Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

What tier would you consider the Ork army to be in 8th edition. This is based off the entire army not just the top tournament list.

Below all the codex-armies, and below index tyranids, SOB, and Asuryani. But above index craftworld, index-tau and index-necrons.

I really don't know where that puts us. I think the best comparison is with Tau really. Tau has their commanders and we have our greentide. But the rest of both indexes is a wasteland competetively.

I honestly have yet to play 8th ed necrons, but at minimum their army special rules seem incredibly strong. It would be hard for me to rate orks above necrons, based on what I've seen from youtube batreps.

I'd give you tau, though, played them a couple times.

But basically anything but boyz rank from not-so-great to bad to dumpster fire. And boyz are getting worse and worse with everything getting up-gunned to hell and back.

Easily bottom tier. We may have some company at the bottom, but we're definitely resting comfortably down there.

What's worse, I can scarcely imagine of what our codex would have to do to make us not bottom tier. As long as cover, falling back, and ridiculous stacking aura abilities remain unchanged, I don't see HOW orks could be good, beyond something ridiculous like 'everything half price and double shots and attacks'.

I could be wrong, but I've been playing for about 5 years, and "making orks not suck" has never been a priority for geedubz. And I don't really expect that to change this time around.

Currently, orks kinda suck. Almost everything is either garbage or overpriced (excluding some units like boyz), and the only way to use them competitively is to spam boyz, which I never found to be any fun.
The orks either need a buff, or at least a points reduction for most units.
The forgeworld models for orks aren't great either. Most of them are okay, but not something that I would really want to take for a competitive game.
Hopefully the codex can fix this when it comes.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
I honestly have yet to play 8th ed necrons, but at minimum their army special rules seem incredibly strong. It would be hard for me to rate orks above necrons, based on what I've seen from youtube batreps.

I'd give you tau, though, played them a couple times.

But basically anything but boyz rank from not-so-great to bad to dumpster fire. And boyz are getting worse and worse with everything getting up-gunned to hell and back.

Easily bottom tier. We may have some company at the bottom, but we're definitely resting comfortably down there.

What's worse, I can scarcely imagine of what our codex would have to do to make us not bottom tier. As long as cover, falling back, and ridiculous stacking aura abilities remain unchanged, I don't see HOW orks could be good, beyond something ridiculous like 'everything half price and double shots and attacks'.

I could be wrong, but I've been playing for about 5 years, and "making orks not suck" has never been a priority for geedubz. And I don't really expect that to change this time around.

Orks are pretty bad this edition, mostly due to the rather terrible internal balance in their index. However, I do think Necrons compete with Tau for the worst faction in 8th at the moment. Their faction special rule is a downgrade to last edition, and many units are egregiously overcosted.

You have to consider that they have a decent army that does well in tournaments, and also, that they don't even have a codex yet.

Orks finished ahead of Ultramarines in the SoCal open.

Not saying Orks don't need a buff. But consider this for a moment. Ultramarines have a primarch and a codex. And didn't do as well as Orks.

So are they worst army? No, not at all. There are a lot of armies - including Xenos - well behind them. Dark Eldar, Necrons, Tyranids (at least, pre-codex) were all much worse than Orks.

My personal preference would be Ork buffs, to be in line with the Tyranid codex. These two armies are similar and should be fairly evenly matched on the table.

Orks have two competitive lists. Greentide and the more competitive Smite and Weridboy spam. I voted for 4th tier.

Orks need the treatment the nids have just had, a book whereby you pick a theme focus and some otherwise reasonably bland units can be made to come alive.

Where they are now is in a holding pattern, they need someone to write a book who at least knows the army is meant to be more than a target

Boyz, Weird Boyz and Storm Boyz are definitely our best units, but I think there are a few other units that aren't necessarily bad but probably suffer more from poor internal balance.

Warbosses, Nobz*, Kommandoz and the Banner Nob aren't bad, I think. While the Warboss isn't bad, the Weird Boy is just so good it is hard to justify choosing something else. The other units I mentioned aren't bad, but more Boyz are usually going to be better, especially since right now we only have the generic stratagems to spend command points on.
*Inexpensive Nobz specifically, as a lot of their wargear options are currently overpriced.

Tankbustas, Big Gunz and some Mek Gunz I don't have a good feel for yet. They seem okay on paper but haven't done much for me on the tabletop, but that's just anecdotal.

In terms of Forge World the Kill Tank, Meka Dread, Gargantuan Squiggoth and Big Trakk (especially with Supa Skorcha) all seem like they should be good.

leopard wrote:
They need someone to write a book who at least knows the army is meant to be more than a target

Truer words have never been spoken, however, I highly doubt such an author exists at GW. We'll have a good indicator shortly with the chapter approved changes, but I'm afraid I'm not holding my breath.

