Codex Orks detachments hit 15 in total, and the new mix-and-match system means Ork list building has more combinations than most Orks can count.
Fifteen detachments is a lot (maybe too many), but being able to mix and match them changes list-building even more. Orks have spent every edition picking a detachment and living with whatever came in that package, but now Codex: Orks tosses that setup aside and lets you bolt your favorites together.
So figuring out what a greenskin army is actually running gets a lot messier in Warhammer 40k 11th Edition overall, a bit too.
Either way, Codex: Orks is also 11th Edition’s first codex, so whatever GW is trying here could easily become the model everybody else gets later. We already saw the Faction Focus detachments back in July, and at a total of 15 now, those were really just the warm-up, it seems like.
But if you’ve still got some random models collecting dust because the rules never gave you much reason to use them, check this list, because some of what we’re seeing was already hinted at through the new Waaagh! rules, but the rest of the overall codex picture is coming into focus pretty quickly.
- Fifteen detachments: one two-page War Horde plus fourteen specialized one-page detachments, and you can mix them together.
- Runt Swarm: Battleline Gretchin, Sneaky Little Gitz, and a stratagem that brings a 20-grot mob back.
- Brute Bosses: no stratagems at all, just a double enhancement list built around your Warboss.
GW Traded One Fat Detachment for Fourteen Skinny Ones
Sure, the 15 detachments phrase grabs the headline, but the page count tells you more about what GW is doing. War Horde is the familiar-looking one with two pages, six stratagems, and four enhancements, and it’ll happily take pretty much any Ork unit you want to throw into it.
The other fourteen, though, fit on a single page and focus on a smaller slice of the army. So, now, that’s less rules baggage for players and a much smaller thing for GW to adjust if something goes sideways.
Put that next to how much army customization has shifted into detachments, and the direction is hard to miss. Your detachment is carrying more of your army’s identity now instead of wargear doing the heavy lifting, and Orks are the first faction getting 15 different slots to work with.
Runt Swarm Makes Grots Something You Actually Have to Answer
Grots have spent forever feeling like the spare change in an Ork list, so GW giving them an entire detachment is easily one of the more fun surprises here. Runt Swarm makes Gretchin Battleline, so now you can pile these little gits onto the table without having to drag Dread Mob along just to make it work. Sneaky Little Gitz follows the same idea and actually lets grots behave like grots instead of pretending they’re proper troops.
- Battleline Gretchin: grots pick up the keyword inside Runt Swarm, with no Dread Mob tax attached.
- Sneaky Little Gitz: cheap, expendable, and built to run forward, score points, and get flattened.
- Infested War Zone: a full mob of 20 Gretchin comes back after getting wiped off the board.
- Minefield Detail: sends them out front as screens and speed bumps.
That resurrection stratagem is probably the one opponents are going to complain about first, because chewing through 20 grots twice still eats real resources. Add that to what the new Ork Boyz datasheet already brings to mob scoring, and suddenly the cheap end of an Ork list could be a real pain to clear off the table.
Shoota Boyz Gives Ork Infantry Assault, Which Beats the Range Bump a Bit
We already talked about the Shoota Boyz range boost when the Waaagh! rules showed up, but that’s only part of what this detachment does. Giving Assault to infantry ranged weapons lets Flash Gitz and Tankbustas move up the board without giving up their shooting, which used to be the awkward tradeoff whenever you wanted them getting onto objectives. Boyz can also keep lumbering toward the next fight while still chucking dice on the way too.
- Range boost: the part GW already revealed alongside the army rules.
- Assault on ranged weapons: Boyz, Flash Gitz, and Tankbustas can advance and fire in the same turn.
- Never Enough Dakka: possibly the most accurately named stratagem GW has ever printed.
We’ve already seen an Ork shooting detachment get out of hand, and More Dakka needed a nerf to prove it. This time you’ve got mobility mixed into the shooting package too, which is usually a nastier problem than raw volume by itself.
Two of These Detachments Throw Out Stratagems Completely
This mechanic came out of nowhere. Two of the 15 detachments ditch stratagems entirely and swap them for a double-size enhancement list, which gives players a very different place to spend points. Brute Bosses takes that idea furthest, we think, because its whole job is basically to make your Warboss nastier overall.
