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My Army List

Warboss, Big Shoota, Choppa
Big Mek, Slugga, Kustom Force Field
4 Kommandoz plus Nob, 2 rokkits
4 Kommandoz plus Nob, 2 rokkits
16 Flash Gitz plus Nob (power klaw), More Dakka, 4 Big Shootaz
18 Slugga Boyz plus Nob (power klaw), 4 Rokkitz
12 Slugga Boyz plus Nob, 4 Rokkitz
16 Slugga Boyz plus Nob (power klaw), 4 Big Shootaz
4 Tankbustaz plus Nob, 2 attack squigz, 4 Rokkitz
4 Tankbustaz plus Nob, 2 attack squigz, 4 Rokkitz
19 Grotz plus Slaver (Big Shoota, squighound)

Game 1
Iron Warriors
Take and Hold
Gamma
20 points

This was a very standard Iron Warriors army, with 6 obliterators, 2 havok squads, a predator, a basilisk, a demon prince and 2 las plas squads, as well as 3 bikes. With a nice big wood over to my left of the centre point, I simply walked toward the objective, killing as much as I could. I blew the basilisk up after it got one shot, and he left his daemon prince hiding behind it all game, and killed his predator with the only tankbusta remaining out of a squad, with a tankbusta bom, with the last dice roll of the game. He didn't really know what he was doing, didn't play to the mission, and I massacred him with about 130 points to spare.

Game 2
Ulthwe Seer Council
Cleanse
Omega
7 points

This was just unpleasant. My opponent had 2 five man guardian defender squads (no grav platform weapon) and a 1419 point seer council, with 74 wounds (64 models). Luckily, I rolled a cleanse (the only mission I thought I had a chance at). I sent off most of my small units to claim quarters (the tankbustaz and the kommandoz) whilst I fed my other units into the seer council, one by one. This nearly worked, except I made two mistakes. The first was I didn't keep a unit back in my own quarter, and I sent one of the units of tankbustaz into kombat when they should have been claiming a quarter. One of my units ended the game straddling my home quarter, and another quarter that I already had control of. We rolled to see which they would count for, and it was the wrong one. Had the dice come down the other way, I would have had a minor win. As it was, I suffered a minor loss.

Game 3
Steel Legion
Take and Hold
Omega
10 points

This was a nice looking army, very well-themed with lots of ork heads and other mementoes of armageddon. Luckily, this was an omega level mission, so his tanks, armoured fist and rough riders started off board. I again marched up toward the centre of the board, blowing up a couple of sentinels on the way. He had bad luck getting stuff on board which combined with only a 3 turn game (he was a very, very slow player), meant that this was pretty much a non-event. I made a mistake in turn 2, moving my Flash Gitz out of cover, that got them very, very shot up, and this stopped me getting the minor win.

Game 4
Alaitoc
Take and Hold
Gamma
13 points

Standard-ish Alaitoc army with 5 disruption rolls, 3 wraithlords, scorpions in a wave serpent and a bunch of starcannon defender squads. The game started very badly for me with 2 big units starting the game pinned, and my grot screen (and a unit of kommandoz) stuck into reserve. He promptly took the first turn and shot me to bits. I spent the next four turns hiding and trying not too lose too much stuff. My Flash Gitz, in particular, took a bit of a pounding. However, having taken the first turn, I was going to move onto the objective last, so he had to start a run for it in full view of my army. Having done basically nothing through the first four turns, in turn 5 I blew his wave serpent out of the sky, and assaulted and killed two wraithlords and one of the defender squads. In turn six I killed the other wraithlord, a vyper, 2 of the ranger squads and his pathfinder squad, clearing him entirely from the centre of the board. I missed the major win by 32 points, which was basically a single grot wound, as my grotz were just one wound below half strength.

