If the situation should arise, that both an Ork-Fleet and an Imperial Fleet meet while fighting against a big Tyranid-Fleet. Could it be possible for both to leave with a symbolic nod and not kill each other afterwards?

Or picture the Kill-Team, engaged in a fight with a Tyranid-prime on a hive-ship, when suddenly an Ork-team bursts into the scene and helps the Marines, since both want the threat of the Nids being taken care off. Could they afterwards both leave without killing each other?

I ponder on using such a situation in Oblivion's Edge to put a bit roleplaying into it and to provoke discussions between the different chapters and maybe a coverup story afterwards to not let this event come to the ears of he inquisitor.

(Or maybe even resulting in a follow-up adventure against the Ordo Hereticus or so...)

I really don't think either side would be willing to do that. Orks being orks don't exactly care much for the perks of joint operations, and would even shrug it down to "ey look, humie 'ard boyz! shiny helmetz for me pointy stikk!" Space marines -may- be willing to use the greenskins, but.. It would be in the form of yoking them into doing their bidding, not standing shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy.

Orkz iz made for fightin'! In all seriousness, in the heat of the moment, an Ork might ignore some beakies while he was fighting something bigger (Hive Tyrant, Carnifex), but as soon as that goes down, he'll go after the Imperials. As to the Deathwatch, they're pretty "Suffer not the Xenos", so I'd imagine that they'd probably follow the same order of operations as the Orks. Shoot the big one and all that.

I'd suggest using Eldars instead of Orks for something like this. Orks don't really back down, but Eldars have sometimes allied with Imperials

Maelflux speaks the truth. Eldar are more likely than Orks. Heck, much as I'm loath to acknowledge the existence of that bit of fluff, the NECRONS are more likely to help than the Orks.

It depends on the Ork clan, really. If it's Freebootaz, or Blood Axes, then yea, they might work alongside the Imperium, as they have in the past as mercenaries. Otherwise, they'd probably charge into both the Tyranids and Imperial forces, tryin' ta crump da humies and da bugs!

The problem with Orks is that they fight because they enjoy fighting. So they will fight the DW marines unless they have either been hired to help (and the DW forces don't attack them), or the DW marines have a way to escape without having to fight the Orks.

If there are enough Orks and the DW team has completed its goal, I can see them retreating to prevent any of them being killed. But that's about it.

There's no chance any agent of the Emperor would work side by side with orks let alone space marines under any circumstance, they would probably just let them fight each other until there was only one enemy to deal with. It might seem like tactics below mighty warriors like the Deathwatch, but it would be considered an incredible waste of gene seed resources to lose marines fighting two opponents when they would have better tactical odds against a weakened single enemy.

I could see the Deathwatch working with the Orks provided that they are summoned to aid a Radical Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos. I could for example see such an Inquisitor wantinig to tocus the Orks on the Tyranids and either make direct contact with Blood Axes Orks or telling the Deathwatch to avoid engagement with the Greenskins.

Thanks for all the input!

Well, I played the scene yesterday with my group and watched, what would happen. They encountered a swallowed orc battle-cruiser, where still some fighting was going on inside. Since the tyranid-warriors overwatching the killing of the orcs inside spotted the BB, they had to fight against some hormagants and warriors, which helped the orcs inside enough that those could get their cruiser under control. Then the BB came closer to the orc cruiser and some orcs climbed out at the top and one started firing at them, but was silenced by one of his comrades. I envisioned it as the orc leader waiting, what the BB would do, as he had no strength in men left to fight them.

The BB assessed that the orcs might be too big of a force, especially since the general of the imperial fleet urged them to get moving with the plan, since they could not much longer keep the nid-fleet occupied.

So the BB left, but the orcs were kind of the cover for them, since the later arriving nids thought the alarm was sounded because of the orcs and fought against them without searching for any roaming marines.

So it turned out quite interesting...

It is more likely that the DeathWatch would manipulate Orks into a situation were the Orks begin fighting the tryanids. This could be as simple as feigning a retreat from the Orks to lure them into a trap against the swarm.

Ultimately it is up to your imagination. The Deathwatch exists to act independently and at least partially removed from the structure of their parent chapters. Kill Teams can and will take liberties such as siding with certain Xenos to destroy greater threats.

This kind of situation is great for determining the beliefs of your player's characters. Puritan versus radicalism is a great plot point.

Ä little side-note: If you are using Rites of Battle allying with xenos of ANY type will result in -2 Renown penalty, even if the Battle-brothers only agreed to this because they were ordered to.

Polaria said:

Don't forget this! If they group wants some sort of advantage there needs to be a cost!

Isidro

Gaire said:

The problem with that is Tyranids don't fight Necrons, as there's nothing to gain from them except death. This would be to the Imperials favor should the Tyranids force be larger that both necron and imperial force, however once the Nids have executed their retreat, the imperials must then deal with a less favorable enemy.

This just happened in our campaign, Hive Fleet Dagon was suckin resources from our planet, (forget the name) and we'd eliminated Chaos and Eldar, but Orks and Nids were left, we chose to eliminate the Nids next and save Orks for our all out final fight climax, when we we're blowing up the Tendrils from the Hive Mind, the Necrons awoke(hell if i know why) and the tyranids ran off like *******. now we and the orks have to deal with a necron fleet arising from the surface, with very little space reinforcements, due to our inquisitor leaving the sector with our fleet to deliver the Titan plans we just retrieved from the destroyed chaos threat, leaving us, the kill team, with Commissar Yaricks fleet (Ghazghul Thraka was the Orks Warlord, but he left cuz you know how he is) The White Scars with Jubal Khan, and the Space Wolves fleet that came from nearby Fenris. Fresh out of Castellan Missles (our last one just got used on the first Nec ship to rise from the surface) and now we're stuck on the inside of a Necron ship after encountering a Cryptic, that ran away due to our dipshit Salamander Lib summoning a DP midfight with the cryptic.

