Editing Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Orks (section)

==Building Your Army==
:;Picking Your Detachment
::The Orks have access to many different detachments. Besides the Normal Combined Arms and Unbound options in the base rulebook, there are formations and the Ork Horde Detachment. Formations have a lot more requirements than FOC, so you will need to meet them. Many Formations are interesting choices, but the lack of freedom and options means they will likely be joined by another detachment. 
::Decide whether or not you want Objective Secured; in the tournament scene stealing objectives is considered a top-tier strategy. In friendly or lower tiers of play this might not be a factor. The Ork Horde Detachment is a good option if you want to field more HQs, though this requires the tax of more troops.
:;Picking Your Warlord
::If you want to take the Warboss as your warlord, remember that the Waaagh! is a powerful ability for the Orks and is only accessible if the Warboss is your warlord.  However, if you are making a gun line as opposed to a melee charge, don't worry about him.  The warlord in an Orky gunline army could be anything, though it is good to take an HQ that has survivability (such as Big Meks) and access to Gifts of Gork and Mork. 
::Weirdboyz can actually benefit from the Ork Warlord Traits, with only the fifth trait being a borderline-useless wash. Special characters are always a good choice, but if they force you to have a warlord trait make sure that it's one you want or one you can use. Otherwise you can just take them as a secondary HQ, and have a generic HQ to get you your preferred trait.
:;Picking Your Troops
::There aren't many choices for Ork Troops now that FOC HQ's don't exist.  Play unbound if you want to skip this selection.  But if you want to play with a battle forged army, feel free to fill this slot with minimum squads of Grots. 
::It won't take up a lot of points and will leave you to build the rest of the army as you see fit.  Ork Boyz are always a solid choice for the Warboss on a close-combat rampage.  Need to take them on a trip?  You can doggy-bag them in a Trukk. If you want to play around with Objective Secured, Ork Boyz are your best bet as they have the mob rule to keep them in line.  Grots will just run or get procedurally eaten by Squig Hounds.
:;Picking Your Elites
::Elites are pretty lackluster for Orks.  Mostly they are units that you want to get into melee, the only exceptions being Kommandos and Tankbustas.  Even then, Kommandos only can take a limited number of heavy weapons.  That in mind, Kommandos are meant for backfield distractions and shoving Rokkits up AV 10 rears.  
::Tankbustas are great anti-vehicle choice since every one of them gets a Rokkit Launcha, Tank Hunters, and Tankbusta Bombs.  Burnas are anti-MEQ in close combat and solidly anti-horde at close range; they are good for holding points and abusing cover, but really shine with a transport.  Nob squads are more elite versions of Ork Boys with access to all the toys, but they aren't as hilariously slaughter-matic as they used to be.  
::Now that Cybork Body got nerfed to the ground, all of the old problems with Nob squads are starting to really show through: insufficient armor, bad initiative, can't square off with other 5-man close-combat death squads and expect to survive, and easy so blow far too many points on.  Nowadays they don't even get the 5++ that saved them from Instant Death.  Most Elites are a complement to or reinforcement of your squads of Boyz.  Figure out what you want to do better, and then set it loose.
::The exception to all of the above are Grot Tanks.  Grot Tanks fantastic, tournament-competitive, and not anywhere in the basic codex.  They came from Imperial Armour 8, and got ported over during the 6th Edition jump, which means that they are legal in any game without the need to be running an actual capital-d Dread Mob Army.  Treat them like Warbuggies on steroids: screen units, harass flanks, and generally make moving around hard for the enemy.  Keep track of all their little eccentricities, because most of them are super irritating for the enemy.
:;Picking Your Fast Attack
::This is where most people will throw their Warbikes on the table from.  The stuff here is fast and is great for moving about the board, and Orks can pick up a surprisingly large volume and variety of highly-mobile units.  
::Bikes are a tough, fast and deadly unit that can close the distance to close combat in Turn 1, though it hardly needs to thanks to its useful guns and multiple survival tactics.  Warkoptas take over the scouting role that you might want to put bikes in: even more flexible than the biker boyz since they can fly over terrain, and great for taking rear-armor rokkit pot-shots. 
::Stormboys are the Turn 1 assaulters, even more so than bikers, though they tend to attract a lot of attention so keep them in close combat lest they be forced to take a volley of bolter-fire.  Don't bother with Warbuggies or Wartrakks, just take a squad of Grot Tanks.
::Ork fliers were the new flavor of 6th Edition, and still maintain a rather large presence in the Fast Attack section.  All vanilla-codex Ork fliers are thin-skinned glass cannons, and will fall out of the sky if a Hydra so much as looks at them, so resist the temptation to kit them out too hard.  That said, both bombers and fighters will barf shocking volumes of fire on their chosen targets, especially if you let loose with some of your plentiful one-shot bombs and missiles.  
