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http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/665753.page

Orks: 1
Necrons: 0

Wait a tick, what? Orks beat Necrons? That's literally impossible, because time travel. I declare a rematch!

Also, Void Superiority + time travel + C'tan (which counter Gork/Mork) = win

I voted necrons because of the reasons the op listed above, plus a few of my own at I will list here.

Firstly, this quote from the necron codex:

What the Imperium cannot know is that, should the Necrons ever fully wake and unite, they would face a foe as numerous as themselves.

Obviously, there are far more orks than imperial citizens in the galaxy. However, even a necron warrior is more powerful than a space marine. One could argue this point, but I say that warriors are more durable, and have better weaponry, while space marines are much faster. Now a space marine is the very peak of the human fighting machine. They are the elite of the elite, and no one can stand against them. Now imagine an imperium where everyone is a space marine, but more durable, equipped with a gun that can punch a hole in anything, totally devoted to the war effort, and completely self-sufficient. That is what the orks would be up against.

My next argument is about gauss weaponry. Gauss literally breaks apart the molecular bonds holding things together. Let me ask you, what is the orks greatest strength? The ability to grow stronger the more they fight. Gauss mostly invalidates this by destroying the ork completely, spores and all. The only way the orks are going to increase their numbers is through the relatively small number of spores that fall out when the ork is walking around. And as far as destroying those, all the necrons have to do is point their guns at the ground and shoot.

Null field matrices are another important tool for the necrons. One of the orks strongest features is their innate psychic ability. If enough orks believe something, it becomes true. Since that ability is tied to that psychic ability, it stands to reason that if they were cut off from the warp, that ability would no longer work. And that is exactly what null field matrices do. Imagine ork technology working like it should. Gunfire would virtually stop altogether, trukks wouldn't go fasta, and missiles wouldn't make big explosions just because they're painted yellow. Orks would still be fierce in melee, but all the necrons would have to do is expand the thokt dynasty's strategy of creating killing worlds to grind the orks to dust. It's not as if orks would stop going to the killing grounds, they aren't stupid, but they can't resist a good fight.

My final point (for now) is about canoptek robots. Thousands (perhaps millions) of orks could die for every necron warrior that dies, and the orks would still win. There is no doubt that the orks could win any war of attrition against the necron nobility. Which is why necrons should rarely, if ever, fight orks directly. Because the necrons have access to an infinite supply of fighters: canoptek swarms. Scarabs eat through their victims, neatly taking care of that spore problem as easily as gauss weaponry. And what do scarabs do with all the energy they collect? Build more of themselves! If it can take root, a scarab swarm can become unstoppable by anything short of orbital bombardment (paraphrased form the necron 5th Ed codex). And necrons have the void superiority to prevent that.

The Silent King's Strategy:
Here's what I think Szarekh should do to destroy the ork menace.
Step 1: create killing worlds across the galaxy. These worlds would be big and unimportant, with null field matrices in their cores to drastically reduce the ork's firepower.
Step 2: flood the planets with scarabs, and put a fleet in orbit.
Step 3: Bait the orks into coming to the planet, put technology or some other bauble there, and then intentionally start a Waaagh
Step 4: as orks arrive, let them go to the planet's surface. If any kunnin orks want to stay in orbit, engage them and force them to land or annihilate them in void combat.
Step 5: wait. It will probably take thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, but necrons have all the time in the universe.

Tl;dr: I think necrons could pull it off with the right strategy. I could be convinced otherwise though. I'm eager to hear any rebuttals!

Anrakyr-the-Traveller wrote:
However, even a necron warrior is more powerful than a space marine. One could argue this point, but I say that warriors are more durable, and have better weaponry, while space marines are much faster. Now a space marine is the very peak of the human fighting machine. They are the elite of the elite, and no one can stand against them. Now imagine an imperium where everyone is a space marine, but more durable, equipped with a gun that can punch a hole in anything, totally devoted to the war effort, and completely self-sufficient. That is what the orks would be up against.

That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Surely they would have easily destroyed the Eldar if a single Necron warrior was that powerful.

Anrakyr-the-Traveller wrote:
That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Surely they would have easily destroyed the Eldar if a single Necron warrior was that powerful.

I agree it's a rather controversial statement, but let me provide a little evidence to back it up. Crunch-wise, Warriors and marines have nearly the same stats. Warriors have higher leadership, but marines have a higher initiative and a better armor save. However, warriors have reanimation protocols, and gauss weapons, while marines only have ATSKNF (I say only, but it's still a very powerful special rule). I think the warrior slightly edges out the marine based on these stats, but they're so close you could certainly make a good argument for the marine.

