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.

No, they just want Ork units to be useful, while you don't.

 Melissia wrote:
No, they just want Ork units to be useful, while you don't.

There are a lot of useful Ork units, there are even more Ork units in the codex. They want every unit to be useful, whereas I'm aware of the strengths of my army and am focusing on how to make that part better.

 jhnbrg wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
The marine himself costs significantly more than the Ork. He has already paid for the same WS as the Ork and a better BS. No need to charge him twice with making the equivalent gun more expensive too. You keep talking as though Marines and Orks cost the same.
Orks should not pay more for melee options as they have already paid for it in their points cost.
The cost for the number of shots is always included in the weapons cost, hence a Punisher Russ, a Punisher Tank Commander and Punisher Pask all paying the same for the Punisher cannon despite having Bs4+, Bs3+ and Bs2+ respectively. Otherwise why do you have to pay for the BS increase in the first place? Take Pask compared to a Punisher Russ for instance, he hits 167% as many times as the normal Russ, so should he pay 167% more for his weapons? If so, why pay for his Bs increase at all if it doesn't make his shooting more efficient in comparison to the price of his gun?
Also don't bring assault cannons into it - I think we can all agree that they are bonkers broken for their points cost. They need a serious price hike.

How many points does -1 to hit cost?
How many points does +1 save cost?

It's almost impossible to say since they price units based on roll and how characteristics interact with each other (a +1 save on a Russ is better than a +1save on a Grot) and their roll but I'll give it a go:
A conscript compared to a vet is 3pts difference, with this you get +2BS (why I used this comparsion), +2LDs, +1WS, a Vet Sarge and unlocking of multiple weapon options.
A Scion compared to an Elysian Drop Vet gets +1save for 2pts more (Although many say the Elysians are broken but let's go with that), so +2save is 4pts.

So an Ork boy upgraded to 13pts should look like it has similar stats as a SM:
M5 WS2+ BS3+ S4 T4 W1 A2 LD8 Sv4+
Marine
M6 WS3+ BS3+ S4 T4 W1 A1 LD7 Sv3+

Ork has a chopp a for +1 attack, SM does not, Ork has a comparable gun to a bolter if taking the shoota. Ork has Ere We Go, Mob rule and Green Tide, SM has ATSKNF and Chapter Tactics.

Mob rule > ATSKNF imo whilst Ere We Go and Green Tide stack well together and with the Orks melee abilities and character buffs to equate to CTs.

So an Ork would get 1 extra WS, 2 extra attacks and 1 extra leadership than the equivalent marine in return for 1 worse save and one worse move. So the Ork certainly takes it.

Thus we can say that the Marine has definitely paid for his BS.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
No, they just want Ork units to be useful, while you don't.

Where are you getting this from? All we've been saying is that they should get equivalent Weaponary for the same price. Your stretching and overexaggeration reminds me of hardline vegetarians comparing us meat eaters to Hitler because we don't mind farm animals being killed for food.

Orks have 8 LD? That's news to me.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Orks have 8 LD? That's news to me.

Come on Slayer, read the whole post.

hollow one wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
No, they just want Ork units to be useful, while you don't.

There are a lot of useful Ork units, there are even more Ork units in the codex. They want every unit to be useful, whereas I'm aware of the strengths of my army and am focusing on how to make that part better.

And what is wrong with having every unit in one's codex useful? if units like flash gitz, lootas, tank bustas, burnaboyz, or non-kff big meks are supposed to be intentionally bad to take, then why bother having them in the codex?

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

hollow one wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
No, they just want Ork units to be useful, while you don't.

There are a lot of useful Ork units, there are even more Ork units in the codex. They want every unit to be useful, whereas I'm aware of the strengths of my army and am focusing on how to make that part better.

And what is wrong with having every unit in one's codex useful? if units like flash gitz, lootas, tank bustas, burnaboyz, or non-kff big meks are supposed to be intentionally bad to take, then why bother having them in the codex?

beat me to it. But there is always this

You're complaining about the lack of range dakka in comparison to quite excellent CC.

Orks do not have "excellent" CC. What we have is Boyz. Literally just boyz. What else in our codex is "Excellent" at CC? I mean beyond our characters who are good at CC? Are Meganobz good at CC? how about Warbikers? Or Killakanz?

No, the only thing we are good at is HORDE CC. which is fine, its just BORING AS HELL to play the same list over and over and over. I want to be able to take a gunline and not automatically lose, or god forbid i bring a tactical list with both ranged weapons and CC units. At the moment my tournament list is 90 Boyz, 40 Stormboyz, 35 Kommandos and a couple support pieces like weirdboyz. Stormboyz are this editions trukk Boyz and Kommandos are just garbage, but they distract my opponent for a turn so they are worth it, and more importantly I can drop them on an objective turn 3.

