I'm going by the Army List Compendium version (3.0.3) of the Gargant Bigmob list, since I expect it will be the main version that players encounter when looking to start an army. However, I'll also be referencing the 3.0.5 version that Evil&Chaos released in 2012, which can be found here, as a point of comparison.

Concept
The core thematic concept of the list is 'Gargants and Mad Meks', which is pretty awesome. E&C seemed very determined that this theme should remain as strong as possible.

Unfortunately, I think this gets undermined by a simple weakness of the list: it tends to result in armies with too few activations, because gargants are damned expensive. E&C advocated "a minimum of six activations" at 3000 points, which basically means one Mega-Gargant or Great Gargant and one Gargant, maximum - he's also said that it's basically impossible to build a viable list with both a Mega-Gargant and a Great Gargant.

(In the 3.0.5 version, this is even further enforced by limiting the number of non-gargant formations to three per Gargant/Great Gargant and four per Mega-Gargant. Within that framework, it's effectively compulsory to take one gargant of any size and one regular Gargant, with an absolute maximum of nine activations. I feel that's probably a bit too prescriptive.)

If a list with two big gargants (Great or Mega) is basically a non-starter, I'd like to see the option to build a list focused around one heavily-customised big dude supported by non-gargant formations.

The Mega-Gargant

Since the other two sizes of gargant are pulled directly from the Ghazghkull list, there's not much to say about them. However, the Mega-Gargant is unique to this list, and therefore a defining feature. In that role, I feel it has some shortcomings.

First, it locks out the other half of the theme - Mad Meks. This thematic element mainly comes through in the Kustom Upgrades - but the Mega-Gargant is not allowed to take any. I assume this was partly because the Mega-Gargant is already loaded up with every weapon under the sun, and partly to stop certain abusive builds, but I feel like this is an unfortunate thematic break that could be avoided with some re-working.

Second, it's surprisingly fragile. It lacks the reinforced armour of its smaller siblings, and is therefore significantly easier to take down than a Great Gargant (except when using TK weapons exclusively). Since it will inevitably be both your Break the Spirit target and your Supreme Commander, this is a big liability, and encourages players to take a Great Gargant instead for the extra resilience, even though it means giving up quite a bit of firepower.

Also, for some weird reason, its Gaze of Mork is weaker than the ones on the smaller gargants - their version is TK, while the Mega-Gargant version is only MW (and FxF as well, while the others aren't).

It seems like a shame - a Mega-Gargant is a perfect centrepiece model for an army, but it's simply a sub-par choice at the moment.

Supa-Stompas vs Gargants
I'm not sure why you'd ever run a Gargant instead of two Supa-Stompas. (In the 3.0.5 version, the reason is clear: you're forced to. That's not a good or satisfying reason.)

Two Supa-Stompas are almost exactly as resilient as a Gargant, have double the firepower, and either cost the same (in two formations, with the advantage of an additional activation) or 50 points less (in a single Big formation).

In a list that's meant to showcase gargants, having them lose out so badly to Supa-Stompas seems like a terrible idea.

(Also of note: there's no profile for Supa-Stompas in the 3.0.5 list, even though they're still an option. On the other hand, there are Kustom Stompas from the Stompy Onslaught list, which are still just as resilient, have a bit less firepower, gain a transport capacity, and cost less than half as much. The comparison gets even worse!)

Kustom Upgrades
The other defining feature of the list is the ability to modify the gargants and Supa-Stompas, as well as units of Big Gunz, with Meks. Sadly, most of the upgrades don't seem that useful.

For starters, every upgrade (except the Wyrdboy Tower) demands that you replace an "arm or belly weapon" (and in the Compendium list, it's specifically a Gargant weapon - Supa-Stompas aren't Gargants and don't have Gargant weapons, nor does an Oddboy joining a unit of Big Guns or a Gunfortress). Nowhere is the location of gargant weaponry defined - we can assume that Soopaguns and Lifta-Droppas are arm/belly weapons while Big Guns are not, but that's just a guess. This should be clearly and explicitly defined - "Each Kustom Upgrade replaces one Soopagun, Twin Soopagun, Supa-Zzap-Gun, Lifta-Droppa or Mega-Choppa on the unit with one of the following".

