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So, I'm just curious about this, but in my area, or at least my gaming circle, I've noticed that I am one of very few active ork players.

I was discussing this at the local GW store, and the manager confirmed that I'm about the only ork player that comes in, at least for 40k, there's several AoS ork players.

I'm just curious if that's a common theme, or if it's somewhat unique.

I really don't want to get into how a thread complaining about how bad orks are - I get it - but I'm honestly a little surprised, I suppose. CSM are arguably worse, but I see those pretty consistently.

So, I guess my question is: Are ork players rare in your area? Have they always been, or did it seem like the new codex drove people away?

It just seems a bit sad, as I still enjoy my orks. I like modeling for them, and I still have fun with games. And I still do pretty well, honestly, even with fun lists.

At the FLGS across town from me there are probably 3+ Ork players I see playing fairly regularly which isn't including myself (shelved the boyz for a few weeks). At my old FLGS which closed up shop I was the only regular Ork players but there was also a regular who would come in to work on his Ork models and custom conversions but he almost never played the game.

Well where I used to live I was one of maybe 3 people that played Orks as a primary army, the other work players had them as side projects that would rarely come out to play, funnily enough Chaos was very popular in comparison. I don't know the scene where I'm currently at.

Ive only known one other Ork player beside mtself in my area at all, and i only.saw him my first week ever at my FLGS, never again.
Though, i don't think the lack of players has anything to do with the generally 'bad' codex and has more to.do with people wanting to play one of the more serious, driven factions as opposed to the guys the are just.in for a good fight.
I also think that the model.line has something to do.with the lack of orks. There's very little uniformity between ork armies. I bet that if there was a 40k Ork convention than none of.us would all have the exact same color scheme, models used, or even recipie for ork skin! And other players like having the same consistency between other armues that lets them know that they're modelling and painting 'correctly'

Myself and maybe two or three others. That's it out of about 40 40k players

Orks are the most popular army in my local meta. Out of our 20 or so regular players, We've got 3 Regular Ork players with 3 more that play them from time to time. The only other army that comes close is space marines proper (2 regular, 5-6 irregular), and Space Wolves (3 Regular, no Irregulars).

I've been playings orks alot on the tournament scene this season, and typically I'm seeing about 1 Ork player per about 12 tourney participants. Less frequent than Eldar or Space Marine proper, but much more frequent than IG, Tyranids, Blood Angles, Dark Eldar, or Skitarii/Ad Mech.


I know that GW has put some effort into making Orks less fun to play, but in all my travels as a 40K player, one constant is that people really, really want to play Orks, and the people who do really love the models and the fluff. The only army that I've seen generate a similar level of passion is Sisters of Battle.

3 or 4.... I think. I know for a fact there are 2 of them but every now and then 2 or 3 more show up (not completely regular ones). There are enough regular Orks that there is a Stompa and a series of trukks and such in the FLGS display case that is used by any one of them for battles.

A lot I, it might even be as high as 20% but most have their army shelved.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The % drops however if you only look at tournament players.

There used to be 4 in 5-th edition. I'm the only one remaining after 6-th. And i'm playing orks only 50% of the time. The good thing is that i bought their stuff for cheapo. The bad thing is that 50% of this stuff is not very useful.

Our meta is quite competitive. > half of the players run some sort of psy deathstars and orks can do nothing about it. A lot of others have a bunch of knights and once again, orks can do nothing about it outside of meganobz and tankbustas (before the faq - now only meganobz) and none of those who played orks before own any of these. They were mostly running a bunch of footslogging boyz with aobr warbosses, a battlewagon or two and stuff like that. So, i guess, they were tired of facing hard counters all the time and decided it wasn't worth it. 1 stopped playing 40k, another one moved to fb, another one started playing sm with libconclave and the last one is me. I moved to bullyboyz in looted trukks (mostly club rhinos and fishes). Used to play oldschool footslogging hordes with mek guns in the backline. But footslogging boyz just don't cut it anymore. I didn't think i'd ever say that but ork boyz are kinda overpriced for what they do now. Especially when on foot.

It's really hard to get excited to play them now. The new codex is just awful, to the point where you feel like youre being punished for running it. Why on earth GW decided to scrap the old 4-5th ed mob rule is beyond me. It was simple, made sense, and worked. Keep in mind the few guys around me play pretty casual, and yet I still can't see much to the orks that works anymore.

Add on all the other issues, especially customization, which you'd think orks would have in spades yet many units don't, make them less appealing now. About the only place I'm tempted to use them is kill team, and even there it can be tricky coming up with a good list.

I hate to say that is the main reason, but honestly I think it is. Before the current ork codex came out, I remembered seeing a lot more ork players anytime I visited an FLGS. Now they seem pretty rare. Orks is all about having a good time and a laugh. It's kind of hard to do that when it seems like your codex is doing everything in its power to make you fail or take away control.

