Ask any fan who the happiest Warhammer 40k faction is, and you'll get only one answer: Orks. Loud, proud, rude, and crude, these green-skinned alien brutes are DNA-coded to fight constantly and, therefore, the only people in Games Workshop's whole grimdark, war-torn galaxy who properly love their lives. It's a constant tonic for us 40k fans that, though everyone else is miserable, da boyz are always having a great time krumpin'. They're the cheerful, light-hearted foil to an otherwise relentlessly bleak and hate-filled setting.
So, naturally, many of us have been overjoyed that Warhammer 40k 11th edition is administering a large dose of Ork silliness back into the game, by making them this edition's main 'baddie'.
These, remember, are a Xenos race who canonically speak in grunting, pantomime London accents, call their soldiers Boyz, their sergeants Nobz, and have a latent psychic power that lets them bend reality when they gather in large numbers, allowing them to make planet killing superweapons out of rusty paperclips because they believe they can. They make a mockery out of everyone and everything else in the setting, and we love them for it.
But here's my worry: after 10 years of Warhammer 40,000 getting measurably darker, grimmer, and more self-consciously serious, I'm no longer sure 40k's veins can take a massive, glowing green adrenaline shot of Orky nonsense. I don't know if our suspension of disbelief has the antibodies to withstand bollocks of this magnitude.
The feeling's been coming on for a while - but it came into sharp relief when I read "Ghazghkull's grand plan", GW's latest pre-Armageddon lore drop. In it, GW reveals that the big Waaagh! for Armageddon has been made possible by the Mega-Tellyshokka: an "unimaginably massive teleportation device" that can destroy planets and catapult whole fleets of Ork warships "across impossible distances".
As described, it's a more powerful FTL transit technology than the Imperium of man has ever had, and an enormous geopolitical asset for the normally erratic, uncoordinated Orks. How do the Greenskins accomplish such a feat? They fly ten Ork Kroozer warships around in a circle really really fast, and a giant portal just opens up between them, because a bunch of Orks believed it would.
Let me be clear: that's fantastic, and it's entirely consistent with established Ork lore. Going by the most popularly accepted in-universe theory on the subject, their scrap-built weaponry and war machines work not because scientists carefully developed them to harness natural phenomena, but because a few smart Orks (Meks) drew a picture of it in crayon, and convinced several million Boyz it would work, so it did.
Near as humanity can tell, Orks' mysterious, low level connection to the Immaterium lets them just wish stuff into existence, stuff it'd have taken the Adeptus Mechanicus millennia of hand-wringing and paperwork to achieve. It's a delicious, hysterical joke at Warhammer 40k's own expense, poking fun at the dark, hardnosed, political themes governing literally every other army's technology, society, and warfare. Considered in a vacuum, it's as funny today as it was 30 years ago.
No laughing matter
The problem is, Warhammer 40k itself isn't funny anymore. Back in the mid 90s, when the Orks first transitioned from one-note 'Space Orc' baddies into their physics-denying, English football hooligan era, Warhammer 40k was a more bombastic, satirical, humorous place. From character names and codex lore-writing to the model sculpts themselves, 40k cared less about narrative consistency and conceptual detail, and more about energetic, cartoonish, fun-loving vibes to reel in its (then much younger) target audience.
But I contend that, for good or ill, that bright age is dead and gone. For context, let's review the primary antagonists GW has put front and center in 40k for the last ten years.
- 8th Edition (2017-2020) - the Death Guard: Terrifying walking plague tanks that kill you in ways deliberately meant to mimic the most gut-wrenchingly horrifying disease deaths in real human history, and laugh as they do it.
- 9th Edition (2020-2023) - the Necrons: Terrifying emotionless robots who've built machines that switch off your soul, some of whom want to cut off your skin and wear it as a poncho.
- 10th Edition (2023-2026) - the Tyranids: Terrifying, utterly pitiless space bugs whose only purpose in life is to cut you into little pieces, eat you, and poop you out as biotoxins and/or more bugs.
And let's not forget that the biggest supporting antagonists were two more terrifying flavors of ritually disfigured insane supermen: the World Eaters, who understand no higher pleasure than making you bleed, and the Emperor's Children, who get orgasms when they hurt you. These are not forces intended to get a laugh. They're meant to frighten you.
