Ork Builds in Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000

This is a pre-release army skeleton for Orks in Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000, not a live patch meta. Creative Assembly has shown greenskins as a body-count army that still has to respect cover, sightlines, and bombardment, because a WAAAGH! that arrives as one clump is a gift to a Guard gunline. Bad Moons are the confirmed clan colour on stage. Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka is the confirmed Ork face of the Armageddon story opposite Commissar Yarrick. A second lore sub-faction ships at launch; this wiki will not invent its clan name, skin tint, or unique wagons until CA does.

Read the builds hub first. Then read the preview tier list — mobs as battleline, Stompa as a shown super-heavy — and the Ork faction page before you treat Ghazghkull like a Total War: WARHAMMER III legendary lord who wins by existing in the blob.

What CA has actually shown

Gamescom 2026 and related hands-on put Orks on the attack against a Cadian river line and against a tiny Marine Strike Force. The lesson is not “mobs auto-win”. The lesson is that more bodies still die in the open, still get suppressed, and still get deleted by army-level bombardment if they clump. Shown Ork vocabulary includes:

• Mobs as the battleline you flood the map with.
• Meganobz as the elite punch that should not be the entire list.
• Deff Dreads as ramshackle walkers, not quiet flanking ninjas.
• A Stompa as the Ork super-heavy counterpart to the Guard Baneblade.
• Ghazghkull as a warlord who still wants a bodyguard, because heroes in this engine do not wander as immortal individuals.
• Mixed weapons and unlimited simulated ammo in the builds shown, which means your shootas still miss if the geometry is wrong.

We do not invent a WAAAGH! percentage chart, a dakka-per-second table, or a points cost for the Stompa. The skeleton is posture: flood, punch, and do not hand the opponent a bombardment target the size of a hab-block.

Preview WAAAGH! skeleton

Think in waves, not in a fake 2,000-point roster.

1. Warlord core — Ghazghkull or a custom warlord with a bodyguard. Each launch race gets two lore sub-factions plus the custom option. Bad Moons are the clan we can lock today. Do not send the warlord in first as a novelty charge; send him when the mobs have already forced the gunline to spend sentry and bombardment.
2. Mob battleline — several large infantry units. Their job is to take streets, occupy the ruin the Guard wanted, and force Marines to split fire. Their job is not to arrive as one green rectangle that a single army ability erases.
3. Meganob punch — a smaller elite element that actually wants the melee the rest of the list is creating. If you build only Meganobz, you have built expensive Marines with worse discipline.
4. Walkers — Deff Dreads as noisy, visible threats that pull tank facing. They are not Aeldari. They do not vanish.
5. The super-heavy — a Stompa as the shown Ork apocalypse piece. Use it to break a lane or to scare a Baneblade, not to tourist the far flank alone.
6. Army tools — reserves for the second wave, bombardment if the preview build in front of you gives Orks one, and a refusal to chase a sentry gunline into the kill zone it prepared.

Chaos Space Marines are post-launch and are not an Ork ally. Traitor Guard is a Guard reskin, not a lootable roster.

How the skeleton plays in battle

Versus Astra Militarum, assume overlapping fields of fire, a Baneblade on the long lane, and sentry mode on the ruin. Split the mobs. Make the tanks choose a facing. Do not gift bombardment a single clump on the river. Versus Space Marines, you have the bodies they do not. Fill the map, then pick one Strike Force unit to drown rather than spreading damage across four elites that all live. Versus Aeldari, public data is thin. Assume they want to delete the Stompa or the warlord and leave. Keep the super-heavy near friends. Keep the warlord in the bodyguard. Cover still matters for Orks; ruins are not a human-only mechanic in the footage shown.

Strafing exists on vehicles in this engine. If an Ork wagon or walker is on the table, treat movement-while-firing as a real accuracy penalty, the same way Guard tanks pay it. Unlimited ammo is not a reason to stand in the street and spray a hab-block you cannot see into.

Campaign posture is part of the build

Orks in Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000 want to industrialise the planets they take. CA has contrasted that dirt economy with Space Marines upgrading fleets in orbit. Your crusade “list” is the host you can build on the ground, not a quiet Strike Force you drop from a battle-barge. Crusade theaters still chain toward Armageddon, which is why Ghazghkull is on this skeleton instead of a generic unnamed warboss. Governors, bombardment, and world-killing weapons exist on the galactic map; they do not replace the need to stagger mobs on the tactical map.

The game launches on PC via Steam app 4199910 and Epic, plus PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. Full controller support is listed on Steam. The WAAAGH! skeleton does not change on DualSense; console controls stay honest about unpublished button maps. Japanese voice-over and the 18+ rating do not add extra clans.

How to practise this list

Open the army planner and tick the Ork version of the same habits everyone else needs: cover, staggered waves, warlord in a bodyguard, super-heavy with friends, reserves after the gunline spends its toys. Register for the closed beta that opened sign-ups in June 2026. Wishlist with the wishlist and beta tool. If you only know you like hordes, confirm it with the faction picker and how to play. When Creative Assembly publishes real datasheets, this Bad Moons skeleton becomes a patch page. Until the 2027 launch of Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000, it stays labelled preview — not a ranked WAAAGH! ladder.