What would be the best weapons and tactics for orcs?

The obvious one would be night time guerilla tactics, taking advantage of humans not seeing well and being weaker individually. Throw in some poison for good measure.

...

Grey Bastards style, aka riding massive hogs in pseudo motorcycle gangs.

Super heavy shock infantry with thicker heavier plate armor than the humans could manage, standard infantry with larger (longer) weapons.
Humans will never win an even fight.

The humans have advantage in numbers, metal body armor, and formations. So put the human strength against them.

Us BIG hammers to bash in that mettle armor. A reach hammer if possible. Use flanking to fuck their formations. And their numbers mean nothing.

Rape

Came here to post this. Well done.

>Orcs would use the same weapons as everyone else

Well golly gee I didn't see that one coming.

>humans

>advantage in numbers

Combined arms warfare utilizing small squads of well-equipped, loose formation infantry backed up by long-range artillery, heavy armor units, and air support strikes.

>Weapon
Chris Metzen
>Tactics
Revisionist retcons

You’re not fooling me, orc.
You’re not getting intelligence that easily

>Orc
>Tactics

No such thing.

Orcs would open with crude pilums and javelins to disable the human shields, before closing with large spiked clubs or shield and falx. An orc with a cheap club would knock down any human they swing at, probably disarming them or breaking their wrists if they attempt a parry. Humans would need spear and shield to safely engage orcs due to their hulking frames giving superior reach. They would cheaply and easily beat most human forces.

Their large size makes them less suitable for horseriding, so chariots would be invaluable.

Is their a horse like animal that would work?
Maby I could become a rich ork by breading and farming the Budweiser horse?

Assuming the humans are at a Stone Age level and the orcs have modern military technology, the best tactic would be to hunt them down with assault rifles and shoot them, possibly using planes or helicopters as spotters. But really, it depends on the setting.

Probably whatever weapon they're most used to using determined by their military tradition and influenced by their cultural values.

So "depends on the orcs".

Honorless welp!!!
If the humans only have sticks and stones then we will use sticks and stones.

Don't disrespect the sport of it. It's already in our favor it won't be fun if it's too easy.

I actually considered this quite a while, and while the answer does depend on the orcs in the setting most are big, brutish barbarians. As are orcs in my setting. Because the whole plot of my setting is that an orcish warlord who may or may not be the demon king incarnate, searching for the fragments of his infernal body that heroes from a distant past sealed and scattered has forcibly united all orcish tribes and is agressively expanding into civilized territory, I needed strategies that favor orcs.

Then I considered what the orcs have going for them: numbers, fierceness and (under the warlord) a willingness to adapt. Early strategies would reflect those of the Zulu and maybe some Hannibal (a 'civilized' individual, but much of his army consisted of Gauls and African mercenaries). Especially the Zulu's Bulls Horn would help. There'd be two flanks with mostly missle units (the 'horns'), a center of infantry (the 'head') and a reserve group of either elite infantry or cavalry (the 'loins'). The idea is that the entire group marches forward in formation with the horns screening the head. The horns then move to the side of the enemy while the head charges in and the loins stay in reserve (considering the elves are supposed to be faux-Romans, I imagine the warlord simply observed the elven tendency to keep elite units in reserve and aped it). This also vaguely resembles Hannibal's box.

Over time, assuming the orcs have competent enough leadership and willingness to adapt, they'd raid whatever weapons and armor their enemies leave behind on the battlefield or in cities. Especially if a hostile city is subjugated, I imagine the natives of the city are allowed to survive if they equip and feed the orcish army. At that stage, the orcish army would become a mirror image of their enemy, or some sort of combination if they're fighting multiple enemies at once.

tl;dr: Zerg in the short run, adaptation in the long run

Was meant for. Sorry

Your orc should craft their own steal armor and weapons. They should have massive landscape raping mines with small settlements built over the old mines. Piss off those hippy elves by eating a mountain for stone walls/buildings and steal tools.

Look, for like two thousand years mankind used chariots and carts but didnt ride horses. Chariots can deliver devestating charges and provide mobility, who needs cavalry?

