Talk Fantasy Football

Hi everybody,

I was talking the other day with a friend regarding new teams to take on incoming tournaments, and i suggested him orcs. He just told me "i've never lost to orcs in tournament". My experience is the same, and i've had plenty of matches vs. orc teams, while i was coaching different teams (skavens, pact, even goblins.... and only lost once with pact, probably more on my lack of interest in that game after all day tiredness).

Anyway.... i've been thinking about orcs in tournaments, and i have a mixed feeling.

On paper, they look powerful. Great AV, great blitzers, not expensive RR, 4 st. 4 guys, a troll if you want....

On tabletop, and after 7 years attending big and small tournaments, i've never seen an orc team winning any of them.

So what are the main problems with an orc team in tournament?

I have played in at least one large tourney (50+ coaches) which was won by Orcs. IIRC this team had 8xM-Blow.

It depends partly on format. Orcs are a relatively cheap team; if the format is encouraging to cheap teams, then it will likely be good for Orcs. If the format allows doubles skills, then it may be unfavourable for Orcs (on the basis that many other teams have better doubles choices).

IMO coaching Orcs require experience, patience and application. In the hands of a good coach they can be formidable opponents, but not necessarily against all teams.

The Achilles heel of Orcs IMO is their indifferent performance against most AG4 teams. If the format is discouraging to AG4 teams, it will likely favour Orcs.

Hope that helps.

In Italy players like Spartako, Cana and Liam consistently win tournaments with orcs.

Orcs have 2 problems:
-they are used a lot by beginners. So a lot of orcs you meet at a tourney are beginners.
-in the hands of an "average" player they tend to draw a lot. To win your defence has to be good.

They certainly can win consistently. I've won a tourney and got second place at the next putting together a combined 8-0-1 record.
And I'm not an impressive player. Just a little above average.

Rolex wrote: And I'm not an impressive player. Just a little above average.

Your a top player in my book buddy!!

glowworm wrote:

Rolex wrote: And I'm not an impressive player. Just a little above average.

Your a top player in my book buddy!!

Thank you, man!

I have had a bit of success with Orcs (9W 4D 1L with 1 first place and 1 second) in three tournaments and I can agree with what has been said that Orcs main drawback is that they are not flexible. They play their Orc game and that's all. That will win a lot of games but in a tournament, one loss (or draw) is often enough to remove you from the running.

I love that 8xMiB idea, may have to steal that one...

I have had some success with Orcs as well, winning 2 smaller tournaments (OwlCon Cup and Spiky Cup) and did well at 2 others (Orclahoma and Chaos Cup). I think it has a lot more to do with inexperienced players using them (due the the availability of the models and great starting skills) than them not being a really high level competitive team. They also have a tendency towards a draw rather than a loss, as with most strength based teams, which can cause one to miss out winning enough to win a tournament without a skilled coach.

Orcs are my favorite team in tournaments. The green wall is hard to get thru if the orc coach play with dicipline and the cage is the orcs best friend on offence. I havent won any tournament at all but finished (in my first attemt) 9/156 on NAF this year. 4-1-1 with orcs. Draw against orc, and lost against Geggsters goblins because I made some mayor mistakes and Geggster really know his goblins.

The orc problems are that they are slow so the positioning have to be great, all the time. Many orc coaches gets to aggresive to get the hurt in. They also lack tackle so thats a problem if you face amazons or wood elfs (or goblins...). The orcs are also senisble for the kick off, they have a hard time to change from offence to defence against blitz results for example. With deep kicks from fast teams the orcs also have to send home more players then other faster teams. The team I struggle most against is Lizardmen, otherwise all matchups are good (well maybe except orcs, mirrors are just not that fun).

Don't they only lack tackle in the way that every race except the 2 varieties of dwarves lack tackle?

I think it's pretty obvious that they're one of the best teams. Good starting skills, high armor, high strength, very cheap. Being fairly slow isn't that much of a downside when you've got so much going for you.

