I added early in the last thread (prior to the silliness that got it locked) that I would post results of the next three tourneys I will be participating in. Yesterday's Ard Boyz round 1 was the 1st tourney.

Overall Standings; there were 20 players in total. 3 Total Ork players.

1st: Mech Orks 60+ points (can't remember exact total)
2nd: Mech Orks 52 points
2nd/3rd: Mech Space Wolves 52 points
4th: Mech Orks 51 points

I came in 4th, but the Space Wolves player advised he absolutely was not going to make it to the next round, so the ticket was deferred to me by the TO.

As a caveat: The GW rep advised the local TO that Deff Rollas did work against vehicles. 1st place Orks had 3 Deff Rollas, 2nd place Orks had 0 Deff Rollas and 4th place Orks had 1 Deff Rolla. We did not know this until the morning of the event. But, at least we know this for the next round as round 2 is being held at the same location.

To my wife's amusement (not really), I've now got another tourney scheduled for August.

By no means definitive proof of how Orks stand in the grand scheme, but locally, they do pretty well.

Yep....Orks are awesome for anyone who knows how to use them.

*insert Dashofpepper's standard cut and paste, 'how to use orks' speech*

So John shaffer is the official GW rule guy.. HE ruled that you cannot use deff rollas against vehicles.. someone calls GW and now you can?

Adepticon FAQ says you cant either..

lol

Better than my store I suppose having judges who havent played since 3rd edition

Deff rolla's working on vehicles definitely push orks over the top, which is probably the reason most places rule they cant. I hope we see some kind of official word on it before the next round as we didnt hear anything about it at the location I was at and it makes a huge difference going into the next round.

http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/07/ard-boyz.html

Hay 'sup.

Frank Fugger wrote:http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/07/ard-boyz.html

Hay 'sup.

Save that for yourself. Great site for people who excel in paper theory. We prove the strength of orks on the table.

Doesn't GW have a deffrolla sprue coming out? Nothing like making it useful against vehicles to sell a few more units...

First place with Mech orks at the prelims yesterday by the way. 2 massacres and a minor victory. Orks are definitley NOT 3rd tier

I would like to state that I was screaming about Ork mech all along being incredibly powerful.

Davicus wrote:

Frank Fugger wrote:http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/07/ard-boyz.html

Hay 'sup.

Save that for yourself. Great site for people who excel in paper theory. We prove the strength of orks on the table.

I agree his lists are all theory and no gaming. he even admits that the local games he does play is against bad players. some of the lists on that site are decent. Most are spam lists that would win vs noobs not experienced players.

We should email john again and see if his position on deff rolla has indeed "changed" with the recent release of the new upgrade sprue

Cause thats pretty absurd that it was allowed

(I suspect John was at home since it was saturday and the janitor picked up the phone)

The problem with Orks is that they can't destroy vehicles without piling out and making themselves vulnerable to attack.

This problem is largely nullified if they can sit safe inside their transports (that should have a 4+ cover save) and plop d6 S10 hits everywhere.

There's a big difference between No Deffrolla Orks and Deffrolla Orks.

If I can get a definitive answer on whether or not Deffrollas will be allowed, I will certainly be taking Mech Orks to the semifinals.


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mrdabba wrote:

Davicus wrote:

Frank Fugger wrote:http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/07/ard-boyz.html

Hay 'sup.

Save that for yourself. Great site for people who excel in paper theory. We prove the strength of orks on the table.

I agree his lists are all theory and no gaming. he even admits that the local games he does play is against bad players. some of the lists on that site are decent. Most are spam lists that would win vs noobs not experienced players.

That's not true in the least. Love Stelek or hate Stelek, the vast majority of his fundamental advice is sound. It's also pretty obvious (to me, at least) that he plays quite frequently.

sourclams wrote:The problem with Orks is that they can't destroy vehicles without piling out and making themselves vulnerable to attack.

This problem is largely nullified if they can sit safe inside their transports (that should have a 4+ cover save) and plop d6 S10 hits everywhere.

There's a big difference between No Deffrolla Orks and Deffrolla Orks.

If I can get a definitive answer on whether or not Deffrollas will be allowed, I will certainly be taking Mech Orks to the semifinals.

Well they do have boarding planks. But that will leave whatever vehicle they are on in melta range very easily.

I agree and this ruling will make a huge impact on what we see for the second round.

Anyone wanna trade some orks for my necron army? lol

Tell them I said that it worked okay, Deffrollas work on vehicles end of argument.

Our TO called their GW rep this past week and asked about the ruling in regards to the Ard Boyz tourney. He was advised it was allowed, so that is what the TO based the ruling on. As players, we found out the morning of the tourney. No one really built a list around Deff Rolla spam (4-6 Battlewagons w/ Deff Rollas for example).

I agree it is a contested issue and I based my army on it not affecting vehicles. My list had one b/c I used my Necronomicon list and added extra stuff to make up the point difference. The Necro does not allow which is why I only had one rather than three in my army.

However, 2 of the top 4 placed finishers did not rely on Deff Rollas. Second place didn't have a single one.

What the three players did have in common was multiple Battlewagons, Big Mek w/ KFF and Ghazghkull Thraka.

For the next round, I'm expecting to see more Deff Rollas at this location.

Regarding my usage of the Deff Rolla, it was very hit or miss (more misses really):

Game 1: Successfully destroyed a Razorback and Venerable Dreadnought.

Game 2: Nothing. Failed to penetrate a Land Raider.

Game 3: Nothing. Battlewagon destroyed at mid field.

Hollismason wrote:Tell them I said that it worked okay, Deffrollas work on vehicles end of argument.

yep that'll do it

/endsarcasm


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Sarigar wrote:

What the three players did have in common was multiple Battlewagons, Big Mek w/ KFF and Ghazghkull Thraka.

yep that seems to be the pattern everyone was seeing. Add in trukk mobs/kans/deffkoptas/lootas/burnas to flavor. The ork player at our location ran somethign like:

2x loota's in wagons

ghazzy and nobs in a wagon

KFF mek

shootas in a wagon

meganobz in a trukk

2 trukk squads.

GW has a interesting track record when it comes to gray rules issues. Call them twice in the same day, and get two answers. As for adepticon saying something does or does not work: it is not an official GW event, and the faq was longer than the rule book. Treat it as a homebrew rule set used for that tourney. Because it is.

I hadn't heard there was an official rules guy for GW. If there is, then GW needs to post his rulings as official FAQs. If it is not in writing on the easily accessed FAQ, the rules books, then it is not official. Calling up GW for a ruling is the same as rolling a dice IMHO. Rolling to see which rep is on the phone.

Personally I don't see an issue with deffrollas being over the top if they hit vehicles. If somebody with an important tank is stupid enough to be withing 13 inches of a battle wagon that isn't immobile, then they deserve what is coming. How you not run away from a tank that only has an one inch movement advantage? How do you not figure out how to get a side shot on the weak armor on the side?

Ork battlewagon spam is a solid list, but like all unbalanced lists (almost all competitive orks are unbalanced lists) can be countered by smart play, and a flexible list. When Mech orks get 3 of the top 4 at a 20 player tourney, I ask myself what the other people where playing. Orks are good, in fact define the bottom of the competitive part of this game. They are a the "you must be this tall to enter the ride" marker. Does this make them tier 1? No, they get destroyed by too many lists to be that. They are also too weak against armor, which is popular in the 5th ed meta game. Are they tier 3? no that tier is for armies that aren't competitive at all. (as in they can't beat orks, or enough or enough of the armies that beat orks.) This puts orks on tier 2, which makes them a solid choice at an event. They are obviously tier 1 when their bad match ups don't show in enough numbers.

I happen to play orks, but I'm no fan boy. I know what they can and can't do. What they can't do is beat mechanized lists that actually use their mobility, or beat a bike army without resorting to KoS type lists. Nothing wrong with having a weakness, it just happens to be a weakness that is popular right now. Orks are victims of their own popularity. That and the awful changes to how fearless and combat resolution works. I have seen too many times where a squad of enemy is almost wiped out, but the orks lose a quarter of a unit to combat resolution. 20 boy squads will often lose their fearless after the combat res wounds are finished. Its one of the reasons I run throw away truk boyz, or no boyz at all. Grots are fine for scoring purposes, and there is other options in the book for killing ability. Sometimes you can even make them scoring.

As for paper theory vs on the table: in paper both players make few if any mistakes. In reality, orks are vicious at punishing mistakes, so win more than their on paper analysis should allow them. If both players play a flawless game, or the ork player makes more mistakes, the other army (assuming it is a real one, not a fluff army) should win. I have yet to see a flawless game, but I have seen many games where my or other people's orks crush the other side for making a serious error. I also have played/seen games where the orks had almost no chance from the start. Bad match ups are bad match ups.

Davicus wrote:Save that for yourself. Great site for people who excel in paper theory. We prove the strength of orks on the table.

mrdabba wrote:I agree his lists are all theory and no gaming. he even admits that the local games he does play is against bad players. some of the lists on that site are decent. Most are spam lists that would win vs noobs not experienced players.

It's a list of results from various 'Ard Boyz meets from around the US. Hardly "paper theory". A cursory glance down the list should tell you two things:

1) Orks aren't doing as well all over the place as the likes of IG, MechDar and Salamanders.
2) A lot of people are bringing shoddy lists to their meets.

Interpret that how you will.

I wouldnt treat adeption as homebrew.. its the biggest tournament in the nation now since GW fails at GTs this year (heck its bigger than the non-baltimore ones anyway)

They also put A LOT of effort into the FAQs which is something that cannot be said of GW.. I firmly believe that all tournaments should use a UNIFIED Faq that constantly updates "grey areas"

Its sad that GW cant do this for the community and therefore you gotta take it into your own hands

Kirasu wrote:I firmly believe that all tournaments should use a UNIFIED Faq that constantly updates "grey areas"

Signed. The number of problems they'd solve at a stroke by doing this is incredible; there's really no good reason they haven't, either.

Oh god, do we really need this thread? I deeply regret starting the first one.

It's going to be Frank vs the pro-ork crew going back and forth quoting each other's unintelligible non-logic, but now we're going to have a bunch of whiners b*tching about the deffrolla ruling on top of everything else.

Personally, I think orks *are* competitive, they are *not* tier 3, but arrogant, know-it-alls will continue to insist on their perspective no matter what you tell them.

OT: Re, deffrollas: (since it's fun to weigh in)... besides the upcoming new kit, (which gives GW an incentive to rule in orks favor regardless), I've always felt that they should work for a number of reasons, but the strongest intent-based argument is a quote from the codex:

Another type of Battlewagon is the Kursha...these lumbering behemoths can crush the enemy into a bloody paste with their massive spiked deff rollas...A kursha's driver will spend much of the battle steamrolling enemy infantry and *light vehicles*, cackling maniacally all the while.

Not to mention the part in the guard book about a deffrolla taking the top off of Pask's tank. If that isn't an indication of the intent that they work against vehicles, I don't know what it.

Edit: I'm not sure mech orks are an unbalanced list. You've got anti-horde infantry, anti-TEq (in the nobs), speed, armour, excellent protection via the KFF, and limited but significant anti-armour. Boarding planks are very effective if you get close. Granted, my rolling was ridiculous, but I had success against khornatedaemon's mech sallies - if I used my deffkoptas correctly, my mech orks would have taken a major victory against him and even with average rolling I still woud probably taken out both of his redeemers.

The fact that they work against tanks by RAW is beside the point.

dumbuket wrote:Oh god, do we really need this thread? I deeply regret starting the first one.

It's going to be Frank vs the pro-ork crew going back and forth quoting each other's unintelligible non-logic, but now we're going to have a bunch of whiners b*tching about the deffrolla ruling on top of everything else.

So far you're the only one to bring up anything of the sort. It's been quite civil up til your post, and I hope it keeps going.

Furthermore, nobody's "b*tching" about the Deffrolla. Regardless whether you believe it works or not against vehicles, if it is allowed by the tournament organizers, then Orks suddenly have more options for destroying vehicles than they did before.

dumbuket wrote:It's going to be Frank vs the pro-ork crew going back and forth quoting each other's unintelligible non-logic

Come now, my logic is simple; Orks are a starter army, and are the button-basher's choice. They're competetive in areas where people play silly army lists (Mech Space Wolves? Seriously?); everywhere else they get their eye wiped. The stupid thing is that Ork players here KNOW that's the case. They KNOW they're playing an army list any gimp could use to table a cruddy opponent, yet for some reason they get defensive whenever you point it out to them. Statements like "orks are vicious at punishing mistakes, so win more than their on paper analysis should allow them" tell you all you need to know about the Codex; it's simplistic, unreliable and falls flat on it's arse when there are no opponent failures to take advantage of.

And for the record, I don't see why Deffrollas shouldn't work against vehicles.



Let's face it, they need to.

Well, I posted the results over on Stelek's blog. He pretty much called me a liar and cheat. I then tried to respond, and suddenly, there is an error in trying to post. Classy move on his part.

@ dumbuket: In your previous thread, I advised I would post up how my Orks fared in the month of July. I was attending the Ard Boyz, Necronomicon and an RTT. I figured I'd see how the army fared in North Carolina and Florida and in various fields in regards to Battle Points, Army Composition, Sportsmanship and Painting. By no means am I the final authority, but I challenged the idea that Orks are not competitive in a tourney enviornment. Locally, Orks are one of the more competitive armies being played, despite popular internet opinion. No need to be regretful. If you don't want to read it, just don't enter the thread. The last one did spiral out of control by a couple of posters. So far, this has not.

I went 2-0-1 yesterday and placed 4th. My tie was against the 2nd place Space Wolf player. My 2nd game was against Vanilla Marines and 3rd game against a 4 Land Raider Demonhunter army. I managed to kill 2 Land Raiders and outplay my opponent in regards to the mission.

One thing I can say is locally, Nob Bikers are finished. I took my 1850 Necro list and added Nob Bikers and Snikrot/Kommandos to make up the points difference. The Nob Bikers got punched in the teeth every game. Sadly, they will be relegated to looking cool on a shelf. Locals have faced them enough and know how to deal with them.

Ghaz, Nobz in Battlewagons and Mekboy w/ KFF as the lychpin of an Ork army was a bit trickier for opponents. 3 of the 4 Ork players utelized this basic construction and did well.

Will they do well in the Ard Boyz 2nd round? Hard to tell. In all honesty, if I had been matched up against one the IG players in the 2nd scenario, I'd have probably lost. He was able to sit back and absolutely punish his opponent with shooting. I may not have even been able to reach his armored gunline.

From personal experience, I just don't see the Ork codex as an unplayable tourney army. Is it the flavor of the month... no. Folks will flock to the new codex and lots of new armies pop up. However, given time, many will sell off, trade or shelve the flavor of the month and move on to something else.

I really enjoy the army and still fare pretty well with them.

My prelim 1st place list: 110 Boyz, 6 Kanz, KFF Mek, warboss, 10 Nobz in trukk, 12 regular bikes, 15 lootas, near full squad of kommandos with snikrot.

Scored massacre round 1, major victory round 2, round 3 opponent was stomped by my round 2 opponent first round, surrendered to me before the game started.

2nd place was Orks as well, something along the lines of 2x battlewagon, 10 nobz in trukk, 5x trukk o' boyz, 10 regular bikes, 12 lootas.

Expect a rougher time in round 2, but will definitely be assembling the Battlewagon my winnings covered for next time if the deff rolla gets a ruling.

Malecus wrote:
Scored massacre round 1, major victory round 2, round 3 opponent was stomped by my round 2 opponent first round, surrendered to me before the game started.

WTF? That is grossly unfair to all the other players.

sourclams wrote:

Malecus wrote:
Scored massacre round 1, major victory round 2, round 3 opponent was stomped by my round 2 opponent first round, surrendered to me before the game started.

WTF? That is grossly unfair to all the other players.

Unfortunately, we had a small turnout and had already done the math. Unless he scored 6 more points off of me (with Tyranids) than the other Ork player scored on his opponent, the results couldn't change between 2nd and 3rd. And the other Ork player needed to outscore me by 19 points in round 3 to tie for 1st. Anyone and everyone potentially affected was consulted before we allowed the game to be tossed.

Ah, that is unfortunate.

But.. isnt the point to play of a tournament to play a game you enjoy playing?

I talk people out of conceding because Id like to play

Sarigar wrote:Well, I posted the results over on Stelek's blog. He pretty much called me a liar and cheat. I then tried to respond, and suddenly, there is an error in trying to post. Classy move on his part.

Stelek isnt exactly known for his ability to take disagreement without resorting to flipping out :p His advice isnt bad but I dont understand why he thinks orks are bad.. Tournaments are about MATCH UPS not god list vs god list..

I know. I'll let it be. He's the big fish in his small pond. It's the second time I've tried to have a rebuttal on that site that he's blocked it.

offtopic, why do people always post stupid pictures if they don't like the thread? I have a "back" button I press to exit the thread if I don't like it...

The internet lets you feel witty when in reality you're just recycling someone elses pictures (which were lame when they posted them also)

Well I personally think that stelek might be in the trap I saw often in competitive magic the gathering when I played that. People who were super competitive would build a deck that would absolutely wreck a certain matchup. Said deck would destroy most of other matchups. That player would then confidently go into a tourney expecting to not see certain lists, because they were supposedly bad. That player would then flip out when people played things they shouldn't be playing. It would ruin the meta, and give the "superior player" rough matches he wasn't expecting. He may be right, with perfect information people have no reason to play what they are playing. People rarely have even good information, and you shouldn't base what you play on what other people should be playing. At least not entirely. In this case Orks, whom should be weak in the 5th meta game, are a solid choice because people are slow to change their armies to a new rule set. Orks punish 4th edition and other non optimized lists. If that is what people are playing, then its a good choice. I'm not really good with the math behind game theory, but this is a pretty simple problem set. Personally I would just take an army that beats both orks and the 5th ed lists, because 5th ed lists and orks will take out the lists that beat mine. The various flavors of guard/inq give the largest pool to meta game with. Its no wonder that type of army is so strong in the meta. Dark eldar is another army that is pretty good at 5th ed.

That sums it up pretty well.. It helps if you've played any highly competitive CCG. The "jank" decks as they were called often won tournaments cause the "power decks" werent prepared for them

its amazing how one random card can mess them up

I think this is why you see armies like necrons doing something.. Granted its still a ton of IG and Orks but thats how WFB is too (replace IG with demons and orks with dark elves)

Wait are you comparing IG to daemons in fantasy?

Why not? They're both game-ruiningly, staggeringly broken armies that any idiot can win with... right? Right???

God I hate this board sometimes.

dumbuket wrote:Why not? They're both game-ruiningly, staggeringly broken armies that any idiot can win with... right? Right???

God I hate this board sometimes.

QFT. Not only are some posters stunningly and willingly obtuse, but seemingly lacking in humor as well.

Oh well.

I was at Sarigar's quarter-finals, and I won first with mechanized Orks. I added Deff Rollas to my list just before the tournament after the TO informed us that Deff Rollas were ok. To be fair, I *was* frothing at the teeth in hopes that they would fly around the table smacking into vehicles and causing mass ruination. In practice, it didn't happen.

Round 1: I faced mechanized IG. I lost one Battlewagon turn 1, and between my remaining two, only one got to smack into a tank, causing 3 hits, 1 glance, and a weapon destroyed result.

Round 2: I played Nidzilla...no vehicles there.

Round 3: I played against mechanized orks. Our vehicles never really got close to each other. Everyone jumped out and had carnage somewhat in the middle.

3 Deffrollas = 75 points. Total value over 3 games....one weapon destroyed. They're not wonderbread.
-------------------------------------
Because of GWs ruling on competition, I also participated in a second quarterfinal round, making quite the grueling weekend - Deff Rollas were not allowed, and despite my boarding planks and grabbin' klaws, I still didn't get to use them. I still took first place.

Round 1 (Scenario 3): I played against some weird Eldar. Almost all of his eldar were STR5 T6, and a couple of wraithguard monstrous creatures in there, and some howling banshees on foot, along with some infiltrating pathfinders and other nasty stuff. Capture and Control. He turtled, and attempted to slow play. Took 45 minutes to deploy his eldar. 2h 15m into the game, we're at the bottom of turn 2. The TO let us have a turn 3 because I complained. His turn 3 deep strike attempt to contest the objective on my half of the board scattered 8" away and failed, and I sent a squad of trukk boyz over to contest his; I had more killpoints and got a massacre. No vehicles, so no chance to do anything with Deff Rollas, boarding planks, or grabbin' klaws.

Round 2 (Scenario 1): I played against Tyranids: No vehicles there.

Round 3 (Scenario 2): I played against mechvet IG. Dawn of War, and he won the roll off, which is the absolute worst scenario and worst draw to play against mechvets with. He went first, I stayed completely in DoW reserves. You would think all that firepower would annihilate a mechanized list, but math *does* have an impact here.

Lets presume he's shooting at me with with a STR10 weapon at a battlewagon. He has a 50% chance to hit. That hit has a 50% chance to at least glance. I have a 50% chance of passing a cover save. If it gets through, that glance/penetrate has a 50% chance to do anything that I care about. That STR10 shot now has a statistical 6.25% chance of actually stopping my wagon. I've said this elsewhere....but mechanized IG don't scare me. When I first read the threads about them they did, but having had a chance to play against them....not scary.

Kirasu wrote:Stelek isnt exactly known for his ability to take disagreement without resorting to flipping out :p His advice isnt bad but I dont understand why he thinks orks are bad.. Tournaments are about MATCH UPS not god list vs god list..

I don't think that's what he's about at all; what he's essentially saying is, if competetive 40K became more competetive (i.e every player was running optimised lists and had a better overall understanding of the game), Orks wouldn't fare anywhere near as well as they currently do purely because there's so much their army list can't cope with. The current trend is clueless people bringing sad lists to tournaments and consequently Ork players roll them (I'm still trying to work out how exactly you make mech Space Wolves...), and in that sort of setting trying to claim the Orks are a good Codex is like trying to claim Nikolai Valuev is the best heavyweight in the world. Which is a good analogy, since Valuev and the Ork Codex are both lumbering, clumsy beasts who rely on their freakish nature to overwhelm opponents rather than outclassing them, and who struggle to deal with anything or anyone that has the finesse to punish their simplicity and one-dimensionality.

All that said... it's important to keep in mind the "most important rule" in the BRB; 40K is only worth playing as long as you're enjoying it and everyone has fun. I'll admit that, in some of my ravings, I tend to lose sight of that. At the end of the day the "metagame", if you will, of people bringing whatever list they have to hand to a tourney and playing it the way they want to is NOT going to change, and in that environment the Ork Codex's pick-up-and-mongle style of play becomes viable. Wether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of personal opinion; personally I'm not massively bothered, as long as whatever trends develop allow 40K to keep going.

Dumbuket, keep it civil.

Some other posters: Keep the thread on-topic, please.

Thank you.

Frank Fugger wrote:

Kirasu wrote:Stelek isnt exactly known for his ability to take disagreement without resorting to flipping out :p His advice isnt bad but I dont understand why he thinks orks are bad.. Tournaments are about MATCH UPS not god list vs god list..

I don't think that's what he's about at all; what he's essentially saying is, if competetive 40K became more competetive (i.e every player was running optimised lists and had a better overall understanding of the game), Orks wouldn't fare anywhere near as well as they currently do purely because there's so much their army list can't cope with. The current trend is clueless people bringing sad lists to tournaments and consequently Ork players roll them (I'm still trying to work out how exactly you make mech Space Wolves...), and in that sort of setting trying to claim the Orks are a good Codex is like trying to claim Nikolai Valuev is the best heavyweight in the world. Which is a good analogy, since Valuev and the Ork Codex are both lumbering, clumsy beasts who rely on their freakish nature to overwhelm opponents rather than outclassing them, and who struggle to deal with anything or anyone that has the finesse to punish their simplicity and one-dimensionality.

All that said... it's important to keep in mind the "most important rule" in the BRB; 40K is only worth playing as long as you're enjoying it and everyone has fun. I'll admit that, in some of my ravings, I tend to lose sight of that. At the end of the day the "metagame", if you will, of people bringing whatever list they have to hand to a tourney and playing it the way they want to is NOT going to change, and in that environment the Ork Codex's pick-up-and-mongle style of play becomes viable. Wether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of personal opinion; personally I'm not massively bothered, as long as whatever trends develop allow 40K to keep going.

In essence, math hammer with an escape clause; Ork players can only win b/c their opponents are clueless.

In reference to the mech Space Wolves: Mechanized Marines (of nearly any type) can be a competitive army. Never dismiss any army that you may not be familiar with. Folks did last year and 2 of our local players made it to the finals in Baltimore. Mech Blood Angels and pure Mech Sisters.

I believe some folks are not accounting for different playstyles in various regions of the country/world. After being able to play across the United States, I can definitely see variations in army lists as well as player skill level. I'm sure there are folks that are not very good 40k players and don't bring optimized army lists, but that has happened in every tournament, RTT, Indy, GT or otherwise. As you mentioned, this hasn't changed nor will it change in the forseeable future. Additionally, 40K is not really an optimized game system for tourneys. At the end of the day, I think with the right matchups, any codex in production has a chance to win any tourney, Ard Boyz or otherwise.

Besides, lets be frank about what the Ard Boyz is: an opportunity for GW to make money from folks who can buy more models to make for a 2500 point army they may not have been inclined to purchase otherwise. Call it whatever they want, I'll call a spade a spade. Not knocking them for it as it gave me the opportunity to enjoy my hobby.

Personally, I had 3 fun games with my greenskins. I most likely will bring them to the next round.

But, I've not played my Eldar in some time...

Sarigar, the funniest thing about the tournament was that there wasn't really any BO.

So rare to see that at a 40k event! =p

Frank Fugger wrote:

Kirasu wrote:Stelek isnt exactly known for his ability to take disagreement without resorting to flipping out :p His advice isnt bad but I dont understand why he thinks orks are bad.. Tournaments are about MATCH UPS not god list vs god list..

I don't think that's what he's about at all; what he's essentially saying is, if competetive 40K became more competetive (i.e every player was running optimised lists and had a better overall understanding of the game), Orks wouldn't fare anywhere near as well as they currently do purely because there's so much their army list can't cope with. The current trend is clueless people bringing sad lists to tournaments and consequently Ork players roll them (I'm still trying to work out how exactly you make mech Space Wolves...), and in that sort of setting trying to claim the Orks are a good Codex is like trying to claim Nikolai Valuev is the best heavyweight in the world. Which is a good analogy, since Valuev and the Ork Codex are both lumbering, clumsy beasts who rely on their freakish nature to overwhelm opponents rather than outclassing them, and who struggle to deal with anything or anyone that has the finesse to punish their simplicity and one-dimensionality.

All that said... it's important to keep in mind the "most important rule" in the BRB; 40K is only worth playing as long as you're enjoying it and everyone has fun. I'll admit that, in some of my ravings, I tend to lose sight of that. At the end of the day the "metagame", if you will, of people bringing whatever list they have to hand to a tourney and playing it the way they want to is NOT going to change, and in that environment the Ork Codex's pick-up-and-mongle style of play becomes viable. Wether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of personal opinion; personally I'm not massively bothered, as long as whatever trends develop allow 40K to keep going.

Maybe that's the way orks are supposed to be played. Whereas Eldar are a finely tipped rapier, orks are a meat cleaver. The list is designed to be smashmouth. There are guys out there that were winning GTs with the 3rd edition codex. That is saying something about the players considering what a turd that book was.

The only ork players I saw winning were doing so with the feral ork list which was not a fair comparison due to how overpowered it was when compared to the real ork book

3 BS3 TL rokkits for 150 pts? yes please

I know who you are talking about. I don't mean him. There is a guy from the Pacific Northwest who stomped a lot of ass with the 3rd edition codex at GTs as well as a guy from Birmingham Alabama. I'm not dropping names, because when that happens here their names usually get drug through the mud. There was also a guy from England that used a footslogging list to win one of the U.K. heats a few years back. I'll never say that the ork codex (the old one or the new one) is made of win. And I agree to a point with some of what Frank Fugger says about people getting wiped because they refuse to adapt their lists. But it's crazy to say that there is some kind of nationwide simultaneous fluke causing the ork army to be doing so well at the Ardboyz. The ork book is different from say the space marine codex. That's good. If all the races did the exact same thing, we might as well be playing checkers.

