Chaos Lord vs Orkz

[Paradise Lost]

How exactly do you counter Orks? I'm new to Elite and it'd been a while since I had played retail so I basically had to learn from scratch. I've watched tons of replays and read Raven's guide, but it doesn't go into as much detail as with other factions. See, I do well enough against every other faction (except for Eldar GWT spam in team games, but that's another matter), but Orks seem to completely counter Chaos, or at least my particular styles of play. Every 'traditional' Chaos counter has proven insufficient against Orks in my experience. You see how you use AC tics to counter shees? They just get butchered by sluggas. Outshoot/melee shoota squads? Bad luck, they'll just suppress and kite you. Use your CL against Orks at all? The few times he actually manages to get into melee range and even get some health back with KtW, Ork melee units destroy him!

Supress them with havocs? Bad luck, the Warboss can charge and slaughter them while giving bonuses to his army that make supression irrelevant. Kommando Nob just sneaks up on them and tears them apart with knife or shotgun. Heck, my HoR, LC, DH Chaos Lord lost HALF his health when that little bugger uses his special knife ability.


Even my LC terminators face huge trouble fighting the cheaper Nobz. If they are fully upgraded, they tear through my termies like if they were Heretics.

The list could go on and on. Mind you, it's not that I CANT beat Orks, I just find them incredibly difficult to deal with, constantly feeling that all of my units are being out-performed by Ork ones, and all my victories over Ork players in 1V1s being due to out-microing them (heavily) and bashing power like crazy. I'm just baffled by the fact that my full-offense-oriented Chaos Lord loses 1v1 to a hero like the Warboss that in spite of being the toughest hero in the game has insane troop support options.


Any insight will be welcome with open arms.

[Triple d]

Well I'm no chaos main myself but I think I can help.

I mostly do imperial guard and my answer to the chaos lord is exactly the same as the orks answer you described: shoot the crap out of him.

That being said I think chaos has a pretty unique and powerful option in the form of the pretty over the top noise marines.

Any time I have a super shooty army, noise marines are a giant kick in the balls. Them shutting down the ranged blobs is a big deal.

Your opponents natural response will be to send the sluggas and warboss after them, trying to stop them from wrecking his ranged blob, but this is where either a spare set of heretics or you chaos lord comes along.

Bear in mind I recommend two sets of heretics (your free one and a second) and maybe( read almost always) a regular csm before you swing for the noise marines. One to worship and send the chaos lord down their throat with rocket boots and the other to hang back and wait for sluggas to show up and try and bother your noise marines. Once your lord is in the fight you can probably safely get the other tic squad to babysit the noise marines too if needed.

And as always if things go fubar your nasty noise makers will have that bloody on demand knockback.

Did I mention I hate noise marines I don't think I did XD

If I had to guess the orks will probably go for a set of storm boys to help out the sluggas and warboss in taking on the noise marines but then he is dedicating quite a bit of his army just to take on your backline, but such is life.

I think a set of havocs after the noise marines would be hilarious at that point though. Keep them well behind your noise makers with your worship tics and laugh maniacally as he jumps into trouble.

The havocs have the extra bonus of that sweet sweet autocannon come tier 2. I don't think the lascannon is necessary for the ork vehicles they aren't terribly tough in tier 2.

As for nobs....I have no idea. I don't know chaos tier 3 well enough to know what to tell you. I know the real answer is consistent knockback, or lockdown....but for the guard I abuse the shit out the inquisitor for that sort of thing..... I would say go for a khorne dread but that just alleviates symptoms of tank hammers in your face it won't fix the real issue and keep them out.

Again, such is life

[Torpid]

Quite a lot of exaggerating going on there. Shees do better in melee than sluggas - it was probably the supporting fire from the double big shootas and a bunch of waaagggh buffs that made AC tics lose to sluggas because otherwise they beat them most of the time or at least come very close, whereas they don't beat shees.

Regardless, I fear you may be using your CL incorrectly vs orks too. Sure early on before he gets his big shootas upgrades/lootas you can just charge in and bully the shootas with your CL. After that though you need to get the combi bolter and use him in ranged vs the shootas/lootas and only use him in melee defensively vs sluggas/stormboyz that move in to intercept your csm/nm/havocs.

