White Dwarf #20 - More Orks, Still no Codex

A third week of Ork releases is featured and still no sign of the Codex. This week's releases are the new Mek Gun, which is a multi-part kit for any of the big guns, including a bunch of new weapons, the new Shokk Attack Gun, the 40k Librarium (all the 6th edition codices plus the rules), and some other Black Library releases.

The paint splatter section includes various parts of the new Shokk Attack Gun, which is then followed by the rules for Mek Guns.

Mek Guns includes the old standbys, the Kannon, Lobba, and Zzap Gun, as well as four new weapon types: the Bubblechukka, Smasha Gun, Kustom Mega-Kannon, and Traktor Kannon. All four are 36" range. The bubblechukka is a Heavy 1 Large Blast, with D6 Strength and AP. A single D6 roll is used each turn for both the Strength and AP, making it have fairly limited use I think. The Smasha Gun has a Strength D6+4 AP 1 and is heavy 1. The Kustom Mega-Kannon is a standard Kustom Blasta profile, S8 AP1, Blast Gets Hot. Finally, the Traktor Kannon is S8 AP3 with Skyfire. Additionally, the Traktor special rule means it deals an automatic Immobilized result in addition to any result when it glances or penetrates a vehicle, or when wounding a Swooping FMC, that FMC will suffer a -3 penalty to its grounding check.

Mek Guns check in at 18 points base, with the new weapons coming in at a 12 point upgrade. Other options include additional grot crewmen and an ammo runt. With the BS3 from the Grots, I think most of these new weapons are worthwhile, except maybe the bubblechukka.

The rest of the issue mostly deals with background and design thoughts of the new Ork releases.