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I will ask you Dakkaites with experience with and against orks in tournament settings of how to overcome some of the greater and common obstacles when facing highly competitive armies.

The specific challenges
In a game where gunlines and shooting / ranged attacks dominate how does orks handle the following:

# 1 Tau gunlines, AM gunlines and gravturion stars can diffuse a lot in one round. What is orks tools to not only be swept off the table? Do you think that the battle wagon and trukk spam is enough to get through the inferno, and if not then what?

# 2 Invisibility is the bomb, especially on something that is tenacious and ultimately will form something like a death star. It put an end to my favorite weapons smasha gun, which now only hits on 6s. Most other orks will be indifferent as only a downgrade from BS 2 to 1. I think that lootas will be prime devices to do something about this and they can also act as AA at the same time.

# 3 Wraithknights (T8, 3 +) and riptides (T6, 2 +) are hard to shoot down, and do not plan to get caught up in the melee. Several of these make the exercise even more complicated. Here smasha guns do well.

# 4 AV 14 has always been one of the major obstacles to orks (there is no easy solution as BS4 MELTA or launched weapons). You can make an army targeted to tear AV14 from each other, but in tournament lists, there are also other considerations to take, so pretty much this entire list. My two bids will be smashagun spam or S8 + powerfists / killsaws in the face. It requires one or more ork units that traverses no man's land and come unscathed on the other side. In the case of land raiders and imperial knights S8+ killsaws are [i]the weapon of choice, and tank bustas with meltabombs are also good.[/i]

# 5 Chapterhamsters. They are everywhere!! One can not ignore the fact that there will be armies with chapter masters in a tournament.

# 6 Daemon summoning and screamerstars / drone stars. Most attacks will bounce off 2++ or 3 ++ saves. What the heck does a happy orc about this? A smart warboss keeps weirdboyz out of the list.

# 7 Wave Serpent spam. Lootas excel at glancing them to pieces.

The Meta in 7th
With MoW missions have played changed from being about late game objective grapping, to be a game where you regularly scores VP. There is much talk about the super scoring troops in transport fits best into the game, for example. 10 marines in rhino, whose main task is to play MSU and could put on three objectives, and each require relatively much firepower for the opponent if he wants to remove them. The easy answer is to say orks should just be spamming trukk boyz and warbikes. I think that these groups are quite busy already.

My take on orks strengths
In the new codex orks have an easier time making successful charges. Re-roll one dice, Waaagh! and boarding planks.
Challenge has changed. It is now a bad idea to send characters against the orks and challenge their way through the greenskin command structure.
FMC has been changed ... which mostly are in favor of gun lines. Which in turn means orks won't be troubled as much by FMCs.
Orks have new flashgits. Their 3 S5 AP D6 shot allows them to shoot down/risk the opponent take great losses on everything that has T6, 2 + save or less.
Orks have mek gunz, with weapons that can shoot everything between heaven and earth. They do, however come short when playing against an army with invisibility.
Gorkanaut and Morkanaut. Are they actually an asset to the army?
Minor adjustments in units, such as easier access to rokkitlaunchas.


Does it sound completely silly to solve the challenge above with a mix of trukk boyz and warbikes to press forward quickly and tankbustas, lootas and flash gits to provide firepower. Elites, solid attack and HS should then be used (almost) exclusively to provide firepower. It will obviously work well with an aegis defense line. At least orks circumvent grav guns by having 6+ saw on most of the line (heh).

Solutions from tournament environment are received with a smile.

Please help me out here. There are real life $$$ at stake when shopping for tournaments.

What type of tournaments are you expecting to go to? Will they mostly be using maelstrom, or will it be more traditional missions?

I'm going to NOVA this year, which to my understanding has maelstrom-esque missions, and I'm very interested in discussion on this as well. I've come to basically the same assessment that you have OP, but that's just theoryhammering from a relatively competitive meta, rather than actual tournament-going. If any tournament-goers have some insight, please do share


(aka BUMP)

With the exception of Invisibility (which everyone hates) the new Ork book has a counter to all of 7 items mentioned in the OP. A lot of it all depends on how tied you are to the old playstyle of orks vs the newer one.