It's not a case of a nationwide simultaneous fluke. It'd have to be a nationwide simultaneous fluke that's been going on since 3rd Edition at least (to my knowledge). It's more a case that the standard of competetive play in 40K is poor, and as such you can turn up to tournaments and win with pretty much any Codex.

The question is will that ever change? The answer is no, because it's a tabletop wargame and is a social activity rather than a proper competetive thing. It might change if competetive 40K ever becomes lucrative and tourney winners end up getting the sort of Fabulous Prizes that Smash TV! could only dream of handing out, but for some reaosn I don't see that occurring.

Sarigar wrote:In essence, math hammer with an escape clause; Ork players can only win b/c their opponents are clueless.

Preach it, brother

In reference to the mech Space Wolves: Mechanized Marines (of nearly any type) can be a competitive army. Never dismiss any army that you may not be familiar with.

I'm familiar with Space Wolves; they're a concept army, the concept being "WOARGH MOVE CHARGE LOTS OF DICE". You don't get lots of dice when you're trading in wounds for Rhinos, and they're too expensive to horde-up in a Black Templars stylee.

Folks did last year and 2 of our local players made it to the finals in Baltimore. Mech Blood Angels and pure Mech Sisters.

... both of which drastically different beasts to mech Space Wolves in a large variety of ways. Give them enough Faith Points and Sisters will cause problems for anyone, and Mech Blangels are basically Rhino-Rush Marines with one Emo Assault Squad that Rends in CC.

I believe some folks are not accounting for different playstyles in various regions of the country/world. After being able to play across the United States, I can definitely see variations in army lists as well as player skill level. I'm sure there are folks that are not very good 40k players and don't bring optimized army lists, but that has happened in every tournament, RTT, Indy, GT or otherwise. As you mentioned, this hasn't changed nor will it change in the forseeable future. Additionally, 40K is not really an optimized game system for tourneys. At the end of the day, I think with the right matchups, any codex in production has a chance to win any tourney, Ard Boyz or otherwise.

That's basically what I said, only slightly more couched in diplomacy. And it sort of ignores the thorny issue that Orks need the match-ups more than most other Dexes do; which, as we've already established, they'll continue to get until competetive 40K gets more competetive.

Which it won't, because it's a tabletop wargame.

Besides, lets be frank about what the Ard Boyz is: an opportunity for GW to make money from folks who can buy more models to make for a 2500 point army they may not have been inclined to purchase otherwise. Call it whatever they want, I'll call a spade a spade. Not knocking them for it as it gave me the opportunity to enjoy my hobby.

Personally, I had 3 fun games with my greenskins. I most likely will bring them to the next round.

But, I've not played my Eldar in some time...

Don't cop out now; you went through the first round with the Orks, why not crack on and keep going?

I must say that I am completely impressed by Frank's tenacity.

2 threads later, as well as several ork 'Ard Boys wins, and he still insists that Orks are not a strong dex. Nevermind all of the tourneys that they have won over the last year; nevermind that most reputable sites/players list Orks as one of the top 2 codexes; nevermind that he has no physical proof or statistics to back up his claim; Frank still insists that Orks are noobhammers - just because he doesn't like them.

I gotta respect a guy who sticks to his beliefs even though there is nothing backing him up...it shows that he has intestinal fortitude; he's the kind of guy that will never give in to peer pressure.

Now, as much as I resepct Frank for not giving up the ship, he is unfortunately wrong.

Statistics and tournaments over the past year have proven Orks to be strong. Claiming that they only win because other players are noobs is just insulting. In fact, it is far more insulting to every player who doesn't run Orks than it is to Ork players, especially with the ammount of RTTs, Ard Boys events, and GTs that Orks have won during the last year.

To say that the only way for a person to lose to Orks is by either having a poor list or by being a complete noob is a pretty stong statement, and all non-ork players who have ever lost to Orks should be offended by it.

Yes, Orks require little finesse to use. Some people find that distateful; however, others find it rather entertaining. The great thing about different codexes is that they allow you to play different types of armies.

Eldar are a razor; Orks are a sledgehammer. However, there is room for both of ends of the spectrum in 40k. Don't think that just because Orks aren't subtle that they are not capable. When properly applied, both brute force and finesse can be equally effective.

Personally, I find it refreshing that there is at least some variety left in 40k, since it has become ever increasingly more bland since the advent of 4th, when all the armies/chapters/craftwords/etc started to resemble each other more and more.

*edited for typos

I'm a sledgehammer player myself. Go Guard and Orks!

Well said, Alerian.

This reminds me of the state of air combat in WW2. Near the end of the war the Nazis soldiered on with largely outdated and inferior designs of planes punctuated with the occasional brilliant design like the Me262 and FW-190D. Despite all this, the most feared pilot in the Luftwaffe was Erich Hartmann... who flew a Bf-109. The plane was vile handling on the ground by all accounts and was not the most maneuverable thing in the air. What it did possess was an unprecedented power-weight ratio giving it superior climb and dive characteristics. Hartmann used this to his advantage by tailoring tactics to surprise attacks. Most pilots that he shot down didn't even know he was there until their planes were shot from around them. Hartmann achieved a still unbroken record of 352 kills, over 250 of which were fighter type aircraft. He used a second string fighter plane while doing so.

I am reminded of the words of Chuck Yeager... "It's not the plane, it's the pilot". They suit well here.

It's not the Codex... it's the player.

If Chuck Norris had been around, Hartmann wouldn't have achieved that record. Srsly.

*looks around furtively*

Didn't mean to crack that joke, meant to make a serious observation here: I consider myself to be a finesse, razor type Ork player. How dare you impugn my razor sharp eldarish tactics with a sledgehammer comparison!

@ Alerian

Well put.

I'm not sure why FF has chosen to take this position. Most Dakkites disagree with him, excpet for a few other's, in the vocal minority. I will say that I love the concept of Orks. I love the comical, random, no real sense of purpose, except to move forward and Bash em'. The fact thay they have a good codex and lots of plastic, is just icing, as I think I would play them either way. I agree that the insinuation that Orks are a Noob army is kind of insulting. I've been playing off and on for almost 10 years now.

By the way I love the sig!! ......edit..I mean your avatar!


GG

Alerian wrote:2 threads later, as well as several ork 'Ard Boys wins, and he still insists that Orks are not a strong dex.

Are the Tyranids a strong Codex? What about Daemonhunters? I've seen a couple of 'Ard Boyz where those armies did well too, and I'm sure a lot of Necrons players have walked away with results in more than their share of tournaments over the years. There's actually a thread on Librarium Online where some bloke won a Brazilian GT playing a Necrons list.

Remind me again; which armies are supposedly alongside Orks in this... "tier 3" thing? Is it all of the above? It's all of the above, isn't it? So what, then, is the difference between these other Codexes that can, and indeed do, place well in heats and tournaments and the Orks, who win them?

Yes, Orks require little finesse to use.

There we have it. This is something that can't be said about any other Codex which is deemed uncompetetive.

I don't mind the Orks. They're fun. That's good, because in games like 40K it's not hard for the universe to take itself far too seriously. I also have nothing against people who play them, and to be Frank I'm not particularly bothered if people want to tell me they're a competetive Codex. They are. Where we differ is in reasoning why that is. You say it's because they're an awesome army. I say it's the opposite; they're good because most of the stuff they're pitted against is not. Yes they're competeteive, but we all know it's not because their army list is the strongest or because the Codex is good (Ork players complain about both constantly), and if the Orks require little finesse to use it can't be because the person behind the models is a great player, because that's contradictory. Why does such a simple tool require a skilled hand to use?

It's not a question of adopting a position or being tenacious. I'm calling things as I see them, and how I'm sure a lot of Ork players would too if they wiped the green stuff from their eyes and took a step back. Of course most Dakkaites are going to disagree with me; it's an Ork forum after-all, innit? Clue is in the name, I think. If you find it insulting then I'd say you're a bit too emotionally attached to the Orks to see things objectively, in which case feel free to ignore everything I say from this point on.

I'm not going to stop saying it, though

Alerian wrote:I must say that I am completely impressed by Frank's tenacity.

2 threads later, as well as several ork 'Ard Boys wins, and he still insists that Orks are not a strong dex. Nevermind all of the tourneys that they have won over the last year; nevermind that most reputable sites/players list Orks as one of the top 2 codexes; nevermind that he has no physical proof or statistics to back up his claim; Frank still insists that Orks are noobhammers - just because he doesn't like them.

I gotta respect a guy who sticks to his beliefs even though there is nothing backing him up...it shows that he has intestinal fortitude; he's the kind of guy that will never give in to peer pressure.

Now, as much as I resepct Frank for not giving up the ship, he is unfortunately wrong.

Statistics and tournaments over the past year have proven Orks to be strong. Claiming that they only win because other players are noobs is just insulting. In fact, it is far more insulting to every player who doesn't run Orks than it is to Ork players, especially with the ammount of RTTs, Ard Boys events, and GTs that Orks have won during the last year.

To say that the only way for a person to lose to Orks is by either having a poor list or by being a complete noob is a pretty stong statement, and all non-ork players who have ever lost to Orks should be offended by it.

Yes, Orks require little finesse to use. Some people find that distateful; however, others find it rather entertaining. The great thing about different codexes is that they allow you to play different types of armies.

Eldar are a razor; Orks are a sledgehammer. However, there is room for both of ends of the spectrum in 40k. Don't think that just because Orks aren't subtle that they are not capable. When properly applied, both brute force and finesse can be equally effective.

Personally, I find it refreshing that there is at least some variety left in 40k, since it has become ever increasingly more bland since the advent of 4th, when all the armies/chapters/craftwords/etc started to resemble each other more and more.

*edited for typos

Pretty much summed up everything.

Btw, just curious : Why is everyone so bothered by Frank Fugger? Just ignore his comments (since I seriously think they are WORTHLESS anyway), and we can continue the discussion from there.
Perhaps, change the topic to : The Weaknesses of Orks . And yes, continue the discussion and ignore worthless comments.

Davicus wrote:The Weaknesses of Orks

Shall we start from AV14 and just keep on going, or have we already done that one to death?

Sarigar wrote:I know. I'll let it be. He's the big fish in his small pond.

I like this

Frank Fugger wrote:

Davicus wrote:The Weaknesses of Orks

Shall we start from AV14 and just keep on going, or have we already done that one to death?

Frank....I think you're missing out on the bigger picture. Yes....AV14 is annoying to Ork players. It isn't a show stopper. Every time I see a land raider in a game, I pop it just because I can. I've yet to run up against 4+ land raiders in a single game, but I've taken down 3 in a game with nothing more than nobs with powerklaws, and Ghazghkull's powerklaw.

I cart around a full squad of tankbustas now, along with bomb squigs, and grabbin' klaws, boarding planks, and I'll have Deff Rollas for semi-finals. (6+2D6 Strength) x15 = dead land raider.

Yeah. AV14 is annoying, but if my opponent is carting around land raiders, that's a lot of points they aren't putting into more scary things. Just because Orks don't have lascannons and railguns doesn't mean that they can't come up with another way of dealing with land raiders.

Yeah like zzaap guns, wrecking balls, massed rokkits, DNCCW's etc.etc.. Ork players have many options they can use to adjust to a shifting metagame.

GG

Yup, lascannons and melta guns are not the only way to pop AV14.

Yup, lascannons and melta guns are not the only way to pop AV14.

Let's not side-track the thread into a debate about who can and can't do what to AV14, eh? I know I started it but I shouldn't have; it was a stupid comment to make, one that I'm not going to delete but instead leave up there for posterity to show that Frank can be an idiot and respond to trolls too

Alerian wrote:2 threads later, as well as several ork 'Ard Boys wins

I would wait for the Semifinals before concluding anything about the competitiveness or lack of of any given codex. There are some really *horrible* lists out there that did well in 'Ard Boyz prelims simply because they fought an even more horrible list. I won my local store tourney with a very hard list (Mech Chaos), but it was largely unnecessary against some of my matchups.

R1 is largely roflstomping newbz to get your Golden Ticket. If a certain codex or list type continues to dominate in R2 I think conclusions can be drawn that are more definitive for the current competitive scene.

sourclams wrote:

Alerian wrote:2 threads later, as well as several ork 'Ard Boys wins

I would wait for the Semifinals before concluding anything about the competitiveness or lack of of any given codex. There are some really *horrible* lists out there that did well in 'Ard Boyz prelims simply because they fought an even more horrible list. I won my local store tourney with a very hard list (Mech Chaos), but it was largely unnecessary against some of my matchups.

R1 is largely roflstomping newbz to get your Golden Ticket. If a certain codex or list type continues to dominate in R2 I think conclusions can be drawn that are more definitive for the current competitive scene.

this ^

The problem with that is this;


The people bashing Orks, won't care. If Orks dominate round 2(a big IF), they will just continue to say "oh well, the Orks must have all played noobs in round 2". If Orks somehow win this thing, same thing. They will never change their opinion, no matter how wrong it is proven to be.


It's kind of pointless to talk to them, try to prove anything. If Orks win every tournament in the world for the next year, Frank already has his fallback argument that 40k isnt competitive enough to show that Orks arent a good army. So he just runs back to that over and over again.



Clay

What I think is extra stupid about math hammering orks is they only take into consideration one result. That the vehicle is destroyed.

They do not think about what if I get a glance off and stop the vehicle in its tracks then follow up with the orks instead of hitting on 6s now are always hitting. Simple things like that make me sick when people look at cold math for just ONE situation.

Primarch wrote:It's kind of pointless to talk to them, try to prove anything. If Orks win every tournament in the world for the next year, Frank already has his fallback argument that 40k isnt competitive enough to show that Orks arent a good army. So he just runs back to that over and over again.

You say it's a fallback argument and seem to suggest there's no basis to it, yet you're not providing any counter to it. Show me why it's wrong. Show me that these people are winning tournaments by playing the best players using the best possible lists and I'll believe that Orks are a competetive Codex in their own right rather than being made so by a competetive scene that, largely, isn't competetive.

So far it's gone from throwing tailored lists and hypotheses at me to attacking my position and arguments without providing any of your own, over and above the whole "Orks win heats so they MUST be good!". If it makes anyone feel any less slighted I believe that Necrons, Tyranids and Daemonhunters are similarly crippled; the difference is that those other three Codexes require substantially more involvement to be put to best use, whereas the Ork Codex can be used to great effect by pretty much anybody. It's getting to the stage where I'm seriously considering eBaying an Ork army just so's I can not touch it until the next UK GT comes up, then crack it out of the box, enter, and see how well I do.

Frank Fugger wrote: Show me why it's wrong. Show me that these people are winning tournaments by playing the best players using the best possible lists and I'll believe that Orks are a competetive Codex in their own right rather than being made so by a competetive scene that, largely, isn't competetive.

Translation-----I'll make an impossible standard that no one can live up to, so therefore I'm right.


GG

generalgrog wrote:Translation-----I'll make an impossible standard that no one can live up to, so therefore I'm right.


GG

It's entirely possible to "live up to" it; are batreps and army lists THAT difficult to come by? Obviously they are, otherwise I wouldn't need to bang on like this



UK Throne of Skulls heat one is on October 17th; might have to cancel my plans for the new Space Wolves army to get my awesome Orks list painted in time :(

Frank Fugger wrote:... Frank can be an idiot...

At last... a FF quote I can agree with.

generalgrog wrote:

Frank Fugger wrote: Show me why it's wrong. Show me that these people are winning tournaments by playing the best players using the best possible lists and I'll believe that Orks are a competetive Codex in their own right rather than being made so by a competetive scene that, largely, isn't competetive.

Translation-----I'll make an impossible standard that no one can live up to, so therefore I'm right.


GG

And that's worse than simply shouting "You're wrong!" without any evidence to the contrary...how?

The Green Git wrote:

Frank Fugger wrote:... Frank can be an idiot...

At last... a FF quote I can agree with.

That's taken completely out of context

Ok, seriously?

Frank has not proven anything either. Yet, we are expected to disprove his opinion . He has presented no facts that I can see, all opinion based argument. Why should we answer this;


Orks suck.


With anything other than this;


No, they don't.


We provided what little evidence there really is, and that is results based. Frank just chooses to make a statement about how 40k isn't competitive, so thats supposedly why the Orks are doing well. Would you prefer me to argue back "40k is very competitive, and Orks are winning, so therefore Orks are competitive", to counter his point?

Just so he can claim that we are the ones with the burden of proof, and that his opinion should be considered fact until we can convice him personally somehow? I find that laughable.



Clay

@ Frank: I may still play my Orks for the 2nd round. It's just I've been playing my Orks this entire year and have left my Eldar to collect dust. I played in the Ard Boyz last weekend w/ Orks. This coming Saturday, I'm playing my Orks in an 1850 point RTT. The following weekend, I'm taking that same 1850 point army to the Necro Indy GT.

It's a lot of games with the same army. On the plus side, it looks pretty cool. I'm almost ready to post up pics here showcasing the army (assuming it doesn't get totally pasted at the Necro

The only downside to round 2 of the Ard Boyz, is that it can bring out some ugliness in otherwise pleasant individuals. Put some money on the table (so to speak), and attitudes tend to change.

And I'm also waiting for the new Wolves.

Primarch wrote:Ok, seriously?

Frank has not proven anything either.

I haven't got access to batreps or lists so this will have to do. UK Throne of Skulls results; interpret them how you will. Remember we're not just looking at the winners; we're looking at the tables as a whole to see what kind of armies are placing well:

UK Throne Of Skulls 08-09 Heat 1:
http://warhammerworld.typepad.com/warhammer_world_news/files/wh_tsgt40k_final_results_ht1.pdf

Because the Dark Angels Codex is top ten quality in ANYONE'S book! Also note how many Orks players there are compared to players of other armies; maybe I should add "weight of numbers" to the "shoddy opponents" hypothesis?


UK ToS 08-09 Heat 2:
http://warhammerworld.typepad.com/warhammer_world_news/files/40k_tsgt_ht_2_karen6.pdf

More proof that Dark Angels are a competetive army. And Tyranids too, apparently.


UK ToS 08-09 Heat 3:
http://warhammerworld.typepad.com/files/wh40k-tsgt-heat-3-actual-r6.pdf

No Dark Angels in the top ten here. Maybe they stopped being competetive all of a sudden?


UK ToS 08-09 Final:
http://warhammerworld.typepad.com/files/wh40ktosgt-final-mkii-r6.pdf

There you go.

This sort of pattern is repeated throughout the 40K tournament scene. Look at any of the White Dwarf reports from official torunaments and you'll see what I mean. The Guard fanfare issue was particularly shoddy; the garbage these journalists took to the Doubles Event would shame a child. "Lol Lysander and Termies in a 500pt army list WHAT CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG?!" If you think that's an isolated incident, play more competetive 40K.

Watching Stelek's blog as the 'Ard Boyz results keep a-comin', too. Daemonhunters doin' fine; which is cool, I always like to root for the DH players because I'm a Grey Knight fanboy at heart. Sure the Codex sucks and they require vast amounts of sweat and tears to be remotely competetive, and indeed wouldn't be competetive at all if the tourney scene was, but hey.

One last thing; bear in mind that nobody is saying "Orks suck". They don't. For whatever reason, they're a competetive army. What I'm saying is if competetive 40K was more competetive they wouldn't be. If you're going to RAEG at me then at least do it for the right reasons.

notabot187 wrote:Personally I don't see an issue with deffrollas being over the top if they hit vehicles. If somebody with an important tank is stupid enough to be withing 13 inches of a battle wagon that isn't immobile, then they deserve what is coming.

This is a great example of the difference between a hardcore 40k player and someone with a little less tactical acumen.

My apologies notabot for singling you out, but the deffrolla makes a HUGE difference for orks in certain matchups. In others not so much. My IG army has been dismantling foot orks, bike orks and mechanized orks lately.

Remember that I'm only speaking about my particular IG list, and the anti-ork tactics I've been using against very skilled players.

My anti-mech ork tactic revolves around my 6 devildogs. I move them 18" every game. As close as I can possibly get, and sideways, to the battlewagons. Almost every other army in the game will lose a movement phase to the wall, but will be able to melta my tanks down through their smoke, and trundle off on their next turn. Ork players without access to a deffrolla are completely stuck. The boarding plank can't legally be used against targets that move more than 12". The wrecking ball is not going to be enough to explode my tanks, and getting out to claw my tanks funnels you into a nice packed up ball, and I pack at least 1 manticore and at least 4 medusas to really make you pay for debarking like that. So you lose a turn of movement, and then unless you had lootas, you are set up for me to be able to recycle my movement next turn, swapping the postitions of my devildogs again, denying your boarding planks, and another turn of movement. While this is happening, bastion breachers are dropping into the tanks, and scoring a consistent number of AP1 pens for you to cover save against. Pens that have +2 to damage rolls.

It is my belief that designer intent was for deffrollas to work on vehicles, 5th edition was deep in development when orks were being written, hell there was mention of 'defensive grenades' in the chaos space marine codex. Regardless of intent. Almost every other army has a plethora of shooting based anti-tank that can be attached to, or ride in transports. Shooting is not bound by the dreaded 6's to hit conundrum of anti-vehicle CC. I believe that deffrollas should work on my cheap tactic, and you should (on a good roll) be able to blast through my roadblock in a very orky fashion. That would challenge my IG list a lot more and make for a lot more fun games.

Congratulations to all of the ork winners so far. I don't mean this condescendingly. I don't think orks are some disadvantaged underpowered list, the only thing different from last season (where orks completely dominated an entire season of high level tournament play) is the introduction of the IG codex. My position has always been that IG has a great matchup against orks, considering equal generalship and list construction. Nothing more though. Every other army I own in my collection seriously fears orks. I hope that in the finals, there are swathes of ork players, all hungry to get an offical and IN PRINT ruling on deffrollas. I for one think that they should work on vehicles, and I think a lot of the former ork players that are tired of getting walled off and templated in their local meta will come back into the fold hardcore.

So ork players keep winning next month please! I need to see that deffrolla ruling in print!

Interesting post and tactics Shep.

There's something there to give me pause; I would definitely be counting on my grabbin' klaws (if Deff Rollas aren't allowed) to be holding you still so I could get some good swings off. I wonder how that would work? A squadron of vehicles, and a grabbin' klaw causing a one-turn immobilize result to one of them. Would it immobilize the squadron?

Dashofpepper wrote:Interesting post and tactics Shep.

There's something there to give me pause; I would definitely be counting on my grabbin' klaws (if Deff Rollas aren't allowed) to be holding you still so I could get some good swings off. I wonder how that would work? A squadron of vehicles, and a grabbin' klaw causing a one-turn immobilize result to one of them. Would it immobilize the squadron?

I'll check on that. I feel like I'm remembering some squadron rules from 4th edition as well as 5th. So I'd want to look at a book before I commented.

Your klaws fortunately keep you from being permanently walled off, which might be a mandatory upgrade. Your planks can auto-hit rear armor 10 on the following turn which should easily blast you clear of the roadblock.

It just sucks that I'll be able to take two movement phases away from you with a rather 'uninspired' tactic. I think orks deserve a one turn solution to this problem.

They have a one-turn solution to the problem. They're called "Tankbustas".

And Frank Fugger, to put the burden of proof back on you....try this logic statement on for size:

I am the best 40k player on the planet Earth, and I play Orks. I do not need to beat every single 40k player on the planet earth in every possible scenario to prove it. Instead, I can remain undefeated as an Ork player through every possible scenario. Until an individual topples me, I am the best 40k player on the planet Earth.

I don't need to prove that I'm right, you need to prove me wrong.

All the quarter-final rounds where Orks won (and other races) - the players who won get to make the same claim. At the final round of 'Ard Boyz, there will remain only one person who can still claim to be the best 40k player, and they do not need to individually beat every person who meets your criteria to maintain that claim. Titles are granted, then challenged; not infinitely fought for and not granted.

Unless you can find someone with the tactical combination and army list that can take me down, then Orks are the best army in 40k. And if we throw your logic into the mix, even if I get beaten...Orks are STILL the best army in 40k, I just lost with them because I'm a noob.

Dashofpepper, that logic is only sound if you agree that only noobs ever lose (since you would justify a loss by claiming noobhood), which is patently ridiculous.

I see the point you are trying to make, but that analogy doesn't cut it.

I like analogies, but I never claimed that they were any good!

Nurglitch wrote:They have a one-turn solution to the problem. They're called "Tankbustas".

i like this concept on paper.

In the past I've had very little success with them. But 12 rokkit shots out of a battlewagon that moved 7", and not losing its boarding plank klaw (or tankhammer) like a wagon full of burnas or lootas would, should be great in this world of tank spamming. Uncontrollable movement and targeting decisions are right up there with 'random abilities' in the pantheon of crappy game design ideas. And that always turned me off of the unit.

I'll have to pore over "Glory Hogs" again and look at how that'll effect their behavior in a transport. Moving around and shooting rokkits would be great. But debarking and charging a vehicle at an inopportune time would put them right back in the case.

To the codex!

Glory Hogs isn't a problem, particularly in a Mech-heavy environment. They have to shoot or assault enemy vehicles in preference to non-vehicle models, but that's it. It just means that given a choice between shooting a vehicle and a non-vehicle unit that they have to shoot the vehicle, and given a choice between assaulting a vehicle and assaulting a non-vehicle unit, they have to assault the vehicle unit. They don't have to move towards enemy vehicles, so no worry about them spontaneously debarking.

tankbustas must always attempt to shoot and/or assault an enemy vehicle if there is one in LOS regardless of range.

From the glory hogs rule in the codex. This leads me to believe that they would spontaneously disembark to assault a vehicle

I disagree Toxxic. Mad Dok Grotsnik has a special rule specifically detailing how he should move during his movement phase. "As fast as possible towards the nearest enemy unit."

Tankbustas and Glory Hogs tell you to shoot at and/or assault an enemy vehicle if there is one in range; it doesn't tell you how to move. It is neither your job nor I to make inferences about a rule that aren't written into it. The writers of the Ork codex obviously know how to tell a unit how to move during the movement phase; they did it with One Scalpel Short for Mad Dok. If they wanted the same language to apply to Tankbustas, they would have written it in.

My tankbustas always attempt to shoot an enemy vehicle if there is one in line of sight. Notice the addition of /or next to the and, giving us and/or. That means that tankbustas have an option. Tankbustas must attempt to shoot an enemy vehicle, OR tankbustas must attempt to assault an enemy vehicle, OR tankbustas must attempt to both shoot AND assault an enemy vehicle.

Its looking pretty good for tankbustas in battlewagons.

"Glory hogs" hurts foot based tankbustas (which is a shame) because they can't run if there is a single enemy vehicle in LOS.

In a battlewagon, the running isn't an issue, and the charging isn't an issue either. You must charge if you can, as per Glory Hogs. But there is no enforcement of mandatory debarkation. A quick search of YMDC revealed a pretty overwhelming consensus on that point.

Therefore, as long as tankbustas are in a battlewagon, they are pretty much a normal unit with the only catch that if you want to shoot at some space marines, and there is a land raider on the table, then sorry buddy gotta shoot at the land raider, and if you shot at the land raider, then you aren't charging anything but the land raider (or someone who fell out of it)

I'm thinking a couple units of 15 tankbustas with 2x tank hammers, a nob with a power klaw and bosspole is in order. Or do you skip the klaw, since you have the tank hammers for boarding plank duty?

And Dash, this is what I fund on the vehicle squadron question.

"When a squadron moves, all of its vehicles move the same speed (i.e. they all move at combat speed, at cruising speed, etc.)"

Since they used the speed catagories from the vehicles section of the rulebook for their example, I'm gonna venture to say that if one of my vehicles in a squadron MUST be 'stationary' then the rest are compelled to "move at the same speed".

Thats good enough for me I think.

Oh and some quick math showed that 13 BS2 rokkits and 2 bomb squigs penetrates armor 12 1.98 times. Lootas shooting twice penetrate armor 12 1.6 times.

delicious food for thought.

