Ork vehicles of Armageddon Secundus 1: Armour

Principal armoured vehicles of Armageddon Secundus

An identification guide

Bad Moon krew member
@grinnialvex 

***

The wild one's eyes were wide, his pupils dilated. His thin purple lips drew back over his tusks, splitting his face into a grimace – no, a grin – as his knuckles tightened on the steering yoke, impatient to get going. Drivin' a dead killy Gobsmasha in Waa-Ghazghkull – 'oo would ave fought it? 

He was so excited, he didn't really mind Gubbins' elbow jabbing him in the side,  Zodgrub's flailing hands catching him every time the stupid zogger moved, or the kommanda using the top of his head as a step to get into his cramped seat.

With a crash, the hatch slammed shut, and the tank kommanda tightened the securing wheel behind him. Odgutz wasn't sure if the creaking was the hoary old skarboy's leather jerkin, or his corded muscles – but then, he didn't much care; just as long as he got to drive the tank into battle soon.

'Alright, young'uns,' said the skarboy, adjusting. 'When I gives da signal, Odgutz, I wants yer to push dat button...' 

The rest of the sentence was lost as Odgutz instantly hammered the ignition and the Gobsmasha lurched into battle.

***

The Imperial armoury: Mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus

The Standard Template Construct system and attendant tech-priesthood that has long underpinned the armoury of the Imperium is necessarily conservative and restrictive – innovation is taboo and development is largely stagnant, for reasons barely-remembered and little understood. Such inherent conservatism, extended over ten thousand years, has resulted in the Imperial military having an incredibly limited selection of vehicles given its size – though the critical advantage of this is that an Imperial Guardsman who travels halfway across the galaxy can arrive at the frontline and find a vehicle all but identical to that left behind on his homeworld, ready for him to take into battle immediately.

15th Army Group Chimera interior – barring minor and largely aesthetic differences, such a vehicle could as easily be crewed by a soldier from Lastrati or Mordian as one of the Armageddon Steel Legion.
@shotgun_miniatures

***

The ork armoury: triumphs of individuality

Goff Mekboy of the Second Goff Horde, bearing kustom combination assault pistol/welding torch.
@probablysquigs

Belligerent and numerous, the continually expanding diaspora of the orkoid race means that the aforementioned Guardsman might travel halfway across the galaxy only to find the same greenskinned aliens to fight, though their vehicles would likely be all but unrecognisable – in form at least.

In their vehicles as in so much else, the orks hold up a twisted mirror to humanity. Far from being standardised, ork vehicles are highly individual. Nevertheless, the compulsive need of the Imperium for record-keeping means that fundamental categorisation is repeatedly attempted – and though the effort has been likened by combat veterans to 'draining the sea with a sieve', such an attempt was made during the War for Armageddon.

Bad Moon 'Kustom Boostablasta' – classified by the Imperials as a buggy, this example is typical of the idiosyncratic approach of the orks to warfare.
@grinnialvex 

For the greenskins, the acme of technological achievement is the concept lauded in their speech as 'Kustom' – items individually crafted by their specialists for a particular individual and particular purpose. Their caste of specialists ('oddboyz') includes mechanical savants known as mekaniaks or, more commonly, mekboyz. These innately creative individuals are apparently able to envision and construct mechanical tools and devices instinctively. As more orks gather and tribes expand, the sophistication of the devices Mekboyz are able to create also increases. This often owes as much to competition with his peers as collaboration. 

In households or small tribes, Mekboys will have little access to the materials necessary to construct complex devices like ranged armaments and vehicles, but as the orks agglomerate in greater numbers, oddboyz will begin to innovate and begin to produce more complex devices such as vehicles – and as the numbers increase still further, more unusual and sophisticated weapons of war. 

As with all else, orks treat this as a form of competition.  Successful mekboyz attract more followers, and seemingly refine and develop their design insights and engineering capability.

Evil Suns mekboy bearing an impossibly dangerous warp field-projection device
@giokahnni

Some more excitable Magi of the Adeptus Biologis attribute this precocious and seemingly spontaneous development to ‘subconscious or psychic access to a pool of ur-concepts common to all orks, wherever they are in the galaxy’. While such feverish ideas are possible – after all, Xenos are inherently unknowable – such events might as easily be understood through the Mekboy’s increasing familiarity with aspects of technology and engineering. Such development could, therefore, be more soberly attributed to experience and resources rather than any esoteric source. 

