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I have played Orks (on and off - mostly off, TBH) since 4th edition.

A recurring theme with Orks is that they are intended as the "comic relief" army of the 40k universe with unreliable weapons, random explosions, etc. But based on the games I have played since getting back into the hobby, I would argue otherwise.

I'm not saying that Orks are necessarily the best or most competitive army overall, but I feel their reputation for unreliability is undeserved, at least in the current meta/7th edition.

For example:

1) Psychic powers. Many other armies rely on psykers. I am still getting the hang of how the psychic rules work, because it just seems like my opponents roll a load of dice then nothing happens, which leaves me scratching my head for why they invested so many points.

2) Shooting. Orks compensate for their low ballistic skill with the sheer number of shots, and their weapons are actually pretty good when they do hit. This means that I have a rough idea of how much damage I can do in a round of shooting, and it tends to average out due to the sheer number of dice I have to roll, so the fact that most of them miss doesn't really matter. Other armies might be more accurate, but it all rests on a knife edge, and one bad roll can really ruin their day. There are a couple of gimmicky weapons that still fit the stereotype, but not the core weapons.

3) Assault. There are lots of assault-oriented armies out there, some of which are even more killy in this regard than Orks. However, Orks have an awesome combination of numbers, open-topped vehicles and assault weapons which gives them the edge in many situations. You can get them into combat more reliably than, say, genestealers or daemons, and their assault weapons enable them to soften the enemy up first.

Thoughts?

Agreed, especially since painboys can join any squad now and the lucky stick... Oh how I hate that.

What would you say is the most unrelable army now then.

I think that's just about always been the case. Orks aren't exactly unreliable as an army. They've almost always had the ability to bring a competitive (and reliable) list to the table.

What Orks have is some of the most random weapons in the game. The bubblechukka (artillery), deffgun (Lootas), shock attack gun (big mek), smasha gun (artillery), snazzgun (flashgitz), and zzap gun (artillery) all have a random ap or random strength. Not to mention any of their 1-shot weapons like rokkits or kustom mega weapons only have a 1/3 chance of hitting.

I'd say Daemons are a lot more random that orks nowadays.
Wish they'd bring more random back to the Orks. I want Pulsa Rikkits!

Okay first off, let me say that I actually enjoy playing Orks and I think the current codex is an upgrade from the previous one.

 Krusha wrote:

1) Psychic powers. Many other armies rely on psykers. I am still getting the hang of how the psychic rules work, because it just seems like my opponents roll a load of dice then nothing happens, which leaves me scratching my head for why they invested so many points.

They are doing it wrong. At worst, they should be equivalent to an extra heavy/special weapon, at best they should crazy combos TPing death starts around the board, or making them invisible.

2) Shooting. Orks compensate for their low ballistic skill with the sheer number of shots, and their weapons are actually pretty good when they do hit. This means that I have a rough idea of how much damage I can do in a round of shooting, and it tends to average out due to the sheer number of dice I have to roll, so the fact that most of them miss doesn't really matter. Other armies might be more accurate, but it all rests on a knife edge, and one bad roll can really ruin their day. There are a couple of gimmicky weapons that still fit the stereotype, but not the core weapons.

Orks individually are terrible at shooting. Using huge masses of shots to actually accomplish anything is just compensating. Unless you are using Tankbustas or Lootas, most of that fire is just bolter equivalent. So yeah, okay against lightly armored foes, just like every other gun in the game.

30 Boyz shooting so 10 can hit, and 5 can wound, isn't all that impressive.
10 Boyz shooting so 3 can hit and 1, maybe 2 wound, is just something you do so they aren't standing around doing nothing.

Orks unfortunately are the bottom of the barrel for competitive right now. Sure wagon spam is good but any good list will be able to shimmy around av14 and blow up the rear armour. Green tide is the only thing that holds them in there cause 100 ork boyz, even Footslogging, is a pain to deal with. Trust me I don't like it either but the one thing to fix orks would be to change mobrule.

Everyones down on orks lately. Depressing.

I played against Orks last night and lost, though mostly it was due to my tactical stupidity. I Pask did not get to fire his punisher cannon a single time all game long, and got krumped by Ghazkull because I had conscripts in between them which allowed him a slingshot through assaulting them. I was kicking myself so hard for it.

