Posleen vs Ork WAAAGH!

[hongi]

The battlefield is Earth with no humans around.

All the Posleen that are said to have invaded Earth in the Aldenata series vs the Orks from the Amarggeddon campaign, lead by their standard leader. No orbital bombardments. Everyone gets their standard armament, but this is going to be nasty, balls-up ground war. Who wins?

[Imperial Overlord]

Orks win.

1) Both sides breed fast but the ork spore spawning is faster and harder to deal with.

2) Orks use lots of automatic weapons and have plenty of heavy artillery and armoured vehicles. Great for killing hordes of unarmoured lizard-centaurs.

3) Ork psychic powers

4) Ork logistic advantage: Orks Mekboys can build advanced weapons on planet. Posleen can't. New spawned Posleen will be SOL for weapons that aren't scavenged, new spawned Mekboys will build them.

5) Ork combat adaption. Ork survivors will get bigger, tougher, and smarter as they survive.

6) The Armaggedon campaign had several cunning ork warlords in charge.

[Gerald Tarrant]

4) Ork logistic advantage: Orks Mekboys can build advanced weapons on planet. Posleen can't.

Not quite true

I found this

"Damn, they're digging in."

The humans had observed that behavior before, but only on Earth. Although the God Kings invariably lived above ground, usually in large stone or metal pyramids—although there didn't seem to be any evidence of those here—most of their manufacturing facilities seemed to be underground.

Apparently this was a "late conquest" activity. After an area had been fully reduced and all the human evidence cleaned up the Posleen generally put in farms. They primarily grew local crops having, apparently, none of their own. While this was going on the local God King's pyramid was constructed and the multitude of items necessary for that and day-to-day existence was created from the "factories," mostly nannite "vat" production, on the ships. But as soon as an area reached a certain level of production, underground facilities started being built. And when they were complete, the ships were passed on to the next generation and took off for either another planet or another part of the same planet. And the local settlement started working on the next ship out of their surplus.

chapter 12

This link goes to the Baen free library. They have 12 chapters of the book up, the first taste is free link

New spawned Posleen will be SOL for weapons that aren't scavenged, new spawned Mekboys will build them.

This part is correct feral Posleen aren't capable of the same level of organization as feral orks.

1) Both sides breed fast but the ork spore spawning is faster and harder to deal with.

I don't know the Ork numbers and I couldn't find them on Wiki, but Posleen take 2 years (From Chapter 1 of same book, can't find the quote right now.)

5) Ork combat adaption. Ork survivors will get bigger, tougher, and smarter as they survive.

It's stated that the Posleen are getting smarter as they are learning from the humans as well as having there dumber god kings weeded out by humans. As to the bigger/tougher nature of Orcs, most Posleen weapons (excepting shotguns, and the 1mm railgun) are capable of killing ACS, I don't think any unarmored Orc is up to that. But I'm not well enough versed in 40k, to know for sure.

An advantage Posleen have over Orcs is in the air, although I don't know if this

All the Posleen that are said to have invaded Earth in the Aldenata series vs the Orks from the Amarggeddon campaign, lead by their standard leader. No orbital bombardments. Everyone gets their standard armament, but this is going to be nasty, balls-up ground war. Who wins?

allows the use of the Posleen landers, which were occasionally used in air mobile or air support roles. I don't know if the Orcs have anything filling that role.

That said the Posleen still lose.

Disadvantages

1)They are dumb. Even the god kings don't innovate, are uncooperative, and dumb. In the first 4 books the only God-Kings that ever cooperate are relatives or assigned subordinates. Equally senior God-Kings aren't ever seen working together.

subpoint to 1: There are seemingly as many lines of command as there are god-kings. Orks are fractious, but not this fractious, the War Boss can form a coherent strategy to repell the occasional intelligent God-King.

2) No Gargants. The closest thing Posleen have is their landers.

