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Wow, this discussion is still going on with the main point being people didn't like the scenario becuase fast units were worth 3 points? Did anyone else play the last few years? What about when HQ's were worth 5, or 3 each if you were a wolf and had to take 4? What about when troops were worth 3 per unit? I know I swore a blue streak when I found my guard could give up in excess of 68 points as I ran alot of heavy and special weapon squads. But that is the point, it changes all the time and makes you actually have to think. Do you really need more then a week? Should you really have to go out and buy new models just to assemble and use? No. Not if you know your own force and how to use it. Spend the week thinking of how to minimize your risks and and max out on what you get from the enemy, as everyone has realized, this year didn't kill mech. It did however make them think more. It's just like all the people who went out and went crazy trying to replicate the "leafblower" list. It is an ok list, but not the best that's ever been, it's just that he knew how to use it and had some luck when he did use it.
What about the lack of night fighting this year? Every year and every round is something different. I for one like it, even if it leaves me hurting once in awhile. Yes scenario 3 did favor foot sloggers with no transports. Yes last year favored armies with minimal troop choices, and before that it favored ones with limited Hq's. So face a choice, use what you have better or take something else you don't normally play (otherwise you'd already have it and switching it in/out of your list is nothing more then doing the paper work to change the list) and play with limited experiance on the new list.
On people taking draws rather then playing. I for one would blast them in our store for doing that. Not going to play? Sounds like 2 forfeits to me, 0 points each. Fight and record the game as a draw? At least you played or faked playing. Unless your blatant as hell about it, I'm not going to call someone a liar. Frankly though, as a competitor, I want to see that. In my experiance, it just put them both out of the running in 90% of the tournaments I've played. Or at least makes it a heck of a lot harder for them to take the top spots. Yes you can win after a draw or even a minor loss, but it sure isn't easy, unless we're talking a real small player group, or one that's looking like a dogfight and alot of draws are happening in each game. I think we had 19 people in our qualifier, most we've ever had. 35 pts was the lead going into the third round (and there were several in that range). Alot of massacres the first round, alot of draws (legitimate) the 2nd. Two people tied at 59 at end of third round, think it was around 52 that took thrid. For those who score 58 and placed 5th, how many people were at your qualifier and how were the rounds matched up? Was it top 2, then 3 &4th, then 5&6th, or otherwise? Depends on matchups when it comes to scores to take it all. Given a group of say 18-20 players, if played top vs top, only 3 players can be undefeated after 3 rounds. So 58 would have to place. If you mix and match or go top vs bottom in round 2, then yes, every game is essential to max points, as it's now a race to slaughter the less experianced/less hardcore for max points. No that won't turn them off from playing again, or make them a WAAC gamer later.....
As for being a tank game, it's all in how you play. It does take more to kill vehicles in 5h then it did in 4th, but I thought vehicles were wayyyyy underpowered in 4th. Now they seem about right. If I roll good (or alot) I can kill those tanks and transports without too much hassle. It takes more shots to kill all those troopers, but less strength shots work too. Take all lascannons? Wow is that foot horde going to hurt you. Took all heavy bolters? Tanks are going to love you. Took some of each? You've got a shot at going all way. But that's just my 2 cents. Thanks if you took the time to read it all. HAve a good one and good luck on the 12th!

Monster Rain wrote:

I don't buy the analogy. People who weren't already hitting a shocking amount of Home Runs in the regular season weren't picked for the Home Run Derby... if they were, maybe that would add up.

How many tourneys do you play in, Danny? Orks are not to be sneezed at. I'm not busting your balls, dude. I'm honestly asking.

A lot. In fact, every single one that I can attend.

Orks are a mediocre army and foot Orks represent the most mediocre build that codex can put out. It's a point-and-click list that gets man-handled by good armies in the standard scenarios. If you really want to know how I feel about the codex read this: http://www.baldandscreaming.com/commentary/greenskins-versus-meta-game-are-orks-competitive/

Edit: I think they've gained significant ground due to the deffrollas clarification, but still aren't in line with IG and SW.

Redbeard wrote:

sennacherib wrote:I like Victory points way more than i like KP. While KP are faster and eaier to figure out, VP give a more complete tally of the damage you inflict on your foe.

