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I am curious about any weaknesses that people have noticed when fighting against Ork armies.
I realize that that's a pretty broad question, but just think of all the times in the past when you fought against orks, what might have caused your opponents army to really fall apart?
And if you play Orks, same question but reversed, what caused you're army/plan to fall apart.

What units/combinations of units didn't work well?
What units/combinations of units cause orks problems?
What overall is an area where the army struggles?
Is there a certain phase the army suffers in?
Are there certain races that Orks really seem to fail against?

You know, that kind of stuff is what I am after.
I am looking at collecting Orks, and my previous experience against Ork players has been against a fairly small number of players who weren't particularly useful for the kind of information I'm after.

INB4 anyone asks, the kind of list I want to run isn't really relevant here. I just want to know of things to look out for that could potentially make things hard in a very general sense.

Lack of boys/ and lack of focus are probably the biggest downfalls of the orks.

They apply both during list building and during the actual game.

Tough question!

I think first off they are not an easy army to play. They are very unforgiving of mistakes. If you are a beginner with Orks, you should expect to loose quite a bit while you find your feet, but try not to let that put you off! Once you get the hang of them, you'll start dishing out beatings!

Orks are a Quantity over Quality force. Lots of shots, lots of attacks, lots of casualties. This is why they're known as a "Bully Force", pick on the units weaker, and gang up on anything stronger.

When it comes to combat, Orks have low initiative so expect to go last. Pick your targets wisely - after you take casualties from Overwatch and the units CC attacks, will you have enough boyz to swing back and deal damge? If not, try and avoid that combat, or have another unit join as well. Getting the charge is important due to Furious Charge and Attack Bonuses.

Space Wolves have always been a pain in this regard, striking before your boyz and getting a huge amount of attacks due to Counter Attack. Curse them!

The Ork Codex is one of the rare ones, in that every unit has it's place. There are no "avoid at all costs" units (Mandrakes?). And there's more than one valid option for any given problem. This is why any army lists you see will vary alot, there is no "standard" list.

Most importantly it's a fun army. And fun to play against. There's always lots of action, lots of death. No one likes being tabled without killing any of the enemy, but when Orks table you, you at least feel like you've had a decent scrap!

The best way to fight orks is take us piecemeal. Oh, and we're quite vulnerable to telepathy due to low ld and things like dominate can screw your plans.

^ Agreed Orks can be very unforgiving if you lack focus.

Without proper support the army unravels. So certain units I feel are mandatory while others should never be taken competitively...

Units like meks to absorb challenges, mek gunz, painboyz for fnp and boyz blob support are very important while units like Deff Dreads/ Kans/ gork/morkanaut seem cool but are unfortunately not worth taking.


Knowing how to bubblewrap is also pretty important. You have the advantage of taking tons of space marine toughness bodies. In a recent game with Grey Knights, my opponent ran two dreadknights, my mek gunz were on the field and I knew he would shunt up and torch them/assault when he could, so I wrapped my mek gunz in a thick layer of fnp boyz and he had to chose between getting bombarded by mek gunz or getting tied up with boyz, he chose to get tied up. His mistake, it was stuck for the entire game

Orks rely on numbers, don't expect to hit anything with orks unless you take a lot of shots.

I often find my own boyz getting in the way and their large footprint becoming their worst enemy.

Numbers.. why are they important?

Initiative two means orkz swing last. Orkz have no saves most of the time. This means we simply remove orkz on the opponents terms and hope we have enough left to mop you up. Win the assault, get a failed Ld check, sweep our poor initiative.

Numbers, ork shooting, orkz,hit 33% of the time, you need a lot of dice to make mathematically consistent. On top of our wacky d6 stuff here and there shooting can vary.

Ork leadership sucks, like Kooaei said, most vulnerable to fear and Ld checks than anything else in the game.

No invulnerable saves makes us an easy kill in challenges to str8

With no really good invulnerable saves or reroll gimmicks most ork lists, short of a green tide, lucky stick boss, or warbike mob, can't protect the boss and his painboy through the first turn of dedicated fire.

