Ork Lootas and Burnas review

Well, all this talk about 6th edition 40k made my mind wander to my poor neglected Ork Horde a bit, and I decided to give them some reinforcements. In the last Ork Codex you could buy Burnas (orks with flamethrowers) as upgrades for your boys, and I had a couple of metal models already. Not particularly useful but cool models and the templates could come in handy against another horde army, like Tyranids or Imperial Guard. I used them to give some power weapons to my 'Ard Boyz mobs which had +1 strength, to open Space Marine armour with.

In the current codex however, burnas are fielded in mobs of their own, so I needed some more. They are still counted as power weapons in close combat but may not be 'Ard Boyz any more so they are Strength 3. Not as good, but I want to use my old cool models. Consequently I bought the Lootas and Burnas Box to add the figures I need.

Life is like a box of extreme orky shootiness. Loud and foul smelling.

At first I was expecting finecast versions of the old metal models, but this is a plastic boxed set containing five multipart models. This is good because it means that the conversion possibilites are better and the parts can easily be swapped with the normal ork boxed sets. However things did not turn out to be as good as they seemed.

The shooty bits -- Deff Guns.

First sprue is all the parts needed for the Deff guns. They are big, bulky and patched together affairs. In my opinion they are much better than what the old metal Lootas had. The parts are not that interchangeable I think, but the four pieces are varied enough to make customisation unnecessary. One looks like a heavy plasma, the other some sort of lascannon, the third looks like a twin linked heavy shoota while the last one looks maybe like a melta, or a very large caliber shoota. There are some addons like small missiles, ejecting shell casings and sights. The guns are mounted on some kind of carrying harness and you also get four heads that are different from the normal ork heads and great for swapping with Deffkopta pilot heads for added variety. If you have kept count you probably noticed that you only get four guns while there are five figures... yeah, I noticed that too.

The burny bits -- Burnas. Well, duh...

The next sprue contains all the parts for the burnas. They are all held in the right arm, with the left arm holding a handle. You get four large fuel tanks that fit on the backs of the orks and four fuel tank tops with attached carrying straps. This takes some fiddling to align right, I recommend first glueing the tanks on and then the right arm to make the fuel lines meet up, before adding the straps. Left arm should be fitted last when everything else fits together. We also get four cool looking heads with welding masks or protective goggles. One is chomping on a cigar and has a cutout in his blast shield for it...

Some nice varied design on the fuel tanks.

So, ok, now you have realised that you can only assemble four burnas or lootas from this set. So what's the fifth figure for? Well, he's a Mek Boy, since you can upgrade one of your burnas or lootas in the codex for free. Hooray, you say, a Mek Boy has to be very cool to have in your mob, right? More on that later, but first let's take a look at the sprue.

The fleshy bits. Oooh, look a gretchin too!

The last sprue contains all the bodies; there are four ordinary bodies and one for the mekboy. The bodies are all in the same two-part vein that we recognise from the Ork Boys set and similar to the ones in the AoBR box although they were assembled. What's good is that they have varied them a bit, the legs are more standing still than advancing for a change, and there are some small details that are different. The Mekboy's body is slightly more muscular and he's barechested but the parts can be swapped around without any problems. The Mekboy is armed with a Kustom Megablasta and has a backpack with some mek's tools. There are also two optional weapons included, a Big Shoota and a Rokkit Launcha, which corresponds to the upgrades available in the codex. A nice touch, until you realise GW has forgot to include the left arm for the optional weapons! First I thought you could use the same left arm from the Megablasta, until I realised the arms holding the megablasta is the left one! A backpack with a gretchin stuffing bullets into an ammo belt is included for the heavy shoota though...

The Mekboy. That brain implant looks useful.

So what's the verdict? Well... it kind of depends.

I feel a bit cheated by the inclusion of the mekboy. While the codex allows a unit of 15 lootas or burnas (they are different units though, no mixing) to upgrade up to three of the orks into Mekboys it's not that optimal. The Mekboy's Megablasta has a get hot rule and is not as good as the Deff guns. In a Burna unit he might be useful with a Big Shoota since you probably will be using them against lightly armed masses of troops, but in that case another Burna would be even more useful. Since the Mekboy has the same stats as the regular orks and is not allowed to take any wargear there is no reason to field them other than to provide some ranged fire while the burnas advance. The inclusion of the Big Shoota and Rokkit Launcha without the left arm needed to use them is incredibly daft and the space used could have been used for another Burna and Deff gun, giving you the choice of building a fifth Burna or Loota, or the Mekboy.

Now you have to buy four boxes instead of three to field a full unit which will give you four near useless Mekboy figures for your bit box. (Well, parts are never useless per se, but I think you get what I mean.) Sure, if you want to field both Lootas and Burnas you only need to buy six boxes, since you can use the leftover parts from the other boxes on the Mekboy bodies, but I still think it's a cock-up of epic proportions. GW seems to even acknowledge that themselves, since they include the following description:

The set also contains a big shoota and a rokkit launcha which you can use to customise your other Ork Mobs.

And that's really the value of this box, if you have lots of other ork figures which you can use all the leftover bits from this set for. For example, if I have six ork bodies, two heads and two left arms laying about, say, from the Assault on Black Reach set, I could combine them with this set to make another four Lootas or Burnas, one ork with a Big Shoota and one ork with a Rokkit Launcha. On it's own this set is very poor though.

To sum it up, I give this boxed set 2 out of 5 on it's own, but 3 out of 5 if you have lots of other ork bits to use, or if you want to expand your army and get extra bits for converting other figures.