But KP aren't about measuring damage inflicted, they're about presenting a counterpoint to the benefits that MSU tactics inherently have. It's why this is a game, not a simulation.

If 5th ed used VP as the default, rather than KP, then there would be no reason not to take more smaller units than fewer large ones. Why take a unit of 2 landspeeders, when you can have two units of one each? They're stronger (not lost to immobilizes), can target more things, can contest more objectives, and require your opponent to shoot with at least two units to destroy them. VP makes this choice a no-brainers. KP makes this choice interesting.

I think that 5e overly rewards mech/mobile armies (compared to more massive armies) too much, and as such has removed another interesting aspect of the game.

In 4th ed, the alternate deployment style was Escalation, which hurt mobile armies and rewarded footsloggers. In 5th ed, Dawn of War rewards mobile armies and hurts foot sloggers. In 4th ed, of the 5 book missions, two (recon and loot counters) rewarded the more mobile army, but two (Take & Hold and Straight VP) were more to the benefit of the larger, less mobile force. (The third, cleanse, is probably a wash, maybe a little advantageous to the mobile player). In 5th ed, 2/3rds of the missions benefit the more mobile player.

These changes, along with the general decrease in price of transports, plus the increase in survivability of the same, have really removed much of the play/counter-play that was found in matching up a slower, larger army against a smaller faster one. Now, the armies that used to operate better as static forces (marines, guard) are all running mobile forces. The armies that can't (necrons, and to a lesser extent nids) are rarely seen.

Mobility gives you the ability to pick the battles of your choosing - that's an advantage in of itself, and really needs to be priced as such. 5th ed has taken that inherent advantage and rewarded it with superior durability and lower costs as well. It's no wonder that you don't see many foot armies in 5th ed. In 4th, the rhino cost you three men, and added a risk. In 5th, it costs you barely two men, and is not only more durable, but safer for the men as well.

I think it is a design failure that has led to everyone having to follow this same trend. And, I think that M3 was a good response to that. I think that the overall mass versus mobility question (and how to tackle it) is one of the most interesting questions in wargames, and I feel that 5th ed has neutered mass armies and buffed mobile armies so much that it's just not a factor anymore. I personally think that's a shame.

Very well put. I believe GW internally figured out how to try and earn more money from their product. Vehicles that are cheap in points, but very effective on the tabletop equates to more folks buying vehicles. The overall cost to build an army goes up significantly when you tally up multiple vehicle kits. And because folks have caught on to this and still buy the vehicles, I wouldn't expect this trend to go away in the upcoming codexes or next edition. I really believe GW figured out that they cannot drive miniature sales by cool minis alone; the minis need favorable rules as well.

Danny Internets wrote:

Other than that article has a pretty graph that means literally nothing - which show a distinct lack of higher order mathematical thinking - I feel it's written for fourth edition (lol) and it's 11 months old. Yes it was a lovely discourse on 'tournaments' but it has nothing - nothing to do with playing an ork army in a competitive environment in 2010.

Give us your thoughts on that then eh?

From what I gather, the US tournament scene more often than not use LESS than the recommended 25% terrain on tables. Was this true on your Ardboy event?

Danny Internets wrote:
Orks are a mediocre army and foot Orks represent the most mediocre build that codex can put out. It's a point-and-click list that gets man-handled by good armies in the standard scenarios. If you really want to know how
I feel about the codex read this:

http://www.baldandscreaming.com/commentary/greenskins-versus-meta-game-are-orks-competitive/

The whole article is written in the style of "ignore any data you might see that opposes my view, because that data must obviously be a result of bad opponents". That's how Stelek argued too. It sets you up in a nice defensive position. Anyone shows you data, and you simply wave your hand saying "bad opponent", while continuing to preach from your ivory tower. Come down from the land of ideal opponents and perfect stats and play some games in the real world.

Claiming that orks can only win against uncompetitive armies, or against poor players, is clearly erroneous. They keep performing well at GTs, even when the scenarios aren't designed like S3 at 'ard boyz. Surely not all other players at these GTs are bad players.