Da Slaggin' Wagon – an excellent example of a true 'Kustom job'.
@argaastes

Whatever the source of their inspiration, Mekboys are seemingly endlessly – indeed obsessively – innovative, and their creations are thus utterly individual. They create a kustom job for each vehicle they make, with its own idiosyncracies. 

Mekboys show no interest in repeating a project or replicating a design in any manner that is standardised, and few Mekboys feel even the slightest appeal in recreating even a greatly successful vehicle, weapon or other device as a mere copy. 

Unfortunately for the rest of the galaxy's inhabitants, ork Kultur has provided the greenskins with an answer for the inherent limits of bespoke and individually-constructed weaponry and materiel.

***

Kustom and mass-production

Mekboyz tend to work alone in their workshops, which expand organically as their current project demands, though for great constructions like Gargants, they will collaborate. Even the most talented. however, are limited to their own two hands (with the possible exception of the celebrated Mek Gronskul, who attached so many bionic arms to his spine that their weight eventually tore out his central nervous system), and so almost all have gretchin hangers-on who provide vital services like ‘holding dat bit still’, ‘poisonin’ dat zogger wot hasn’t paid his bill’ and ‘being nearby for kickin’ when sumfing goes wrong’. More influential Mekboyz, however, will attract the orks referred to as Spanners.

Far more common than Mekboys, Spanners are arguably a caste of pseudo-oddboyz – though their sheer prevalence makes it just as arguable that all orks have at least some urge towards the mechanical; particularly Evil Suns and Deathskulls. 

Spanners are more practically-minded than other orks (in that they recognise that some bits of metal can be combined to make better weapons, rather than simply using sharp ones as shivs and blunt ones as clubs), but not creative enough to be truly considered mekboyz. They gather to mekboys  and operate as a sort of retinue; much as an Imperial Magos will gather lesser techpriests as his influence increases. 

Spanners do much of the practical work of building ork vehicles to a Mek's design, leaving the mekboy free to pursue other tasks. During the build, Spanners will more-or-less faithfully replicate the original, including many of the quirks of a particular kustom job. Being familiar with the workings of the vehicles they work on, Spanners are thus able to operate both as drivers, gunners, operators and field mechanics, and are instrumental in keeping the huge numbers of vehicles in an ork army operational.

Evil Suns Deffkopta piloted by a Spanner – late war
@tains_miniature_painting

Lacking the creative drive of the Mekboys, Spanners are nevertheless excellent mimics, and thus a form of standardisation becomes implicit in larger forces, as a Kustom job is duplicated – with all its inherent advantages and weaknesses – over and over again. Even here, Spanners will frequently adapt the design slightly, as materials become scarce or jury-rigged field repairs need to be made – and it is this as much as anything else that leads to the distinctive varied visuals of ork armies.

Aerial pict-capture of Battlewagons from the Second Bad Moon Horde: Ash Desert north of the Infernus Mountains. Note the similar chassis structure indicating Spanner manufacture – though even here, early in the conflict, adaptations both aesthetic and functional appear to have been made.
@too_many_epic_minis

Once an ork army starts to conquer other regions, slavery becomes commonplace, and at this point mass-production kicks in. Along with the orks' own servant caste, the gretchin, an enslaved populace will be put to work mass-producing weapons, equipment and vehicles to a mekboy's design.

***

Waa-Ghazghkull and Armageddon Secundus

Turning to Armageddon specifically, Ghazghkull and his horde brought with them huge numbers of vehicles. Thousands were stored within the cavernous interior of the space hulk Alveus Alpha Alpha Sextus, known to the orks as Wurld Killa, and these were put into action as soon as they were deployed.

The beleaguered soldiers of Armageddon Prime faced armies of Snakebite and Blood Axes – of whom we shall read more later – both tribes who diverge substantially from the detail listed below. Those of the Steel Legion who faced the orks on the plains of Armageddon Secundus, however, were exposed to the full might of orkish innovation, along with numerous vehicles clearly looted from Armageddon Prime's own warehouses and blasphemously altered.