If ork shooting isn't supposed to be good then GW has failed as a company because why buy the models if the rules are so crap that they wont even be played and instead will sit on a shelf collecting dust?

hollow one wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
No, they just want Ork units to be useful, while you don't.

There are a lot of useful Ork units, there are even more Ork units in the codex. They want every unit to be useful, whereas I'm aware of the strengths of my army and am focusing on how to make that part better.

Not including characters (as they're not really units) there's maybe 3 useful ork units, from a "serious" viewpoint.

Boyz, Boyz, and Boyz.

Seriously though, the actually decent units are Boyz, Maybe Stormboyz, and... You know, I just had to open the codex and scan through to find a third thing to say, and I honestly couldn't find anything that didn't have a huge problem. Actually, the Mek Gunz aren't too terrible, nor are Big Gunz, but they're a bit flimsy and overpriced. So lets be nice and call it two and a half useful units.

I still run a mek mob list though, cos frankly I like the models more and its more fun than moving a couple hundred boyz. But I would never expect to actuall win a game with it, unless I got *very* lucky with the dice.

I don't know what lists you guys are looking at, but if you check out competitive lists pretty much everyone has a spammed army with two or three things. You saying that Orks deserve their entire codex to be competitive and viable?

Orkz bring boyz, weirdboyz, stormboyz, warbosses, nobz with banners, painboyz, big mekz, and some fools bring trukks, big gunz, and tankbustahs. All that stuff is borderline competitive or down right good.

You guys are just complaining for complaining's sake. Yeah there are units like lootahs that totally suck, but people sometimes bring them coz they look cool, and maybe in a niche position they might be useful; I don't know mayhbe against ork mirror, tyranidz, maybe khorne demons, who knows. But competition? yeah only a few units are good, like everyone's army list! And then you sit here and say: "why do they include units if they are not as good as boyz!?" and the answer is obvious, for fun and variety.

edit: I'll have you know that i consistently bring sub-optimal lists to my local groups games, I bring a battlewagon converted to look like a pirate ship and I load it up with flash gitz and it runs around while we all have a good laugh. I'm not taking that to a tournament, I'm taking boyz and weirdboyz and maybe a couple of units I think are overlooked or I'm priced into bringing because I don't own 150 boyz. That's what everyone is doing right now, find what works and spam it. Complaining that other things don't work AS WELL is just not a functional argument, of course certain things are going to be better than others.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SemperMortis wrote:
Orks do not have "excellent" CC. What we have is Boyz. Literally just boyz. What else in our codex is "Excellent" at CC? I mean beyond our characters who are good at CC? Are Meganobz good at CC? how about Warbikers? Or Killakanz?

No, the only thing we are good at is HORDE CC. which is fine, its just BORING AS HELL to play the same list over and over and over. I want to be able to take a gunline and not automatically lose, or god forbid i bring a tactical list with both ranged weapons and CC units. At the moment my tournament list is 90 Boyz, 40 Stormboyz, 35 Kommandos and a couple support pieces like weirdboyz. Stormboyz are this editions trukk Boyz and Kommandos are just garbage, but they distract my opponent for a turn so they are worth it, and more importantly I can drop them on an objective turn 3.

If ork shooting isn't supposed to be good then GW has failed as a company because why buy the models if the rules are so crap that they wont even be played and instead will sit on a shelf collecting dust?

You just said Orkz do not have "excellent" CC then went on to name Boyz, which are excellent in CC. Why do you want so much more? How greedy are you? HORDE CC is fun to play, its complex, CC is difficult and multi-staged and can capitalize on opponents poor movement and deployment. It has WAY more depth than shooting in my opinion. It rewards good positioning and landing successful charges first, and the order of sequencing matters more than shooting IMO. Landing a CC alpha strike is much more complicated than a shooting alpha strike and requires substantially more wits and effort. That is A LOT of fun for me. Your opinion is that is not fun, and I respect that. But that's really your only good argument as to why you want other things (such as greater dakka), that you find boyz boring. That's fine, but it's not actually a good reason for Orkz to have more options.

edit: damnit I could go on man, weirdboyz are REALLY hard to use optimally. Keeping them in position to smite where you want, while not blowing up their head AND deciding to buff units or not is difficult. Weirdboyz are typically your heavy hitters so you have to protect them while putting them in precarious positions to allow them to get useful smites. Balancing an army with stormboyz also makes your list more complex, do you bring a big mek on a bike now to keep up? When do you jump? Can you get your support units like painboy or waagh banner near da jump in an effective way? Can your jump surround vehicles and delete transported units? Boyz on their own are seriously complex, how far do you conga line? how many shootaz? where is the best part of the board to get maximum surface area on your charges? how do you bait your opponent into those windows?

