Ork Boyz Review

Any self-respecting Ork Warlord will tell you that you need lots of Boyz to take the fight to the enemy, so I ordered an Ork Battleforce box just in time before the GW price rize. The box contains two sets of Ork Boyz, an Ork Trukk and a set of three Ork bikers. The sets are identical to the ones sold in separate boxes, just bunched together, so there are no extra special or limited edition figures included, but you do save a couple of bucks by buying the Battleforce.

The contents of the boxed set. Photo from Games Workshop.

In this review I will concentrate on just the Ork Boyz however.



The Ork Boyz set contains two sprues with all the parts to make up ten figures, five per sprue, and a command sprue with extra parts to make a Nob or a heavy weapon ork as well as some extras to put on the regular boyz.

The Boyz sprue. 

In the Codex you can choose to equip a unit of Boyz with either Shootas (sort of automatic rifles) or Sluggas and Choppas (heavy pistol and close combat weapons). So the first sprue contains all the parts needed for either option. This means that as well as five sets of legs and bodies, you also get five pairs of arms armed with shootas, and five pairs of arms using sluggas and choppas. Five heads are also included as well as a couple of armour plates and some extra ammo. Except for the extra arms and weapons however, there are no extra parts on this sprue. As mentioned you get two of this sprue, meaning that you will have to juggle around parts to make ten different figures. The command sprue more than makes up for it though, as we will see next.

The Command sprue.

The command sprue contains parts for making a Nob to lead your boyz as well as parts to make a heavy weapon ork. There are also some pouches, spikey bits and various grenades and mines to outfit the other figures with. One arm is throwing a grenade while another is carrying a tank mine, perfect if you want to convert your own Tank Bustas. There are five different heads on the sprue, one is obviously a Nob head (because it has longer horns than the other) and two are probably meant for the Heavy Weapon orks, while the last two sports some impressive hair. The Nob can be equipped with either a  Power axe or a Power claw and you get a suitably muscular torso for him as well. You could also give him a regular Choppa from the other sprue if you use the arm with a grenade or a mine on one of the boyz. The heavy weapon boyz get special torsos with ammo back packs and a special set of legs...

Wait, what?

The body parts for the Nob and Heavy Weapon boyz.

Yes, that's correct. There are actually eleven sets of legs and thirteen torsos included in the set, enabling you to build eleven models. Yet both the box and Games Workshops webshop clearly states:

"This boxed set contains 10 multi-part plastic Ork Boyz, and includes options for sluggas, choppas, shootas, heavy weapons and stikk bombz."

Games Workshop cannot count, which would actually explain a couple of things about their pricing strategy! This makes this set extremely versatile though, and great value for the budding ork player. An Ork Mob can be between 10 and 30 models strong. You can upgrade one model to a Nob, and you can upgrade one model in ten to carry a heavy weapon. With this set you can build both a Rokkit Launcha or Big Shoota armed model and swap them around between battles. And if you buy another boxed set to increase the size of your mob you do not need to build one model as a Nob, you can build 10 regular guys and an extra heavy weapon ork as before.


Now here's the fun part. If you take a look at the picture at the beginning of the review of the contents of the Battleforce, you will notice that of the two mobs of boyz pictured neither has a Nob. One has the Rokkit Launcha while the other has a Big Shoota. This led me to suspect that GW had pulled a fast one and only included one command sprue and four regular sprues. To my surprise however, the Battleforce contained four regular sprues and two command sprues, just as if I had bought two ordinary boxes of Ork Boyz. Excellent!


To sum it up, I give the Ork Boyz boxed set 5 out of 5. 
If you play Orks in Warhammer 40k, you need at least one of these boxes. It's great for spicing up the 20 boyz you got in the Assault on Black Reach for instance.