Saying that footslogging orks are a point-and-click list is another way of simply not wanting to acknowledge that there are skills involved in knowing how to play the army. It's like me saying that IG or Mech Wolves are point-and-click armies, because the only real skills needed to play them are a good grasp of target priority. That's not true, and it's this sort of mentality that separates the good IG player from the mediocre IG player.

Orks are a lot less forgiving than either Wolves or IG. If anything, it takes more skill to play foot orks well than either SW or IG. If SW get out of position, they've still got a 3+ save. If they accidentally misjudge a range and get charged, they've got counter-assault. An ork army that finds itself out of position dies, quickly. An ork army that lets itself gets charged is in a world of trouble with CR.

But maybe that's what you mean. When you say foot orks are a weak list, what you're really saying is it takes a better player to win with them.

I think this line from the article sums up that up too:

(I still have trouble with Charlie's army, but I chalk that up to him being a good player).

Maybe all the orks that "gets man-handled by good armies" are played by the same average players as the SW and IG lists that get beat by orks are played by. Maybe, the player is more important than the list.

Monster Rain wrote:
A tank game? Even with the results that Orks and 'Nids seem to have come up with?

Imperial Guard and other mech armies seem to out number Orks and Nids in the national results if we go by the reporting on this and other sites.

so its very much a mech oriented game right now, even with a scenario that might have hurt them, in most locations they had allready bounced the non mech armies down the rankings and out by the time the final scenario was played.

and if they were playing against horde in the final game they just had to fall back on normal wipe out the horde tactics that are so effective for armies like IG. if you table your opponent you dont have to worry about all those nasty kill points.

Other than that article has a pretty graph that means literally nothing - which show a distinct lack of higher order mathematical thinking - I feel it's written for fourth edition (lol) and it's 11 months old. Yes it was a lovely discourse on 'tournaments' but it has nothing - nothing to do with playing an ork army in a competitive environment in 2010.

It was written a full year after 5th edition was released so saying it was written for 4th edition is a reading comprehension failure on your part. 4th edition is only mentioned because there are still a lot of people who have failed to adapt to 5th edition both when this article was written and even today. These are the people who generally think Orks are awesome, at least from my experience. In my area, the players were quick to adapt to 5th. As a result, I haven't seen Orks win a tournament (with the exception of this year's 'Ard Boyz, for obvious reasons) since the end of 2008. Orks were mediocre 11 months ago just as they are mediocre now. I would argue that they are worse now after the releases of SW and IG, both due to the power of these armies and their popularity.

Claiming that orks can only win against uncompetitive armies, or against poor players, is clearly erroneous.

Redbeard, you have this curious tendency to read what you want to hear rather than what other people are saying. I have never made the claim that Orks can only win against uncompetitive armies or poor players. I would agree that is erroneous, which might have something to do with why I've never said it.

I simply think that Orks excel at stomping armies and players that haven't adapted to 5th. I think they do so even better than tuned 5th edition armies in some cases. But the degree to which you crush bad armies is of little consequence to whether or not an army is good, at least once you past the threshold of being able to achieve massacres in these situations reliably. No one cares if you can table your opponent or simply beat them badly enough to score 24 battle points.

I do think that an Ork army in the hands of a good player will perform very well, particularly if it is one of the better Ork builds (ie, not a foot horde). I think Dashofpepper is a good example of this. However, I think that given equally good generals, an Ork army will be at a serious disadvantage versus properly built armies from a number of books, including SM, SW, and IG.

Maybe all the orks that "gets man-handled by good armies" are played by the same average players as the SW and IG lists that get beat by orks are played by. Maybe, the player is more important than the list.

Perhaps you should read up on context before making (more) ignorant comments. The army I was referring to was my Vulkan semi-drop pod list, which I explain numerous times in several articles that it is not a powerful army, but is tactically challenging and fun to play. As a follow-up, Charlie permanently stopped playing his Orks after getting tabled by my mech IG several times because he didn't think he had even a remote possibility of winning.

First you say this:

Redbeard, you have this curious tendency to read what you want to hear rather than what other people are saying. I have never made the claim that Orks can only win against uncompetitive armies or poor players. I would agree that is erroneous, which might have something to do with why I've never said it.

