Honestly my use of them is so engrained with playing Wurrzag, I was pretty underwhelmed by them when trying out Gorbad, Wurrzag's boosts to them were pretty instrumental to my enjoying use of the unit
Fair. I've fought them with early Empire armies and they could be scary for a while, but only until I started breaking their leadership. Lots of damage, but I won reliably against them. That's a problem if you're the Greenskins player. Basically... you need to tie down missile units for best results.
@@OffToBattle If you get a savage ork general and 4 heros with the discipline perk, then the bois will become a force to be reckoned with. +10 attack and leadership means their strenghs will be increased while their weakness will be decreased. Edit: Also having the savage bois in Oglog's armee makes quite a difference.
Good fodder at least. Was besieging Pfeildorf as early game Nuln. Savage horde popped up next to me, declared war on the vampires, and I just started the siege battle, kept my soldiers out of range of the towers, and sped it up. Only lost one or two spearmen from fell bats and after the battle, I just turned around and wiped the horde out. 10/10 amazing value.
That's an interesting one, going up walls. I mean, it's rather hard to shoot them once they're climbing and melee is where they want to be in the first place, and leadership issues largely cease to exist.
@@OffToBattle If it wasn't vampire counts, most of em probably would've died before getting in, but luckily a lack of range let them in easily. The leadership was indeed weird, though. Like I wasn't sure if I needed to intervene because I just kept seeing them rout and return and they were dropping like flies. In the end, they pulled through and did all the dirty work for me.
For me, Savage orcs are interesting... but also debatable for their value; they're only available from a handful of very specific locations, their lack of shields means they get shredded by a lot of ranged units and they're pricier then regular boyz. However... if you have them and regular orcs you can use them as a sort of poor man's cavalry; they'll rush in from the flanks to encircle enemy infantry after the lines have made contact and then do double duty with bot damage and flanking bonuses while being meaty enough to bog down a lot of other units. Is it better then boarboys? Probably not. But it is cheaper.
I'm floored that there used to be a scrap upgrade that gave them nutty missile resistance and CA traded it out. I'm not convinced Savage Orcs are winners for that. But... we'll see as I go. I'm always hunting for new Greenskin tactics.
@@OffToBattle Greenskins are certainly a diverse faction in terms of what you can do with them; they've got artillery, cavalry, chariots, monstrous infantry, single entities, plenty of heroes, interesting lords and some truly bizzare specialized units.
This is a very thematic, cool unit. I love the fact that they go all out to emphasize a specific play style- 0 armor, 25% physical resistance, low MD. They need to get into the scrap, hit their enemy, and get hit right back. I would give them an activatable Dampen Magic ability to make them competitive against enemies with Magical Damage. I feel that Savage Orcs have to be defeated on their own terms- in a wild melee by out-hitting and out- damaging them.
Yeah, confining it to the Bloody Hands faction only makes the dampening questionable in practice, but they're not potted plants to be kept on a pedestal. The whole point is to get them in someone's face and make dealing with it their problem not yours. Erasing the archer lines is someone else's job (except for the occasional nimble Savage Orc squad that slips into the cracks).
In my experience, if your enemy has magical attacks of any variety, these guys are worthless. A bright wizard, demons, or anything that just natively has it will run over the savage boys like they were goblins. But against shit that doesn't have reliable access to magic attacks, they preform just slightly above rate. Not fully into next tier, but just slightly better. The worst part is that the usual place you get them, the Badlands, has Skarbrand *right there* so you're inevitably going to have to fight him. which means you can't bring the Savage boys you went all the way down there for. I love em, but I hardly use them. If you aren't playing Wurrzag, I wouldn't suggest going out of your way to find a source of them unless you really want to, and honestly, valid. They're a cool unit that's just slowly been power crept out of relevance. Used to be I would be praising this unit up and down when the Greenskins got their big rework in Wh2. Now they're just... they're just there.
Wurrzag got a unique "Idol of Gork" scrap upgrade that applies Dampen to the weapons of Savage Orcs and their archers, it was added with the Omens of Destruction DLC. Basically covers the last major weakness they have.
@KKmanmi yee, I know. It doesn't change that as wurrag you use them and as everyone else you use them if you really want to, not because they're better
Roger that. I wasn't going to assume anything, esp. with Wuzzag himself relocated in this DLC, but reviewing the unit in isolation makes for some weird issues when gauging effectiveness with Skarbrand around. And to the extent he rocks some non-magical stuff too, Chaos Warriors are a tough matchup anyway, at least without some major help.
Savage Orcs have a *really* odd niche, and one that is admittedly shrinking with the ever increasing sources of magical attacks in the game. Savage Orcs are Anti-Anti-Armor. They tend to hold up about as well as regular Ork Boyz in a full-on brawl, but the more the enemy is invested in armor piercing, the more Savage Orks tend to shine. I've seen savage orks krump Trolls and Crypt Horrors without even losing half of their health, where ordinary ork boyz would rout with minimal damage to their target... and they stand up to empire handgunner fire almost as well as regular ork boyz do. They also tend to absorb artillery fire better than your regular boyz (including your own, if you are so inclined), since they can't use their shields to block artillery fire... and your own Night Goblin Fanatics' Spinnin' Loons ability does 100% non-magical armor-piercing damage. Food for thought. Naturally, the things that beat Savage Orks *really* beat them. They'd almost be ideal units against Nurgle, until you remember that all demonic units have magical attacks. I guess the point is, know who you're fighting and build your army accordingly: The more you understand the game and can pick your matchups, the better savage orks get.