Looted wagon sighted in the north prior to the Siege of Hades Hive – constructed around the hull of a Leman Russ battle tank.
@grinnialvex

For the defenders, rapid identification became critical for successfully fending off the orks – but with silhouettes diverging so much, the Steel Legion were forced to issue a pamphlet to its troops that contained broad catch-all categories. Guardsmen of the Steel Legion were thus expected to judge a particular threat according to a swift and necessarily crude assessment that grouped ork vehicles as either 'buggies', 'battlewagons', 'gunwagons' or 'battlefortresses'.

'[The] thuggishness inherent in orkish pronunciation is reflected in the rendering of the names in this instructional pamphlet; in order to highlight the ork's barbarism and avoid any admiration of their efforts. Guardsman, you are of a higher order than the greenskin: it behooves you to avoid polluting your tongue with attempts to replicate them. Stick closely to the sanctioned Imperial terms provided in their place.'

A Guardsman's Guide to Greenskins: Steps to Victory

For the bulk of the orks of Waa-Ghazghkull, such categories were largely irrelevant – the very human need for compartmentalisation is bewildering and alien to the orks, who have a cheerfully indifferent relationship with such niceties. At the strategic level, vehicles were integrated and organised according to the preference of each particular warboss. Of course, even orks occasionally need some way of referring to a particular vehicle, and this usually took one of two forms. 

The first is merely a brutish description of the vehicle's capabilities – a 'Skorcha' for a buggy equipped with an incendiary weapon, for example, or a 'Wartrakk' for a buggy with tracks; but the second is more interesting. 

The ork homeworld – if one ever existed – is unknown to the Imperium; but so similar are the terms orks use for their vehicles across the galaxy that most analysts agree that these constitute allusions to dimly-held ork racial memories of the creatures of their long-forgotten homeworld. Translated into low Gothic, such terms are aggressive and monstrous, and seemingly descriptive only of the creature's method of killing: 'Gibletgrinda', 'Braincrusha' and so forth. 

This theory of common nomenclature is unproven, but given its usefulness in specifics, both the Imperial and orkish methods of naming are used in the descriptions below.  

***

Buggies

'Small, fast-moving and lightly-armoured, these ramshackle contraptions are often surprisingly heavily armed. Buggies should be preferentially engaged with heavy bolters, autocannons and multilasers; any that can be successfully engaged with small arms should be treated as bikes.'

A Guardsman's Guide to Greenskins: Steps to Victory

Buggies were the scourge of the Steel Legion, outstripping the bulk of the Imperial forces in speed. Only the Rough Rider Brigades – made up of enhanced cavalry and entire Regiments of Sentinel walkers – were reliably able to engage them.

Skorcha of Madgrinz Murderas – sighted in the assault on Helsreach
@giokahnni 

All tribes of Waa-Ghazghkull made extensive use of Buggies, but the Evil Suns were notable for using them both in greater proportion and greater absolute numbers. This mechanically-minded clan produces far more Mekboyz and Spanners than their peers, and almost all Evil Suns members are seemingly obsessed with movement.

Evil Suns are not the only orks obsessed with speed: individuals from other clans are also susceptible to its siren call. The infamous Kult of Speed is made up of orks of all sorts, each of whom has been exiled from his original tribe – usually owing to some misdemeanour or transgression made in the pursuit of speed (such as driving the boss' favourite wartrakk into the drops). 

The Kult is detailed elsewhere in this record, but for the purposes of vehicle identification, it suffices to point out that red is deeply embedded in the ork psyche as associated with velocity and power – and thus vehicles in the Kult of Speed are almost invariably painted red, either completely or in part.

Despite its membership being drawn from all walks of ork life, the Kult is primarily associated with the Evil Suns – likely because the clan's motif colour of red is shared with the Kult. Despite this surface similarity, Kults of Speed are nearly as likely to appear within a Bad Moon force as an Evil Suns one; and likewise Evil Suns forces are far more varied and flexible than the stereotype might suggest.

Yazgob's Magnificent Speedsta – Bad Moon Kustom Speedsta
@argaastes

Despite rumours to the contrary, not all ork vehicles are painted red. As shown above, the ork tribes did differentiate by livery, using their tribal colours – Bad Moons in the example above. 

Note the use here of red flames; a common device – and again one sometimes considered an ork folk-memory of the original 'Evil Sun' of the lost ork homeworld.