 Galas wrote:
Orks have two competitive lists. Greentide and the more competitive Smite and Weridboy spam. I voted for 4th tier.

Orks might be the highest placing mono-faction army in the game right now other than Astra Militarum.

I would really like it if they could tone down this allies nonsense. I get that in some cases it matches the fluff. But it's getting silly.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Orks have two competitive lists. Greentide and the more competitive Smite and Weridboy spam. I voted for 4th tier.

Orks might be the highest placing mono-faction army in the game right now other than Astra Militarum.

I would really like it if they could tone down this allies nonsense. I get that in some cases it matches the fluff. But it's getting silly.

Give them clan traits that make sense and they become allies with themselves which makes a lot of sense, also means say allowing Blood Axes to work with others (but making it a lot harder for the other clans) works nicely

Green Tide should work, but it needs to be just one of many options, when you see you are playing orks and you know the bulk of the list before you see it there is a problem.

They should be ohh so much more

leopard wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Orks have two competitive lists. Greentide and the more competitive Smite and Weridboy spam. I voted for 4th tier.

Orks might be the highest placing mono-faction army in the game right now other than Astra Militarum.

I would really like it if they could tone down this allies nonsense. I get that in some cases it matches the fluff. But it's getting silly.

Give them clan traits that make sense and they become allies with themselves which makes a lot of sense, also means say allowing Blood Axes to work with others (but making it a lot harder for the other clans) works nicely

Green Tide should work, but it needs to be just one of many options, when you see you are playing orks and you know the bulk of the list before you see it there is a problem.

They should be ohh so much more

When you play any competitive game you pretty much know what you're going to get based on the declared faction of your opponent. At least Orks have a viable build. Many armies simply don't - Necrons, Tyranids (pre-codex), Blood Angels, Space Wolves to name a few.

 Marmatag wrote:

leopard wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Orks have two competitive lists. Greentide and the more competitive Smite and Weridboy spam. I voted for 4th tier.

Orks might be the highest placing mono-faction army in the game right now other than Astra Militarum.

I would really like it if they could tone down this allies nonsense. I get that in some cases it matches the fluff. But it's getting silly.

Give them clan traits that make sense and they become allies with themselves which makes a lot of sense, also means say allowing Blood Axes to work with others (but making it a lot harder for the other clans) works nicely

Green Tide should work, but it needs to be just one of many options, when you see you are playing orks and you know the bulk of the list before you see it there is a problem.

They should be ohh so much more

When you play any competitive game you pretty much know what you're going to get based on the declared faction of your opponent. At least Orks have a viable build. Many armies simply don't - Necrons, Tyranids (pre-codex), Blood Angels, Space Wolves to name a few.

Very true, just have seen perhaps a few signs that GW do actually know how to write for something other than smurfs

Orks are garbage tier. Everything is too expensive, they get screwed over by the base rules compared to every other army, speicalist are too fragile, vehicles cost more than the unit they're transporting, a lot of different faction traits and special rules ignore ork's advantages, they're an army that expected to lean on assault when so much of the game rely on shooting to do anything, and the reason greentide is any good is the same reason greentide has always been good: because people have an allergic reaction to actually taking anti-horde weapons and just spam the living gak out of plasma to solve all their problems (and then get upset when that doesn't work)

Darsath wrote:


Orks are pretty bad this edition, mostly due to the rather terrible internal balance in their index. However, I do think Necrons compete with Tau for the worst faction in 8th at the moment. Their faction special rule is a downgrade to last edition, and many units are egregiously overcosted.

The biggest problem for Orks (aside from gross overpricing in the index) is 8th itself. Most of the changes in 8th hurt Orks or benefited others far more. A lot of people saw that initiative was being removed and jumped to saying Orks would be amazing now, and yeah, removing initiative was a big boost for Orks. But that was immediately counterbalanced by changes that hurt Orks badly.

- Retreat from close combat. Easily the change that hurts Orks the most. This one hits all close combat armies hard, but Orks especially so because we lack survivability and spike killing power. Elite close combat units can deal with this both by being survivable and by straight up murdering anything they touch. Orks tend to kill more by attrition and wearing units down. So having a unit just waltz away leaving our Boyz in rapid-fire range of half an army is a sure-fire recipe for disaster, and a big reason why you just see Boyz spam in 8th; you need to just keep throwing bodies into the fire just to keep even.

- Blast changes. Killed every blast weapon in the Ork codex. Previously these were some of our best weapons since they were much less affected by our abysmal BS. Now they're utterly worthless; a Shokk Attack Gun, on average, hits once per turn.

