Bonesplitters are brilliant now and the maths that show it.

[Orkmann]

Icebone piggie spam have a good damage potential, I think thats true even if you compare them to combat armies, and it' quite mobile as well. With the great hunters trait, and low drop list, I can see a lot of alpha potential which can surprise people. Alpha strike in general is not my play style at all, but I see a lot of lists lately which are not prepared for that. Also, even if I dont go for an alpha, the threat itself can force the opponent to deploy defensively. 

So I think there is plenty to try out even in a competitive setting. On the other hand, most of the moaning, at least on my end, was not about the Icebone power level, but how blend and boring the play becomes compared to v2. Bonesplitterz is my first and true orky love, so to speak, so I will play them no matter whay, but if someone asks me to recommend a fast combat army I dont see why I shouldnt say Ironjawz. It has all the damage, plus all sort of tricks from MT, the subfaction, not to mention the teleport.

What I would like to add in the end is that if we could coalition or even just ally other orcs, that could change list building a lot. Let's see if that ever changes.

[Magnus The Blue]

Ok, last one of these. Going to start focusing on how to get the most out of the new book rather than doing more before-after analysis.

So though I'd got for the elephant in the room: normal Savage Orruks.  Points hike and loosing than bonus attack for a horde (15+) is a bitter pill to swallow.  But +1 to wound on the charge and built in 5+ save does help compensate.  Here are the numbers

Unit name	Options +Buffs	Cost	Number	wounds/model	save (X+)	Ward	Melee Damage	Effective wounds	Cost/EW	Cost/Melee Damage
Savage Orruks 2.0	Spears, Melee Save, horde bonus	130.00	10.00	2.00	5.00	6.00	3.88	36.00	3.61	33.55
Savage Orruks 2.0	Spears, horde bonus	130.00	10.00	2.00	6.00	6.00	3.88	28.80	4.51	33.55
Savage Orruks 2.0	Spears, Melee Save,	130.00	10.00	2.00	5.00	6.00	2.63	36.00	3.61	49.52
Savage Orruks 3.0	Spears, Icebone, Charge	165.00	10.00	2.00	5.00	6.00	5.83	36.00	4.58	28.29
Savage Orruks 3.0	Spears, Icebone	165.00	10.00	2.00	5.00	6.00	4.67	36.00	4.58	35.36

If your not into maths the two last columns at the end are the important ones: points costs per effective wound (how many points it costs you per zero rend wound it would take to kill the unit) and cost per Melee damage (how many points it costs you on average for each wounding hit the unit causes in combat per round). For both, lower is better.

The main story is that their isn't much difference.  Old Orruks were more survivable in combat, but obvious new ones are a better target for save stacking. New Orruks actually do more damage in combat (all calcs assume attacking a 4+ Save enemy) despite losing 1/3rd of their attacks.  

I'm not going to argue they got better, 165 points is just too much for what they do and I've not done the calcs for the old horde discount (which everyone lost). but they didn't get much worse, can operate effectively in units of 10 now and I think a minor points tweak will see them right.  

 

[bonzai]

6 hours ago, Magnus The Blue said:

 

I'm not going to argue they got better, 165 points is just too much for what they do and I've not done the calcs for the old horde discount (which everyone lost). but they didn't get much worse, can operate effectively in units of 10 now and I think a minor points tweak will see them right.  

 

 

Then there are the secondary things that were lost like monster hunters and such that are harder to factor in. They aren't that much worse, but I knew we were in trouble when GW said that feedimg units of 10 to Mega Gargants was a good solution. Lol.

[Magnus The Blue]

7 minutes ago, bonzai said:

Then there are the secondary things that were lost like monster hunters and such that are harder to factor in. They aren't that much worse, but I knew we were in trouble when GW said that feedimg units of 10 to Mega Gargants was a good solution. Lol.

For regular Savage Orruks, yes. But these are very much the worse case scenario and I think that in a competitive setting everyone will be taking their clan dependant battleline over Savage Orruks anyway. In their respective Clans Morboyz, Boarboys and Arrowboys are sufficiently better than the loss of monster hunters isn't a big deal.