In addition, most of the Kustom Upgrade weapons aren't something that's worth giving up either a 2BP MW or 3+ MW TK(D3) gun to obtain. The Megalobba is particularly egregious - since it has different special rules to the Soopagunz (it's not a MW) they can't be fired together, which means that on Supa-Stompas and gargants it's worse than useless.

So far, most lists I've seen have exclusively used Bigga Generatas for the extra power fields. That seems like a clear indication that something is wrong.

The Big Kustom Upgrades allow smaller gargants to take one of two Mega-Gargant weapons or gain a transport capacity, and everyone picks the Wyrdboy Tower because it's vital in a list with very limited air defense options. Again, having an auto-take option is not a good sign.

I feel like the Transporta upgrade is something that should have been built into all the gargants anyway. All the Ork fluff I can remember has gargants swarming with hordes of Orks (chanting "'Ere we go, 'ere we go," naturally) and charging out when it gets close to the enemy. The same is also true of Stompas, which have a big transport capacity in 40k.

I think the list could easily get away with just having a "Hitch a Ride" special rule which gives all gargants a transport capacity equal to their DC (plus Grots equal to half their DC) for free. This would also allow Mega-Gargants to gain a transport capacity - it's weird that they can't when the smaller gargants can.

(Note that in the 3.0.5 list the Transporta upgrade is almost completely useless, because the Ork War Engine Transports rule prevents all War Engines from transporting any units except those in their own formation.)

I also think it's sad that both kinds of upgrade are limited to 0-1. If someone wanted to go nuts and trick out their gargant with a bunch of kustomisations, would that be so terrible? Doesn't that sound exactly like something a Mad Mek would do?

An interesting alternative, I think, would be to give all the upgrades an appropriate cost, but allow them to be taken in addition to a gargant's existing weapons. If you could take a Great Gargant and add an extra Soopagun, two Supa-Zzap-Guns, a Grot Mega Missile pod, two Kombat Arms and a Wyrdboy Tower for about 200 points, you wouldn't even need a separate Mega-Gargant entry because you basically just built a kustom one! To stop things getting out of hand, perhaps allow each Oddboy (anywhere in the list) to add a kustom upgrade to the Mekboy Big Boss' gargant (with upgrade-specific limitations like 0-1 Wyrdboy Tower, for example) - now you've got a big crazy gargant centrepiece and a bunch of Mad Meks, which sounds bang-on for theme.

The Need for Speed
The list's major weakness is that it's predominantly pretty slow. Yeah, you can put your Loota Warbands in a Battlefortress if you want them all to die in a massive fireball, or mechanise them in Battlewagonz and such at great expense, but that's about as fast as it gets and you don't really have the points for it.

The Compendium list has the Tellyportas rule, which allows you to Planetfall a formation if you have a spacecraft. Ork spacecraft are just as garbage here as everywhere else, so scratch that. (The 3.0.5 version of the list scraps the rule entirely, making spacecraft even more worthless.)

Any ability to cross the board, then, basically comes from Drop Roks (which have Self-Planetfall). So, um... what are the stats for Drop Roks? In the Compendium, there aren't any. (The 3.0.5 list includes their profile.)

I think it's a bit weird, given E&C's focus on the theme of the list, that Drop Roks are one of its defining, unique features - they just don't seem to fit. Orkstein, in the fluff E&C wrote, pretty much focuses exclusively on gargants. There's no mention of his propensity to seed the low orbits with asteroids filled with Boyz, or how it relates in any way to his favoured tactics.