- Twin-linking: This didn't hurt Orks directly since Orks did get a slight increase in firepower from this change. But it benefited other armies immensely, who saw a huge increase in firepower. So now we had to face even more dakka coming our way, whilst at the same time we lost our main source of survivability...

- Cover. Cover both became much harder for Orks to get (whole unit must be on the terrain piece and Orks tend to run large squads to negate our low Leadership) and provided the least benefit, since +1 to an average armour save of 6+ means very little, doubly so when any weapon with an AP value can just strip it away.

When you ask ork players, many of them will declare that they are they are the worst, and that simply isnt true.

Orks as a faction have done pretty well for an index. Many people are just salty because the majority of the index is really bad (everything that isnt boyz variants or HQs). However they can compete and have been seen to do well with a few lists. If you just focus on thier competitive options you get very strong and resilient builds that can do well in the current meta.

That being said. It would be nice to have other options in the ork arsenal be more cost efficient aswell as have more options, rules and power.

 Dr.Duck wrote:
When you ask ork players, many of them will declare that they are they are the worst, and that simply isnt true.

Orks as a faction have done pretty well for an index. Many people are just salty because the majority of the index is really bad (everything that isnt boyz variants or HQs). However they can compete and have been seen to do well with a few lists. If you just focus on thier competitive options you get very strong and resilient builds that can do well in the current meta.

That being said. It would be nice to have other options in the ork arsenal be more cost efficient aswell as have more options, rules and power.

Their index IS bad.

The only reason they succeed is because they have a single decent unit, which allows them to build a skew list - countering the meta.

They win because of skew - which with the release of the Tyranid codex, and more horde/first turn assault armies become popular (genestealers much); the meta will shift to counter hordes, which means the orks have nothing.

They have literally no other way to play, if they want to remain even remotely in the game (not even competitively, casually as well).

fe40k wrote:

 Dr.Duck wrote:
When you ask ork players, many of them will declare that they are they are the worst, and that simply isnt true.

Orks as a faction have done pretty well for an index. Many people are just salty because the majority of the index is really bad (everything that isnt boyz variants or HQs). However they can compete and have been seen to do well with a few lists. If you just focus on thier competitive options you get very strong and resilient builds that can do well in the current meta.

That being said. It would be nice to have other options in the ork arsenal be more cost efficient aswell as have more options, rules and power.

Their index IS bad.

The only reason they succeed is because they have a single decent unit, which allows them to build a skew list - countering the meta.

They win because of skew - which with the release of the Tyranid codex, and more horde/first turn assault armies become popular (genestealers much); the meta will shift to counter hordes, which means the orks have nothing.

They have literally no other way to play, if they want to remain even remotely in the game (not even competitively, casually as well).

Like 50 percent of the meta are skew lists. In the competitive scene everyone is spaming thier best units.Pretty sure there arent any wining marine lists without Bobby or raven guard. Or Guard with out conscripts. Or Chaos without primarchs, zerkers, brimstones, or MLords.

Orks are doing worst than any of the codexes but have been doing better than most of the other indexes. They are easily Tier 3. Every index has bad units, every index has decent units, and every index has a few amazing units. Codexes have raised the power level of every index so far.

They're good orks, mortis

leopard wrote:
Give them clan traits that make sense and they become allies with themselves which makes a lot of sense, also means say allowing Blood Axes to work with others (but making it a lot harder for the other clans) works nicely

Green Tide should work, but it needs to be just one of many options, when you see you are playing orks and you know the bulk of the list before you see it there is a problem.

They should be ohh so much more

And space marines can ally with themselves thanks to chapter traits. But can still soup it up with others that give them access to stuff they don't have naturally.

As long as alliances exists soup will trump monobuilds unless mono faction becomes varied enough they have naturally every option soup has! See orks having equally wide toolbox naturally as imperium soup?

This is tough because the one good build Orks have

(Green tide & wierdboys)

It's quite good, but it's all they have.

Apart from boyz, almost every unit in the index is wasting points for more boyz.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dr.Duck wrote:
When you ask ork players, many of them will declare that they are they are the worst, and that simply isnt true.

Orks as a faction have done pretty well for an index. Many people are just salty because the majority of the index is really bad (everything that isnt boyz variants or HQs). However they can compete and have been seen to do well with a few lists. If you just focus on thier competitive options you get very strong and resilient builds that can do well in the current meta.

That being said. It would be nice to have other options in the ork arsenal be more cost efficient aswell as have more options, rules and power.