Deny our assault. It's difficult because orkz can afford to have speed bumps when other armies can't. But it should be a goal.

 Rismonite wrote:
I often find my own boyz getting in the way and their large footprint becoming their worst enemy.

Second this. On boards with lots of terrain, the back boyz have an awful time getting any combat in.

This is especially bad on hammer and anvil boards.

Thanks guys this is exactly the kind of stuff I was after!

I don't know if I'd agree that Orks are an "easy kill" in challenges.

Most weapons that strike at initiative are not ap2. Therefore, a mega-armoured warboss will probably survive the initial flurry of attacks and respond with his own strength 10 ap2 attacks. Hell, even my boss Meganob with twin killsaws has taken the heads of supposed beatstick HQs for this reason. Add in da lukky stikk and you're laughing.

Warbosses are not the absolute hardest beatstick in the game, but you have to spend a LOT of points to get a better one.

Indeed. Nobz are not bad squad leader on squad leader challengers, too, simply because few sergeants/champions/what have you can reliably do two wounds - and if they don't, the Nob's power klaw will squash them flat.

But yes, it depends on your army, but if you're taking massed boyz, then terrain and bottlenecks are your enemy, along with area effect weapons, and being countercharged.

The damage potential difference between boyz getting charged and being the charger is immense. Get charged, and you have the damage potential of a ~10 point khorne cultist. Get the charge and you have the damage potential of an ~20 point space marine bezerker.

Accept that even a footslogging melee army needs fire support. There are some things you need to gun down before the lines meet.

Ultimately, the ork codex has a massive variety of good units, and lots of good formations scattered across Waaaggh! Ghazgkhull, The Red Waaaggh! and The Hour Of The Wolf. Whether you want your force mechanised or footslogging, walker-heavy or shooty, elite or horde, you can make a decent, fairly competitive stab at it.

Weakness: Relying on orks to survive a protracted engagement. No matter what it is it will easily be killed - boyz, MANZ, warboss.

My experience has been that Orks rely heavily on cover. If the table is wide opened we are punished far more then the humies.

Templates are my big enemy as an Ork player.
Flame templates on my open topped trukk/battlewagon are terrible.
Same with template/blast on top of my Lootas that I have hiding in the back lot.
Or when some one gets my artillery/mek gunz into assault.

I also have a hard time moving once I get out of my vehicle delivery system. If my opponent can strand my Boyz/Tankbustas and eat at me from the other corner of the board I usually don't recover.

Grots...

Anything with multiple flamers is a real problem, because they're so hard to charge. Every charged a unit of Wraighguard with D-scythes? An average of 10 overwatch hits! Ouch!

Ignores cover sucks as well as S6 or higher weaponry (as it negates our high tougness). Wave Serpents suck, down them as soon as you can with an assault by Kommandos or Trukk boys.

Fear causing enemies can be a problem due to low LD and Mob rule doesn't help there.

Redundancy is important. Most things need to be taken in huge numers or multiple units.

grendel083 wrote:Tough question!

I think first off they are not an easy army to play. They are very unforgiving of mistakes. If you are a beginner with Orks, you should expect to loose quite a bit while you find your feet, but try not to let that put you off! Once you get the hang of them, you'll start dishing out beatings!

Orks are a Quantity over Quality force. Lots of shots, lots of attacks, lots of casualties. This is why they're known as a "Bully Force", pick on the units weaker, and gang up on anything stronger.


Most importantly it's a fun army. And fun to play against. There's always lots of action, lots of death. No one likes being tabled without killing any of the enemy, but when Orks table you, you at least feel like you've had a decent scrap!