Ok, I'm going to eat some crow and start taking another look at Tankbustas. I've been adamant since the codex came out they were nigh useless. However, since my own Ork army has gone mechanized, there seems to be a glimmer of hope for this unit.

However, before I bust out the paints and order up 10 more Tankbustas, I'm awaiting some type of response from GW regarding Deff Rollas. After all, it's not like the kit is coming out in less than a month and the public outcry about Deff Rollas being broken.

If Orks are Tier 3, then what the hell is Tier 1?

This is an exercise to get GW to rule that deff rollaz work when tank shocking landraiders? Just kidding.

Nidz also have problems with AV14. That has always been a trait of low tech horde armies.

Sarigar wrote:Ok, I'm going to eat some crow and start taking another look at Tankbustas. I've been adamant since the codex came out they were nigh useless. However, since my own Ork army has gone mechanized, there seems to be a glimmer of hope for this unit.

However, before I bust out the paints and order up 10 more Tankbustas, I'm awaiting some type of response from GW regarding Deff Rollas. After all, it's not like the kit is coming out in less than a month and the public outcry about Deff Rollas being broken.

Before you order up 10 more tankbustas, you should look in your bitz box. I bought a box of fantasy orks quite some time ago to give me extra bodies; they made my kommandos. Fantasy box maces cut in half give you rokkits. Boyz boxes (and most other things) come with a tankbusta bomb or two. I cut apart the kill-kan rokkits and glued the rokkits onto sluggas to make rokkit pistols....my rokkit launcha boyz that don't belong in any mobs went into the tank-busta group....all sorts of stuff. I bought one box of tank-bustas (and got bomb squigs) but the rest of my tank-bustas were kustom-built.

As for utility....I don't take a nob with my tank bustas; if I'm going to boarding plank something, a Nob with a powerklaw is STR9, and a Tankhammer is STR10. They have plenty of killy without needing a nob with a powerklaw, and I keep them away from mixing it up in close combat with nasty things. In 'Ard Boyz, I didn't play a single space marine player between all my games. They *did* do a few nifty things for me though:

1. Got a glancing 6 against an open-topped battlewagon turn1, destroying it.
2. Killed a leman russ and multi-assaulted two heavy IG tanks, killing them both.
3. Killed a couple of elite Carnifexes in one round of shooting at each. (STR8 AP3); tyranids have no vehicles.
4. Killed a wraithguard; the eldar player had no vehicles on the table, so I went after his monstrous creatures.


My current configuration of vehicles has a battlewagon with a deff rolla and a boarding plank, with 15 tankbustas inside (can't remember offhand if I took the bomb squigs out). I can Deff-rolla into a vehicle, then either shoot it or another vehicle, then potentially boarding plank and assault the vehicle I just hit with a deffrolla. There's a lot of potential in there.

Just for clarification, your Tankbustawagon has a total point cost of something like ~280-300 pts, right?

Shep,
Your wall trick is nice, and I'll have to remember it. However, since I always bring 30 lootas, I wouldn't be bothered by it.

How do you deal with Lootas backing up BW orks?

(P.S. This is a serious question, as I am starting an IG army soon, to go along side my Eldar, DA and Orks)

sourclams wrote:Just for clarification, your Tankbustawagon has a total point cost of something like ~280-300 pts, right?

360 points.

Battlewagon is 125, Tankbustas are 235.

I like Tankbustas, especially in an open topped Battlewagon. I do usually take a HQ unit or Nob to supply the all important Bosspole, or else they tend to run off quickly.

One favorite configuration is to put them in the BW with the KFF Big Mek. He gets the Bosspole, the Tankbustas get a ride, and the Battlewagon supplies the rest of the units around it with the KFF.

Don't forget that Tankbustas have tankbusta bombs, which act like krak grenades used by Monstrous Creatures. Rolling 9+ on 2D6 x10 is pretty good odds. Tankhammers are nice, and work against non-vehicle units, but volume is what counts with Orks.

Dashofpepper wrote:And Frank Fugger, to put the burden of proof back on you....

I am the best 40k player on the planet Earth, and I play Orks. I do not need to beat every single 40k player on the planet earth in every possible scenario to prove it. Instead, I can remain undefeated as an Ork player through every possible scenario. Until an individual topples me, I am the best 40k player on the planet Earth.

I don't need to prove that I'm right, you need to prove me wrong.

I don't see how presenting this hypothetical scenario burdens me in any way.

My opinion is that Orks wouldn't do anywhere near as well as they currently do if competetive 40K was more competetive. The ToS rankings show that not everyone is bringing the most competetive of Codexes to the party at the UK's premier GT event, which (along with the raft of other results from other tournaments I've seen over the years, including the Round 1 results from 'Ard Boyz) sort of bears out my reasoning that competetive 40K isn't competetive. Obviously without proper army lists it's difficult to give this evidence any sort of meaty context, but since you're trailing into hypothesis I feel I have a bit of leeway to do the same.

Nobody would try to classify the Dark Angels Codex as balanced, or "competetive", or whatever. It was a test-bed for the 5th Edition Smurf Codex, and as such pretty much everything available in it is also available to Smurf players, only cheaper, better, and punchier. The exception is Deathwing, and thus we can hypothesise that the only reason you'd take a DA army to a GT is because you want to play Deathwing. Now, Deathwing aren't fantastic. There are multiple reasons for this, but for the sake of brevity we'll just say they're not great and allow people to look them up and judge for themselves. They are, however, the only unique factor when it comes to the DA Codex (inb4 Dualwing, because that sucks. Also inb4 Greenwing, Ravenwing and/or Mech-DA, because those all have analogues within the Smurf Codex which are better and cheaper). Deathwing are also, arguably, one of very few "competetive" ways to build your DA list.

So, supposing the DA player who finished in the top 10 for the first two rounds was playing a Deathwing army. That's a "competetive" list built from a rubbish Codex. What does that say about his opposition? I've got about 6 army lists swimming around my head right now that would have a DW player conceding at deployment; and one of them is from the Orks Codex.

We could argue that that's a bad analogy because any-Wing armies suck utter cod-milt at 1500pts. So assuming he was playing DA Mech instead, because that doesn't suck (as bad) at 1500pts as a DA-Wing army. It still sucks, though. It's still expensive, stiff and silly compared to Mech Smurfs. How, then, did he manage to do so well with it?

I know it seems like I'm picking on DA players, and to an extent I suppose I am. I also realise that, if the DA player from the ToS is reading this he'll likely feel slighted at my suggestion that the reason he did so well up until heat 3 is because he was playing gimps. I'd apologise, but the price you pay for taking a rubbish Codex to a GT and succeeding with it, then thinking the fact you did makes you awesome.

Unless you can find someone with the tactical combination and army list that can take me down, then Orks are the best army in 40k. And if we throw your logic into the mix, even if I get beaten...Orks are STILL the best army in 40k, I just lost with them because I'm a noob.

But you're the best player in the world. You can't be the best and also a noob.

You seem to be either misinterpreting and/ or misrepresenting what I'm saying. It's not the case that Ork players who succeed at tournaments are "noobs" or whatever. Far from it. It could be argued that the ability to spot a noobhammer Codex, recognise that the scene sucks balls, and then use said noobhammer to do well is actually quite canny. What I'M saying is that, when other the hammered noobs start recognising it too, the hammer will stop working. It's also not the case that the Ork Codex doesn't contain solutions to certain things (like, for instance, AV14). In the last thread I suggested this was the case, and after thinking on it for a while I realised that it's not at all; solutions to anything can be found. The only problem is the solutions in the Ork Codex are neither as reliable nor as flexible, multi-purpose and resilient as the solutions in other Codexes.

That's basically what Stelek means when he says they're "bottom of competetive" and also the reasoning behind his forming of this opinion, and if we look at the standings from UK ToS they sort of bear that out. Orks didn't win. They placed well, though. If there weren't so many of them, and people hadn't been bringing flabby DA/ Tyranid lists to the party, they probably wouldn't have done so well.



As an aside... What would be helpful if people would stop feeling personally slighted by what I'm saying and take a step back, look at 40K for what it is, and try to apply my logic to it. In the grand scheme of things this is just a thread on a messageboard, but in terms of 40K it's a discussion worth having if you've got the patience and the motivation to sit through it. If you can do these things, and you find some objective evidence that you feel counters my argument, by all means throw it out there. I assure you that if I'm proven wrong in a conclusive way, I'll hold my hands up and admit it. It needs to be conclusive, though, rather than conjectural or hypothetical.

If you can't do that, and would instead prefer to continue bawwing and RAEGing at me personally... meh. It's your dime, I suppose. For my part I'll do my best to keep you folks entertained, but I'm afraid that with the sudden emergence into the debate of people able to form coherent sentences and cohesive arguments I might be too busy to respond to you personally. I'll be thinking of you though. Honestly.

Frank Fugger wrote:
That's basically what Stelek means when he says they're "bottom of competetive" and also the reasoning behind his forming of this opinion, and if we look at the standings from UK ToS they sort of bear that out. Orks didn't win. They placed well, though. If there weren't so many of them, and people hadn't been bringing flabby DA/ Tyranid lists to the party, they probably wouldn't have done so well.

As an aside... What would be helpful if people would stop feeling personally slighted by what I'm saying and take a step back, look at 40K for what it is, and try to apply my logic to it. In the grand scheme of things this is just a thread on a messageboard, but in terms of 40K it's a discussion worth having if you've got the patience and the motivation to sit through it. If you can do these things, and you find some objective evidence that you feel counters my argument, by all means throw it out there. I assure you that if I'm proven wrong in a conclusive way, I'll hold my hands up and admit it. It needs to be conclusive, though, rather than conjectural or hypothetical.

If you can't do that, and would instead prefer to continue bawwing and RAEGing at me personally... meh. It's your dime, I suppose. For my part I'll do my best to keep you folks entertained, but I'm afraid that with the sudden emergence into the debate of people able to form coherent sentences and cohesive arguments I might be too busy to respond to you personally. I'll be thinking of you though. Honestly.

Are you Stelek's spokesman now?

People were saying you were acting like a dick... well, because you were acting like a dick.

That said your "New" argument certainly comes across better now that it doesn't contain the insults and talking down tone.

Still, the Ork codex is very competitive regardless of the environment. Even the most recent tournament results support this. All the other hard lists got to play the easy lists as well, so I do not see how that makes much difference.

I did notice a significant decrease in the number of Ork players at the 2 tournaments I attended this weekend. Guard and Chaos are for sure the flavor of the month. I wonder Frank how this will effect your future studies?

methoderik wrote:Are you Stelek's spokesman now?

Do you have to be someone's spokesman to agree with their ideas? Funny way to run a world.

People were saying you were acting like a dick... well, because you were acting like a dick.

Yeah, that wasn't good. Then again I was led to believe that this was a forum of grown-ups; it's apparently not (and I don't mean that in an insulting or derogatory way - simply that there are a lot of younger members here too), and I'll factor that into my dealings from now on.

Well, most of the time.

That said your "New" argument certainly comes across better now that it doesn't contain the insults and talking down tone.

Still, the Ork codex is very competitive regardless of the environment. Even the most recent tournament results support this.

Show them to me, if you'd be so kind. From where I'm sitting (ear-deep in the UK ToS tables and the 'Ard Boyz first round results, which are the two most recent that I'm aware of) it looks like this is wishful thinking rather than hard fact.

All the other hard lists got to play the easy lists as well, so I do not see how that makes much difference.

It's not a case of "everyone got to play the crap"; it's that, without the crap to play, the Orks wouldn't be as competetive as they currently are whereas the truly hard lists still would be.

It's also questionable how "hard" some of the hard lists truly are.

I did notice a significant decrease in the number of Ork players at the 2 tournaments I attended this weekend. Guard and Chaos are for sure the flavor of the month. I wonder Frank how this will effect your future studies?

Time will tell, though since the number of Ork players decreasing means a new Codex is less likely, and since the book is the core issue, I'd be willing to bet "not at all".

I'm also curious as to how you think an army that is one of the most prominent at tournaments, i.e Chaos, is "flavour of the month"?

Another aside, the prevalence of CSM lists at tournaments is further proof of the crappy standards I'm talking about, especially when you consider that 90% of these lists will contain Plague Marines ago-go, dual-Lash, Berzerkers, Kharn, or any combination of the above. None of these things should be "hard" for a 5th Ed army to deal with.

Frank Fugger wrote:Another aside, the prevalence of CSM lists at tournaments is further proof of the crappy standards I'm talking about, especially when you consider that 90% of these lists will contain Plague Marines ago-go, dual-Lash, Berzerkers, Kharn, or any combination of the above. None of these things should be "hard" for a 5th Ed army to deal with.

I just can't agree with your assessment that CSM aren't competitive anymore. That does seem to be what you are saying. Regardless, a well-built CSM lash list is still a force to be reckoned with in the hands of a skilled general, even against these mech lists.

So what army do you believe is the best right now? I just want to know how you judge what is currently out there, especially now that you are implying that the BEST units in the CSM codex are proof of "crappy touranment standards".

I'm willing to agree with your assessments regarding Orks, but Chaos have both one of the best/most versatile shooting units (Oblits) and one of the strongest basic troops (regular CSM) and basic transports (Rhino) for the point values. When you add together how well all of those things synergize with mech Chaos guiding Deep Striking Oblits via icons, I mean, it's basically a perfect storm for army optimization.

It's not undefeatable and shooty mech builds like IG, DE, and Tau have the tools to take them off of the table, but against the majority of matchups lash/mech Chaos is going to do fine.

skipdog172 wrote:I just can't agree with your assessment that CSM aren't competitive anymore. That does seem to be what you are saying.

They're not uncompetetive. They're just not a proper "hard" Codex, not in 5th Edition.

Regardless, a well-built CSM

... list is just as hard and competetive as any C: SM mech list because CSM squads are cheap and nasty, Chosen squads will eat your face, and Warptime Daemon-Princes are nose-bitingly tremendous?

lash list is still a force to be reckoned with in the hands of a skilled general, even against these mech lists.

No, we're back to Lash. I just don't see how people can NOT have figured Lash out yet; put all of your units in transports and poof goes the crutch. Be as skilled as you want, Lash still doesn't work on tracked vehicles.

So what army do you believe is the best right now? I just want to know how you judge what is currently out there, especially now that you are implying that the BEST units in the CSM codex are proof of "crappy touranment standards".

If you think that Lash lists are the best the CSM Codex all I can say is try some other builds. Obviously you can take the best the CSM Codex has to offer alongside your Lashing DPs and/ or Sorcerors, but the best units in the CSM Codex are the best precisely because they don't need Lash to be awesome.

Define what you mean by "best" army out there. If we mean the Codexes which contain the most viable hard lists it'd go something like, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Codex: Smurfs (damn you Vulkan!), Chaos Spurfs (note: not Lash. Never Lash), Witch Hunters (nobody expected the Inquisiton ) and The Guard. The Tau only really have one or two options for building hard lists and tend to fail it when it comes to doing anything other than showering people with shots, but that works too. Why hold objectives when you can just S10 AP1 and Plasma your opponent off the board in 3 turns? Probably the easiest hard list to counter (mobile AV14, Fast Skimmers and templates will eat it's face), but still harder than most other things.

I must have missed something Frank.


I do check Stelek's blog occasionally, and I posted the results for our first round, both here, and there. You are saying that Stelek's numbers show that Orks didn't do well? But here, they did VERY well as an army in the first round. Did he have tons more data than is posted here? I might have missed that thread, but what I did see, was less actual numbers supported on his site as compared to here.


Can you link me the numbers you are getting from his site? A quick search here should show you that Orks were either the highest, or 2nd highest placing army in the first round nationally. If you consider the numbers here to be enough to calculate some basic stats.



Thanks,


Clay

sourclams wrote:I'm willing to agree with your assessments regarding Orks, but Chaos have both one of the best/most versatile shooting units (Oblits) and one of the strongest basic troops (regular CSM) and basic transports (Rhino) for the point values. When you add together how well all of those things synergize with mech Chaos guiding Deep Striking Oblits via icons, I mean, it's basically a perfect storm for army optimization.

I agree totally, and the only reason I haven't got much of a CSM collection is because I'm a loyalist lapdog trying to put together a Biker list AND a 1500pt Ork army to take to the Throne of Skulls in October (I've got my list sorted by the way, and the name; Captain Scrudmongler's Scruds. They shall be pink, and there shall be nary a Loota in sight).

Problem is, how many Chaos Spurf players do you know who run anything other than crumby dual-Lash/ Plague Marines/ oh look it's Zerkers in Rhinos/ here's a random Defiler lists? The CSMs are not a bad Codex by any manner or means, and to be honest I'm probably overstating the case against Lash a bit because it can be made to work to devastating effect when combined with Oblits, Termicide squads and other such stuff. The overuse of Lash and it's (somewhat undeserved) status as a "crutch" isn't what makes the CSMs a depressing sight on tourney tables. It's the knowledge that 90% of the people who play Chaos Spurfs do so for the Lash above all else, and the further realisation that 99% of that 90% are thus going to be flavour of the monthers who want Pink-Powah! because they think it's an I-WIN button, a fact largely reflected in their list composition.

Frank Fugger wrote:No, we're back to Lash. I just don't see how people can NOT have figured Lash out yet; put all of your units in transports and poof goes the crutch. Be as skilled as you want, Lash still doesn't work on tracked vehicles.

I don't think it has anything to do with "figuring it out". Even against mech armies, Lash is very effective. It very much affects how/when/where the mech player can drop his units and greatly limits their options. It isn't an auto-win for an army just because its models are in transports. Lash also is not solely what makes the list dangerous. It looks like we can just agree to disagree, as I don't think I can change your mind.

Primarch wrote:You are saying that Stelek's numbers show that Orks didn't do well? But here, they did VERY well as an army in the first round.

Yes, because local success and personal experience are what count when determining how competetive armies are. I've lost, sum-total, 3 games with my pure Grey Knights Raider-spam list; therefore, pure Grey Knights are competetive. Right?

Can you link me the numbers you are getting from his site? A quick search here should show you that Orks were either the highest, or 2nd highest placing army in the first round nationally. If you consider the numbers here to be enough to calculate some basic stats.

I don't. A lot of the results posted here have also been posted on Stelek's blog too, and they sort of get lost amidst the sea of other results in which no Ork lists appear at all. Here you go:

http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/07/ard-boyz.html

If you've got access to an official national 'Ard Boyz listing I'd be happy to take a look at it. Otherwise this is probably as close as we get for the time being.



Also, for the people asking my why I'm going to take an Ork army to a GT and attempt to do well if I'm trying to prove they suck, read the thread back again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

skipdog172 wrote:

Frank Fugger wrote:No, we're back to Lash. I just don't see how people can NOT have figured Lash out yet; put all of your units in transports and poof goes the crutch. Be as skilled as you want, Lash still doesn't work on tracked vehicles.

I don't think it has anything to do with "figuring it out". Even against mech armies, Lash is very effective. It very much affects how/when/where the mech player can drop his units and greatly limits their options. It isn't an auto-win for an army just because its models are in transports. Lash also is not solely what makes the list dangerous. It looks like we can just agree to disagree, as I don't think I can change your mind.

Frank Fugger wrote:

sourclams wrote:I'm willing to agree with your assessments regarding Orks, but Chaos have both one of the best/most versatile shooting units (Oblits) and one of the strongest basic troops (regular CSM) and basic transports (Rhino) for the point values. When you add together how well all of those things synergize with mech Chaos guiding Deep Striking Oblits via icons, I mean, it's basically a perfect storm for army optimization.

I agree totally, and the only reason I haven't got much of a CSM collection is because I'm a loyalist lapdog trying to put together a Biker list AND a 1500pt Ork army to take to the Throne of Skulls in October (I've got my list sorted by the way, and the name; Captain Scrudmongler's Scruds. They shall be pink, and there shall be nary a Loota in sight).

Problem is, how many Chaos Spurf players do you know who run anything other than crumby dual-Lash/ Plague Marines/ oh look it's Zerkers in Rhinos/ here's a random Defiler lists? The CSMs are not a bad Codex by any manner or means, and to be honest I'm probably overstating the case against Lash a bit because it can be made to work to devastating effect when combined with Oblits, Termicide squads and other such stuff. The overuse of Lash and it's (somewhat undeserved) status as a "crutch" isn't what makes the CSMs a depressing sight on tourney tables. It's the knowledge that 90% of the people who play Chaos Spurfs do so for the Lash above all else, and the further realisation that 99% of that 90% are thus going to be flavour of the monthers who want Pink-Powah! because they think it's an I-WIN button, a fact largely reflected in their list composition.

Funny how that works, innit? And I posted that before your reply.... PIME TARADOX


EDIT: For clarity's sake; I'm not suggesting that the CSM Codex sucks, because that's just silly since it doesn't. I'm also not even saying Lash is necessarily a "bad thing", because a hard list can be built around it. What I'm saying is that a lot of Lash players don't do this, and instead choose to try and run their army as disparate blocks of (points-intensive) models rather than having the whole thing revolve around each other. Which is a silly way to run any list. This happens more with CSMs than most other Codexes because of Lash's reputation as an I-WIN button and a broken ability, which it ain't.

I think that the real lesson that we should take away from all of this is that there is no magical codex and magical army list that will always win.

Frank conjectures that Orks should hypothetically do less well than other codexes, but that entire supposition is based on the idea that Orks don't have an answer to AV14. I can't speak to anyone elses' experience, but not every game I play is riddled with 5 land raiders, and when I *do* run up against a land raider or two, I have no problem destroying them.

If Frank's belief is that a lack of long-ranged STR9 and STR10 weaponry constitute a weakness in an Ork armylist, I could counter that armies are simply different. If I wanted long ranged firepower and anti-tank, I'd whip out my Tau. Not having a railgun certainly makes an Ork army different, but it doesn't make Orks a weaker army.

It really seems to boil down to one thing: You appear to have a single-minded viewpoint of how all situations in 40k should be dealt with. You view Orks as not having the same arsenal as space marines/other xenos, which makes them a weaker army. Yet, the debate about which army is an endlessly unprovable debate. Is vanilla icecream inferior to chocolate icecream? Can you prove it? Can you prove that Orks are inferior to *ANY* other codex? Can you prove that Orks are not the absolute best codex in existence?

That's my point. I believe the Orks codex is the single most powerful codex currently in existence. In every venue I participate in, my Orks have absolutely dominated the playing field. I have no reason to believe that Orks are not the most powerful codex in existence. To my eyes, you have an opinion that runs contrary to my empirical evidence, and in any analytical discourse, fact will always prevail over countering opinion, lest that countering point of view be backed up by equal fact.

For example, if your argument was, "Orks are an inferior army, I regularly stomp ork players. I've played every Ork player in my area time and again, and it isn't even fun anymore because they lose so hard." I'd at *least* take a look at the merits of your argument. It could be mismatched army lists, unbalanced lists, poor generalship, or it could be a true weakness in the Ork army. Yet...that isn't your argument. Orks are destroying competition left and right. Absolutely destroying competition. You mentioned that Orks didn't win the UK GT....do Orks have to win every single competition to not be a 3rd tier army?

I just think that you're attempting to turn your opinion, which is fact-less and largely based on contrived beliefs about how 40k should be played into an actual "side" when there simply is neither grounds nor merit for your beliefs.

Frank Fugger wrote:

Primarch wrote:You are saying that Stelek's numbers show that Orks didn't do well? But here, they did VERY well as an army in the first round.

Yes, because local success and personal experience are what count when determining how competetive armies are. I've lost, sum-total, 3 games with my pure Grey Knights Raider-spam list; therefore, pure Grey Knights are competetive. Right?

Can you link me the numbers you are getting from his site? A quick search here should show you that Orks were either the highest, or 2nd highest placing army in the first round nationally. If you consider the numbers here to be enough to calculate some basic stats.

I don't. A lot of the results posted here have also been posted on Stelek's blog too, and they sort of get lost amidst the sea of other results in which no Ork lists appear at all. Here you go:

http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/07/ard-boyz.html

If you've got access to an official national 'Ard Boyz listing I'd be happy to take a look at it. Otherwise this is probably as close as we get for the time being.


Also, for the people asking my why I'm going to take an Ork army to a GT and attempt to do well if I'm trying to prove they suck, read the thread back again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

skipdog172 wrote:

Frank Fugger wrote:No, we're back to Lash. I just don't see how people can NOT have figured Lash out yet; put all of your units in transports and poof goes the crutch. Be as skilled as you want, Lash still doesn't work on tracked vehicles.

I don't think it has anything to do with "figuring it out". Even against mech armies, Lash is very effective. It very much affects how/when/where the mech player can drop his units and greatly limits their options. It isn't an auto-win for an army just because its models are in transports. Lash also is not solely what makes the list dangerous. It looks like we can just agree to disagree, as I don't think I can change your mind.

Frank Fugger wrote:

sourclams wrote:I'm willing to agree with your assessments regarding Orks, but Chaos have both one of the best/most versatile shooting units (Oblits) and one of the strongest basic troops (regular CSM) and basic transports (Rhino) for the point values. When you add together how well all of those things synergize with mech Chaos guiding Deep Striking Oblits via icons, I mean, it's basically a perfect storm for army optimization.

I agree totally, and the only reason I haven't got much of a CSM collection is because I'm a loyalist lapdog trying to put together a Biker list AND a 1500pt Ork army to take to the Throne of Skulls in October (I've got my list sorted by the way, and the name; Captain Scrudmongler's Scruds. They shall be pink, and there shall be nary a Loota in sight).

Problem is, how many Chaos Spurf players do you know who run anything other than crumby dual-Lash/ Plague Marines/ oh look it's Zerkers in Rhinos/ here's a random Defiler lists? The CSMs are not a bad Codex by any manner or means, and to be honest I'm probably overstating the case against Lash a bit because it can be made to work to devastating effect when combined with Oblits, Termicide squads and other such stuff. The overuse of Lash and it's (somewhat undeserved) status as a "crutch" isn't what makes the CSMs a depressing sight on tourney tables. It's the knowledge that 90% of the people who play Chaos Spurfs do so for the Lash above all else, and the further realisation that 99% of that 90% are thus going to be flavour of the monthers who want Pink-Powah! because they think it's an I-WIN button, a fact largely reflected in their list composition.

Funny how that works, innit? And I posted that before your reply.... PIME TARADOX


EDIT: For clarity's sake; I'm not suggesting that the CSM Codex sucks, because that's just silly since it doesn't. I'm also not even saying Lash is necessarily a "bad thing", because a hard list can be built around it. What I'm saying is that a lot of Lash players don't do this, and instead choose to try and run their army as disparate blocks of (points-intensive) models rather than having the whole thing revolve around each other. Which is a silly way to run any list. This happens more with CSMs than most other Codexes because of Lash's reputation as an I-WIN button and a broken ability, which it ain't.

Thats where I think I am getting confused. How are Stelek's numbers any better/more important than the ones here? Stelek basically has the same info, just from different people. I think, you'd have to combine both lists, and cross out the dual posts, to get any semblance of a real number. It's fairly obvious that a lot of the posters there agree with you and Stelek, and so, would never take Orks to a tournament. That being said, they are also probably some good players there as well as here, so if they are against Orks, or think Orks are a poor army choice, they won't take them, and their results will show that other armies are doing well. If some of the good players here, disagree with that assessment, and do take Orks, and do well, then there will be a much higher percentage of Orks doing well on this board, compared to that one. That doesn't prove that Orks are bad however. If the best players in the nation all decided to take Tyranids, you know Tyranids woulda cleaned out most of these first round events. So, in the end, we are left with what?

Absolutely no way to prove that Orks are not as good as everyone thinks. Unless we could find 2 equally skilled players, and let them pair off with each codex, and do a round by round elimination tournament, where they could choose their army list before each game.


You are right about the local thing, but that also goes for the "meta game". It just doesnt exist in my opinion outisde of your local play area. If the local Meta favors Nids, they will do well, if they move on from there to a meta that doesnt favor Nids, then they will do poorly. There is no national "meta" to speak of, just little pockets of meta everywhere.