Instead, we're discussing if a Kustom Shoota should be 4 or 2 points... Man who cares. We don't need it, get better at the tools you have.

hollow one wrote:
There are a lot of useful Ork units

Haha... hah...

Orks are doing terribly right now, because most of their units are garbage. You don't really know all that much about the army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

hollow one wrote:
You saying that Orks deserve their entire codex to be competitive and viable?

Yes.

fething duh?

Marines have more useful units in their book than Orks have units.

 Melissia wrote:

hollow one wrote:
There are a lot of useful Ork units

Haha... hah...

Orks are doing terribly right now, because most of their units are garbage. You don't really know all that much about the army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

hollow one wrote:
You saying that Orks deserve their entire codex to be competitive and viable?

Yes.

fething duh?

Marines have more useful units in their book than Orks have units.

So we should count the amount of useful units until they are even? A month ago it would've been stormravens and Guilliman as the only viable imperium units, you think they were complaining? No one army has an entire codex of competitive units, sure some will have more than others, but look at the lists people are bringing to BAO for example, you won't see more than 4 types of units in literally every single list.

hollow one wrote:
So we should count the amount of useful units until they are even?

Your argument is poorly thought through and unhelpful in proving your point; the existence of stormravens and guilliman doesn't prove ANY Ork units are useful, nevermind "a lot".

 Melissia wrote:

hollow one wrote:
So we should count the amount of useful units until they are even?

Your argument is poorly thought through and unhelpful in proving your point; the existence of stormravens and guilliman doesn't prove ANY Ork units are useful, nevermind "a lot".

When a space marine looks at his list, and realises he has to bring stormravens and old gil to be competitive, do you think he gets angry that his melee units are crap? Do you think that they count these two units, and go "damnit I wish the rest of my codex was viable!". Nah, when that was the best option, they spam the stormravens. Just like any reasonable ork player trying to win will spam boyz at the moment.

hollow one wrote:
When a space marine looks at his list, and realises he has to bring stormravens and old gil to be competitive, do you think he gets angry that his melee units are crap?

I already know for a fact that the answer to this is yes. Have you not read any Space Marine thread on this forum?

 Melissia wrote:

hollow one wrote:
When a space marine looks at his list, and realises he has to bring stormravens and old gil to be competitive, do you think he gets angry that his melee units are crap?

I already know for a fact that the answer to this is yes. Have you not read any Space Marine thread on this forum?

Then the discussion will never change. Everyone want's something literally unattainable. Eventually things will get boiled down to the strictly best thing (or two or three) to bring, and people bring that. To achieve anything else would be a godlike display of balancing that no company has EVER shown with 10+ races. It's just not possible. Why not just enjoy the fact that Orkz can win games?

So do you have anything of value to add to the discussion, or are you just here to whine about Ork players wanting their book to be better than it currently is?

Your argument thus far can be summed up as "Boyz, Weirdboyz, and Warbosses are good, therefor stop your complaining about everything else not being good", which you may find convincing in your own mind, but you're not really convincing many people here.

Yeah alright, even if I clearly think Orkz are doing better than most people in this thread, I wouldn't mind something exciting and new like everyone else. But damn if it's just a marine painted green I will be sorely disappointed. This discussion, the original weapon vs weapon discussion is remarkably unhealthy for moving forward, in my opinion, which was why I started in this thread fairly sarcastically. Orkz have two or three fairly outstanding units, if you bring the codex up to snuff compared to those three units, Orkz will be over powered AND have variety. Balance is a tightrope, it's elegant when employed well, but just giving Orkz comparable weapons/dakka to marines is a redundant and ham-fisted way to approach it. Comparing the weapon effectiveness to ONE other race and stating that Orkz fall short, is short sighted, simplistic, and virtually irrelevant in the scope of the effectiveness of what Orkz do. You want to have a discussion that benefits Orkz dakka? Maybe discuss adding benefits that come with situational shortcomings, such as high randomness in their damage output or chance to hit, or more "gets hot" rules, multiple profiles for weapons, single shooting weapons, etc. Putting a bolt rifle in the hands of an Ork is not only boring, but it has the capacity to overpower Orkz, because their CC is important and very good, and making comparisons in a vacuum is absolutely NOT how you balance a game. Another example, substantial changes to the terrain rules or your setup (such as adding heaps of LOS terrain, or having objectives in close quarter buildings) will dramatically change the effectiveness of Orkz.

hollow one wrote:
But damn if it's just a marine painted green

Strawman argument. No one here has suggested "a marine painted green", in spite of your wild and unjustified assertions to the contrary.