To begin with, these ^^
I am relatively new to orks and in a few games i've lost pretty soundly, and in a couple where I had them on a serious backfoot I made a couple mistakes that effectively did cost me the match. Its not that they require super-uber hard tactical play, its that while in general RUSH RUSH RUSH is the tactic.... there is a finesse within that, such as; Avoiding challenges, allowing your big characters to stomp face while a mek dies horribly to some SM beatstick. Getting charges right so that you get enough boyz to cause some damage, but also last it till their combat phase (which can be hard because with good rolls and huge numbers of dice sometimes you WILL obliterate them - I had 2 ork boyz I used in a multicharge that I was using as a combat anchor - while the PKs crushed some armour - those 2 boyz killed 4 scouts and caused them to run, leaving me open in his turn).

However, as mentioned we are bullies, pick targets weaker than you and basically pick apart the enemy that way. From that a weakness with orks is going Toe-to-Toe with equivilent roled units, ie dedicated assault units going against your assault units, deathstars going against your warboss and so forth.

Overall though every game is a great laugh with orks

Angrygrot wrote:^ Agreed Orks can be very unforgiving if you lack focus.

Without proper support the army unravels. So certain units I feel are mandatory while others should never be taken competitively...

Knowing how to bubblewrap is also pretty important. You have the advantage of taking tons of space marine toughness bodies. In a recent game with Grey Knights, my opponent ran two dreadknights, my mek gunz were on the field and I knew he would shunt up and torch them/assault when he could, so I wrapped my mek gunz in a thick layer of fnp boyz and he had to chose between getting bombarded by mek gunz or getting tied up with boyz, he chose to get tied up. His mistake, it was stuck for the entire game

Orks rely on numbers, don't expect to hit anything with orks unless you take a lot of shots.

These ^^

Makinit wrote:My experience has been that Orks rely heavily on cover. If the table is wide opened we are punished far more then the humies.

lack of cover will really take its toll, you have loads of units in general, so ample cover provides a decent save to many of our saveless/weak AV units.

Solar Shock wrote:

lack of cover will really take its toll, you have loads of units in general, so ample cover provides a decent save to many of our saveless/weak AV units.

Does that mean that MSU is an option for orks? - units to provide cover saves, units to soak up overwatch?

5 lootas
10 shoota boys
5 tankbustas
4 warbikes

are all about 70 points, provide some reasonable shooting and cover all available slots apart from hq so it is easy to get a lot of units on the table. There are cheaper options available as well (grots, single mek guns, single deffcoptas)

Not really. Don't forget, you're just ld7. And even if you pass mob rule, you'll kill a few more boyz yourself.

 koooaei wrote:
Not really. Don't forget, you're just ld7. And even if you pass mob rule, you'll kill a few more boyz yourself.

MSU is an option, but probably not as a whole theme.
Min grot squads for cover, screening and such.
Min Koptas for objective grabbing, overwatch eating and blocking charge paths.

But in general you wont want to say bring min boyz just because you can. As koooaei said, they will likely run once hit by a few deaths, followed by mob rule deaths

Lootas however, different story. They have some magic numbers and occasionally 2x5 man > 10man IMO! If you have a 10 man squad 3 dead and your taking a check, in a 5 man its 2 dead and a check, thus in this case 2 x5 man could 'potentially' be more effective. But in general you'd want like 13 over 12, thus making 3 deaths =/= 25% so it would require 4 deaths to take a check. the same applies to 8 and 9. 8 requires 2 deaths, 9 requires 3. These are sweet spots that basically help reduce the likelihood of taking a check simply by getting the model count right.

MSU can be useful, but not in the sense that MSU for a DE player allows him to saturate target threats. We already can manage to saturate targets, MSU for orks is about providing a cover save to say a very large unit. Another example is;

Snikrots formation;
bringing 1 min 5 man squad with no upgrades, placing them in front of the max squad, the min squad elects not to shoot the turn it arrives, thus getting stealth and something else (cant remember what), giving them a good cover save and also applying a good save to the 15 man squad you most likely did shoot with

In most games I bring a min unit of grots. They are good for cover. I would rather you use a round of shooting to kill my 35pt grot unit than shooting at my core units.

Solar Shock wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Not really. Don't forget, you're just ld7. And even if you pass mob rule, you'll kill a few more boyz yourself.

