehicles if no other targets are available. I’d say look for those juicy and squishy infantry units and make them suffer heavy losses.

Defencive Tactica:
 You better make sure you get some points back for it because it probably won't last until the end of the game but if it does you can make use of the Skimmer rule and contest an objective. The only way to protect it is target saturation. You should have a lot of things on the board and make your opponent choose what he's going to shoot. If you keep moving at least 12" all the time your opponent might have some difficulty hitting you and opt to shoot at something else instead but if he does manage to shoot it at least your mob of greenskins is one turn closer to the enemy and getting closer to assault range. The Blitza-Bommer is 135 points and 140 with RPJ(mandatory) so when you’ve dropped 1 Boom Bomb on an infantry unit it’s probably got it’s points back and done its job.

 The verdict:
I’m just not a big fan of weapons that can only be used once per game and with this one you also have to fly over your opponent leaving you open to be charged…yes you can charge a plane in close combat. The thing is that your opponent can spot you coming from miles away and anticipate. He’s probably going to target prioritise your plane and make sure it will never drop the Boom Bombs. Also the “Screamin’Descent” table is very unreliable. You have almost a 1 in 3 chance of blowing yourself up.
In my opinion this is also a anti infantry plane and the one thing the Ork army isn’t lacking is anti infantry. We need something that can take out or damage armoured vehicles from a distance. If you are getting this kit you are getting most out of it by constructing it as a Dakkajet.

Cheers,
Seb

Ork Bommer Project Finished!

It took me two weeks to get my Ork plane done and I'm very happy with the result. It really turned out exactly the way I wanted, a nice old, rusty and banged up flying suicide machine...

I only bought one box but I still want to be able to field all three types of planes so I got busy with magnets and ended up magnetising the bombs and rokkits, pilot's windshield, Grot gunner turret and a closing cap for when I want to field the Dakkajet and don't want the Grot gunner on the model. This cap is from the Ork Battlewagon kit and fits exactly although it would have been better if it was a little bigger.

I have also put up this model on CoolMiniorNot and I'd like to ask you to go there using this LINK and rate the model for me as I don't have that option here on my blog.

So here's my new baby...

You can see what I mean with the closing cap for the grot gunner's turret at the picture on the right. It fits in just fine and doesn't look out of place. I could have magnetised the whole part that fits the turret but I thought this was a good alternative.

With a few small alterations I can also use this model as a Burna-Bommer. The magnetised bombs and rokkits click under the wings quite easily. I can click on the back windows from the pilot's canopy (also magnetised) and of course the grot gunner looks fantastic in his little turret. In this picture you can see the grot without the glass top. I didn't glue it because it snaps on and off quite nicely by itself and I think it's always nice to be able to have a look inside.

I really liked to look of the pilot's glasses in the White Dwarf so I tried to copy that. I think it turned out well and it looks as if you can see the horizon in the pilot's glasses reflection. The rest of the pilot and cockpit are pretty simple and straight forward . He looks like a proppa fighta ace.( ready to go down in a blazing ball of fire...)

The engine was a pretty straight forward job. Some boltgun metal and a few washes and after that I did some highlighting and I picked out some details. The soot was done by simply drybrushing some chaos black in the direction of the flight of the plane.

And last of course the formidable Blitza-Bommer with it's two Big Bombs. I don't think I'll play this type of plane a lot for the Orks because to use a pretty wonky result table when you drop of the bombs with a pretty high risk of knocking yourself out of the air. But just because I've got the parts and it only cost me a few magnets more I thought I would paint them up as well.

Again I'd like to ask you to follow this link and rate my Bommer on CMoN. You can rate the individual Bommer here:

-Dakkajet

-Burna-Bommer

-Blitza-Bommer

If you want to see more posts on the Work In Progress the go here:

WIP part 1

WIP part 2

WIP part 3

WIP part 4

Cheers,

Seb





Ork Burna-Bommer Tactica

This is the second tactica in the new Ork flyer tactica series. You can find "Part 1: The Dakkajet" right here.In this episode I'll look at the strengths and weaknesses of the Ork Burna-Bommer.