 Melissia wrote:

hollow one wrote:
But damn if it's just a marine painted green

Strawman argument. No one here has suggested "a marine painted green", in spite of your wild and unjustified assertions to the contrary.

People in this thread are literally asking for storm bolters to be put on Orkz.

edit: the very nature of the thread is comparing a specific marine and a specific ork shooting load-out and stating that it is a problem that one is worse than the other.

hollow one wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

hollow one wrote:
But damn if it's just a marine painted green

Strawman argument. No one here has suggested "a marine painted green", in spite of your wild and unjustified assertions to the contrary.

People in this thread are literally asking for storm bolters to be put on Orkz.

edit: the very nature of the thread is comparing a specific marine and a specific ork shooting load-out and stating that it is a problem that one is worse than the other.

Lol, you are missing the point on purpose, thats not very honest of you.

I just looked back over every post in this entire thread.

Not a single person said that.

Alright I'll take the long way around. If the weapons are not the same, they are imbalanced. The general discussion has been should they cost the same? Where do the points go, should we weigh the points of the individual unit when considering the weapon cost? How come other armies pay less for their guns and Orkz pay more? Orkz should pay less for at least comparable weaponry etc. etc.

Some people are saying, no the weapon cost should be the same across armies, despite the cost of the unit holding it. That is the nature of comparing the two weapons in the first place, its quite clear that under certain circumstances one weapon will always be better than another. So, you can either be dissatisfied with that comparison and ask for a normalisation of the weaponry (which some people are doing by way of saying they need to cost the same) OR you can compensate for the unit holding the gun and discuss other strengths and weakneses of units. Breng77 for example discussed the durability difference between comparable weaponry, others such as Semper are merely dissatisfied with the fact that the kustom shooter is CLEARLY overcosted compared to a stormbolter.

So there are some people having good discussions, such as breng, and others who want equality across the races with comparable weaponry that does not account for the units holding them.

This may not have been explicitly said by someone, but for me it is clear that if you are dissatisfied with comparisons that are unequal then you probably seek equality. Seeking equality is sort of like wanting a marine painted green.

Sorry I took a short cut before.

In regards to comparing Ork shooting to Marine shooting, there's something that I haven't seen anyone else really bringing up:

To-hit penalties.
This edition, to-hit penalties are really, really common, (some armies can get them pretty much universally,) and Orks are particularly screwed over by them. When you write a shooty Marine list, your options for dealing with those penalties are to either just fire away regardless, keeping your Plasma on cool fire mode and dealing with the -1 since it's only a 25% reduction in accuracy, or find a source of re-rolls to mitigate the penalty. If they manage to stack two sources of penalties for a total of -2, then you're still hitting at 50% efficiency, and still can get rerolls to mitigate that.

If you're playing Orks, you don't have any counter to that. If someone brings to-hit penalties, you can't suck it up and keep firing away, because you're at a 50% to-hit penalty, and if it's a -2, then Orks literally cannot do anything about it. There are also few sources of re-rolls for Orks (outside of Ammo Runts, which are very limited in availability, and on Tankbustas, who are actually one of the better shooty units in the codex, though they still kind of aren't great) that could otherwise help mitigate the penalty.


Shooty Orks are not a viable option, not because they're weak, but because hard counters exist that don't just weaken them, but literally make them unable to do any damage. If you're paying for orky guns, you are paying for weapons that - depending on your opponent - might be firing at a massive, insurmountable handicap or even simply be unable to fire.

hollow one wrote:
Alright I'll take the long way around. If the weapons are not the same, they are imbalanced.

*sigh*

Oh, this argument again.

1: The basis of the argument being a load of bollocks-- points, army playstyle, supporting units, terrain, stratagems, player skill, etc all make a huge difference in balance; two wildly different armies can still be balanced against each other. As much as I think the game is a blithering festival of mediocrity taht doesn't deserve 1/100th of the accolades given it, I bring up Starcraft as a rebuttal. A game with wildly different factions, but popularly considered highly balanced. GW's 40k of course has not gotten to that point, and probably never will, because 40k is immensely more complex... but the defeatist argument of "it's hard therefor don't even try" is unconvincing.

2: You're still making the same absurdist logical fallacy of "if Ork players aren't content with their lot of having inherently inferior gear than everyone else, they clearly just want to be space marines". The repeated use of this argument is inherently dishonest, and you know it. There's plenty of ways to make kustom shootas worth 4 points while not being identical to storm bolters, and while fitting in with the Ork mentality-- for example, giving kustom shootas more shots than they currently have, which indeed would be very Orky. Or they can be made cheaper than 4 points, allowing them to be more easily spammed-- again, this fits in with the Ork mentality.

