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I am very interested in starting an Ork army but I know little about them. I have watched a few battle reports on them and it raised a few questions.

1- What are their strengths?
2-What are their weaknesses?
3-Should I play more of a zerg army? or focus on a few really good troops?
4-Was is your general opinion about them? Do you have anything to add that might be helpful? Would you recommend them, why or why not?

Thanks for answering these questions and adding to the discussion,

I play them and have since 3rd my oppinion wait till next dex then look at them again.
Their strengths are currently Nob Bikers.
Weaknesses are no range gun with more than STR 8 as well as low BS and Range.
Currently the Zerg trick kinda works.
My current oppinion is they are lacking in all catigories. I love the army but expect a uphill battle in every game you play.

As a horde army, Orks can field lots of bodies, but are easily killed. Paper armour means they will generally not get armour saves, and as such must rely heavily on cover or transports.
Shooting ain't that great, but what self-respecting Ork is trying to get kill shots? The proper use of a gun is to beat your enemy to a pulp (also known as "Krumpin'"). All in all Orks can be great fun no matter how you play them. If you are not laughing your ass off, you are doing something wrong.

Ya, I saw that their BS skill was low. Need a lot of high rolls to hit.

I think orks are the second best army. Only bettered by the dark angels. I want to start an army if them too but I find it hard keep buying more dark angels

Usefulidiot86 wrote:
Ya, I saw that their BS skill was low. Need a lot of high rolls to hit.

We have low BS but our gunz fire lots a(not enuff)dakka.Shootas are assault 2.Very killy.

Orks are a flexible, balanced force, which can use shooting, close combat or outmaneuvering the enemy to win. They tend to have vast amounts of low to medium strength attacks. They also have battlewagons, which are extremely durable fighting platforms. A warboss in mega-armour is a truly impressive close-combat monster at a very reasonable points cost (one hundred points for a guy with S 5, T5, W3, A4 and a 2+ save, armed with a power claw).

However, they have some significant flaws. All of their units except battlewagons and Mega-Armoured Nobs are very easy to kill. They have no effective ranged anti-tank weapons. Their basic troops are good for their price, but need to be fielded in very large quantities to be effective, which makes it hard to use transports or cover to keep them alive.

As an ork player, you have to take a lot of cheap guys. It simply isn't practical to have a whole army of expensive models unless you take the special character Wazdakka Gutsmek and field a biker force.

You do have a few options for lower-model counts units. A warboss lets you take one unit of nobs as troops (generally you want to take biker nobs or mega-armoured nobs), which is pretty good.

Meganobs are one of the best assault units in the game; basically space marine terminators who trade their 5+ invulnerable for an extra wound and an extra attack. They can also take a battlewagon as a dedicated transport, which is awesome. The big downside is that the official models are overpriced and look terrible.

Most of the really good shooting units in the ork army are very delicate. Fortunately, you can mount them in a battlewagon, which helps a lot. Better still, some of them can buy mekboys who can repair the battlewagon from inside, making it even tougher. The general consensus seems to be that Lootas are the best choice for this role, although 6th edition template weapon rules might make burna boys a viable alternative. The downside is that you are spending a lot of points, using both an elite and a heavy support slot and getting a unit which can't seize objectives.

For your basic troops, the obvious choice is shoota boys. They are pretty much just better than the other options. There are basically three ways to deploy them; on foot, in a trukk or in a battlewagon. On foot you can take a nice big unit, but you are going to have difficulty getting them across the table without getting butchered by barrages and the like. In a trukk, they will be fast, but in such a small unit that they will be easily broken. The battlewagon is generally the best compromise, letting you bring a unit of twenty in a durable transport. Downside is that you have a very limited number of battlewagons available. I'd generally go with at least one mob in a battlewagon to move forward onto objectives and another one on foot to hold onto objectives in or near your deployment zone.

They are a fun army to play, if sometimes a bit frustrating. Some of the models are among the best that GW makes, although there are also a few units which are old, ugly as sin and overpriced - notably the mega nobs. If you enjoy converting your miniatures, they are probably the best army for that. They will, however, take a long time to paint and they are a real pain to transport.