Clay

Enough with quoting other people's entire posts, or quoting people's posts broken up into disparate parts. If we want to check what they wrote, we can scroll back up the thread. Stop making the thread difficult to read. Use the quote function for rules or identify inconsistency, but not as a substitute for writing a coherent post. See Dashofpepper's last post as an example of how to write posts.

They are quite dear.

It seems like quoting multiple parts of somebody's post to reply to those different parts separately is a core and useful function of internet forums that does help the reader digest an argument. It can be very difficult to respond to exact separate points made by others by not quoting. Is that in the forum rules somewhere that I missed?

Well, due to your sincere and nicely worded request, I shall attempt to refrain from quoting a quote any more than I have in this thread(one time, I think?)



Clay

Frank Fugger wrote:
That's basically what Stelek means when he says they're "bottom of competetive" and also the reasoning behind his forming of this opinion, and if we look at the standings from UK ToS they sort of bear that out. Orks didn't win. They placed well, though. If there weren't so many of them, and people hadn't been bringing flabby DA/ Tyranid lists to the party, they probably wouldn't have done so well.

Well hmm...looking at results, there were 8 Ork armies in Top 20, and 14 in Top 50 (more than any other). Best vanilla Marine was 20th, best Tau was 21st, best IG 23rd (old codex though). There were only two SM, one Tau and one IG in Top 50. So though best Ork was "only" 5th, I don't see the results as evidence of anything else than the Orks seem to have done just fine...

Alerian wrote:Shep,
Your wall trick is nice, and I'll have to remember it. However, since I always bring 30 lootas, I wouldn't be bothered by it.

How do you deal with Lootas backing up BW orks?

(P.S. This is a serious question, as I am starting an IG army soon, to go along side my Eldar, DA and Orks)

armor 12 with 4+ cover falls into a really tricky spot for lootas. The average loota shot gets 10 hits, of which only 1.6 glances and 1.6 pens. Cut that in half for cover and you are left with a very slim margin of killy-ness.

Every list I've playtested against has fielded 45 lootas. they go after my screen every time. And it seems like weapons get blown off, I get crew stunned which downgrades to shaken, maybe I lose one. but the screen tends to hold. Its part of what is sometimes very maddening about killing vehicles without ap1. You roll to hit, roll to "wound", maybe there is a cover save. But then there is this new "save" which is the damage table. So many results keep me moving and blocking movement.

Lootas certainly kill some of my tanks every game. But I usually have more than enough fast vehicles left after a round of shooting to shut down BW movement for a turn.

If i feel i need to deal with lootas in a hybrid BW list, I go with some manticore shots. Also, remember that the devildogs, if untouched, are in range of 12" move and souffle on the lootas, but usually they don't make it past turn 2. Realistically, they (lootas) are hard for anyone to deal with. I tend to take out one full unit of them and then let the rest go to town on me. Just tough to deal 30 wounds to T4 models that are 40+" away.

Dashofpepper wrote:Frank conjectures that Orks should hypothetically do less well than other codexes,

No I don't. I'm suggesting that Orks wouldn't do so well if everyone brought hard lists to tourneys. It's vastly different.

but that entire supposition is based on the idea that Orks don't have an answer to AV14.

No it's not. Not entirely. Please try to keep up.

I just think that you're attempting to turn your opinion, which is fact-less and largely based on contrived beliefs about how 40k should be played into an actual "side" when there simply is neither grounds nor merit for your beliefs.

This is wrong. It's made wronger because your thinking is predicated on a fallacy. See above. You need to sort that out before we can really start dialogue-ing in any meaningful way. If you've read everything I've said and still think I'm bashing Orks based solely on the fact that they have no answer to AV14, well... I dunno what to tell you.

Primarch wrote:Thats where I think I am getting confused. How are Stelek's numbers any better/more important than the ones here?

Because the ones here are being posted as an addendum to the numbers being posted on Stelek's blog. Unless there's a thread I'm not aware of, three-quarters of the results posted on Stelek's blog don't appear on this site at all.

I think, you'd have to combine both lists, and cross out the dual posts, to get any semblance of a real number. It's fairly obvious that a lot of the posters there agree with you and Stelek, and so, would never take Orks to a tournament.

That'd be a silly thing to do if you agreed with me (and Stelek, apparently), because thinking thus you'd probably come to the realisation that Orks are more competetive than they have a right to be and thus can be used to do well at tournaments providing the match-ups fall for you.

That's the mission for Captain Scrudmongler's Scruddy WAAAGH!; to boldly go to ToS 09-10 and do well despite Captain Scrudmongler (that's me!) never having played a game with an Ork army before, thereby proving that a) the competetive 40K scene isn't competetive, and b) Orks are so simplistic that a basic understanding of the game is all that's needed to trounce shoddy opposition with them.

Should have enough to get my Warboss, Big Mek and Nobs Mob this Saturday; watch this space. It's going to be pink, green, and sexy.

You are right about the local thing, but that also goes for the "meta game". It just doesnt exist in my opinion outisde of your local play area. If the local Meta favors Nids, they will do well, if they move on from there to a meta that doesnt favor Nids, then they will do poorly. There is no national "meta" to speak of, just little pockets of meta everywhere.

QFT, with caveat; even local meta can be cut through by hard lists. If the meta in your area favours Nids,

Backfire wrote:Well hmm...looking at results, there were 8 Ork armies in Top 20, and 14 in Top 50 (more than any other). Best vanilla Marine was 20th, best Tau was 21st, best IG 23rd (old codex though). There were only two SM, one Tau and one IG in Top 50. So though best Ork was "only" 5th, I don't see the results as evidence of anything else than the Orks seem to have done just fine...

Please re-read the thread and understand the discussion taking place around it. Primarch/ Clay has taken the time to do it, why can't you?

You can only beat what's in front of you.

It's a game with the human factor- hypothetical statistics can only be taken so far. Statistics cannot deal with the "human" factor.

I can wax lyrical all day long about how LIVERPOOL football club is statistically better than EVERTON, they have more valuable players, a bigger squad, more money and so on. However, add a dash of the human element, and watch Everton beat them 1-0 in the FA cup quarter final. POW! Go ORKS!

Statistics can be made to say anything. I repeat- You can only beat what's in front of you.

Keyasa wrote:You can only beat what's in front of you.

Didn't work for Lennox Lewis' claim to be the best heavyweight of all time and it ain't gonna work here either ;D

It's a game with the human factor- hypothetical statistics can only be taken so far. Statistics cannot deal with the "human" factor.

It's also a game with a rigid set of rules that don't deviate (... much) between games, standardised and strictly regulated methods by which models interact with the board and other models, and dice. In such an environment the human factor only comes into play when we're talking about the ability to play to and through the rules and processes of the game; people who can do that run hard lists, because they know that while they may not be able to deal their own hand, they can at least stack the deck in their favour.

I can wax lyrical all day long about how LIVERPOOL football club is statistically better than EVERTON, they have more valuable players, a bigger squad, more money and so on. However, add a dash of the human element, and watch Everton beat them 1-0 in the FA cup quarter final. POW!

If footy was a turn-based sport this might be a reasonable analogy. It's not, so it's not.

EDIT: David Moyes is an onion-head.

Statistics can be made to say anything.

So can maxims

Frank Fugger wrote:

Backfire wrote:Well hmm...looking at results, there were 8 Ork armies in Top 20, and 14 in Top 50 (more than any other). Best vanilla Marine was 20th, best Tau was 21st, best IG 23rd (old codex though). There were only two SM, one Tau and one IG in Top 50. So though best Ork was "only" 5th, I don't see the results as evidence of anything else than the Orks seem to have done just fine...

Please re-read the thread and understand the discussion taking place around it. Primarch/ Clay has taken the time to do it, why can't you?

Honestly, I can't understand how that particular result proves anything else that the Orks are (or at least were, at the time of that tournament) very competive. Whereas the armies which you have claimed to be superior to Orks fared much, much worse. Which leaves me at loss why you even brought that one out.

Backfire wrote:Honestly, I can't understand how that particular result proves anything else that the Orks are (or at least were, at the time of that tournament) very competive. Whereas the armies which you have claimed to be superior to Orks fared much, much worse. Which leaves me at loss why you even brought that one out.

Not all tournament lists are hard, and not all tournament players are either. What I'd like to know is how a Dark Angels player managed to end up sticking it out in the top 10-15 as long as he did. If that's any indication of the quality of the opposition (and, given the fact a Tyranid player finished in the top ten, I believe it is) then it was either a bad field, or I'm missing something in the DA/ Nids and Ork codexes that allows them to whup hard lists. Either these other awesome tournament players were just not ready to face down the awe-inspiring horror of a Lictor, or they weren't running hard lists.

*giggles wildly*

Frank, I'm not going to write anything lengthy because the post I contributed to this discussion (above) you answered abrasively, refuting nothing I said, and hoping that a condescending tone and accusations of mental slowness would glib over refutations of your fanatical and wildly deluded and skewed view of reality.

Being an ass to people doesn't constitute your own ability to "keep up" with a thread either. This is the part where I bow out because the meaningful things have been said, and you've degenerated a thoughtful discussion into petty name-calling.

skipdog172:

Part of the problem with responding to individual points by quoting said points is that you miss the forest for the trees. By breaking a post down into individual points, you fail to address the point made by the entire post. That's why no one does that in the real world, because in the real world people can read and write well enough to follow all sides of a discussion. Likewise nobody needs to quote entire posts in their own posts because, as I've pointed out, people are literate enough to read a conversation without parts of it being repeated in their entirety.

Quoting other people's posts, and breaking them down into a series of disconnected quotations, to which you append your own disconnected non sequitors, demonstrates not only an inability to digest and analyze information, but also an inability to evaluate and synthesize your own ideas. Simply address the poster whose post you are addressing, and get on with composing your own thesis or counter-thesis the way you would compose any essay.

By following the standard format of thesis statement, argument, and re-statement of thesis, you can make the content of your posts clear, as well as better develop your own positions and arguments. At the least, it will make your posts more legible, and more interesting to read. Proof-reading and multiple drafts will go a long way to improving the quality of your posts. If people have a problem with "blocks of text", then maybe they should go find some activity that doesn't require stuff like reading...

I have found locally orks do well, some lists are a bad match up but that happens sometimes. The only armies that got totally screwed over are the ones that could not mech up. With the survivability of vehicles now, it is a huge advantage.

After wasting far too long of my life reading this hissy fit of a thread, I only shake my head at the people who take a GAME and turn it into a serious event. I for one am not going to care about how the orks are noobhammer or whatever, the bottom line is that I find the orks fun to play, and games are played for...everyone say it with me....FUN. The guy I play against mostly runs Eldar. Does he have to make more careful decisions than me? yes, as he plays a fragile army. Do I sometimes get away with small errors because of the nature of my army? yes. Do either of us hold any animosity toward each other for it? Of course not. Its a game, we play it for fun, not to show each other who is smarter or a better tactician. I'll show up with my BW orks and NOOB tatooed on my forehead at my next tourney, and in the end I'll have a great time, even with the super fun guy calling my list easy to play. How about from now on everyone only shows up with eldar and mechguard at tournaments and we can have bouncers at the door making sure no one brings in a list that isn't top-tier so we can really find out who the good players are? Thats about as enjoyable as no items on final d every time. (I wonder how many will get that reference). The fact of the matter is everyone is taking a game too seriously, sure there are some armies that lend themselves to being a little less 'strategic' than others, but who cares? The fun in the game is in its diversity, even if every list isn't super competitive. If I showed up at games and was only facing MechVet or whatever the hell is the top tier stuff right now, I'd stop playing. In the end you're still just playing with little plastic men.

F is for friends who do things together.
U is for U and ME
N is for anything and anytime at all, down here at my game tourn-ey.

indigo_jones wrote:After wasting far too long of my life reading this hissy fit of a thread, I only shake my head at the people who take a GAME and turn it into a serious event. I for one am not going to care about how the orks are noobhammer or whatever, the bottom line is that I find the orks fun to play, and games are played for...everyone say it with me....FUN. The guy I play against mostly runs Eldar. Does he have to make more careful decisions than me? yes, as he plays a fragile army. Do I sometimes get away with small errors because of the nature of my army? yes. Do either of us hold any animosity toward each other for it? Of course not. Its a game, we play it for fun, not to show each other who is smarter or a better tactician. I'll show up with my BW orks and NOOB tatooed on my forehead at my next tourney, and in the end I'll have a great time, even with the super fun guy calling my list easy to play. How about from now on everyone only shows up with eldar and mechguard at tournaments and we can have bouncers at the door making sure no one brings in a list that isn't top-tier so we can really find out who the good players are? Thats about as enjoyable as no items on final d every time. (I wonder how many will get that reference). The fact of the matter is everyone is taking a game too seriously, sure there are some armies that lend themselves to being a little less 'strategic' than others, but who cares? The fun in the game is in its diversity, even if every list isn't super competitive. If I showed up at games and was only facing MechVet or whatever the hell is the top tier stuff right now, I'd stop playing. In the end you're still just playing with little plastic men.

F is for friends who do things together.
U is for U and ME
N is for anything and anytime at all, down here at my game tourn-ey.

Amen brother!

Toxxic wrote:

indigo_jones wrote:After wasting far too long of my life reading this hissy fit of a thread, I only shake my head at the people who take a GAME and turn it into a serious event. I for one am not going to care about how the orks are noobhammer or whatever, the bottom line is that I find the orks fun to play, and games are played for...everyone say it with me....FUN. The guy I play against mostly runs Eldar. Does he have to make more careful decisions than me? yes, as he plays a fragile army. Do I sometimes get away with small errors because of the nature of my army? yes. Do either of us hold any animosity toward each other for it? Of course not. Its a game, we play it for fun, not to show each other who is smarter or a better tactician. I'll show up with my BW orks and NOOB tatooed on my forehead at my next tourney, and in the end I'll have a great time, even with the super fun guy calling my list easy to play. How about from now on everyone only shows up with eldar and mechguard at tournaments and we can have bouncers at the door making sure no one brings in a list that isn't top-tier so we can really find out who the good players are? Thats about as enjoyable as no items on final d every time. (I wonder how many will get that reference). The fact of the matter is everyone is taking a game too seriously, sure there are some armies that lend themselves to being a little less 'strategic' than others, but who cares? The fun in the game is in its diversity, even if every list isn't super competitive. If I showed up at games and was only facing MechVet or whatever the hell is the top tier stuff right now, I'd stop playing. In the end you're still just playing with little plastic men.

F is for friends who do things together.
U is for U and ME
N is for anything and anytime at all, down here at my game tourn-ey.

Amen brother!

Ditto

indigo_jones wrote:F is for friends who do things together.
U is for U and ME
N is for anything and anytime at all, down here at my game tourn-ey.

F is for Fire that burns down the whole town.
U is for URANIUM...BOMBS!
N is for No survivors when you're-
Here at the game tourn-ey!

Dashofpepper wrote:*giggles wildly*

Frank, I'm not going to write anything lengthy because the post I contributed to this discussion (above) you answered abrasively,

I don't think it was abrasive at all. Obviously some people are more sensitive than others.

refuting nothing I said,

Everything you said was predicated on your assumption that my standpoint is "Orks suck because they can't deal with AV14". That your opinions revolve around a misconception makes them self-defeating; I'm not going to waste time refuting things that refute themselves.

and hoping that a condescending tone and accusations of mental slowness would glib over refutations of your fanatical and wildly deluded and skewed view of reality.

Aw, petal :( Reread, cogitate and digest the thread properly, then comment, and I promise I'll try not to hurt your feelings again.

Being an ass

Namecalling; I call shenanigans!

Here's a digested version of what I actually said to you, coated in as much sugar as possible; what you're bringing to the party is the assumption that I think Orks suck because they can't deal with AV14. That is demonstrably incorrect, and that'll become clear to you if you re-read the thread.

Obviously you don't want to do that, and I've regurgitated my opinions often enough for one lifetime so I'm not going to do it again, so perhaps bowing out is the best thing to do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

indigo_jones wrote:After wasting far too long of my life reading this hissy fit of a thread,

... you decided to waste more of your life by typing out a big wall of hissy text decrying it? Well done to you!

indigo_jones wrote:After wasting far too long of my life reading this hissy fit of a thread, I only shake my head at the people who take a GAME and turn it into a serious event. I for one am not going to care about how the orks are noobhammer or whatever, the bottom line is that I find the orks fun to play, and games are played for...everyone say it with me....FUN. The guy I play against mostly runs Eldar. Does he have to make more careful decisions than me? yes, as he plays a fragile army. Do I sometimes get away with small errors because of the nature of my army? yes. Do either of us hold any animosity toward each other for it? Of course not. Its a game, we play it for fun, not to show each other who is smarter or a better tactician. I'll show up with my BW orks and NOOB tatooed on my forehead at my next tourney, and in the end I'll have a great time, even with the super fun guy calling my list easy to play. How about from now on everyone only shows up with eldar and mechguard at tournaments and we can have bouncers at the door making sure no one brings in a list that isn't top-tier so we can really find out who the good players are? Thats about as enjoyable as no items on final d every time. (I wonder how many will get that reference). The fact of the matter is everyone is taking a game too seriously, sure there are some armies that lend themselves to being a little less 'strategic' than others, but who cares? The fun in the game is in its diversity, even if every list isn't super competitive. If I showed up at games and was only facing MechVet or whatever the hell is the top tier stuff right now, I'd stop playing. In the end you're still just playing with little plastic men.

F is for friends who do things together.
U is for U and ME
N is for anything and anytime at all, down here at my game tourn-ey.

I think you forget that some people enjoy this aspect of the hobby. I.E. coming on a forum and debating the finer aspects of the hobby. It doesn't make the hobby any less fun for them, and I for one think it's a good thing that people have a lot of passion for the hobby.

Although I also think some people take it tooo far.

GG

Because the ones here are being posted as an addendum to the numbers being posted on Stelek's blog. Unless there's a thread I'm not aware of, three-quarters of the results posted on Stelek's blog don't appear on this site at all.

You say this, which I agree with....But wouldn't it also be fair to look at it in reverse? 3/4 of the results posted on Stelek's blog don't appear here at all? If they did, then this site's numbers would be more accurate.

That'd be a silly thing to do if you agreed with me (and Stelek, apparently), because thinking thus you'd probably come to the realisation that Orks are more competetive than they have a right to be and thus can be used to do well at tournaments providing the match-ups fall for you.

I guess I hadn't thought of it that way, but I doubt the majority of the Stelek followers would use that logic. As much as they trash talk Orks in general, they wouldn't be caught dead playing them.

Not all tournament lists are hard, and not all tournament players are either. What I'd like to know is how a Dark Angels player managed to end up sticking it out in the top 10-15 as long as he did. If that's any indication of the quality of the opposition (and, given the fact a Tyranid player finished in the top ten, I believe it is) then it was either a bad field, or I'm missing something in the DA/ Nids and Ork codexes that allows them to whup hard lists. Either these other awesome tournament players were just not ready to face down the awe-inspiring horror of a Lictor, or they weren't running hard lists.

Ok Frank, you've just lost me again. You say that Orks should not be a competitive army(correct me if I have your premise wrong), but that they are in fact competitive because of the environment, that being that 40k just isn't competitve as a whole on the tournament scene. Then, you provide results, where the Orks have shown to have scored the highest of all the other races. Including the choices that can make the so called "hard" lists.

You then fall back on the defense that, the only reason Orks did well was because of a poor field, you cite examples of Dark Angels and Tyranids also doing well in the same environment, so that should prove your point. However, couldn't you argue that in fact, Orks are the MOST competitive army in 40k? I mean, according to you(you are about to test your theory), pretty much anyone can show up with Orks and do well in a tournament. Whereas the "hard" armies require a lot more effort to win with. Contain your answer to just the current tournament scene, the one you think is not very competitive at all. In that box, if there was an army that took very little effort to win with, consistently scored high, higher than any other army, then couldn't you reach the conclusion that in fact, the Orks are the most competitive army running right now?



Looking forward to your answer.




Clay

Alerian wrote:Shep,
Your wall trick is nice, and I'll have to remember it. However, since I always bring 30 lootas, I wouldn't be bothered by it.

How do you deal with Lootas backing up BW orks?

(P.S. This is a serious question, as I am starting an IG army soon, to go along side my Eldar, DA and Orks)

We've playtested this scenario numerous times. Most of my 1750 lists involve at least 3 wagons with KFF protection and at least 30 lootas. Some have 45. I even run solitary deffkoptas with rockitts and buzzsaws as anti tank tech.

There simply isn't enough shooting to deal with his horde of vehicles. I can't kill them all fast enough. Once my wagons run into his vehicle wall it's usually over since I'm now forced to wait for the lootas to take down his tanks or I must disembark which is even worse than just sitting there in a wagon. The open topped nature of battlewagons makes them a lot more fragile than I'd like, especially when he can easily get side armor shots because of how narrow their front armor side is.

So yeah lootas do some damage but they can only shoot at one vehicle a turn and that isn't a guaranteed destroy result.

Note we don't play with the deffrolla vs. vehicle ruling. If we did that could change the dynamic of the strategy as the vehicle wall would be much less effective if I get to actually steamroll his banewolves.

Primarch wrote:You say this, which I agree with....But wouldn't it also be fair to look at it in reverse? 3/4 of the results posted on Stelek's blog don't appear here at all? If they did, then this site's numbers would be more accurate.

Well yeah, it'd be fair to say that; but it should go without saying really, shouldn't it? If the same numbers appeared here then Dakka's results would be just as useful a barometer as Stelek's blog, common sense tells us that. The results don't appear here though, so it's not. Not really.

I guess I hadn't thought of it that way, but I doubt the majority of the Stelek followers would use that logic. As much as they trash talk Orks in general, they wouldn't be caught dead playing them.

Stelek plays Orks. I've seen various posts of his regarding his Orks. I've never tried them myself but they look like a helluva lot of fun, and I defy anyone to say they dislike the SAG Big Mek model.

Ok Frank, you've just lost me again. You say that Orks should not be a competitive army(correct me if I have your premise wrong), but that they are in fact competitive because of the environment, that being that 40k just isn't competitve as a whole on the tournament scene. Then, you provide results, where the Orks have shown to have scored the highest of all the other races. Including the choices that can make the so called "hard" lists.

You've got the premise down; where you're losing it is in the decryption of those results. Yeah the Orks did well. So did Tyranids. And Dark Angels. And there were more than a few Necrons in there too. I could also postulate that, since an estimated 99% of Chaos Marines players are Lash-merchants, the presence of so many CSM players in the results also attests to the low quality of the opposition; however that'd be conjectural since no army lists are available and a lot of hard lists can be built using the CSM Codex.

The same cannot be said of the Tyranids, Necrons or Dark Angels books. How else did players using these armies place so well if their opposition didn't suck?

However, couldn't you argue that in fact, Orks are the MOST competitive army in 40k?

Assuming their opposition is rubbish, yeah. They're a lot more forgiving to play than almost any other Codex in 40K whilst also being quite dangerous to the uninitiated opponent; the sight of 180 Orks deploying for a 1500pt game will cause some people to panic. People who know what those 180 Orks are capable of will shrug it off.

I mean, according to you(you are about to test your theory), pretty much anyone can show up with Orks and do well in a tournament.

Yup.

Whereas the "hard" armies require a lot more effort to win with.

Yup. They require a far more intimate understanding of the general game to run properly; you can have the hardest list in the world, but give it to a player who doesn't understand that Fast Skimmers can't fire weapons when moving Flat Out or AT weapons suck against infantry, or that Hormagaunts aren't something you need to kill but Carnifexes are, etc etc, and he'll fail with it every time.

The same thing cannot be said of Orks. I'm fairly confident that I could take an Ork list to a tournament and do well having never moved a Git in my life before, provided the opposition I face remains the same gaggle of footslogging Storm Troopers and Drop Pod Dreadding nuggets that currently attend GTs.

Contain your answer to just the current tournament scene, the one you think is not very competitive at all. In that box, if there was an army that took very little effort to win with, consistently scored high, higher than any other army, then couldn't you reach the conclusion that in fact, the Orks are the most competitive army running right now?

I'd agree with that. Thing is, though, if people actually started playing for keeps at tourneys the Orks would rapidly disappear from the placings, because they rely on simplicity, ease of use and weak opposition to be competetive. Hard lists rely on their own units being able to deal with anything in order to win games; the Orks rely on the opponent being unable to deal with their units to win games.

I think you forget that some people enjoy this aspect of the hobby. I.E. coming on a forum and debating the finer aspects of the hobby. It doesn't make the hobby any less fun for them, and I for one think it's a good thing that people have a lot of passion for the hobby.

Although I also think some people take it tooo far.

GG

Dude...paragraphs

You know 60% of the time my army wins all the time.

Proper assessment of armies is not as simple as many on this thread make it. Some people can use tournaments as an example but others will dismiss it those results.

Another form of assessment is looking at the codex and using math to determine what is most point efficient but it doesnt take the mission/players/list at hand

My assessment of armies is based on if the army can dominate 2 of the 3 phases of the game.

Orks can dominate any of the 3 phases of the game simple and easy.

thehod wrote:You know 60% of the time my army wins all the time.

Proper assessment of armies is not as simple as many on this thread make it. Some people can use tournaments as an example but others will dismiss it those results.

Another form of assessment is looking at the codex and using math to determine what is most point efficient but it doesnt take the mission/players/list at hand

My assessment of armies is based on if the army can dominate 2 of the 3 phases of the game.

Orks can dominate any of the 3 phases of the game simple and easy.

Surely that's far more unscientific since it too doesn't take into account the set-up of the board or the opponent's Codex, let alone the players involved or the opponent's army list.

EDIT: Also, how do you define domination in terms of the shooting and movement phases?

A lot of the results posted here have also been posted on Stelek's blog too, and they sort of get lost amidst the sea of other results in which no Ork lists appear at all. Here you go:

http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/07/ard-boyz.html

If you've got access to an official national 'Ard Boyz listing I'd be happy to take a look at it. Otherwise this is probably as close as we get for the time being.

From what I can tell Dakka has many more results than there are on Stelek's blog. Here is the data from the Dakka results thread (this is a list of armies that made the semifinals):

UPDATED COUNTS (this thread only):
Space Marines -- 35
Orks -- 31
Imperial Guard -- 18
Chaos Marines -- 20
Eldar -- 16
Chaos Daemons -- 13
Tyranids -- 17
Tau -- 9
Space Wolves -- 5
Necrons -- 6
Blood Angels -- 4
Demon Hunters -- 1
Black Templars -- 4
Dark Eldar -- 4
Dark Angels -- 1

Frank Fugger wrote:

Surely that's far more unscientific since it too doesn't take into account the set-up of the board or the opponent's Codex, let alone the players involved or the opponent's army list.

EDIT: Also, how do you define domination in terms of the shooting and movement phases?

Well im not much for scientific research over a game of toy soldiers. I just see 40k more as a game where as many people treat this as a simulation.

This game is simply broken down into 3 phases: Movement, Shooting, Assault

Orks can dominate the movement phase by using mass battlewagons or bike spam, special abilities such as snikrot's flank march ability can work as well in restricting the movements of the opposing army. You also have the run rule or the waaaagh special rule that can cover the board in no time. Domination of the movement phase can be accomplished too by controlling the battlefield and with 180 orks, that is pretty simple to take up the board. As for shooting, Orks dominate it with volume of fire along with protection from return fire with the introduction of coversaves in 5th and the use of KFF to protect ork forces on their way to target. IMO Orks are weakest in assault due to combat resolution that can kill way more orks than shooting could.

Frank Fugger wrote:Hard lists rely on their own units being able to deal with anything in order to win games; the Orks rely on the opponent being unable to deal with their units to win games.

Frank, don't take either of the following statements the wrong way:

A) It's about time you got around to making a legitimate point as to what is actually "wrong" with the Orks.

B) I agree with you 100%, you're absolutely right about that being the difference between what you consider "hard" and the Orks.