The Burna-Bommer:
This plane has some potential in theory but I think the price and manoeuvrability are a problem.Here's why..

Basics:
Unfortunately you can only take 1 plane per fast attack slot so that means you could have 3 planes max. This is ok but I hoped you could take them as squadrons of three leaving you with 2 more fast attack slots. Further more it is a Skimmer and it's Fast and follows those universal rules but there's nothing wrong with that for now but we'll probably see some major changes for flyers when 6th edition hits the shelves.

Special rules:
The Burna-Bommer has a few special rules.
Aerial Assault: When you move at cruising speed(12") you can still fire all of your weapons.Grot Gunner: You can select 1 of your guns and have a grot aiming that gun for you so it has BS3 instead of the basic BS2 for the plane. You have to choose if you want your big shoota or supa shoota before the game starts and it needs to be noted on your army list. It's a bit of a no-brainer that you put the grot at the trigger of the supa shoota because it's the better gun. I think you can also let him fire the Burna Bombs or Rokkits but since those are template weapons it would mean the only benefit is scattering 1" less. (it doesn't say you cant use this on the bombs and rokkits)
Supersonic: You can boost about on the battlefield moving a whopping 36" to get in or out of action.Waaagh!plane: This special rule is great for a dakkajet because you can now fire all your weapons twice on the turn your Waaagh! is called but for the burna-bommer it's not so hot. The Burna Rokkits and Burna Bombs are "one use only" so you have the big shoota and supa shoota left. It's a nice bonus but it's just not that big a deal.

Weapons and options:
The Burna-Bommer comes with 1 TL Supa Shoota's and Big Shoota as standard. To make it a Burna bommer it also has 2 Burna Bombs that you can drop on your opponent when you fly over a unit. (you can only drop 1 per turn and you can not drop any if you move flat out). These bombs are using the large blast template and only scatter 1D6 at Strength 5 AP4. You can also buy up to 6 Burna Rokkits at 10 points each. These are also ST5 AP4 and have a range of 24" but use the small blast template.The good thing about these Burna weapons is that they ignore cover. I think 4 Rokkits should work but your plane is then a whopping 165 points at least.

Like the other Ork planes you can buy a red paint job for 5 points to move them an extra 1".

Deployment Tactica:
I think you'll always want your Burna-Bommer to come from reserves. You don't want your opponent shooting at it if he goes first or steals the initiative and also normally you won't be able to maximise it's firepower first round by calling a Waaagh!. The Burna-Bommer only has an Armour Value of 10 so there's a lot of guns out there able to glance it or even penetrate it's fragile armour.A plane is very hard to hide so you won't get a cover save and since you don't want your new toy to go down in a raging ball of fire in the first round you keep it in reserve and you'll be able to shoot something with it at least once.

Attacking Tactica:
When you come from reserve and move on the table you should pick a target and fire all your Burna Rokkits at it so you might get some points back for all those points you invested. There's a big chance that your opponent will make your bommer a target priority if he has seen the effect of the burna rokkits and you still have some left to fire in the next turn.
The Burna Bombs require quite a bit of planning, luck and skill so if you successfully manage to drop 1 on the enemy you should call yourself a true master of the skies! the problem is that you have to fly over a unit with a 12" move, A good player will see this coming and will make sure you can't get over in your turn or makes you end your move in terrain so that you have to take a terrain test.

Target tactica:
When you Burna-Bommer is on the battlefield you must try to fly over something as soon as possible but that's unlikely to happen in the first turn it's on the table so try to fire off all your Burna Rokkits so you at least get some hits.No use in going for (light) armoured vehicles so focus on infantry. Preferably Units that are in cover because the burna rokkits ignore cover and your other units can fire at or assault  units that might not be in cover.