It's not salty if almost all of your models are overpriced bricks that don't add anything to your army. It's not fun to use the same list over and over again while all these expensive models sit on your shelf.

Currently they are bottom tiers, like all the other factions that haven't got a codex yet, with the exception of ynnari which were good since day 1 of 8th edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Glane wrote:


The biggest problem for Orks (aside from gross overpricing in the index) is 8th itself. Most of the changes in 8th hurt Orks or benefited others far more.

I agree, 8th edition basically killed more than 80% of the orks units.

Anything that either needs to pay points for wargear or is a shooting unit doesn't work well.

Still, you can't deny that you can built a pretty decent army out of the six to seven units that do work. Too bad it's boring as feth to play.

I don't think all the -1 to hit garbage floating round has helped Orcs a lot. I think if they had a rule that made them ignore it (especially with shooting) they would improve vastly. Its not like their shooting is fantastic anyway, but their more specialised units that carry the fancy guns wouldn't be a complete waste of points to field.

 Nubgan wrote:
I don't think all the -1 to hit garbage floating round has helped Orcs a lot. I think if they had a rule that made them ignore it (especially with shooting) they would improve vastly. Its not like their shooting is fantastic anyway, but their more specialised units that carry the fancy guns wouldn't be a complete waste of points to field.

Actually, I have been thinking about this a lot. A stratagem for -1 cp that lets you ignore all modifiers to shooting for one unit would probably do the trick. It takes a lot of power from your opponent when they have always consider that their wraithfigher or advancing transport might get shot by a unit of lootaz or tankbustaz unhindered.

 Dr.Duck wrote:

fe40k wrote:

 Dr.Duck wrote:
When you ask ork players, many of them will declare that they are they are the worst, and that simply isnt true.

Orks as a faction have done pretty well for an index. Many people are just salty because the majority of the index is really bad (everything that isnt boyz variants or HQs). However they can compete and have been seen to do well with a few lists. If you just focus on thier competitive options you get very strong and resilient builds that can do well in the current meta.

That being said. It would be nice to have other options in the ork arsenal be more cost efficient aswell as have more options, rules and power.

Their index IS bad.

The only reason they succeed is because they have a single decent unit, which allows them to build a skew list - countering the meta.

They win because of skew - which with the release of the Tyranid codex, and more horde/first turn assault armies become popular (genestealers much); the meta will shift to counter hordes, which means the orks have nothing.

They have literally no other way to play, if they want to remain even remotely in the game (not even competitively, casually as well).

Like 50 percent of the meta are skew lists. In the competitive scene everyone is spaming thier best units.Pretty sure there arent any wining marine lists without Bobby or raven guard. Or Guard with out conscripts. Or Chaos without primarchs, zerkers, brimstones, or MLords.

Orks are doing worst than any of the codexes but have been doing better than most of the other indexes. They are easily Tier 3. Every index has bad units, every index has decent units, and every index has a few amazing units. Codexes have raised the power level of every index so far.

Bringing one Bobby G is considered spamming? Most lists take 1-2 ravens and 2-3 asscans. Then either some tacs or different versions of the new primaris marines. Not very spammy for SMS.

Orkz on the other hand have 3 viable lists that are basically the same damn thing. Boyz with weirdboyz, stormboyz with weirdboyz and Kommandos with weirdboyz. Now they might vary a tiny bit. Some will take a couple big guns to hold backfield objective and because we don't have any more time/room for more boyz models. Some will take a painboy or a big Mek with a KFF. But that is about it. The rest of the index is unplayable in a competitive meta.

 Nubgan wrote:
I don't think all the -1 to hit garbage floating round has helped Orcs a lot. I think if they had a rule that made them ignore it (especially with shooting) they would improve vastly. Its not like their shooting is fantastic anyway, but their more specialised units that carry the fancy guns wouldn't be a complete waste of points to field.

Negative modifiers to hit helps orks a lot. People that stack negative hit modifiers against shooting absolutely hate it when you bring an assault army. The only exception is airborne fliers.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Nubgan wrote:
I don't think all the -1 to hit garbage floating round has helped Orcs a lot. I think if they had a rule that made them ignore it (especially with shooting) they would improve vastly. Its not like their shooting is fantastic anyway, but their more specialised units that carry the fancy guns wouldn't be a complete waste of points to field.

Actually, I have been thinking about this a lot. A stratagem for -1 cp that lets you ignore all modifiers to shooting for one unit would probably do the trick. It takes a lot of power from your opponent when they have always consider that their wraithfigher or advancing transport might get shot by a unit of lootaz or tankbustaz unhindered.

Its not really unhindered, its an Ork shooting remember, that's hindrance enough without modifiers XD