Excellent summary and I'll happily pin your comment. Exactly right, the more armor piercing specialized a unit is - ideally if it has limited armor itself - the more Savage Orcs make sport of that armor-piercing, up until the point it's magical armor-piercing and even then it's not like you "lost" anything, at least you're not soaking those hits with your Black Orcs.
Before 6.0 I used them as skarsnik whenever I got to confed wurzhag! That now doesn't work anymore but I really like usingthe savage orks from time to time. The high amount of magic damage makes them quite risky to use. Wurzhag no longer having maligor and skarbrand as their neighbors helps a ton though haha. Have a great start to 2025 you gits!
My awareness of Greenskins is about the lowest of any faction I do play, so I have fairly little to add of any real quality. About all I know is that they're good with Wurrzag, and... "okay" with anyone else, and you should probably just get normal Boyz.
They do get a large charge bonus and big dmg from wurzag but they are squishy. In short, they class cannons like red cresteds but stronger considering red cresteds lose to orc laborers
That's the cost of being an armor-piercing unit with many entities and low armor themselves. You WANT something like orc laborers (that largely ignore what armor they do have) wailing on them. The worst thing an opponent wants to see is red crested skinks pounding on an elite unit occupied with something worse - like a Stegadon - and taking the punishment but not taking the skinks down in turn. These aren't armor-piercing and that hurts, but savage orcs beg for using them with something tanky and dangerous. Even a Black Orc Warboss should help immensely.
Honestly my use of them is so engrained with playing Wurrzag, I was pretty underwhelmed by them when trying out Gorbad, Wurrzag's boosts to them were pretty instrumental to my enjoying use of the unit
Fair. I've fought them with early Empire armies and they could be scary for a while, but only until I started breaking their leadership. Lots of damage, but I won reliably against them. That's a problem if you're the Greenskins player. Basically... you need to tie down missile units for best results.
@@OffToBattle If you get a savage ork general and 4 heros with the discipline perk, then the bois will become a force to be reckoned with. +10 attack and leadership means their strenghs will be increased while their weakness will be decreased.
Edit: Also having the savage bois in Oglog's armee makes quite a difference.
Good fodder at least. Was besieging Pfeildorf as early game Nuln. Savage horde popped up next to me, declared war on the vampires, and I just started the siege battle, kept my soldiers out of range of the towers, and sped it up. Only lost one or two spearmen from fell bats and after the battle, I just turned around and wiped the horde out. 10/10 amazing value.
That's an interesting one, going up walls. I mean, it's rather hard to shoot them once they're climbing and melee is where they want to be in the first place, and leadership issues largely cease to exist.
@@OffToBattle If it wasn't vampire counts, most of em probably would've died before getting in, but luckily a lack of range let them in easily. The leadership was indeed weird, though. Like I wasn't sure if I needed to intervene because I just kept seeing them rout and return and they were dropping like flies. In the end, they pulled through and did all the dirty work for me.
For being unarmored they can get about 40 armor if you also take a trip to cathay to pay gelt and zhao ming a visit.
That is interesting. If you smack Yuan Bo over the head and use the sea lane near him, you can visit them just fine, right?
@OffToBattle yup and frankly you're going to want to do that anyways because yuan bo has arguably the best trait for wurrzag in the entire game, lol
For me, Savage orcs are interesting... but also debatable for their value; they're only available from a handful of very specific locations, their lack of shields means they get shredded by a lot of ranged units and they're pricier then regular boyz.
However... if you have them and regular orcs you can use them as a sort of poor man's cavalry; they'll rush in from the flanks to encircle enemy infantry after the lines have made contact and then do double duty with bot damage and flanking bonuses while being meaty enough to bog down a lot of other units.
Is it better then boarboys? Probably not. But it is cheaper.
I'm floored that there used to be a scrap upgrade that gave them nutty missile resistance and CA traded it out. I'm not convinced Savage Orcs are winners for that. But... we'll see as I go. I'm always hunting for new Greenskin tactics.
@@OffToBattle Greenskins are certainly a diverse faction in terms of what you can do with them; they've got artillery, cavalry, chariots, monstrous infantry, single entities, plenty of heroes, interesting lords and some truly bizzare specialized units.
This is a very thematic, cool unit. I love the fact that they go all out to emphasize a specific play style- 0 armor, 25% physical resistance, low MD. They need to get into the scrap, hit their enemy, and get hit right back. I would give them an activatable Dampen Magic ability to make them competitive against enemies with Magical Damage. I feel that Savage Orcs have to be defeated on their own terms- in a wild melee by out-hitting and out- damaging them.
