Hi I'm running my first Only War campaign and just had a question.

I've run Dark Heresy before and had no problem just throwing a couple extra human enemies at my group but I'm going to use Orks for my Only War. They are a line infantry unit normally used for stealth sniping but in this instance will be travelling through a bombed out city to rescue a VIP with important info in a downed Chimera somewhere in the city.

What kind of numbers should I start with for the Orks? I dont want to overwhelm them to early. (Kinda want to wait till they just think it's getting good then have a bunch of Orks show up to ruin their day.)

What are your players armed with? That's very much important as to what you throw at them - Orks are not easy kills unless they're toting Boltguns or weapons of similar power.

Mostly just the basic kit. The M36 Lasgun and most have a Long Las as well (which i figured would help since it has felling [4]) I'm planning on mostly longer range encounters unless something goes horribly wrong (one can only hope ). Should i maybe just switch to humans enemies and have an easier time with that?

I have come to the conclusion that human enemies (whether Dominion, other renegades or chaos warbands) are the best starter enemies on Only War.

With Orks and Tyranids the players are easily swarmed and the battle tactics of those enemies if used properly either make them TPK (if in large numbers) or too easy (if in unrealistically few numbers) though, the latter might be explained if the players are sent to mop up the last of a nearly beaten enemy.

When you use regular human enemies even the lasguns are deadly and the enemies can use "normal" tactics which is usually easier for both the GM and the players.

If you have trouble with explaining why a single squad would only face few enemies at the time make it into a part of a larger battle going all around the squad. The other squads are around the players and they are facing most of the other enemies, the players might be ordered at one point to do something like flanking the enemy positions (give them a turn to shoot at the enemies who are focused on the IG in front of them) or to hole up in a position to prevent enemy flanking maneuvers or counter attacks.

This way you can explain that there are more enemies but the squad only needs to concentrate on the ones in their killzone and if things get too easy or too hard it is easy to adjust.

Thanks for the info. Ill start with humans and maybe move on to orks later. Maybe after a few more battles and some exp under their belts.

A good option is to use an Ork with some gretchin (need not be a runtherder). That way, your players can first encounter the gretchin for comic relief and then encounter their ork master. If played well with all his perks, a single ork is not an easy opponent, even for a squad. At least one player should be burning fate points...

And that sets it up nicely for later encounters. The players now know orks are nasty and will try desperately to evade mobs and gang up on single or small groups of orks.