I think the ability to transport Warbands in gargants (see above) would make it easier to do without crutches like the Drop Roks. You could include upgrades which increased the gargants' transport capacity, and its movement speed. In addition, changing (3.0.5: and reinstating) the Tellyportas rule to allow for teleportation instead of Planetfall (and removing the awful spacecraft from the list altogether) could be quite neat, and very much in keeping with the Mad Mek theme, while becoming very distinct from other Ork lists.

Anyway, those are my main thoughts on the list as it stands. What do other people think?

This was to keep it from being essentially impossible to kill.


Probably a typo.


Not getting an activation was found to be a big thing there.


They can be fired together, you just lose the MW ability. I'd suggest a build that avoids mixing BP-type weaponry though.


Drop Roks feature extensively in the un-released mechanicus vs orks supplement I wrote.

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Oh, I totally get that - it certainly shouldn't be 4+ RA with 16 DC, that would be nuts. I'm not convinced it should be quite so much easier to take down than a Great Gargant, though - even making it the same (4+ RA with 12 DC) would be a huge improvement even with the loss of a few dice in assault.


Not sure I understand what you mean by this, can you elaborate?


Huh! I'd been reading that FAQ entry completely wrong, so cheers! As you say, giving up MW on the barrage probably isn't optimal in any case.


Ah, cool... specifically in relation to Orkstein and his forces, or as a general Ork tactic? I think they'd be a fantastic addition to some other Ork lists, just not sure they're the best fit for this one since they seem to dilute the theme (tellyportas just seem more mad-sciencey).

Thanks for taking the time.

Kustom Stompas are added to a formation rather than having an activation of their own. Thus they're cheaper than they'd be if they were stand-alone units.


I wrote the list to specifically reflect the forces deployed in the supplement.


No probs, hope my thoughts helped.

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Ah, good call. I really like the Stompy Onslaught list, mainly because it uses Stompas as troop transports, which is how I've always imagined them. I was a bit disappointed to find that Epic's conception of a Stompa was some tiny thing (not even a War Engine) that was more like a Mega-Dread.

The Kustom Stompas seem pretty cheap for what they are, but that's what mechanised (ground assault transport) lists seem to need to be viable at this point.

On that note, a lot of the Epic unit profiles seem stuck way back in the past, so they don't mesh with what I'd expect coming from more recent editions of 40k. I'd love to see an Ork list where the Battlewagons actually felt like Battlewagons to me (AV 4+ RA since they have the same armour profile as a Leman Russ, with CC 3+ for the Deffrollas), for example, but there doesn't seem to be much desire in the community to 'update' the game to match current fluff. I'll get used to it, I guess.



Cool. I'm still kind of feeling out exactly what the situation is with regard to list creation - if I wanted to come up with my own variation on a 'Gargants and Mad Meks' theme which worked slightly differently to how the Orkstein list does, would it be better to push for changes to the Orkstein list, or to create another entirely separate list?

The first option risks stepping on others' toes (yours in particular, but probably other players' too) and ending up in some kind of mongrel list which neither of us are happy with (since I'm sure there are elements you are quite attached to, given the amount of work you've put in). The second option creates two lists with basically the same theme, which seems like pointless duplication. Any advice?

Well, anyone can create lists if they want to. But to be able to push for anything you need to ve the AC of the list.

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By "push" I mean "make suggestions to the AC".

I threw together a rough draft of a (non-Orkstein) Gargants and Meks list - available here. It's more of a proof-of-concept for how such a list might work, but I'd appreciate others' thoughts on it.

I've gone for very limited unit selection - basically nothing that's not an Ork, a Grot or a Walker. I made Oddboys (Mekboys in this list) more flexible to make up for the loss of Flakwagons, and added Gorka/Morkanauts to give a way to take Mekboys and Leaders in formations of Dreadnoughts.

The basic premise is that the Boyz cling to the massive walkers as they stroll across the table, a kind of slow-moving mechanised assault. The Mega-Gargant starts off with a slightly reduced Great Gargant profile, but can gain firepower until it has the full suite of Mega-Gargant weapons, a slight speed boost and a pretty big transport capacity if you can pack enough Meks into the list.

