Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Just finished my first 40k tournament and it was amazing. I was really happy to have attended. I was really shocked to see the number of Valkyries on the boards. It seemed like at least a 3rd of the players were running Imperial Guard with a pair of Valkyries. The real shock though, was the lack of Orks. I honestly saw more Necron(myself included of course), Dark Eldar, and Squat(not combined) armies than I saw Ork armies. I only personally saw 1 but I also reviewed photos from the Tournament and it appears there were around 3. Anyone know what could have cause the Ork army to have lost so much popularity? They are fairly new and very competitive, maybe its just to difficult to get that many boyz ready for a 1850 point tournament?

You have to be quite skilled to win with Orks because they have glaring weaknesses that it takes a good general to circumvent.

As opposed to IG and certain spacewolf builds, which are pretty much easy street.

I came here expecting a sad story about a lost Ork army...so phew!

That said, Dash is right. IG mech gunline kills with math. There are some wrinkles, but they're small-it just kills with math.

I was at adepticon and i counted 5 ork armies while I was there, and I only looked at the yellow tournament.

But still that is a poor showing.

I was happy that I wasn't the only Dark Eldar player there!

Orks have a middling codex with some very glaring weaknesses. A good general can overcome to some degree, but against another good general, one with a better codex, it's an uphill battle. Don't get me wrong; orks can still win games, but in tourneys, to do well, you need massacres, which are hard for them to pull off, especially against the power armies like IG or SW in the hands of a good opponent.

Orks won team tournament. They cant be that bad, right behind wolves and ig in power levels, but so is everybody else.

Problem the orks face is that you only have 1 option. Move across table to apply fist to face.

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:Orks won team tournament... Move across table to apply fist to face.

True, and true

Well, it could have little to do with the power of Orks, there just weren't much of them for some other reason.

I played orks in a small event friday night (and won it), and got a top-ten finish playing orks on Sunday in the yellow championship. For what it's worth.

Orks did also win the team event, and Dakka Detachment One got seventh in the team event with orks.

Great points... I wouldn't count too much on the math/theory by itself... clearly, they're competitive.

Perhaps it's just the large numbers of models that drove people away from them for this event. I know 'Nids aren't the most competitive thing out there, but that's a deterrent for fielding a force of them, too...

The thing with orks, as ive said before, is you have no tactical options. If you want to get across the table and kick ass they are the best army in the game. But that is all you will ever do. Assuming you dont bring some absurd army, like 9 koptas, 45 lootas, and shoota boyz.

You grappled the shaggoth!?

Sorry, I couldn't resist . You're right about the tactics... see "apply fist to face" comment above

There is a web site that shant be named that says orks sucks. thus nobody brings them. Sad because I think roket filled orks can do a number on mech armies. Ity's still better than the fantasy Daemons who rule all. Sad that people think they have to take IG and Wolves to win. I hear Nids had a poor shoing also.

sexiest_hero wrote:There is a web site that shant be named that says orks sucks. thus nobody brings them. Sad because I think roket filled orks can do a number on mech armies. Ity's still better than the fantasy Daemons who rule all. Sad that people think they have to take IG and Wolves to win. I hear Nids had a poor shoing also.

Someone linked me over there. I posted for Stelek and all the fanbois that they were welcome to meet me on Vassal and to put their money where their mouth is - my orks against their....I don't care. No takers yet.

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:Orks won team tournament. They cant be that bad, right behind wolves and ig in power levels, but so is everybody else.

Problem the orks face is that you only have 1 option. Move across table to apply fist to face.

But what an option to have...

I'm back... (kind of)

We did pretty well with Orks. There were a lot of guard armies and SW armies, but Orks showed up pretty regularly, just not as much as they did last year (when they were relatively new and shiny.) New and shiny always is more popular, especially the ones that people have had a chance to tweak.

We did pretty as an Ork team, and I faced two ork armies in the Blue Championships. Going into round 3, an Ork KOS army was top seed, with my Daemons in 2nd. We basically knocked each other out, although I technically won.

Dashofpepper wrote:

sexiest_hero wrote:There is a web site that shant be named that says orks sucks. thus nobody brings them. Sad because I think roket filled orks can do a number on mech armies. Ity's still better than the fantasy Daemons who rule all. Sad that people think they have to take IG and Wolves to win. I hear Nids had a poor shoing also.

Someone linked me over there. I posted for Stelek and all the fanbois that they were welcome to meet me on Vassal and to put their money where their mouth is - my orks against their....I don't care. No takers yet.

Well of course. You aren't drinking the Kool-Aid, so you can't play competetively. Duh. YTTH ripping aside (someone once posted that Stelek is a combination of 40K genius and idiot-and I agree) I think too many people got scared of the "invincible IG".

