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I have a few questions about collecting orks.

1: Can you be a good ork player/collector if you can't kitbash properly? I have very little artistic sense so i won't be able to make all those wonderful conversions i've seen around the internet
2: how competitive are they really? heard numerous times that they are subpar but i've also heard they can win against anyone. My friends play tau, necron and space marine primarily and i would like a 50/50 chance even when they turn on the cheese
3: how expensive are they to collect compared to eldar which are my second choice closely followed by daemons. Again when you can't make all those scratchbuilds yourself and have to buy it all
4: I like painting. Mediocre skill at best, but still like it. How hard are they to paint. I figure that making it look bad on purpose can be quite the challange
5: tournament level. how do they fare and how often through the editions have they been a real contender for a tournament win

Hopefully you can answer one or more of my questions so i can get a little closer to a decision whether i should start orks which i love looking at when built properly or simply choose eldar for the higher chance to win more than now with my nids.

1. Sure, kitbashing/scratch building is just an option when modeling and it so happens that Orks are the best kitbash army. That being said with Orks is super easy to kitbash and mistakes are easy to overlook due to Ork's ramshackle technology design.
2. Not really, especially after the FAQ ruining Tankbustas and Void Shields. The cheese builds are too much for Orks to win in a straight up fight but its possible to win with MSU tactics and focusing on taking objectives and just road blocking those unkillable deathstars or super heavies. Fielding cheese builds against Orks is generally considered a TFG move as Orks are one of the "pre decurion" era codexes. Tau are probably the biggest hard counter to Orks while Orks can be somewhat effective against Necrons and Space Marines depending on the list and tactics being used.
3. Orks are generally considered very expensive to make an army for due to the large number of models you need. Bike lists can get very expensive but good use of kitbashing (turning ork boyz into tankbustas for example) can make it a lot less painful to the wallet. Eldar is probably a bit cheaper but all those finecast kits Eldar have tend to be really cost ineffective. Daemons need a lot of models and even more with Summoning.
4. Orks are easy to paint as Orks have some bulk to them and most models don't have a ton of details/accessories on them (but Orks do have a lot of annoying belts on their clothes). There are some strategies out there to rapidly paint Ork models.
5. Right now Orks are bad in tournament play except for the ITC with its Big Mek Stompa ruling. Orks in 5th where decently good with their Nob Biker Stars being able to play wound musical chairs but those days are long gone. Orks are playing the game on hard mode and until GW makes a new codex for them its not looking great for the boyz in green.

Play Orks because you like the army and the models, not because you want to dominate the game. Orks are generally considered one of the more fun armies to play against for all armies because they don't have a lot of gimmick cheese mechanics that make playing against them unbearable.

zaible wrote:
I have a few questions about collecting orks.

1: Can you be a good ork player/collector if you can't kitbash properly? I have very little artistic sense so i won't be able to make all those wonderful conversions i've seen around the internet
Yes, but the real reason kitbashing is so popular is it's really easy and beneficial with orks. Mostly it's just a case of "glue these parts together" and you don't need greenstuff even. Stuff like building mek gunz out of the various cannons included with the battlewagon kit is sort of a no-brainer, and each one you do saves you the purchase of a 66$ kit, soooooo.... Same deal with making both lootas and burnas out of that kit.

2: how competitive are they really? heard numerous times that they are subpar but i've also heard they can win against anyone. My friends play tau, necron and space marine primarily and i would like a 50/50 chance even when they turn on the cheese
Not. At all. The FAQs kicked us while we were down, and we were already well below the level where we'd ever be seen in a large tournament. You will not get a 50/50 chance against tau Necron and SM cheese. Well, maybe necron cheese, Orks can often beat the decurion just by nature of being obsec and starting brawls on all the objectives.

3: how expensive are they to collect compared to eldar which are my second choice closely followed by daemons. Again when you can't make all those scratchbuilds yourself and have to buy it all
More expensive. Almost everything the orks have is plastic which is nice, but they're all cheap points wise which means you need tons of models. Most eldar armies work out to be far cheaper.

4: I like painting. Mediocre skill at best, but still like it. How hard are they to paint. I figure that making it look bad on purpose can be quite the challange
I'd say harder to paint than eldar/Sms and about on par with chaos marines, because they're not really monochrome, at the very least you'll have green parts and colored parts, so most models end up with 5-ish colors on them.

5: tournament level. how do they fare and how often through the editions have they been a real contender for a tournament win

Only once or twice tbh. We are GWs favorite little punching bag, along with CSM.

Hopefully you can answer one or more of my questions so i can get a little closer to a decision whether i should start orks which i love looking at when built properly or simply choose eldar for the higher chance to win more than now with my nids.

1. Yes. you certainly can, but I would say that, in terms of kit bashing, there's no such thing as "proper". If you start small and set simple goals while you're learning you can pick it up fast. For example, it's pretty easy to by a tank kit and cut up random pieces of plastic card to stick on as "Orky Armor". If you start with things like that you'll be on the track to picking up more complex projects in no time at all. Like I said though, you don't HAVE to kit bash to be a good Ork player.

2. You will, unfortunately, not really have anywhere near a 50/50 chance against the armies you list unless you're very good and your friends are very bad. The one nice thing is that Orks don't care about Grav, so that's a nice big middle finger to marines, but yeah ... still an uphill battle.

3. A lot of people say they are more expensive so YMMV here, but I've found them to be less expensive. I've found so many great deals on Orks through Ebay/Amazon, and bits boxes at my LGS that my 3000pt Ork army (which is A LOT of Orks) was significantly less expensive than my 2000pt. Tau army.

4. The thing about Orks is that they lend themselves well to basic techniques. For example, you would be surprised at how good an Ork army can look if you base coat green, paint the clothes/armor as you would any other model and do a black wash followed by a lighter green highlight on the skin areas (which can be easily dry brushed even if you're bad at it). I can paint 500points of Ork Boyz in almost no time at all and they look pretty good on the table top. Not winning any awards obviously, but pretty good for table top.

5. Tournaments are the real stick in the mud here. For a long long time Orks were pretty tough. Their fourth Ed. book was just crazy good. Crazy good. The books that have come after that have not been kind however. You're going to be very hard pressed to win a lot with these guys astray are currently in the bottom tier with CSM. Unlike CSM though (I play both CSM and Orks), I find that I never regret pulling out my Orks and having a go. There's just something very silly and fun about them that feels like it's missing in the game in recent years.