Look, for like two thousand years horses looked like this. Once you breed horses to become big and strong enough to easily endure the weight of a man in full armor, you don't really need chariots anymore. In Caesar's time the only ones actually using chariots were the Britons, and even then they mostly functioned like mobile infantry rather than cavalry (quickly retreating on their chariots if the enemy got too close).

>big ridiculously bulky green tinged orcs
>not short hunched bow legged malnourished shit orcs backed by industrialization
?????

you mean goblins?

this kind of GWfaggotry is starting to become annoying

That's the first step, eventually you'll get mad and start telling them to stop or some such then after that you'll get use to them and get over it.

No, I mean the only orcs that are actually halfway interesting, ie Tolkien orcs.

In my setting Orcs spent a few centuries conquered by an evil overlord who basically commanded the equivalent of the roman empire. The loose tribes of Orcish society were basically folded wholesale into the Legions and trained as such.

Thing is, the Legionary mindset is highly compatible with Orcish culture: Loyalty to your Chief/Commander, the willingness to commit your life to the Tribe/Cohort, and of course, PILLAGING FOR DAYS YO.

It was a revolutionary moment for their culture, such that when the empire finally fell for the most part, there's a Byzantine equivalent still kicking around in the east holding the line against undead hoards commanded by an 8000 year old God-King Lich chilling in the desert, the Orcs kept the Legion lifetyle alive, and are essentially a wandering mercenary powerhouse, kept together by killing whatever enemy they're paid to fight, and then whatever employer refuses to pay.

Yeah, i guess from a narrative they're more interesting than other orcs but they're not much of a player species, so they kinda suck in that regard.

>It's not interesting unless you're copypasting Tolkien
Guys like you are everything wrong with fantasy.

Literally nobody actually copies Tolkien, simpleton. The closest thing I can think of is some of the Elf stuff in Warhammer fantasy has some similarities to Tolkien's Elves.

That's a really fun idea for orcs. Like it.

I think there's a real problem with WHAT ARE ORCS, which is totally dependent on setting.

LOTR-orcs seem to be naturally cruel and greedy, and prone to infighting (at least what we see of them in the books) - and they aren't big hulking brutes, but rather the same size as humans, and easily cowed or scared.

Blizz-orcs are YUGE, really strong and warlike, and their only real weakness seems to be that they cleave to traditions of leadership that are no longer relevant for their society (the biggest and strongest is chieftain, etc), but which made sense when they were living in smaller tribes.

D&D-orcs are traditionally almost just a particularly mean-spirited breed of neanderthal; hunter-gatherers that are completely uninterested in peaceful coexistence with other folk, and sometimes mob and destroy large areas, when a few rich years have allowed their numbers to swell because of their fast reproduction.

Guns, of course.

My setting orcs are tolkienesque. Less Mordor industrial orcs and more Moria goblins though, due to a lack of a Sauron figure.

The exception are the orcs of Rakrez, who've civilized and aren't nearly as filthy and malnourished due to being, well, a functional society. They've moved away partially from the strength based warchief model of barbaric uruks to a more feudal society in which the larger, stronger orcs breed for strength and protect the masses in return for authority and the resources to equip themselves.

So they're knights. Big armored, transitional plate level knights, equipped with lances, swords, and poleaxes. There is a split between those who ride huge, muscled warhorses and the smaller but far more intelligent and dangerous wargs (who themselves are sapient and sadistic, but less awful than wild wargs and pretty loyal.)

There's also a middle class of light raider cavalry, heavy infantry, and lighter infantry, who mostly focus on skirmishing and supporting the knight. They also serve as the highest rank of non-nobles, and are the equivalent of village headmen and such.

They've also got two traditions of magical warriors, who represent the contrasting attitudes of the new orcish society- the chivalric, noble Paladins, who temper their bloodlust and cruelty with chivalry and honor, and the Blackblood Berserkers, who hew to a romanticized fake savage ideal of their past as savages. Both have proponents, but the current king AND his heir are Paladins.