Then you immediately after say this:

I simply think that Orks excel at stomping armies and players that haven't adapted to 5th.

Wouldn't a player/army that hasn't adapted to 5th edition be considered poor/uncompetitive? I think you just contradicted yourself in the same post.

FWIW I'd happily play against Horde or Mech Orks with my gunline SW. My tiny army footprint makes it ridiculously easy to refuse a flank and 22 blast templates plus the ability to blow apart Battlewagons with S10 guns, or Trukks with Str-anything guns. Counterattack makes Snikrot a non-issue, and combined assaults with Logan screaming 'boo' murders Boyz squads, even with Ghazzie.

At the risk of becoming another 'Competitive Orks' thread, the most difficult thing about playing against Orks in a tournament is getting the entire game in. From personal experience, games that end early tend to favor Orks; there's still a million on the table covering objectives. It takes til about turn 4 to really hit the tipping point where you do more casualties than their army can absorb, and once Orks lose momentum they just start dying in droves from fearless wounds and low initiative.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ozymandias wrote:First you say this:

Redbeard, you have this curious tendency to read what you want to hear rather than what other people are saying. I have never made the claim that Orks can only win against uncompetitive armies or poor players. I would agree that is erroneous, which might have something to do with why I've never said it.

Then you immediately after say this:

I simply think that Orks excel at stomping armies and players that haven't adapted to 5th.

Wouldn't a player/army that hasn't adapted to 5th edition be considered poor/uncompetitive? I think you just contradicted yourself in the same post.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive statements. Orks can win against other-than poor/uncompetitive players, but they absolutely excel at stomping on those armies. It's simply a function of an inherently slow assault army (or in the case of Mech Orks, a fairly small assault army) that, when delivered, is capable of rolling a massive pile of dice.

What sourclams said, basically.

To add, saying that Orks excel at stomping bad armies is not at all the same thing as saying they cannot beat good ones.

the thing i find most interesting is that alot of IG players complain about how unfair it is that they give up more kill points than other armies and that makes kill points unfair. I also find it very interesting that IG can put out way more troop units than any other army and that in an objective based mission that is totally fair.


hmmmmmm

Tortuga932 wrote:the thing i find most interesting is that alot of IG players complain about how unfair it is that they give up more kill points than other armies and that makes kill points unfair. I also find it very interesting that IG can put out way more troop units than any other army and that in an objective based mission that is totally fair.


hmmmmmm

(1) Not all IG armies focus on having huge volumes of Troops. Most people run Veterans nowadays as the bulk of or entirety of their Troops (not necessarily the best build, but it seems by far the most common).

(2) Needing Troops to capture objectives is part of the core rules of 40k. Multiplying KP's by a factor of 3 if you mech up is not.

(3) Many of the same players would be just as annoyed if they flipped KP's around so that the person with the most KP's alive at the end of the mission won. We don't like stupid, wacky missions.

It's not about penalizing our particular army. They made a game where mechanized armies are powerful and then decided to run what they bill as a competitive tournament where you're supposed to bring the hardest list possible, but at the last second changed the game so that if you take the hardest archetype of list you get massively penalized (unless you're lucky to get matched up against a similar list).

Danny Internets wrote:It's not about penalizing our particular army. They made a game where mechanized armies are powerful and then decided to run what they bill as a competitive tournament where you're supposed to bring the hardest list possible, but at the last second changed the game so that if you take the hardest archetype of list you get massively penalized (unless you're lucky to get matched up against a similar list).

...or if you just table them, which was the only option for mech in that mission.

That is the same counter I gave to people who thought the mission was fine, "What if they made it so that the most KPs left on the table won?"

Danny Internets wrote:
Orks are a mediocre army and foot Orks represent the most mediocre build that codex can put out. It's a point-and-click list that gets man-handled by good armies in the standard scenarios. If you really want to know how I feel about the codex read this: http://www.baldandscreaming.com/commentary/greenskins-versus-meta-game-are-orks-competitive/

Edit: I think they've gained significant ground due to the deffrollas clarification, but still aren't in line with IG and SW.