As for the necrons defeating the eldar, remember that right before the great sleep, the necrons were spent from their fight against the C'tan. Even after the loss of trillions of necrons in a matter of days during the war in heaven and probably the loss of billions more during the betrayal (Afaik there isn't a concrete stat on this), it took the combined onslaught of the eldar, orks, and powerful warp creatures to drive the necrons to hibernation. Iirc, the eldar were also far more populous than they were even before the fall. I'll try to find a direct citation to back that up, but here's some evidence to that effect. The necron 5th ed codex mentions the necrons of Zappanec defeating a massive eldar fleet, one so large it left the entire planet surrounded by orbiting metal for 60 million years. Surely the eldar must have had a truly immense population to be able to shrug off a loss such as that.

To summarize: I think that by taking into account fluff as well as the model's tabletop stats, a necron warrior is at least comparable to a space marine, possibly even more powerful.

WAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!

Every time I have put my green tide down against my friends necron decurion, I have flattened him completely by turn 5.
Even 3++ invulnerable and 4+ reanimation protocols go down to the tide.
Orks win.

 r_squared wrote:
Every time I have put my green tide down against my friends necron decurion, I have flattened him completely by turn 5.
Even 3++ invulnerable and 4+ reanimation protocols go down to the tide.
Orks win.

This thread is a hypothetical who would win if the orks and necrons were fully United. You cannot disregard fluff, that should be the cornerstone of your argument. In addition, your personal experience with one necron player is not evidence to support the ork argument. If your friend is playing a canoptek harvest Decurion and losing to your green tide, either other aspects of his list (probably a lack of damage dealing units) or his generalship are to blame. I get the feeling you aren't being serious in your post, so I apologize if it seems that I'm taking this thread too seriously. I encourage you to post any evidence you have to support your viewpoint.

Orks vs Necrons -> Necrons always necrons.

Orks vs Necrons (fully united on each side)?

This is something else. When all Orks are finely united they conquer the entire universe.

I like to imagine such event as all orks turning their heads with eyes glowing of waaaagh energy to a single point in space responding in unison to the orders of the old ones.
The united orks is one of the doomsday scenarios that are referred to many times in the fluff. The scary part is that when the old ones return to unite / command the orks a large part of the eldar would probably also join in.

The following will be based upon my memory of the initial conditions for the poll results OP disagrees with. IIRC, those were basically that each faction has total unity of purpose in all it's members.

A few counterpoints against the Necrons advantages:

Void - Quantity has a quality all of it's own.


time travel - not a bad trick. It doesn't help if there is no possible set of actions that will give you victory. (see francis grey in the TV show The Batman)


C'tan - All the remaining C'tan acting together don't hold a candle to Mork/Gork. M'Gork canonically beat up Khorn for funsies when they're bored. G'Mork spend most of their time tricking/fighting each other. Easily 90% of current Ork strength is spent against itself in canon.

warp dampeners - Far too few of them. Plus, Orks are not cavemen with green energy that lets them fight science fiction enemies. They are genetically preprogrammed to be genius inventors. They also adapt/improve enemy technologies. Ork teleportation technology is second to none. They have man portable warp hole generators on worlds where they're only fighting imperial forces.


Ork strengths:

spores - largely countered on the battlefield by Gauss weapons. Completely game changing on the hundreds of millions of planets (based on the Imperium [not all of humanity] having roughly a hundred million worlds) vacated by the hordes of orks acting as one charging towards the fight. Those worlds will regrow entire ork populations within years. Necrons, incredible as it sounds, are the faction that will lose this battle of attrition.

gestalt field - frankly, this is a game winner. The psychic might of the Ork race combined easily dwarves that of the elder. United under both Gork and Mork, this energy would, IMO, completely overwhelm any attempt by the necrons to cut off the warp. Sure, their anti- warp tech is implied to be a match for the eye of terror, but the Ork gestalt field dwarfs EoT.

numbers - touched upon in the spores section, this is a big deal. I am going to do a little speculation based on my recollection of the terms of engagement. Necrons, fully awakened, are said to be a force of equal numbers as the Imperium. Many of these necrons are not only not awakened, they are in disrepair and mentally unsound. A non trivial percentage of necron units would be liabilities IMO. Secondly, my understanding of the quote on necron numbers leaves open the interpretation the necron forces (which are about 100% geared for war) would be equal in numbers to the imperium's military, not their entire population.





Tangentially related: does anyone else kind of sort of imagine the board's response to the question as being similar to the factions response to such a conflict? Orks outvoting Necrons despite the Necrons utilizing compelling arguments based on their powers, clever and cunning Ork arguments punctuated by lots of "We win kause we're da Orks! ." The Necrons, upon witnessing their loss, go back in time to fix things/ call a revote?

