Dawn of War Codex

Something That has always bothered me when playing orks is how expensive their nobs are for each of their infantry squads.

Not only are they among the most power heavy infantry leaders in the game but they are also the most population heavy with many of them lacking the leader dies last mechanic.

Now i know that orks are in a pretty good spot (certain opinions of certain units that i hold not with standing).

But I am curious, can someone more informed on this matter give me some good pointers on why the nobs for they sluggas boys , shoota boys and kommandos are uncharacteristically pop heavy / power heavy when other races have leaders which cost less pop or less resources?


It always struck me as wonky that the orks (a race that is supposed to somewhat zergy in unit count in lore at-least) have these weirdly high pop cost to unit ratios.

Die last leaders are reserved for IG and later implemented on detectors.
It's very normal that they don't have that mechanic, The otehr races suffer the same fate.

25 power for a leader upgrade is nothing out of the ordinary.
Just look at all the benefits their squad leaders give them.

Nob leader for Sluggaz because it increases their health, gives ability to decrease incoming ranged damage so a less bleeding charge every time you use it. Also, great amounts of power melee, specially deadly with burnaz against heavy infantry squads like Tactical Marines. And if you are expecting a play with Sluggaz, burnaz are a go to upgrade.

Nob leader for Shootaz because it detects infiltrated units, increases ranged damage of all shootas in his squad and very nice ranged dps from his shoota eather. Specially effective if you have 2 full upgraded shootaz around as long as you keep them away from harm. Also, only nob leader that dies last. Not avaible for Sluggaz or Kommandoz.

Nob leader for Kommandoz because it increases the survivalyty of your squad. Also, rokkit launcher. Mostly the reason to go for it.

but you can argue that those other races mentioned also get side perks to their leader as well. most leaders of most squads can make the claim that they increase squad durability by simply adding a higher hp model into the mix, id hardly call that special. And most leaders of other units come with their own particular set of abilities or perks.

too be fair i do understand the power cost as a method to gate when you get detectors out and to an extent the other abilities on the other nobs. So lets drop the power cost of the question and strictly focus instead on the population cost.

why are nobs 5 - 6 pop when most other leaders in most other races are much less pop in comparison?
It is not like the leaders of other races are somehow deprived of abilities to level the field and the durability of the nobs themselves is often inline or less than these less pop heavy upgrades .

again i always viewed orks as a swarmy race , yet they lose out to eldar of all races in terms of pop efficiency. in an accumulated game the difference in pop efficiency can be upwards of 8 - 12 or an entire squads worth.


This has only gotten more noticeable with the recent changes to races like eldar and ig (one which gets their leaders earlier and one that gets a massive pop reduction)

It leads to very odd pop combinations and waste pop space (because the ork leaders and some ork squads take up pop in ways that is difficult to min max) 17 pop infantry squads , 15 pop infantry squads 18 pop base heavy infantry squads 21 pop kommandos . it feels strange especially when coming off playing a race like eldar or ig where the squads cost less pop.

I think it is mostly to prevent a spam. IG GM sergant and commisar are not as effective as ork nobz so 3 pop is cool. Actually they have 1 pop but nevermind. If you compare with Eldar, for example lets take Banshees, they have 18 pop with exarch but Sluggaz have 17. Pretty much close to each other. And even their upkeep is higher which is not something you want to see with a big infantry army.

Pretty much no squad leader gives that much benefit to his squad as much as nobz. I mean buying a Sergant for Tacticals is situatinal, buying leaders for GM is for less req to reinforce, I mean there are max 2 reasons to buy a swuad leader for all factions exept Orks. Nobs are making you swuad just supper-killy! Maybe a full upgrade Shoota can loose a fight against a Tac squad but Tacs are already good, Shootaz are not. Nob leader is just carrying them.

I consider nobz (slugga boyz and stormboyz leaders) very strong (especially that slugga boyz' leader) so I am more than fine with their current costs/population/whatever else that has nothing to do with their performance.

Nobz add a ton of durability and damage to their respective squad. Just checked the codex and the Nob leaders for Sluggas/shootas, they have more damage output and health of 2 sluggas/shootas AND give the swamp'em/detection. Almost seems like a steal considering those huge health pools make them die last in 95%(Made up number alert) of situations not including Lictors.

Their cost is nothing out of the ordinary as long as you don't compare them to eldar squad leaders, who've always been lulzy cheap for reasons unknown.

well even ig upgrades are kind of inline with the nobs in certain situations.

take the commissar upgrade , he basically adds another 340 hp to the squad . i think his pierce damage is 15.4 and he ads an additional 8 from the two guard bros he brings with. more or less comparable to the shoota nob but costs only 3 pop . you can argue he is a t2 upgrade i suppose , but the shoota nob has that 15% t2 buff thing too.

not sure if it is really comparable.

cat leaders are 2 pop and the crap they add ..( well the demo expert anyway) is a game changer when used right (the t2 cat leader kinda sucks imo)


and the other races with leaders are often leaders of heavy infantry squads which have model pop reqs of 5 pop anyway and heavy infantry.

So i don't quite think it is reasonable to say that eldar is somehow the only race with better leader pop cap efficiency than orks...


