How to kill an Ork Warboss?

[Shado]

I was playing Gladius with some friends last night, and I went random and got Orks.
One friend was playing Space Marines, the other Necrons.
I went for a Warboss fairly quickly, and prioritized kitting him out with the good stuff (blade of lazarek, dawn blade, etc.) despite tanking my WAAAGH.
I also got a Painboy pretty much immediately afterwards as well, probably by like turn 50-60ish?
Basically, I slaughtered the SMs on turn 76, and then pushed into the Necron territory and sat near their cities for awhile (he had, like, a lot of Doomsday Arks. I personally think he could have won, but he chose to surrender the game on turn 95-ish). By this point my Warboss was level 7 with everything but the "Bust Heads" ability, and was fully kitted out with the melee items, Zoat Hide, and the armor weave thing. The lowest he ever got was 1/2 HP, and that was from facetanking like 4 Doomsday Arks and 1 or 2 Predator tanks when I was faced SM.
The Doomsday Arks were dealing like 4 (if that) damage to him, but he could pretty much one or two shot them.
Is there anything that SM or Necrons could have done to counter this? Would Destroyers have worked, as an Anti-Armor unit?

[Grotzel]

Naah ... if they are big and green and strong enough, you don't kill da boss, da boss kills you!

But seriously, I can think of many ways (actually, I don't have to, I just have to remember what happened to my bosses) ... super units like Monoloths and Obelisks can do a good deal of damage to Warbosses and won't get killed immediately. Fliers are pretty decent, too - Warbosses aren't known for their ranged damage.
But really, you could also theoretically block or swamp them with infantry, while you pummel them with barges - or get C'tans or - more risky - your own heroes to surround them/ sweep in for the killing blow. If the Warboss is alone, that should definitely be possible. If he is not, you might be able to get his morale down first by killing more vulnerable targets. Warbosses are great, but they are not actually invulnerable.

On the other hand, you clearly can't win against them - cause Orks are green and best and only lose so they can win anotha day. :)

[Jey]

Originally posted by Shado_Zoles:

I went for a Warboss fairly quickly, and prioritized kitting him out with the good stuff (blade of lazarek, dawn blade, etc.)

That'd a bad choice.
The first step gear is :
- Adamantium Weave Vest
- Armaplast Bracers
- Concealed Weapon System.

And note that those three are always as such for any fighting hero.

Then you can go for Lazaerek/Dusk Blade/Axe of Blind Fury depending on what you need.
The big boss already deals plenty of damage, the first thing he needs is survival.

"But I won, so ", yeah because your friends suck.

I also got a Painboy pretty much immediately afterwards as well, probably by like turn 50-60ish?

Super late.
Assuming standard speed, You would usually get the Warboss before turn 30, before turn 20 if you're rushing it.
That means a solid 20 turns of a building doing nothing, when it could have produced a Painboy, sent to the front to gain XP, reduce upkeep, heal, whatever.

So either you indeed had a hero building sitting on its hands doing nothing for 20+ turns, or you made your warboss extremely late. (Or you play a lower speed setting, I guess).
In any case, that sounds bad.

The lowest he ever got was 1/2 HP, and that was from facetanking like 4 Doomsday Arks and 1 or 2 Predator tanks when I was faced SM.

You didn't tank 4 Doomsday Ark.
"Yes I did!"
No. They have two weapons, one range 3 (if not moved) and one range 2 (if not moved).
The main weapon isn't that great, the big thing is the gauss array which hits as hard as two necron warrior squad benefitting from rapide fire (so basically 16 damage ignoring armor to anything above 24 HP. Yeah that hurts a lot.)
If both weapons had fired, the Warboss would be dead as it would have dealt 48 (4 per main cannon and 8 per gauss array)) damage, which is plenty more than the Warboss HP.

"Actually"
You then forgot to say that they didn't have morale.

Point is, the warboss is not as tanky as you think it is. While it deals high amount of damage and is easy to gear, it falls pretty easily.

Is there anything that SM or Necrons could have done to counter this? Would Destroyers have worked, as an Anti-Armor unit?

Before even going into army composition, I would very much like to go into build order

The timing you provide gives a lot of insight.
You killed the SM turn 76.

Let's say you started fighting 15 turns before.
It means you started fighting turn 60.

I assume you went for a small or medium map, nothing bigger.

That is way way too slow.
In comparison normal fights start happening roughly at turn 35, giving a bit of leeway for bad start or whatever, you should have found one of your enemy turn 40 at the latest.

But. You. Didn't.
This means that both the SM and you were slow at clearing neutrals.
The SM being slow is whatever, but YOU as an ork need to be clearing neutrals.
So you were slow, which means less influence and ore. Which means your build was weak.

