Warhammer Underworlds: Online – Orruk Deck Rationale

You like smashing skulls and yelling “Waaaaaaaaaagh!” while your opponent’s stabbing you in the guts? Welcome to that guide to my Orruk decklist!

Figthers

Note: Credit goes to Mandarga

Da Boss: Gurzag

Gurzag is da beast and da beauty: 3 damage 2 hammers make him a threat to anyone. He lacks a bit of reliability though, until he gets cleave and/or inspired. Support to help him is always a good idea. Movement 3 is ok, 1 Shield is ok, and he comes with this glorious 5 Wounds, which makes him the most difficult unit to one shot in the game for now. He is the orruk that gets most of my kills. Be cautious with gurzag, if he dies early on, the game is gonna be a lot harder. 3 damage means he can go for one shots easily with Gorkamorka’s Blessing, or Upgrades.

Da sidekick: Bonekutta

Bonekutta is quite meh before he is inspired. While uninspired, he is worse than zharkus or ghartok. Once inspired, the 3 damage is always nice, though I don’t really use him this way. As he’s got 4 wounds, and people won’t want to inspire him, you can’t really trust the 3 damage output he might get. I use him mainly as a dissuasion tool, or with the upgrade Brutal Swing to get a good swipe on enemies. He is the one that gets me the less work done to be honest.

Da Worse: Hakka and Basha

Hakka and Basha are pretty much interchangeable. I tend to think that Basha is slightly superior, because the only situation where Hakka’s passive is useful, is when you are attacking an inspired stormcast eternal (that got at least a crit on defense, and you one crit on offense), and that isn’t something you want to do with him, because he sucks. 2 swords 1 damage while uninspired, he is lame. Use him as bait, or with the wombo combo: Brutal Frenzy and heroslayer. I also use him to take position on objectives. Once inspired, I sometimes put Waaagh! on one of them, if I need that extra surprise damage.

Da Objectives

The deck is quite aggressive, but you still need some cards to be able to score glory if your opponent won’t let you have a proper fight.

Biggest an’ da Best: Gurzag will most likely get one kill.

Call of the Waaagh! (Surge): Easy to score in most match ups (except against stormcast if they stick in the back of their territory)

Dere’s More of Us: Easy to score in most match ups (except from sepulchral guard). You just need to kill someone in mirror match up or against Fiends.

Good Scrap: Good for aggro match ups or vs Guard, a dead card vs Stormcast, unless you get slaughtered.

Punch-Up: Dead card vs Stormcast, but good otherwise. The face that you

Too Dumb to Die (Surge): Great vs Stormcast, orruks and magore’s, a bit less effective in guard match ups.

Chosen Champion (Rotated): Quite easy to score, you will probably have a main focus on boosting Gurzag anyway

Swift Advance: Can be useful, but not my favorite objective overall. You can swap it with Hold objective 5, so that you can take advantage of it if you happen to have it in your side of the board.

Crushing force (Surge): Quite easy to score, given how much damage you can inflict.

Massive Assault (Surge) (Rotated): Quite easy to score, given how much damage you can inflict. Obviously don’t charge with gurzag if you plan on scoring it, because you’ll have a harder time inflicting 7 damage if your boss can’t play anymore (Hakka and Basha are not reliable and do little damage).

Tactical Supremacy 1-2 Great to get some early glory, or to give you some glory in match ups where you don’t fight

Tactical Supremacy 3-4 Great to get some early glory, or to give you some glory in match ups where you don’t fight.

Da Kunnin’ (Ploys)

Ploys are divided into two parts: Mobility, and damage.

‘Avin’ a Good Time: Brilliant on Gurzag, especially when inspired. Having a free attack is excellent. Good on Bonekutta with the Brutal Swing upgrade too. Tip: you can combine this with sidestep or distraction, in order to move before your activation, hit the enemy with ‘Avin’ a Good Time, and then have another go during your action phase.

Gorkamorka’s Blessing: Surprise 4 or 5 damage when needed. Great card.

Kunnin’ But Brutal: Let’s you move and attack, and be able to attack again. Great for Gurzag and Bonekutta, as they don’t get +1 dice on charge with Brutal Frenzy. Can be replaced by Second wind, though they don’t do the exact same work. Second Wind is more “Call of the Waaagh!”-friendly.

