I'm an old Ork player from way back. I started in 2nd Edition with the clans, built and painted my first army and that army has been evolving ever since.
Ork Codex - left to right: 2nd Ed (1994), 3rd Ed (1999), 4th Ed (2008), 7th Ed (2014)
The first iteration of the army was mostly a Badmoon force. It was small and largely made up of the very first plastic Space Orks boyz combined with the old single piece figs common to 2nd Ed. These were my university days so was largely out of the hobby and the army remained small.
Somewhere I have the Badmoon Warboss and his Goff retinue. I've searched high and low with no luck - if I ever find them I'll come back and update this post.
With the coming of 3rd Ed, five years later, I was getting back into the hobby. The Ork boyz plastics got a significant upgrade - in fact they've remained largely unchanged to this day. I began the second iteration of my force. Despite the clan rules being gone, I still clung to the old ways and this new army had elements of Deffskulls, Evil Sunz, Blood Axes and even Snakebites.
We then entered the great drought. It would be 9 years until a new dex and any significant re-release would come out. In those years, I moved away from the scattered multicolour look of the various clans in favour of a single unified look. My front runner was Speed Freaks, but there was one problem - no good Ork vehicle kits. I opted instead for Blood Axes. I liked the more serious, militaristic look and I could use IG kits for the absent Ork vehicles. The third iteration of the army was underway.
Blood Axe Battlwagon based off several IG Chimera kits
When 4th Ed came along and with it new love from both GW and Forgeworld I had a new conundrum. Orks finally had good kits. While I liked the IG theme of army I wanted to make use of the new kits and give the army more of an 'orky' feel. I retired many of the vehicles in favour of the new Ork ones. I also took the opportunity to give all the units an upgrade, rebasing, unifying the colour scheme and adding detail. The 4th and current iteration began and has lasted right through the 7th Ed dex.
Over the next few months I'll go through the current version of my Ork force, a highly converted Blood Axe army incorporating GW and Forgeworld models as well as a wide variety of micro-casters.