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 DeffDred wrote:
Ork spores grow in days not months.

Where do you get this from?

The fluff seems to indicate that it takes years and years for an ork infestation to become a fighting force.

Snoipah wrote:
Wouldn't the orkz win because if one dies it automatically starts putting out spores for more boyz, where as the Nids have to wait til phase 4 is overwith.

If phase 4 never finishes, they never start eating, thus never start ro regain strength.

Where as the orkz as soon as one dies it begins to replish the supply of troops.

The battle at Octarius is only being sustained by the nids because they are calling in help from the fleet, where as the orkz are sustaining it by victors becoming stronger, dead becoming more, and reinforcements.

Hmmm, do you think if you ran a Octarius style horde:
Nobs are basic troop choices, boys are unavailable.
Warbosses are Elite troop choices, perhaps could be taken as a standard troop choices if you take a warboss the size of 3 ghazzgulls as your HQ

Would that be accurate? Since only the strong are left and the boyz have all either died or turned into nobs?

Phase 4 doesnt need to happen. Since orks and nids are dying all over the place biomass can be harvested at any point they need.

Yes when an Ork dies it releases spores,.. with Nids i believe they go back to the Hive mind and from there pop back in a new body (formed from biomass) Spores hatch in a couple of days/weeks i believe, i think the Hive mind does this a bit faster though..

Nids are the fleet, its not like they call for backup,. The fleet is a Hive mind that controls all nids,.. on the ground this is channeled through Swarmlords and Tyants which in turn guide the army on the ground..

And no you would not be entirely accurate...

Weak boyz will always be there since orks are dying every second So spores are released, baby orks are born, thus they are average size.. Now the ones who can stay alive long enough, yes,.. they will be bigger and stronger then usual.. But Orks tend to be reckless and literally throw themselves into the enemy,.. so even the big ones will die on regular basis. Also Orks need to ''learn'' their skills when they are born ( they know how to fight instinctively though so anything they need to learn just happens mega quick), while the hive mind remembers everything.

Though one more thing why Orks might have the advantage IMO... Even if an Ork dies of a fatal blow,,.. some Orks tend to stand up after a day or 2 because of their fluffwise regeneration like abilities.. On this planet though,.. If some crazy Painboy/Mad dok doesnt use him for spare parts or if a ripper swarm doesnt consume him he might stand up

And its becoming the whole universe of Orks vs 1 massive hive fleet at one point,.. what if Ghazkull and his lads show up there? I think they will stomp em good!


My Nid fluff knowledge might be slightly off since i dont play them or read about them much..

 -Loki- wrote:


That said, regarding the OP - the main difference is that the Orks won't ever all unite. The closest they came was the Warlord that the Emperor and horus slew in the Great Crusade, but even that wasn't all of the Orks united. However, the Tyranids are coming. They are united. One is a theory, one is an eventuality.

First of all horus didn't slay blackfang nor was even close to winning. Horus's, mortarion's and dorn's forces were crushed and without emprah's intervention horus heresy would not exist.

Orks will unite when the situation call for it. As Octavius oes on it call more orks to te scene fighting against a common foe. Unless nids soon the edge over orks they are doomed. Orks get bigger tyranids don't. Eventually you will have armies of carnifex sized orks.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/The_Beast#.UUiECVfQnPo

Notice how this all happened after the HH, and therefore was vanquished without the help of Primarchs or the Emperor.

what I would like to see is a shokk attack gun fire a gaunt through it lmao... a carnifex would be funnier but I imagine it wouldnt fit in the suction tube

This is another one of those questions that I can't believe people are seriously (even semi-seriously) debating.

Unless there's been a massive shift in the background material in a limited edition chapbook or audiobook (since I buy and read everything else), we don't even know where the tyranids come from.

We know that they are extra-galactic, but we don't know if they emerged from our galaxy, hibernated between galaxies, and re-entered, entered our galaxy from a single nearby galaxy, or are in every single other galaxy in the universe.

Let that sink in for a minute.




We don't know whether the tyranids are confined to one galaxy, or billions of galaxies.



This would be like asking someone, "Who would win in a fight between [pick your favorite boxer] and somewhere between one and a billion or more people?".

The question is so impossibly vague that you are just making up an answer.

However, we do know that the few extra-galactic probes the Imperium has sent out were still picking up Ork transmissions last time anyone heard from them, which means that Orks, at least, are confirmed to have gone extra-galactic.

 Bobthehero wrote:
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/The_Beast#.UUiECVfQnPo

Notice how this all happened after the HH, and therefore was vanquished without the help of Primarchs or the Emperor.

Beast, Blackfang and Urruk are all diffrent orks.

