Waa-Ghazghkull – organising the horde

Important! If you want to get involved, all you need do is post pictures of your models with the tag #ashesofarmageddon – exactly like the example below, by the ever-talented @tangential_contrivances.

 

If, however, you're interesting in adding a bit more meat to the bones of the project, this article explains how you can help do that. The aim is to help fire your imagination, give you ideas, and to add depth to your hobby enjoyment.

There is a Discord server for further discussion and to ask any questions – here's your invitation. This is also the best place to submit an article, or get help in writing one.

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Neksnappaz warband: ork boy
@tangential_contrivances

With a snarl, Urgok 'Wun-Eye' paused and pointed the gaping muzzle of his slugga in the direction he thought he'd seen movement, and banged off a few shots. The large calibre shells whined a couple of metres to the left of a makeshift barricade that a handful of Militiamen were huddled behind.

Urgok hadn't been a particularly good shot before the beakie in red armour had robbed him of his left eye two summers ago and unsurprisingly, the loss hadn't improved things in the slightest. The harsh report of the slugga had the desired effect of discouraging any return fire from the humies anyway.

Hefting a rough-hewn choppa in his right hand, the ork bellowed a warcry at the top of his lungs and hurled himself forward alongside the other Boyz in his mob as their loping run became a headlong charge towards the beleaguered Militia positions.

Plenty of enemies and a really good scrap. As far as Urgok was concerned, life didn't get any better than this...

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What are we doing?

If you're new to the project, check out the Overview here to get up to speed. 

Games Workshop's boardgame The Battle for Armageddon is a strategic wargame that simulates the conflict between orks and the Imperium for control of the Imperial hive world Armageddon. 

Alongside the history of the war and its major players, the game provides a campaign map with cardboard chits or counters to represent the tens of millions of combatants involved. It's a fun strategic level game that details an up-and-coming Warlord called Ghazghkull Thraka, and his invasion of the planet. If you get the chance to play, I'd encourage you to have a go. 

In this project, I'm inviting you to help explore the details of those cardboard chits. Rather than the rather dry and anonymous 'Bad Moon Ork Horde 1' , we'll know that this is 'Da Junkyard Dogs'. Your contributions, alongside those of other hobbyists, will see your models and armies clash (in an at least semi-organised fashion!), somewhat like GW's old worldwide campaigns.

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We look here at the structure of the Orks during the Second Battle for Armageddon. The ork player starts the game with all the counters, whereas the Imperial forces need to build theirs through the campaign.

Let's have a closer look at the forces at Ghazghkull's disposal. At the end of the article, you'll see how to 'claim' a counter – and what you can do with it.

Waa-Ghazghkull basics – what do the counters mean?

On the day of the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension, 40,941, the massive Ork assault on Hiveworld Armageddon began. System ships from Space Hulk Alveus Alpha Alpha Sextus smashed through the orbital cordon of the planet, annihilating the obsolete orbital monitors completely. A massive space drop swiftly overwhelmed most of the western continent of Armageddon Prime. Lightning assaults by the highly mobile Ork forces encircled hive after hive. Tens of thousands of Ork Boyz blasted through the hives' outer defences and massacred or enslaved the populations within. Soon, lines of communication were cut and vital supplies started to run out.

The Battle for Armageddon rulebook

Ghazghkull brought a colossal amount of troops to Armageddon, and to the average citizen of Armageddon, it must have appeared as a largely undifferentiated mass of greenskins, their slaves and their creations. 

Orks may not be as rigidly structured and formalised as the Imperial defenders, but the Imperial strategic command require a more nuanced view of their opponents. Using lessons drawn from time immemorial in humanity's wars with the greenskins, they identified five broad tribal groupings – which tally with the ork clans: the brutal Goffs, arrogant Bad Moons, speed-obsessed Evil Suns, treacherous Blood Axes and primitive Snakebites. Of the opportunistic Deathskulls, we will read more later...