I like how you dis on Orks and use your pre-deffrolla arguments as support. But your arguments within that argument pre-suppose that deffrollas don't work against vehicles. So then you add as an after-thought that they've "gained ground"??? Orks now have PLENTY of anti-tank, PLENTY of anti-personnel, and PLENTY of bodies to absorb casualties, and crazy mobility.

But, I'm sure that you opinion is very important to you, so I'll leave you with a quote from your own blog...

With 3 consecutive wins I was able to take 2nd place, 6 points behind a very capable Ork player with a hybrid list

So, Orks suck, and you couldn't do better than the Ork player with your IG list..... A < B && B > C therefore A ? C

But you keep preaching that Orks are not competitive, I like having people underestimate them in tournaments. It makes my massacres that much more enjoyable!>

I like how you dis on Orks and use your pre-deffrolla arguments as support. But your arguments within that argument pre-suppose that deffrollas don't work against vehicles. So then you add as an after-thought that they've "gained ground"??? Orks now have PLENTY of anti-tank, PLENTY of anti-personnel, and PLENTY of bodies to absorb casualties, and crazy mobility

Not all Orks run Battlewagons. Not all Orks armies that run Battlewagons run multiple Battlewagons. Furthermore, it's still a number one priority of armies to kill those Battlewagons before they get to the other side of the board, so it's likely that anti-tank capability will be gone before it can be used.

So, Orks suck, and you couldn't do better than the Ork player with your IG list..... A < B && B > C therefore A ? C

Surely the fact that both Ork players got a free massacre by going up against mech IG in the third scenario had nothing to do with them placing first. Surely. Logic fail of epic proportions.

Lots of people argue that Necrons suck. If GW makes a single tournament scenario that says all Necrons get S10 weapons and Necrons happen to perform well in that tournament, does that mean Necrons are a good army in 40k?

That Orks were even playing at the top tables in the final round gives the lie to your argument.

If Orks were such a mediocre force, then they should have been weeded out- if not one but two different Ork players make top tables in your tourney... maybe Orks aren't -necessarily- as sucky as you'd like to claim.

/plays Orks
//took first at 'ard boyz prelims

Maybe, just maybe, three rounds isn't really enough time to properly sort out the best armies from the merely good.

If that's the stance we're taking, then there's not much data on either side of the argument from a tournament stand point.

I thought Redbeard was spot on in his assessment of the article linked. I'll just add that the graph presented will be IDENTICAL for any given army- of course they do more poorly against better army lists... by definition, ALL lists will have less success as quality of opponent increases.

It just strikes me as bizarre that an army that does as well as Orks do nationally can be sneered at as uncompetitive.

kartofelkopf wrote:That Orks were even playing at the top tables in the final round gives the lie to your argument.

If Orks were such a mediocre force, then they should have been weeded out- if not one but two different Ork players make top tables in your tourney... maybe Orks aren't -necessarily- as sucky as you'd like to claim.

/plays Orks
//took first at 'ard boyz prelims

Do you people actually read things before slamming out responses on your keyboards?

(1) There were ten people at each tournament. Ten. You're using the fact that Orks managed to get a pair of wins (not even massacres!) in a three-round tournament, with 10 people, the vast majority of which brought armies totally unsuited for competitive play, to conclude that Orks are a good army. Think about that for a while.

(2) I don't claim that Orks suck. I've made that clear at least twice before this post (more reading comprehension fail). I said they are mediocre, and, in fact, slightly less so due to the ruling on Deffrollas. Mediocre != bad, mediocre = mediocre. I'm really not sure how to simplify this statement for you any further. Would pictures help?

The article reads like it was written with a 4ed mentality. The graph is meaningless unless it was based upon hundreds or more games, which I doubt is hte case.

G

Black Blow Fly wrote:The article reads like it was written with a 4ed mentality. The graph is meaningless unless it was based upon hundreds or more games, which I doubt is hte case.

G

Right, and all of the other observations in this thread and elsewhere on Dakka are based on controlled experiments performed in a sophisticated 40k laboratory which hundreds of trials. Oh wait.

