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I am a chaos player of two years. And I'm looking into starting an Ork army. I was wondering what was the best way to go about this? What are some things that are essential to a fairly balanced( maybe 75% combat, 25% shooting) army. I would also like to know some helpful ork tips. What are some generally successful strategies for orks? Any extra info would be appreciated! Thank You, Rod!

I'll break it down for you:

- Boyz. Lots and lots and lots of boyz. My average lists run two maxed out squads of 30 boyz each.
- Lootas. Absolutely incredible fire support. A squad of 15 autocannons that can pump out between 15 and 45 shots per turn.
- Nobz are awesome. The new kit is fantastic, and each nob can be individually tooled out. This can lead to things being kind of cheesy, but whatevs. Put them and a warboss in a battlewagon and kill everything.
- Speaking of battlewagons, deffrollas are the best anti-vehicle option Orks have. If you tank shock a unit you do d6 strength 10 hits to them. This also works on vehicles now, effectively letting it kill monoliths, land raiders, and so on.
- Have fun with it - Orks have all kinds of stuff that doesn't always quite work. Lootas might not shoot enough, trukks might careen 18 inches into your own men and explode, shokk attack guns might turn into black holes and suck up your units. These should not be seen as flaws, but as Orky boons.
- Going from Marines to Orks is a really natural transition, strangely. Having a high toughness is great. Ork boyz are the best, and most durable troops choice point-for-point in the game.

Brother has it. Orks are great because no matter what list you come up with it can still be competitive. For optimized ork lists though stick with one thing though dont mix shooty orks with assaulty orks. Not to say it wont win you games because it can but for say 'Ard Boyz tournies you will probably not fare too well.

Well said Brother!

Vindicator#9 wrote:Brother has it. Orks are great because no matter what list you come up with it can still be competitive. For optimized ork lists though stick with one thing though dont mix shooty orks with assaulty orks. Not to say it wont win you games because it can but for say 'Ard Boyz tournies you will probably not fare too well.

IMO, shoota boyz aren't a shooty-only unit, they're a shooting/assault hybrid unit. Nothing about WS 4, furious charge, and 2 attacks base per model says 'I don't belong in combat to me.' Orks are by nature either a hybrid shooting/assault army or an assault army. 90% of my games with shoota mobs are shooting on the way in and then finishing it off in assault. The other 10% are mostly assault-only against vehicle armies. It's incredibly rare for me to just sit and shoot with shootas, they tend to be much more effective doing both.

I've had much success mixing hard assault units like Nobs and even slugga mobs into a mostly shoota horde. Diversification lets you apply your units to roles which are most suited to them rather than trying to do everything with the same kind of unit.

Ok with all this advice in mind what are the first few things I should purchase?

rodt777 wrote:Ok with all this advice in mind what are the first few things I should purchase?

The Nobz box.

AoBR also gives you a Warboss, a fair few boyz, and a couple other things that may come in handy.

Assault on Black Reach is pretty good for starting an Ork army, as it comes with twenty boyz, five nobs which can then be taken as troops with your warboss(allowing you to use all your boyz in one mob), and three deffkoptas, whose outflanking combined with twin-linked rokkit launchas can kill vehicles pretty well. Then the small rulebook is just nice to have, and you can sell the Spess Mehreens to finance some lootas or something.