From my experiences, Orks don't actually kill everything, they kill what they can and survive the rest. A smart player will do the same thing with any army: Example-- an Eldar force has had every one of their AT weapons glanced off by destroyers, but hold 4/5 objectives, there's really no need to move a unit off of an objective to try and go pin a haywire grenade or two onto the monolith across the field. By that same token, an Ork army pushes forward and literally denies table access in order to keep nasty units out of the fight. The difference is that where other armies avoid the fights they can't win, an Ork will intentionally engage the same target and tie it up, keeping it from threatening the rest of the table.

Yes, you can probably win a lot of games with Orks just by weight of numbers, and the army doesn't have any one unit that is truly an answer to anything. The difference is that Ork units aren't "hard" by your definition unless you want to count a PowerKlaw with 30 ablative wounds or riding a fast vehicle that can potentially scatter closer to the intended target when destroyed able to deal with anything, but the army list as a whole can be. Yes, a Big Mek can dish out a lot of damage, and so can a squadron of Kans. But make the right choices, and suddenly the synergy of the list becomes a force multiplier, as a Kustom Force Field for the Mek takes away all of his serious damage capabilities, but gives the surrounding units like the aforementioned Kans much more survivability and damage output. Stormboyz will get torn apart relatively quickly for their points, and a big mob of thirty Boyz has trouble reaching the enemy lines at anywhere near full strength. But combine the two, and those Stormboyz can be sacrificed tie up a unit or two long enough to get the rest of the army up close where they can do their work.

Orks have the potential to be a very competitive codex not from what an individual unit can do (such as a tactical squad with a powerfist, flamer, and multimelta), but with a synergy throughout the list to let units work together, compliment each other, and sacrifice themselves to improve the position of the army or prevent the enemy from doing the same. I might lose 10-20 Boyz to Flechettes in the process, but I will bring down that Hammerhead, and stop it from shelling my lines, even if I would only lose another 5-10 or so to the same tank in the game's remaining turns. Why? Not because I'm pushing bodies forward, not because I want to see the tank go down out of pride, not because I'm a pushover player that likes sacrificing models, but because I know which of my units matter to my plan and which don't.

You take the average Joe Ork and put him up against John Space Marine, and all things being equal, Joe and John not being very good at making lists or carrying out a battleplan, and Joe Ork is probably going to come out on top so long as he remembers what the objectives are and doesn't get carried away. I'm not the average Joe ork though. From what I understand, neither is Dashofpepper or any number of other Ork players that have contributed their views in this thread. We are competitive... nay beyond that, dominant. And because of this, I believe that as the competition steps up and begins to rise to the challenge, even if we do not remain dominant, we will continue to be a Tier 1, competitive force for some time to come.

Several people will disagree with these statements, and you are well within your rights to do so. When you do, I will simply smile and nod, consider your points about what makes Orks a tier 3 army, why they're barely competitive, and then I'll go play some more. And win.

A) It's about time you got around to making a legitimate point as to what is actually "wrong" with the Orks.

B) I agree with you 100%, you're absolutely right about that being the difference between what you consider "hard" and the Orks.

I believe his point is that if hard lists can deal with anything, and Ork lists depend on opposing armies not being able to deal with specific units in order to win, then it stands to reason that hard lists can deal with said units and thus always trump Ork lists.

Strangely, you seem to agree with this assertion but then go on to disagree with what logically extends from that premise (that Ork are not "hard", i.e., competitive).

Malecus wrote: ...

QFT

Manimal wrote:

A lot of the results posted here have also been posted on Stelek's blog too, and they sort of get lost amidst the sea of other results in which no Ork lists appear at all. Here you go:

http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/07/ard-boyz.html

If you've got access to an official national 'Ard Boyz listing I'd be happy to take a look at it. Otherwise this is probably as close as we get for the time being.

From what I can tell Dakka has many more results than there are on Stelek's blog. Here is the data from the Dakka results thread (this is a list of armies that made the semifinals):

UPDATED COUNTS (this thread only):
Space Marines -- 35
Orks -- 31
Imperial Guard -- 18
Chaos Marines -- 20
Eldar -- 16
Chaos Daemons -- 13
Tyranids -- 17
Tau -- 9
Space Wolves -- 5
Necrons -- 6
Blood Angels -- 4
Demon Hunters -- 1
Black Templars -- 4
Dark Eldar -- 4
Dark Angels -- 1

So basically, Orks enjoyed greater success than Tyranids, Necrons, and Daemonhunters (and Tau, Eldar, and Chaos). Wasn't Frank trying to explain that the presence of qualifying tyranid/necron/DH lists somehow disqualifies any success orks might have in the semis? I think the fact that Orks rival only Vulcanspam in these results suggests that the army might be competitive. Results like this don't look like a 3rd tier army sneaking through a tournament full of scrubs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Danny Internets wrote:

A) It's about time you got around to making a legitimate point as to what is actually "wrong" with the Orks.

B) I agree with you 100%, you're absolutely right about that being the difference between what you consider "hard" and the Orks.

I believe his point is that if hard lists can deal with anything, and Ork lists depend on opposing armies not being able to deal with specific units in order to win, then it stands to reason that hard lists can deal with said units and thus always trump Ork lists.

Strangely, you seem to agree with this assertion but then go on to disagree with what logically extends from that premise (that Ork are not "hard", i.e., competitive).

Actually, he's trying to distinguish between Fugger's definition of hard/competitive and his own definition of hard/competitive. Whether or not being competitive can be seen as a logical extension from what Fugger is saying is a matter of debate. Tau, for example, have no effective way to deal with hordes (like horde orks or gaunt hordes) and therefore do not fall into Fugger's definition of competitive, even though he takes the fact that they are seemingly for granted.

thehod wrote:Well im not much for scientific research over a game of toy soldiers. I just see 40k more as a game where as many people treat this as a simulation.

Scientific as in "objective and based in demonstrable fact", rather than scientific as in "meticulously measured and tested to death". You don't need beakers to be scientific about something.

This game is simply broken down into 3 phases: Movement, Shooting, Assault

Orks can dominate the movement phase by using mass battlewagons or bike spam, special abilities such as snikrot's flank march ability can work as well in restricting the movements of the opposing army. You also have the run rule or the waaaagh special rule that can cover the board in no time. Domination of the movement phase can be accomplished too by controlling the battlefield and with 180 orks, that is pretty simple to take up the board.

The thing with all this is, apart from stuff like fielding hordes and Fleeting once per game, most other armies can do all of these things to a far more potent extent than the Orks. Marines and Eldar can Bike-spam. Marines, Daemonhunters and Guard can tank-spam. Eldar and Deldar can Fleet (and they can do it more than once per game), and most Codexes have some unit or other that can Outflank. Sure Snikrot's Outflank is different, but unless your opponent fails at 5th Ed and has something sitting back-field waiting to be gribbled then it's not massively useful. I'll give you that 180 Orks can take up the board, but they're only Orks. T4 and a 6+ save is hardly inspiring, and neither is S3(4) attacks against even AV10; even en masse. Assuming you get near my vehicles to begin with.

So yeah, none of this stuff is particularly novel or impressive in the grand scheme of things, and I'd hardly say any of it amounts to dominance.

As for shooting, Orks dominate it with volume of fire along with protection from return fire with the introduction of coversaves in 5th and the use of KFF to protect ork forces on their way to target.

Again, other armies can do this too, only they tend to do it better. Guard have more shots and a better chance of hitting with them, and it's hard to keep a 30-man Mob in cover; a ten man Tac Squad not so much.

IMO Orks are weakest in assault due to combat resolution that can kill way more orks than shooting could.

Considering the entire army is based on WOARGH MOVE CHARGE LOTS OF DICE that seems like a strange conclusion to reach. Not entirely unwarranted, but strange nonetheless.

Malecus wrote:

Frank Fugger wrote:Hard lists rely on their own units being able to deal with anything in order to win games; the Orks rely on the opponent being unable to deal with their units to win games.

Frank, don't take either of the following statements the wrong way:

A) It's about time you got around to making a legitimate point as to what is actually "wrong" with the Orks.

What Danny Internets said. Also what I've been saying since page 1 of this thread.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dumbuket wrote:So basically, Orks enjoyed greater success than Tyranids, Necrons, and Daemonhunters (and Tau, Eldar, and Chaos). Wasn't Frank trying to explain that the presence of qualifying tyranid/necron/DH lists somehow disqualifies any success orks might have in the semis? I think the fact that Orks rival only Vulcanspam in these results suggests that the army might be competitive. Results like this don't look like a 3rd tier army sneaking through a tournament full of scrubs.

13 Daemons, 17 Tyranids and 6 Necron players also got through. The presence of such still devalues the Orks' success; numbers don't really enter into it.

Also, doesn't it seem a bit strange that the most popular army is also the best represented in round 2? Maybe they were all playing Vulkan Bikers.

Actually, he's trying to distinguish between Fugger's definition of hard/competitive and his own definition of hard/competitive. Whether or not being competitive can be seen as a logical extension from what Fugger is saying is a matter of debate.

Seems logical to me. Competetive Codexes will remain competetive even if the opposition is playing for keeps using a hard list. That doesn't happen, though, and so the Orks produce good numbers at tournaments. Tyranids do too, apparently; not as good as Orks, but they're still well represented considering they're a scrub Codex.

Trying to claim that a Codex is hard based purely on a bunch of numbers in a table isn't very subjective.

Tau, for example, have no effective way to deal with hordes (like horde orks or gaunt hordes) and therefore do not fall into Fugger's definition of competitive, even though he takes the fact that they are seemingly for granted.

I dunno, 30-40 S7+ shots per turn plus a couple of Blasts, plus the Broadsides and Pirhanas, plus the Kroot, plus the Smart Missiles, plus... yeah, it all adds up. Seems like a lot of shooting to me. Is it enough to deal with 180 Orks before they can get into combat with the Kroot? Maybe not, but does it really need to be?

It might also be worth noting that horde armies are not "hard".

Well yeah, it'd be fair to say that; but it should go without saying really, shouldn't it? If the same numbers appeared here then Dakka's results would be just as useful a barometer as Stelek's blog, common sense tells us that. The results don't appear here though, so it's not. Not really.

I must be dense or something. According to Manimal(I think), there are far more results posted here, than on Stelek's blog. I still can't see why the numbers there mean so much more to you than the numbers here? It doesnt matter that the results from here aren't there, the numbers from there aren't here either. I will stick to my statement above. You would have to gather all the numbers from there, then add them to these numbers to get a solid single number of results that we can use.

Right?



Clay

@ Frank

I am going to first say that I am in no way an expert in 40k, nor will I claim to be. I just play for the challenge of going against the best players in my area and around the nation if I am playing at GTs/Indy GTs.

As for objective facts:

Fact: Orks swept the 2008 GT season in the US
Fact: The GT circuit winner of 2008 played with orks
Fact: I good player can make a good army better

As for other armies that can tank/bike spam: I do agree that many armies have much of wha the orks have but Orks have a few distinct advantages over other armies.

Vehicles: Most of the vehicles orks have are fast and are cheap. Orks also can take advantage of mounting a KFF giving said vehicles a mobile coversave that most other armies fail to have (Imperial Vehicles) or have to go flat out (DE and Eldar), or can but too but limited range (Tau disruption pods). Grot Riggers can bring an ork vehicle previously thought out of commission, back into the game.

Bikes: Ork bikes come with a coversave attached to them over others whom have to turboboost.

In regards to shooting:

The reason I say orks dominate in the shooting phase is because while they are now currently outshot by guard, their survivability against most of the weapons guard diminishes their firepower. Once again KFF will provide a save against most weapons while Mad Dok Grosnik can confer FNP to the front unit while giving the rear units a cover save. Domination of the shooting phase doesnt just mean having more guns than your opponent but it also means the denial of the full potential of his weapons and minimizing the damage done.

As for the weakness in HtH, remember orks are still I2, S3, T4 with a wifebeater save. A dedicated assault unit can inflict enough casualties on an ork unit to make them lose combat and force plenty of saves through no retreat.

While some armies can fleet always, the orks only need 1 turn for fleet, the rest of the time, they can simply run if needed or move n shoot. What other armies dont have is a Ghazkull to ensure a 6 inch fleet. You also forget that wyrd boyz have a random power that can give the ork army another waaagh, Just to correct you on your statement of them only having 1 fleet roll.

What makes Orks dangerous is the synergy of the armylist that allows for units to perform better than normally or survive better. KFF, Mad Dok Grosnik, and Ghazkull enhance the army.

Peace, Godbless and dont roll unless its for ld tests

thehod wrote:@ Frank

I am going to first say that I am in no way an expert in 40k, nor will I claim to be. I just play for the challenge of going against the best players in my area and around the nation if I am playing at GTs/Indy GTs.

As for objective facts:

Fact: Orks swept the 2008 GT season in the US
Fact: The GT circuit winner of 2008 played with orks
Fact: I good player can make a good army better

As for other armies that can tank/bike spam: I do agree that many armies have much of wha the orks have but Orks have a few distinct advantages over other armies.


Vehicles: Most of the vehicles orks have are fast and are cheap. Orks also can take advantage of mounting a KFF giving said vehicles a mobile coversave that most other armies fail to have (Imperial Vehicles) or have to go flat out (DE and Eldar), or can but too but limited range (Tau disruption pods). Grot Riggers can bring an ork vehicle previously thought out of commission, back into the game.

From a practical point of view. Getting cover saves with guard or marine or imperium armies is quite easy using smoke launchers or leap frog tactics. The KFF save isn't really an advantage as it is a necessity to be on par with other armies.

Ork vehicles are also far more fragile than imperium vehicles. Trukks are only armor 10 where chimeras or rhinos are 12 or 11 in the front. Battlewagon's are a pricier alternative but the AR 14 is easy to get around because of how narrow the vehicle is. They generally aren't much more sturdy than a 50 point chimera and are twice the cost not to mention eating a heavy slot. All ork vehicles are open topped which makes them explode far more often than other vehicles.

I don't consider the ork vehicle selection to be any kind of advantage. Trukks and Wagons are decent and I don't think they suck, but I certainly don't think are they are superior to guard chimeras or even rhinos point for point.

@ Kevin Nash.

I agree that Chimeras are far more superior than trukks. But smoke launchers are only for a round and ork vehicles can also leapfrog as well. BW taking a heavy slot isint a big deal and dont forget that Nobs can buy a BW as a dedicated transport. Orks do have wargear to close the top of said vehicles (works better for the BW than trukks).

Thanks for bringing up a good point Kevin.

Frank Fugger wrote:
You've got the premise down; where you're losing it is in the decryption of those results. Yeah the Orks did well. So did Tyranids. And Dark Angels. And there were more than a few Necrons in there too. I could also postulate that, since an estimated 99% of Chaos Marines players are Lash-merchants, the presence of so many CSM players in the results also attests to the low quality of the opposition; however that'd be conjectural since no army lists are available and a lot of hard lists can be built using the CSM Codex.

The same cannot be said of the Tyranids, Necrons or Dark Angels books. How else did players using these armies place so well if their opposition didn't suck?

Are you still talking about UK GT? If so, there were just two Tyranid players in Top 50, one Necron and no Dark Angels... (results here)

Really, since Ork seemed to be so popular there, and assuming they lose to AV14...shouldn't it logically mean that Land Raider lists ought to do well, since they had so many helpless Ork opponents to crush?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frank Fugger wrote:
I dunno, 30-40 S7+ shots per turn plus a couple of Blasts, plus the Broadsides and Pirhanas, plus the Kroot, plus the Smart Missiles, plus... yeah, it all adds up. Seems like a lot of shooting to me. Is it enough to deal with 180 Orks before they can get into combat with the Kroot? Maybe not, but does it really need to be?

See, it's comments like this which make me think you have not actually played Tau. Sure they have all that stuff in the Codex. But Tau stuff tends to be expensive. You can tune your army to face horde, or face Mech, but it is hard to make it able to face both.

Fugger's just a 40k player with a big mouth. As soon as he started calling orks a "noobhammer" he lost me. If you want a forgiving army that plays itself, you don't play orks. They sell space marines for that.

Primarch wrote:I must be dense or something. According to Manimal(I think), there are far more results posted here, than on Stelek's blog. I still can't see why the numbers there mean so much more to you than the numbers here? It doesnt matter that the results from here aren't there, the numbers from there aren't here either. I will stick to my statement above. You would have to gather all the numbers from there, then add them to these numbers to get a solid single number of results that we can use.

Right?

If I knew where those numbers came from I'd be more inclined to accept them at face value. They're still not indicative of Orky competetiveness, but at least I'd be able to corroborate them for myself.

Even without corroboration, the fact 13 Daemons players managed to make the second round speaks volumes of the quality of the field. This is an army which fails against bolters and meltabombs, which is easily able to fill out most of it's FoC slots at 1250pts (try it, it's fun!), which can take a maximum of 3 vehicles (all Walkers) and which has a distinctive CC bent but must arrive on the board by Deep Strike. There's so much wrong with the Daemons Codex it's untrue; yet there are 13 Daemons players through to round 2. Either they've found some previously unknown way to make the Codex not suck against hard players, or the opposition was poor.

thehod wrote: As for objective facts:

Fact: Orks swept the 2008 GT season in the US
Fact: The GT circuit winner of 2008 played with orks
Fact: I good player can make a good army better

I won't dispute any of these things; what I will say is that none of these things are particularly indicative of the Codex's quality. Especially not the last one; a good player can make a good army better, but he can also make a cruddy one good in the face of poor opposition.

I also think the concept of dominating game phases = competetive is flawed. Grey Knights can arguably dominate all three phases at the same time in each and every turn. If you look at it objectively Orks can do the same thing; they can throw out a lot of shots, have various means by which to protect themselves against return fire, most of their weapons are Assault weapons and they will chew up a lot of armies in CC.

Fact is that throwing either army against a hard list, which can't out-and-out "dominate" phases (you'll never get as many shots from a Raider squad as you would from a load of Shoota Boyz in a Battlewagon, f'rinstance) but which doesn't need to as it's able to dictate how their opponent's phases will play out, well that's just going to end in tears.

Backfire wrote:Are you still talking about UK GT? If so, there were just two Tyranid players in Top 50, one Necron and no Dark Angels... (results here)

Really, since Ork seemed to be so popular there, and assuming they lose to AV14...shouldn't it logically mean that Land Raider lists ought to do well, since they had so many helpless Ork opponents to crush?

Number one; get off AV14. That was a thread and a half ago. We've already established that is but one of the problems the Orks face.

Number two; quality, not quantity. Sure only a single Tyranid player made it into the top ten, but if the other players had been running hard lists even he wouldn't've been there. Neither would the 4 Ork players, nor any CSM Lash merchant.

See, it's comments like this which make me think you have not actually played Tau. Sure they have all that stuff in the Codex. But Tau stuff tends to be expensive. You can tune your army to face horde, or face Mech, but it is hard to make it able to face both.

Not really, considering you can be dropping Submunitions on the horde from across the board and anything that comes within 36-24 inches is liable to get beaned with as much Plasma, Missiles and Smart Missiles as you've got Suits and vehicles. Multi-Trackers are pretty cool considering how cheap they are. Then of course there's the Kroot to consider.

Frank Fugger wrote:

People were saying you were acting like a dick... well, because you were acting like a dick.

Yeah, that wasn't good. Then again I was led to believe that this was a forum of grown-ups; it's apparently not (and I don't mean that in an insulting or derogatory way - simply that there are a lot of younger members here too), and I'll factor that into my dealings from now on.

Well, most of the time.

Friend, even "grown-ups" don't like it when you act like a dick.

Actually, I think "grown-ups" like it even less when you act like a dick.

Saldiven wrote:Friend, even "grown-ups" don't like it when you act like a dick.

Actually, I think "grown-ups" like it even less when you act like a dick.

It's telling that you put grown-ups in quotation marks.

I'd like to see 100% less usage of the word 'dick', as well as some polite conversation.

This topic was an interesting one.

If it could stay on topic, that would be great.

Please remember Dakka's Rule 1.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/core/forum_rules.jsp

If I knew where those numbers came from I'd be more inclined to accept them at face value. They're still not indicative of Orky competetiveness, but at least I'd be able to corroborate them for myself.

The numbers came from this thread

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/247793.page

I am not claiming this is a definative list of results nor do I claim that I know for certain that everything reported here is true.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
However as far as orky competitiveness is concerned, I believe these results indicate that in an average tournament with variety of army types and player skills the orks are very competitive.

As I originally stated, I completed another tourney with my Orks. 1850 points and used my Necronomicon army list.

Game 1 vs. IG w/ Demonhunter allies: Minor Win w/ bonus pts
Game 2 vs. Iyanden Eldar: Minor Win w/ bonus pts
Game 3 vs. IG: Minor Win w/ bonus pts

This tourney was pretty smaller than expected. As a result, there were only 6 players. It had soft scores, and I scored well in both Painting and Sportsmanship.

The armylists weren't completely min/maxed, but neither is mine, so it pretty much was a wash.

In the end, I won Overall by a single point.

Again, mathhammer dictates one thing, but I prefer to play it out on the table. I can't choose whom I compete against and can't write their armylists in a tourney.

What is the definition of these tiers? What does tier 1,2, and 3 mean?

Not sure the exact definition, but Tier 3 affords the lowest probability to win tourneys.

Frank Fugger wrote:

Even without corroboration, the fact 13 Daemons players managed to make the second round speaks volumes of the quality of the field. This is an army which fails against bolters and meltabombs, which is easily able to fill out most of it's FoC slots at 1250pts (try it, it's fun!), which can take a maximum of 3 vehicles (all Walkers) and which has a distinctive CC bent but must arrive on the board by Deep Strike. There's so much wrong with the Daemons Codex it's untrue; yet there are 13 Daemons players through to round 2. Either they've found some previously unknown way to make the Codex not suck against hard players, or the opposition was poor.

Hmm...again, correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't Daemons done pretty well in tournament scene? So you say they suck too?

Ever thought that perhaps it is you who is wrong, and not the real world...?

Frank Fugger wrote:
Not really, considering you can be dropping Submunitions on the horde from across the board and anything that comes within 36-24 inches is liable to get beaned with as much Plasma, Missiles and Smart Missiles as you've got Suits and vehicles. Multi-Trackers are pretty cool considering how cheap they are. Then of course there's the Kroot to consider.

Lets take the suits for example: assume you've got ten Fireknife suits (Commander + three full Crisis teams). These suits will cost you something like 650+ points. At typical ranges (12 to 24 inch) they will put out 30 S6/S7 shots - but outside of your Commander, they will be at BS3. (you can buy Targeting arrays for your team leaders, but that will cost you more). So you will be looking at maybe 17 hits, causing perhaps 14 wounds - and when you figure in that some of the opponents will be getting cover saves, your suits are lucky to kill ten Ork Boyz per turn. It's not that killy. You can, of course, make your suits more efficient against hordes (AFB, flamers, drones etc.) but that will make them less effective against other opponents.

Sarigar wrote:Again, mathhammer dictates one thing, but I prefer to play it out on the table. I can't choose whom I compete against and can't write their armylists in a tourney.

Which sort of lends credence to what I'm saying. Although if you COULD do those things, would you choose to compete against the bearded Mechdar bloke with the Bolt-Thrower t-shirt, or the kid who brought his Superfriends?

Manimal wrote:However as far as orky competitiveness is concerned, I believe these results indicate that in an average tournament with variety of army types and player skills the orks are very competitive.

Which suggests that in the current climate of competetive 40K the Orks do well. Something I've been saying all along. Awesome.

You might as well ignore the numbers; unless there's some way to find out how many players of each army actually entered the heats they're pretty much meaningless. Por ejemplo, 35 Smurf players got through. I know precisely 1 40K player who doesn't own some form of Smurf army. Conversely, I know about 3 players who haven't ever owned an Ork army. I'm one of them.

Backfire wrote:Hmm...again, correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't Daemons done pretty well in tournament scene? So you say they suck too?

I am indeed, for all the reasons I gave you just there.

Ever thought that perhaps it is you who is wrong, and not the real world...?

Are you trying to say that Daemons are a competetive army?

Lets take the suits for example: assume you've got ten Fireknife suits (Commander + three full Crisis teams). These suits will cost you something like 650+ points.

Yeah. So what? 650+pts ain't bad considering I can move them into Rapid Fire range, shoot, then move them back out again in the same turn. How's non-Fleet stuff supposed to catch me?

At typical ranges (12 to 24 inch) they will put out 30 S6/S7 shots - but outside of your Commander, they will be at BS3. (you can buy Targeting arrays for your team leaders, but that will cost you more).

And that's bad because.... Tau vehicles cost a lot? Their Troops are humongosly expensive?....

So you will be looking at maybe 17 hits, causing perhaps 14 wounds - and when you figure in that some of the opponents will be getting cover saves, your suits are lucky to kill ten Ork Boyz per turn. It's not that killy. You can, of course, make your suits more efficient against hordes (AFB, flamers, drones etc.) but that will make them less effective against other opponents.

At this point I have to ask; are the Suits all I'm allowed to use? Because I have this 1500pt net-deck list here you see, and it's got 2 Multi-Trackered Hammerheads, 2 Broadsides, a unit of Pathfinders, a Multi-Trackered PF Devilfish with my cruddy mandatory Fire Warriors in it, plus 20 Kroot and 9 Fireknife suits. Well, 8 Fireknife suits and a Commander. I think in total that gives me 2 Submunitions, 18 MP shots, 9-18 Plasma shots, 20 Smart Missiles, plus God knows what else the Drones and Kroot and Fire Warriors are carrying per turn, and some Markerlights. Oh, and all the Suits and Vehicles have lovely Targeting Arrays on them so they're all BS4. It seems very shooty to me, but of course I could be wrong. Maybe if I throw out the Pathfinders and add a couple of shooty Pirhanas, or throw out the Broadsides as well, stick another Hammerhead in there AND some shooty Pirhanas?... I dunno.

Maybe you're right. I mean, it's not like the horde player is going to deploy as close to me as possible because his sod-awful shooting won't cut it and he needs to get into CC with stuff in order to stand a chance of killing it is it?

If all your suits have Targetting Arrays then how are you getting both 18 MP shots and 9-18 Plasma shots? You'd be losing one or the other on at least 5 models (assuming 3 team leaders and the commander). Let's give you all the shots you've claimed and see how many orks behind a KFF you kill shall we. Just mathhammer since that seems to be what you base most things off of.

I'll give you 5 Orks hit per submunition shot.

2 Submunition:10 Hits-9 Wounds-6 Dead Orks, 4.5 w/4+ Cover
18 MP Shots-12 Hits-10 Wounds-6.66 Dead Orks, 5 w/4+
18 Plasma-12 Hits-10 Wounds-6.66 Dead Orks, 5 w/4+
20 Smart Missiles-13 Hits-11 Wounds-8 Dead Orks- 5.5 w/4+

Congrats dude, all your shooting has killed 27 Orks, 20 if they have a 4+ save. That is assuming you get all your shots and that all are BS4. Tau don't fair well in a horde situation. Granted using the markerlights could mean you kill a whole squad instead of leaving 3-10 orks but your using over 1k points to kill 220pts.

And your suggestions to make it more "shooty" leave you much more vulnerable to other lists. So you pointing out you can change your list to beat orks doesn't make orks bad.

Hulksmash wrote:If all your suits have Targetting Arrays then how are you getting both 18 MP shots and 9-18 Plasma shots? You'd be losing one or the other on at least 5 models (assuming 3 team leaders and the commander).

OK maybe not ALL of the Suits have Targeting Arrays. In fact lets say only one Suit has a Targeting Array, because I forgot. Still a lot of shots, innit? Not more than, say... a mob of 30 Slugga Boyz, but then again mine aren't S4, hitting on 5s and 12" in range.

Let's give you all the shots you've claimed and see how many orks behind a KFF you kill shall we. Just mathhammer since that seems to be what you base most things off of....

Some time later....

Congrats dude, all your shooting has killed 27 Orks, 20 if they have a 4+ save. That is assuming you get all your shots and that all are BS4. Tau don't fair well in a horde situation. Granted using the markerlights could mean you kill a whole squad instead of leaving 3-10 orks but your using over 1k points to kill 220pts.

While your army is doing what, exactly? Moving 6" towards me each turn? Oh no wait, there's WAAAGH! to consider also; good job I've got my Multi-Trackers on, otherwise I'd never be able to escape the 6"+D6" fury!