Their strengths sadly this edition lie mainly with the amount of cost-efficient dakka we can throw out via shoota mobz and Lootas. It's mainly about quantity over quality for us and we got plenty of boyz to go around.

Weakness wise we are woefully underarmed for any long-ranged engagement with the foe, particularly anti-tank weaponry since we're primarily reliant on our unit's Power Klaws to open up enemy tanks and transports. The only other weapons typically used that are consistent are our Battlewagons' Deff Rollas. We also lack any significant way to field AP2 (or more importantly AP1) weaponry en masse
which can make dealing with the plethora of 2+ save units hard since many of them can challenge out our PK-wielding Nobz.

If by zerg you mean field a green tide, yes it is potential build. Keep in mind it will take you forever though and your opponent might get bored as your turns take twice as long as him. Another good build includes Battlewagon Rush.

My general opinion is that they still are kicking ass and taking names well after 2 editions. They may not be the most optimal army now but they still can give your enemy the fight of their life and I love their fluff and how their army can reflect their love of battle. The variety in which you can make your army be based upon is great as well and it helps that you can convert or loot anything you want to represent various vehicular units.

Orks went from a highly resilient and forgiving army to a fragile and unforgiving one over the course of 3 editions (yes, this codex is the oldest one at the moment).

I wouldn't advise you to start them at the moment, because they can be very frustrating to play with :

_our best units (Nob Bikerz, MegaNobz, Lootaz) all suffer from a *huge* moral problem, forcing us to give them an HQ babysitter or to deploy them very well.

_our troops could take on *any* 40k unit (except maybe Khorne Berserkers) in 5th edition, thanks to our hidden Power Klaw. Now they're reduced to a role of objectif grabbers and dakka saturation, because our squad leaders get sniped or challenged all the time.

_several of our vehicles are now junk. Buggies and Trakks used to be hit on 6+ in Close Combat, now on 3+, making them basically useless as a moving wall (a common strategy in 5th ed). Killakanz also took a huge hit, with only 2HP and the reduction of our Kustom Force Field cover save to 5+ instead of 4+.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Some units actually got a lot better (Deffkoptas for example gained a true Toughness 5, a 5+ cover save and a 24" turbo-boost), but most of them have gotten worse. You still can win with Orks, but it's always an uphill battle.

On a side note, don't start a Green Tide (lots of Boyz on foot) unless you're really sure you will like that. The internet might give you the impression that "everybody loves Green Tide", but most Ork players I know (including me) and more importantly, most of their opponents, don't like to play this kind of list more than once a year, as it drags games to crazy lengths and is rather boring tactically.

Ork boyz point for point are still one of if not the best troops in the game. Problem is remove from the front, you will be pushed back a full turn of moving with most of your units (if not all of them) by the time they get across the table. my footboyz rarely get to combat before turn4 because of this.

Nobbikers are strong as feth, but expensive as feth and rate of fire is their weakness. Which means both newdar and newtau have no issues with them unless we have some crazy 5+/FNP luck.

Lootas are the only "somewhat reliable" range we have, but thats because theyre 48" so they dont need to move and usually have such a high rate of fire the orky BS is somewhat negated. That being said, im about 50-50 with their performance. I usually bring 2 units of 10 and some games they win the game on their own, others they dont do jack cuz of orky BS.

Other units can work but theyre highly HIGHLY situational. MANz are just as deadly as bikers if they can reach their target, problem is if you go against a quick army they wont ever see combat even with a battlewagon toting them around lol.

On the note of green tide: its horrible. It works in tournaments because people typically dont have the firepower to deal with it, but you will have like 30-45min turns minimum just moving gak around. I despise it because its boring to play, and i dont feel like buying THAT many boyz (proxied it before). Boyz before toyz motto is kinda dead right now.

Now, with all that being said, i will still suggest orks if you love to kitbash and customize your army. Orks are one of the best armies for people like that, which is why i have them. in a fun environment (no tournament cheese involved) they work fine and are fun as hell to play. any strat meant to win a big tournament, fun is gone as you are relying on 5+ luck to win.

The biggest problem I have with my orks are the low leadership saves. If you have a bunch of small squads (lootas, burnas, etc), they'll run off the board pretty easily.