I had a chapter master with the Gorgon's Chain in a squad of Sternguard that had dropped down, they were supposed to drop on top of a building but scattered down right next to it, in front of a trukk full of MANz. Needless to say I popped the trukk as the only viable target but my CM got slaughtered in one turn. Rolled 2 2's and 2 1's on his 3+ invuln.

I continued to get screwed over by my dice as the game continued. His list was really good though, but alot of his gak was him making 8/10 assault charges through ere we go and calling his WAAAGH. He brought 3 of those AV14 assault vehicles with truck boys that had a 4+ armor save and a painboy in each squad. One squad had Ghazzkull. He had bikers too that seemed to pass every save they needed to make and jinked on the charge and gak.

The real icing on the cake was his Big Mek shooting some gun that rolls 2D6 for strength at my blob sitting behind an ADL, rolled a double 5, and teleported into combat with my 30 man blob that only had a regular commissar in it. Since he was on a bike, I could only wound him on 6's and he had a 4+ armor save so after 5 rounds of combat I only did a single wound to him, and that one single guy tied up my blob all game until he wiped me off the board.

Needless to say, if your opponent is an idiot and rolls horrible like me then you can win as orks easily XD.

Maths says that rolling so many dice at once reduces the range of expected deviation from the average. They're reliable because you can better predict what you'll get out of each unit. Other armies with smaller model counts vary more wildly around the average.

I don't think Orks are all bad by any means. In a tournament game last September I lost a DA Company Master to a Wierdboy with the 'Edbanger power. I only managed a draw in that game because of that and the fact that I am not that good at the game yet.

 ultimentra wrote:

The real icing on the cake was his Big Mek shooting some gun that rolls 2D6 for strength at my blob sitting behind an ADL, rolled a double 5, and teleported into combat with my 30 man blob that only had a regular commissar in it. Since he was on a bike, I could only wound him on 6's and he had a 4+ armor save so after 5 rounds of combat I only did a single wound to him, and that one single guy tied up my blob all game until he wiped me off the board.
.

This is why I play orks. Because if im not dropping a STR10 vortex on your meaty unit, im teleportin ma self into combat! Both so orky I can't decide which I prefer!
I like random fun things.... especially in a game based upon dice rolling where you can lose simply because you roll 'badly'. Why not add a bit of spice and fun?

I won a game last edition (my first returning game to 40k) by ramming a building with a BW deffrolla, dropping the AV value low enough that my 19 boyz inside with sluggas could actually damage it with STR4 then pistoled the building till it collapsed and killed most of his marines. drive by shootin' ftw.

oh and my icing was that it was this BW; which I spent hours converting and building, so I was very pleased with its performance (it had been finished painting by then)

I dont find orks to be at the botoom of competitiveness

I just had a tournament this weekend (2*1000pts) with orks + DE and we went 3rd overall (loosing only a single name facing TAU/DAR who managed to seize and roll really well)

It may not be as easy to play as wraithspam, serpentspam, bikerspam, centstar or such, but it can be quite efficient.
Orks are cheap, orks are fast, orks can be deadly, you just have to keep them cheap and have enough threats so a few survive.

For instance at 1k point i throw :

Big boss, lucky stick, MA
10 boys, nob, BS, PK, truk
10 boys, nob, BS, PK, truk
3 Meganobz, truk
7 tankbustas, truk
7 tankbustas, truk
5 bikers, nob, PK
5 bikers, nob, PK

That is 7 threats that are in your area at the end of my first turn.
3-4 will likely die, but then its killing time

Yeah...I really don't get the ork hate. It's a great codex full of fun, competitive options. The only thing pushing tournament players away from the codex is the time restrictions of competitive play, which make hoard armies much less appealing.

It's a big problem, but it doesn't mean the ork codex is unable to compete.

 Voidwraith wrote:
Yeah...I really don't get the ork hate. It's a great codex full of fun, competitive options. The only thing pushing tournament players away from the codex is the time restrictions of competitive play, which make hoard armies much less appealing.

It's a big problem, but it doesn't mean the ork codex is unable to compete.

I think the greatest shame was that the change to the allies table left us no allies that didn't have 1 eye open. I have seen people mostly complain that running a pure orks competitive list is almost non existant thing, but then I agree with the statement above, they can be a great addition to anything, as the provide cheap throwaway units that are certainly dangerous if left to their own devices.