Just about everyone I know has an Ork army, including me. My army is around 7k points, I have 3 miniature cases filled with them.

I don't know anyone who actually plays Orks. There are a lot of reasons for this, but basically no one wants to field an army made up of just Lootas, Boys and Bikes. Those seem to be the only useful units in the Codex, but they are too squishy.

I don't know of more than 5 and I'm one of them and two don't really play much now as far as I know. I don't play as often as I used. Mostly due to having an hour forty travel time to the shop.
Or two hours to my good friends home for a good game.
Just last month started a series of 1850 point games with one of my more competitive friends, he's braking in his White Scars, which have been the most enjoyable games I've played with him in two years. His Tau are no fun at all to play against. I should have him beat in a few more games.
Through him I'm developing a more competitive build which I'm hopeful will stand up to his Tau some what. Ork shooting is becoming impressive. (Oh wait..No. it's only partly impressive because every unit in his army is min/max'd.)

With the release of Traitor's Hate I don't think there is any solid grounds to argue orks are better off than chaos...

But to the question at hand...active? Probably 1 or 2 over two towns and roughly 25 or so people. There are a good number of people with ork armies however, they just don't/rarely play them.

One guy has played orks since forth and while he switches between orks, eldar, daemons, and guard regularly orks definitely get their fair share of his table time.

Another guy was undefeated with nectons till very recently and picked up orks as something to play when he's not playing crons.

I have an army that I use the ork rules for (mad max themed humans), but haven't played them in a while as I have a lot more fun with almost every other army I have access to.

One guy got back into orks recently though I don't know if he's played more than a game or two in the past year...another guy has a massive ork army but doesn't play warhammer anymore...another guy has a good sized ork army but I don't think he's played in a year due to work and school...and another guy has picked up orks for when his son gets old enough.

TheSnowmanInHell wrote:
With the release of Traitor's Hate I don't think there is any solid grounds to argue orks are better off than chaos...

what's the logic here

 koooaei wrote:

TheSnowmanInHell wrote:
With the release of Traitor's Hate I don't think there is any solid grounds to argue orks are better off than chaos...

what's the logic here

Traitor's Hate gave Chaos a ton of options, and new psychic powers, and new formations and relics. It put them in a better position than Orks who actually lost some stuff with the newest WAAAGH Ghazgul release, and still have the same mostly worthless and unwieldy formations.

tag8833 wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

TheSnowmanInHell wrote:
With the release of Traitor's Hate I don't think there is any solid grounds to argue orks are better off than chaos...

what's the logic here

Traitor's Hate gave Chaos a ton of options, and new psychic powers, and new formations and relics. It put them in a better position than Orks who actually lost some stuff with the newest WAAAGH Ghazgul release, and still have the same mostly worthless and unwieldy formations.

What are you talking about? I enjoy having a massively expensive Stormboyz formation that gets to deepstrike, but doesnt get to assault that turn and instead becomes an easy target since 6+ saves and no ability to take Invuls or a FNP.

What about our Walker lists, those are awesome, Who doesn't want to field a mork/gorkanaught, they are without a doubt the best walkers in the game.

And how about that Super Formation we got! it gives us the same ability that 2 other formations give us but now we can take a core detachment without any upgrades that costs something like 1050pts. I mean come on dude, Orks are in a great place.

Two, including me. Khorne Marines, Khorne Daemonkin, Iron Warriors, Emperor's Children, Slaanesh Daemons, Thousand Sons, Infernal Tetrad, and multiple Tzeentch Daemon powergamers. The only major faction armies with less representation where I play are Grey Knights (only 1) and Dark Eldar (only 1).

Why, you ask?

Well, chaos' rules are pretty gakky, but at this point, at least they have a lot of them. They've got KDK, Codex: Daemons, Codex: CSM, Warzone Fenris, and three supplements plus another one on the way for Tsons in fenris 2.

They're far and away from the loyalists' build-a-bear army bookapalooza, but at least there's a way to make your stinking pile of garbage army into YOUR stinking pile of garbage. Plus (Go figure, with all that chaos) my meta trends to being fairly casual.

But what kills an army far more surely than being bad, is being BORING. Just ask the dark eldar, with their gorgeous mostly new top quality awesome model line and noooooooooooooooooooooooooobody plays them.

Orks get hit by this even worse because everybody who wants to play orks, wants to do so because they're very obviously supposed to be the "fun" faction.

The current ork rules are bland, and the formations they've gotten in 7th have been absolute minimum effort level. Look at the ork "Decurion", look how many formations are "Take 2 crappy units, add a super crappy special character, and get....nothing, really, they just get worse because now they're 1 unit". Look how many are "We aren't selling enough flyers."

We have 3-5 although most of them only get a few scattered games in so its mostly me. For tournaments a few more show up.

In all fairness, bully boyz are a very good formation. Greentide used to be good a year ago. Some people were having fun with walker formations in fun games before the dread buff.