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I decided to start an ork army up. Based purely on looks and theme... but if I can help it, I don't want to be tabled every game!

I started off with a couple of things.. I've ordered:

ORK CODEX
Big Mek with Shokk attack gun
2 boxes of lootas
Forgeworld Kill Krusha tank. (Again based purely on looks, and I play smaller games, and have been informed that it's cheaper with a versatile gun)

I'm going for a Badmoon themed army. So lots of Mek! , whilst sticking to the shootas, flash gitz, lootas, and anything shiny!

Can anyone help me build a list that isn't going to get curb stomped?...we normally play 1500 points or so... my friends ruthless with his tau, and if using Admech he uses a War Convocation... :/...
.

Good choice, Orks are a great army, even if just to kitbash and convert all your own stuff. Literally anything goes with Orks. As for the list. I can't help you too much, so I'll leave that to the better informed Dakkites.

Firstly welcome to the Orks, best race in the 40k universe and #1 in both fighting and looting. Sorry to hear that you went with those bad moon gitz who don't understand the proper value of fine looting but at least its not those blood axe gits who think they are umies.

Secondly you got yourself an uphill battle going up against those blue skin gits (Tau), and cybork umie boyz (admech). Your boyz are going to need to have some proper shootas, kunning tactics, and a bit of luck from Gork and Mork (this is why you use the blue paint). For making your army your going to need to figure out a game plan and how you want to execute on that plan. You should look to focus your army on a particular tactic and bring lots of that to create redundancy and target saturation.
Tankbustas are a must in any proper 7th edition Ork army as they provide you with the best anti vehicle shooting as well as being fairly good against everything else.
Warbikers are great strategy to get lots of T5 infantry with good mobility, shooting, and durability.
Trukk spam is good for flooding the opponent with lots of targets that can deliver infantry into the enemy's face quickly. Fill with boyz, tankbustas, and/or meganobz generally.
Meganobz pack a lot punch in CC with decently good durability for a fair price point.
Mek Guns are crazy durable to shooting with some of the cheapest T7 wounds in the game. (Lobbas, Kannons, Kustom Mega Kannons, Trakkor Beam being the good ones).
Lootas provide good all round ranged shooting for when you need volume of S7 shooting (typically at flyers, medium vehicles, MCs, or occasionally high toughness infantry.
Mega Armored Warboss with a Lucky Stikk is crazy powerful tank for a unit and is rather killy in close combat
Painboy is the Gift from Mork to all Ork kind. Any free HQ slots need to be filled with a Painboy as they provide a much needed durability boost to a unit for really cheap.

There are lots of tactics for Orks but the important things to remember is you need a way to deliver your orks to the enemy quickly and/or in relatively one piece for not a lot of points. Biker spam, Dread Mob walker spam, Trukk spam, Green Tide, Blitz Brigade, etc are common Ork strategies to get to chopping the shooty and shooting the choppy.

Welcome to the most fun you can have while losing. It's never boring!

Cancel that krushta now and change ik for the bursta im quite serious. The one you are ordering sucks and the other is worth its point in 7"D-pies

I don't like the bursta as much. (Looks wise) that's why I stated it was purely bought for that reason. Not only that, but for the size game I want, it was the better buy

I think you're going about starting this army exactly the way you should man! Buy the stuff you think looks cool first and go from there.

One piece of advice I would give you though is not to buy too much stuff at once. It sounds like you're gonna have a fair bit on your plate with the stuff you've already ordered, but it's still definitely manageable. The last thing you want to do is get bogged down with dozens of unpainted Orks glaring at you at your paint station!

One other piece of advice (and this is only my personal opinion so disregard it if you want) is to leave no Ork unconverted. No other race in 40k leaves you with so much scope for creating a truly unique force. You really can get away with almost anything, so let your creativity go mad

for the size game I want, it was the better buy

I love kill tanks, but they are expensive models ( if you don't scratch build them). So pls don't impulse buy them or buy them based on bad advise.

What size are you planning to play, what convinced you. I have fielded both numerous times and I can think of no situation when I would have the points to field the ~300 points LoW but could not upgrade it for 50-100 points to have one of the decent guns instead.

The Krusha seems like a bargain, but its gun is actually quite weak and doesn't bring something to the table that you the rest of your army could not bring cheaper and or better . At the end of the day end up paying ~300 points to shoot one of the following shots a turn at Bs2 with a orky version of the gets hot rule.
- S8 ap3 large blast ord
- S10 ap 2 armour bane
- S4 ap5 7" blast ignore cover
- S2 ap- hellstorm shred rend.

While you could have one of the following guns (with no stupid loader gubbins rule) if you went for a bursta.
-S7 ap3 Primary weapon 3d6" Radious, that is huge !
Or for 50 points more an
-SD Ap2 7" primary weapon blast.

I am not saying that you should not buy it if you really liked the model but my guess would be that you would most of the time use it as a count as battle wagon instead of a kick ass lord of war.

 Andy140491 wrote:
I decided to start an ork army up. Based purely on looks and theme... but if I can help it, I don't want to be tabled every game!