Of course this is anecdotal evidence. There is no standardized tournament circuit or competitive league from which to pull data for comparative purposes. Your argument discounts virtually every single observation made about this game made by anyone. It is an empty and meaningless rhetorical tactic, not to mention skillful trolling. You'd have a point if I presented my argument as a scientific certainty rather than musings, on a blog no less.

Danny just how are we supposed to take your graph? Is it just another pretty picture? Its very misleading to say the least. If it were based upon the actual outcomes of lots & lots of competitive games it would be very useful. Oh well. Basically all it tells us in general is your games will be harder to win when you play against more competitive armies. Pretty much a no brainer there.

Are orks really mediocre or are they still top shelf? It's very hard for me to say as I rarely ever see them in action. I think that with all the newer armies out now they have lost a lot of their flavour. That in itself does not mean they are mediocre though.

G

Graphs are visual aids used to illustrate points. Unfortunately, you have failed to understand the key feature of the graph (of any graph), which is the curve.

That curve is called a sigmoid function. The point that it illustrates here is how the decline in performance accelerates rapidly with respect to opponent skill (and then decelerates rapidly, leveling off). Again, this is not based on data (which should be obvious given the qualitative axis labels). It is to illustrate the text of the article in an alternative way to facilitate understanding.

In contrast to the sigmoid function, I would peg most other armies as having a straight line rather than a sigmoid curve in this context. The difference between the two is thesis of the article. I'll update the images to make the contrast more obvious.

Danny a sigmoid curve is produced by a mathematical function having an S shape. Sigmoid functions refer to the special case of a logistic function. The main characteristic is the curve quickly saturates over time. Basically there is not much more gain once you past the knee point of the curve. The problem with your cosmetic curve is where you have defined the knee point since it is based solely upon your own opinion and is not reflecting a large sampling of actual game play.

G

Your argument discounts virtually every single observation made about this game made by anyone.

Wow Danny, I'm given how traveled you claim to be I'm surprised we've never met! Given that you've traveled to all the stores here in Colorado and spoken to everyone to gain all of their observations. I guess the last 20 yeas of playing GW games I've just been living in a hole to have never met someone with such an obvious well supported census of every player in the game.

Black Blow Fly wrote:The problem with your cosmetic curve is where you have defined the knee point since it is based solely upon your own opinion and is not reflecting a large sampling of actual game play.

...hence the part about it being ANECDOTAL evidence? You can't sample actual game play (unless you set up a controlled experiment, which would be exceedingly difficult for a large variety of reasons not limited to subject selection) because there is no standardized sample from which to gather data (also already mentioned). Apples and oranges don't make for a good comparative study.

Wow Danny, I'm given how traveled you claim to be I'm surprised we've never met! Given that you've traveled to all the stores here in Colorado and spoken to everyone to gain all of their observations. I guess the last 20 yeas of playing GW games I've just been living in a hole to have never met someone with such an obvious well supported census of every player in the game.

Where did I claim to have have witnessed every game of 40k? All I did was make an argument based on the evidence I have personally gathered through observation and direct personal experience. I've never purported it to be anything but that, despite the constant stream of strawman characterizations you and your ilk have vomited up.

Where did I claim to have have witnessed every game of 40k?

Twist and turn as you might, you can't escape your own words. I wrote

Given that you've traveled to all the stores here in Colorado and spoken to everyone to gain all of their observations.

in response to your post which said

Danny Internets wrote:Your argument discounts virtually every single observation made about this game made by anyone.

Every single observation made about this game made by anyone.... That's a VERY strong statement. You've made a lot of really strong statements, yet you do not support any one of them.

You really should just give it up, because we're having a lot of sport at your expense. I do believe you when you say that Orks are mediocre. But, I believe that you're saying it in response to your perception based on the games and players in your area. But to extend it to all players everywhere just shows that you really don't know what you're talking about.

Hell, my Sisters of Battle army is quite competitive, mostly because most people don't know what it's capable of. I'll also boast that most people couldn't play my list and win with it, because they are not familiar with it. When you start posting some concrete support that any specific army is not competitive, we can have a meaningful conversation. Until then you're spouting your opinion, stating it as if it's a proven fact with absolute statements and pseudo-science graphs, and providing a lot of sport.

despite the constant stream of strawman characterizations you and your ilk

Me and my ilk eh? I'm so glad that you've defined me with such precision. It must be your vast knowledge and experience in which you've watched not only my play style but those I frequently play against.