One of the players is an Orcish Earl acting as an ambassador to the PC Republic (recently reformed via PC coup into a feudal bureaucracy, weirdly enough).

Religiously, the Orcs revere the goddess of kindness who civilized them, but don't worship her, instead worshiping spirits, who speak through the Shamans (less orc shaman more european animism).

It's almost like most weapons were used for their functional perpose and not astetics

The secret reason they can't fully worship the goddess is because civilization comes from consuming the flesh of gods, and their goddess was eaten in a cannibalistic frenzy by their ancestors, which may or may not have been consensual on her part. Her giant, half devoured corpse is being hidden by the cult that leads the Blackbloods (the eponymous blackblood brew which gives the Berserkers their magical abilities is made from her ever seeping blood), and the knowledge of her death has been erased. If this was discovered, their society would fracture utterly. The PC Earl was recently initiated into the Brewer cult, and was nearly broken by it because he was big on revering her.

Normal orcs worship whoever can command their fear- usually they're led by powerful warchiefs, evil spirits or shamans of evil spirits, priests of evil gods, demons, monsters, or their own sorcerers, the Speakers of the Black Speech. They're not really unified at all.

Oh, except the Hetmanate, which worships the gods of the Dwarves, being former vassals of theirs, and the slaves of Dulinn, an ancient necromantic lich elf, who worship... him. I guess they fit under the category of normal orcs, since he's scary as fuck.

What? Thats not why nobody rode horses (except the people who did, like scythians and other losers) it was because of the saddle and styrrups not being invented.

... you're a tad retarded, yeah? Everyone rode horses after they were bred large enough to be easily ridable. He's speaking of 4000-1500 BCE, when Chariots were actually quite common due to, you guessed it, shit horses. Hell, the Sumerians preferred to use half wild asses.

Here's a list of folks who rode horses without saddles or stirrups:
Greeks, Macedonians (the companion cavalry of Alexander was rather famed), Romans, every Celtic culture, who were known for cavalry- germans, Numidians, Persians- I think you get the idea.

(Now technically they had tied cloth "saddles" but these were nothing like we think of when someone said saddles- the first thing we'd consider close to modern saddles in the West came from, hey, the Scythians, latter adopted into a rudimentary saddle appearing in Roman hands in around 100 BCE.)

Horses were in use as riding beasts long before saddles or stirrups- and chariots were in use before horses were ridden.

Polearms, warbows, dane axes, Zweihänder - something that requires alot of strenght to weild.

I think that's a hinny in the picture.

It's a Przewalskis horse. While it's not the ancestor of all modern horses (as was previously believed), it is the only wild* horse still around and therefore a solid indicator of what horses looked like before domestication and selective breeding.

*most other horses that are referred to as "wild" are actually feral ie. domesticated but escaped into the wild.

Those are goblins.

Let's make orcs and goblins have a clear difference.

Orcs are big and have war culture.
Goblins are "tolkin orcs" small and have an industrial culture or a raid culture.

I've always liked Skyrim orcs as it actually imparts a modicum of culture beyond "le big fighty green men". It makes sense that a race of outcasts (as they are considered neither beastfolk nor man) would be feared for their size and battle prowess and as such, given their smaller numbers, are often driven to physically defend what rightfully belongs to the orcish people. Their skill in smithing is also logical, why would a race constantly subjected to brutality and raiding not only hone their ability in battle, but their technical prowess in how they wage their wars.

They have sort of a "medieval jews"-thing going on, but 10000x more violent and martial. It is a cool take on it.

I also like the Skyrim orcs. I would love it if they became better arcitects and started mining and building with stone.

How are they "Jews"??

Because cavalry is better and cheaper than chariots, even beforevthe stirrup. I love the looks of chariots, but practically speaking they're very niche.

If you want to justify chariots, give the orcs a beast strong enough to pull the chariot but with an anatomy that makes riding it unhealthy for the beast or the rider.

I like big bulky orcs with industry and varied skin colors.

