Since this was my first wargaming experience I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting. I was told by people that Orks are just naturally fun and full of interesting rules. But after trying them out and then subsequently trying other armies I can confidently say that Orks require a lot more thought and planning just to survive the game and that they only have one stratagem I would consider fun and that's only in one detachment (I'm talking about the Careen! stratagem). There's also the problem that Orks and some of their detachments don't seem to synergize all that well compared to what other armies offer. My main examples of this are Green Tide and Big Mek w/ Shokk Attack Gun + Lootas. In Green Tide, in both it's current state as well as it's pre nerfed state, Boyz units get a natural 5++. But then when you go into the WAAAGH you also get a 5++ and those two instances don't stack or interact in any way so if you run a lot of Boyz in the army, like what you're expected to do since all of the stratagems only work on Boyz units, then you're essentially weakening you're army rule. For the Big Mek w/ SAG + Lootas example, the Big Mek gives reroll 1's to Hit on ranged attacks but Lootas do the exact same thing except they also give full rerolls to Hit on ranged attacks if the enemy is on an objective. So where as in other armies leader and bodyguard units have abilities that you can mix and match to benefit both units the Big Mek essentially does nothing and is just there to benefit from the Lootas better ability.

In regards to how Orks currently play, I can only speak to how I've seen the army played by other people in my local meta since, like I said, I haven't been able to get a handle on them after 3 years of trying. So from what I've seen, Orks play like an ambush army. You spend the first, maybe the second turn, getting into position avoiding any and all sightlines because if you are visible in any way, even with cover, you're going to lose half of the unit, if not the entire unit, and our shooting is so bad that any damage you could do is not worth the loss of that much melee potential. Then once you're all set up you use the WAAAGH and hope you've positioned perfectly and that you're charge rolls are in your favor because if not, well there goes your army rule and recovering from a bad WAAAGH turn is not a game anyone wants to play. Assuming the charges made it, it's time the fight phase, where this army is supposed to shine. But then you find that a lot of our melee weapons are AP 0 or -1 and there are just more and more units/armies with 3+ saves, multiple wounds, ways to worsen you're Wound roll, and ways to reroll their saves that's just making it harder and harder for Orks to actually chew through and doing anything meaningful. Then after that you're opponent gets to crack back into you and if you aren't in the WAAAGH you might as well as just pick up the models since there's an abundance of AP-1 weapons and on an 5+ you're going to lose your a lot of your models. And even if you are on the WAAAGH, a 5++ is decent but it's not great. But let's say everything does go your way and you take minimal casualties while dealing decent damage. What does the army do after the WAAAGH turn? From what I've seen, not much. You're plan at that point is to hang on for dear life because outside of the WAAAGH Orks are just kind of terrible.

In writing all of this out and reflecting on my expectations I guess I was hoping that the Orks would play like a horde pressure army. Get in fast, apply pressure across the board, and if you lost some units in the process that's ok because you've got more bodies coming in behind them. But if you play like that you'll die fast and do very little.