I guess i can accept that ork nobs as leaders are better in some situations. They are most certainly more geared towards offense than other squad leaders ... but at the cost of defense in most cases so again is that worth the extra pop distinction. I am kind of still leaning on the side of no. but i wont say i am definitively in that camp

except the slugga nob , because he actually is pretty nuts

Okay, so let's examine the 3 nobz on Sluggas, Shootas and Kommandos:

You already acknowledge that Slugga nob is pretty insane. And I'm sure many would agree. No buffs needed there, unless you disagree.

Shootas: the leader is pretty good, although maybe not as good as the Slugga nob. First and foremost it's a die-last detector, and many detector leaders have always cost about 25 power, or a detector squad around 30ish power. This is to preserve the power and cost-efficiency of infiltration upgrades (if the counter is too cheap it won't see any play). This is the same reasoning as the fact that Relic had always made jump troops more power heavy than suppression teams. Most of them were 40-50 power for jump troops in retail vs 30 power for suppression teams. Even back in the old days of pre-TioW (i.e. 1.3.2 and before) they had ASM at 25 power and suppression teams cost 0 power and could be built out of the gate (lol). However, these detector leaders did not have the die-last mechanic which made Lictor Alpha insanely good at his supposed counters: the game has now been changed to protect that heavy power investment.

So let's examine what else the Shoota nob gives: it gives much better staying power, due to more efficient damage spread, and the Nob's superior health. That superior staying power translates into more won fights, in conjunction with his already decent dps output, but the most important factor is his synergy with Big Shootas: the fact that they are almost at full combat effectiveness at 3/6 with full upgrades makes the squad a dominant T1 presence and scales well into T2 (but perhaps not so well into T3). So all in all, I think that the Shoota Nob is reasonably priced.

Kommando Nob gives a decent model with decent durability, but I must confess that I am not a Ork expert. But I feel that it's a pretty decent leader when you have decent AV on a squad with infiltration, in addition to their native utility.

Well in terms of the shoota nobs, keep in mind that is 25 power on top of the 20 power for shootas.
the big shoot ais a pretty expensive upgrade when you think about it. extra range on two models and about 14 extra dps and the suppression at will for that 20 power. it is great dont get me wrong , but I think that strength is already paid for .... by that 45 power which makes them almost as expensive and just as pop heavy as a bunch of the jump units designed to effortlessly counter them.


i would like to clarify that the shootaboys when upgraded do crush players who don't invest as heavily in t1 as orks do. but when you upgrade 2 of them that gives that other player 90 power to play with, which can net them a large number of specialist units. this is actually why i brought up power in the first place. 90 is alot for 2 conventional ranged squads.


That being said if any other race actually decided to match that investment , oh god those poor boyz just get demolished , especially against imperial guard which get alot of hp on their guardsmen for pennies on the dollar in compassion and alot less pop.


I can accept the power cost , but why the pop inefficiency too?

(edit) oops on thek nob it is 5 , looks like i was looking at wrong numbers sry

saltychipmunk wrote:Well in terms of the shoota nobs, keep in mind that is 25 power on top of the 20 power for shootas.
the big shoot ais a pretty expensive upgrade when you think about it. extra range on two models and about 14 extra dps and the suppression at will for that 20 power. it is great dont get me wrong , but I think that strength is already paid for .... by that 45 power which makes them almost as expensive and just as pop heavy as a bunch of the jump units designed to effortlessly counter them.


i would like to clarify that the shootaboys when upgraded do crush players who don't invest as heavily in t1 as orks do. but when you upgrade 2 of them that gives that other player 90 power to play with, which can net them a large number of specialist units. this is actually why i brought up power in the first place. 90 is alot for 2 conventional ranged squads.


That being said if any other race actually decided to match that investment , oh god those poor boyz just get demolished , especially against imperial guard which get alot of hp on their guardsmen for pennies on the dollar in compassion and alot less pop.


I can accept the power cost , but why the pop inefficiency too?

the knob i am more annoyed that purchasing him puts the squad a 21 pop which sucks so much. 20 pop darn it , all i want is 20 pop his rocket is not exactly amazing , even if it is useful for killing light vehicles like say manticores . tankbusta replacement .. he is not. and the 5 boys in the squad can already do gen bashing with ease.

?

No1 is forcing you to buy big shootas on top of a nob. The actual dps boost difference with the 2 upgrades is minimal with full models and shootas with just the nob upgrade are a competent unit in T1. The way I see it is that big shootas are for AWD and nob is for detection/durability, and well getting both is for that shooty snowballing. When I go with the usual double shoota opening I usually get 1 big shoota and 1 nob in T1 for separate squads and see how the game unfolds, sometimes I fully upgrade one or both of them and sometimes I leave them like that.

Against IG it's usually better to just get 2 nobs for staying power and forgo the big shootas in T1 since AWD isn't going to be that useful.

I've probably had the least pop concern with orks out of all races so I've never even thought about the pop thing.

Knob leader is fairly useless ye, but I think it's mostly just because people tend to get kommandoes very late in the game and you usually need 2 of them to really put any pressure on vehicles apart from manticore or prism so he's rarely worth getting.

Interesting standpoint , i think i will test that out and see how it works