Ghazghkull divided his forces in two during the later attack on Armageddon Secundus, leading three whole tribes – over half of their entire invasion force – to capture the continent. The resulting campaign lasted for almost two years and was one of the bloodiest in Imperial history.

ibid.

Each counter represents an entire Field Army. While the numbers of troops will vary, you can think of an Imperial Guard Army counters as representing an entire Regiment alongside all its auxiliaries. Likewise, the ork counters reflect tens to hundreds of thousands of individual orks. 

A typical ork counter

Each counter has three statistics: leftmost is Attack, the central value Defence, and the rightmost Movement. The higher the better in all circumstances. 

You can read the article on the ork horde above, which represents Whitetusk's Howlas, through the link. It is intended as the sort of article that you might like to write in detailing another counter, and you should feel free to use it as a template of sorts if you like. Having said that, creativity is key, so feel free to present your article completely differently! 

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Forces of Armageddon Secundus

The Goff armies

The Goff tribe is notable for having more hard-hitting Nobz and Stormboyz than the others, and being slower overall. Their hordes tend to be stronger on the attack than in defence.

The stats on the counters should be used as a guideline, nothing more. Simply because a counter says 'Gretchin', that does not mean it consists only of a sea of grots – you might interpret it as:

• A heavily-depleted force of orks, suitable only for second-line and garrison duty in Ghazghkull's eyes.
• Just as it appears – mobs and mobs of gretchin with just a few ill-favoured orks in command.
• A mass of slaves, gretchin and human alike, from Armageddon Prime. They are overseen by a few cruel orks
• Something completely different.

It's for this reason that I encourage you to take the stats as a starting point – it's easy to write a powerful ork horde, but explaining a weaker one has lots of narrative options to explore.

The Bad Moon armies

As you might expect, the wealthy Bad Moons attract a preponderance of Gretchin – they know which side their squigbread's buttered. It is otherwise a well-balanced tribe, with a mix of hard-hitting and fast counters. 

Bad Moon hordes are overall better at defence than other orks – and the reason for that is for you to decide. Better armour? More guns? Perhaps, unlike the straightforward Goffs, a larger proportion of their 'eavily armoured nobz are distributed into their hordes?

The Evil Suns armies

Bikers and battlewagons are the hallmarks of the Evil Suns, and they are by far the fastest of the tribes in the Armageddon Secundus theatre. This comes at the detriment of fewer assault specialists, and the tribe is relatively pillow-fisted. 

Having said that, you can't hit what you can't reach, and the Evil Suns are able to use their speed to outflank and launch surprise attacks almost at will. Note also that one of their hordes is very unusual in having movement 3 – perhaps a reflection of being all-mounted?

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Forces of Armageddon Prime

While the 'historical' campaign had the three tribes above deployed to Armageddon Secundus, the expansion for the Battle for Armageddon boardgame, Chaos Attack, had a few 'what if?' scenarios. One of these was that Ghazghkull took different forces with him to conquer the continent, and it provided two additional tribes, the Blood Axes and Snakebites.

For this project, I'll be sticking with the historical forces, but I didn't want players of other ork armies to be left out. For that reason, we'll also be looking at (the mostly-unknown) history of what went on in Armageddon Prime – while the Imperials were defeated here, fighting continued – and so if you'd like to claim one of these counters for your storytelling, they're presented here.

The Blood Axe armies

The Blood Axes are the most unusual tribe, as in addition to their own proppa orky tanks (the Tank Korp) they include Imperial equipment in the form of Land Raiders and Predators – perhaps these are spoils of previous wars, or perhaps they reflect the captured manufacturing might of Armageddon being turned against the Imperium – you get to decide.

The Blood Axes are otherwise fairly average overall; the main difference being the lack of a 'super-unit' in the form of Gargants; the feared Tank Korp perhaps the nearest equivalent. They have also employed some Ogryns and Freebooter mercenaries. Perhaps these might also be seeded through the Hordes?