Goff Warbuggy attached to Whitetusk's Howlas
@argaastes

While Goffs prefer to fight as infantry, most Goff forces in the Armageddon war used at least some buggies as outriders and scouts to find and harry the enemy. 

The minimalistic and 'no-nonsense' attitude of the klan often extended to the lack of decoration on its vehicles, which were often given a perfunctory coat of black paint or – as in the example above – left simply to gather dust.

The Imperial term 'Buggies' encompassed myriad variations that the orks would term wartrakks, warbuggies, and boosta-blastas – even the squig-drawn chariots of the more extreme Snakebite tribes. Indeed, the only thing that differentiated buggies from larger bikes was typically number of crew – and even this was a thin definition, easily crossed.

The Spleenrippa and its kin

As a demonstration of the fluid nature of ork armour designations, the Spleenrippa is usually considered a buggy owing to its small crew complement – typically just the driver and a single gunner – and its extremely high speed. However, its heavy armament of a centreline battlecannon makes a compelling case for it to be considered a gunwagon.

This uncertainty – and the arguments in the Imperial stratego-chambers – led to it being left out of the initial issue of the reference guide A Guardsman's Guide to Greenskins. As a result, the vehicle and its ilk proved unexpectedly effective against the Steel Legion as its unexpected power and speed ran the defenders’ forces ragged – indeed, a formation of Spleenrippas were at the core of the force that came close to scuttling Ordinatus Armageddon as it lay in dock.

The Steel Legion strategists belatedly concluded that the vehicle should be counted as a particularly well-armed buggy, mainly owing to the overlap in weaponry the Guardsmen were being instructed to use against it: rapid-firing heavy bolters and multilasers were far more likely to hit than lascannons, and sufficiently effective against its light armour.

Kult of Speed warband embedded within the Second Bad Moon Horde. Visible here are three kustom Speedstas, two equipped with the peculiar field weapons of the orks, and one with rockets; a 'Skullhamma' battle fortress – easily identifiable by the colossal engine; two Gobsmasha cavalry tanks; and a Spleenrippa.
@too-many-epic-minis

'Spleenrippa' is the ork translation for a fast anti-tank platform: something akin to the Imperial Guard Destroyer Tank Hunter in role, but much more lightly-armoured and faster. It appears to occupy a particular niche in the ork understanding of armoured vehicles, for they distinguish it from other types similar in role, which are not granted a totemic name. 

Similar vehicles that straddle the line between buggy and armoured vehicle are termed 'Speedstas' – a  catch-all term that is used interchangeably with 'Boostas' or 'Dragstas'. Spleenrippas appear to be a fairly stable archetype of this fast and fragile type of vehicle, whereas Speedstas are highly varied. These are often, but not always, the personal vehicles of individual Mekboys or else influential orks within a warband, and so they often exhibit weaponry far out of the calibre one might expect. As well as rapid-fire cannons that strain the ability of the vehicle to move in a straight line, or missile racks one might expect to see on a Manticore missile launch vehicle, such armaments are frequently exotic and esoteric, and sighted examples included force-field projectors, the baffling tractor-cannon technology known to the orks as lifta-droppas, or short-range teleport devices. Given their individual nature, such creations are often specifically named by the Mekboy, with overblown labels like 'Rukkatrukk squigbuggy' or 'shokkjump dragsta' being used.

Goff buggies and bikes ranged ahead of the hordes of Waa_Ghazghkull. These are passing – or perhaps recovering – a downed comrade.
@too_many_epic_minis

***

Battlewagons

'Battlewagons are orkish infantry fighting vehicles: designed to quickly and safely transport and deploy ork infantry, and remain in the area to support them. Larger and heavier than Buggies, they bear fewer or smaller-calibre guns, and typically less armour, than Gunwagons. Battlewagons often have open crew compartments, and full advantage should be taken of this to engage ork infantry before deployment. Preferential weapons to engage Battlewagons are missile launcher (krak shells only), autocannons and lascannon.'

A Guardsman's Guide to Greenskins: Steps to Victory

A necessarily nebulous description of the wide-range of ork designs, Battlewagons were narrowly the most numerous vehicles encountered by the Steel Legion during the war. A necessity of the war owing to Armageddon's geography, Battlewagons were employed to ferry troops across the broad wastelands and ash deserts, to carry supplies, and to serve in active combat. 