To springboard off of scrabb's point, Orks do not have strange outlier factions within themselves. There's no factions in Ork society that are hated or ostracized ala Flayed Ones and, to a lesser degree, Destroyers. That is another crack in Necron unity, as they will have a growing portion of their population throwing themselves at flesh or a fight because that's all they want now.

Orks for sure. As Scrabb said, Gork and Mork would have their way with the Ctan, not sure how Ctan"counter" gork/mork.

Also in the ork codex its said that if all the tribes unified they would be able to conquer the galaxy (or something to that effect).

Da Orks cuz greener iz meaner!

The answer I believe, is clear. The Orks would win, GW has already flat out stated this to be the case in numerous publications.

In fact, verbatim

Warhammer 40,000 4th Edition Rulebook wrote:If ever the Orks united as a race, no force in the galaxy could resist them

 Vaktathi wrote:
The answer I believe, is clear. The Orks would win, GW has already flat out stated this to be the case in numerous publications.

In fact, verbatim

Warhammer 40,000 4th Edition Rulebook wrote:If ever the Orks united as a race, no force in the galaxy could resist them

Counterpoint:

Codex Necrons 5th Edition wrote:Only one hope can now preserve the other races from the Necron's implacable advance, from the endless legions of silent and deathless warriors rising from long-forgotten tombs. If the Necrons can be prevented from waking from waking to their full glory, if the scattered Tomb Worlds can be prevented from unifying, then there is a chance for survival. If not, then the great powers of the galaxy will surely fall, and the Necrons shall reign supreme for eternity.

Animus wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The answer I believe, is clear. The Orks would win, GW has already flat out stated this to be the case in numerous publications.

In fact, verbatim

Warhammer 40,000 4th Edition Rulebook wrote:If ever the Orks united as a race, no force in the galaxy could resist them

Counterpoint:

Codex Necrons 5th Edition wrote:Only one hope can now preserve the other races from the Necron's implacable advance, from the endless legions of silent and deathless warriors rising from long-forgotten tombs. If the Necrons can be prevented from waking from waking to their full glory, if the scattered Tomb Worlds can be prevented from unifying, then there is a chance for survival. If not, then the great powers of the galaxy will surely fall, and the Necrons shall reign supreme for eternity.

I would counter that the Orks in the case of the latter statement are not framed as being a unified force as they are in the OP's question and GW's statements regarding the Orks.

 curran12 wrote:
To springboard off of scrabb's point, Orks do not have strange outlier factions within themselves. There's no factions in Ork society that are hated or ostracized ala Flayed Ones and, to a lesser degree, Destroyers. That is another crack in Necron unity, as they will have a growing portion of their population throwing themselves at flesh or a fight because that's all they want now.

Mutants and Madboys are shunned.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
I would counter that the Orks in the case of the latter statement are not framed as being a unified force as they are in the OP's question and GW's statements regarding the Orks.

Well that's a double edged sword, as there is no unified Necron force in the galaxy to oppose the Orks at the moment.

Animus wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
I would counter that the Orks in the case of the latter statement are not framed as being a unified force as they are in the OP's question and GW's statements regarding the Orks.

Well that's a double edged sword, as there is no unified Necron force in the galaxy to oppose the Orks at the moment.

There's no unified force of either. However, the way I'm reading it, we have a somewhat absolute statement regarding the Orks in that nothing could stop them. With the Necrons, it's more of a galactic re-ordering. The Orks aren't really a great power, they're an uncountable collection of dynamic groups. The Necron statement seems to be framed in the context of how the the various races currently function, while the former statement regarding the Orks was in reference to a more hypothetical (and decidedly unnatural) unified race.

The Necron statement basically has the drawback of appearing to have something of a ceterus paribus standing while the Ork statement appears to be rather more absolute.

 Vaktathi wrote:
There's no unified force of either. However, the way I'm reading it, we have a somewhat absolute statement regarding the Orks in that nothing could stop them. With the Necrons, it's more of a galactic re-ordering. The Orks aren't really a great power, they're an uncountable collection of dynamic groups. The Necron statement seems to be framed in the context of how the the various races currently function, while the former statement regarding the Orks was in reference to a more hypothetical (and decidedly unnatural) unified race.

The Necron statement basically has the drawback of appearing to have something of a ceterus paribus standing while the Ork statement appears to be rather more absolute.

The Ork statement says that with their unification no force in the galaxy could resist them.
The Necron statement says that with their unification the races of the galaxy would fall and the Necrons would reign supreme for eternity.

I would say the Necron statement is just as if not more absolute than the Ork one, as :
The unified Necron force does not exist in the galaxy, and so we cannot say whether it could resist the Orks or not.
The Necron statement does not care about the condition of the enemy, just the Necrons.

