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Just starting to build some "sons of anarchy" style ork bikers and im tempted to bulid a small Ork army.

So sell me on an ork Klan!
Which is your your favourite?
Why is it your your favourite?
Whats the top top moment youve had with your klan?
Etc etc you get the idea

If you are doing an Orks biker army from the inspiration of watching SOA. There is only one real Ork clan to play at that point. Kult of Speedfreeks, Evil Sunz.

Why settle for one. Use them all. Looks great, its fluffy and its easy to tell which squad is which.

 wowsmash wrote:
Why settle for one. Use them all. Looks great, its fluffy and its easy to tell which squad is which.

This. Painting everything one colour is so boring, and leads to a confusing experience on the table.

Make your own clan with what ever colors you want.

I like Blood Axes.

Fluffwise it's the orks that don't act orky that scare others and Orks often hold hate for Blood Axes because they do things that aren't orky. There is an irony to it I like. They are thinkers. The brand of thinkers that brought you christmas lights for the rokkit launchers. Why? Because blinking red lights on IG weapons increases accuracy.

Sadly, most of my lists are built like speed freaks in jeeps.

 wowsmash wrote:
Why settle for one. Use them all. Looks great, its fluffy and its easy to tell which squad is which.

Exactly what I plan on for my army. Something like the klanz of Gorgutz, but nowhere near as large.

Thanks for the the suggestions so far.

As I would only be doing a small force id rather keep to just one Klan. So I kan.....can be more fluffy with it. Do you yourselves just do custom / multi Klan lists? what klans make up your lists and Why did you chose them?

@ Rismonite Thats more of what im after. Sodo you run your speed freaks as blood blood axes(purple instead of red im guessing ) or just as speedfreeks?

I agree also with Blood Axe, I've been playing/improving a Blood Axe Ork Kill Team, and it's a blast.

I thought about why I like them so much, why they're my favourite despite being the least Orky, here's the train of thought:

Orks being dastardly Orcs in space is not funny.

Orks imitating humans, although quite quaint, is still not funny.

Orks imitating humans BADLY, getting it totally wrong, yet it somehow works, is hilarious to me.

So I reckon, if you want to play Orks, it's because you want some hilarity in the 41st millennium of only grimdark, and Blood Axes take the piss out of it all.

(Death Skulls or Freebooterz were close runner-ups, but they merely steal from their opponents rather than incompetently re-create their likeness.)

---

With my Ork Kill Team, I'm currently working on giving them some mini-tanks so they can ape Imperial Guard tank armies. It'll be a mini-Armoured Krumpany.

Only one klan waaaaaughs in doppler.

The rest of 'em are just too slow.

I run a two-Klan Waaaaagh!, Blood Axes and Goffs. I feel that between the two Klanz, you get the two main aspects of Orkiness: brutal and kunnin', Gork and Mork (or was it Mork and Gork?).

Goffs are proppa Orks, nice and brutal. If you love smashing Warbosses, Nobz, and Boyz into your enemies' lines, then they are the way to go. They are straightforward to play, but tons of fun. Seriously, Goffs can build a Death Star, and if you can get it there (which I'm sure will be easier once we get a new Dex), it's really hard to deal with. And more importantly, once again: tons of fun. Caveats: If you play them fluffily, they lack some tactical flexibility, and they can be a tad vanilla (they are essentially the Ultramarines or Black Legion of Orks).

If you want to be more kunnin', then go with Blood Axes. Kommandos are fun, and I bet they get some love in the next Dex. Looted Wagons are fun, and look better in Orky kammo than in Deffskull blue (IMHO). Also, they're a fun army to play more competitively; Blood Axes are schemers, so feel free to play hard to win. It's fluffy! I have nothing bad to say about Blood Axes, except that some other Ork players will make fun of you. Bonus: Kammo is fun to paint (although time consuming).

The other Klans are all really cool, but I feel like they epitomize less significant aspects of Ork mentality. Yes, Orks like to go fast; yes, they like shiny toys; yes, they verge on being primitive; yes, they like to snik stuff. But their psychic representation in the Warp is composed of two entities, and those two entities are brutally kunnin', and kunninly brutal. Goffs and Blood Axes let you revel in those the most.