For example: MSU 'Ard Boyz in trukks works well against tau gunlines due to the large number of threats. Tankbustas do wonders against MCs, AV14 and MEQ. Meganobz with Killsaws laugh at Wave Serpents.

You just need to relook at each threat and identify what best addresses it. Once that list is compiled, see spans more than 1 of those threats and begin building the list.

One thing I want to point out though - while I love Mek Gunz, the likelihood of me using them in a tournament is doubtful as Gretchen are LD5 and Wave Serpents cause pinning tests which would mitigate them too easily.


EDIT:
With all of that said - Tournaments in 7th are still new and Orks even newer. So at the moment, it's really hard to outright predict where Orks will be in the tournament scene and it also matters heavily on what the tournaments go up against. Orks may need to bring in allies to ensure that some weaknesses are thoroughly covered as the meta evolves.

Awesome guys. The easy solution for the mek gunz Ld is to put a Ld 7-8 guy in there.

At the moment the local tournament meta is ETC'esque, so as hard lists as possible with limits to the amounts of FOC's available.

Tourny friends, help me a little more here. Even if it is only qualified guesstimates.

Iam going to the Dutch Grand Tournament with this list (dont got the rulespack yet, so it might change):

PRIMARY ORK CODEX DETACHMENT (ork horde)

WARLORD HQ: Big mek + SAG + eavy armor + 2 ammo grots + Big choppa + Thinking Kap
HQ: Big mek + SAG + eavy armor + 2 ammo grots + Big choppa
HQ: Warboss + Mega armor + Lucky Stikk + bospole + cybork

* Extra HQ: mek with KMB
* Extra HQ: mek with KMB
* Extra HQ: mek with KMB

TROOPS: 16 grots + 1x squig
TROOPS: 10 grots
TROOPS: 10 grots

ELITE: 3 Mega Armor Nobs*
* Battle Wagon + ram + 2x rokkits + Boarding plank

FAST ATTACK: Dakkajet
FAST ATTACK: 3 buggies

HEAVY SUPPORT: Battle wagon+ram + 2x rokkits
HEAVY SUPPORT: Battle wagon+ram + 2x rokkits
HEAVY SUPPORT: 10 loota's + 1 mek

ORK THRAKKA SUPPLEMENT ALLIED DETACHMENT

HQ: Big mek + SAG + eavy armor + 2 ammo grots + Big choppa + Mega Force Field
* Extra HQ: mek with KMB

TROOPS: 10 grots

ELITE: 5 tankbusta's + 3x bombsquigs

HEAVY SUPPORT: 10 loota's + 1 mek


It's not the best ork list but it got sum nice things:

* I always pick 2x strategic warlord traits (thinking Kap) and go for 3x units infiltrate and/or +1 reserves and +1 seize. My grots can protect the battlewagons from melta droppods by deploying around them with infiltrate.

* Loota's go in the battlewagons and the SAG Big meks go with the meganobs (slow and purposefull) in their battlewagon.

* Also possible to deploy the 16 grots in front of the battle wagon with the 4+ inv save KFF big mek and the mega armor warboss. Mega armor warboss got a 2+/4++ reroll save so its really nice against wave serpent/necron shooting. big mek gives a 4++ save to all the battle wagons to.

* I got 3 SAG for fun and giggle's, but when I let them join the tankbusta's the got 'ordnance' and 'tank hunter', so thats a nice option! Got those big choppa's so I could still hit vehicles 'rear armor' when the teleport themselves.

* If i got infiltrate then those tankbusta's could earn their points back with "Glory Hogs". Also possible to add those 4xmeks with KMB for maximum effect.

* meks with KMB could also join the Mega armor nobs for cheap wounds + repair options.

* Dont like the dakkajet but it's got a nice paintjob so i need to bring it.

* Units in the thrakka supplement can deep strike on a 6+, so thats a nice option for tankbusta's and loota's.

I dont got them models but the only thing i would like to add/change are the: ork bikers + warboss on a bike + powerclaw +lucky stickk