Orks were made to fight necrons... not even an argument orks win!

Necrons. Every time. Sorry. Big planet machine that can kill stars at the click of a button... vs orcs that use teef for bullets...

Ffyllotek wrote:
Necrons. Every time. Sorry. Big planet machine that can kill stars at the click of a button... vs orcs that use teef for bullets...

Lets not forget that Orks have their own superweapons as well, for every Necron superweapon, there's an Ork psyker that can call down the literal fist of a Warp entity and smash such machines with the raw power of orkiness, or a fleet of Rok's that can be hurled at it.

Tangentially related: does anyone else kind of sort of imagine the board's response to the question as being similar to the factions response to such a conflict? Orks outvoting Necrons despite the Necrons utilizing compelling arguments based on their powers, clever and cunning Ork arguments punctuated by lots of "We win kause we're da Orks! ." The Necrons, upon witnessing their loss, go back in time to fix things/ call a revote?

I fully agree!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Billagio wrote:
Orks for sure. As Scrabb said, Gork and Mork would have their way with the Ctan, not sure how Ctan"counter" gork/mork.

I agree with you rather than the op on this one, C'tan can't stand up to gork/mork unless reunited.

If all necons combined out number the IoM thats ok. Orks would stil outnumber all necrons AND all of mankind COMBINED.

Secondly, time travel only works if your enemy can't see it coming. Divination. Access to the warp means the ability to see around the curvature of time. And those who travel it.

 Red Marine wrote:
If all necons combined out number the IoM thats ok. Orks would stil outnumber all necrons AND all of mankind COMBINED.

Secondly, time travel only works if your enemy can't see it coming. Divination. Access to the warp means the ability to see around the curvature of time. And those who travel it.

Orks can time travel too so moot point

But the Orks haven't weaponized time travel the way the Necrons have.


I do have hopes that the Orks will get exposed to said technology and we'll get an epic time travel battle royale.

Animus wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The answer I believe, is clear. The Orks would win, GW has already flat out stated this to be the case in numerous publications.

In fact, verbatim

Warhammer 40,000 4th Edition Rulebook wrote:If ever the Orks united as a race, no force in the galaxy could resist them

Counterpoint:

Codex Necrons 5th Edition wrote:Only one hope can now preserve the other races from the Necron's implacable advance, from the endless legions of silent and deathless warriors rising from long-forgotten tombs. If the Necrons can be prevented from waking from waking to their full glory, if the scattered Tomb Worlds can be prevented from unifying, then there is a chance for survival. If not, then the great powers of the galaxy will surely fall, and the Necrons shall reign supreme for eternity.

This clearly counts the Orks as not being "a great power of the galaxy".

As for the time travel... time wars are so... ugh. You know what happens if two time travelling cultures get in a war against each other?

You end up with one of two outcomes: They obliterate the universe through paradox, or they end up sealing themselves outside time entirely.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
As for the time travel... time wars are so... ugh. You know what happens if two time travelling cultures get in a war against each other?

You end up with one of two outcomes: They obliterate the universe through paradox, or they end up sealing themselves outside time entirely.

Ugh, I hate that time travel is a thing in this setting. Time distortion in the Warp is cool (because it makes sense) but this stuff just breaks the believability of the setting. And if Necrons and Orks can travel... then the Old Ones probably could too... and the Dark Eldar with their high tech toys (mini black holes and stuff) probably could too... And the Emperor could probably figure out a way to do it too... since he did explore the galaxy and stuff by himself... and so on. Actually wait, the setting has perpetuals. Never mind...

I've never seen or heard of time travel being terribly widespread to the point where it is or was a significant component of any race's strategy.

Ghaz has the ability to use toe warp to travel through time currently (in some ways anyway) and some necron have the ability to manipulate time (Orikan) but it it doesn't seem like its a massive effect.

Orks either win or the galaxy is destroyed. Orks are, for all intents and purposes, infinite in number. Every world they step foot on, they seed the soil with new Ork spores. Orks don't have to create a landing spot, erect a city, etc., they only need to crash a hijacked asteroid into the planet and their corpses will begin to seed the planet. Once there, they will devote themselves to a single purpose - war. If united, all of their energies will be directed against the Necrons. The point being, Necrons cannot fight a war of attrition on that scale. No faction can apart from the Tyranids, and to a much lesser extent, I suppose mankind can replicate at a fairly rapid pace. Necrons do not create new Necrons. They will be worn down over time.

The only possible defense that the Necrons would have is to eradicate systems and annihilate all Orks within them. However, this would by necessity result in the destruction of the entire galaxy, as the Orks would never stop coming.

Oh look.

It's this thread again.