Just my two teef.

If your warboss is powerful enough, he'll gather ALL of the clans to his banner.

Paint each unit as a separate ork clan.

 kronk wrote:
If your warboss is powerful enough, he'll gather ALL of the clans to his banner.

Paint each unit as a separate Ork clan.

This is a fine idea if you like having lots of different colors scattered around your army, and I know many Ork players interpret the fluff this way. I've followed Orks since the beginning, and while that doesn't make me an expert, I have a very different concept of how Orks work. I agree that Waaagh!s are heterogeneous, but I see 40k-sized warbands as being somewhat more homogeneous. Note that the following (and proceeding, really) is all a matter of opinion.

There are only two likely ways Orks would initially reach a planet: either through contaminating spores, or as part of a pre-existing Waaagh! The two are really separate cases.

In the first case, Orkoid ecology would evolve over time, and eventually some real Orks would emerge. They would build a society, based upon pre-programmed knowledge and instinct. This society would of course be Balkanized, possibly even upon some facsimile of ideological lines (e.g. - Orks who want to go fasta vs. Orks who want to krump harda), but not by Klan lines (because these Orks don't know that Klanz exist). If these Orks successfully conquer this planet and are united under a powerful and charismatic Warlord, then they will have themselves a Waaagh! They will either form their own novel Klanz or be united under one Klan (the Klan of the Boss). In this scenario, there is no reason to assume that multiple Klanz that we've heard of would be fighting side by side. Also, don't forget that Orks tend to follow the biggest bloke around. So, if this smaller Waaagh! gets incorporated into a larger Waaagh!, there's no reason to assume that individual warbands would be broken up. In fact, there are plenty of examples of large Waaagh!s that are composed of multiple small warbands, with their integrity preserved.

In the second case, Orks are born into a pre-existing Waaagh! They would probably join a warband and/or a Klan. Since they are part of a galactic empire at this point, there should be plenty of like-minded individuals around. It would make sense that they would, at least to some extent, stick to their own. I'm not saying that discrete Ork groups don't fight together. But I am saying that 40k games (even Apocalypse games) are small in comparison to real Waaagh!s. If your 2000 point army has all six Klanz in it, that would suggest that your Warboss is actually leading a huge interplanetary empire and has chosen to fight a very small battle with a very politically correct army (which seems very unOrky), or every single battle you fight represents just one very small part of a truly massive, sprawling battle. This could be fun for some, but I don't think it's what most 40k games are meant to represent. Also, personally, I like the size scale of most games of 40k. I like to think of relatively small armies struggling for survival on long campaigns, etc.

Anyway, just my two teef as a veteran Ork player. I'm not saying the other view is wrong. It's just that I've seen a lot of people argue that incorporating multiple-Klan armies make more sense than single-Klan armies. I respect both viewpoints, and there are examples of both in the fluff. However, at the size scale of 40k (which is basically a warband- or skirmish-oriented game), I think one or two Klanz make sense. It's also easier to build a narrative with smaller numbers (e.g. - my Goff Warboss killed a Blood Axe Warboss and took over his Warband, which explains the Blood Axe division in my warband). It's also easier to theme the color scheme of your army. My Goffs wear black, with white checks and dags, and also red accents. My Blood Axes wear black and white kammo, with red accents. Still looks like one warband!

tl;dr: I like fewer Klanz better, and I think it's at least as fluffy as a multi-Klan band.

 Ugin, the Owl King wrote:
In the first case, Orkoid ecology would evolve over time, and eventually some real Orks would emerge. They would build a society, based upon pre-programmed knowledge and instinct. This society would of course be Balkanized, possibly even upon some facsimile of ideological lines (e.g. - Orks who want to go fasta vs. Orks who want to krump harda), but not by Klan lines (because these Orks don't know that Klanz exist). If these Orks successfully conquer this planet and are united under a powerful and charismatic Warlord, then they will have themselves a Waaagh! They will either form their own novel Klanz or be united under one Klan (the Klan of the Boss). In this scenario, there is no reason to assume that multiple Klanz that we've heard of would be fighting side by side. Also, don't forget that Orks tend to follow the biggest bloke around. So, if this smaller Waaagh! gets incorporated into a larger Waaagh!, there's no reason to assume that individual warbands would be broken up. In fact, there are plenty of examples of large Waaagh!s that are composed of multiple small warbands, with their integrity preserved.