(Also you took 20 turns from killing SM to surrounding Necrons?! Did they not clean anything? Because if there were no neutrals, your waagh must have tanked so hard. Or... You had very little army.)

And you won a 1v2? Then it means necrons and SM are terrible at the game.
It's not a matter of choosing the wrong units. The whole build order needs to be revised.


So as a SM, you usually want to go vehicles because there are snipers ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ where, and your infantry will get slaughtered.
So you go something like book-armory-req-armory-req-pop-energy-req-armory.
And you put your fortress of redemption on requisition outposts (Grox Pasture and Ore Field), or in last resort on Shards of Vaul to get 10% req/10% energy.
If you have full req, you can switch armories to make them earlier.
If you have low req, you can make armories a bit later and more importantly you will change the units you make.

In a full req build you make Razorbacks (or bikers if you don't have the DLC) -> Predators.
Then depending on what you face you may want to add some Dreadnoughts and Vindicators.
Dreadnoughts are good at killing frontline heroes or melee units, Vindicators are good at killing medium-sized group of infantry (3-5 models) especially if they rely on ranged damage reduction.
Predators are your main stay because:
- They are relatively early
- They have range 3
- If you reach T8 and tech the heavy bolters they are basically the most cost efficient unit.
- They are good at killing vehicles and cities (and did I mention the range 3 putting them out of retaliation from most some cities?)

In a req/energy build you make Land Speeders.
Land Speeders are overall a bit worse (less tanky, can lose one model, range 2), but they are mobile and the Multi Melta are a T7 tech which allow them to get a second wind earlier than Predators.
And honestly it's not like you have the choice if you have low req. Duh.

Now you get your basic army to explore and you find Orks and OH NO THEY HAVE A WARBOSS.
What do you do?
Predators/Dreadnought.

Predators are not super efficient against warboss, but they can probably still chip like 3 HP at range 3, which is great and rather dissuasive (You don't always want to push in the enemy like an idiot, sometimes waiting for them to come up to your big cannons work juuuuuust fine).
Dreadnoughts, if hidden a bit can surprise a Warboss and obliterate it, especially with Hammer of Wrath. I don't have the numbers of the top of my head, but I'd wager a solid 8 damage per Dreadnought. With 2 that's already half HP of the warboss that go away.


As for Necrons.
Your build is:
- Book-energy-summoning core-probably more energy or maybe some ore-then more production buildings
With your second and third city destined to produce ore and energy.

When you can make the Canoptek Spyder, your summoning Core must not have anything else in queue, you click on the spyder and you accelerate it immediately. You don't have time to wait, you need the spyder as fast as possible.
Then off she goes and build your city and whats not.

Ok, you went for a decent build and OH NO THERE'S A WARBOSS.
As a Necron almost all your units can wreck a warboss.

You have Deathmarks at T2, you have HD at T4, you have Praetorians at T6 if somehow you made it to T6 before meeting the Warboss. You can also go T5 with Canoptek Wraiths, since they're so fast and can absolutely surround a Warboss.
You went vehicles?

Tomb Blades can act as sacrificial units to kill the warboss (or the units around. They're good at a lot of things, and ONE warboss can't kill all the tomb blades).
Annihilation Barge (T3) are a very good vehicle that can also kill the warboss or anything around and most importantly can do so from range 2 (which tomb blades dont excel at, they're more of a range 1 unit). And you know what? They might be OHKO by a Warboss, but they're not by most other units (as opposed to Tomb Blades :'()
Not many tiles to attack from? You can make one or two Triarch Stalker which in addition to having a Melta also give +2 accuracy to all your troops hitting what they hit before, so more damage to the Warboss if somehow spamming annihilation barge doesn't work (it always works, you never need Stalker).

Grotzel went on to advise high tier units, but you won't have them if anyone plays decently in the game.
So don't go for that, it's bad advice.

Also please keep in mind that Doomsday Ark are defensive units. 4 Arks failing to kill a Warboss means that somewhere someone thoroughly messed up their placement.
You don't move agressively with Arks, which is why Barges are much easier on the new players because THEY can very much move agressively.


Again, I would like to reiterate:
The problem is not the Warboss, the problem is not the unit choice, the problem is much deeper than that.

[Grotzel]

Originally posted by Jey:

Grotzel went on to advise high tier units, but you won't have them if anyone plays decently in the game.
So don't go for that, it's bad advice.

Also please keep in mind that Doomsday Ark are defensive units. 4 Arks failing to kill a Warboss means that somewhere someone thoroughly messed up their placement.
You don't move agressively with Arks, which is why Barges are much easier on the new players because THEY can very much move agressively.

Super Units were just an example as there are indeed tons of Necron units that can kill warbosses. I didn't go into details ... and yes. at least some of the Doomsday Arks must have moved for the Warboss to survive such an apocalyptic barrage, even if he was in cover.

