According to fluff, both orkz in 40k and orcs in fantasy should be amongst the armies with stronger morale. After all...

According to fluff, both orkz in 40k and orcs in fantasy should be amongst the armies with stronger morale. After all, all they want is to fight and the stronger the enemy is the happier they are. Yet in both games greenskins are one of the worst armies in this regard.

Why? Is it simply because orkz can't be competent?

>morale is the capacity of a group of people to pull together persistently and consistently in pursuit of a common purpose
>pull together
>persistently
>consistently
Orks are fickle, and are constantly bickering amongst themselves. They have no discipline if they're not lead by a strong leader. Orcs even have the Animosity special rule.

Besides, it's Ld for Leadership, not morale. Leadership encompasses other aspects like efficiency and tactical prowess.

>orcs
Never heard of them. Do you mean orruks?

Classic Tolkien orcs that everyone draws from to some extent or another are quite a cowardly lot on the whole. They enjoy fighting insomuch as it's against people who really don't stand a chance. They typically need much larger numbers and a will behind them, either Morgoth or later Sauron. Without those two things they typically break and flee.

The thing about ork morale is that it only has two states:

>WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

or

>FOIT AGEN ANUDDA DAY!

Which one they're at depends solely upon whether or not the have a boss that can keep them in line.

Orcs like to fight and win, if they're being absolutely slaughtered that means they're losing bad without getting much real fighting in.

I think their lack of self-preservation and concern for survival is overstated in the lore. They're not outright cowards, but a small squad of Orks is not going to rush against an army of Imperial Guard - they're not stupid, they want a fun fight, which means they want the odds in their favor. I figure they feel the same way about if a lot of them are dying, they don't want to die as well and not have a good fight.

They would if they brought old Mob Rule back.

Why are you in EVERY thread?

Don't they reproduce by dying in combat?

So why do morale checks use leadership?

So why don't they gain bonuses to pass leadership/morale tests if a leader is close by?

Across different editions:
>you actually get to use the Leadership of a character in your unit instead of the unit's own Ld, or you can use the General's leadership if he is nearby
>having Black Orcs around shuts down Animosity
>half the animostiy results have to do with the boss putting his boyz in line with a few head kumpin'
Did you ever WHFB or you just like to ask inane questions?

They're drunken English football fans looking for a fight because their team lost/won/drew. After a bloody nose, they slink away when the coppers arrive, to fight another day.

You had Ork. So naturally I assumed 40k.

The premisses are wrong, both orcs and orks can be pretty cowardly, in fact they often are when they aren't really high on Waaagh.

Orks enjoy a fight - they enjoy winning, in the same way we enjoy an FPS game. They dont fear death because its death, but because it represents having to 'start over*' and miss out on the current fight.

This explains why even veteran orks can be cowardly - you dont want to die and lose your accumulated cool gear and collected items thinking you'd have to go through the whole 'levelling up' process again from yoof.

*its explicitly mentioned that orks believe they are 'belched' back into a newly hatching body by Gork or Mork upon death in one of the old books.

>Fantasy
I'm not terribly familiar, but I'm given to understand that Animosity is fluffy and helps shape the army. An Orc player might take Black Orcs or kit out his general differently in order to address potential psychology issues, or try to use weight of numbers to compensate instead.

>40k
The 7e crunch is retarded. I thought this was common knowledge.

But 40k orks are not like that. A normal ork can't imagine his life without a fight and gladly charges at any opponent.

Was old Mob rule OP?

Same reason why Infinity uses Willpower for hacking. Because adding half a dozen situational stats and skills does wonders to wreck the flow of a tabletop wargame.
Morale is one aspect of Leadership, out of many (like IG orders, SoB miracles, or some psychic powers).

OP here, I'm back.

I'm not really convinced by most of the arguments presented here. They're mostly based around rules /stats that contradict the fluff (which is nothing new in 40k, that I'll grant). The other argument is something like "liking to fight is not liking to die", this one makes sense, yet it doesn't explain why orkz are more likely to retreat than more pacific races. A normal human (not a marine), eldar or tau should act more cowardly in tabletop than the ork, since they don't enjoy war for the sake of war and would prefer to be somewhere else if it wasn't for duty. This is different for elites and leaders, but I'm talking about the rank and file.

Also people tends to forget that orkz are literally retarded, specially when it comes to detect danger. This should make them less eager to flee too.

Orkz have the same leadership as trained human and tau soldiers do and are less likely to retreat because of mob rule. The issue is that they don't have any of the Ld boosts the other races have access to.

As

Said, being 'broken' is the state of no longer being able to function as a military unit. Orcs are great warriors but poor soldiers. They don't have the sense of comradeship and self-sacrifice that allows more disciplined forces to face up to a superior opponent.

Then why they don't receive specific boosts to Leadership when it's used to represent bravery?

Leadership also sometimes represents intelligence or the ability to coordinate, not just bravery.

So they flee because they're stupid and uncoordinated? That would make sense for humans, but they're not.

The mob rules from earlier editions of Orks served a similar role. Orks that would fail leadership tests would run off and, if another Ork mob was in its path, would join up with them and run back into the fray.

A weaker atsknf for cheaper units? Op?

Human routed due to low leadership rolls
>oh emperor preserve me, we are all going to diiiieeeee

Ork routed due to low leadership roles
>wez is gettin ourez teef kicked in, betta move ta covah so we can woit fer da flyboyz ta bomb da muck outta dem

Not:
>WE'Z ALL GONNA DIE!
Or:
>LET'Z LEG IT!

The real reason is that the Orks haven't had a well written codex since 3e. In early 3e, sargents needed an upgrade to get higher leadership. This was changed to the default for races updated in 3.5/early 4th. By the time the 4e Orks codex came that had been forgotten and nobs were ld7, but the iron gob as wargear was removed. Mob Rule was streamlined, mob up removed. From then on Orks were more cowardly than humans. Then, when the more recent codex came they fixed nothing and wrote the new, shitter mob rule because they didn't know shit.