That's the next thing. The optimal build generally is starting tic -> csm -> tic -> havoc -> noise marines -> AC on one of your tics, combi bolter on CL. That's a great T1 vs orks. Then bloodletters and a dread in T2 is the generic optimal build vs most ork builds.

So in T1 you shut-down the shootas with your havocs and noise marines, the WB can only tie up one and you have your havocs behind your NM so they suppress the wb when he moves in. Shoot him up with your CL/CSM and he dies quite quick. You have tics to deal with any flanking squads, or even stormboys. Two of them will butcher any ork melee that is alone. You can disrupt their melee with your noise marine's cacophony - it's a good way to stop a painboy from getting in and healing his stormboyz/sluggas that are deeper into your lines.

Come T2 let the galaxy burn is great on your CL, armour of the inferno is. Use LTGB after you suppress the shootas and by now you can get a blastmaster on your NM and those shootas should be no problem. Then you go bloodletters to help vs the upgraded ork melee because now it will beat your tics fairly easily, especially 1 on 1. But bloodletters under worship handle T2 sluggas/storms pretty easily, the warboss too, they also help for hunting down weirdboys and lootas but lootas get wrecked by the blastmaster NM and LTGB anyway. Get the AC on your CSM and abuse slaughter to counter melee squads extra hard.

Letters do reasonable damage to vehicles and when under worship can tie up a deff dread for quite a while and you can upgrade an autocannon in the mean-time. Vs the DD you might want to get an autocannon+a second las-cannon havoc though, those things are surprisingly tough to kill.

A dreadnought will finish it all off as by this point the ork will be spamming anti-infantry/set-up team stuff and lack proper AV. Bustas will bleed to your ranged dps and lootas get owned by the blastmaster/LTGB.

Blood maul on your CL can be purchased if melee becomes overwhelming or if they go nobs. The havocs with autocannon or heavy bolter are good vs nobs, especially with blastmaster too. Khorne dreads decimate them when in blood rage. Or you can just kite them with a tank or beat them head-on with lightning claw terminators supported with tzeentch marine fire or bloodletters. Nobs are actually really easy for chaos to beat - don't forget to use blood sacrifice for more bloodletters in fights to help wipe their melee squads, or blood lust for big prolonged fights. Blood-lust can even counter a potential CDB if you use it early enough.

[Cheekie Monkie]

Slightly off topic, but what race doesn't slurp on nobs at this point?

It seems to me that gitz or tanks come out on top in 9/10 scenarios.

[Torpid]

Slightly off topic, but what race doesn't slurp on nobs at this point?

It seems to me that gitz or tanks come out on top in 9/10 scenarios.

Nids. Unless LA. Yeah, that's about it really. HT/RA.

[Cheekie Monkie]

Surely rending talons/psychic scream HT or crippling talon/reinforced chitin/burrow trap RA would do decently at controlling the nobs though? Even if you factor in over dere the DOM seems built to counter nobs, doubly so if spirit leech roots targets in the next patch.

[Torpid]

Surely rending talons/psychic scream HT or crippling talon/reinforced chitin/burrow trap RA would do decently at controlling the nobs though? Even if you factor in over dere the DOM seems built to counter nobs, doubly so if spirit leech roots targets in the next patch.

They lack proper dps though if they don't have genes though so the control doesn't really matter, although tbh genes are pretty common vs orks anyway so :L

Yeah, nobs are really shit this meta.

[Tex]

I found the original post to be quite exaggerated as well, but I am definitely going to respect how you are feeling about the matchup. And truthfully, you did say that "maybe its just my style of play against orks".

Well I'm thinking it probably is, because chaos as a race, and not even specific to the hero, plays incredibly well against ork. In fact, the only matchup out of the nine possible in chaos vs ork that is clearly ork favored, is WB vs CS.

Anyway, regardless of putting my opinions against yours, I think you can pretty much take what torpid said, and turn that into your cookie cutter build.
Orks struggle tremendously against the CL in the early game, and your opponent is guaranteed to not build more than 1 slugga squad against you. You are free to counter your opponent's backline in any way that you choose, and his sluggas can basically never come near your chaos lord. The early lead you get from the sheer weight of the bullying power that the CL has should give you solid map control whether you decide to go with 2 heretics, or 2 csm squads.

I could go on, but I think you have everything you need. Now go get some games in, and adjust your play!

GL HF

[Paradise Lost]

Thank you all, (specially torpid) for the helpful advice. I'll adjust my play style right away.