I started off with a couple of things.. I've ordered:

ORK CODEX
Big Mek with Shokk attack gun
2 boxes of lootas
Forgeworld Kill Krusha tank. (Again based purely on looks, and I play smaller games, and have been informed that it's cheaper with a versatile gun)

I'm going for a Badmoon themed army. So lots of Mek! , whilst sticking to the shootas, flash gitz, lootas, and anything shiny!

Can anyone help me build a list that isn't going to get curb stomped?...we normally play 1500 points or so... my friends ruthless with his tau, and if using Admech he uses a War Convocation... :/...
.

Love Bad Moons.

Good starting choices. I hate forge world but that aside, sounds good.

Also: probably want to have a warboss and some troops. hehehe.

Warboss is essential as Jancoran said. Also Boyz. You will need Boyz, several squads of trukk boyz would fit the mek theme rather well.

Well, some lists could be played without a warboss. The thing with orks is that you can have lots of lists but each of them is fairly limited cause they all rely on target saturation and timing.

A Warboss activates a lot of things for the army though. its supr hard to say no to one. You can. Not sure I'd ever want to .

If you want to go dakka instead of close combat t would be just a waste of points

 Jancoran wrote:
A Warboss activates a lot of things for the army though. its supr hard to say no to one. You can. Not sure I'd ever want to .

Well if you're running Mega Nob heavy lists like the Bully Boyz formation he doesn't bring that much since none of them can run due to SnP anyways.

 War Kitten wrote:
Warboss is essential as Jancoran said. Also Boyz. You will need Boyz, several squads of trukk boyz would fit the mek theme rather well.

Same goes for boys, you don't need them at all. Trukk boyz kinda suck vs a really shooty or choppy list and could be a useless point drainage if your isn't supporting them.
A decent shooting of MANZ list could be better of using 2 squads of grots ( perhaps even in a transport) in this edition
This is one of the cool things of playing orks if you are over the mental hurdle of point inefficiency and bad special rules you could play lots of builds.

Trucks are exceptionally useful as mobile terrain even when you DONT put anyone in them.

Ardboyz are what you put in trukks. exploding trukks are DEATH to orks. you gotta invest in Ard Boyz (which is just a boy whose armor you say is 'ard, pretty much, lol) to go in trukks but that informs the list a lot. some will say :not worth it". i probably dont agree.

Heres an example of where you might like to have trukks:

Trukks and Psykers and Trukks oh my!

 Andy140491 wrote:
I decided to start an ork army up. Based purely on looks and theme... but if I can help it, I don't want to be tabled every game!
Can anyone help me build a list that isn't going to get curb stomped?...we normally play 1500 points or so... my friends ruthless with his tau, and if using Admech he uses a War Convocation... :/...
.

A general note If your regular opponents play it casual ignore this post completely and play whatever you want to play. If they like to on the higher power lv and you don't want to be in high risk of being curb stomped until the codex is updated don't play orks.
This game is all about point efficiency and currently orks are really bad at it. If you are really set on playing orks and at not getting krumped by high power codexes you should be willing to: plan turns ahead all the time, pull out every dirty trick out in the book, not to waste points on things that "look good on the battle field", whatever you do never consider wasting huge amounts of points on ork psykers like Jancoran suggested and you might also have to play with the more dubious fw rules out there.

-The Krusha will not help in the grand sceme of not getting krumped. Its damage output is just not point efficient.
-Flash gits are not really worth their points -> They might look great but they will increase your risk of getting curb stomped
-Loota's and tank busta;s are good.
-MANZ can be good but having no Inv save can be really tricky for terminators agains some armies
-Ork moral is unusually bad for an 40k army you should not underestimate that.
-Mek guns are good on paper but really suffer from Ld7 you should take some measures to mediate this.
-Battle wagons and the cheaper gun wagons (Ia8) are quite sturdy if your opponent doesn;t bring lots of anti tank
-Single model Deffkopta units are good at mealstorm missions

most good ork things eat up heavy slots, so you need to go unbound or spend a lot of "useless points" on troops
-Grots are bad at combat or shooting but might be worth its points when you consider their hight and potential for cheap back for line objective sitter.
-a unit of plain 10 boys might also be not such a bad choise for an obective sitter. Sure they are kinda sucky and not as modelled for advantage as grots but they are also not that expensive and could survive and actually win some combats.
- Da rippa might be worth its points since he makes bikes troops. Units of bikes are cheap and not at all bad in the objective grabbing game.

-Skypad landingings pad is good if you consider a more immobile way of playing orks and are willing to place vehicles on it.
-One thing you might want to consider is a Kustom stompa (rules are in Imperial armour 8) or the more dubious and dirtiest trick of them all the Mek stompa "upgrade" out of the forge world dread mob ubdate.
Cheap stompa;s are good because they 1) are kinda tough. 2) Have a fearless bubble, you will need some source of fearless or semi high ld in order to survive any shooting volley. 3)They can carry insane weapons and some nice poorly written abilities such as an 12" auto charge. Just don't go overboard with them expensive ones are dangerous but can't match up with any sort of knight point for point.

My buddy has great luck with his biker mob, and has done some awesome conversions and additions.

take a unit of 30 Shoota Boys (EA if you have the points) and Mad Doc. Thank me later.