>mauls
>javelin
>war chief/s for support/grant advantage
>war casters to buff
if you can somehow split the party, some orcs dashing between each group to eat up PC reactions and set up grapples/etc.

Small, largely loathed enclaves dwelling within a larger, more powerful group who are extremely culturally distinct and disproportionately respected/feared for their skill in their niche despite their size and history of persecution.

Tendence to be violent and unruly was one of the jewish archetypes in antiquity. I guess it disappeared when west asia became ruled by peoples who suffered from the same stereotype (germanics, arabs, turkics).

West eurasia, sorry

Yeah, Jewish Zealots were greatly feared for their crazed courage and prowess. These are folks who preferred to commit mass suicide rather than surrender. Judea was this tiny little kingdom on the Syrian coast, and yet they managed two huge revolts and wiped out 3 full legions. That's fucking impressive- when the whole of Rome comes down on you and you still manage to do that much damage and THEN rise up again for another round, that takes courage.

I mean, it wasn't a good idea, given that after the second revolt so many jews were killed or enslaved that Jews became a minority in the province, and the Empire took pretty heavy steps to eradicate the jewish identity from the region entirely, but hey, I said they had courage and resilience, not foresight. Like orcs!

why should players be able to play all kinds races?

Think current state of Israel

Actually when he finally does stop rambling and get to the point he says they'd not use swords at all. So that's different at least.
Holy shit does he ramble though.

By ceasar's time the horses were still rather small like mongolian ponnies but they did what they were meant to do.

because they might want to, I guess. Or that the game creators want to make them playable.

I'd imagine that's pretty obvious so I'm not sure why you hadn't thought that yourself. It's not like making a race playable really conflicts with any setting's lore, since it's not part of the lore, just the rule set.

Well not exactly, their culture and ability to effectively use things larger and heavier would change a lot. Like dwarves being able to afford wearing armor that would make a human crumble and still march around. Being able to take something that would kill a human also means they can risk things more with reach and weight.

Of course where they would lose is tactics, orcs are usually portrayed as dumber or at least less willing to cooperate.

Wars are won by logistics as much as weapons and tactics, if not more. The question shouldn't be what weapons they should use, the question is what weapons can they field reliably. Because if you ignore the restrictions of supply, manufacture, development... The answer is just nukes and guns, right?

It would be even better if they also lost 2 1/2 feet of height and grew beards.

Hm, since this is a orc thread.
How make my pc a goblin slayer but with orcs without making my dm mad?

Much like elves, the best tactics and weapons for orcs would be our weapons and tactics. Because orcs are basically just us but superior in one way or another.

orcs are super strong but not exactly quick, i guess turtling with huge shield and pikes would be nice.

Unless he's got DMPC powers, you may not work well.

Don't they get charging bonuses in like three editions?

depending on the orcs, it might not work that way. Their toughness could be a major point. If a common orc can take a spear being thrust through their chest then it could result in spear not working as well, the spearman might even lose hold of the weapon or the spear could snap. Same with swords, a slash across the chest that doesn't cut through the ribs may not stop an orc at all. Which would explain why orcs favor axes that can break the bones of rival orc forces. Smashing formations not use to fighting orcs.

Arrows and bullets would lose a lot of effectiveness if hit anywhere but the head or heart, so about 90% of the body, couldn't kill an orc, not even from infection. Then the other vulnerables, like lungs and legs, only slowed them down. If they're tough enough the legs might not even cause a noticeable slow down and it'd be common for orcs to leave a battlefield with several arrows poking out of them.

well... a orc that can take a pike in the chest and still wont die is quite something, in this case they should just use use hammers and shields.
they would be a apolypse level threat if united tough.

OP specified that the enemy in this case is humans.

>then after that you'll get use to them and get over it.
Even with trips, you know nothing of autism.

Yea the modern orc has almost nothing to do with Tolkien orcs.

My favorite bit about Tolkien orcs was that they were actually quite ingenious, but everything they did was ugly and produced ugly results. Like at one point they use a healing salve on one of the hobbits that saved him, but left him with a scar forever. That was cool.

