Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. Let's talk about the Orks.

Last episode, I talked about the Chaos Space Marines, I made some jokes about them being edgy and some about the normal Space Marines being good christian boys.

Today, I'll talk about the best one of the best factions/races in the entirety of Warhammer 40k, and one race that almost every single 40k player loves.

The Orks (Or as they say in Ork-speak, Da Orkz)

_{Da Orkz is da bestest and da strongest}

First off, why are they named "orKz" and not just "orCs"? Because Games Workshop can copyright them thanks to the K.

The Orks are basically the True Neutral faction in 40k, not because they keep a balance in the universe or anything, it's because their entire society only thinks about fighting. An ork is born to fight and then to die, if they're lucky (and strong enough) they get to be the Warboss who leads mighty "Waaaghs" (basically the equivalent of a Space Marine's crusade, without the holiness) against anything and anyone who might prove to be a challenge against the Orks.

The orks live only for combat, and they only care about fighting. The best way of explaining this is simply by explaining how they reproduce; Orks are asexual, all of the members of their race resemble males and they reproduce via spores that are dropped when an Ork dies or when they are simply standing.

_{Some Orks doing orky stuff. In purple because it's the most fabulous color.}

The Orks are basically the only faction in 40k that has some fun, because fighting is in their blood. They're not like the Imperium Factions who want to spread the supremacy of the Emperor and humankind on every corner of the galaxy, or the Tau who want to establish communism expand the reach of the greater good, they just like fighting because fighting is cool.

As for other quirks, it's pretty much understood by everyone who is a fan of 40k that the Orks are terrible builders; their vehicles and weapons are just random pieces of scrap put together with no real understanding of engineering or technology, and it's also understood by everyone that the only reason these things work is because the Orks are the embodiment of cartoon logic, if they believe it works then it does.

Another quirk of them is that most orks are terrible shots, and that the only reason they manage to shoot anything at all is because of their addiction to "Dakka" which is a term referring to rapid-fire weaponry. In an Ork's mind, it's better to have a lot of dakka and miss than have a little amount of dakka and hit.

When it comes to gameplay... I'll be honest, i've been playing orks for three weeks now and I still have no idea of what i'm supposed to be doing.

Don't get me wrong, it's actually pretty simple to understand how orks work, they're an army focused entirely on the offensive.

The problem (or difficulty) with learning is that Orks have too many units.

Too many units.

_{This is just a couple of dead squads. A couple.}

Like the space marines, the Orks have units fit for a lot of different situations, the big difference here is that The orks have a trillion different units for a lot of different situations.

Eventually you do learn what makes the backbone of the army, and what ork units are better to have in a regular game than others, to the point that you learn when exactly you need to start rolling the specific units to deal with specific enemies.

The most curious thing about the orks as an army is that they have the bigger population cap in the game, which means you can pump a lot of orks into the battlefield. To do this, you need to build several "Waaagh! Banners" which will not only increase your population cap, but also increase the speed at which you make buildings and produce units.

_{Waagh! Banners can also be used to defend positions, but you'll need like 6 of those to do any real damage.}

The orks, like a lot of armies in the game, have a gimmick that heavily affects the way they play and also serves to differentiate them from the other armies. Most armies have two resources they use to make buildings or to produce units, power and requisition, orks have access to a third resource "Ork Points/Waaagh Points" which are needed to produce units and reinforce them.

The way their gimmick works is that orks need to be in combat in order to receive these points, in other words, your army has to actively fight the enemy to get any of these points. You do get some "free points" as you build "Waaagh! Banners" but the points will eventually run dry at one point, forcing you to make your orks fight if you wish to keep making more units.

Another interesting thing with the orks, is that their commanding unit Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter can't be "produced" like other commander units in other races. You're supposed to get your population cap to 85 or more until you can produce Gorgutz. I find it interesting because every other race gets to summon their "guy" very early in a game whereas Gorgutz usually comes later in the game.

