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The Orks are one of four confirmed playable factions in Total War: Warhammer 40,000. They are among the most widespread and belligerent species in the galaxy, a tide of green-skinned warriors who wage war not out of strategy or necessity alone but because fighting is simply what Orks do. Their entire culture orbits the concept of the WAAAGH!, a psychic and physical phenomenon generated by large concentrations of Orks that amplifies their already formidable aggression and cohesion.
The WAAAGH!
The WAAAGH! is central to the Ork faction's identity in the game. It represents the collective momentum and fervour of an Ork horde building toward a massive offensive. Creative Assembly has confirmed the Orks as a faction driven by the WAAAGH!, though the specific mechanical implementation of this concept across the campaign and battle systems has not yet been detailed. The WAAAGH! is expected to play a meaningful role in how the Orks grow stronger and more threatening as the campaign progresses.
Playstyle
The Orks are confirmed as a faction of vast, brutal hordes. Their strength lies in numbers and aggression rather than the elite precision of the Space Marines or the tactical finesse of the Aeldari. Ork armies are expected to be large, loud, and relentless, grinding down opponents through sheer mass and ferocity. They share some structural similarities with the Astra Militarum in needing to build resources and field a large number of troops, but the Ork lean is toward brute aggression and improvised, unpredictable weaponry rather than disciplined regiments.
Confirmed Units
The June 2026 PC Gaming Show reveal showed the Orks fighting the Astra Militarum on Armageddon. The following Ork units appeared in that footage:
Unit | Role |
|---|---|
Boyz | The core of any WAAAGH!: vast mobs of Orks that mix close-combat weapons with crude firearms and win through numbers. |
Gretchin | Small, cowardly grots fielded in swarms as expendable fodder and support. |
Stormboyz | Jump-pack infantry that use Rokkit Packs to leap into the enemy line. |
Stompa | A colossal scrap-built war engine bristling with weapons; one of the largest single units on the battlefield. |
Meganobz | Heavy infantry in massive armour, built for close range and carrying a mix of ranged and melee weaponry. |
Every unit above has been named by Creative Assembly on camera or in official subtitles. Two further Ork units, Deff Dreads and a titan-class Gargant, have been reported from the reveal footage but have never been named in official material, so they are noted here as sightings rather than confirmations.
Ork War Machines
Despite their crude, scrap-built aesthetic, the Orks bring some of the largest single units to the battlefield. The reveal trailer prominently featured an Ork Stompa, a colossal walker bristling with weapons and built in the Orks' characteristically improvised style. The original announcement trailer also depicted what appears to be an Ork Gargant, the titan-class super-walker that sits at the top of the Ork engineering hierarchy, though it has not been named again in later material. Crude Ork engineering is expected to extend to a variety of clanking battlewagons, walkers, and shock vehicles, though the full Ork roster has not yet been detailed.
Ork Weapons and War Gear
Official gameplay has named specific Ork equipment for the first time.
Unit | Weapons and Notes |
|---|---|
Meganobz | Killsaws, power klaws and kombi-skorchas, a deliberate blend of melee weapons and short-ranged firepower. |
Stormboyz | Jump packs that carry them over walls and buildings to land in the enemy line. Their rokkit packs are unstable and can misfire, sending an Ork tumbling across the field as a live projectile that explodes where it lands. |
Stompa | Megga-choppa, deffkannon, supa-gatler and supa-dupa-rokkits. A super-heavy walker, slow but heavily armoured and difficult to bring down. |
The Orks were shown ignoring available cover and charging straight across open ground, which plays to their close-combat strength but exposes them to massed fire and to terrain that slows an advance, such as water. Stormboyz form up in unusually neat ranks for the faction, a detail the developers attributed to their standing as regimented young Orks with a taste for drill. In one campaign scenario an Ork fleet named the Deff Makerz was shown landing reinforcements on a contested world.
Teleportation and Reinforcements
Orks bring reserves onto the field by teleporting them in rather than marching them on. The development team has described Ork units simply appearing from somewhere unexpected mid-battle, and has named the Weirdboy as the psychic Ork responsible for hurling a mob of Boyz into the enemy line. That gives the faction a way to open a second front behind an opponent who has committed to holding a line, and it sits alongside the Stormboyz jump packs as the second Ork answer to a fortified position.
Each faction reinforces differently. Where the Space Marines arrive by drop pod and Thunderhawk, and the Astra Militarum feed in wave after wave of infantry, the Orks rely on this teleport technology to place units where they are least expected. Ork fleets are built to match: the development team describes them as looking like floating piles of rock with engines strapped on.
Grinding Down an Elite Enemy
The developers have set out how the Orks are meant to beat a far more capable opponent. Because the game tracks wounded soldiers separately from dead ones, and because elite troops take an extraordinarily long time to replace, the Ork answer is not to try to wipe out an enemy chapter in a single battle. It is to apply relentless pressure across many battles, inflicting injuries and denying the enemy time to recover, while Ork numbers replenish far faster than theirs. The intended feel is a green tide that never stops arriving.
Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka
Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka is confirmed to appear in the game. The Warhammer Skulls 2026 teaser on 21 May 2026 placed the game on Armageddon, a world famous for the Ork invasions Ghazghkull led, and at the June 2026 PC Gaming Show a developer named him on camera as the arch-rival standing opposite Yarrick. Creative Assembly has confirmed that he is in the game without saying whether he is a playable lord, an opponent, or both. Ghazghkull is the most powerful and influential warboss of his age, and his campaigns against Armageddon and his rivalry with Commissar Yarrick are among the setting's best-known conflicts.
Nazdreg Ug Urdgrub
Nazdreg Ug Urdgrub is confirmed to appear in the game. He is described as one of the key characters the player will battle with, and against, and he features heavily in some of the early in-game narrative, in events tied to the fighting around Armageddon. That places him in the opening stretch of the Campaign rather than as a late-game or post-launch addition.
Nazdreg is a Bad Moons warboss, which makes Bad Moons the first Ork clan named for this game. No other Ork clan has been named, and Creative Assembly has not said whether he is playable, an opponent, or a narrative figure who appears in both roles.
Sub-Factions and Warlords
Beyond Ghazghkull and Nazdreg, renowned Ork sub-factions and warlords are part of the faction system. Creative Assembly has since confirmed that every launch faction ships with two playable sub-factions, so the Orks will have two at release. Bad Moons is the only Ork clan named so far, by way of Nazdreg's own allegiance, and the second Ork sub-faction has not been announced. Details are expected to be shared throughout 2026.
Army Customisation
Like all factions, the Orks support deep army customisation. Players can personalise colours, iconography, wargear, names, traits, and tactical abilities, building custom WAAAGH! warbands within the visual and thematic identity of the Orks.
The custom-faction system extends to building an Ork clan of the player's own, in the same way a Space Marine player builds a successor chapter and an Astra Militarum player builds a regiment.