Depends on the foe.

Against lightly armoured humans you just need something that can cut well and is balanced.

Against knights you want something that can pierce metal or crush them.
So you want war hammers (the one with the point on one end and hammer on other).

Against clothed humans bows and any other ranged weapon is best.
Why waste your strength on such pathetic foes?
Much more fun to shoot them.

Orcs are stronger than Humans so just replicate their tactics and you will win.

Phalanxes?
Orcs are stronger and bigger so we can use longer pikes.

Shieldwalls?
Get fucked Humans.

Against casters?
Swamp the bastards before they can cast.

A lot of Orcs don't appreciate discipline so you gotta let them loose on a village now and then to work out their urges.
But all in all you should be fine killing Humans, so long as you keep the warriors in-line.

Your Orcs should be stupid because If they aren't stupid they are just ubermensch humans.

the only way I could see Orcs being stronger than humans and as smart is if Humans can use magic but Orcs can't.

I like to put orcs on giant boars. They both seem just ornery and too stubborn enough to get along and it looks more fearsome than some faggotass bigdog like Warcraft do

Hobgoblins are D&D's ubermensch. Same dex bonus as elf, same con bonus as dwarf, just as smart as humans, lawful and organized, breed as fast as orcs do.

Bow before the Big Orange Cock!

It'z a travesty dat you aven't received a (you). I shall put dis to good use.

And yet, the humans need a king for a slower healing than that

In DnD, orcs moved more and more toward the warcraft/gw type.
I'd argue that to represent orcs and uruk-hai in Tolkien terms, one should use DnD Goblins and Hobgoblins

>Your Orcs should be stupid because If they aren't stupid they are just ubermensch humans.

Why make them "stupid?" They're a race that can usually solve their problems by beating the problem over the head until it dies or out-surviving the problem. When your problems can be solved through simple, direct action and raw endurance, it will create a cultural mindset and thought process that values similar things.

That doesn't, however, mean that they are dumb. Just that they have a different set of priorities and abilities and can solve their problems differently.

You don't have to argue it, everybody knows this already.

>mfw ORC thread

>Weaponry
Spears, maces and axes (in that order) are general favorites because of how easy they are to make.
Swords are fine, but they're a humie weapon that takes too much effort to create for no added benefit.
If it's a "Strength" weapon, then an Orc can dominate with it.
Also FIRE. If anyone says that Orcs don't like fire, they're only technically right. Orcs don't like fire. Orcs fucking love fire.

>Tactics
Burn their forests, farms and crops.
Force them from the comfort of their stone walls.
Spread their focus thin.
Dominate on all fronts.
Raze their cities and laugh as their walls crumble.

>Enemies would be humans
Is a fly the enemy of a frog?

>tl;dr
BURN EVERYTHING.
SMASH IT.
THEN BURN IT AGAIN.
WHEN THEY THINK YOU'RE DONE BURNING SHIT?
YOU KEEP GOING.

So ubermensch that will raze kingdoms that become a "problem" , gg.

Humans are portrayed as either dumb and unwilling to cooperate. Or if willing to cooperate it's it stab em in the back. Cuz the only smart humans are back stabbers.

While orcs if organized and motivated (humans share that in a regard) can become a well oiled killing machine.

And had pale to grey skin like dwarfs?
You daft man?

Orcs are best when bigger And meaner! And Skyrim orcs can have beards....

The question for everyone else is. Are orcs better bare or with hair? And how much hair?

Being slow is a weakness! Brother Urcock! Learn to be fast like Mur'durg! Orcs are built warriors! Practice this in all aspects!

>Is the fly an enemy of the frog.
Well... I wouldn't say enemy. I bet if the frog didn't need to eat the fly they would be chill.

It's just natural order for frogs to kill and eat... Oh I guess so then.

Remember in lord of the rings when Aragorn and his two bros are trying to catch up to the uruk-hai who took pippin and merry?

And they keep saying what amounts to "Holy shit orcs can move fast we'll never catch up"?

I think the word you're looking for is "Prey".