Which horde???

[warboss Grotgrim Dakaskab]

Which horde is more fun to play and paint? Nids or Orks?? (I play Orks and they rule but are nids better???)

[Wolfshade]

Depends on your view of fun.

I love orky randomness, that weirdboyz can cause just as much damage to themselves as the opponets.

Nids are less fun in my opinion, though they can still be fun to run and more consistent.

[Slacker]

I play both Orks and Tyranids. I have found that both can be fun to play, and have similar strengths when played as hordes.
I think that as an army, the Tyranids are actually a little more versatile with more of a variety of builds the army can do. That said, they also have a higher learning curve than an Ork army. Many of the Tyranid units support one another in one fashion or another so positioning on the field is very important to them, where as with an Ork army, where the KFF goes is often the main concern.

Playing a Tyranid army can be very rewarding, but it can be very frustrating in the early stages of learning how to play them.

[Wildeybeast]

In terms of painting, it's got to be nids. Orks are basically green with metal bits. If you want an army you can spray and highlight and be done with quickly, then orks are for you. Nids offer a huge variety of paint schemes and much more reward for more adventurous painters. Given that they are basically bugs from another galaxy, you can do whatever you want with them. There is plenty of inspiration in nature you can draw from - I run glossed black and orange poisonous frog inspired nids.

[Gregory Furr]

.....you can't just spray and highlight and be done quickly. You can, I suppose, but it won't look good. Ork skin is green, but they aren't running around naked. Even your basic Ork boy is wearing trousers and shirts, belts with buckles, boots with metal toe plates, gloves and/or straps around the arms. Helmets, or not. The armor looks like bits of random metal they've strapped to themselves, which is basically what it is. What makes Orks fun to paint is, as Wolfshade put it, "Orky randomness." They have a sort of...chaotic uniformity. You can put a box of boyz together, and they'll all look different. The guns, while the same thing in terms of stats, don't quite look the same. Same with the armor and helmets and so on. You can tie them together with a unifying army color or emblem. I use blue and white, which I often turn into checks. The vehicles and walkers are loaded with spiky bits, odd looking weapons, fuseboxes, wires, etc. There's also plenty of opportunity to play with textures, to add things like dirt and rust and so on. One thing I use on almost all my models to some degree or other is what I call the "Ork wash", a mixture of Badab Black and Devlan Mud. Great for making things look kind of weathered and grimy. In short, Ork models can be a lot fun to paint, and you can do as much or as little work on them as you want.

[Dominic]

In terms of painting, it's got to be nids. Orks are basically green with metal bits. If you want an army you can spray and highlight and be done with quickly, then orks are for you. Nids offer a huge variety of paint schemes and much more reward for more adventurous painters. Given that they are basically bugs from another galaxy, you can do whatever you want with them. There is plenty of inspiration in nature you can draw from - I run glossed black and orange poisonous frog inspired nids.

On the other hand, orks are a lot more fun to convert and have a lot more conversion potential for conversion.

[rpricew]

I started Tyranids about 3 years ago... I currently have a bunch and I love them greatly. When I first got started, I told the GW employee that I wanted a Horde army. He said "Orks or Tyranids". I asked what the difference was and he said the Orks had more randomness and the Tyranids had more consistency. Both were great for painting and converting. So it just came down to game play.