Orks army rules, detachment abilities, stratagems and lore for Warhammer 40k, with links to the full unit datasheet table.
The Orks, also called Greenskins, are a savage, warlike, green-skinned species of bestial, asexual humanoids who are spread all across the galaxy. They are unique among the intelligent xenos species known to Mankind in that they possess the physiological features of both animals and fungi. They share many physical and cultural features with the dark fantasy Warhammer universe's Orcs (and were initially called "Space Orcs" to distinguish them).
Orks are seen by their enemies (pretty much everyone else in the universe) as primitive, barbaric, hyper-violent, and crude, but they are the most successful and widepsread intelligent species in the whole galaxy, outnumbering possibly every other intelligent starfaring species, even Humanity (with the very plausible exception of the Tyranids).
Greenskins are one of the most dangerous alien races to plague the galaxy. Numerous beyond belief and driven always to fight and conquer, the Orks threaten every single intelligent species of the galaxy.
Orks are possibly the most warlike aliens in the 41st Millennium, and their number is beyond counting. Amid constant, seething tides of battle and bloodshed, burgeoning Ork stellar empires rise and fall.
Mercifully most are short-lived, soon destroying themselves in a maelstrom of violence and internecine conflict, but should the Orks ever truly unify, they would crush all opposition.
Orks generate a potent psychic gestalt field that allows them to accomplish many feats of technological engineering that might otherwise seem impossible. At the same time, the power of this psychic field is directly proportional to the number of Greenskins present in a given location.
The more Orks that gather, the more Orks are drawn to them, at the same time that the power and intelligence of the Greenskins begins to grow with their numbers.
The Orks' unquenchable thirst for battle has always proved their downfall: historically, the Ork tribes have spent much of their time fighting amongst themselves, waging brutal wars with only the strongest surviving. On occasion, an Ork leader will emerge who is mighty enough to defeat his rivals and unite the warring tribes.
His success draws other tribes to him, and soon a great WAAAGH! is underway -- partly a migration, partly a holy war that can exterminate the populations of entire star systems.
When the Orks are on the rampage, the galaxy trembles, and in the Age of the Dark Imperium there are more WAAAGH!s rising than ever before recorded.
The Orks are a biologically-engineered species, created more than 60 million Terran years ago as a warrior race originally called the Krork by the long-vanished reptilian alien species known as the Old Ones, whom the Orks refer to as the Brain Boyz.
The ancient Krork were known to possess more advanced technology than that of the present Greenskin race, and to be on average larger, in some cases standing as tall as 12 metres.
The Orks were created by the Brain Boyz to fight the Necrons and their C'tan masters in the great interstellar conflict called the War in Heaven that shattered the galactic civilisation of the Old Ones that existed prior to the rise of the Aeldari.
Orks are thus genetically engineered to be muscular, aggressive, and none too bright; their technology is maintained by a caste of Oddboyz who possess genetically-implanted dispositions and technical knowledge that grant them unusual skill with maintaining and developing technology.
However, this skill is an unconscious one preserved through genetic memories hard-wired into the Oddboyz's DNA by the Brain Boyz millions of standard years ago.
Indeed, the Brain Boyz were apparently able to encode information on how to build simple machinery into the genomes of all Orks; thus Mekboyz require very little training in their function within Ork "kultur," since they understand mechanical principles at a fully instinctive level.
Orks lack individual psychic power, being denied such abilities by the Old Ones. However, they do have a sort of collaborative, collective psychic ability, meaning that if enough Orks believe something is true, then it will actually become so, brought into being in realspace through the power of the Immaterium by their gestalt psychic ability.
For example, Ork rockets painted yellow create bigger explosions, simply because the vast majority of Orks believe they do.
This is also why much of the Orks' seemingly ramshackle technology will do terrible damage in the hands of Orks, but will cease to function when used by other intelligent races.
When the Emperor of Mankind revealed Himself to Humanity following the Long Night of the Age of Strife in the early 30th Millennium, He shaped war-torn Terra into a single unified world for the first time in long millennia. Once he had conquered Terra, He looked to taking His Great Crusade to the stars.
Having created the foundations of the Imperium of Man, He launched His massive armies out into the galaxy, seeking to bring all of Human-settled space back under the control of a unified stellar empire. During these early conquests, many Imperial expeditionary fleets encountered the Greenskin menace -- a violent xenos species designated as the "Orks" by the early Imperium.
Within the Telon Reach was an Ork empire that rivalled that centred on Ullanor, and at its heart was the scrap world of Gorro. The Ork tech-caste, the Mekboyz, dominated the Orks of Gorro and had made the world their own.
The dominant tech-caste on Gorro seemed to be fascinated by a form of plasma technology never encountered before or since. Capable of generating destructive yields of terrifying potency, these plasma weapons had done much to blunt the Great Crusade's advance across the Telon Reach. The Emperor decreed that Gorro must be destroyed.
When a thousand-strong fleet of warships dropped out of the Warp above Gorro it was the Emperor Himself who gave the order to begin the assault. Horus, Primarch of the vaunted Luna Wolves Space Marine Legion, and ever the dutiful and favoured son, stood at the Emperor's side and watched as tens of thousands of assault craft spread out from the fleet.
Lore excerpt from Warhammer 40k Wiki on Fandom, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.
53 Orks datasheets on the current roster, each with its points, model statistics, keywords and abilities.
34 Orks datasheets that are no longer part of the current army roster. They are kept for reference and for players whose collections still contain the models.