The Ork Codex just put more units on the chopping block, as Burna Boyz, Lootas, and buggies look one step away from Legends.
If you’ve got a Loota mob painted, based, and waiting on the 11th Edition codex, the contents page GW just posted isn’t exactly what you wanted to see. Two units that have been in basically every Ork codex most of us can remember aren’t listed and are probably going to Legends now. Burna Boyz and Lootas are gone, even though many thought they might get reworked…
Both kits went last-chance-to-buy on the webstore a few months back, and normally you’d read that ahead of a codex release as a pretty decent sign that new sculpts were coming. GW had also said during the Big Summer Preview that Burnas could ride along inside the Ork Boyz unit again. Add that to everything else arriving with the Armageddon wave, and a refresh looked like the obvious answer, but apparently not.
This contents page is about as close as we’ll get to an answer before the actual book lands, and right now it looks a lot more like a quiet exit than a replacement. If you’re an Orks player, that’s a rough way to head into the rest of the 11th Edition codex rollout if those models are already sitting in your collection.
- What happened: Burna Boyz and Lootas don’t look like they’re getting refreshed. They look like they’re getting retired, which makes that earlier webstore pull look a lot worse in hindsight.
- The evidence: Neither unit appears on the Codex Orks contents page, while Burnas have been folded in as a weapon option on the Ork Boyz datasheet.
- What changes if we’re right: Loota mobs would be headed for Legends, while the missing buggy entries become the next big question.
The Burna Boyz, Loota Box May Have Been the Problem Itself
The old Burna Boyz / Lootas kit had one annoying problem that may have contributed to its downfall. You could only buy the unit as a box where one model had to become the leader upgrade, so a single kit couldn’t simply build the squad of five models you actually wanted. If you wanted more regular Burnas, you bought another box, built another model you didn’t really need, and dealt with it.
Fixing that properly would’ve meant doing something with the kit itself, not just rewriting a datasheet. Looking at the contents page now, it seems like GW decided that job wasn’t worth doing.
That also changes how the Burna option looks on the Ork Boyz datasheet now, too. Back in June, before all these new Ork pre-orders hit, it felt like GW might be laying the groundwork for a new Burna kit. Now it looks more like they simply moved the flamer into a unit that’s sticking around so the Lootas and Burnas could disappear, because the new Boyz sprue already has plenty of options to make that work.
GW can still point to that Boyz datasheet and say Burnas remain playable and aren’t only Legends. Fair enough, but having the weapon survive isn’t the same thing as keeping Burna Boyz around as their own unit.
Lootas don’t even get that much; they are just seemingly gone along with their weapon options, which makes their disappearance harder to explain away.
The Buggy Situation Is the One We Can’t Call Yet
The buggies are a lot harder to pin down. Most of the familiar names are gone from the contents page, and one generic Warbuggies entry has taken their place. No Boomdakka Snazzwagon, Boosta-Blasta, Megatrakk Scrapjet, or Shokkjump Dragsta exist as seperate Datasheet entries anymore!
That doesn’t automatically mean they’re dead. GW just rolled all the Killa Kans’ weapon loadouts onto a single datasheet, so there’s already a precedent in this same codex for taking several versions of something and squeezing them under one entry. Warbuggies could simply be the same idea, with all those different builds handled as weapon options instead of separate datasheets.
The weird part is the Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy, because that one kept its own entry. If GW were simply dumping every buggy into one generic datasheet, you’d expect the Squigbuggy to be sitting there with the rest. Maybe it stayed separate because it fills a different role, with indirect fire, but that’s exactly why we can’t call this one from the contents page alone.
GW has also been moving in the opposite direction elsewhere, splitting models into separate datasheets instead of combining them, like Scourges and the Ad Mech walkers. Overall, there just isn’t one clean pattern we can point to and say that’s definitely what’s happening here.
So for now, the buggies stay firmly in tinfoil hat territory. Nobody outside GW knows what the Warbuggies datasheet actually contains yet. Speed Freeks players have more riding on that answer than most, because the Speedwaaagh and Blitz Brigade detachments already lean hard on that vehicle pool. The rest of the detachment lineup doesn’t really give them an easy backup plan if those units are cut, especially with the new army rules pushing Orks up the table faster.
The Gunwagon Coming Back Is a Win
There is at least one nice surprise on the page. The Gunwagon has its own datasheet again, separate from the Battlewagon, and it’s back in the book.
Oddly enough, that makes the missing units even harder to shrug off. GW clearly wasn’t just trying to shorten the vehicle section because it had too many names. Somebody went through this roster unit by unit, brought the Gunwagon back, combined some things like the buggies, and left others off.
That’s why Burna Boyz and Lootas stand out so much to Ork players right now. This looks less like random housekeeping and more like deliberate roster editing, which is exactly how dozens of other 40k models have ended up moving toward Legends.
The timing fits too because new codex releases are where GW tends to clean up a faction’s roster, and there’s nothing on the 11th Edition roadmap suggesting Codex Orks was going to get a pass just because Orks have more weird old kits lying around than most factions.
Final Thoughts on the Ork Codex Cuts: RIP Lootas & Burnas
Honestly, we’d still rather be wrong about Burna Boyz and Lootas, but the kits are dated, and they can’t even make a full loadout for either squad, so we get why they may be on the chopping block.
The buggies, however, still have an escape route. Once the book hits, if it’s packed with profiles covering the missing kits, Speed Freeks players can carry on. If it isn’t, then we’ve got a much bigger round of Ork cuts than the contents page first makes obvious.
And if Burna Boyz or Lootas do end up in Legends, that doesn’t mean the models suddenly stop being Orks. Keep painting them, and use them where Legends rules are welcome, or proxy them for other models.
Ork collections have never exactly been known for throwing away perfectly good scrap, anything, including models.
🔗 Related Reads:
- 11th Edition 40k Orks Codex: Lower Price and New Rules
- 40k Legends in 11th Edition: New App Rules and Classic Models Guide
- 11th Edition Ork Codex Leaked, New Model Rumors Breakdown
- Codex Orks Detachments: 15 Ways List Building Goes Wild Now
- New Ork Boyz Kit Builds 20 Different Models From the Armageddon Box
- GW Moves Dozens of 40k Models to Warhammer Legends
What do you think about Burna Boyz and Lootas getting left off the Ork codex contents page?