3) No real anti-Gargant weaponry. At the end of Hell's Faire (Book 4) Bun-Bun (a SheVa) gets uparmored, call it a "Humie Gargant" it's eventually damaged, but it chews through whole divisions of Posleen and loads of Landers. A gargant would fare at least that well against Posleen ground. (Do gargants mount anti-air weaponry? If they do is it up to snuff for dealing with Posleen Landers?)

4) The Posleen don't innovate technologically. Orks could probably (if urged) put anti-lander style cannons on their gargants, so while they might lose the first Gargant-Lander battles, they'll eventually be at least as good as SheVa for killing landers.

5)I imagine that if pressed the Orcs can always dig in. Posleen seem physically/psychologically incapable of defense. With 20th century weapons humans regularly inflicted 100 to 1 casualties on attacking Posleen. If Orks are willing to dig in, 100-1 is the minimum we should expect.

Posleen haven't faced an enemy as numerous as they are. So if they face an intelligent, well armed enemy that is as numerous as them, they have no chance

[Imperial Overlord]

Orks breed by releasing spores. Spores grow into rapidly growing fungus and wants the fungus reaches a critical mass (not that big) some of the spores start growing into the smaller orkoids. Once the fungus gets large enough, you start getting full blown orks. Orks release a lot of spores when they die. This is why orks are so very hard to get rid of completely, the more die the faster they breed.

As for airpower, orks have that too. Mekboyz are constantly innovating, so yes they will adept especially when lead by the leaders present at Armageddon.

The combat adaptation is mentioned not because getting bigger and tougher (and orks can survive ridiculous amounts of trauma) will give them such a huge advantage, but that as the ork veterans will become harder to kill and much more cunning. The Posleen rank and file are morons and will stay that way. Also big orks can lug around huge weapons. A heavy machine gun is a typical personal arm for an Ork and their heavy weapons are very destructive. Good for killing hordes of Posleen.

Gargant firepower varies with what the Mekboyz who built it decide to do and what the Ork Warboss wants. If they need a lot of antiair, it will have a lot of antiair weapons as well as layers of extremely tough armour and powerfields.

Using the orks from Armageddon is a particularly nasty choice because not only is a big, well equipped horde but that it has notably cunning and innovative leaders. Its the archetypical really nasty Ork invasion force.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Do Orks ever dig in for defense? It seems like they should be able to do, but I'm curious if they've do this cannonically (i.e. in the fluff). If they dig in on defense regularly, then it's pretty much a cake walk for the Orks. 20th century humans could hold off Posleen with prepared defenses. 40th Millenium Orks should do better, if they defend.

[fgalkin]

They did in 15 Hours, although their idea of "fortifications" was building a wall (it's in their genes). Those were rather dumb Orks, though, the ones from Armageddon should do better.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Stormbringer]

Granted I've read little of the Posleen universe, mostly because it strikes me as utterly ridiculous where not borderline offensive.

That said, one advantage that the Orks will have over a lot of the human organizations is morale. A lot of people seem to have an "oh shit" reaction to the Posleen and their numbers. To the orks it's going to look like a damn good time!

An advantage Posleen have over Orcs is in the air, although I don't know if this

Any air advantage is going to be minimal. Orks like all 40k races have genuine aerospace fighters. Even if we assume that there are no ork ships or roks in orbit, ork fighta-bombas are capable of surface to space intercepts as demonstrated in Annihilation Squad and Death or Glory. Given their performance, I don't doubt they'll be able to at least make the Posleen in terms of air power.

allows the use of the Posleen landers, which were occasionally used in air mobile or air support roles. I don't know if the Orcs have anything filling that role.

Orks use air mobile tactics fairly sparsely. It requires a subtlety and small unit organization which is rare among orks. They want to go in guns literally blazing in a huge mob. The ones that will go in for such things are generally the Kommandos and a few oddball Ork Clans (like the Cult of Speed).