Feedback welcome.

There are certainly some interesting ideas in that list. I adore the idea of a Stompa (Morkanaut - not crazy about the name though - harumph!) with a Soopagun, but it will need some playtesting to determine the proper points cost. Right now it really is a souped-up version of a Stompa at the same cost - even if Stompas are generally over-priced.

The idea behind the Mega-Gargant is also interesting. However, it seems like you essentially get double value for your Mekboys. Oddboys are already considered no-brainers basically whenever you can take them, so in a list like this I would definitely load up on as many as possible. I get that that's sort of the idea, but it seems overpowered. Why not turn my 850-point Great Gargant into a killing machine that deletes any enemy formation it looks at, for basically no extra cost?
Again, interesting idea, but if nothing else you may need to consider the cost and/or availability of Mekboys.

On the other hand, it's a bit of a shame that regular Gargants can't take kustom upgrades anymore. In a Gargant-heavy list I feel it's necessary to allow for some kustomization so your warengines can be tailored for individual anticipated threats, rather than the somewhat take-all-comers, jack-of-all loadout of the standard one. I'd love to see those return, along with perhaps a bigger list of kustom upgrades. More like the Titan Legions list, which allows for complete customization. It also fits the theme.

At a glance, I like adding Supa-Stompas to Loota Warbands. One approach I've been mulling over in the Gargant list is giving Supa-Stompas the Transporta upgrade and let them act as huge transports/krawlas for Loota Warbands. It's a really cool concept in my eyes.

Other than that, nice effort!

Thanks for giving it a look-over.

The points costs definitely aren't set in stone, and I agree that the Gorka/Morkanauts (I'm not particularly keen on the name either, but it's the one that 40k provides - they also basically make sense as little idols) are very good compared to the Stompa (which, frankly, isn't very good compared to anything). However, the next price-point up is 100 points, and they would be terrible at that cost - if they needed a bump to that level, I'd make them War Engines and give them 2 DC. Alternatively, keeping them at 75 points and dropping Reinforced Armour could make sense.

You do get 'double value for your Mekboys' in a sense, though in essence it's more like 'adding Mekboys makes the Great Gargant chassis worth its cost'. Great Gargants (which this is based on) are cool but their firepower is basically that of a Supa-Stompa - all the Meks do is add more firepower, so you're not getting a huge amount of real value, it just feels like a really good deal. A Mega-Gargant (E&C's version) has been of less real value than a Great Gargant in all the games I've played - there's no way they're worth 1000 points. However, I'm certainly not above making each upgrade cost +25 points if it proves unbalanced.

On the other hand, I think it's worth getting a little extra value out of the Meks, since the list has some very harsh limitations in other areas - only a single unit (potentially) with a speed above above 15cm being the really big one. Meks on Supa-Stompas and Gargants also aren't adding any real value, since they're just swapping out a Soopagun for another gun of roughly equivalent value.

It's worth noting that this actually allows Gargants to be customised, just in a more limited way - taking a Mekboy allows you to swap one of their Soopaguns for either a Supa-Zzap-Gun or a Traktor Kannon (which is just a Mek-themed Wyrdboy Tower). That's mostly what the old upgrades did - but if you'd rather see more along those lines, it would be easy enough to allow the Meks to spread their upgrades around, rather than giving them all to the Mega-Gargant. If you've got further ideas for upgrades, I'd love to hear them - the existing list is just the weapon-loadout difference between a Great Gargant and a Mega-Gargant, plus some transport stuff.

Riding around in a Supa-Stompa sounds pretty awesome, and I think it's a shame that the regular Ork lists don't let the Boyz do that. Plus Supa-Stompas are basically little Gargants that are actually affordable, so it works nicely in this list.

Thanks again!