Now, it's not like those nasty-ass Warhammer 40k factions were cynically invented in 2017; they've all been present, dark, and horrible, for donkeys' years. And all of them have darkly funny elements baked in - but they're mostly buried in subtext, or localized to a couple delightful, but ultimately inconsequential characters (I'm sorry, Sassy Nurgling, I love you really).
In elevating each faction to 'villain du jour' status, GW made conscious choices about which of their characteristics and themes to put uppermost, and what overarching role they ought to play in fans' understanding of what this sci-fi world is about. And the top theme it chose, in every case, is horror. Sometimes psychological; sometimes body; sometimes tragic; sometimes existential; sometimes religious; often a cocktail of all the above - but always horror.
When I first encountered 40k as a nipper, around 2000-2001, it was a multi color mishmash of awesome, scary, and funny that got a lot of its charm from those elements being in obvious conflict. In 2026, unless you're engaging with the Deep Lore to an extent most fans literally don't have time for, the 'funny' section of that trinity has simply withered away. The war's over, and 'awesome + scary' won.
Functionally, 40k's amazing growth over the last 10 years has coincided with a 'flattening' of its story themes. Once a powerfully satirical, despicable anti-hero, the Imperium has become understood much more sympathetically - as 'humans who're just doing the war crimes necessary to survive against implacable evil'. That's been balanced and supported by a procession of enemies seemingly fine-tuned to be as grim, dark, disturbing, and existentially dangerous as possible.
Don't get me wrong, there's more new lore material now than ever before, and much of it is nuanced, interesting stuff. But the proliferation of new Warhams media for broader audiences - especially Warhammer 40k videogames, much though I love them - has left the setting as a whole feeling increasingly homogenized into a binary setup. The Imperium is the protagonist, and everyone else - complex and interesting or not - is so viscerally horrifying that, let's be honest, they're asking to be virus bombed.
'ERE WE GO LADZ!
Where, in that tableau of grim-faced, amoral survivalism, can you realistically fit a tribe of happy-go-lucky, muscle-bound, sentient mushrooms with names like Jig-Jag Big-Biceps and Mad Boss Blurt Kakdongus*? We've had years and years of the Imperium's big, legitimizing enemies being deeply unfunny, utterly evil, sadistic psychopaths. We've seen countless storylines full of noble, sour-faced sacrifices in the face of those enemies' reckless hate. After all that, how do we adjust back to an adversary that's just inherently silly?
To bring myself back down to earth for a moment: the real answer is that it'll be fine. Most Warhammer fans don't bother with all this fancy pants thematic analysis gubbinz. Brass tacks: the funny joke aliens, rather than the scary freaks, are getting some time in the spotlight, and some wacky new models. It'll be a welcome change of pace, and good news all around. But it'll be interesting to see how much that tonal shift bubbles out into the overall feel of Warhammer 40k's media machine during the next three years.
Over the last decade, basically every Ork fan I know has grumbled at least a bit about their army losing its free-spirited, fourth wall-breaking, anti-establishment edge, and becoming just another big scary alien for the Space Marines to shoot. They've mourned the tabletop rules becoming more consistent and conformist, instead of deliberately unbalanced and swingy, and the Orks' bizarre, lore-twisting storylines taking a muted backseat in an ever more humorless galaxy.
If that's about to change, I reckon the overall vibes of the hobby will change with it, and I'm genuinely excited to see how. If not, well, then I think GW might have over-promised with Big Mek Orkimedes' Amazing TechnoMagical Mega-Tellyshokka, to be honest. Only time will tell.
But wotz your forts, ladz? Do you reckon Gee Dubz is gonna make da Waaagh! stoopid again? Or iz we in for anuva free yearz o' dem bloody 'Umies 'oggin da stage? Join our zoggin' good Discord serva an' sez wot ya mean! We got lotsa shiny gubbinz dere - an it don't even cost no teef to join!
*Yes, I made those names up. But if you think they're significantly dumber than the real, canonical Ork names, I've got a bridge (read: innovative new concept for FTL travel) to sell you.