By rights my Black Templar Fleet should be there with High Marshal Helbrecht, as he left armageddon with the Commissar to chase Ghazghul, however I discovered this too late in our campaign, and our GM didn't know

Stannis Ravensight said:

High Marshal Helbrecht was too busy dealing with another Ork planet instead of retreating the whole force to chase Ghazghul he sent Yarrik off promising to come to his aid after the problem at hand was dealt with! YOU HAPPY NOW?? And necs woke for you to find out in the upcoming camps...

socratim said:

And to help you.

Orks are lootas they love guns and bombs and trucks and tanks tyranids dont have that and orks are selfish rather kill the imperials get all the tanks they need and have a good fight with tyranids.

That is pretty much ork mindset steal what weapons they can use and have a good fight

Stannis Ravensight said:

Necrons will seek out great sources of life energy as they feed off of it. The Tyranids are their ultimate prize, being able to consume a hive fleet could reinvigorate an entire Necron tomb world, bring hundreds of thousands of soldiers back into action. Might even be enough to partially sate a C'Tan and bring up its strength to a frightening fighting potential.

So while the Tyranids would try to avoid or ignore Necrons - the reverse can't be said to be true. The Necrons will seek them out, as they seek out all life to consume it.

Don't forget communication problems: Orcs don't speak Gothic, and Marines don't speak orc! It makes any alliance a dim possibility, at best.

orks don't speak gothic!!? then what's all this gibberish i've been hearin' all these years: "KILL DA BEAKIES!!!!" "RED ONES GO FASTA!!!!" "THIS ONE'S FOR GORK!!!!" "KILL DA HUMIES!!!!" ???????

i'd be inclined to argue that there is no 'orkish,' just gutter (orky) gothic.

Well, to be fair, the description for Orkish in DW says it mostly involves headbutts, so I think we can assume that we, as outside viewers, are wearing universal translators.

Zappiel said:

Same reason that Tau and Eldar and the Imperium are depicted speaking English - it's a stand-in for the languages the characters are actually speaking. Low Gothic should sound nothing like late 20th/early 21st Century British English, given how quickly languages evolve and how far in the future 40k is meant to be, and similarly High Gothic is only represented by fake Latin.

It's the same way that while all the characters in Lord of the Rings seem fluent in English, they're actually speaking in Westron, and we're just reading a "translation" of that.

Zappiel said:

The same thing as you hear when you hear the crew talking in The Hunt for Red October, or any dubbed kung fu movie...

i hear you gentlemen, i do, and i'm not completely brain-gibbled as to misunderstand the concept of anglicizing alien verbiage ; but i prefer my orks's to be intelligible....so my orks's speaks gutta gothik....to use the already-mentioned LotR reference: orks's speak westron, there ain't no orkish, cause orks's of different tribes don't unnastand eachover's tongue-garble, less o' course it's Morbeth, and ain't no one but da Big Bosses spout dat gunk....so, yeah, if westron as the lingua franca of orks works in the professor's epic, then, by the Emprah, low gothic will work for orks's in 40k too!

And to answer the thread, yes, yes they would work with greenies to waste tyrannids...ain'tcha seen the dawn o' war trailer to that effect? (spoiler: picture a 3 way standoff - s.m. , ork, and eldar; then the tyrannids show up, and all three warriors turn and take on the bugs...pure awesomesauce!)

In the Scenario Shades of Twilight I changed the Space Marine to a Space Wolf Killmarine. Now this Space Wolf has a history with a bunch of Orks when he got stranded on Gorka Morka. Since Ozerik Sleipnijr loves speed he became infamous amongst the orcs for being the fastest, most dangerous prey to chase after. Now one of the famous racers on Gorka Morka Spiky Mags chased Ozerik relentlessly for months. During this time Spiky encountered Dark Eldar raiders on Gorka Morka, Spikey waz convinced that this was gonna be his last fight but Ozerik (who hates Dark Eldar) slaughtered the Dark eldar in an ambush thereby inadvertendly saving Spiky Mags life. Ozerik escaped thru the webway. Cause Spiky Mags had had the best time chasing Ozerik, Spiky and his Troup of Burnas (including the Shaman Turbo Glitzegreen) have been tracking Ozerik accross the Universe. Ozerik is convinced that his and Spikys weird are woven togeather and he has used Spikys relentless chase to great devious effekt. He constantly leads them to Dark Eldar and Spiky has become somewhat of an expert at killing Dark eldar. The acolytes have discovered that Ozerik keeps communicating with Spiky. Its not that the 2 of them drink beer togeather and Spiky would love to give Ozerik a properbashing but........... Do you guys think that Ozerik could get into real trouble for this. Not that Ozerik would care

As with so many other things it depends on what the authority figure above you thinks. If you've got a very puritanical Inquisitor, kill team, or chapter master they might see that as a betrayal of everything a Space Marine stands for, but a more understanding authority figure might see that as a perfectly good use of an Ork Warband. I think as a rule there are goign to be more puritanical authority figures then not in WH40k (an open mind is like a fortress with it's walls unguarded etc etc.) but I'd like to think at some high level some of the powers that be are getting the fact that the status quo isn't working as threats pile on.

The only complication with orks is every world or palce he elads the ork warband he's potentially spreading the taint of a future ork action.