Game 5
Chaos (Iron Warriors Lite)
Take and Hold
Gamma
10 points

Iron Warriors-esque army with two obliterators, 3 havok squads, 2 min-maxed las/plas squads, backed up by a pack of furies, the bloodthirster and a 250 point lord on a bike. The game was very, very similar to game 4, above, as he again decided to take first turn, and shot me, and shot me, and shot me. This game only went to turn 5 so he made his move for the centre one turn earlier, but I was able to respond. In the first 4 turns I killed one tactical squad, and in the final turn I killed his boss, his bloodthirster, his furies, one tactical squad and one havok squad. Unfortunately, my final consolidation roll for destroying his furies left me short of the centre ground (to be fair, I needed a 5, and got a 1), so it all resolved out as a draw.

Game 6
Iron Warriors
Seek and Destroy
Gamma
7 points

Bleh, this was just horrible. A nasty Iron Warriors list (9 obliterators, daemon prince, 2 infiltrating tactical squads and 2 predators) on an open table with a mission that meant he could stay back and shoot me. I took an early gamble and sent the kommandoz and a squad of tankbustaz to blow up his tanks, but it failed horribly (first turn night fight and all the squads failed to see over 12 inches) and they died. I killed on tactical squad, his daemon prince was frightened to come towards me and I hid the rest of my army. He was able to kill a couple of models a turn and when he achieved the points he need to get a minor win after his turn 4, I pointed out he wasn't going to kill anything else to get any more points, and I wasn't even going to try, so we called the game as a minor win to him at that point.

Conclusions

It was tough. The first conclusion is that I proved my point, the ork horde is a good army. Against the top players, and some pretty unpleasant army lists, the most anyone could do was get a minor win against me. My massacre was pretty much a fluke, as the guy was not a very good player (possibly a ringer) but you can only beat who you play. I ended up finishing 48th, in a field of over 150, giving me a top third finish.

I was very lucky with my missions, since the best mission for this army is take and hold, and I got four of them. Against that, the army does very well at escalation, and I only got two of those. I was also lucky to play the seer council at Cleanse, rather than take and hold, or even recon. However, once again, I couldn't control that, and I did play the take and hold very well.

Thanks for posting this it was an interesting read.

I'm quite very surprized at the list, no Trukkers, no Buggies, no Painboss + Cyborks, no Looted Tank, not even a whole lot of Grots, and lots and lots of Dakka.

Surprized you took the Big Shoota/Rokkit on the Slugga Nobs, losing the +1 attack for 2 CCW's.

How was the terrain setup on what you played? I have to say that you did come out with some good mission rolls for yourself and thus were able to completely play to the mission instead of having to worry about killing more of your opponent's army to pull out the win. Unfortuneately this didn't work in the one Seek and Destroy mission against IW but it's hard for anything to deal with that army, though it must have been Odd for the IW player to have his Oblits to morph Heavy Bolters instead of Lascannons. :p

Anyway, that's a hell of an odd list than anything I'm used to building, still very nice though and a good read. I may have to try some units of Kommandos w/ Rokkits on the Nob for tank hunting, usually I leave that for 3 Rokkit Buggies.

Also very surprized by no Looted tank and a distinct lack of fast stuff, major kudos to pulling off what you did.

I decided not to take vehicles in order to compete better in escalation games. This basically just left me with lots, and lots of dakka.

The decision to take heavy weapons rather than the extra attack pretty much worked out. 33% more shooting for 20-25% less attacks, particularly given the sheer number of boyz, was a good tradeoff. To get those extra four guns would have required another mob (which I don't have space on the force org for, anyway), which is a minimum of 130 points.

There was generally little terrain, about four or five medium sized pieces, almost always outside of the deployment zones. I did get some good mission rolls, apart from, as you say, the Iron Warriors. I was lucky, but the army does other missions, as well. A secure and control would have probably been even better. Any more cleanses probably wouldn't have helped, though a recon would have been okay, as well.

The kommandoz generally worked well, I also gave them ammo runtz to help out with that. The best they managed was blowing up the basilisk in the first game against the Iron Warriors, as well, as claiming all the quarters in the seer council game, and blowing up sentinels against the steel legion. They didn't work so well on the second day, though, culminating with their abject failure to even see a tank to blow it up against the last Iron Warriors army.