In the UK Orcs are not looked on in a very good light by the top coaches. Almost all of us have abandoned them as a seriously competitive race, and there is always discussion on whether they make the 8 races we take to Eurobowl. That said, they are clearly not a bad team.

One problem I find with them is that they have no plan B. If stuff goes wrong, as it often will in a dice-related game, Orcs struggle to get back into contention. A 1/9 pickup, a bad Blitz!, a 1/81 Black Orc block etc. is often cataclismic. They can't chase a game in the way the truly great teams (Wood Elves, Undead, Lizardmen) can. Sure, they have a solid plan A, and if things go well are often better at bullying their way to victory than other teams. But in a 6 game tournament things will go wrong 2/3 times, and I often find I draw or lose those games. Whereas with Undead or Wood Elves I can more often overcome one turn of bad luck and scrape a win.

My main problem with Orcs is their inflexibility. I call them a solid 7/10 team : they give you 7/10 performance almost regardless of how you play them, but it is very hard to squeeze those extra points out into world class performance. Whereas Undead/WEs/Lizardmen etc are much more responsive to the way they are coached : a 10/10 coach can get 10/10 performance from them if he does everything correctly.

You must like 7AV because that is broken 58.3% of the time nearly double that of AV 9 which is only 27.8%. I think that is one of the key advantages with Orcs. compared to the AV7 or AV7 key players on the other teams that you mentioned. With AG4 you are also tempted to try lots more thing that fail 16.7% of the time, many time already have used your re-roll on the turn.

Nuffle_Hate_Me wrote:With AG4 you are also tempted to try lots more thing that fail 16.7% of the time, many time already have used your re-roll on the turn.

Only if you are coaching badly.

I'll give you Undead, which are an awesome tournament team, but not WE or Lizards, just too crunchy, especially the Lizards which you can end up with trying to ball handle with AG1 Saurus's very easily. I just never see them win tournaments anywhere, not at the last 2 Chaos Cups or any other tournament I have been to in the USA.

Nuffle_Hate_Me wrote:I'll give you Undead, which are an awesome tournament team, but not WE or Lizards, just too crunchy, especially the Lizards which you can end up with trying to ball handle with AG1 Saurus's very easily. I just never see them win tournaments anywhere, not at the last 2 Chaos Cups or any other tournament I have been to in the USA.

well there is a gap (i would say an ocean) between our styles, on the old continent, lizards are known to be in the top 3 races aligned next to undeads and woodies.

i think the main factor is the speed. i am very bad with orcs (i mean very very bad) and i think i know why. I need to be able to score almost when i want and to do this, you need the mv 7 or 8. the orc problem is that if you want to travel from middle of your half to the end zone you have to grind a lot more squares because your main ball carrier moves at 5.

an easy model would be to say that you can - by pushing your opponent every turn- gain 1 square per turn from the LOS.
So at turn 5 you should be in scoring range (including gfi) with lizards undeads and woodies, this let you 3 turns to optimize your set up and prevent the gfi. but orcs still have to grind 2 more squares to be at non-gfi range of the td, so if you don't obliterate your opponent he will overcrowd your team and you will not be able to pass thrue no matter how skinky the tackle zones are.
this is if everything goes well, as stated by joemanji, if something goes wrong with undead and lizards you still have 3-4 turns and opportunities to handle the problems, with orcs you don't have backups.

Note that this model consider only the straight path, with faster teams you can go around and don't even need to gfi, where with orc you will have to make 1 dodge and 2 gfi.
i think this issue is shared with dwarves to, but dwarves have the nemesis phenomen that is a different matter.

Nuffle_Hate_Me wrote:I'll give you Undead, which are an awesome tournament team, but not WE or Lizards, just too crunchy, especially the Lizards which you can end up with trying to ball handle with AG1 Saurus's very easily. I just never see them win tournaments anywhere, not at the last 2 Chaos Cups or any other tournament I have been to in the USA.

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