But that's just Orks, innit? What about a big Guard Horde with Priests and Commissars, or horde Eldar with Guardians and a big old Avatar, or maybe even some Tyranids? Meh... here's some Submunitions for your Command Squads/ Railguns for your Avatar/ Synapse Creatures. Enjoy your Instinctive Behaviour, Ld test failures, and being guided off the board by my Suits (PF Devilfish Deep Striking, it's the wave of the future). As for the rest of you here's some more Submunitions for you to eat.

And your suggestions to make it more "shooty" leave you much more vulnerable to other lists. So you pointing out you can change your list to beat orks doesn't make orks bad.

It's not a tailored list; it's a NetDeck ripped from one of Stelek's "Best Of" lists. Seriously; if you're tailoring a list to beat hordes, and I mean seriously tailoring it SPECIFICALLY to kill lots of low-grade infantry every turn, you use Flamers and Cyclic Ion Blasters and Airburst Fragmentation Doofers and Kroot up the wazoo. You don't rely on Smart Missile Systems, Missile Pods and Plasma.

It is heartening to know that you can, though

The Tau answer to Orks isn't their shooty suits, who do quite well at gibbing a squad a turn or so, but in Kroot. 2-4 big squads of Kroot or Kroot Hounds are an excellent anti-Ork screen, and their shooting isn't inconsiderable. Point for point, charging Kroot are better than Orks, and on the defensive in terrain they're an even match.

They don't even need to be particularly big; 2 squads of 10 with 5 Hounds is usually sufficient unless you're tailoring a list. Otherwise you're just cutting into precious Battlesuit points.

Frank, I agree with you pretty much on you points, but the conclusion you (and Stelek) come to is still incorrect.

Yes, I find Orks pretty easy to beat with my armies (except my DE versus foot hordes...too much stuff to kill!), but we have the closest thing to a scientific experiment on the question with tournaments all across the country, and orks do well.

Yes, you can draw an alternate conclusion that it only shows people play dumb armies/poorly, but really, army lists are geared toward the competitors metagame, and orks win pretty handily, even at national level events, so they must be a Tier 1 army because they are a viable/realistic choice for winning a major event. Sure, any list COULD win, but no one would seriously consider a pure GK list as being a viable competitor for a major event.

Really, if it's so easy to beat, there are enough people across the country improving their game through alternate sources (again, like Stelek's site) that there should be some evidence it tourney results, but I'm not really seeing it (not that I'd notice it much if it were occurring, probably).

@Frank

You have read the Ork codex right? The fact that sluggas are 18" (so 24" if i'm not running) assault 2. The numbers I ran for you drop significantly by the way if you go down to BS3 on most of your suits. Funny how you point out how much extra stuff you get to use but ignore that Orks will have supporting units as well.

And as for the other "horde" armies you listed they are a joke. No one takes a close combat guard horde or a guardian horde.

Your response truly leave me wondering how much you actually play the game. How do 3-4 Railguns get rid of my synapse in a Nid army? Or kill an Avatar? If your using submunition on the command squads what are you using on the heavier tanks? Your response only show me you have a limited grasp of what a lot of armies can actually do as a whole.

And as for disregarding tournament results because people might bring unoptomized lists that's a little silly since only in the first 2 games of a 5 game tournament are they likely to play a lower geared list. After that the toughest lists start to play each other.

Grimaldi wrote:Frank, I agree with you pretty much on you points, but the conclusion you (and Stelek) come to is still incorrect.

Yes, I find Orks pretty easy to beat with my armies (except my DE versus foot hordes...too much stuff to kill!), but we have the closest thing to a scientific experiment on the question with tournaments all across the country, and orks do well.

Yes, you can draw an alternate conclusion that it only shows people play dumb armies/poorly, but really, army lists are geared toward the competitors metagame, and orks win pretty handily, even at national level events, so they must be a Tier 1 army because they are a viable/realistic choice for winning a major event.

So you agree with the points, yet somehow manage to come to the conclusion that they're all irrelevant because "Orks do well"? Of course lists are geared to face off against the players a person plays regularly; that's one of the reasons they're not proper hard lists. Sure they might tweak them a bit before game-day, try and make them "all-comers" lists by adding a few more Meltaguns or something, but they're still not proper hard lists. You should see some of the crap that passes for all-comers round these parts; "mech" Sisters with that Living Saint character who destroys your ability to generate Faith the first time she's killed, footslogging Eldar with a ton of BS3 Bright Lances, Eldrad, and, for some reason, an Avatar, dual Lash DPs with footslogging Noise Marines and 2 Obliterators, something called a "Kroot-mongler" list that, as far as I can see, is an attempt at some sort of Tau horde, and, of course, Raider-spam.

If that's the quality of army list people are taking to tournaments (and, by and large, it is), it's no surprise that the Orks do well, and are at the top of Tier 1, or The Leaderboard, or whatever you want to call it. That's what the evidence points to. If people stopped gearing their armies towards playing people they play every week and instead built them towards taking on 5th Edition armies, the Orks would most likely stop doing well. That won't happen though, at least not when the GTs are played at 2000pts and above, and so Orks will continue to do well, and thus people will continue to play them in droves.

Sure, any list COULD win, but no one would seriously consider a pure GK list as being a viable competitor for a major event.

Why not? Orks are considered competetive because they "do well". Pure Grey Knight armies also have the ability to "do well", yet nobody uses them, and when people DO use them they treat them like Berzerkers, filling out their lists with asinine garbage like Holy Relics and Mastercrafted Weapons on all their Justicars (as though rerolling one WS5 hit per turn was going to make 15pts of difference). Ork lists can't be filled out with crap. Everything in the Codex will do SOMETHING, even if it's just dying so's your opponent can't shoot at other stuff; yet at the same time, because they're so low-grade and simple, once someone figures out what exactly your units are capable of and how best to counter it, you'll get rolled every time. Therein lies the difference between Orks and the Codexes I consider to be truly "competetive"; you can figure out how THEY work all you want, but they're still difficult to play against and beat even when you do.

Orks aren't. Not even for pure Grey Knights lists. Assuming, of course, you're not running 20 Terminators and a Grand Master with a Master-crafted Thunder Hammer at 1500pts.

Oh yes, it happens.

Really, if it's so easy to beat, there are enough people across the country improving their game through alternate sources (again, like Stelek's site) that there should be some evidence it tourney results,

This is quite a bold statement, and not one you can really back up with anything empyrical, because the fact is a lot of people don't really "get it" when it comes to what Stelek calls "Advanced 40K". I know some of the stuff that's said on that site confuses even me; I'm still trying to work out how the hell Dark Eldar can be good, when they used to be so bloody awful.

So essentially, Frank, you're saying that orks only win because their opponents are idiots who make terrible lists?

He's been saying the same (stupid) thing since the beginning of the last thread.

Hulksmash wrote:You have read the Ork codex right? The fact that sluggas are 18" (so 24" if i'm not running) assault 2.

That's some serious BS2 firepower right thurr! And at 24" too. Impressive. No really.

The numbers I ran for you drop significantly by the way if you go down to BS3 on most of your suits. Funny how you point out how much extra stuff you get to use but ignore that Orks will have supporting units as well.

Such as what? OHNOES not a Looted Wagon, they don't suck at all! No, wait... Kan-Wall is the done thing now, isn't it? Because they're difficult to kill AND are BS3! Damn you, Gretchins!

And as for the other "horde" armies you listed they are a joke. No one takes a close combat guard horde or a guardian horde.

ALL horde armies are a joke. Ork ones are just worse, because they substitute steely support units (yeah, the Guard and Eldar get support units too!) for another boat-load of low-grade infantry and then rely on the opponent to not have enough shots to kill enough Orks per turn to deal with the mongling horde. The Codex admits as much itself. And yet again we return to the inescapable truth that the entire play-style of Orks relies more heavily on your opponent NOT having the tools to deal with what you bring than it does upon you being equipped to deal with your opponent.

Which is why when you play your Ork horde against people who know what it can do, it falls flat on it's arse wether they have the shots to kill 180 Orks or not.

Your response truly leave me wondering how much you actually play the game. How do 3-4 Railguns get rid of my synapse in a Nid army? Or kill an Avatar? If your using submunition on the command squads what are you using on the heavier tanks?

The point is, even without tailoring a Tau list, you can handle most (if not quite all) of the rubbish a horde army throws at you each turn, and what you can't handle you ignore. Or throw the Kroot at. Or run away from. Or whatever. It's nice to have options is what I'm saying.

What do you do with your Orks? Mongle forward and WAAAGH! What happens when you have to deal with "heavier tanks"? Mongle forward and WAAAGH! What happens when the heavier tanks aren't there to deal with? Mongle forward and... oh, we used it already.

And as for disregarding tournament results because people might bring unoptomized lists that's a little silly since only in the first 2 games of a 5 game tournament are they likely to play a lower geared list. After that the toughest lists start to play each other.

So we wait for the end of the tournament. Except we've already done that a few times, and the Orks have fared well. Against Dark Angels players, Superfriends Smurfs and Tyranids. And the tri-Monolith Necrons. Can't forget those, because we all know how great Monoliths are. They must be good because people who use them get to finals of 40k tournaments. It's true; I've seen it.

So generally, Stelek's argument is that Orks aren't competitive against hard lists assuming top level players.
I think this analysis is flawed for several reasons:

1. Tier standings are determined by matchup with what people play. Look at how fighting game tiers are calculated. We assign a ranking for every character that is used in the game.
You can't discount the effect of low tier characters on a ranking. To consider tiers, you have to count all armies used in high level play, not only the hardest lists.
Why is this important? Because the matchup changes the game. Also note that the ranking are calculated on who is more likely to win. A mathcup might be 7-3, or 8-2, and a mark of a great player is the ability to win bad matchups.

2. His opinion assumes perfect play. The best players in the world stil make mistakes. An example> in marvel vs. capcom 2, top players agree that sentinel stride doom is a competitive team. Only one top player plays this team. Why? Because the team is extremely execution heavy. In a perfect world with perfect timing and ability, it can handle anything. In practicality it can't because no one can execute it.
That sort of analysis is way more useful than saying, "Hard lists, hard players, perfect world." There is no such thing.

3. Stelek's analysis is also that orks suffer because people are becoming more mechanized...and that's somewhat true. Once again, you gotta take into account mission, play styles, and matchup. WHat about kill points? All those rhinos are extra kill points on the table. What if there's a lot of terrain on the board, making driving around more difficult? WHat about different point levels? Is it always the same when talking about 2500 vs. 1500?
Also, every list has a bad matchup. Why is it Orks are suddenly worse because of a matchup?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and about the Dark Angel's at the GT. Darkangeldentist took pretty much the only viable build, which was deathwing/ravenwing.

Look at Stelek's best of dark angels. That army is crap compared to doublewing.

Don't knock doublewing. Sadly, it's the only competitive build in Dark Angels, but if you master the army it's a hell of an army. Bad learning curve and weak to mistakes hamstring it for most people.

It's one of those builds that your playstyle vastly changes depending on your matchup. If you haven't faced a particular style before it struggles.

It can handle orks, lash, necrons (it's really good against necrons), mech lists, etc.

It's weak matchups are eldar and dark eldar.

Frank Fugger wrote:
So you agree with the points, yet somehow manage to come to the conclusion that they're all irrelevant because "Orks do well"?

At the end of the day, winning does seem to be the best, most objective criteria for successful list building, right? The flashy swordsman may be the more skilled fighter, but Indiana Jones blew him away all the same, and that's what really matters.

Frank Fugger wrote:You should see some of the crap that passes for all-comers round these parts; "mech" Sisters with that Living Saint character who destroys your ability to generate Faith the first time she's killed, footslogging Eldar with a ton of BS3 Bright Lances, Eldrad, and, for some reason, an Avatar, dual Lash DPs with footslogging Noise Marines and 2 Obliterators, something called a "Kroot-mongler" list that, as far as I can see, is an attempt at some sort of Tau horde, and, of course, Raider-spam.

Oh, no surprise there. I think most local scenes are similar (mine included). The frustrating part is how they never seem to evolve, even after getting destroyed by the few good players every tournament.

Frank Fugger wrote:If that's the quality of army list people are taking to tournaments (and, by and large, it is), it's no surprise that the Orks do well, and are at the top of Tier 1, or The Leaderboard, or whatever you want to call it. That's what the evidence points to.

"That's what the evidence points to"? Now you sound like you're agreeing with me!

Frank Fugger wrote:If people stopped gearing their armies towards playing people they play every week and instead built them towards taking on 5th Edition armies, the Orks would most likely stop doing well. That won't happen though, at least not when the GTs are played at 2000pts and above, and so Orks will continue to do well, and thus people will continue to play them in droves.

See, that's the catch, though. What makes an environment? What could be, or what is? Right now, many (most?) players still haven't optimized for 5th edition and the new rules/objectives. Orks, as you mention, thrive on that, which is why they're doing well. Until a large percentage of players make that jump, orks remain a very competitive army. You're judging on potential...no, not even that...an idealized version of what the 40K scene should look like based on your thoughts. Again, I think we both agree on many of the things that could/should come about to make the environment more competitive, but until that happens, it doesn't count.

Frank Fugger wrote:

grimaldi wrote:Really, if it's so easy to beat, there are enough people across the country improving their game through alternate sources (again, like Stelek's site) that there should be some evidence it tourney results,

This is quite a bold statement, and not one you can really back up with anything empyrical, because the fact is a lot of people don't really "get it" when it comes to what Stelek calls "Advanced 40K".

I think you're the one making bold statements in this discussion. The only empirical evidence available shows that Orks win. Often. That means it's more than just a fluke from a few games with lucky dice rolls. IF most people are playing crappy 4th edition lists/tactics and IF orks are especially poor, THEN decent-good players using "advanced 40K" style lists should be quickly racking up wins and getting attention (because you know if they mentioned winning because of advice from Stelek, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth of Dakka and elsewhere). I haven't heard it, so I'm assuming it's not true. 'Ard boyz should be an interesting challenge, because I know several Stelek-inspired players have competed, so if there are several of them (who comprise a fraction of players overall, I'm sure) in the top standings, I think your detractors on this thread will be in a tough spot to disagree with you.

Until it's proven empirically, though, it's still an unproven thesis (which I tend to believe is correct).

It's not like anyone could possibly prove Frank's theory wrong. His defense is irrefutable:

1. Orks suck.
2. Orks only win when the other guy sucks more.

How can you argue with that logic

@ Frank: I'd play anyone that would give me a fun and challenging game. Not sure I get your analogy of players you previously posted (maybe I'm just lost on the humor being from the U.S.)

What will be funny is how well I've done with my Necro army trying to figure out how to play it, only to get pasted at the actual event.

Frank Fugger wrote:
OK maybe not ALL of the Suits have Targeting Arrays. In fact lets say only one Suit has a Targeting Array, because I forgot. Still a lot of shots, innit? Not more than, say... a mob of 30 Slugga Boyz, but then again mine aren't S4, hitting on 5s and 12" in range.

As I said, ten Fireknives cost you ~650 points. A mob of 30 Ork Boyz costs 180 points...

Frank Fugger wrote:
While your army is doing what, exactly? Moving 6" towards me each turn? Oh no wait, there's WAAAGH! to consider also; good job I've got my Multi-Trackers on, otherwise I'd never be able to escape the 6"+D6" fury!

Honestly, you may want to listen to those who ACTUALLY HAVE PLAYED TAU AGAINST ORKS. The list you presented would pretty much suck against horde Orks. Real strength of Tau is not the volume of fire (which isn't all that great) or accuracy (again, mostly BS3 with some BS4), but ability to concentrate the fire to most threatening enemy unit. Horde army is troublesome for most Tau builds, because it comes to you everywhere at once and you often simply don't have enough dakka to deal with all enemy units before they are at assault range. Not to mention that Shoota Boyz actually outshoot your infantry. Kroot, particularly, are horribly vulnerable against Ork shooting, unless you manage deploy them to forest. Another problem are bikes and koptas - they turboboost 1st round, giving you a dilemma - either shoot them, and waste lots of shots to cover saves, or ignore them, giving them chance to assault one of your pricey units next turn.

scuddman wrote:1. Tier standings are determined by matchup with what people play. Look at how fighting game tiers are calculated. We assign a ranking for every character that is used in the game.
You can't discount the effect of low tier characters on a ranking. To consider tiers, you have to count all armies used in high level play, not only the hardest lists.
Why is this important? Because the matchup changes the game. Also note that the ranking are calculated on who is more likely to win. A mathcup might be 7-3, or 8-2, and a mark of a great player is the ability to win bad matchups.

That only really hangs together if we accept that a tier system exists in 40K. I don't. I can take my Ork list to 5 tournaments and win them all, then get crushed by an army composed entirely of Kroot in the first game I play afterwards. On the other hand I could take my Grey Knights to 5 tournaments and bomb out of every one in the first heat, yet have a flawless winning record against the Mechdar player who wins the tournament. Tiers just don't work in 40K the same way they do in fighting games, because there you've only got two variables; the players and the characters they're using. In 40K you've got dice, terrain, and at tournaments third-party adjudication to take into account.

I'm not going to argue that being able to scrounge something from a game against a tough opponent during which everything goes wrong is the mark of a decent player, but by the same token being able to table poor opposition repeatedly doesn't mark you out as a good one, nor does it mean the army you're using is necessarily brilliant.

2. His opinion assumes perfect play. The best players in the world stil make mistakes. An example> in marvel vs. capcom 2, top players agree that sentinel stride doom is a competitive team. Only one top player plays this team. Why? Because the team is extremely execution heavy. In a perfect world with perfect timing and ability, it can handle anything. In practicality it can't because no one can execute it.
That sort of analysis is way more useful than saying, "Hard lists, hard players, perfect world." There is no such thing.

It doesn't, though. His analysis, as far as I can see, assumes a fairly average set of dice rolls and is far more concerned with the composition of the list and it's ability to handle whatever it's opponent might throw at it. A lot of the Best Of... lists look like a load of old nonsense; until you play with or against one, and find that even with an average set of results an average player can, at worst, make life extremely difficult for you using one. The Best Of Tau list is a great example of this. A lot of people look at it and think it's a big pile of arse; that's what I though when I first saw it. Received wisdom always suggested to me that you took at least one squad of Deep Striking Fusion Suits to get at vehicles, Pirhanas were "meh" at best, and that since mech was good, mech Fire Warriors were good. Then someone proxies it against you, you spend the first two turns having your Bike Squads pounded into hamburger by Railguns and chased around by Pirhanas and Fireknives, and the last two turns trying to circumnavigate a load of Kroot so you can at least say you Swept his Broadsides or something. You might well win (I didn't), but it's a lot harder than it would've been normally.

3. Stelek's analysis is also that orks suffer because people are becoming more mechanized...and that's somewhat true. Once again, you gotta take into account mission, play styles, and matchup. WHat about kill points? All those rhinos are extra kill points on the table. What if there's a lot of terrain on the board, making driving around more difficult? WHat about different point levels? Is it always the same when talking about 2500 vs. 1500?

I agree with this to an extent. Stelek constantly says he's a fan of taking as few Troops units as possible and doesn't pay much attention to keeping the Kill Point down when he's building lists, plus a lot of the Best Of lists don't particularly look as if they're optimised for ground-grabbing missions.

The thing is, the Best Of lists are built around balance, and the ethos of taking units that are useful over units that are "necessary". The reasoning behind this is that a non-scoring unit that increases your list's overall ability to "deal" is far better than taking a unit whose only value lies in it's ability to count as scoring. In that, I find it difficult to argue with him; let's face it, if you have 6 Rhino-mounted Tactical Squads while I have only 2, but a load of Land Speeders, Predators and DreadPods backing them up, who's more likely to win the argument that this plastic tree belongs to me? Your scoring units have to deal with my specialist units, whereas mine just have to score. In that sense, the ethos behind Best Of... lists scales incredibly well with points values. As to the board set-up, that's something you can only account for at game-time, but with a list based on balance rather than just the ability to hold ground, you're a lot more able to handle stuff like 12 square feet of terrain.

The ironic thing is that the entire Ork Codex seems to have been built around a similarly utalitarian concept to the Best Of... lists (why else would you have so many options for Troops?), yet for some reason they chose to tack on the whole "low-grade lots of dice comic relief" thing onto it.

One other thing Stelek says that I agree with; Kill Points suck arse, and that ignoring them for the sake of making a list that's balanced is a far better method to employ than worrying about them and trying to keep them to a minimum. If you're furrowing to try and keep your list under 9 KPs the likelihood is you'll go without something you'll probably need, whereas simply not worrying about them allows you to have enough firepower that KPs don't matter. KPs are one of the stupidest things in 5th Edition; Victory Points were a far more fair and sensible way of working stuff out, why did they need to change it? I mean, I get the whole "streamlining" thing, really I do, but VPs weren't complicated and worked fine whereas Kill Points don't. My Death Cult Assassin is worth the same as his Dakka Flyrant? Come on....

Also, every list has a bad matchup. Why is it Orks are suddenly worse because of a matchup?

Not every list has a bad match-up; they all have armies that'll give them problems, but the thing with the likes of Best Of... lists is that they're built around overall competence and as such can meet whatever's thrown at them. A lot of them are optimised to beat 5th Edition mech lists (hence masses of Melta), but they're also able to kill off infantry and either survive any damage they take, or have enough about them to mean it doesn't matter. Or both. The Orks are worse because they RELY on being someone's bad match-up to succeed.

Oh, and about the Dark Angel's at the GT. Darkangeldentist took pretty much the only viable build, which was deathwing/ravenwing.

Look at Stelek's best of dark angels. That army is crap compared to doublewing.

Don't knock doublewing. Sadly, it's the only competitive build in Dark Angels, but if you master the army it's a hell of an army. Bad learning curve and weak to mistakes hamstring it for most people.

It's one of those builds that your playstyle vastly changes depending on your matchup. If you haven't faced a particular style before it struggles.

It can handle orks, lash, necrons (it's really good against necrons), mech lists, etc.

It's weak matchups are eldar and dark eldar.

So basically fast mech, right? Which seems strange, given that all the competetive Dual-Wing armies I've seen have been more Raven than Death. I still contend that, as awesome as Sammael is (and he is indeed awesome), Ravenwing just doesn't work right. There's too much.... "stuff", too much form and not enough function (300pts+ for what amounts to a Fearless Bike Squad? No thanks; I get mine for 100pts less, and I can live without the Troops Speeder). They feel flabby, and making a reasonably balanced list with them at anything less than 1750pts is a fool's errand. Any higher than that and you're fine.

Personally I reckon they seriously need to knock the Space Wolves Codex back to next year and make October the month for a new DA Codex. The potential to build armies that are not only fun but also incredibly stompy exists in abundance in the DA Codex, it just needs to be made 5th Ed compatible. Nobody cares about the Puppies; we're all about the Green.

Grimaldi wrote:At the end of the day, winning does seem to be the best, most objective criteria for successful list building, right?

Assuming you win by some mechanism other than hoping your opponent doesn't have the tools to deal with you, yeah. Otherwise it's a highly qualified and subjective criteria for judging success.

The flashy swordsman may be the more skilled fighter, but Indiana Jones blew him away all the same, and that's what really matters.

If that's how you want to look at it that's fine, as long as you're also willing to accept that just because something does well it doesn't necessarily mean it's good.

Oh, no surprise there. I think most local scenes are similar (mine included). The frustrating part is how they never seem to evolve, even after getting destroyed by the few good players every tournament.

Which is, I think, the whole problem Stelek and his ilk are railing against. I'm not Stelek. That people continue to bring fail-lists to tourneys and Orks continue to place well isn't really that big a bother to me. It would, however, be nice if people would accept what's in front of them.

"That's what the evidence points to"? Now you sound like you're agreeing with me!

Well, our opinions aren't in opposition

We've already established that we agree on all points relating to the Ork Codex and it's worth as a book to build "hard" lists from. The only logical conclusion we can reach from that is that the Ork Codex isn't a "hard" one. It's not a proper 5th Edition Codex, as much as people will try to claim otherwise, because it relies on a sucky and/ or unprepared opponent to do well. It obviously finds those opponents at tourneys, and as such it DOES do well.

Our only divergence seems to be that you believe this makes them a competetive Codex, whereas I don't. It makes them a successful one, sure, but if the match-ups don't fall for your Waaagh! your Boyz are f***ed. Even with a well-composed list. The same can't be said of Serpent-spam Mechdar armies, Vulkan Bikers, Power-Tau, or any of the other bona fide "hard" army builds.

See, that's the catch, though. What makes an environment? What could be, or what is? Right now, many (most?) players still haven't optimized for 5th edition and the new rules/objectives. Orks, as you mention, thrive on that, which is why they're doing well. Until a large percentage of players make that jump, orks remain a very competitive army. You're judging on potential...no, not even that...an idealized version of what the 40K scene should look like based on your thoughts. Again, I think we both agree on many of the things that could/should come about to make the environment more competitive, but until that happens, it doesn't count.

Which is part of my point. In fact it's the whole of my point >_<

I think you're the one making bold statements in this discussion. The only empirical evidence available shows that Orks win. Often.

Well... it shows they place well in tournaments; but we've already established that, whilst that makes them a successful Codex, it doesn't make them a de facto competetive one. I couldn't build an Ork list from the current Codex that everyone would struggle against, yet gimme the Eldar book and I could do it in five minutes.

That means it's more than just a fluke from a few games with lucky dice rolls. IF most people are playing crappy 4th edition lists/tactics and IF orks are especially poor, THEN decent-good players using "advanced 40K" style lists should be quickly racking up wins and getting attention (because you know if they mentioned winning because of advice from Stelek, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth of Dakka and elsewhere). I haven't heard it, so I'm assuming it's not true.

A lot of people have been moaning for quite some time about how hard Mechdar lists are to beat and that's hardly an army build that requires much grey matter to throw together ("Wave Serpents rock... who knew?!", and Vulkan Bikers are a list that anyone who's been running a Biker army for a while could well have stumbled upon by accident without bothering to read the Best Of Bikers and thinking "I know what makes this better... Vulkan!". The very fact a lot of Tau players are still running Fail Warriors (in Devilfish, no less) and are bemoaning the suckiness of Broadside suits sort of suggests they haven't caught the Best Of... bug yet, and yet they're constantly whinged about. Then there's the Deldar; I don't think I've seen a "... vs Dark Eldar" batrep where the Dark Eldar player hasn't won, though that could possibly be because only 4 people in the entire world play Dark Eldar and they're all reclusive loonies who have spent every day since the death of 2nd Ed mastering the art of the spiky elves. Then, of course, there's the good old CSM Dex; I know I said Lash was a noobhammer, but that's because in 90% of cases it is. Use it right and it'll never do you wrong, and if it does you can always drop it and do something else equally hurty.

So, yeah. I'd contend that Hard lists are indeed doing well, and have been for some time (the bloke who won the UK GT was running Mechdar, I believe). Thing is not everyone is running them, and thus the Orks are still able to benefit from match-ups against poor opposition in order to place well.

'Ard boyz should be an interesting challenge, because I know several Stelek-inspired players have competed, so if there are several of them (who comprise a fraction of players overall, I'm sure) in the top standings, I think your detractors on this thread will be in a tough spot to disagree with you.

Well not really; if there are no Ork players at all in the top ten and the standings are dominated by the hard Codexes they'll be completely screwed, but if there are Orks there in any shape or form they'll still be able to contend that this demonstrates competetiveness, I'll still contend that it doesn't, and they'll call me a dick.

Until it's proven empirically, though, it's still an unproven thesis (which I tend to believe is correct).

You can't prove a theory, only evince and espouse it until it gains credence. I've seen the lists people run at tournaments (the Living Saint is a common thing, as are Psyker Battle Squads for some reason I've yet to unravel), and applying that knowledge to tournament results gives them better context than simply saying "Oh well, five Ork players in the top ten; therefore, Orks are competetive".

As I said before, if the only criteria you have for judging competetiveness is "they win lots" then Orks are competetive. If you judge what's competetive based on how competetive it actually is, then they're not.

Here's some evidence of Orks not sucking.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/217725.page

Stelek lost to an Ork army and he took his 5th edition army.