- No stratagems: Brute Bosses and its Weirdboy-themed partner both give them up.
- Double enhancement list: twice the enhancements, so your points go into models instead of extra tricks.
- Warboss only: every buff points at a model you were probably bringing anyway.
Both detachments also give you somewhere to dump those last awkward DP you can never seem to spend cleanly. There’s no extra stratagem sheet to remember, and a character that’s already in your army case gets better too. So, if you’ve been running Ghazghkull since his datasheet turned him into a Primarch, it’s a pretty painless way to lean harder into what you’re already doing.
The Other Twelve Ork Detachments Cover Almost Every Model in Your Case
The names GW flashed during the Big Summer Preview finally have rules attached, too. Here’s what the rest of the 40k Ork detachments are actually doing in the book.
- War Horde: the big general-purpose option with six stratagems and four enhancements, and it’ll take basically any Ork unit without a fuss.
- Green Tide: lots and lots of Boyz. That’s pretty much the assignment.
- Bully Boyz: Nobz and Meganobz bossing the Boyz around with some actual authority.
- Taktikal Brigade: Battleline Stormboyz and forward operations, using the same name GW showed back in July.
- Wreckas: Tankbustas and Breaka Boyz wrecking vehicles, plus your Warboss gets a pirate hat.
- Da Big Hunt: Beast Snaggas chasing down the biggest gitz on the table.
- Madcap Meks: Meks and Big Meks tinkering with things, with the occasional bonus invulnerable save for your opponent.
- Dread Mob: Deff Dreads, Killa Kans, and walkers pushing their luck for extra boosts.
- Blitz Brigade: Battlewagons flying up the field while the passengers get buffed, using a name Armageddon already introduced.
- Kult of Speed: Warbikers become Battleline and all the fast stuff gets pushed even harder.
- Flyboyz: aircraft hit harder when they’re riled up, take less of your reserves, and one of them can even become your Warlord for an Air Waaagh!.
- Wurrband: extra psyker powers that get stronger when you’ve got enough hollering underlings nearby.
Kult of Speed is probably the first one to circle if you noticed the new Nobz and Warbike models, because giving Warbikers Battleline is about as subtle as GW gets when it wants you looking at a kit. We’re already thinking about Killa Kans and Dreads marching up behind Mek Gunz, or running Green Tide for the bodies and bolting on Da Big Hunt when vehicles become the problem.
Your Codex Code Keeps Dropping New Ork Detachments All Edition
Fifteen isn’t even the ceiling. GW says the code inside the book unlocks content drops throughout the edition, and some of those drops will include more detachments. So the codex you pre-order isn’t frozen on release day anymore.
Register the code in the 40k app and that new material lands in your library. New unit rules, short stories, and whatever other bonuses GW decides to add can all come through the same place too. For anyone playing the edition’s opening faction, that makes the Codex pre-order a little more useful than the release-day contents alone suggest.
Final Thoughts on The New 11th Edition Codex Orks Detachments
Starting with 15 detachments and adding more through the app is a very different setup from what codexes have done before. Orks are first, so every faction that follows is going to get compared with this book. If these smaller one-page detachments work, players get more ways to build an army, and GW gets a much easier chunk of rules to adjust when one of them inevitably gets weird.
Runt Swarm and Shoota Boyz are the two we’d keep an eye on early. Bodies that keep scoring and shooting units that don’t have to slow down are useful in basically any edition by any faction too.
Best of all, GW says the full codex walkthrough lands Thursday, so after all these rules, the lore and hobby sections are the next bits worth poking through.
🔗 Related Reads:
- All The New Orks Codex 40k Rules: REVIEW
- Codex Orks Army Rules Let Everyone Charge After Advancing
- New Ork Terrain, Nobz & Warbikes Revealed for Codex: Orks
- Ghazghkull Datasheet Turns the Warboss Into a Primarch
- New Ork Detachments For 11th Edition Bring Three Wildly Different Builds
- GW Sunday Preview: Orks Codex & Models Pre-Order Revealed
- Warhammer 40k 11th Edition Rules: Release Date, Detachments + Every Change
Which of the 15 Codex Orks detachments are you building your Waaagh around first?