In the second case, Orks are born into a pre-existing Waaagh! They would probably join a warband and/or a Klan. Since they are part of a galactic empire at this point, there should be plenty of like-minded individuals around. It would make sense that they would, at least to some extent, stick to their own. I'm not saying that discrete Ork groups don't fight together. But I am saying that 40k games (even Apocalypse games) are small in comparison to real Waaagh!s. If your 2000 point army has all six Klanz in it, that would suggest that your Warboss is actually leading a huge interplanetary empire and has chosen to fight a very small battle with a very politically correct army (which seems very unOrky), or every single battle you fight represents just one very small part of a truly massive, sprawling battle. This could be fun for some, but I don't think it's what most 40k games are meant to represent. Also, personally, I like the size scale of most games of 40k. I like to think of relatively small armies struggling for survival on long campaigns, etc.

There is plenty of fluff that contradicts this though. The Raid on Castorell Novem describes the local army to be Goff, Evil Suns and Deff Skullz, all part of a huge Waaagh! spanning an entire system, but locally (more or less) controlled by Mekboss Buzzgob and his Dreadmob. In many battles of the campain in IA:8 two or more of those fight at once.

Multiple of Ghazghkull Thrakka's episodes around the War of Armageddon describe him utilizing Freeboota, Snakebite and Bad Moon warbands, while he still drags his goff bodyguard around.

In the Battle for Hellsreach, Grimaldus describes the different Klanz without actually naming them, with a band of mixed orks (at least Blood Axes, Snakebites and Evil Sunz were implied) basically suiciding against the imperial trenches and then, later, a greater number of landing orks spreading their forces into camps under different banners, with the imperial guard flying bombing runs on red colored camps to take out their airforce. In later skirmishes across the city Goff and Snakebites often appeared in mixed groups.

In Dawn of War I, the warboss actually travels to each of the local clans to take out their leader and unite them under himself, always threatening the imperial forces with the great number of klanz behind him, before he even left his home planet.

So multiple clans are just as plausible as single clans, even in small battles. Orks also form warbands on the fly (old mob rule), so some remnants of a Bad Moon warband might have joined a Goff Warboss who also forced some looting deff skulls to tag along. Some Evil Sunz might have seen the upcoming battle from a distance and raced there for a good fight, while some Blood Axe kommadoz were already hiding nearby and join the fray.

Sorry, but none of that contradicts anything I said. First, I never said different Klans don't fight together, or that small warbands CANNOT be heterogeneous. I simply said that I doubt they would usually be heterogeneous. Second, every example that you list is on a larger scale than a 40k battle, except for the one that is a rules mechanic and not fluff. I feel like maybe you misinterpreted what I said as an argument that different Klanz don't fight together; that's not what I meant. I'm just saying that all of the interpretations are valid, and lots of small warbands probably consist of one Klan, or even none at all.

That being said, I think all kinds of things are possible given the fluff. I especially like the idea of a single mob that's cobbled together from differently-marked units. In a big warzone, lot's of different Orks will be represented, and I can easily envision this happening. It's probably realistically what the aftermath of a lot of games of 40k would be.

Go red. Not necessary evil Sunz, but from a paint job perspective red looks good with green.

I've got a core or Red nobz, a few other key units, warboss and so on. Then the rest of the force is freely painted, whatevery takes my fancy but then I pull in a few reds to hold the paint job together.
Units with leader have the leaders in Red to shown they are from the main clan.

I suppose I am saying go with Evil Sunz.

^ I gotta admit, Red stuff does look good on Orks.

Yellow can too, as can blue tattoos, but the other colours or blue weapons just don't do it for me at all.

As for the klan/level of ork society thing my understanding is that the klans are ingrained into them, so I can imagine there would be 'deffskulls' sporting blue paint and stealing stuff in a feral Ork mob

I went Bad Moons. I love the look of yellow accents and jaggies. Also Nasdreg is awesome if you can find some older fluff on him. (I really hope he makes it back into the codex the next go around).