Defensive Tactica:
Like all the other Ork Planes and in true ork Spirit the Burna Bommer is really meant to be used.You better make sure you get some points back for it because it probably won't last until the end of the game but if it does you can make use of the Skimmer rule and contest an objective. The only way to protect it is target saturation. You should have a lot of things on the board and make your opponent choose what he's going to shoot. If you keep moving at least 12" all the time your opponent might have some difficulty hitting you and opt to shoot at something else instead but if he does manage to shoot it at least your mob of greenskins is one turn closer to the enemy and getting closer to assault range. The Burna-Bommer is so expensive that you want to fire with it at least once so you better know what range your opponents weapons have and stay well clear of them only to move in when you are sure your own weapons can hurt him.

The verdict:
This is a pure anti-infantry plane and it will be hard to keep your plane in the air long enough to be able to drop the Burna Bombs and your opponent can see it coming and anticipate on it. A good player will spread out his forces so you can not fly over them with your 12" move or he will move so you'll have to take a difficult or dangerous terrain test when your skimmer ends it's move in terrain. The Burna Rokkits will be more effective because you can fire them from a distance but they are pretty pricey. We'll have to see what rule changes of 6th edition will benefit this plane but in my opinion it's to fragile and expensive and the Orks have other options that are cheaper and more reliable.

Cheers,
Seb

Ork Bommer Project WIP 4

For those of you that haven't been following my blog and just started following since I started on the Ork Flyer the following pictures might come as a bit of a shock. For those of you that have seen my other Ork stuff like my battlewagon it might not be so surprising that I have managed to turn the bright yellow plane in an old rusty piece of scrap.

I like my Orks to look like the never really do any upkeep or maintenance on their vehicles. So why should a plane be any different then? I did loads of sponging and weathering with washes and the top of the plane is now nearly finished. I still need to do some details and paint on some oil leaks and stuff but The only thing that really needs to be done is the underside and tail. When those are done I will do the bombs and I have to think of what to do with the base. Any ideas are welcome...

See you next update...

Cheers,
Seb

Ork Dakkajet Tactica

Image by Black Library

This Month it's all about the new Ork Flyer kit and here's my view on how to use each of these new flyers. I'll start off with my personal favourite, the Ork Dakkajet. We all still have to play test the new flyers but we can already look at their strengths and weaknesses.


The Dakkajet:
This plane is my personal favourite out of the Ork flyer range and that's because I think it will work the best on the battlefield. This because you can fire all of your weapons all of the time and and you have more chance of hitting something and to top it off it is also the cheapest plane of the three.

Basics:
Unfortunately you can only take 1 plane per fast attack slot so that means you could have 3 planes max. This is ok but I hoped you could take them as squadrons of three leaving you with 2 more fast attack slots. Further more it is a Skimmer and it's Fast and follows those universal rules but there's nothing wrong with that for now but we'll probably see some major changes for flyers when 6th edition hits the shelves.

Special rules:
The dakkajet has a few nifty special rules.
Aerial Assault: When you move at cruising speed(12") you can still fire all of your weapons.
Supersonic: You can boost about on the battlefield moving a whopping 36" to get in or out of action.
Strafing Run: When you target artillery, infantry, monstrous creatures beast, bikes, cavalry or vehicles without the skimmer rule you add +1 to your BS and all your shots have the pinning effect.
Fighta Ace: to complement the Strafing Run you can take this special rule for only 10 points which gives you a BS of 3 against jetbikes and vehicles with the skimmer rule. In my opinion you want to take this because you will be able to shoot at everything regardless of what kind of enemy you are facing.
Waaagh!plane: this is the last special rule and it can be a devastating one because you can now fire all your weapons twice on the turn your Waaagh1 is called. For example, a Dakkajet with 3 TL Supa Shoota's that's 18 TL shots probably at BS3.