Personally I dont think 40k is much of a tier system rather than rock/paper/scissors

The only vehicle in dualwing is master of the ravenwing. You never take full bike squads or the speeders unless you need to bulk your list, you take 3 bikes and an attack bike.

Oh, i've played his best of dark angels list. It's utter rubbish. It'll do fine against normal armies, but it'll lose badly to certain lists. Like eldarzilla and tyranidzilla. Or doublewing. It loses badly to doublewing. Kill the speeders first, and watch all of his low ap firepower disappear. You got an army built around avoiding normal shots like bolters? Totally rapes the list.

About tiers: If you do statistical analysis, whatever that is, and come up with numbers, tier 1 are things at the top outside of standard deviation, tier 2 is stuff in the middle within standard deviation, tier 3 is bottom stuff outside standard deviation.

Frank Fugger wrote:

Hulksmash wrote:You have read the Ork codex right? The fact that sluggas are 18" (so 24" if i'm not running) assault 2.

That's some serious BS2 firepower right thurr! And at 24" too. Impressive. No really.

The numbers I ran for you drop significantly by the way if you go down to BS3 on most of your suits. Funny how you point out how much extra stuff you get to use but ignore that Orks will have supporting units as well.

Such as what? OHNOES not a Looted Wagon, they don't suck at all! No, wait... Kan-Wall is the done thing now, isn't it? Because they're difficult to kill AND are BS3! Damn you, Gretchins!

And as for the other "horde" armies you listed they are a joke. No one takes a close combat guard horde or a guardian horde.

ALL horde armies are a joke. Ork ones are just worse, because they substitute steely support units (yeah, the Guard and Eldar get support units too!) for another boat-load of low-grade infantry and then rely on the opponent to not have enough shots to kill enough Orks per turn to deal with the mongling horde. The Codex admits as much itself. And yet again we return to the inescapable truth that the entire play-style of Orks relies more heavily on your opponent NOT having the tools to deal with what you bring than it does upon you being equipped to deal with your opponent.

Which is why when you play your Ork horde against people who know what it can do, it falls flat on it's arse wether they have the shots to kill 180 Orks or not.

Your response truly leave me wondering how much you actually play the game. How do 3-4 Railguns get rid of my synapse in a Nid army? Or kill an Avatar? If your using submunition on the command squads what are you using on the heavier tanks?

The point is, even without tailoring a Tau list, you can handle most (if not quite all) of the rubbish a horde army throws at you each turn, and what you can't handle you ignore. Or throw the Kroot at. Or run away from. Or whatever. It's nice to have options is what I'm saying.

What do you do with your Orks? Mongle forward and WAAAGH! What happens when you have to deal with "heavier tanks"? Mongle forward and WAAAGH! What happens when the heavier tanks aren't there to deal with? Mongle forward and... oh, we used it already.

And as for disregarding tournament results because people might bring unoptomized lists that's a little silly since only in the first 2 games of a 5 game tournament are they likely to play a lower geared list. After that the toughest lists start to play each other.

So we wait for the end of the tournament. Except we've already done that a few times, and the Orks have fared well. Against Dark Angels players, Superfriends Smurfs and Tyranids. And the tri-Monolith Necrons. Can't forget those, because we all know how great Monoliths are. They must be good because people who use them get to finals of 40k tournaments. It's true; I've seen it.

Wow Frank, not only do you not logically address my objections but you then head off on tangents. If you don't have answers for my questions it's ok. You can just ignore me

Quick question, what do you consider a horde? How many models does it take to make a horde? I'm curious as my response to your absurd statement that Tau can deal with most "horde" lists needs that information. Just because you got rocked by tau doesn't mean everyone will be or that it's the greatest list ever. Don't get me wrong I think Tau can make a very strong list but it is one that suffers against horde/target rich armies.

Oh and as for your last statement you either didn't get my point or your deliberately avoiding it. My point was the last 3 games of a 5 game tournament means that those "super-friends" and dark angel armies aren't going to be there. Tyrannids might but that is because they are still a very strong list if built properly. Not the Nidzilla of old but a new hybrid style w/deathspitter spam is just nasty. Yes, you might get one random non optomized list in the top 8 but you won't see them in the top 4. My nid's make short work of most almost all armies (excluding LR heavy Black Templars, the scissor to my rock ).

Yelling Orks are bad because the people playing against them suck is a little silly. But we're all entitled to our opinions. Not to mention maybe your right and they do suck across the Atlantic though even your results (GT's which are far more cutthroat than ours) don't show that but hey everyone they played against were horrible players so it's all good

@ Frank: What about if the Ork army isn't completely optimized? Surely, that would offset some of the statements regarding Orks going against non optimized lists. The Necro has a comp section which will dictate first round pairings. Army Comp basically made me build a bit of a softer list. My list isn't horribly optimized, yet it is still doing well thus far.

Wait, I remember; all my opponents sucked

What I do concur with. Orks not having something in the army that is equivelant to a Melta weapon does make things harder in a mechanized enviornment. But, I don't count Weirdboyz (which isn't going to be reliable).

What I also will agree with from what I've been observing. Folks have a hard time building a balanced list that can handle any army. Sure, there can be an army that can easily deal with 180 orks, but then it goes against an IG armored column and gets pasted. My Orks in particular have difficulty with armor 14 (big surprise). In the last two tourneys (2500 pt Ard Boyz, 1850 pt RTT), I've ran into the following armor 14 tanks:

Ard Boyz
Game 1. 2 Land Raiders
Game 2. 1 Land Raider
Game 3. 4 Land Raiders

RTT
Game 1. 1 Leman Russ
Game 2. 0 (Eldar army, Eldrad/Avatar combo)
Game 3. 2 Leman Russ

I did not destroy every armor 14 tank in any game. However, it wasn't necessary to do this in order to win.

Folks can copy any 'uber' list on the internet and play it. However, the armies don't play themselves. Somewhere along the line, player skill has to be factored.

I think this is where I think Frank's arguement falls down. We don't play this game on paper. There will always be players of various skill levels and armylists of varying opinions of effectiveness.

A good player can do well with any codex. Frank, you read Stelek's blog and seem to pretty much agree with him. You do realize he took a Demonhunter army to a no comp GT last year and went 5-0. He utelized a less than stellar codex and still won. Like him or not, I give him credit in regards to player skill. Something, you seem to not want to give credence to.

It is quite mind-boggling how anyone so naturally assumes that most people will take crappy, non-competetive lists to tournaments - everyone except, for some or the other reason, Nids, Daemons and Orks apparently. Is there some substance used in the production of their codices that can be held accountable for this phenomenon? Do their books require a higher IQ to buy than other codices? Are they all played by Stelek or his clones?

The assumption that all those Eldar, SM, CSM...players are readily taking uncompetative lists into a competetive environment is not very convincing. There hasn't been any "evidence" of this apart from some anecdotes of "lists I've seen". What lists do people *actually* take to the UKGT or any equivalent?

But that is not all. It is then also assumed that people do not play Orks outside of tournaments, so that their peers are not used to them. Exactly how anyone gained this information is unknown. For all I know, all those other players could face them every weekend and still struggle. I know I do, and I play against them for what feels like a century, and I know so many others do who are in fact rather canny players.

Frank Fugger wrote:
Which is why when you play your Ork horde against people who know what it can do, it falls flat on it's arse wether they have the shots to kill 180 Orks or not.

Regarding bold statements, and with all due respect but I think this is but bragging. At the end of the day, such broad statements aren't convincing. How you will gain the needed KP's from such a horde without the tools needed to do it, especially when ignoring the whole mission concept in *your* list, or how you are going to get rid of a mob going to ground in some good real estate when their friends are bearing down on you, some of your units are tied up with outflanking deffkoptas, how you are escaping the (big) shootas for more than one turn AND avoiding Snikrot and all of that with one hand tied to your back will probably remain your secret.

Frank Fugger wrote:
The ironic thing is that the entire Ork Codex seems to have been built around a similarly utalitarian concept to the Best Of... lists (why else would you have so many options for Troops?), yet for some reason they chose to tack on the whole "low-grade lots of dice comic relief" thing onto it.

Hu? When all you do is to take the Best Of troops, you don't need many options. You only need a single good one. The reason that they or any others have several options is simply variety.

If you do not know for what reason they chose to give Orks lots of dakka and attacks then I'm afraid you are talking about some other thing called "Ork" than I do.

Orks *can* meet most of what is thrown at them. Of course they cannot kill everything all the time, everywhere under all conditions but yet they can usually handle it. Even Land Raiders do not change that picture much. I'm afraid we disagree at a very basic level.

As I said before, if the only criteria you have for judging competetiveness is "they win lots" then Orks are competetive. If you judge what's competetive based on how competetive it actually is, then they're not.

Actually...you mean some theoretical actuality or the real one? Because for your theory to hold any water, you rely on the crutch of assuming that everyone else sucks. Or plays "for fun" at the UKGT. Yes, it happens, or so I hear.

Frank Fugger wrote:
The thing with all this is, apart from stuff like fielding hordes and Fleeting once per game, most other armies can do all of these things to a far more potent extent than the Orks. Marines and Eldar can Bike-spam. Marines, Daemonhunters and Guard can tank-spam. Eldar and Deldar can Fleet (and they can do it more than once per game), and most Codexes have some unit or other that can Outflank.

No, they cannot do that to a "far more potent" extent. Eldar bikes may be faster, Guard tanks more resilient and deadly at range and so on but they are all hampered by other factors, such as much lower numbers or extreme fragility in close combat.

Being caught by Snikrot is certainly not equivalent to failing at 5th ed. That's just ridiculous. You're invited to move closer towards the rest of the Orks in order to avoid that one unit, in which case you're limiting your freedom of movement, and neuter your heavy weapons. If you either do that or did not take such units, then that Guard army won't be doing the shooting any better, BS 3-4 or not.

I'll give you that 180 Orks can take up the board, but they're only Orks. T4 and a 6+ save is hardly inspiring, and neither is S3(4) attacks against even AV10; even en masse. Assuming you get near my vehicles to begin with.

Au contraire. All those stats barring their armour save are impressive, especially en masse. Apart from the fact that AV10 will never ever face S3 (tanks do not charge Orks, and sentinels will face a powerklaw), they will kill any vehicle they chance upon barring Raiders, or at least render it ineffective, a majority will have at the very least a 5++ save, and then there are the PK nobs. Having said that, why would they even need to touch your vehicles? Anything short of a Hellhound is not going to dent that horde, so there's little need to take them out, and when the passengers wish to approach any objective, they will more often than not move closer to the Orks.

Again, other armies can do this too, only they tend to do it better. Guard have more shots and a better chance of hitting with them, and it's hard to keep a 30-man Mob in cover; a ten man Tac Squad not so much.

Very few armies tend to do shooting any better than Orks. Even less armies do shooting while moving and being able to beat 99 percent of the opposition to a bloody pulp any better.

Regarding your Tau comment, no, that isn't enough to worry a horde. IME of course.

It might also be worth noting that horde armies are not "hard".

I disagree. A conscript horde is not hard. An Ork horde is a steep proposition though - depending on what you face of course. If everyone tools up for Biker Nobs, Nidzilla, and Termi spam, then it's quite easy to see how a horde could do very well. And that doesn't have anything to do with player skill.

Kevin Nash wrote:
From a practical point of view. Getting cover saves with guard or marine or imperium armies is quite easy using smoke launchers or leap frog tactics. The KFF save isn't really an advantage as it is a necessity to be on par with other armies.

As has been pointed out, the KFF holds several noticeable advantages over smoke launchers. The latter give you a save for a single turn and then are spent. The KFF is always on. Smoke launchers increase your survivability at the cost of offensive power - the KFF doesn't. Using leap frog tactics with non-squadroned vehicles may or may not work, and usually breaks down when terrain is involved and/or when you want to keep some fire lanes open, and then there's the fact that infantry can benefit from the KFF as well.

Frank Fugger wrote:
Even without corroboration, the fact 13 Daemons players managed to make the second round speaks volumes of the quality of the field.

Only if you're convinced that the codex is fail boat, which I'm not. You might be able to fell T5 with re-rollable inv saves with those bolters (how many will you have in your list, in range, in LoS etc. exactly?) and meltabombs; I'm pretty sure that few others could repeat that. In the same vein, power armour is nearly useless against Daemons, so it's a wash.

I realize that you judge the codex to be poor but the results do not indicate anything like that. As long as you assume that some supposedly competetive factions were even involved, then you must also assume that these were all played by weak players and bad / outdated codices by better players in order for your argument to make sense. This assumption however is completely unfounded.

Number two; quality, not quantity. Sure only a single Tyranid player made it into the top ten, but if the other players had been running hard lists even he wouldn't've been there. Neither would the 4 Ork players, nor any CSM Lash merchant.

That doesn't hold any water. The hardest lists on earth won't guarantee a result, or there wouldn't be any need to play at all. A single Nid placing high doesn't tell us anything about the quality of the players involved. If at all, it says something about the quality of that particular Nid player.

Frank Fugger wrote:
Which suggests that in the current climate of competetive 40K the Orks do well. Something I've been saying all along. Awesome.

That's what *everyone* is saying all along and has never been in doubt. We "only" come to different conclusions. Whereas I believe that the quality of the codex lies at the heart of this, you argue that the competition is weak. It is I believe a classic case of circular logic: Everyone is weak, ergo Orks (and Nids, and Daemons) perform well, and because Orks (and Nids, and Daemons) perform well, everyone is weak.

I'll chime in on this and then I'm done.

If the Stelek argument assumes perfect competition through perfect lists and perfect play, then it has no real world validity.

WOW! Finally reached the end. Comment time, yay!

1) I own over 10k of Orks, and have played them most of the 15 years I've played 40k.
2) I absolutely LOVE the fun of playing Orks.
3) Orks can't make a reliable balanced list.
4) Few (if any) of you play the game right. Insult? No, fact. Infantry do not have a 360 LOS, so Tankbustas are a hell of a lot better than most people think. In fairness, I haven't used them since coming to this realisation, but, they are lot better than they were in 4th.
5) HulkSmash: Please reread YOUR codex. Slugga =/= Shoota.
6) DoubleWing is okay. It's very much NOT a competitive list.
7) MechDar, the way I use it, at 1750, only has 3 Prisms, and Yriel's face, to reliably kill hordes. Yet, I laugh at them.
8) The UK GT winner's list was, frankly, crap. Better at the time, than now, but not good even then. He must be SOME player.
9) ElfZilla is also crap, but more so. Vendetta = Dead Wraithlord.
10) A lot of Ork wins, mine included, ARE because I'm a better player than the opponent. Not all, but a lot. Conversely, my worst game with the Orks, this year certainly, possibly ever, was against a highly Mech'd Nilla SM list that was in no way tooled. It was a poor list. Mine was also fairly poor, but, on paper, better than his - except that I couldn't kill armour quickly/reliably. I should have gotten tabled, only luck, and the realisation that it was the most likely outcome in good time, saved me. Orks don't suck...but they're below Chaos, Eldar, DEldar, SM and IG in competitiveness. Even Lash.
11) EDIT: Remembered. Those of you who play that a Battlewagon is only AV14 on the tiny front plate need to reread the vehicle arc rules.

Elessar wrote:WOW! Finally reached the end. Comment time, yay!


5) thehod: Please reread YOUR codex. Slugga =/= Shoota.

can you show me where I said that? I didnt see it.

Response,


1. That doesn't really mean anything. Ive played Orks for about the same length of time, and don't agree with most of what you have posted here. Doesn't make either one of us right of course, but it certainly throws a monkey wrench in your "fact" statements.

2. Same here.

3. I disagree, but it seems we have both had different results.

4. See, here is where your statements go a bit off key. How do you know, beyond a reasonable doubt(you did use the term fact here right?) That we are the ones who don't play the game right? Your results against local competition really don't mean any more than my results against local competition.

5. no comment

6. no comment

7. 3 Prisms can stand up to all the Lootas? Depends on who gets first turn I guess. If the Orks go first, your Prisms won't do much thereafter. If the Prisms go first, they better kill some Lootas.

8. He probably is a very good player.

9. Agreed

10. Since we don't know how "good" you actually are, your comments can only be taken with a grain of salt here. I would venture to say that 99% of all 40k wins are because one player is better than the other, so again, whats your point here?

11. I'll just wait this one out and see what comes up.


Basically this, we are all spouting off our opinions here. Noone can definitivly say Orks are a top tier army, any more than they can say they are crap. Your mileage may vary from mine, and thats all related to local meta. The ONLY thing we could possibly use as some sort of guideline, are national results, where local meta doesn't matter any more. So far, those results seem to be telling us that Orks are just fine.

I think everyone's best bet is to wait and see how the next round of 'Ard Boyz goes. From the lists I have seen posted, I would say (as stated by many, it's just an opinion) that not many of the lists that even won were very competitive. A lot of people just showed up to play a fun 2500 points game, and many of the actual tournaments had less than ten people showing.

I myself am quite curious how the higher bracket rounds will go, as people either swap armies completely or at least tool them up better.

Fearspect wrote:I think everyone's best bet is to wait and see how the next round of 'Ard Boyz goes. From the lists I have seen posted, I would say (as stated by many, it's just an opinion) that not many of the lists that even won were very competitive. A lot of people just showed up to play a fun 2500 points game, and many of the actual tournaments had less than ten people showing.

I myself am quite curious how the higher bracket rounds will go, as people either swap armies completely or at least tool them up better.

I agree with this, especially on the point that many lists going to round 2 were not very optimized. I think it has a lot to due with the poor tournament turn-out this year. Our club here split up so we wouldn't have to play each other and it's a good thing we did because none of the locations had more than 12 players, including us. In fact, the store I went to only had 3, including myself and my friend. We could have brought literally anything and we'd have made it to the semi-finals.

7. 3 Prisms can stand up to all the Lootas? Depends on who gets first turn I guess. If the Orks go first, your Prisms won't do much thereafter. If the Prisms go first, they better kill some Lootas.

Can't you just start in reserve (unlike the orks), if you think lootas are gonne ba problem?

thehod wrote:

Elessar wrote:WOW! Finally reached the end. Comment time, yay!


5) thehod: Please reread YOUR codex. Slugga =/= Shoota.

can you show me where I said that? I didnt see it.

Sorry...it was Hulksmash who said

Hulksmash wrote:You have read the Ork codex right? The fact that sluggas are 18" (so 24" if i'm not running)

- my bad, sorry again. lol


Anyway...

@Primarch: Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I thought. Let me rephrase.
Anyone who plays Infantry as though they had a 360* LOS plays the game wrong. Clear?


@number9dream:

Yes, although in DoW it wouldn't be an issue. Also, I play on tables with corners. Just saying.

Hulksmash wrote:Wow Frank, not only do you not logically address my objections but you then head off on tangents. If you don't have answers for my questions it's ok. You can just ignore me

Yaw yaw.

Quick question, what do you consider a horde?

Any army whose strategy is based around throwing more infantry at you than your guns can handle.

How many models does it take to make a horde?

More than your opponent's guns can handle, which really depends on your points level. Say 1500, because that's the points level 180 Orks are supposed to rock at. With a 1500pt Eldar Horde it's an Avatar and maybe 80+ Concealed Guardians (so 4 full squads and a Lock each), depending how many Wave Serpent-riding DAs and Prisms you want to include, and for the Guard I'd say at least 3 IPs with 3 ISquads each tooled up with with a Commissar, plus a couple of tanks (Demolishers are coo', but a couple of Devil Dogs and a 2-strong squad of Valks run nicely as well) and something in the HQ slots that'll make the whole thing hang together.

I'm curious as my response to your absurd statement that Tau can deal with most "horde" lists needs that information. Just because you got rocked by tau doesn't mean everyone will be or that it's the greatest list ever. Don't get me wrong I think Tau can make a very strong list but it is one that suffers against horde/target rich armies.

Double-think at it's finest. How can they make a strong list if they struggle against horde armies? If they struggle against target-rich armies (which is, like, every 5th Edition list ever) they'd be royally boned, wouldn't they, because EVERYTHING is a target.

If everything in your list ISN'T a target, i.e if I can ignore something you're bringing either because it serves no useful purpose OR because it sucks and can't hurt me, then your list fu is weak.

There are a lot of things in the Ork Codex that can be ignored when they turn up on the table, or at worst taken out quickly with cursory application of firepower. 30-man Mobs are one of those things.

Oh and as for your last statement you either didn't get my point or your deliberately avoiding it.

what is this i dont even

My point was the last 3 games of a 5 game tournament means that those "super-friends" and dark angel armies aren't going to be there.

Why not say that, then? Prove to my satisfaction that no pooball armies are playing in the last 3 games. Apparently the bloke who won the UK GT was playing a pooball Eldar army, so that's that theory out the window. NB: Pooball armies do not necessarily have to be built from a pooball Codex.

Tyrannids might but that is because they are still a very strong list if built properly.

ORLY? They're an annoying army when built properly. Then again so are Orks.

Not the Nidzilla of old but a new hybrid style w/deathspitter spam is just nasty.

Can people stop saying "spam" when they don't mean spam? "Spam" Deathspitters? How? How do you do this? Warriors? That's not good, is it? Or maybe you run lots of Monstrous Creatures, which makes your list a Nidzilla list; which makes it suck.

Yes, you might get one random non optomized list in the top 8 but you won't see them in the top 4.

You sure about that?

My nid's make short work of most almost all armies (excluding LR heavy Black Templars, the scissor to my rock ).

Again, how?

Yelling Orks are bad because the people playing against them suck is a little silly. But we're all entitled to our opinions. Not to mention maybe your right and they do suck across the Atlantic though even your results (GT's which are far more cutthroat than ours) don't show that but hey everyone they played against were horrible players so it's all good

Take out the bit about the Atlantic and, wayhey, you're on the trolley!

Sarigar wrote:@ Frank: What about if the Ork army isn't completely optimized?

You can't optimise an Ork list unless you possess powers of divination. How do you optimise something that relies on your opponent being a gimp?

What I also will agree with from what I've been observing. Folks have a hard time building a balanced list that can handle any army. Sure, there can be an army that can easily deal with 180 orks, but then it goes against an IG armored column and gets pasted.

In which case it isn't optimised; or if it is, the player is Doin' It Wrong.

My Orks in particular have difficulty with armor 14 (big surprise). In the last two tourneys (2500 pt Ard Boyz, 1850 pt RTT), I've ran into the following armor 14 tanks:

Ard Boyz
Game 1. 2 Land Raiders
Game 2. 1 Land Raider
Game 3. 4 Land Raiders

RTT
Game 1. 1 Leman Russ
Game 2. 0 (Eldar army, Eldrad/Avatar combo)
Game 3. 2 Leman Russ

I did not destroy every armor 14 tank in any game. However, it wasn't necessary to do this in order to win.

Of course not; 2500pt lists with 2 Raiders and 1 Raider hardly force you to deal with the AV14. Oh sure it's on the table, doing what a Raider does, but at 2500pts one or two of them isn't something you can't work around, regardless of what army you're playing. In the case of 4-Raiders it's slightly more difficult to understand quite how he managed to get through a game without forcing you to deal with them, since, regardless of what your Ork lists consists of, the chances are each Raider and it's cargo would be fit for at least a quarter of your entire army. Either he took Redeemers, or he was Doin' It Wrong. Which, to be honest, are two sides of the same coin.

Inb4 "AMAGAD REDEEMERS RAWK VERSIS ORKS U NOOB" Redeemers rock versus nothing. Lern2AV14.

Folks can copy any 'uber' list on the internet and play it. However, the armies don't play themselves. Somewhere along the line, player skill has to be factored.

I think this is where I think Frank's arguement falls down. We don't play this game on paper. There will always be players of various skill levels and armylists of varying opinions of effectiveness.

At least that's where it WOULD fall down, if I was trying to claim that taking NetDecks to tourneys was a guaranteed success. It's not. You can optimise your list all day long; if you don't know how to play it you're going to get stiffed. Worse still if you take a NetDeck and expect to win with it without Getting It.

A good player can do well with any codex. Frank, you read Stelek's blog and seem to pretty much agree with him. You do realize he took a Demonhunter army to a no comp GT last year and went 5-0. He utelized a less than stellar codex and still won. Like him or not, I give him credit in regards to player skill. Something, you seem to not want to give credence to.

And he did so with a 7 Raider list, if I recall. That's not balanced in any shape or form, and -- guess what? -- relies totally on opponents who aren't equipped to handle it to be successful. Stelek himself admits that he won not because the Daemonhunters are a competetive Codex, but because his opposition is poor; having played Daemonhunters for a number of years I feel qualified to state that, unless his opposition truly did suck in one way or another, he wouldn't have gone 5-0. The change in game mechanics made a lot of stuff that was borderline useful before (shooty =][= Retinues, GK Dreads) a load of balls, and stuff that was useless (Daemonhosts, Purgation Squads) even moreso. The only reason the Codex isn't a complete dead dog is because their basic Troops are reasonably nasty (Grey Knights are, out and out, one of the best infantry-killing units in the game (not point-for-point, they're too expensive) and ISTs allow you to add cheap special weapons to any Imperial list), a lot of their wargear is coo' even in 5th Edition (some of it, like Psychic Hoods and Smoke Launchers, because of Codex creep, and some of it like Psycannons and Incinerators because it's just awesome), people like Mystics, and of course they can Raider-spam.

Yeah, anyway. DH rant over. Point is he took an army list that does exactly what the Orks do (relying on opponent gimpage), except to a greater extent (7x 14-14-14 Ohnoes!), to a tournament and won with it. What exactly does that tell us?

Lord Solar Plexus wrote:It is quite mind-boggling how anyone so naturally assumes that most people will take crappy, non-competetive lists to tournaments

People taking piss-ball lists to events is a safer bet than the tide coming in.

- everyone except, for some or the other reason, Nids, Daemons and Orks apparently.

No no, you've gotten the wrong end of the stick. You can't build a hard, balanced list from any of these Codexes; the reason they go to tournaments and place well is because the opposition they're up against sucks.

Is there some substance used in the production of their codices that can be held accountable for this phenomenon? Do their books require a higher IQ to buy than other codices? Are they all played by Stelek or his clones?

Reading the thread will answer all of these questions for you.

The assumption that all those Eldar, SM, CSM...players are readily taking uncompetative lists into a competetive environment is not very convincing. There hasn't been any "evidence" of this apart from some anecdotes of "lists I've seen". What lists do people *actually* take to the UKGT or any equivalent?

Wych Cults, footslogging Sisters, 500pts of Lysander and TH/SS Terminators (Awesome? Yes. In a 1500pt army? No), Superfriends, Mechdar with the infantry deployed on the table, MonoGod Daemons lists, Lictors... the list goes on.

But that is not all. It is then also assumed that people do not play Orks outside of tournaments, so that their peers are not used to them.

No, no it's not...

Seriously, re-read the thread. I can't be arsed to digest and regurgitate it every time someone new comes in, misreads the bugger, and then gets on their high horse about stuff that nobody is even saying.

My friend can't really afford GW prices, so he spent months and months carving a "counts-as" Ork army using stone from a local quarry.


I can honestly say it's the hardest army I've ever faced.


Boom Boom. I'm here all night.

Ork players are still waiting for all these alleged "better players with better armies" to come knock them off of their perch.

So far...noones stepped up to the challenge, Orks are still winning tourney's.



I think I just heard a toilet flush.

And your point is...

A good player can do well with any codex. Frank, you read Stelek's blog and seem to pretty much agree with him. You do realize he took a Demonhunter army to a no comp GT last year and went 5-0. He utelized a less than stellar codex and still won. Like him or not, I give him credit in regards to player skill. Something, you seem to not want to give credence to.


