Ork Unit Analysis: Painboy

The Painboy

The final generic HQ we will be analyzing is the Painboy, one of the blandest, yet most essential of the HQ choices. The painboy is the apothecary of your army, though he is cheaper, and is an independent character. This is important as it allows him to join any unit he wishes, giving the potential for some very nice builds.

To start off with, he has the stat line of a nob, with a un-upgradeable 6+ armor save. He costs 50 points base and comes with an 'Urty Syringe and a set of Dok's tools. An 'Urty syringe is a melee weapon which is Poisoned 4+, Ap -, making it the only poisoned weapon in the ork's arsenal. This is obviously useful at wounding things with high toughness, not that this matters though as your army should contain models which are S10 or S9. The Dok's tools confer FnP to the unit the painboy is with. The painboy is very limited with options, it can take from the Orky Know Wots list, though nothing here is of interest, and from the Runts and Squigs list. The only item of note here is the grot orderly, which, for 5 points allows the painboy to re-roll a single failed Feel No Pain roll, this is useful, though not to be relied upon. I would not recommend taking grot orderlies, however, keep your painboyz base so you can bring more of them.

Painboyz are useful in any list except for a Mek based list. The best list to take painboyz in is Green tide lists, they are a relatively cheap means to give your unit of boyz extra survivability. In an unbound list, I would recommend putting a painboy with every squad, this will make your Ork army far harder to kill, giving them extra survivability against small arms fire.

Painboyz are also very useful in units like meganobz, meganobz are slow and lack an invuln save like their terminator counterparts so a feel no pain save is the next best thing. Any unit, however, can benefit from a painboy unless they have s special unit type, such as jump infantry or infiltrators.

There is not much more to be said about the painboy, they lack options but are crucial to any good Ork army, Feel no Pain saves cannot be underestimated, they really can be game changers, especially for orks. Every Ork army should try and bring these, though I believe a Big Mek takes preference as they have far more versatility than a painboy could ever hope to have.

Cheers,

Christian (The Painiest Painboy that ever caused Pain)