If you're going to make a statement, either prove it, or be prepared to endure the stones suffered by others who attempt to sway the uninformed through rhetoric and pseudo science. Until then we'll enjoy a good laugh.

Danny Internets wrote:
Do you people actually read things before slamming out responses on your keyboards?

Yes. Perhaps the problem isn't so much reading comprehension of any individual post, but rather, that we read your other posts and draw inferences from them about what you're trying to say without worrying about your plausible deniability that you seem to work in.

What I mean by this is that you say in various posts things like,

... the vast majority of which brought armies totally unsuited for competitive play

And then you say,

... I said they are mediocre, and, in fact, slightly less so due to the ruling on Deffrollas...

Now, this is where the rest of us start making connections. You clearly believe in competitive play. To play competitively, one needs to field a competitive army. You make claims about how many people who go to tournaments field armies unsuited for competitive play. And then you say that orks are mediocre. Mediocre might != bad, but mediocre also != competitive. So, when you say orks are mediocre, what the rest of us get from that is that you don't believe they're competitive, and as such go into the bucket of armies unsuited for competitive play. If they're not suited for competitive play, then from a tournament perspective, they do suck - they're not competitive in an environment that requires such.

You see how this all works together. From a competitive perspective, you're either competitive, or your not, and calling something mediocre implies that it is not competitive and therefore sucks for use in tournaments.

So is it any wonder that when we all see that orks do well in tournaments, we wonder how they can be considered mediocre, and therefore unsuitable for competitive play.

Yes. Perhaps the problem isn't so much reading comprehension of any individual post, but rather, that we read your other posts and draw inferences from them about what you're trying to say without worrying about your plausible deniability that you seem to work in.

I say Orks are great at crushing bad armies, which others (more or less) read as "Orks suck." That had nothing to do with poor reading comprehension, but rather because I've gone to great lengths to craft a position that is immune to characterization? Come on. Read what I'm saying, not what you think I might be trying to say if I were saying something completely different.

Regarding the rest, there is indeed a point in here, but you're jumbling contexts and using terms that are defined very differently by different people. What is competitive to some is not competitive to others, and then you get into the increasingly sticky subject of comparative competitiveness.

Note that I do not say Orks are uncompetitive--in fact, I make it explicit that I do not believe Orks are a "crap army." I say what I mean and do not say what I do not mean. You can call that "plausible deniability," but really it's just frank communication. Furthermore, being mediocre in a competitive context does not equate to being "uncompetitive" just like it does not equate to being "bad." It's just middle-of-the-road, not good and not bad. Not particularly competitive or uncompetitive--basically unremarkable with respect to quality.

Are there Ork armies that can hold their own in a competitive environment? Certainly! Winning games of 40k is not a simple function of army list strength. I maintain, however, that all things being equal (such a generalship), an Ork player with a good list (relative to the codex) will struggle badly against other army builds that I would consider highly competitive. In a nutshell, that is why I consider Orks mediocre.

Of course, there is the issue of Ork players allegedly performing well in tournaments. No two tournaments are the same so comparing results is really an effort in futility. Even when you restrict your analysis to battle points you face insurmountable problems due to the unquantifiable effects of population selection, comp scoring pressure, major rules changes (ie, INAT FAQ), wacky missions, and so on. Mission scoring is another reason why I think Orks are perceived as performing well. If my argument has any truth to it, scoring formats that reward massacres over other levels of victory will tend to favor armies like Orks that are especially proficient at steamrolling lower quality opposition. It is not uncommon to play through a whole tournament without facing a really tough opponent, especially in 3-round events. Even in 5-round events the majority of your opponents tend to be fairly easy. At that point, the winner is whoever clubbed their seals the hardest. Is that really a good measuring stick for the quality of an army? (As an aside, the NOVA Open format overcomes this fundamental problem and if Orks win that I'll happily eat humble pie.)