Never the less, they have at least some idea of the concept (from Guard and Marine forces among others) so they are not likely to be taken completely off guard. They may cause some trouble as ork rear area security is lax at best but hardly enough to rout orks.

Do Orks ever dig in for defense? It seems like they should be able to do, but I'm curious if they've do this cannonically (i.e. in the fluff). If they dig in on defense regularly, then it's pretty much a cake walk for the Orks. 20th century humans could hold off Posleen with prepared defenses. 40th Millenium Orks should do better, if they defend.

Orks can use defensive fortifications, though they prefer to be on the offensive when ever possible. If it's tactically advantageous then you can expect that the smarter orks will indeed do so. They'll probably be some what cruder than human fortifications but no doubt workable.

And prepared positions with things like big shootas and other orkish heavy weaponary are going to be murderous on the lizards.

[Vendetta]

Orks use air mobile tactics fairly sparsely. It requires a subtlety and small unit organization which is rare among orks. They want to go in guns literally blazing in a huge mob. The ones that will go in for such things are generally the Kommandos and a few oddball Ork Clans (like the Cult of Speed).

The closest they have is Drop Roks. An asteroid large enough and shielded well enough to survive impact when dropped from orbit, full of da most eager and willin of da boyz..

Kults of Speed use combined arms tactics, though this is largely by accident, as they have some koptas mixed in simply coz dey go fasta.

Anyway, if the Posleen could be effectively fought with twentieth century Earth weapons, they won't be half a fight for the Orks even on an ordinary Waaagh!!. Especially not the force that invaded Armageddon, the largest Ork force ever seen by the Imperium, which took the equivalent of four chapters of Adeptus Astartes, plus millions of Imperial Guardsmen, including 600 Steel Legion companies, the most heavily mechanised Guard outfit, to force into a stalemate that left Armageddon with an almost permanent Ork infestation. It's going to be a slaughter.

[Vendetta]

Sorry, just rechecked the fluff in the Epic Armageddon rulebook. At the height of the war there were twenty three full chapters of Adeptus Astartes on Armageddon. Four chapters was what stayed after the fighting to deal with the remaining Orks.

Seriously, the Posleen simply cannot cope with the number of Orks they are facing, even with their breeding rate, they're not going to get a chance to make any use of it, the first Ork strikes are going to be devastating.

[white_rabbit]

The Orkish vessels in Battlefleet Gothic, the escort level ones are " Like all attack ships" capable of "landing on planets as part of an invasion force, and can carry a large ork warband plus their vehicles and artillery."

That and Roks are their version of the Postie landers, and the post-armageddon Rok "doktrine" seems to be to drop them on things.

[starfury]

Didn't I recall many of You guys saying Posleen were a essantially a weaker version of Tyranids, Orks and Tyranids seems to match up pretty well, I think the Orks can handle the more primitve and weaker posleen hordes, since they more then can hold their own against tyranid swrarms.

[Adrian Laguna]

They did in 15 Hours, although their idea of "fortifications" was building a wall (it's in their genes). Those were rather dumb Orks, though, the ones from Armageddon should do better.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Most of the Orks built walls. The section of the trench line that the main character of the book was stuck in faced Orks with decently constructed trenches of their own.

[white_rabbit]

I'd say it depends on the Orks in question, when left to their own devices in "Green on Green" warfare, the Orks produce super-units of Supreme Commanderesque proportions, and can settle into entrenched positions as readily as any enemy.

the land version of Da Grimlug, or hell, the naval version would shit the Posties up something awful given their IIRC blindspot as far orbitally fragging superunits goes.

hell, they couldn't comprehend naval units AFAICR, so the Grimlug itself would be horrendous news.

[Vendetta]

Whereas the Orks not only know about them, they have all sorts, including things like submersible assault vessels that can carry warbands underwater for surprise attacks.

[JonathanMS]

Considering their weakness to conventional artillery, I 'd imagine the orks' soopaguns are going to do very unpleasant things to them.