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:Move across table to apply fist to face.

What else does an Ork want to do but that. It fits the fluff and looking at my 2010 Ard Boyz Ork army lined up on my table it is alot face smacking to go around. While IG and SW are the new armies out there that are really strong there is nothing more satisfing then an enemy seeing his best unit smacked out of the park by a hopped up baseball player in the first round of assault. Point for point Orks are just a much more fun army wto play and will never sux no matter what the new shiny codex that comes out.

It's kind of nice that Orks behave like they do in the fluff eh?

Dashofpepper wrote:

sexiest_hero wrote:There is a web site that shant be named that says orks sucks. thus nobody brings them. Sad because I think roket filled orks can do a number on mech armies. Ity's still better than the fantasy Daemons who rule all. Sad that people think they have to take IG and Wolves to win. I hear Nids had a poor shoing also.

Someone linked me over there. I posted for Stelek and all the fanbois that they were welcome to meet me on Vassal and to put their money where their mouth is - my orks against their....I don't care. No takers yet.

Oooh! ooh! I think I can consider myself enough of a "zombie" (or "ynquisitor" or whatever) to sympathize with those dudes... and I would gladly give you a shot on vassal... as soon as I'm done with work and exams and my wife lays off me for a bit.

But seriously, I'll play you on vassal. I'm not going to pretend that YTTH isn't flawed at times, but it's not like the guy doesn't have reasonable points.

That said, I disagree with his frankly myopic view on orkz - I personally like stelek 's tactical view of 40k and all, but I view things like this:

at a hypothetically "highest" possible level of competition, where no one runs anything except super-optimized lists and no one ever ever fethed up tactically... then yes, orkz would be really bad, as would be few other armies (chaos, to boot)

But that's not really how it works, practically, in 40k. people do make mistakes, dice do get hot, and few lists are in fact "super-optimized" - and it is through these 2 qualities that you see orkz do well at tournaments (since not even tournament armies are as fully tweaked out as they could be).

That said, they aren't one of the best armies in the game (even through some people seem to think they are for some reason), and they do have issues with mech, but it's fething slowed to imply you can just roll over them like he does. playing against orkz is like playing against zangief in street fighter 2 -in theory, it's a walk over, but in practice, one empty-jump means you just lost like 30% health to spinning pile driver. Don't get me wrong - in old street fighter 2, at the highest levels of play, you almost never see zangief - which is the point stelek is trying to make about orkz. Hypothetically, in ideal competitive conditions, orkz shouldn't be able to hack it.
But really, just because of the nature of 40k, games never get to that level of "quality", for lack of a better term. It's just not practical in a hobby where it is obscenely expensive and often not very rewarding to trick your army out the nth degree (why trick out your army if it makes people not want to play casual games against you, after all?) Hence, orkz do alright at the current level of play.

It's really dumb to underestimate them - but to extend the street fighter metaphor, they sure as hell ain't Sagat. (That would be guard, obviously, but with MELTA MELTA MELTA instead of TIGER TIGER TIGER).

And a challenger has arrived to defend Stelek's Blog and my attacks upon his credibility as an anti-ork theorist!

More news as it develops.

Milquetoast Thug wrote:
at a hypothetically "highest" possible level of competition, where no one runs anything except super-optimized lists and no one ever ever fethed up tactically... then yes, orkz would be really bad, as would be few other armies (chaos, to boot)

Prove it.

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:Orks won team tournament. They cant be that bad, right behind wolves and ig in power levels, but so is everybody else.

Problem the orks face is that you only have 1 option. Move across table to apply fist to face.

Orks won the team tournament the year before. The team tournament requires alot more than just massacring your opponent. It has alot of soft scoring.

Milquetoast Thug wrote:
at a hypothetically "highest" possible level of competition, where no one runs anything except super-optimized lists and no one ever ever fethed up tactically... then yes, orkz would be really bad, as would be few other armies (chaos, to boot)

But that's not really how it works, practically, in 40k. people do make mistakes, dice do get hot, and few lists are in fact "super-optimized" - and it is through these 2 qualities that you see orkz do well at tournaments (since not even tournament armies are as fully tweaked out as they could be).

I played against two or three armies in the style of YTTH. Razorback Las/TL Plas spam, Eldar light-walker spam, etc. (with my orks), mech-guard spam. First, they're boring. Second, they have glaring weaknesses. I guess if part of the theory is that you'll do well against other lists of this nature, then if you don't, it's not your fault, it's the fault of the opponent who brought something non-competitive and beat you, right?

That said, they aren't one of the best armies in the game (even through some people seem to think they are for some reason), and they do have issues with mech...

