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so ive been playing chaos for the past 7 years, and i love them dearly they will always be my main army, something about spikes and sacrificing stupid guardsmen sings to me.

but ive always been fascinated with orks and always wanted to play them, but never had the money. well now i do, and i kinda want to get in on the craziness that is the green tide. whats a good way to start with them? most of the scary lists ive run up against are just masses of dudes and lootas. does that concept work well in say a 1k game? id want to build them slowly as to actually have a painted army. so ork enthusiasts heres your chance to say what you love so much about them, and how you started out with them!

I started out with a couple of the big megaforce boxes that came out when the codex was newly released. I love running a SAG and then loads of boyz to get stuck in. Lootas are always helpful as wel..

You looking to still go inexpensive? I would get a black reach ork army and then a bunch of boyz from black reach usually you can buy them for $1 a pop on ebay and $45 after shipping for the black reach army.

I would get like the set plus 80 more orks. If you want you can buy shoota arm bitz on ebay and convert some to shootas or add tubbing to the sluggas for longer barrels to make them into shootas you can use the plasticard tubing, electrical tubing even the sticks on ice creme push pops I hear work. Then you would need a KFF big mek. Now you need about 3 nobz with PKs and Bosspoles to lead your boyz, you can get the nobz box or the boyz boxes as they come with 1 nob and a PK. A single box of gretchin is good for objective sitting but 2 is better so you can get like 15-19 going on. Between the Warboss, Big Mek, Boyz+Nobz and Koptas which you want to model with buzz saws somehow, you have a pretty solid green tide. Next you need some lootas, unfortunately you get 5 bodies in each box and only 4 loota guns at $25. You're gonna want at least 10 lootas for 2 groups of 5 but down the road you'l might want more like 20 or 30.

Now you can make a decision of where to go from here. If you want to go more green tide you could convert up 2 burnas and 7ish boyz to kommandos by adding big shoota back packs and knives and bitz from the boyz and nobz box, burna heads make good kommando heads and add in Snikrot and add more lootas or boyz.

If you want mechanized get like 3 battlwagons and make or buy deffrollas for them. I would get a box of boyz use those burnas on them, 2 boxes of nobz and a painboy for diverse nobz, and Ghazzy.

If you want a kan wall get kans and a 2nd KFF big mek, possibly a deffdred or 2 to compliment them.

Speedfreaks then some bikers and trukks.

I grabbed two Attack on Black Reach boxed sets, then added a Battlewagon (christmas present), Warbiker boxed set and a nobz boxed set. I carefully mixed and matched nob bits so that I had 5 with big choppas and 5 with powerklaws, plus 5 with normal weapons. Add in a painboy and you can build a mob of nobz for any points value. I did all that back at Christmas, and have been using them, and not buying any more, in order to concentrate on painting those units before moving on.

Some general tips would be:
1) Get used to losing a LOT of guys. I got told, "You need to varnish them, because you pick them up in handfuls", heh. This is why you should not run boyz in mobs lower than 20.
2) Orks paint up well, and people are not used to seeing fully-painted mobs hit the table.
3) You can do a lot of shooting if you want, using Lootas, SAG, shootas, warbikers. This works on the theory that enough bullets will eventually overcome your terrible BS.
4) Don't let anyone charge your units. Orks don't take a charge well. It causes mass death and you'll lose the mob on sweeping advances more often than you'd believe.
5) Powerklaws seem to be very key to Ork melee strategy at the moment. Sad, but true; entire mobs of boys are little more than "Nob delivery systems". Get involved with the strength 8 carnage.
6) Watch out for Hydras, LR Crusaders, and the like; stun them with rokkits, and ram 'em with deffrollas.
7) Don't send your mega-armoured nobz against terminators; it won't end well.

My army, that I have used with reasonable success for the last few months, consists of:

Warboss (powerklaw, cybork, boss pole)
Nobz squad (including 2 Big Choppas, 1 Powerklaw, Painboy, all with cybork - a very budget squad, with relatively few upgrades, but they do the trick in 1k)
Both are transported in the Battlewagon, which sports a Deffrolla, Kannon, Big Shoota and Red Paint Job.

Two mobs of 20-strong Boyz Mobs, each with Powerklaw and Bosspole equipped nob. They are currently both choppa boys, but I've been testing one as a shoota boyz mob, and that works well.

Three warbikers, with Powerklaw and Bosspole equipped nob.

Two Deffkoptas, one with a buzzsaw, both with TL rokkits.

This slots in at exactly 1,000 points. The deffkoptas tend to die horribly, but can occasionally totally screw your opponent. The Warbikers are really too small a unit, but they can really put the hurt on enemy squads with a good bit of shooting. The boyz mobs do the job, which is about all there is to say about them, and the nobz and warboss can reliably take on most anything. Yesterday I played a game against an all-biker Space Marine army, and they chewed through the entire enemy army in four turns of melee.

You could try taking a look at http://www.the-waaagh.com/, which is a dedicated Ork forum. I found them to be a big help when constructing the above list.