Weapons and options:
The Dakkajet comes with 2 TL Supa Shoota's as standard. The Supa Shoota has a range of 30" Strength 6 and AP4 and is an assault 3 weapon.For a mere 10 points you can take 1 extra TL Supa Shoota and I think you'll always have to take that. The Dakkajet is quite fragile so you might only get 1 or 2 rounds of shooting so you want to make sure you do as much damage as possible. You also have some firepower left in case you get a weapon destroyed result against you.
For 5 points you can get the Red paint job that will make it fasta! you can move an extra inch on your movement which could be use full to dodge shots at your plane but I still have to see if it is necessary.
And last you can take the Fighta Ace upgrade which I already mentioned above in the Special rules.

Deployment Tactica:
I think you'll always want your Dakkajet to come from reserves. You don't want your opponent shooting at it if he goes first or steals the initiative and also normally you won't be able to maximise it's firepower first round by calling a Waaagh!. You can still get a Waaagh! first round if you take a weirdboy and use it's psychic powers, hell I'll even go as far as saying we'll be seeing more weirdboys from now on or even Warpheads. ( a warphead is a weirdboy that can re-roll the psychic power result)With weirdboys or warpheads you'd be able to Waaagh! every turn in the game, how cool would that be if you had three Dakkajets flying about...but anyway.
The Dakkajet only has an Armour Value of 10 so there's a lot of guns out there able to glance it or even penetrate it's fragile armour.A plane is very hard to hide so you won't get a cover save and since you don't want your new toy to go down in a raging ball of fire in the first round you keep it in reserve and you'll be able to shoot something with it at least once. Of course you can get a cover save if you have a Big Mek with a Kustom Forcefield nearby but you don't want your plane to circle 6" around you Mek and forfeit it's manoeuvrability. When you come from reserve and move on the table you can move 12"and still fire all your weapons which have a 30" range so you could target enemies that are 42" from your table edge, that's nearly your opponents table edge depending on mission rules.

Attacking Tactica:
Like I already mentioned I think you should max out on firepower and take the exUnfortunately your opponent still gets a cover save(if he's in cover) but that's still pretty good for an Ork. You can also try and take out those pesky bike squadrons, (dark)eldar jetbikes that would normally run circles around your boys. Even light armoured vehicles are a valid target because ST6 is not bad at all and with that amount of shot's you're bound to roll some sixes.

Defensive Tactica:
The Dakkajet is really meant to be used aggressively like most of the Ork units. You better make sure you get some points back for it because it probably won't last until the end of the game but if it does you can make use of the Skimmer rule and contest an objective. The only way to protect it is target saturation. You should have a lot of things on the board and make your opponent choose what he's going to shoot. If you keep moving at least 12" all the time your opponent might have some difficulty hitting you and opt to shoot at something else instead but if he does manage to shoot it at least your mob of greenskins is one turn closer to the enemy and getting closer to assault range. Between 110 and 135 points the Jet is expendable but you want to get at least one round of shooting out of it.tra Supa Shoota. Pick a juicy target and call a Waaagh! when you fire 18 TL ST6 AP4 shots (re-rolling to hit!!!) at BS3 you can do some real damage. Mathhammer says you should hit about 14 shots and probably wound at least half of those. Target tactica:
Ok, so your jet is on the board and it's time to pick a target. What to shoot at and what not? Well the Dakkajet is designed to shoot at other flyers so whilst your other units might have trouble shooting something from the sky the Dakkajet has both the range and firepower to do so. On the other hand if you see a unit of infantry in open ground it might be hard to resist not going for it but if there's no flyer or unit in the open I'd look for some units in the back of your enemy's army that are giving long range fire support like sniper scouts, devastators, lootas etc. Since you know your plane will probably go down you want to take at least one unit with you especially if you're playing kill points.

The verdict:
It will be a fun new unit to use and it broadens the variety of anti infantry and skimmer units in the Orks range but there are already some good unit's like Lootas who can do that. It would be better if at least one of the three planes was a specialised anti tank plane, I guess it wasn't meant to be so keep on struggling with those powerklaws.

Image from Deff squadron Black Library

Cheers,
Seb

Ork Bommer Project WIP 3

I made some progress again. I finished the grot gunner but I still have to do it's guns. He's a characterful little fella. This is why I love Orks!