Thanks for the kudos, though

yea, your first IW player sounds like mine.

well played

i think ork horde with cover save is a decent answer to IW. i saw the horrific seer council game, and was amused to see you feeding orks into it which were 2" spaced apart in a long a line as possible, for slowest possible pile in moves, hehe.

I'm impressed with 2-2-2 with orks, but I don't know that it proves your point that they're still viable.

It depends what you mean by viable. Can an Ork horde win the GT? Probably not, since when it wins, it finds it harder to win big than some armies and it has problems with dealing with certain armies. But 2-2-2 means the Orks are punching their weight, although in the hands of a less capable player they might struggle. Nevertheless, I'm sure Dave could take the Orks to a heat or one of the European/US style local GTs and they would perform very well.

Well, I can't speak for Europe, but if he took that list to a US GT and did well, then he rocks. Because that would be quite a feat over here.

Regardless, again I'm impressed with even 2-2-2 with orks at this level.

2 x iron warriors
1 x wish we were iron warriors
1 x 1400 pt seer council
1 x random fluffy army
1 x random little kid elf army

The more I hear about the UKGT scene the more it sounds like a real hoot.

Well, yes, 2-2-2 doesn't exactly strike fear into opponents' hearts, but it's as much about the scale of the victories and defeats. Playing my worst possible opponent (IWs) in my worst possible mission (seek & destroy) on a board with no terrain, and all I suffer is a minor loss? That's my definition of viable.

Will it win the GT - possibly, a lot depends on the opponents you face, the missions you get and, ultimately, the dice that you roll. Does it have a reasonable chance? I think so.

Can a codex ork army end up with more than average points (ie, 10 points per game, using the GT scoring method) over a tournament? Absolutely, and I don't think many people would have agreed with that statement a week ago.

SpikyD, I still think the army blows. You must therefore just be a truly exceptional player.

Perhaps one of his exceptional qualities as a player is to see strengths in an army that others can't.

Mauleed: Well, thanks for the compliment

Relic_OMO: Well, thanks for that compliment, as well

Actually, as torgoch mentioned in passing, it's very difficult to see where the list ends and someone's skill begins, particularly when they are playing with such an, um, idiosyncratic list. I do take your point, just because I did well with it, doesn't mean someone else would, so doesn't mean it's actually a good list, but then the only way to actually prove that would be to have a whole bunch of people use that list (and another list, as a control group), and then compare the results, which isn't terribly viable, really.

(Which is a shame, cos having mentioned that I'm now *really, really* tempted to see what would happen. Hmm, how many people do I know that I can armtwist into building an ork horde...)

Stop looking at me like that....

Though I wouldn't mind taking the Horde out to play at an event, if you aren't using it. I could probably find a way to loose with an Ork Horde no matter what the mission!

Actually, as torgoch mentioned in passing, it's very difficult to see where the list ends and someone's skill begins, particularly when they are playing with such an, um, idiosyncratic list. I do take your point, just because I did well with it, doesn't mean someone else would, so doesn't mean it's actually a good list, but then the only way to actually prove that would be to have a whole bunch of people use that list (and another list, as a control group), and then compare the results, which isn't terribly viable, really.

I don't think even that would work, since I think 40k is a very idiosyncratic game. Just because one person does well with a list doesn't mean that everyone will do well with that list - it's a question of personal style. I know many players who do brilliantly with lists that everyone thinks are total garbage, and it's not because they are necessarily brilliant players - the list just suits them. Put a list that common wisdom tells you is 'better' in their hands, and they frequently suck.

Common wisdom will tell you that the number of viable 40k lists is about 10. Common wisdom is sometimes right, but not in this case. There are many lists that have strengths that not everyone can see. Perhaps you can see the strengths in the list you have, and that's good enough.

Bah!

The list sucks. SpikyD rulez.

Japp. First thought of our local Ork was: "My list is much tougher"

Congrats to your performance SpikyD and thx for the BatRep.

Torgoch: Yeah, I'm sure you can borrow the list for an appropriate event - should be fun

Relic: No, maybe not. I guess we'll never know. It does make a lot of this internet debating stuff a bit pointless, though...

Chaos: Thanks