Urruk is some warboss Horus killed.

Beasts is some badass ork as far as I know intoruduced during 6th edition.

Blackfang is even more badass ork that as far as I know is only documented in an official apocalypse sheet.

burnaboy wrote:
Come on this is no competition the Orks will stomp the Nids good and proper then grind them into the dirt abit just to make sure they got the message.

Besides the Orks spores ensure the Orks will never be beaten for good. A catastrophe that destroys alot of the Tyranid's bio mass stores wont be so easily recovered from than a catastrophe that wipes a bunch of Orks out as the spores will replace there numbers and in all likely hood increase them within weeks.

This sort of thing is nonsense. Do Orks just magically grow from nothing? No, they need spores, they need nutrients, they need food etc, and they need time to grow. If you're going to play the "you can deny Tyranids biomass" card, then you also have to accept that the Tyranids can also poison/consume/hijack an Ork spawning ground and "deny the Orks their re-population". Ground consumed by the Tyranids is unable to support life. Not even Orks can breed on an airless rock without aid. Expect a "dead scar" of worlds behind the Tyranid advance into Octarius.

The reason "deny them biomass" is flagged up so much as the anti-Tyranid strategy is because it's about the only thing that works, bar the occasional miracle weapon like the virus that wiped out a Leviathan tendril.You can do the same thing to Orks.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
However, we do know that the few extra-galactic probes the Imperium has sent out were still picking up Ork transmissions last time anyone heard from them, which means that Orks, at least, are confirmed to have gone extra-galactic.

There's a big difference between "extra-galactic" meaning in the void between galaxies, and it meaning in another galaxy altogether (considering the distances involved).

Tyranids fight to live.

Orks live to fight.

I'd say Orks win.

 illuknisaa wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/The_Beast#.UUiECVfQnPo

Notice how this all happened after the HH, and therefore was vanquished without the help of Primarchs or the Emperor.

Beast, Blackfang and Urruk are all diffrent orks.

Urruk is some warboss Horus killed.

Beasts is some badass ork as far as I know intoruduced during 6th edition.

Blackfang is even more badass ork that as far as I know is only documented in an official apocalypse sheet.

Blackfang was removed from existence by the Emperor and his Custodians http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gharkul_Blackfang

Lexicanum certainly make it sound like the Beast Waaagh was the biggest, and even that was stopped by a weakened Imperium.

Da Butcha wrote:
This is another one of those questions that I can't believe people are seriously (even semi-seriously) debating.

Unless there's been a massive shift in the background material in a limited edition chapbook or audiobook (since I buy and read everything else), we don't even know where the tyranids come from.

We know that they are extra-galactic, but we don't know if they emerged from our galaxy, hibernated between galaxies, and re-entered, entered our galaxy from a single nearby galaxy, or are in every single other galaxy in the universe.

Let that sink in for a minute.

The 5th edition rulebook fluff clearly stated Tyranids have consumed a dozen galaxies before ours. This has not been contradicted by 6th edition fluff.

Xyptc wrote:

burnaboy wrote:
Come on this is no competition the Orks will stomp the Nids good and proper then grind them into the dirt abit just to make sure they got the message.

Besides the Orks spores ensure the Orks will never be beaten for good. A catastrophe that destroys alot of the Tyranid's bio mass stores wont be so easily recovered from than a catastrophe that wipes a bunch of Orks out as the spores will replace there numbers and in all likely hood increase them within weeks.

This sort of thing is nonsense. Do Orks just magically grow from nothing? No, they need spores, they need nutrients, they need food etc, and they need time to grow. If you're going to play the "you can deny Tyranids biomass" card, then you also have to accept that the Tyranids can also poison/consume/hijack an Ork spawning ground and "deny the Orks their re-population". Ground consumed by the Tyranids is unable to support life. Not even Orks can breed on an airless rock without aid. Expect a "dead scar" of worlds behind the Tyranid advance into Octarius.

The reason "deny them biomass" is flagged up so much as the anti-Tyranid strategy is because it's about the only thing that works, bar the occasional miracle weapon like the virus that wiped out a Leviathan tendril.You can do the same thing to Orks.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
However, we do know that the few extra-galactic probes the Imperium has sent out were still picking up Ork transmissions last time anyone heard from them, which means that Orks, at least, are confirmed to have gone extra-galactic.

There's a big difference between "extra-galactic" meaning in the void between galaxies, and it meaning in another galaxy altogether (considering the distances involved).

The orks create their own living conditions, their excrement's (Their Poo and piss) is all that is need for their spores to grow. The orks are a fungus, as such they do not require much to grow, anytype of wet substance and some ground will do. As such they literally create a never ending supply, orks do something in their base camp, couple of weeks later spores take root, months later, new ork pops up. Easy as one two three but a little longer.