I painted in a lot of details as well and added some decals. Normally I'm not a big fan of decals but these are too nice to ignore. I couldn't get that checkered pattern on the wings myself. With the help of some Micro sol the decals go on smooth as silk.

The bad moon flames are harder to paint then it looks. I'm quite happy with them now but need some touch ups. I'm not sure if the flames should run along the whole length of the wing or if I should leave them like this. The wing mounted Supa Shoota's are a bit in the way.

I Also painted the nose art freehand. and I'm pleased how it turned out. It now looks like a proppa winged beast.

Last thing I did was to magnetise the rear window of the pilot. It's canopy is made from a front shield and a back bit. I magnetised the back bit so he can open it up when flying hot missions... no, seriously I want to be able to open it so you can have a better look in the cockpit if you want. It works well and was little effort.You can see the little hole behind the pilot.

So hopefully tomorrow I can do the last details and some minor freehand stuff and then it's up to the fun part of this project where I will take this bright shiny and new plane through the washes, pigments and other weathering techniques to make it look old and used.

Cheers,
Seb

Ork Bommer Project WIP 2

Hi, I just wanted to give you a quick update of the progress I made today.

Cockpit Close up

I prepared my airbrush and sprayed the plane with a 50-50 mix of Lyanden and Golden yellow(sorry I don't do new paints yet). After that I took some chaos black and painted over all the bits that will be metal. I tested the drybrushing of boltgun metal over the black exhaust pipes but they will need a wash and a touch up before they are done.

I also had some fun and painted the pilot and the cockpit. It's slots in and out really nice so it was easy to paint. I did the same with the grot gunner but he's only 50% done and will needs some layers and highlighting before he's done.

Here's some pics of the progress I made today:

Cheers,

Seb

Ork Bommer Project WIP 1

Ork Bommers

Today I got the new Ork Bommer kit. Actually it isn't just a bommer but a Dakkajet, Burna Bommer and Blitza Bommer in one box but unless you've been living under a rock you will probably know all this.

Since this is a brand new model I thought it would be nice to keep track of my progress. It's hard to say how long it will take to finish this model so just sit back and relax. Lately I've been slacking on my blogging so this will also be a nice project to get my blog going again. I have got a lot of things done that haven't yet made it to the blog so I'll play a bit of catch up in between posts of my Bommer Project.

So on with the good stuff. The kit comes in a nice big box. (don't you just love the smell of fresh models when you open the box??) It contains three grey sprues that have everything on it to assemble 1 of the three models. It also has the flyer stand, clear plastic sprue for the pilot canopy, some decals and of course the instruction manual.

Magnetized bombs

My challenge will be to make a model that can feature as all three of the different bommers. I will be using tiny magnets to attach the little rockets and bombs. The assembly was easy but getting those tiny magnets in the right place was a bit of a pain. You can glue all the bombs, rockets and guns on the plane because with some minor adjustments there is enough room for them. However I like to be able to field the plane like it should be and if I fire some rockets that I can take them off the plane and don't have to remember how many I already fired.

After about three hours I had the model like I want it. everything magnetised and I even took out a pen and sketched some freehand on it to see if it would fit and how it would look. As you can see I'm going with flames on the wings. I will paint the main body yellow to go with the rest of my army so the black flame pattern fits in well. On the nose I want to paint a sort of shark mouth like you see on Bell hue helicopters and warthog plane. I had to remove two of the 'Teeth' that were on the front end otherwise it wouldn't fit or look right.

So this basically is what it looks like when I had put it all together and loaded up all the bombs and rockets. All ready for priming. Of course the canopy isn't glued on yet and I I haven't glued the pilot or Grot gunner yet so It will be easier to paint those individually.

Today was beautiful priming weather so I got some of mt Tamiya surface primer and got the job done. The reason I chose the light grey primer is because it works nicely and gives me a better undercoat for yellow paint.

I'm all fired up and ready to go so will you follow me and this project?If you have any questions or suggestions please drop them in the comment section below.

Cheers,
Seb