The Beast Snagga Orks Army Set is up for pre-order this weekend, and it includes a shiny new edition of Codex: Orks (with exclusive cover art, no less). Among the many awesome rules in the book are details of three distinct types of warcry* – a Waaagh!, a Speedwaaagh!, and a Great Waaagh!. You may be tempted to think of them as guttural howls of animalistic fury with zero tactical effect, but no. There are nuances, and they give Ork armies scary advantages in battle.
Calling a Waaagh!
To unleash the thunderous power of a Waaagh!, you need a Warboss or Speedboss to be your Warlord – they’ve got the loudest voices, clearly. Your choice here also determines whether your Warlord can call a Waaagh! or a Speedwaaagh!.
For your Warlord’s galvanising warcry to be heard, they need to be on the battlefield during the Command phase – or at the very least, embarked on a Transport that’s on the battlefield. In the latter case, we assume he shoves his head out of a window before starting the shouting.
A Waaagh! or Speedwaaagh! can be called once per battle, and they both work in two stages. Stage 1 lasts until the start of your next Command phase. Then Stage 2 kicks in, which lasts until the beginning of your subsequent Command phase.
Calling a Waaagh! at the right time enables your greenskin hordes to get krumpin’ much faster as they can Advance and charge in the same turn, and it gives them more Attacks once they get there. Your Speed Freeks units are fast enough already, so unleashing the Speedwaagh! gives their ample firepower a boost instead.
The third type of Waaagh! – the Great Waaagh!, no less – is reserved exclusively for the biggest, the meanest, the nastiest, and the ugliest (don’t tell him we said that) Warboss of them all – the Beast himself, Ghazghkull Thraka.
A Great Waaagh! can also only be called once per battle, but it combines the effects of both a Waaagh! AND and Speedwaaagh!, making your army faster, stronger, and shootier all at the same time. If you didn’t think the deadliest Ork of all could become deadlier still in the new codex, the Great Waaagh! is solid proof to the contrary. Suffice it to say that if Ghazghkull has called one in the picture below, those poor Astra Militarum soldiers are going to have a very bad day at the office.
Remember that the Beast Snagga Orks Army Set, complete with the shiny new codex, is up for pre-order this weekend. To get ahead, you can order Ghazghkull Thraka now – who doesn’t want the biggest Ork in the galaxy to lead their army into battle? We’ve also been listening to The Beast Arises series while doing some painting recently – check it out for a powerful reminder of how terrifying Orks are.
We’ll have plenty of rules previews from the rad new edition of Codex: Orks throughout the week. If you want to learn why the greenskins are set to become ’arder and killier than ever before, make sure you check back with us every day.
* Providing strong evidence that Orks can only count to three.