The emphasis on holding objectives in the middle of the board coupled with shorter games and Command Phase scoring means that gunline armies that prefer to sit back and shoot won’t be successful – units have to rush forward early to capture objectives if players want to maximize their primary points. 9th Edition missions reward aggressive melee playstyles.Meanwhile changes to morale, coherency, and combat have changed the way Orks have to think about their army and how it plays. The changes to rules and missions for 9th edition have fundamentally changed the game and player priorities, putting an emphasis on holding objectives and durability. We’re going to go through the big wins and losses the faction sees in 9th, cover off the changes to the units in the various battlefield roles, and finally look at some army lists to get you started with the new edition. As it may not surprise you to learn, Orks are pretty good at this – maybe good enough to punch through the challenges and make themselves a force to be reckoned with on the tournament tables. Things may not be as dire as they seem, however – as people have finally started to cotton onto, the 9th Edition missions are set up to reward a certain style of play hard – moving into the mid board in force and bowling over anyone who tries to stop you. Core rules changes weaken their units on the table, the new detachment system hurts them, and several key units took point hits. On the face of it, the 9th Edition changes are pretty hard on Orks. Things dipped a bit during Space Marine winter, but some help from CA2019 helped get them back onto the tables, and the sheer brute force of 90+ Boyz backed up by some surprisingly deadly shooting consistently proved to be a recipe for success.

On launch their book was exceedingly powerful, sufficient that it got taken down a few pegs by subsequent nerfs, but even after that they remained a reasonable force. Once they finally got a Codex in November 2018, Orks had a pretty good run of it in 8th Edition.

We decided waiting till November would be too mean.

Today, by extremely popular demand it’s finally the turn of the Orks. 9th edition is out in the wild, and with it a whole raft of changes to the factions of Warhammer 40,000.

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