You do realize that you don't have to tell every player with a problem 'you suck and your friends suck' even if you consider this to be honest and helpful advice? I get your point, but I'd like to add that your 'build this then that then that if you want to be a decent player' advice can suck ... all the fun out of the game. (<= horrible joke, kind of serious point, though)

[Shado]

Originally posted by Grotzel:

Naah ... if they are big and green and strong enough, you don't kill da boss, da boss kills you!

But seriously, I can think of many ways (actually, I don't have to, I just have to remember what happened to my bosses) ... super units like Monoloths and Obelisks can do a good deal of damage to Warbosses and won't get killed immediately. Fliers are pretty decent, too - Warbosses aren't known for their ranged damage.
But really, you could also theoretically block or swamp them with infantry, while you pummel them with barges - or get C'tans or - more risky - your own heroes to surround them/ sweep in for the killing blow. If the Warboss is alone, that should definitely be possible. If he is not, you might be able to get his morale down first by killing more vulnerable targets. Warbosses are great, but they are not actually invulnerable.

On the other hand, you clearly can't win against them - cause Orks are green and best and only lose so they can win anotha day. :)

Thank you!

That's a good point about the fliers, though it might not have worked with the amount of Tankbustas I was spamming.

The Warboss would chew through any infantry, especially with the Painboy keeping him topped up, and anything that wasn't infantry got disappeared by a bunch of Tankbustas. He was whittling away at me though, and I do think he could have won, but his economy was tanked, one of his cities was gone, and I was about to flank his capital with even more Tankbustas, and I guess that was enough to break his morale and he quit (he did that when I was beating him with Space Marines too... hm).

Originally posted by Jey:

Originally posted by Shado_Zoles:

I went for a Warboss fairly quickly, and prioritized kitting him out with the good stuff (blade of lazarek, dawn blade, etc.)

That'd a bad choice.
The first step gear is :
- Adamantium Weave Vest
- Armaplast Bracers
- Concealed Weapon System.

And note that those three are always as such for any fighting hero.

Then you can go for Lazaerek/Dusk Blade/Axe of Blind Fury depending on what you need.
The big boss already deals plenty of damage, the first thing he needs is survival.

"But I won, so ", yeah because your friends suck.

I also got a Painboy pretty much immediately afterwards as well, probably by like turn 50-60ish?

Super late.
Assuming standard speed, You would usually get the Warboss before turn 30, before turn 20 if you're rushing it.
That means a solid 20 turns of a building doing nothing, when it could have produced a Painboy, sent to the front to gain XP, reduce upkeep, heal, whatever.

So either you indeed had a hero building sitting on its hands doing nothing for 20+ turns, or you made your warboss extremely late. (Or you play a lower speed setting, I guess).
In any case, that sounds bad.

The lowest he ever got was 1/2 HP, and that was from facetanking like 4 Doomsday Arks and 1 or 2 Predator tanks when I was faced SM.

You didn't tank 4 Doomsday Ark.
"Yes I did!"
No. They have two weapons, one range 3 (if not moved) and one range 2 (if not moved).
The main weapon isn't that great, the big thing is the gauss array which hits as hard as two necron warrior squad benefitting from rapide fire (so basically 16 damage ignoring armor to anything above 24 HP. Yeah that hurts a lot.)
If both weapons had fired, the Warboss would be dead as it would have dealt 48 (4 per main cannon and 8 per gauss array)) damage, which is plenty more than the Warboss HP.

"Actually"
You then forgot to say that they didn't have morale.

Point is, the warboss is not as tanky as you think it is. While it deals high amount of damage and is easy to gear, it falls pretty easily.

Is there anything that SM or Necrons could have done to counter this? Would Destroyers have worked, as an Anti-Armor unit?

Before even going into army composition, I would very much like to go into build order

The timing you provide gives a lot of insight.
You killed the SM turn 76.

Let's say you started fighting 15 turns before.
It means you started fighting turn 60.

I assume you went for a small or medium map, nothing bigger.

That is way way too slow.
In comparison normal fights start happening roughly at turn 35, giving a bit of leeway for bad start or whatever, you should have found one of your enemy turn 40 at the latest.

But. You. Didn't.
This means that both the SM and you were slow at clearing neutrals.
The SM being slow is whatever, but YOU as an ork need to be clearing neutrals.
So you were slow, which means less influence and ore. Which means your build was weak.

(Also you took 20 turns from killing SM to surrounding Necrons?! Did they not clean anything? Because if there were no neutrals, your waagh must have tanked so hard. Or... You had very little army.)

And you won a 1v2? Then it means necrons and SM are terrible at the game.
It's not a matter of choosing the wrong units. The whole build order needs to be revised.