One critical line that I included in the first draft of my response, but which I neglected to keep, is "Bear in mind that I have very little experience with Epic, and none at all with the Gargant lists". So my critique is pretty much entirely theoretical - just pointing out potential issues. Take it with a huge grain of salt

That said, I've never understood the philosophy behind sticking to set points values. It crops up with gunwagons, too, where they aren't quite worth 35 points but too good for 25 points. Thinking that a unit needs to be valued at either 75 points or 100 points entirely defeats the idea of such a high-values points system. There is so much granularity inbetween those values that it shouldn't be a problem to find a reasonable value for any unit through playtesting.
Choosing a points value first, and then trying to accomodate the stats is going about it exactly the wrong way, in my view.

That sounds like a whoooooole other discussion. Definitely an interesting one, and one I think is very valuable to have, but one that I think a lot of people will have some investment in.

Price points seem like a very strongly ingrained part of the system. I'm not particularly fond of them myself, but at this stage they're well baked into list design, and I don't particularly want to rock the boat on that score. At least Orks get a few more price points than some races!

(I find it pretty annoying trying to build lists when there's a mix of 25 and 35 point units, personally - somehow I always end up at 2995 points and it offends my obsessive nature.)

The problem with setting up stats first and then costing appropriately is, basically, that there's no consistent pricing for stats. Everything is contextual. Just as an example, the comparison between one Gargant and two Supa-Stompas - same price, same armour, same DC, twice the firepower and an extra activation on the Supa-Stompas - tells you pretty much everything about trying to cost stats.

Wherever a unit is costed, it will be out of whack with something, simply because some things in the existing lists aren't costed appropriately, or have massively outdated stats. Battlefortresses and Gunfortresses are awful for their points, while Fighta-Bommas and Landas are amazing. Battlewagons and Stompas have stats that are totally out of sync with their 40k counterparts. The hardest thing is that you can't really change any of that, because if you make a new version that's worth the points, people compare it to the old equivalent and say it's undercosted and OP.

That's true, but it's equally true for any points value system. Whether you have a system as the current one, where certain in-betweeny values are banned, or one where any points value is kosher, the true value of a unit is ultimately dependent on the context it finds itself in. So I don't see how it's an argument against utilizing the full points spectrum, or at least one with much finer resolution - say any value divisible by 5.
If one set value is generally agreed to be too low for a unit, and the next available one up is too high, then use a middle value instead of arguing about how to fit the unit into the preset points costs.

It's an interesting point - the fact that it's so ingrained in the system makes me think that there was some design principle behind that decision, but that is clearly just an assumption.

Perhaps a better argument for less granularity is that it makes direct comparisons easier, and therefore the 'balance' of a unit can be judged more easily/fairly/accurately. Since there are already huge abstractions in unit stats for the sake of 'balancing' them within the wider context of the game, it doesn't seem like a stretch to paint a rough outline of a unit, cost it, then adjust it to 'fit' its slot.

But you have a good point - there's probably no inherent reason why tiered costs exist (and there's clearly some granularity already, like Battlefortresses at 115 and Gunfortresses at 125). I'll take another look at the list after a couple of test games and think more about how much various units should cost then.

That is probably a good argument. As a starting point, tiered values probably simplify the design process significantly, at a minor cost of proper balancing.

I would argue, however, that as we now have more than a decade of playtesting it should be possible to drop the tiered values in favor of more refined balancing. The overall balance of the list is locked in, but there are units that just don't seem worth taking like naked gunwagons or Stompas. The internal balance is out of whack because of unrefined points values on these units.

It'd be interesting to hear from those who oversaw the balancing process from previous years. Just so this isn't entirely a theoretical endeavour

I've got a whole other rant about Gunwagons (and all the Battlewagon-chassis vehicles), but I might split that into another thread.

What price would you put on Stompas? In their current form I'd probably put them at 200/350/500 and +65 for additional ones (65 points would be a super useful cost for filling gaps in a list full of stuff that costs 35 points, and it's slightly more than a Leman Russ, which they're slightly worse than). I'll never get used to the idea of a Stompa as a little mega-dread thing, though - the Supa-Stompa is basically the profile I expect a Stompa to have.