8th Ed. Preferred trap for Savage Orcs?

I'm due to play a buddy of mine who plays Orcs & Goblins. Greenskins have a lot of options available to them, but I can pretty much count on two things in this army: 2 units of Squig Hoppers, and 30-50 Savage Orc Big 'Uns. Doom Divers are also likely.

Now, the S.O.B.'s are a tough unit - the last time they faced my Saurus, they crushed them in one round of combat - I lost by something like 13 points. WS4, S5 in the first round, with 3 Attacks each (frenzy + extra hand weapon) - and that's without a character! But they're also frenzied, which means I can pull out my old-school redirecting tactics to force them to pursue a fleeing unit - ha! I get to draw them into pretty much whatever sneaky, Skinky trap I please.

So my question for you, my cold-blooded colleagues, is this: what would be your preferred (but reasonable) trap to draw a massive unit of Savage Orcs into? I'd like to hear what units you would use, and how you arrange the trap...Ancient Stegs, Temple Guard, Kroxigor, Ripperdactyls? Take the charge with an anvil unit, make them pursue into empty space, or just into a flimsy Skink cohort?

I'll likely be playing a 2k pts game, and his Squigs will be causing havoc among my Skinks - just a couple of things to remember.

Thank you in advance for your devious ideas!

 

I don't believe they have a lot of armor....
so maybe a trap filled with poison darts
and salamander fire ought to thin their ranks a bit.

 

Salamanders, 2 sallies from the flank will ruin his day.

And poison is always nice

 

Bastiladon into the flank.
He's got a great shot at surviving, and an ok shot at winning combat.
If the Bastiladon survives, the orcs have lost the +1 strength; if you actually win, he's lost frenzy.

S4 and without frenzy takes a lot of the edge off the Big Uns.

The Bastiladons boosts saurus to striking at the same time, and boosts Cold Ones and Temple Guard into Striking first.

-Matt

 

If possible charge him in the flank with a sallie or unit of skinks, or some terradons... being frenzied he has to overrun or pursue, thus setting him up for your counter charges. I have found good results with ancient stegs, TG and CoC, saurus characters with good defense and GW will hurt them too. combo charges ftw.

Shooting at them depends on his dice(saves) on the night. As he will probably have lucky shrunken head on a char in the unit making that ward save 5++.

Your troops should try to kill the shaman with shrunken head to make your life easier.

Mostly I can manage that block if I debuff them: miasma (extended), and iceshard blizzard.

Beware setting up your redirectors as a canny OnG general will make sure his fanatics and/or mangler squigs does not allow easy redirection of his expensive block.

 

Sometimes the best option is not to set a trap at all. Just lead the Savage Orcs away from the battle and concentrate on killing the rest of his army. A fully loaded horde of Savage Orc Big 'Uns with a Great Shaman is going to cost over 600 points. Even if you have to sacrifice a couple of hundred points of skinks to take the SOBUs out of the fight, it will give you a huge advantage against his remaining units.

Or you could lead them away for a couple of turns and then whittle them down with skinks/salamanders / razordons as they try to return to the fight. Then mop up whatever is left with anything fighty - a unit of 15-20 SOBUs is much less scary than 40.

This isn't always the right answer, but it can be effective in certain circumstances.

Also, salamanders can hurt them since they have no armor (but a 5++ or 6++ Ward Save), but Toughness 4, 25mm bases, and the fact they won't panic will somewhat limit salamander's effectiveness. You'll kill some, but you'll need something else to finish them off.

 

My friends your missing the best tactic ever....magic...I can't remember the spell but I took Shadow as my slanns lore, got off the spell which reduces target units strength by D3. As max this makes them S1, even S2 would be great. My temple guard took them down in 2 rounds. (50 of them vs 50 of me + Slann)

 

I played against a friend of mine who fields almost the exact same unit the other day, he also brings a pair of doom divers and a pair of spear chukkas, a wolf chariot, a couple of units of wolf riders, some night goblin archers and a big block of black orcs.

Against this i was fielding an all comers list I've been toying around with for fun, two slann (WD and FM), a heavens priest, 7 units of skink skirmishers, 5 terradons and 2 sallies.

Essentially I just rang rings around the big units and refused to let them get the charge in whilst using the slann to magic the savages to death. The skinks took care of the chaff and the terradons took care of the artillery. The sallies were also quite key in killing the savages, as said above they don't like flames to the flank.

 

Oldblood on Cold One.

Thats all you need.

Charge b2b his shaman. Don't declare any challenge, Your opponent if want his chaman to survive will do instead. You gladly accept.
In case there's no challenge you will only face 8 to 9 attacks. And Olblood could fairly survive.


Win the Challenge and next and further rounds Savage Orcs strike at S4. You can now charge with your units.

It's the same tactic I use against Dwarf hatred. Send someone who could survive the first round and hold. Send next turn the reinforcements.

 

Fiery Convocation. Let them burn! After a couple rounds of that there'll be 10 - 15 of them left. Shoot up the remainders with Salamanders and Skinks, or throw a combat unit at them to clean up.

Maybe toss a unit of Rippers into them to try to Killing Blow the Shaman.

Otherwise kite them around the board and just kill everything else.

The O&G guy that plays around here runs a big Savage block plus MSU. You'll never get a flank charge off on him because his units span the entire board. If you can get a flank charge, awesome. But I wouldn't bank on that as your main strategy.

 

Well done, young ones. You have mastered the art of necromancy. And you raised one exactly a year old! That is very impressive indeed!

But yeah, Fiery Convo those hordes. Put your Slann out in the open so he doesn't miscast his unit to death, and blow them up. Same thing I do to deal with witch elves, or Plague Monks, or... Well, any kind of horde, ever, actually. If they put 40+ models in a unit, they can reliably expect to lose at least 50% of it before it ever gets to do anything, assuming it doesn't panic off the board before it gets that far. Dispel scrolls and dispel attempts are futile, I'll just recast it next turn.

That's what happens when you waste the vast majority on a super expensive unit. Hell, this has even worked against a BotWD unit, where the HE player expected his 2+ ward to save his white lions, and then proceeded to lose 10 out of 40 in one turn, which paniced them, which lead to me charging them with a small unit of terradons, who caught them and ran them down.

And just like that, he lost a bit more than 50% of his entire army.

This is why MSUs are far better than massive deathstars. We aren't the only ones with spells that wipe units this easily.