An Old Ork's View

The Warboss.

A lot of ork players, current and future, shouted out in glee when the Warboss became toughness 5. Whoo HOO! While this does match the fluff, in terms of game play the extra toughness is useless, and it’s one big benefit (denying insta-kill from str 9 and below weapons) perhaps could have been better handled with wargear.

Think old Scarpia’s nuts? Well take a look at it this way.

Protection from shooting. This is a moot point really, as if your warboss was getting shot you weren't using him correctly. The rules don’t allow you to target an IC if you position him wisely, so all you have to deal with here is the errant ordinance shot. And if he’s with a mob, that’s negated as well as you can pass the wound off to another model. So the occasions where toughness 5 will save your hide from shooting are rather limited.
Protection from close combat. Also kind of useless, as despite his higher toughness, the majority of things that will be facing him will still be wounding on twos. People will hit him with the hidden powerfist or big weapon where ever possible. An imperial guard character with a powerfist is wounding him on threes, marine sergeants with a powerfist are still wounding on twos. It does help against regular marines or str 4 or below attacks, but those were combats for you to loose anyway.

I know a lot of players are seeing the warboss on a bike as the ultimate character, as now he’s toughness six on the bike. Again, this doesn’t mean squat against either shooting or close combat as I’ve pointed out, powerfists are still wounding you on 2’s, even on a bike.

But what about the insta-kill? Agreed, that's kind of cool, but maybe there was a better option.

It would have been just as easy to simply provided a piece of wargear, say a suupacybork body, that cost more, but provided a 4+ invulnerable and protection against insta-kill (and only allow one per army). It would have actually brought the ork warboss more in line with other army’s characters from a stat level, and could have allowed for some nice modeling opportunities.

Now what about our bionic bonce, and the armory? You're saying I cannot take a pklaw and choppa anymore? No more 3+ armor save? That's right lads, for some incredible reason, no more choppa/pk combo (which with the neutered choppa makes even less sense than before). And that 3+ armor save is a thing of the past, 'eavy armor is as good as it gets unless you want to run a mega-armored Boss. And even that's been curtailed, as you can no longer buy the tubo boostaz to negate his slow walk.

Personally I’d happily trade the extra toughness for the bionic bonce and other lost items in the armory. There are a ton of toughness 5 models out there, just ask the Nurgle boyz, and while the toughness helps it isn't an end all. So in the end, the ork warboss gained a point of toughness at a fair loss of wargear, and equation that I think will either leave him little changed, or for that matter, even a little worse off than before.

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