And he did so with a 7 Raider list, if I recall. That's not balanced in any shape or form, and -- guess what? -- relies totally on opponents who aren't equipped to handle it to be successful. Stelek himself admits that he won not because the Daemonhunters are a competetive Codex, but because his opposition is poor; having played Daemonhunters for a number of years I feel qualified to state that, unless his opposition truly did suck in one way or another, he wouldn't have gone 5-0. The change in game mechanics made a lot of stuff that was borderline useful before (shooty =][= Retinues, GK Dreads) a load of balls, and stuff that was useless (Daemonhosts, Purgation Squads) even moreso. The only reason the Codex isn't a complete dead dog is because their basic Troops are reasonably nasty (Grey Knights are, out and out, one of the best infantry-killing units in the game (not point-for-point, they're too expensive) and ISTs allow you to add cheap special weapons to any Imperial list), a lot of their wargear is coo' even in 5th Edition (some of it, like Psychic Hoods and Smoke Launchers, because of Codex creep, and some of it like Psycannons and Incinerators because it's just awesome), people like Mystics, and of course they can Raider-spam.

Yeah, anyway. DH rant over. Point is he took an army list that does exactly what the Orks do (relying on opponent gimpage), except to a greater extent (7x 14-14-14 Ohnoes!), to a tournament and won with it. What exactly does that tell us?

EDIT: found the first link for the results of his LVGT last year. Went 5-0 with Demonhunter. It also links to his armylist. Not 7 Land Raiders.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/217705.page

Wrong tourney, Frank. The 7 Land Raider list was the Ard Boyz. I was referring to a GT that did not utelize 7 Land Raiders. It's posted in the battle reports somewhere. I'll see if I can dig it up.

He actually tied one game against Eldar. So he didnt win all his games.

My daemonhunter list is actually very effective. I run 5 land raiders (2 crusaders, 3 standard). I have grey knight squads inside, except for 2 that have inquisitors. I win a good majority of my games with this list, as it is very good against most all-comers, typically there is just not enough anti-tank. I thought orks were a pushover army.

Then I played the first round of 'Ard Boyz against a 3 Battlewagon list with 2 full squads of lootas. Did the battle wagons survive? No. Did the lootaz survive? One squad did. Who won? Orks. If I killed some of his guys, it didn't matter. He controlled the objectives, and he protected the objectives he controlled. I don't know if orks can ever overpower an opponent. But they can win games in 5th edition, they can take objectives arguably better than any other troop in the game (30 fearless orks is hard to take off of an objective). They can take their kill points too (30 orks vs 10 marines is an attrition battle, and if orks get the charge...). How did he win? On every charge he got his orks all the way around my vehicles. When his powerclaw killed it, my grey knights couldn't get out, and were killed. I understand that a lot of units can do this, but with 30 models it is a lot easier.

I don't care for orks, I will never play a game with them. But do they suck? are they a lower tier army? No.

Grey Knight Luke wrote:How did he win? On every charge he got his orks all the way around my vehicles. When his powerclaw killed it, my grey knights couldn't get out, and were killed. I understand that a lot of units can do this, but with 30 models it is a lot easier.

I understand what you're saying, but how in the world did it ever happen like what you describe? If you were tank shocking through his mobs, Death or Glory is Death 9 times out of 10 and he needs 6's to hit you while your Hurricane Bolters pop off 6 every turn.

I just can't help but think you weren't using your LR to max effectiveness.

@Frank

Just two quick things and I'm bowing out of this thread.

1) A strong army will still have problems with their rock army. You give me any build of any army and i'll show you a solid take all comers list that is the paper to your rock. You'll say well if everyone built competatively then those take all comers wouldn't be there which is silly but seems to be what you really believe. Maybe competative 40k only has 4 viable army builds according to you.

Again you didn't understand what I was saying about the Tau or your choosing to be deliberately obtuse. Which is your choice and cool but your still yelling orks suck with no proof to back it up.

2) In Regard to the Tyrannid comments.

12 Warriors in 2 squads (at 2k) w/12 deathspitters and +1st is a lot of boom. Add in 4 Carnies (3 heavy carnies) and 2 Hive Tyrants and you've got a very very respectable firepower list that can brawl up close. You use gaunts and create a leveled cover system which keeps your shooters and heavy hitters safe as they close. I said spam and I meant spam. 12 St6 Blast Templates is more than any other army out there can put out so it is spamming an excellent unit.

At 2k, SM can easily have 16 S7 Blasts.

Guard can have far more.

You still haven't addressed the small matter of your ignorance, calling a Slugga a Shoota.

But I forgive you - "you didn't understand what I was saying about the Shoota or your choosing to be deliberately obtuse. Which is your choice and cool but your still yelling orks rule with no proof to back it up. "
lolz. Edited quotes ftw.

Elessar wrote:
1) I own over 10k of Orks, and have played them most of the 15 years I've played 40k.

Neither the amount of models you own nor your past experience with older rule sets have any bearing on the question of whether Orks are competetive in 5th.

Frank Fugger wrote:
People taking piss-ball lists to events is a safer bet than the tide coming in.

Yes, let me correct myself: I’m sure some do, and I’m sure others don’t. Even skimming the abundance of BatReps here and elsewhere is ample evidence of that. Some go go great lengths to ensure they stand a chance while others simply take what they have painted or like best at that point.

Even then there is simply no good reason why only Orks (or shall we say: supposedly weak codices) would show up with a competetive list - especially when that isn't even possible from those books, which is what you assert so forcefully. There is no reason why they should show up with a better list than others. Some people have suggested that because the die-hard Ork players had to put up with an outdated codex for so long, they have gotten better at playing than people with more “forgiving” (newer, more competitive) armies but I don't think that is right. Despite being the target of much ridicule, SM players (or Eldar or IG players) will and can be just as experienced.

No no, you've gotten the wrong end of the stick. You can't build a hard, balanced list from any of these Codexes; the reason they go to tournaments and place well is because the opposition they're up against sucks.

So you keep asserting, yes. To be honest - whoah, extremely bad pun avoided at the last second! -, I believe that this will remain a minority opinion for the foreseeable future though. Not that I think that you care but hey.

Frank Fugger wrote:

But that is not all. It is then also assumed that people do not play Orks outside of tournaments, so that their peers are not used to them.

No, no it's not...

It isn’t? This sentence evoked lots of mental question marks: "If people stopped gearing their armies towards playing people they play every week and instead built them towards taking on 5th Edition armies, the Orks would most likely stop doing well."

1) People gear their armies towards what they usually play against.
2) People play against Orks.

Ergo, they at least take Orks into account. Why in all the heavens do they then not fare any better? Why would they be stupid if those lists they actually bring are geared to tackle Orks, too, since if they play them and gear towards what they play against this is the conclusion? I’m afraid simply calling everyone stupid doesn’t cut it.

People take stupid, uncompetetive lists. People gear their armies towards what they are used to play against. If they indeed play against Orks much, then gearing against them (as well) is neither stupid nor uncompetetive but quite reasonable - regardless of what we think about the quality of the codex, there's no doubt that there are many Ork players at tournaments.

If however the lists are as stupid as you think, then they are not optimized to deal with Orks, and that can only mean that people do not play against them. In every other case, they would take that into account. Whatever way I look at it, your reasoning breaks down at one point or the other.

Regardless of these considerations, there is another aspect that I do not understand: If the Ork codex is not a proper 5th edition codex, then how does optimizing other lists to tackle 5th edition codices help against one that isn't?

Seriously, re-read the thread. I can't be arsed to digest and regurgitate it every time someone new comes in, misreads the bugger, and then gets on their high horse about stuff that nobody is even saying.

Keep your internet platitudes, they bore me.

*Yawn*

You're wrong. My experience shows that, irrespective of the ruleset, I have a lot of experience playing the race. To clarify further, though, just for you - I have played, with my Orks, over 60 games, this year alone. I have literally used every unit in the Dex, and every character, except, strangely, Grotsnik. Experience gives me the ability to compare this Ork Dex to previous ones.

I preferred the last one - when Burnas could penetrate armour, and Orks had more than a snowballs chance in hell against TH/SS Termies.

The choppa rule does not affect invulnerable saves so thunder termies could roll their 3+. There is no way the old codex is in any shape or form better than the new one.

Burnas. Zzap Gunz. Speed Freeks Codex in general. Tankbustas. Choppa rule.

I think you'll find a 3+ is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than a 2+.

Elessar wrote:*Yawn*

You're wrong. My experience shows that, irrespective of the ruleset, I have a lot of experience playing the race. To clarify further, though, just for you - I have played, with my Orks, over 60 games, this year alone. I have literally used every unit in the Dex, and every character, except, strangely, Grotsnik. Experience gives me the ability to compare this Ork Dex to previous ones.

The reason your experience means nothing in this debate is because there is no way to compare your 60 games to the current tournement atmosphere.

Your experience means nothing if your 60 games are played with the skill of a partially slowed 7 year old. Especially if you can safely assume that Tournement players are reletively competant adults playing armies that they're familiar with. (we can)

-btw, I'm not saying that you ARE this inept. Just trying to illustrate why citing experience is meaningless in a debate such as this.

I've seen Tournament players that, literally, are playing their first game of 40k. A MAJORITY of tourny players may be relatively experienced with their army. Doesn't mean a thing.

The majority of players in the UK ToS played the Heats competitively, then broke out the fluff armies for the Finals, because all they cared about was qualification. Doesn't mean a thing if Orks beat them.

Of course, you're right, if I had little/no ability those results would be irrelevant. Did I neglect to mention that most of those games were in a Tournament? Ooops.

A League Tournament, which I won with more points than third and fourth place guys put together, and then half that total added again. With Orks.

Some of those players were scrubs. Mostly, it was because I played few tooled lists. A mediocre list struggles against 20 Nob Bikes, which was fine to run, because it was 6 months ago, and they were still fairly good.

One game, I tabled an IG player with 300 points more than me, in 5 turns. He went first.

So, even if my opponents weren't, it's pretty safe to say, I WAS playing at a Tourny level.

Fine, then we play THIS game all thread long....

You post what you just did...

I can respond with the total opposite.

I'm a tournement player myself since '96 and been playing 40k since '88. I've also got HEAPS of experience playing as and against Orks in AND out of Tournement during that time. Myself as a gamer rarely loose and typically get within top 10 or so whenever I go to a major tournement, GT or Indie.

It's MY experience that Orks can make a competetive/balanced list.

...I just trumped your arguement.


Now if we can have some actual DEBATE on the subject...since personal experience is not valid in this discussion...

It's too bad that everyone kind of figured out how to deal with Nob Bikers, and there are really no tools left to deal with a mechanized force anymore...

Or are people going to start debating the merits of sitting a warboss with a power klaw in front of a landraider?

Hardly. All you did was provide evidence that wasn't relevant to 5th.

As I originally said, the previous experience was for purposes of illustrating that I know how to play, and how to play Orks. It was also to compare this Dex to the previous ones, which, in my view, were better from a purely balance perspective.

Orks could be balanced before, sure. Now? No.

Maybe if you bothered to answer any of the other 10 points I raised I could be bothered with you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

sourclams wrote:

Grey Knight Luke wrote:How did he win? On every charge he got his orks all the way around my vehicles. When his powerclaw killed it, my grey knights couldn't get out, and were killed. I understand that a lot of units can do this, but with 30 models it is a lot easier.

I understand what you're saying, but how in the world did it ever happen like what you describe? If you were tank shocking through his mobs, Death or Glory is Death 9 times out of 10 and he needs 6's to hit you while your Hurricane Bolters pop off 6 every turn.

I just can't help but think you weren't using your LR to max effectiveness.

In addition, a LR is over 4" deep. Therefore, it is impossible to charge the rear with a squad that didn't already either start surrounding it, in which case MOVE, or in an illegal position, in which case, call a Judge.

Here is what I know. I have won more games with orks than I've lost. I did this as well with the 3rd edition codex. I've won more local games than I've lost. I've won more "away" games than I've lost. I have lost my fair share of games don't get me wrong. I've played numerous opponents of assorted skill level. I've beaten the best players locally a few times each. Probably lost more than I won against them. I've travelled to tournaments and gotten the "wow! you beat player X! He rarely loses" I've also gotten "Don't feel bad about losing to player Y, he always wins". The common denominator in all of this is that I had fun. Win or lose.

Orks are a fun army. Who cares if they are top tier, or if Pedro Kantor lists will krump them. The pro ork crowd will not convince the anti ork crowd of their position and vice versa. You guys might as well beat your heads against the wall, you are likely to get more out of it than this debate.

I feel orks are top tier because they are my favorite army. I'm pro Ork all the way. I have no scientific evidence that they are top tier, I just know. No one can change my opinion of that. just like no one will convince Frank otherwise. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Just play your army because you like it. Don't feel compelled to bludgeon someone else with "my opinion is right and yours is wrong!" Just have fun. It is afterall a game of toy soldiers!

Well, I've wasted enough time on the clock. Back to work!

You're missing the point Elessor.

Personal experience has no place in this debate because your personel experience is reletive to you and you only.

At least the tournement results give us a statistic to go by. Its still essentially "personal experience" but at least its across a much broader player base than what you yourself can give us.

If 20 critics give a restraunt a great rating and say their sushi is great...thats a much safer bet than listening to your opinion of how much "their sushi sucks", regardless of how much sushi you say you've eaten in the past.

Basically, we dont care how much of a 40k "God" you are. Any points you make based on your personal experience are meaningless in this debate.

You're missing the point. Or rather, points. The ones I raised earlier you continue to ignore. You could at least spell my name correctly, also. How hard is it to read?

Elessar wrote:You're missing the point. Or rather, points. The ones I raised earlier you continue to ignore. You could at least spell my name correctly, also. How hard is it to read?

First off Ellezzor, I know you're a big fan of Stelek, but you should take a hint from his sordid escapades and realise that outright rudeness accomplishes 2 things

1. banning from sites
2. making you look like an a$$ that noone really cares to listen to despite any valid points that you make

Second my only 'point' is that your personal experience here means nothing. I'm not argueing your stance in this thread at this time.

Third, reading must be pretty hard for some people...since you've yet to "get" what I'm talking about.

I 'get' your drivel Dedshun. I'm just not interested in people who have no points to make.

I'm not a big fan by any means, let's disavow everyone of that notion now. I don't know him, but I like what he's trying to do - make people better at the game. Maybe you'd be happier only playing scrubs all day, getting hollow wins that require little or no effort, but us grown ups prefer a challenge.

I've only been rude to people in response to them being an ass. I could really care less about being banned from Dakka - I don't WANT banned, but I really don't care, if the powers that be can't take dissenting opinion, fine. I think people should be helped to become better at the game. Just because your friends don't like him doesn't mean you have to feel the same, and, from where I'm standing, he's made as positive an impact on the game as any other individual.

It's refreshing to read his comments - even if he's wrong, he's never two-faced about it. At least, in my experience. Then again...supposedly that means nothing.

Elessar wrote:I'm just not interested in people who have no points to make.

So, my point that states that your personal experience has no bearing on this discussion is no point at all.

Gotcha.

Must be nice to be able to stick your head in the sand whenever you want to and keep on "debating".


EDIT: btw, misspelling my name doesnt bother me, just so everyone is clear that you're losing THAT race. Happy to offend you.

All experience is personal to someone, including tournament outcomes.

Yes, but as I stated before, at least tournement outcomes include a broader base of players to draw a conclusion from...I.E. Statistics.

In a debate....Statistics > "I did this"

Modquisition on:

The cranky old man of Dakka has been awakened.
Temporary block whilst I see if people need to get off my lawn.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
OK, warnings have been given out. Be advised that at this point forward, posts should follow Rule #1, or risk strong disciplinary action, including suspension and banning if appropriate.

If you have made an errant post that appears after this warning, and come across the warning after, you are strongly advised to edit that post quickly. All posts in violation after this warning will be treated most harshly.

I will be occasionally monitoring this thread.

So how about them Orks?

Probably better I just shut up.

Yeah those stinkin' Orks...

thehod wrote:So how about them Orks?

That they could win a Super Bowl, uhm...Grand Tournament, with Barry Switzer as their Coach, uhm...Player, it tells you just how dominant that team was in the mid 90's. And as a diehart Steelers fan, it pains me to say that.

Let the dust settle on this tourney season. New IG puts a crimp in Orks. Using Deffrollas against vehicles is a huge boon to Orks. Orks have been knocked down the metagame pecking order a little. But, Orks still have some big advantages - notably being a non-MEQ army in a game where 2/3 of the armies at a tourney are an MEQ. Orks might need matchups a little more than some other armies, but they can still win a lot of tourney games. I can't believe that's just because all the other players are idiots.

Elessar wrote:Burnas. Zzap Gunz. Speed Freeks Codex in general. Tankbustas. Choppa rule.

I think you'll find a 3+ is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than a 2+.

I don't agree with most of what this guy says, but he is right on the money here. That KoS codex was crazy good. Imagine if right now, you could have 2 Warbosses, and 2 KFFs? Imagine if the 2 Burnaz in Snkkrots mob rolled 2d6 for Armor Penetration? Imagine if Grot Riggers were rolled at the start of your turn, so you could repair your vehicle, then move in the same turn. Looted Land Raiders anyone?


Other stuff coming, but that needed to be clarified.




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Danny Internets wrote:All experience is personal to someone, including tournament outcomes.

I think what he means, is that you can't give your opinion as a fact, based solely on your personal experience. That is all relative. You can base your opinion off of that all you want, but don't come here spouting it as fact.


Clay

Primarch wrote:

Danny Internets wrote:All experience is personal to someone, including tournament outcomes.

I think what he means, is that you can't give your opinion as a fact, based solely on your personal experience. That is all relative. You can base your opinion off of that all you want, but don't come here spouting it as fact.


Clay

Fair point, but I'm unclear on where I did that.

Frazzled wrote:posts should follow Rule #1

No doubt.
No matter how bad-ass we might all think our army is, were all still playing with toy soldiers.
There is an inherent limit on the serious factor associated with it.

Grey Knight Luke wrote:My daemonhunter list is actually very effective. I run 5 land raiders (2 crusaders, 3 standard). I have grey knight squads inside, except for 2 that have inquisitors. I win a good majority of my games with this list, as it is very good against most all-comers, typically there is just not enough anti-tank.

Emphasis mine. Your army doesn't rock; your opponents fail at 5th Edition.

I thought orks were a pushover army.

And well you might, since they have less anti-tank than most!

Then I played the first round of 'Ard Boyz against a 3 Battlewagon list with 2 full squads of lootas.

What else did he have, because that right thurr is barely 800pts assuming he didn't have ridiculous wargear on the Wagons.

Did the battle wagons survive? No. Did the lootaz survive? One squad did. Who won? Orks.

How?...

If I killed some of his guys, it didn't matter. He controlled the objectives, and he protected the objectives he controlled. I don't know if orks can ever overpower an opponent. But they can win games in 5th edition, they can take objectives arguably better than any other troop in the game (30 fearless orks is hard to take off of an objective).

Nowhere near as hard as 10 Grey Knights in a Land Raider.

Seriously, how did you not win?

They can take their kill points too (30 orks vs 10 marines is an attrition battle, and if orks get the charge...).

You had fething Grey Knights! Grey Knights! In Land Raiders! How do you not kill 30 Orks every single turn with each full squad of Grey Knights? Moreover, how will the Orks EVER get the charge if you're in a Land Raider?

How did he win? On every charge he got his orks all the way around my vehicles. When his powerclaw killed it, my grey knights couldn't get out, and were killed. I understand that a lot of units can do this, but with 30 models it is a lot easier.

You sir have done something terribly wrong.

I don't care for orks, I will never play a game with them. But do they suck? are they a lower tier army? No.

You lose to them and that makes them awesome? That's not how it works, m'friend. Otherwise Grey Knights would be the top tier of everything, and would in fact be so competetive that they'd have to invent a whole 'nuther tournament just to contain the competetiveness. Seriously, these boys can do everything BUT kill tanks; and even then, give them a charge at something AV10 and they'll stand a reasonable chance of whacking it. I win with them a lot, and I lose to them a lot as well.

Unfortunately personal experience counts for nothing in terms of determining how competetive an army is. Which is a shame, because I quite like the idea of winning the Throne of Skulls with my Stern/ BroCap Psycannon-spam list.

Hulksmash wrote:1) A strong army will still have problems with their rock army. You give me any build of any army and i'll show you a solid take all comers list that is the paper to your rock. You'll say well if everyone built competatively then those take all comers wouldn't be there which is silly but seems to be what you really believe. Maybe competative 40k only has 4 viable army builds according to you.

According to the ruleset. Blame me for whatever, don't pin 5th Edition on me.

Again you didn't understand what I was saying about the Tau or your choosing to be deliberately obtuse.

MAKE me understand, then. All you seem to be saying is "Tau suck against hordes", which is patently not true.

Which is your choice and cool but your still yelling orks suck with no proof to back it up.

That's not what I'm doing at all, and I've laid my arguments bare over the course of two threads now. If you're still not getting it try going back and perusing them again.

2) In Regard to the Tyrannid comments.

12 Warriors in 2 squads (at 2k) w/12 deathspitters and +1st is a lot of boom. Add in 4 Carnies (3 heavy carnies) and 2 Hive Tyrants and you've got a very very respectable firepower list that can brawl up close. You use gaunts and create a leveled cover system which keeps your shooters and heavy hitters safe as they close. I said spam and I meant spam. 12 St6 Blast Templates is more than any other army out there can put out so it is spamming an excellent unit.

12 BS2 templates. For 300+ points. It's not the worst way to run Tyranids I suppose, I'll give you that, not at 2000pts anyway. I'd wonder how it'd cope with AV12, but you've probably got some sort of anecdote about pweening a Mechvet list to prove how awesome it is.

Lord Solar Plexus wrote:Yes, let me correct myself: I’m sure some do, and I’m sure others don’t. Even skimming the abundance of BatReps here and elsewhere is ample evidence of that. Some go go great lengths to ensure they stand a chance while others simply take what they have painted or like best at that point.

There's also a third "some" who run balanced 5th Edition lists rather than taking "cheese" lists (the 1st "some") or whatever they have to hand (the 2nd "some"). The third "some" are the minority.

Even then there is simply no good reason why only Orks (or shall we say: supposedly weak codices) would show up with a competetive list - especially when that isn't even possible from those books, which is what you assert so forcefully.

It isn't. Ork players don't make competetive lists - at best they look through their Codex and think "opponents won't be able to deal with this -- I'll put that in my list!". Look at the AV14 coping strategies for evidence. Most players use the balance of their list to cope with AV14-heavy armies; Ork players throw Battlewagons and Power Klaws galore at them in an attempt to out-spam the Raider-spam.

There is no reason why they should show up with a better list than others. Some people have suggested that because the die-hard Ork players had to put up with an outdated codex for so long, they have gotten better at playing than people with more “forgiving” (newer, more competitive) armies but I don't think that is right. Despite being the target of much ridicule, SM players (or Eldar or IG players) will and can be just as experienced.

None of those three armies are anywhere near as forgiving as the Orks. Inb4 "BUT IG CAN GET FIVE MILLIONSANDDREAD TANKS!" Build a 1500pt IG list and see what you get for your points.

So you keep asserting, yes. To be honest - whoah, extremely bad pun avoided at the last second! -,

Just as well, really. You're not Frank enough to pull it off ;D

I believe that this will remain a minority opinion for the foreseeable future though. Not that I think that you care but hey.

It will, and indeed I hope it does too; that way when I come to a club and kick the reigning super-champ Ork player around the table with my grotty Tau list, people will think I'm awesome.

It isn’t? This sentence evoked lots of mental question marks: "If people stopped gearing their armies towards playing people they play every week and instead built them towards taking on 5th Edition armies, the Orks would most likely stop doing well."

As in, the opponents that they play every week. Codexes don't enter into it. If you play an Ork player every week you will most likely gear your list towards beating him. That's fine; just don't call that list an "all-comers" list, take it to a tournament and expect it to be able to beat every Ork list going.

Ergo, they at least take Orks into account. Why in all the heavens do they then not fare any better? Why would they be stupid if those lists they actually bring are geared to tackle Orks, too, since if they play them and gear towards what they play against this is the conclusion? I’m afraid simply calling everyone stupid doesn’t cut it.

If I'm Doin' It Wrong, and I usually play an Ork player who takes no vehicles and a million SHoota Boyz, my list will be geared towards killing lots of Boyz. If I then Do It Moar Wrong, go to a tournament and face a Battlewagon spammer, my list is geared towards killing lots of Boyz. Do you see how that's bad?

People take stupid, uncompetetive lists. People gear their armies towards what they are used to play against. If they indeed play against Orks much, then gearing against them (as well) is neither stupid nor uncompetetive but quite reasonable - regardless of what we think about the quality of the codex, there's no doubt that there are many Ork players at tournaments.

All of whom play a list that is a variation on a theme - the theme being "boy howdy I sure hope my opponent hasn't got any [x/y/z] to kill/ avoid my [a/b/c]!" A list that contains lots of [x] to counter lots of [a] will invariably fail it against a list that contains much [b] instead. Simple algebra. If, however, your list contains no specific counters to [a/b/c], but is built and played around the idea of tackling everything, you'll do better.

If however the lists are as stupid as you think, then they are not optimized to deal with Orks, and that can only mean that people do not play against them. In every other case, they would take that into account. Whatever way I look at it, your reasoning breaks down at one point or the other.

Because you're looking at it wrong.

Regardless of these considerations, there is another aspect that I do not understand: If the Ork codex is not a proper 5th edition codex, then how does optimizing other lists to tackle 5th edition codices help against one that isn't?

First, you tell me how you optimise an Ork list. How do you do that? Lootas? Rokkits? Tankbustas (alololol)? What?

Way I see it you can't optimise an Ork list. It relies on the opponent being unable to deal with what it brings to the table, and as such the closest to "optimisation" you could get would be to take a little bit of everything. Which would suck, because then you wouldn't have enough of anything to overwhelm an unprepared oppo. You could also just look at the tourney scene, look through other Codexes, see what Ork units people whinge about most, and cram your list with those. That way you'll rock 90% of people you play, until you hit someone who knows what they're doing at which point you either play the game of your life or get Massacred.

Keep your internet platitudes, they bore me.

Platitudes?... Well lah-di-dah, Mr. "I have failed to comprehend anything that's been going on thus far but I demand in a Teutonically arrogant way that you answer my non-points anyway!"

Elessar wrote:

Primarch wrote:

Danny Internets wrote:All experience is personal to someone, including tournament outcomes.

I think what he means, is that you can't give your opinion as a fact, based solely on your personal experience. That is all relative. You can base your opinion off of that all you want, but don't come here spouting it as fact.


Clay

Fair point, but I'm unclear on where I did that.

4) Few (if any) of you play the game right. Insult? No, fact.




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It isn't. Ork players don't make competetive lists - at best they look through their Codex and think "opponents won't be able to deal with this -- I'll put that in my list!". Look at the AV14 coping strategies for evidence. Most players use the balance of their list to cope with AV14-heavy armies; Ork players throw Battlewagons and Power Klaws galore at them in an attempt to out-spam the Raider-spam.

Unfair generalization here Frank. You don't seem to lump all Marine players into one category, why would you lump all Ork players into one?


Secondly, if you played an army with no melta weapons, wouldn't you figure out what in the codex could kill a Land Raider and include at least some of that? I really think you are being very close minded about this. You spout off a lot of things as if they were fact, then ignore anyone else who counters with a different opinion. Everyone's opinion in this thread is worth exactly the same thing, nothing. That's all you have is opinion, and my opinion is different.

The people in the Stelek camp have a perfect opportunity to show us all up in the Ard Boyz. They should bring a "best of" list from his site, or put together a competitive all-comers 5th edition codex list, and wipe us all out right? Let's see how well that works out for them in round 2.


The thing is, I live/play in a very competitive environment in the Atlanta area. There are a lot of strong players here, and they don't bring "weak" lists. These guys rummage through the codexes with the best of them, and find every competitive edge they can get their hands on, and guess what? They bring Chaos with Lash, Daemons, Orks and the like to events. That runs exactly opposite of what you and Stelek have to say.

Now, are these guys such bad players that they have it that far wrong? No way, no how, at least until you prove otherwise. I would put 5+ guys one on one from the Atlanta metro area up against anyone with total confidence that they wouldn't get rolled, and in fact, would win more than they lost. Naturally, this is all my opinion, and means as much to you, as your opinion means to me. But you can see how different conclusions can be drawn here.


Either way, i am looking forward to seeing how Orks do in round 2.


Clay