I wouldn't have thought so from my games this weekend. My kan list killed its fair share of tanks. My battlewagon list made parking lots out of mech guard and mech space wolves. There is nothing that proper application of a powerklaw cannot solve.

Hypothetically, in ideal competitive conditions, orkz shouldn't be able to hack it. But really, just because of the nature of 40k, games never get to that level of "quality", for lack of a better term. It's just not practical in a hobby where it is obscenely expensive and often not very rewarding to trick your army out the nth degree (why trick out your army if it makes people not want to play casual games against you, after all?) Hence, orkz do alright at the current level of play.

It's really dumb to underestimate them - but to extend the street fighter metaphor, they sure as hell ain't Sagat. (That would be guard, obviously, but with MELTA MELTA MELTA instead of TIGER TIGER TIGER).

That all depends on how they're used, doesn't it. Melta-melta-melta means you're in range of ork close-combat. And one unit of orks can kill a lot of guard stuff in one turn (multiple tanks and units). If you send one unit with meltas to get the job done, our forcefields save us If you send more, you lose more than the tank you killed is worth. And so guard is the uber-army here?

If you make up imaginary conditions and then claim that those imaginary conditions are what is "competitive", you're basically laying out a strawman argument that can't be disproved. I can make the claim that Tau are the most competitive army in the game if it's played in optimal conditions too, and then state that the reason tau aren't winning is that too many people are running theoretically bad lists that hurt them. Can you smell the BS from where you are? The environment that matters is the real world that we play in, not the imaginary one where everyone is running spamcrap lists. In the real world, orks are plenty strong, and have far more options than most of these super-optimized lists - and more fun to boot.

Redbeard wrote:

Milquetoast Thug wrote:
at a hypothetically "highest" possible level of competition, where no one runs anything except super-optimized lists and no one ever ever fethed up tactically... then yes, orkz would be really bad, as would be few other armies (chaos, to boot)

But that's not really how it works, practically, in 40k. people do make mistakes, dice do get hot, and few lists are in fact "super-optimized" - and it is through these 2 qualities that you see orkz do well at tournaments (since not even tournament armies are as fully tweaked out as they could be).

I played against two or three armies in the style of YTTH. Razorback Las/TL Plas spam, Eldar light-walker spam, etc. (with my orks), mech-guard spam. First, they're boring. Second, they have glaring weaknesses. I guess if part of the theory is that you'll do well against other lists of this nature, then if you don't, it's not your fault, it's the fault of the opponent who brought something non-competitive and beat you, right?

I'm not too concerned with "boring", but the idea you outline above (bolded for clarity) is Stelek's idea, not mine. But yes, that is what he would argue. I find that to be a weak one and part of why he takes a lot of heat - reasonably so.

If one compares list building to a scientific endeavor, and we build lists based on certain principles (as Stelek does, mobility, vehicles, redundancy, etc)... and then lists that do not follow this as well do better than we expect - then wouldn't we normally conclude that maybe something is wrong with our list building principles? if it was our own list's failing, that is one thing, since we can examine our own playstyle - but when orkz and chaos continue to do well, we might want to examine our principles of list building. The problem is the other examples are all anecdotal - "I killed X tanks with powerklaw" type affairs, which might lead one to assume the theory doesn't need changing.

That said, they aren't one of the best armies in the game (even through some people seem to think they are for some reason), and they do have issues with mech...

I wouldn't have thought so from my games this weekend. My kan list killed its fair share of tanks. My battlewagon list made parking lots out of mech guard and mech space wolves. There is nothing that proper application of a powerklaw cannot solve.

This is an example of the above - in general, the Stelek school of thought states that meleeing vehicles to kill them is abad idea, due to how 5th ed works... and then you inform us that that it does work. Either the theory is wrong or your opponents are "bad", but I think stelek fails to consider the first possibility seriously enough.

That said, I would like more context on how you won your games.

Hypothetically, in ideal competitive conditions, orkz shouldn't be able to hack it. But really, just because of the nature of 40k, games never get to that level of "quality", for lack of a better term. It's just not practical in a hobby where it is obscenely expensive and often not very rewarding to trick your army out the nth degree (why trick out your army if it makes people not want to play casual games against you, after all?) Hence, orkz do alright at the current level of play.

It's really dumb to underestimate them - but to extend the street fighter metaphor, they sure as hell ain't Sagat. (That would be guard, obviously, but with MELTA MELTA MELTA instead of TIGER TIGER TIGER).

That all depends on how they're used, doesn't it. Melta-melta-melta means you're in range of ork close-combat. And one unit of orks can kill a lot of guard stuff in one turn (multiple tanks and units). If you send one unit with meltas to get the job done, our forcefields save us If you send more, you lose more than the tank you killed is worth. And so guard is the uber-army here?