Yeah, confining it to the Bloody Hands faction only makes the dampening questionable in practice, but they're not potted plants to be kept on a pedestal. The whole point is to get them in someone's face and make dealing with it their problem not yours. Erasing the archer lines is someone else's job (except for the occasional nimble Savage Orc squad that slips into the cracks).
In my experience, if your enemy has magical attacks of any variety, these guys are worthless. A bright wizard, demons, or anything that just natively has it will run over the savage boys like they were goblins.
But against shit that doesn't have reliable access to magic attacks, they preform just slightly above rate. Not fully into next tier, but just slightly better. The worst part is that the usual place you get them, the Badlands, has Skarbrand *right there* so you're inevitably going to have to fight him. which means you can't bring the Savage boys you went all the way down there for.
I love em, but I hardly use them. If you aren't playing Wurrzag, I wouldn't suggest going out of your way to find a source of them unless you really want to, and honestly, valid. They're a cool unit that's just slowly been power crept out of relevance. Used to be I would be praising this unit up and down when the Greenskins got their big rework in Wh2. Now they're just... they're just there.
Wurrzag got a unique "Idol of Gork" scrap upgrade that applies Dampen to the weapons of Savage Orcs and their archers, it was added with the Omens of Destruction DLC. Basically covers the last major weakness they have.
@KKmanmi yee, I know. It doesn't change that as wurrag you use them and as everyone else you use them if you really want to, not because they're better
Roger that. I wasn't going to assume anything, esp. with Wuzzag himself relocated in this DLC, but reviewing the unit in isolation makes for some weird issues when gauging effectiveness with Skarbrand around. And to the extent he rocks some non-magical stuff too, Chaos Warriors are a tough matchup anyway, at least without some major help.
I suppose you could argue that problem is worse now.
I'm on the fence if this idol thing saves the unit or not but that's just waiting for me to use them in anger somewhere...
Savage Orcs have a *really* odd niche, and one that is admittedly shrinking with the ever increasing sources of magical attacks in the game. Savage Orcs are Anti-Anti-Armor. They tend to hold up about as well as regular Ork Boyz in a full-on brawl, but the more the enemy is invested in armor piercing, the more Savage Orks tend to shine. I've seen savage orks krump Trolls and Crypt Horrors without even losing half of their health, where ordinary ork boyz would rout with minimal damage to their target... and they stand up to empire handgunner fire almost as well as regular ork boyz do. They also tend to absorb artillery fire better than your regular boyz (including your own, if you are so inclined), since they can't use their shields to block artillery fire... and your own Night Goblin Fanatics' Spinnin' Loons ability does 100% non-magical armor-piercing damage. Food for thought.
Naturally, the things that beat Savage Orks *really* beat them. They'd almost be ideal units against Nurgle, until you remember that all demonic units have magical attacks. I guess the point is, know who you're fighting and build your army accordingly: The more you understand the game and can pick your matchups, the better savage orks get.
Excellent summary and I'll happily pin your comment. Exactly right, the more armor piercing specialized a unit is - ideally if it has limited armor itself - the more Savage Orcs make sport of that armor-piercing, up until the point it's magical armor-piercing and even then it's not like you "lost" anything, at least you're not soaking those hits with your Black Orcs.
Before 6.0 I used them as skarsnik whenever I got to confed wurzhag! That now doesn't work anymore but I really like usingthe savage orks from time to time. The high amount of magic damage makes them quite risky to use. Wurzhag no longer having maligor and skarbrand as their neighbors helps a ton though haha. Have a great start to 2025 you gits!
Yeah, I want to see what his much changed start means for his units.
@OffToBattle yeah I mean skarbrand and the spells of malighor where kinda brutal against the naked Orks XD
My awareness of Greenskins is about the lowest of any faction I do play, so I have fairly little to add of any real quality.
About all I know is that they're good with Wurrzag, and... "okay" with anyone else, and you should probably just get normal Boyz.
My opinion was formed in an era before the spear version existed, but it was: Boyz are cheap, not better. But they're also a lot more available.
I think they are a perfectly viable flavor if you want to go for a more tribal feel. Not bad, not outstanding.
I'll treat that like an endorsement. Thanks for popping in!
💚
Thanks for the heart!
I feel they are only good if you are playing wurzag. Any other LL would be better off using normal boyz
I'm not 100% sure that's true, but nonetheless, it's how I expect most people will react.
They do get a large charge bonus and big dmg from wurzag but they are squishy. In short, they class cannons like red cresteds but stronger considering red cresteds lose to orc laborers
That's the cost of being an armor-piercing unit with many entities and low armor themselves. You WANT something like orc laborers (that largely ignore what armor they do have) wailing on them. The worst thing an opponent wants to see is red crested skinks pounding on an elite unit occupied with something worse - like a Stegadon - and taking the punishment but not taking the skinks down in turn.
These aren't armor-piercing and that hurts, but savage orcs beg for using them with something tanky and dangerous. Even a Black Orc Warboss should help immensely.