The Savage Orc Horde: Death and Destruction!

Savage Orcs! Checkout more pics of this great army here.

Scary Savages


In one of my early posts Orcs and Goblins: Balanced or Broken it was decided, with the help of the community, that the OnG were a Warhammer Fantasy army with a lot of great choices.  However, there is one choice that has stood out in the book, and this week I've enlisted help from a message board, a couple of bloggers, a podcaster, and a vid-caster to discuss how to cause the most destruction with the behemoth which is: The Horde of Savage Orcs! But don't worry, if your not an OnG player we'll also be discussing how to take down the big horde!

The vid-caster I contacted this week is none other than MrMalorian.  Otherwise known as Brian, he does a great job posting battle reports, and general Warhammer Fantasy tactics vids on Youtube.  I've linked him serveral times in the army roundup section, and you can even see a great battle report between us under the Warriors of Chaos section.

But what did MrMalorian have to say about the big horde? Well being an Orc and Goblin player himself,  he loves the fact that a horde of Savage Orc Big'uns can pump out a massive amount of strength five attacks with a decent weapon skill.  However, he says as nice as this is, the key to the unit is running it with a shaman equipped with the shrunken head and potion of toughness.  This means you have a unit that can dish out the attacks, and take them too!

More great work by Johan over on the Dice and Brush Blog.

Green Machine:

MrMalorian also suggests another character you may want to consider taking along side the savages is the Black Orc BSB.  Although I don't really like this non-fluffy choice, it does allow the barbarians to take a magic banner, and can help with the OnG's biggest problem, animosity.

Next up, I once again enlisted help from the great Orc and Goblin community located at Da-warpath.com.  Rikit proposes that running another horde of Orcs in conjunction with the savages can really cause your opponent headaches, and points out the key to success is being aggressive with the units, so your opponent won't be able to charge in with multiple units.  Check the discussion here.

I also contacted the author of my favorite Orcs and Goblins blog Troll Tales.  Dennis has witten his own post on the Savage Orc horde, and if you visit the site you'll find tons of other great articles.  He suggests going a different route than MrMalorian.  He takes twenty eight savages seven wide and four deep.  This way, he says, you still get tons of punch with the unit, but the unit itself is far more affordable.

I'd be interested to hear what readers think about runnning units seven wide versus horde formation because I've been debating running by Marauders with great weapons in horde or seven wide?

Checkout close up views of this unit on Dakkadakka.com

Dealing Death:

So we've heard some thoughts on getting the most out of your Savage Orc horde, but how do you take down the monster unit?  As mentioned by Rikit simply getting the unit combined charged can often get it in trouble.  Blogger and tournament regular Rhellion explained he attacks the unit with this combined arms approach.  His horde of Plague Monks with Furnace and Abomination are usually up to the task when supported by Skaven shooting and magic.

Like wise, podcaster Canhammer Chris likes to take the head on approach when dealing with the savages.  He stacks his unit of chosen or warriors ten wide and takes the fight to the boyz.  He does caution that it is imperative that you eliminate support units such as chariots.  One supporting orc chariot could swing the combat the other way.

I used to deal with big units like this by feeding them smaller units, or delaying them with a big steadfast block.  But recently I've been positioning fast cavalry to take a charge, and allowing the big block to over run into a couple of my combat units.  The important combat therefore takes place on my turn allowing me to counter charge, and use supporting magic.  I'm sure there are plenty of other tips others can add to make this an even better resource, so please do!  It's easier than you think!

Thanks for reading,


Mike