More Choppin’: Extra choppin’, extra chances to kill. Keep it for important attacks, like one shots, or Brutal Swings.

Distraction: a staple card for any warband, just so flexible.

Fuelled by Fury (Rotated): Great for one shots, same reason as more choppin’

Hidden Paths (Rotated): Very useful to track coward/sneaky opponents. Can be used to go in their territory, or get back to yours to kill an invader.

Scavenge (Rotated): Extra glory on kills. Very useful if you are behind and your opponent spends loads of glory on his people. It’s great against decks that run the keys, because it rewards you so much for killing that guy standing on objective 3 with his key in hand.

Sidestep: a staple card for any warband, just so flexible.

Spectral Wings: Lets you charge an enemy that you wouldn’t be able to hit otherwise: great for sniping people, to score punch up or Call of the Waaagh! Also useful to score Tactical supremacies. Very versatile card overall, not always useful but can be a gamechanger.

Da Loot

Brutal Frenzy: Useful on Hakka and Basha to make them more reliable overall, and mainly with heroslayer in hand.

Brutal Swing: Great on Bonekutta, to chop some heads off, especially vs guard.

Crush and Cleave: Dead card vs undead, but very handy against every other warband, and stormcast in particular.

Unkillable: More survivability on Gurzag, that justifies to take it. You also don’t take any of the damage, so if your opponent spent ploys to try and one shot you, good for you.

Waaagh!: Extra damage on charge, can be played on anybody, just to get that extra damage. The only issue is that you can’t attack again afterwards.

Great Fortitude: Extra health can protect bonekutta from one shots, or either of the two bad ones you have given heroslayer to.

Great Strength: Great card.

Heroslayer (Rotated): Risky, but with the bonus dice from Brutal Frenzy of Hakka/Basha, it becomes 2H 4 damage, which is quite sick. More Choppin’ also works perfectly with this card.

Shadeglass Spear (Rotated): 2 to 3 damage from range. Can be boosted by Waaagh! and Great Strength. It is nice to use when you have been driven back or pushed by an enemy, and they think they are not in danger anymore. Very interesting to use with more choppin’ too, or with Crush and Cleave. Can also be used simply to push someone out of an objective. Can be replaced by Shadeglass Darts, that have more range, don’t break, but can’t be upgraded and deal less damage.

Shadestep (Rotated): This card is a bit gimmicky. It can be great, and can also be useless, according on who you are facing and how they play. Very strong vs sepulchral guard, because they won’t be able to block the way to the warden. To make the most out of this card, I tend to play with my fighters very close by vs an Aggro deck, this way I can take advantage of bodyblocking, and surge from the shadows to hit someone with supports. Can also be useful to get on an objective if the path is stuck.

How to Play This?

VS Control:

The deck is designed to be aggressive against passive decks, like cowardcast, and sepulchral guard.

First of all: When placing objectives, deny the best spots to your opponent. Place objectives in their half so that they can only place the next ones closer to your territory, this way they will have to commit in order to score glory. And this is when you can strike them down.

Always stick gurzag on an hex bordering the map, so you can hidden path to get yourself a kill. Just wait for the best moment to do so.

Mulligan any hand where you don’t have cards such as sidestep, hidden path, distraction or spectral wings. You will need your mobility more than ever in such match ups. If you can, keep distraction to prevent your enemy to score glory from the Key Upgrades in the last round.

Avoid charging alone with Gurzag. Kunnin’ but brutal can be great in those match ups, especially versus sepulchral, because you can get more than one kill from gurzag on that action phase.

In this match up, you also need tactical supremacies in hand, dere’s more of us is also great vs stormcast. Once you harvest some free glory, you are ready for the carnage.

VS Aggro:

NEVER go first. If you charge in with anybody, you are going to get butchered. Let them coming to you, and kill targets based on who you can kill the most easily. Try to take your distances from the enemies that didn’t charge yet: Orruks and Fiends get free glory for charging 3 times. Isolate the two first chargers, and kill them. Then you can try to kill the other two. They sometimes run Denial, so just send someone in their territory in the last round, either by moving/charging, or with hidden path.