::Orks are naturally great at airplanes, because all of their weapons are configured for that classic orkish BS2.  Dakkajets are the weakest of the bunch, but they're cheap and can tear other fliers out of the sky like nothing else.  Blitza-Bommas are dedicated armor killers, which Orks need desperately.  If you absolutely positively need that Leman Russ dead Turn 2, accept no substitutes.  Burna-Bommas are a middle-ground, designed to kill dug-in infantry.  You have a lot of anti-infantry as Orks, but a Burna-Bomma can eat entire squads of cover-abusing gunlines and MEQs in a single turn, if you are willing to blow your whole load at once.
:;Picking Your Heavy Support
::This is the most crowded section in the codex, as well as one with the most firepower.  Heavy Support comes in two flavors, Heavy and Support.  As a general rule, you will want to find a way to synergize these units with your other force organization choices, not the other way around.  
::If you want to Support your Boyz and their toyz, you are mainly looking at Lootas and ways to make Lootas not run off the table (Painboys with bosspoles) or die to blast weapons (Meks with KFF).  You may also consider the Mek Gunz for the same role as the Lootas.  Mek Guns are your swiss army knife: you can kit them out to take on various threats, but only really one threat at a time.  
::Also, they are the best anti-air unit in the game as of release.  Depending on how deeply you want to dig into the Ork Rules Rabbit Hole (or Squig Hole, as it were), you can pull out the Imperial Armour 8 rules and summon Big Trakks with Supa-kannons and pretend you've got Basilisks (for a pretty penny in cash and points alike).
::Your other flavor is Heavy: close combat and close-support units to put bigger gunz in with your boyz.  You have three sub-flavors, walkers and tanks and Flash Gitz.  Flash Gitz are an actual option nowadays, but unless you're running Kaptin Badrukk's Flash Gitz to maximize your damage output, you may want to go with Burnas or Lootas.  Walkers are next, and Orks get a lot of them.  
::Kans are good screening larger Dreads, and in smaller games can support infantry advances well with their BS3 Grotzookas and Rokkits.  Deff Dreads are selectively useful: with 4 DCCW arms they can feast on most other units in close combat, but they are very susceptible to being shot to death and their ranged weapons are underwhelming.  Other options such as the Morkanaut with KFF give a nice boost to your army's overall defenses, but the Orkanauts don't really know what they want to be, and tend to not be worth their points. 
::Battlewagons are usually good for moving units around (like Flash Gitz and Tankbustas), and make great battering rams for inserting Nobs, Burnas or Warbosses into close combat.  They can even be taken as Dedicated Transports by some units, which frees up your Heavy Support slots for more Lootas.  Also, consider looking at Mega- and Meka-Dreads, which make a fantastic distraction and have a tendency to consume whole vehicles, monstrous creatures, and buildings in a single assault phase.
:;Picking Your Transports
::Don't be fooled by the 7th Edition Ork codex. You are not stuck with only paper thin Trukks or expensive Battlewagons.  We have the most transport options out of any codex.  Marines have technically more, but they just call every rhino-chassis tank with a different gun a different transport and that doesn't ''really'' count.  I'm talking about ''real choice''. 
::From AV 10 open-topped skimmers all the way to AV 14 'ard-Cased battlewagons and literally everything in between.  The only thing that is missing are flyer transports (and you can get those if you play an IA8 Dread Mob army).  Check the Heavy Support section for more info, and seriously consider playing Unbound if you want to avoid cluttering up the Heavy Support section, since most Ork transports come from the Heavies section.
::Transports are a big deal for Orks.  Since we rely on huge infantry waves or swarms of lightly-armored vehicles, each list needs to find the transport that is right for the job.  Do you want to dump the points for the Battlewagon to move units, since you need to make it Open-Topped to be useful?  Do you want to risk the now-nerfed Trukks in favor of more esoteric choices like Big Trakks for just a few dozen points more?  Do the math on survivability versus speed versus firepower.  
::Also keep in mind squad sizes: Boyz need to be in big groups and shoving them in 12-model transports cuts their maximum squad size in more than half, but Burnas and Tankbustas can be effective in squads of only six.
:;Picking Your Lord of War
::You want, you need the Stompa. With so many unfair choices out there for other armies (KNIGHTS) the Stompa is the most balanced Super-Heavy in game.  Sadly your only limitation is that Tournament Organizers will ban super-heavies, and taking them in low points matches is a dick move.  Ghazzy is a great option and with his built in fearless Waaagh! means you are all set to use him and leave the HQ slot for your important stuff.