Also please remeber that nids have bio-organisms that eat other bio-organisms, ork spores, this will hurt their production of orks, but the ork spores are extremely hard to kill, and it might fight back in a way, I don't know if it is possible for them.

Orks crash land on a dead world, they lose snots and grots and other things, over time, orks spores pop up from the dead and the excrements of the remaining orks. Decades later, new ork world. Easy as that.

Fire kills spores, explosions kill spores. The Nids will be fine

Uh, might have escaped your notice, but nids don't use fire or explosions.

Edit: spores? The hell, Miko.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Uh, might have escaped your notice, but nids don't use fire

Pyrovores flamespurt says hi.

Carnifexes bioplasma says hi.

While being based on organic acids, both are described as producing fire.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
or explosions.

Not conventional explosives, they have their own biological equivalents. Mostly throwing out acid, or like the new Rupture Cannon, something capable of causing an implosion that can turn a tank inside out. Pretty sure Ork spores aren't immune to acids or implosive effects.

Tyranids are fine.

 Manchu wrote:
Tyranids fight to live.

Orks live to fight.

I'd say Orks win.

Manchu sums it perfectly.

Cite what ya want, say what ya want. Orks win all the way. And don't forget Gork and Mork. Remember they make the emprah shudder with a mere stir, and they brush aside chaos with easeness. If such a fight as to be a total war ever would erupt between orks and 'nids, orks would instinctively come from all around the galaxy and beyond, directed by their gods. They would build bigger, killier weapons, and join forces in growing scale, until they overcome 'nids. That's just the way they work. Orks are not natural born exterminators nor full scale dominators, but they are downright good fighters, the harder the fight the better they fight.

An Octarius ork army btw would have skarboyz (with battlewagon transports) and boyz as troops and stompas as heavy support, at the very least...

Furthermore, a Tyranid invasion of a world isn't just built around macroscopic creatures ripping your face off. It's also a microscopic war as the planet is bombarded with spores of all sorts that drive local flora to extremes, mess with the life cycles of fauna and eventually reduce your lungs to sludge.

I'm sure that the Tyranids can come up with a viral spore that targets nascent Ork fungus and either kills it or does something useful with it.

Tyranids are good at adapting and turning what is used against them back on their foes. Once the Tyranids really get to grips with the biology of the Orks things could be very different.

The hyper-resilient Ork ecosystem versus the hyper-predatory Tyranid ecosystem. Given that the Orks don't change their biology, but the Tyranids do, I think the Tyranids will have the edge in a true war of attrition. The Orks will need fast, brutal and crushing victories like they had at the start of the Octarius war (and even then, they only failed to kill one Hive Ship and that was enough to rebirth an entire tendril of Leviathan).

^

An Ork Waagh is like a tsunami, they destroy everything in its wake, not even giving you time to come up with a counter strategy,.. as said numerous times.. More and more orks are coming, they feel the call of battle in their very soul... the bigger the fight gets, the greater the call gets,.. Right now its a stalemate, but eventually the hive fleet will become so outnumbered it just cant hope to stand against the coming green tide... Orks dont care about sludge lungs 1 ork dies, releases hundreds of spores and is reborn hundreds time over (if nids dont destroy his spores ) But just be glad,.. The Nids will only lose 1 hive fleet, there are many more When da Orks are done Stompin, the waagh will continue untill it loses its momentum... Then it will be small ork bands getting larger and larger all over again to stop another ''undefeatable'' opponent..

Now Nids lovers and Ork lovers! Continue!

I have a hard time imagining the Orks claiming anything more than a moral victory.

Granted they take that hands down. They get to take part in the literally greatest fight in 40,000 years. Can't imagine anything that would make an Ork happier

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:
^

An Ork Waagh is like a tsunami, they destroy everything in its wake, not even giving you time to come up with a counter strategy,..

So is a Hive Fleet.

The difference being every Hive Fleet has the same goal, and is directed by the same intelligence, whilst every Waaagh has its own leader, own goals, and doesn't communicate or coordinate at all with each other outside or 'Fight there? Fight there!'.

 rabid1903 wrote:
I have a hard time imagining the Orks claiming anything more than a moral victory.

How do you have a hard time picturing orks claiming anything other then a moral victory?

willhman wrote:

 rabid1903 wrote:
I have a hard time imagining the Orks claiming anything more than a moral victory.

How do you have a hard time picturing orks claiming anything other then a moral victory?

Sorry, guess I should have clarified. I meant I can't see the Orks emerging victorious against the Tyranids. Tyranids are literally hunting them at every level. They even have microorganisms to eat the spores.