The Snakebite armies

With a very different composition to the other tribes, the Snakebites favour solid, reliable and proven units over flashier experimental material. Like the Blood Axes, they lack Gargants – but have two Squiggoth counters in their place.

The Boar Boyz are are good example of a counter that might be interpreted as an equivalent to an Imperial Guard Rough Rider company, but might equally reflect a modern-day 'Beastsnaga' force. While this project nods to the past and revels in a bit of retrohammer, please don't feel restricted from using whatever models you prefer.

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Claiming a counter

Having looked over the options above, you now have a couple of choices.

If this all looks a bit complicated, don't worry! As noted right at the top, you can simply post models with the #ashesofarmageddon tag and I'll use them as seems appropriate within the project to support others' work – rest assured you will always be credited if I use your pictures or writing. If I can't get in touch or find a username, I won't post your work.

If you've got an idea in mind and want to claim a counter, pop onto the Discord chat (or send me a message on Instagram (@death_of_a_rubricist) with the following info:

• Your Instagram handle (or however you wish to be credited).
• The counter you want.
• The name of the warband 

For example, a claim might be:

I'd like the first Blood Axe Horde [stats 5 3 1], they'll be called Grabkanz Bommaz'. For credit: @orkbasha. 

The next stage is to share some models and text. This can be as involved as an entire article or battle report, or as simple as an Instagram comment or captions. Please post your model(s) wherever you like, using #ashesforarmageddon. 

If you've got a full article or pictures to submit for this blog (or are just interested in doing so), let me know by sending me a message on Instagram (@death_of_a_rubricist) or Discord (apologist).

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Important: 

Claiming a counter doesn't give you exclusive ownership. While I'll do my best to avoid direct contradictions (i.e. such-and-such army is called two different things'), I encourage you to interact on your own steam to work with other hobbyists to come up with something greater than its parts. Perhaps your entire gaming group may want to collaborate on a particular counter?

Likewise, the point of these articles is to inspire. They are showcases of your work, but the hope is that other people will find inspiration and riff off them. As an example, I've posted my army as Whitetusk's Howlas – but I hope that other hobbyists have a go at following my prompts and ideas for this particular tribe. 

What if I've got models that don't seem to fit?

@johnpaints

This beautiful Goff Gibletgrinda battle fortress, by @johnpaints, doesn't look to have an obvious place – there's no 'Battlewagons' counter for the Goff tribe. 

• Don't panic. Showcasing beautiful models trumps anything else, and there are lots of ways to work it in. Taking the Gibletgrinda example above as an example, here are a few ideas:
• This could be a supporting element of a Nobz or Horde counter – @johnpaints might fold it into a broader article of his own warband.
• It could be added to someone else's existing force to help expand and enrich that warband – such as the Fourth Ork Horde (for example).
• Orks aren't as uniform as the Imperial Guard – who's to say that this Goff Gibletgrinda isn't riding in support of the Bad Moons Gargant Bigmob?

In short, there is almost always a way to explain things – even the seemingly esoteric. While I encourage you to riff off the established lore (as that makes it as palatable as possible as widely as possible), Armageddon is a big place. We'll favour Steel Legion, Orks and the historical forces here, but if you want to bring in something more esoteric in your own writing, feel free!

Notes and tips:

• If the counter you desperately wanted is 'taken', then get in touch – I can suggest alternatives or work with the person claiming it to take your ideas and pictures into consideration.
• Scale is of no object – you can submit 40k, Epic, Kill Team, home sculpts... whatever you like.
• There is no minimum requirement. Articles with pictures (or vice versa) will get priority, but don't feel that you have to do anything. Even a single model can make a great article.
• Please feel free to tag me (@death_of_a_rubricist) on Instagram if you want me to be sure of spotting it.
• Remember to have fun with it – this isn't a job, there is no time pressure, and the aim is to help you and others enjoy your hobbies.
• If you've got any questions, get in touch.
• Finally, no challenge is made to GW on any level with this – it's an unofficial, fan-led project that celebrates a great little game!