If you make up imaginary conditions and then claim that those imaginary conditions are what is "competitive", you're basically laying out a strawman argument that can't be disproved. I can make the claim that Tau are the most competitive army in the game if it's played in optimal conditions too, and then state that the reason tau aren't winning is that too many people are running theoretically bad lists that hurt them. Can you smell the BS from where you are? The environment that matters is the real world that we play in, not the imaginary one where everyone is running spamcrap lists. In the real world, orks are plenty strong, and have far more options than most of these super-optimized lists - and more fun to boot.

Milquetoast Thug wrote:
This is an example of the above - in general, the Stelek school of thought states that meleeing vehicles to kill them is abad idea, due to how 5th ed works... and then you inform us that that it does work. Either the theory is wrong or your opponents are "bad", but I think stelek fails to consider the first possibility seriously enough.

That said, I would like more context on how you won your games.

Well, a lot has to do with synergistic defense. The Kustom Forcefield is a great piece of equipment. In a kan list, it gives a 4+ save to your kans, who then give a 4+ save to boyz behind them. Lootas outrange a lot of things, and can pick off glass-hammer squadrons like land speeders or eldar walkers, valkyries, and good stuff.

I don't know that kans are the best example though - the championship games, I was running battlewagons. AV14 with a 4+ cover save, some are going to get close. Once I'm close, that's a lot of boyz on your side of the field, stopping you from playing your game. 20 boyz can charge a bunch of tanks, and even if I only get some glances and shakes, that means you're not hitting me back much. In a kill-point game, I'll happily trade my 20 boy unit for 2-3 tanks.

Deff-rollas let me kill a tank in the movement phase (huge tactical edge, as I can decide to disembark if you die and there are passengers to assault, or stay inside if I don't). I had one wagon that carried the warboss and some nobs. I could ram/rolla one enemy tank, disembark the boss to assault a second, and have the nobs inside the wagon use a boarding plank to hit a third, all in the same turn. The boarding plank is another excellent piece of equipment. Against skimmers (who can dodge the ram) or walkers (who could hurt the wagon), the plank means I get multiple S9 or S10 attacks just by pulling up alongside you.

Both the rolla and the plank give you a way around the usual problem of assaulting vehicles, which is that the occupants get to go after the assaulters. But the rolla gives me the option for that first charge, and the plank means I'm assaulting (with multiple high-strength hits on back armour) without leaving my tank...

If your defenses are lots of multilasers, which can't hurt the battlewagons, vendettas, which can be shaken or worse by loota fire, missile-troops, who miss often and can only glance, and meltaguns, which require you to be in ramming and assault range, and my forcefield saves any of those on a 4+ to-boot, with multiple wagons bearing down on you, I like my odds well enough.

But this does bring us to the question of theory vs. reality, which I'll get to this evening.

I'm interested in what you've got to say about this.

Enjoyable discussion.
I think Orks can handle mech, but it all depends on build. I've been horde focused for a while, and I do okay. But I do know that if I make a mistake, because of the nature of the list, I'm probably now heavily committed to a bad course of action that will lose me the game.
Battlewagons are easier, because you can recover more easily from mistakes, and also, because your choices are more obvious and your weaknesses harder to exploit. I don't own enough BWs to run that list right now, and I'm too poor to buy them.
Kan Wall looks pretty good too, though I haven't run it myself.
One other build I want to give a better look is "elite orks"- Nobs, Meganobs, Burnas, Lootas, Snikrot Kommandos, with some trukks and maybe a wagon. Each element is really good at dishing out a particular type of damage or exploiting a particular weakness, but kinda fragile too. Only 2 scoring units is a big problem too. That said, it worked in my (brief) playtesting phase.

I'm suprised, given the BW ruling, that we didn't see more BW spam lists at Adepticon- looks like a very strong build to me, with some pretty solid anti-tank.

Back to the topic of why there is not that many orks…

I think a larger part of why there were so many ork players a year or two ago and there are a lot less now is because a lot of people buy armies that are new, play them for a while, and then move on to the newest codexes (and thought to be the most powerful armies).

Some of those Space Wolf and Mech Guard armies that were at Adepticon were ork armies before. Now the ones that are left are the true ork army players. Those people who love the army and were the ones that played it before the new codex came out.

Good point, Blackmoor.
I see a lot of people in my environment gearing up towards Blood Angels

The ruling came out kind of late, and if you thought it was inviable with a month to go, you probably hadn't built or tested the list.

I bought, built and painted the wagons in two weeks (Neal@thewarstore rocks for getting them to me in time to paint them), and went into the event having never played the list before.

Most people don't want to take a list they've never played to a major event.