I mean, sure the more battles an Ork fights the bigger and badder they get. But every Tyranid that lives is used to make a whole army of better Tyranids. As soon as the Tyranids find something that works it gets distributed to the whole army.

Orks can survive from photosynthesizing light to the algae in their system in the same way coral do.

Orks grow and thrive on conflict, the more protracted the conflict becomes, the stronger the orks become and the stronger the offspring orks from spores released through conflict deaths become.

Tyranids, especially given the new fluff, are vulnerable to burning themselves out through hyperevolving new morphs and not obtaining the vast quantities of food they require to fuel them.

Tyranids are given to massively overwhelming a planet's defenses with all manner of deadly biomorphs in a tsunami of initial violence.



If all orks came together and were working in unison against the hive fleets, they'd obliterate them. Orks literally require starlight to function. Someone earlier said 'ripper beats grot' (which is debatable when 'grot carries gun and possesses opposable thumbs..) but Gaunt sure as all hell does not beat Ork...

My theory?

One on one, a ork beats a nid(AND EVERYFING CUZ ORKZ IS BEST) so if this scenario happened, the first line of orks will fall, but the second line would advance past it, denying the nids the ork spores as food. This would create a bubble for the spores to thrive as the lines advance. And when the spores get to size they help an already powerful line, while the nids crumble since they cant get to the dead or dying to feed.

Of course, the orks wont know what they're doing, they just charge in because its natural to them, and in a way, it helps prevent their dead's spore growth from being bothered.

Gork and Mork were geniuses when they created the orkz, they probably know that if they made all the orkz eager to charge, the dead one's spores will thrive.

 rabid1903 wrote:

willhman wrote:

 rabid1903 wrote:
I have a hard time imagining the Orks claiming anything more than a moral victory.

How do you have a hard time picturing orks claiming anything other then a moral victory?

Sorry, guess I should have clarified. I meant I can't see the Orks emerging victorious against the Tyranids. Tyranids are literally hunting them at every level. They even have microorganisms to eat the spores.

I mean, sure the more battles an Ork fights the bigger and badder they get. But every Tyranid that lives is used to make a whole army of better Tyranids. As soon as the Tyranids find something that works it gets distributed to the whole army.

You do realize that most orks have horrible armour? So they adapt, what will they adapt to? Better claws to cut through armor? Awesome, especially when most of the army has the weakest armour there is, their skin. Guns that spread out substances that eat away flesh? Great except that they are a green tide, you can throw in rocks, but it will continue to come at you. Oh I know, a type of micro-organism that kills by eating the flesh of a target. Amazing except that the world has a huge amount of micro-organisms already, the ork spore, and oh yeah some orks are have metal bodies. Not much good.

The orks are a race were you can't really out advance them, you just have to take them on head on. Now yes I am sure there are some exceptions to what I said, but in the long run it doesn't matter, for every adaptation that there is, the orks will just get an advancement from tech. Really this is a head beater fight more then anything.

Nah, Tyranids have it in the bag. Their ruin of the natural environment wouldn't kill the orks straight off, but it is obviously doing enough that one hive fleet is holding a planet in standstill against the arrival of every Ork in the neighborhood. Eventually, the Tyranids will take it home, just like the rest of the galaxy.

willhman wrote:
Guns that spread out substances that eat away flesh? Great except that they are a green tide, you can throw in rocks, but it will continue to come at you.

You keep underestimating Tyranid numbers. The rough explanation in the 6th edition codex puts them at practically numberless. Hive fleets made up of hundreds of thousands of hive ships, each home to countless Tyranids. Or the other way around, but still, the mental image they're trying to get across is 'if you think you have the numbers, the Tyranids have more'. Not to mention, while Orks are described as a 'green tide', Tyranids actually embody it. Fluff descriptions of Tyranids attacking a planet are like 'ink spilling on a map'.

Numbers are not something Orks can count on against Tyranids, because Tyranids keep getting attributed the same population quantities, if not more.

Yeah, I don't think there's much of a contest here. While Orks all united would be a pretty big problem for all the races, it's just not going to happen. Like, ever.

Also, let's not forget that the Octarius war began with one hive ship landing. One single hive ship is defeating what is currently the largest Ork empire.

Hunchkrot wrote:
Also, let's not forget that the Octarius war began with one hive ship landing. One single hive ship is defeating what is currently the largest Ork empire.

Actually, the Octarius war started when Kryptmann lured a tendril of Leviathan to the system. Not one hive ship, but not all of Leviathan either. Given the size of Leviathan, the tentrils are still pretty big, but it's not all of the hive fleet, since the rest of it is still out wrecking up the galaxy.