The backbones of the Ork army are the Choppa Boys:

_{A group of Choppa Boys capturing a strategic point.}

Who, like the name implies, whack stuff with their big Choppas (Choppas: Anything big enough that can be used to chop stuff, Orks use this word to refer to literally anything that can be used in melee, ex: a sword), a Choppa Boy squad usually fights only in melee, because their aim sucks and also because they lack the fire power to do so.

In come the Shoota Boys, who can actually shoot stuff with their Shootas (Like Choppas, but with guns) they will usually miss but since they have a rather decent amount of "dakka" they will eventually hit something. Unlike the Choppa Boys these guys can't fight anything in melee, so make sure they don't get melee'd by the enemy.

_{Some Shoota Boys keeping an eye out for danger.}

Other good units are the Nobz and Mega Armoured Nobz, which are Hulk Orks and Hulk Orks in Power Armor respectively...

And like the Space Marines, they have Orks in Jet-packs called "Stormboyz". They work similarly to the Space Marine's Assault Squad.

They also have a unit which dedicates itself to blowing vehicles and buildings up, a "Tankbustaz" squad is necessary because the damage regular orks make against vehicles or buildings is really small. These guys also have access to infiltration, for a reason. _{they're like wet toilet paper}

An interesting thing is that when playing orks it's fairly easy to ignore vehicles entirely because your infantry can basically do everything. Ork vehicles are fairly basic, but you'll probably use three more than any other: the Wartrak, the Killa Kan and the Squiggoths.

A Wartrak is a bastardization of engineering which is usually employed by Orks as a lightly armored vehicle and despite the fact they're just made by putting random things together they are actually quite good against enemy forces, they have to be handled with care however, as the explosions they make can "accidentally" hit fellow Orks.

Killa Kans are like the Ork version of Dreadnoughts, in that the driver is just someone who's been wired up to the machine and they're an absolute nightmare to fight against. These things can devastate the enemy lines so expect anyone who sees one to focus fire immediately.

_{Are they called Killa Kans because they look like giant cans of soda with weapons...?}

Finally, we have the Squiggoths, in few words they're like Ork dinosaurs with lasers on their backs, which they can use to screw over a lot of people. Like Killa Kans, they're something to be afraid of, however the laser on its back can (and will) usually miss and it's also fairly easy to dodge its melee attacks. However it still remains a very powerful unit that can disrupt the enemy.

They can, for some reason, be repaired as if they were a simple machine. This let's them stay for longer on the field and also lets them become a bigger threat to the enemy. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're playing against orks) these guys take some time to produce, and making one will pretty much stop the production of other vehicles unless the ork player spends extra on a second vehicle base.

---

Their stronghold, which is their "headquarters" level in the campaign mode of Dark Crusade, is one I love way more than any other stronghold.

The gimmick in their level is that Gorgutz has several Ork camps under his command and each of them is part of a different "tribe". The player's objective is to destroy the "Big Bannas" that Gorgutz placed so that the Ork tribes rebel against Gorgutz.

This doesn't work like you think, the orks turn against Gorgutz but they're still hostile to you and considering that their banner is in the middle of their camp you'll probably end up killing all orks before they can do anything against Gorgutz (if they do, sometimes they don't and just focus on you)

This map isn't like other strongholds where you're forced to traverse a rather large map destroying all enemy bases in your path, the ork stronghold is really small and you can pretty much go down one road and reach their main base without much effort.

But what really makes this map the best has to be the interactions, like it always happens the commanders of each faction get to trash talk each other while you play through these, but the ork interactions have to be the best of the entire game.

They're just so chaotic and unfocused on the battle raging on behind them, which is normal for orks since this is just like any other day, and I absolutely love how Gorgutz decides to simply tell the rebel orks "come at me!"

Just like the Chaos stronghold, this one is in my list of favorites.

And now, the usual tradition of posting some of the carnage that happens when playing this little game. Like always, thank you for reading and I hope you have a fantastic day.

_{Necron Lord standing over a pile of Ork corpses.}

_{Necrons firing into the Ork's camp.}

_{Gorgutz's final action was to blow everyone up and then escape. It's how he lived this far.}

_{After action report. Necrons don't really seem to care much about Orks.}