I also think that current tournament rules work against horde armies. I can understand their ruling to prevent major cheese with other dex's, but in reality, I could easily field a few CAD's for relatively low points costs. So with the other dex's limited by say 2 CAD max, with orks, i'd probably still have another 500 pts left that I could easily throw into another CAD, but I can't, I literally have to find the points and put them in the remaining slots I have even if I would much prefer them into a slot that is already full.

For example, I actually think a few CAD's focussed on the big guns, with lobba's, KMK's potentially smasha and bubble would be a force to be reckoned with. I mean, imagine all the HS slots full, so like 9x 5 batteries at 35 pts each, thats 1500 pts, with the rest of the CAD you could take it up to 2000 pts. Yeh 9x5 is probably a little too much you would probably want like 1200 pts of HS slot then 800 elsewhere, but imagine facing that? an army thats throwing out 15 plasma blasts, 15 large blasts and 15 high Str shots, all with T7 and ablative wounds? Would you really have the firepower to take that down before it crippled you? Probably not like auto-win and easy play, but would be incredibly fun. It also negates alot of the orks low BS skill, and who cares about scatter? your gona hit something! 5 KMK's? will on average 1.66 direct hits, so over 2 turns that's 3 direct hits, any DSer's are likely toast if they dont spread, then the scattered ones still have potential anyway.

I just think in reality orks are limited by tournament rules because most units are cheap. We can't like Nids take some really powerful expensive units like flyrants that will do work. I mean gorka and morka are pricey points wise but in general are pretty poor both rule wise and in reality. No assault vehicle? wtf? so anything inside has to be meks really. KMK is nice, but you only have 1 shot and the 3D6 shoota is good but again not effecient on the model.

Orks are Allies of Convenience with Chaos Space Marines, so no One Eye Open rule.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Orks are Allies of Convenience with Chaos Space Marines, so no One Eye Open rule.

Lol yeh but at the moment the general consensus is that the only army worse than orks, is CSM haha. And even then some people say CSM are better than orks.

CSM are only better if they are propped up on IA13. It's sad really.

On the subject of volume of dice, hoard armies and luck:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/625779.page

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Orks are Allies of Convenience with Chaos Space Marines, so no One Eye Open rule.

ah forgot that. That is useful, but yeh sadly I dont particularly like the latest CSM dex. Not because its not 'strong' but because it just doesn't seem very interesting :/
I'll have a look at IA:13

I'm with adamsouza here. You need to invest tons of points in boyz just to make them barely useful. In the end you're devoting 1/3 of your points to achieve what any other army does with 1/5 of theirs. Sure boyz have a slight bonus in close combat, but one that's offset by t-shirt armor and dismal initiative, and we still pay dearly for it.

And let's not mention Mob rule...

Mob rule has nothing to do with Orks being competitive or not. At worst I've lost a handful of ork boyz with the new mob rules at best they have made my large blobs much more resilent then the older rules. No game I've played was decided because of the new mob rules and it is essentially a fearless blob because of it. It's not like our old rule was so much better that Orks were competitve before.

My issue with the codex. Ghazskull is overpriced and hardly the a good choice for what he does I rather they drop his waagh based 2+ invul to 4+ and allow him to call waagh every turn.

Mega armour nobs are still overpriced they cost more then terminators and yet are worse and terminators are largely considered inefficient themselves. I can see a 5 point drop.

Half our hs choices are based on walkers in an edition where nonsuper heavy walkers without saves still suck. Personally I think both the mork and gorkanaut could have the kff option and a 30 points drop on both. Deff dreads should come with grot riggers naturally and come with and ability to purchase 2 per slot. Killa kans just need To lose cowardlygrot rule.

The old trukk ramshackle rule was better for trukk survivability. If your going to make av10 transports with no save of any kind at the very least reliably allow that vehicle to downgrade pen hit to glances. They will still vaporize to bolter Fire but at least it doesn't take out the contents with it.

Do this and ghaz is a good foot army leader, walkers are more survivable cheaper and more accessible. Trukks are a bit more reliable and safer and mega nobs rush becomes a bit more usable since it doesn't take all your points to create a bully boys list without much support. Even if they can die fairly easy still. But none of the above have anything to do with mob rules.