 Melissia wrote:

hollow one wrote:
Alright I'll take the long way around. If the weapons are not the same, they are imbalanced.

*sigh*

Oh, this argument again.

1: The basis of the argument being a load of bollocks-- points, army playstyle, supporting units, terrain, stratagems, player skill, etc all make a huge difference in balance; two wildly different armies can still be balanced against each other. As much as I think the game is a blithering festival of mediocrity taht doesn't deserve 1/100th of the accolades given it, I bring up Starcraft as a rebuttal. A game with wildly different factions, but popularly considered highly balanced. GW's 40k of course has not gotten to that point, and probably never will, because 40k is immensely more complex... but the defeatist argument of "it's hard therefor don't even try" is unconvincing.

2: You're still making the same absurdist logical fallacy of "if Ork players aren't content with their lot of having inherently inferior gear than everyone else, they clearly just want to be space marines". The repeated use of this argument is inherently dishonest, and you know it. There's plenty of ways to make kustom shootas worth 4 points while not being identical to storm bolters, and while fitting in with the Ork mentality-- for example, giving kustom shootas more shots than they currently have, which indeed would be very Orky. Or they can be made cheaper than 4 points, allowing them to be more easily spammed-- again, this fits in with the Ork mentality.

I think you're missing my point a little as well. If people were discussing the things in this thread that I have bolded in your comment, I probably wouldn't have started posting in the first place. Because I agree with you, 100% on that point. And I also agree that starcraft is a great rebuttal, I used it earlier myself. My point is mostly, balancing is complex, and for me personally when people make vacuum comparisons (like the premise of this thread) I feel like that is a waste of time and an unhealthy balance discussion.

You and I are in accord with your #1 point, although I'm not saying "don't balance", I'm saying "please consider everything when discussing balance". Comparisons are not useful and spawn debates that go no where, because you could always compare it to something else and be dissatisfied.

And to #2, you're right there are plenty of ways to make kustom shootas worth 4 points, and we should discuss that without comparing them to weapons that are held by different armies who have different points costs and have different auras/advantages.

Waaaghpower wrote:
In regards to comparing Ork shooting to Marine shooting, there's something that I haven't seen anyone else really bringing up:

To-hit penalties.
This edition, to-hit penalties are really, really common, (some armies can get them pretty much universally,) and Orks are particularly screwed over by them. When you write a shooty Marine list, your options for dealing with those penalties are to either just fire away regardless, keeping your Plasma on cool fire mode and dealing with the -1 since it's only a 25% reduction in accuracy, or find a source of re-rolls to mitigate the penalty. If they manage to stack two sources of penalties for a total of -2, then you're still hitting at 50% efficiency, and still can get rerolls to mitigate that.

If you're playing Orks, you don't have any counter to that. If someone brings to-hit penalties, you can't suck it up and keep firing away, because you're at a 50% to-hit penalty, and if it's a -2, then Orks literally cannot do anything about it. There are also few sources of re-rolls for Orks (outside of Ammo Runts, which are very limited in availability, and on Tankbustas, who are actually one of the better shooty units in the codex, though they still kind of aren't great) that could otherwise help mitigate the penalty.


Shooty Orks are not a viable option, not because they're weak, but because hard counters exist that don't just weaken them, but literally make them unable to do any damage. If you're paying for orky guns, you are paying for weapons that - depending on your opponent - might be firing at a massive, insurmountable handicap or even simply be unable to fire.

Exactly!!

I think orks were better in 7th than now. Yes we have the greentide spam that can be mid tier but even in 7th edition we did have some mid tier lists with tons of bikers and/or the bullyboyz.

This edition is better than previous one but orks are even more terrible, that says enough about them.

My question is why shooty Orks should even be viable. That's not what the army is about. It could be more viable, but that's really not the play style of the army and never has been.

Assault Marines aren't good at the whole ASSAULT thing compared to other units but I don't complain.

I always weep for the Orks as they are always Game Workshop's whipping boys... that Flamer comparison really rubs it in.
Shame as Warhammer has the best Lore for Orks since their conception by Tolkin so long ago, they should be given some Rule love as well.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
My question is why shooty Orks should even be viable. That's not what the army is about. It could be more viable, but that's really not the play style of the army and never has been.

Assault Marines aren't good at the whole ASSAULT thing compared to other units but I don't complain.

Orks have always been both shooting and close combat, more than half the choises in the codex (index?) are about shooting ffs!