So as a SM, you usually want to go vehicles because there are snipers ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ where, and your infantry will get slaughtered.
So you go something like book-armory-req-armory-req-pop-energy-req-armory.
And you put your fortress of redemption on requisition outposts (Grox Pasture and Ore Field), or in last resort on Shards of Vaul to get 10% req/10% energy.
If you have full req, you can switch armories to make them earlier.
If you have low req, you can make armories a bit later and more importantly you will change the units you make.

In a full req build you make Razorbacks (or bikers if you don't have the DLC) -> Predators.
Then depending on what you face you may want to add some Dreadnoughts and Vindicators.
Dreadnoughts are good at killing frontline heroes or melee units, Vindicators are good at killing medium-sized group of infantry (3-5 models) especially if they rely on ranged damage reduction.
Predators are your main stay because:
- They are relatively early
- They have range 3
- If you reach T8 and tech the heavy bolters they are basically the most cost efficient unit.
- They are good at killing vehicles and cities (and did I mention the range 3 putting them out of retaliation from most some cities?)

In a req/energy build you make Land Speeders.
Land Speeders are overall a bit worse (less tanky, can lose one model, range 2), but they are mobile and the Multi Melta are a T7 tech which allow them to get a second wind earlier than Predators.
And honestly it's not like you have the choice if you have low req. Duh.

Now you get your basic army to explore and you find Orks and OH NO THEY HAVE A WARBOSS.
What do you do?
Predators/Dreadnought.

Predators are not super efficient against warboss, but they can probably still chip like 3 HP at range 3, which is great and rather dissuasive (You don't always want to push in the enemy like an idiot, sometimes waiting for them to come up to your big cannons work juuuuuust fine).
Dreadnoughts, if hidden a bit can surprise a Warboss and obliterate it, especially with Hammer of Wrath. I don't have the numbers of the top of my head, but I'd wager a solid 8 damage per Dreadnought. With 2 that's already half HP of the warboss that go away.


As for Necrons.
Your build is:
- Book-energy-summoning core-probably more energy or maybe some ore-then more production buildings
With your second and third city destined to produce ore and energy.

When you can make the Canoptek Spyder, your summoning Core must not have anything else in queue, you click on the spyder and you accelerate it immediately. You don't have time to wait, you need the spyder as fast as possible.
Then off she goes and build your city and whats not.

Ok, you went for a decent build and OH NO THERE'S A WARBOSS.
As a Necron almost all your units can wreck a warboss.

You have Deathmarks at T2, you have HD at T4, you have Praetorians at T6 if somehow you made it to T6 before meeting the Warboss. You can also go T5 with Canoptek Wraiths, since they're so fast and can absolutely surround a Warboss.
You went vehicles?

Tomb Blades can act as sacrificial units to kill the warboss (or the units around. They're good at a lot of things, and ONE warboss can't kill all the tomb blades).
Annihilation Barge (T3) are a very good vehicle that can also kill the warboss or anything around and most importantly can do so from range 2 (which tomb blades dont excel at, they're more of a range 1 unit). And you know what? They might be OHKO by a Warboss, but they're not by most other units (as opposed to Tomb Blades :'()
Not many tiles to attack from? You can make one or two Triarch Stalker which in addition to having a Melta also give +2 accuracy to all your troops hitting what they hit before, so more damage to the Warboss if somehow spamming annihilation barge doesn't work (it always works, you never need Stalker).

Grotzel went on to advise high tier units, but you won't have them if anyone plays decently in the game.
So don't go for that, it's bad advice.

Also please keep in mind that Doomsday Ark are defensive units. 4 Arks failing to kill a Warboss means that somewhere someone thoroughly messed up their placement.
You don't move agressively with Arks, which is why Barges are much easier on the new players because THEY can very much move agressively.


Again, I would like to reiterate:
The problem is not the Warboss, the problem is not the unit choice, the problem is much deeper than that.

Thank you!

For reference, all we've got for Unit Packs rn is Reinforcements and Fortifications.

So aside from the build-order stuff, that's Vindicators and Dreadnoughts for SM, and Annihilation Barges+Tomb Blades for Necrons (I think he already knows that though). I was surprised I didn't see him build any Annihilation Barges this game, those are usually the bane of my existence. He had a couple Tomb Blades, but those got shot down by my Tankbustas, which I had been spamming since I found out the SM had Predators.

It wasn't so much a 1v2 as it was a 1v1, and then another 1v1.

Again, I also maintain that he could have won, cause my high-level units around my warboss had been whittled down (I kept everything carefully hidden behind a treeline, though, I guess maybe he thought I had more there than I did) and my big plan was going to be rushing my massive blob of fresh Tankbustas at his capital that was filled with Doomsday Arks.

But oh well.

Thank you again! I'll see about picking up the pack with Deathmarks here soon- they were a great enemy in Mechanicus and I'd love to see how they work here.