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Yeah, I use the Red Gobbo, the original Makari, and the AOS 'gobbapalooza' set as various and sundry counts-as characters.

I also have a kitbash of my original silly gretchin conversion (the grot model with the baseball cap, which I painted as a boston red sox cap and then gave him an ork power klaw because it looked silly) where I kitbashed a killa kan with the AOS megaboss to create 'Grotzghkull')

Among them, this crack team masquerades as basically every ork character model I happen to need at the time - runtherds, painboyz, makari and ghaz, a waaagh banner nob, and most recently the red gobbo and a couple lieutenunts have been running as Mek Boss Buzzgob, Nitluckle and Lunk because Buzzgob can give a turn-long (including shooting phase) +1 to hit to a single unit of killa kanz which makes them quite the effective shooters.

Currently the grot list is primarily fairly mechanized, with grot tanks, a grot megatank, 3 deff dreads (an old metal deff dread as a 'mega kan', a looted carnifex, and a looted dreadnought with gretchins piloting it), 6 killa kanz, ghazghkull and makari run as Goffs with the gretchins basically just running in min squads and hiding around the board trying to score and do actions. Makari's FNP aura works for all GOFFS not just core or infantry, because gw was incredibly lazy with orks' 9th ed rules and while that resulted in a lot of underpowered stuff it also resulted in an incredibly sloppy implementation of CORE where they put in CORE restrictions on a couple character auras and psychic powers and that's basically it. All the named characters and minor characters just kept their auras exactly the same as before with no CORE.

the list is still pretty underpowered, but it at least has some kind of plan - aim to use heavy antitank shooting turn 1 to remove elite or armoed threats to the vehicles, hide all the infantry profiles from the enemy's guns, and make use of ghazzy's super-waaagh to benefit both the rokkit heavy shooting and the walking dreads and kanz.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Running the numbers, a Tac Marine without gear has a 39.51% chance of doing a wound to an Ork on the charge. Each turn after that, it's down to a 22.22% chance.

An Ork Boy without gear has a 55.56% chance of doing at least one wound, and an 11.11% chance of doing two in a single fight.

If we assume they strike simultaneously, that means you're looking at...

Round One
39.51% chance of Ork Death
11.11% chance of Marine Death

Comparing that to the 3rd ed codex (which was in play for 9 years, 1999 - 2008).

(without gear first, as you did)
25% chance of Ork Death
50% chance of Marine Death

This doesn't take into account initiative, which had it's own little design space where it could be ignored/bypassed depending on what's going on. But in terms of raw lethality you can spot a pretty big difference between then and now.

(With gear - Slugga Boy with Choppa)
20% chance of Ork death
25% chance of Marine death

A really big factor was charging, which granted an extra attack. This created a really critical opportunity for the Marines, as they doubled their single attack (and therefore lethality) on the charge. Orks however would usually double their initiative on the charge (evening out that stat advantage) and only getting them a 33% boost in lethality (4 attacks vs. 3).

Orks charging
33.3% chance to kill a Marine

Marines charging
41.5% chance to kill an Ork

This put Marines individually on the back foot against Orks unless the Marines charged, which was just about perfect, imo.

We're using in-game stats to argue fluff now are we?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
We're using in-game stats to argue fluff now are we?

They're not disconnected, and both will inform a players model of the universe. But mostly I'm pointing out that there was a definite era in which Boyz were quite a bit more capable.

*not dissimilar to similar comments regarding a certain Tyranid mdel that starts with C.