MSU is an option, but probably not as a whole theme.
Min grot squads for cover, screening and such.
Min Koptas for objective grabbing, overwatch eating and blocking charge paths.

But in general you wont want to say bring min boyz just because you can. As koooaei said, they will likely run once hit by a few deaths, followed by mob rule deaths

Lootas however, different story. They have some magic numbers and occasionally 2x5 man > 10man IMO! If you have a 10 man squad 3 dead and your taking a check, in a 5 man its 2 dead and a check, thus in this case 2 x5 man could 'potentially' be more effective. But in general you'd want like 13 over 12, thus making 3 deaths =/= 25% so it would require 4 deaths to take a check. the same applies to 8 and 9. 8 requires 2 deaths, 9 requires 3. These are sweet spots that basically help reduce the likelihood of taking a check simply by getting the model count right.

MSU can be useful, but not in the sense that MSU for a DE player allows him to saturate target threats. We already can manage to saturate targets, MSU for orks is about providing a cover save to say a very large unit. Another example is;

Snikrots formation;
bringing 1 min 5 man squad with no upgrades, placing them in front of the max squad, the min squad elects not to shoot the turn it arrives, thus getting stealth and something else (cant remember what), giving them a good cover save and also applying a good save to the 15 man squad you most likely did shoot with

2 5 man squads of lootas is also less volatile than a 10 man squad - and you have the option of firing at another unit if you did enough damage with the first. As you say orks are bullies, and you are aiming to concentrate all your fire on a small number of units to eliminate them. I take your point on boys though it might be better to field them in larger blocks, but for list building convenience I find it easy to think of 1850 as 25 70 point blocks plus a hundred points for a warboss or a big mek and some tankbustas.

the real situation I had facing orks was the vehicles; trukks makes'em boys go in melle faster, but blow'em up and you're looking at 1 or 2 rounds where you can just blast away and kill,em, AND you get overwatch as well.

I'm restarting my orkz and MY biggest problem was what people have already touched on:
1. Not enough boyz!
2. No focus (Has a few walkers, few mecs, nobs, meganobs....)
3. Transports help quite a bit to get them to your destination and are cheap

The weakness of Orks is redundancy. You must have it.

Also focus, as previously stated.

If you're building a list, you really need to go for broke on your theme. It's very difficult to sprinkle a little of this or a little of that in a list that's primarily something else. In a foot slogger list, you don't want a lot of vehicles, or they can get in the way of your sloggers. And if the vehicles wreck, they become a spike strip that will slow you down later on down the line, thus doing more harm than good.

If you make a walker list, you don't have too much room for other stuff, or it takes away from the things you'll need to make the walkers work. If you bring too many boyz, they may roadblock the walkers from getting where they need to be, and vice versa.

Then comes redundancy. Since stuff will get wiped easily for us, you want backup squads. Multiple threats is key. If you're running Mek Gunz, run two mid sized batteries to force them to split fire in two directions, or even if they drop pod in to assault, they have to dedicate multiple pods to take them out, and hopefully one will last long enough to get those shots off until reinforcements chase off the deep striking unit.

Bring enough power klaws to get the job done, but not so many that they eat up all your points. (pretty pricey upgrades).

In Trukk Rush lists, have enough Trukks so they can't break them all in one turn.

In general, I feel one huge weakness for Orks is we have a little too much in the way of unreliable shooting. I was desperatly hoping they would put more Grot like units in the book, or perhaps give Grots some kind of upgrade tree to make them more...well...appealing. They have the best shooting in our army, but they lack any sort of weapon to make use of it.

Yes, Grots man the mek gunz, but that isn't the same. It's a boon of course. And the changes we got for the Mek Gunz is huge too...many options. Though to this day, I want Grot snipers. :I

Despite all odds, for me footsloggas have proven weak. My opponent just took Thunderfire Cannon and obliterated everything. Also, footsloggas are SLOW GODDAMMIT THEY ARE SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!! Just reaching your enemy takes more than half of the game.