ORKS IS DA BEST...right?

No, they are not...

The Chaos posts practically wrote themselves so I think I'll stick with that same formula, up first, special rules, but I won't bother with 'Ere We Go, cause that's one of those good rules.  Mob Rule on the other hand, that one is a pisser
So the idea behind the mob rule is that it gives you a chance to pass a failed morale check as long as you meet the specific criteria and take a couple hits from it.  The 3 criteria are, be in combat, have a character, and have lotsa boys.  The thematic idea is that there are situation where orks won't care about morale because they are fighting, da boss sez so, and ders more boyz dan dem.  The trick is to have all 3, or at least the second 2, as often as possible or be prepared to fail morale checks.  For some of the specialised units that is particularly difficult because they are limited to smaller numbers.  To top it off, if you meet the criteria, you take additional wounds.  Now that might seem like it's a good rule, except the way they formulated the chart is weird in that it's not cumulative.  For example, if you have a squad of 30 boys, and they get shot up a bit and loose 25%, and through some means, they loose their nob, they will have to pass a Ld on 7, if they fail, there is a 50% chance that one of the result on the table will meet their criteria.  That means that it doesn't matter that there are still 23 boys left, they are gonna run.  I think they should have made the 3 criteria a standard, if you meet any one of the 3, you take a couple hits to restore order and then pass the check, but I'm not writing rules so...
Even still, at least it gives you a chance to not run when other wise you would.

And, that's it for special rules.  On to the HQ units...

Ok, so after having a look at them, aside from some of the named characters, which I won't get into, Orks don't have a bad one.  The Warboss is probably the biggest, toughest and killyest HQ around for the points he costs being pretty damn effective at 100 pts.  The big Mek can take the Kustom Forcefield while the Painboy gives the whole unit FNP.  Even the little Mek boys add characters to a unit to help keep up the Mob Rule.  The least used character is probably the Wierdboy, and even he is pretty good with a decent array of psychic powers.

So I guess it's on to Troops?

The ork boy is the staple of every ork army, in the fiction at least.  It's not too often that you see large mobs of boys anymore, at least not winning.  There are just far too many things out there that can pump out dozens of shots and kill Orks by the bucket full.  And the Ork boy really depends on making the charge into combat to be effective, and if that first round of combat does not go his way, he is in trouble cause it's gonna get worse.  To throw out some numbers, assuming the Nob kills 2, it will take 96 attacks from Boyz to kill 8 MEQ's.  That means that the unit of Orks will have to make it into contact with 24 Boyz and the Nob to inflict that damage, which is almost unheard of considering 10 marines with only bolters will kill 7, already dropping you below the required number, and then kill another 1-2 during overwatch, AND THEN kill another 3 before the Orks can even swing.  And those 19 Orks left will only kill 8 marines, 6 if they multi-charged.  That's including the power klawed Nob.
That brings up another problem, Orks need to make sure they hurt their target hard enough so it's crippled, but not hard enough to wipe it out so they don't get wiped the next enemy shooting phase.  This means that in some cases they will need to make multi charges, which as previously noted, reduces their effectiveness.
Now, they aren't without use.  I can see the usefulness of taking a large mob with a Big Mek with a Kustom Force Field and a Mad Dok giving the majority of the unit a 5++ and FNP.  You can even get a 4++ KFF in the Gaz supplement.  This gives them some staying power, add in a Warboss for some punch and maybe you got something worth taking. For around 500 points.

Next on the list are Grots.  Now these guys are cheap, dirt cheap, and they are about as effective as dirt too.  They are weak, they are cowards, and they are effectively useless as they can't take any weapons upgrades and their pistols are shit.
Their best use is as the mandatory 2 troops choices of a CAD so you can fit in more points of things that can actually do something, because as we talked about before, da Boyz aint just quite doing it.

So, this one is gonna be a bit short since Orks happen to have some pretty consistently good HQ's.  Who knew?  Next post we will start off with Elites.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.