'Trukk'. note stripped-down side and top armour to reduce weight, and the boarding ramp – an infamous  device that became known as the 'death-hook' by the Steel Legion's supply line transports.
@grinnialvex

To the Steel Legion who fought them, the Battlewagon designation included everything from the unglamorous and lightly-armed and -armoured vehicles referred to as 'trukks' by the orks to vehicles that were as heavily armed as armoured as main battle tanks – but that nevertheless seemed to have transport as their primary purpose.

Multi-purpose, rugged and versatile, battlewagons are the vehicular equivalent of the orks themselves – but just as ork kultur is infinitely forward-looking and aggressive, the underlying mass is little honoured. Just as all orks aspire to become a nob of the household – or better still, a warboss of a warband – so the everyday battlewagons are given little thought and short shrift, despite the fact that they do the bulk of the work that allows ork warfare to be waged.

Evil Suns battlewagon sighted in the wastelands west of the Stygies, ahead of the attack on Heslreach
@argaastes

Just as the orks themselves vary between tribes, so clan preferences often affect the sort of vehicles that are bought or constructed. As an example, Evil Suns battlewagons on Armageddon were more frequently wheeled for speed, while Goffs favoured tracks for increased reliability. 

This tendency, however, was only relevant at the strategic level. On the battlefields around Helsreach, a force of the 622nd Mechanised – part of the 6th Army Group under Colonel Zem Lucien – attempted to stall the pursuing orks at the confluence of the Helsreach and Stygies river. Expected the pursuing Evil Suns to use stripped-down light transports, Matthis deployed his mortars to catch the attackers and shred their open transport bays.

As the mortar rounds found their range, Lucien was horrified to see not wholesale greenskin bloodshed, but instead a phalanx of armoured and enclosed battlewagons, upon which the mortar rounds detonated to little effect. As the 622nd scrambled to remount their Chimeras and evacuate, the orks came upon them, and the force was routed in short order. 

***

Gunwagons

'As the Battlewagon is to the Chimera, so the Gunwagon is to the Leman Russ: a poor imitation – but still dangerous. Gunwagons are the ork's principal heavy armour, and highly varied. Priority should be given to their destruction, and the appropriate weapons to use are low rate-of-fire and high-impact: lascannons and missile launchers (krak rounds only).'

A Guardsman's Guide to Greenskins: Steps to Victory

Bad Moon Lungbursta – note anti-aircraft adaptations indicating late-war time-period.
@grinnialvex

Highly-prized by the orks, the main point of differentiation Imperial strategists made between Battlewagons and Gunwagons was that Gunwagons lacked dedicated transport space – though since orks proved quite happy to simply grab hold of a protruding part and hang on, the Steel Legion could not rely on them appearing without infantry support.

While combined into a mass by Imperial Strategists keen to make things simple for the Guardsmen under their command, the orks themselves appeared to draw clear distinctions between seemingly similar vehicles – apparently for largely cultural reasons. As the war dragged on, Steel Legion veterans began to look for the sometimes subtle identifying marks that would give them an edge in an engagement – and thus translation of the ork's own grunting terms were in common use amongst the Imperial forces by the midpoint of the war.

***

Braincrusha and Kilbursta

Bad Moon Braincrusha
@grinnialvex

Occupying a space somewhere between a Leman Russ and a Demolisher, the Braincrusha is a heavily-armoured vehicle defined by the huge calibre of its single main cannon and the fact that the crew have to be displaced – to a tower over the gun's breech, or to a small platform. The cannon is usually fixed in place, but is able to be angled to fire its gigantic shells to arc over intervening forces and engage Imperial armour.

The noise and vibrations the colossal shells send through the superstructure – and the effects on the crew – account for the tank's name. The Kilbursta seems to refer to a related archetype, and tends to have a shorter-ranged but more destructive main cannon.

***

Bad Moon Lungbursta engaged by the 3rd Army Group.
@grinnialvex

An ork assault tank, the Lungbursta designates an enclosed tank with a turret, and is perhaps the nearest thing to a 'standard' ork tank. Otherwise unremarkable, the Lungbursta's underlying similarities to the Leman Russ and Predator meant that there was considerable overlap between looted examples of those vehicles and Lungburstas proper – though to an ork, the difference is obvious. Lungburstas have to be of ork construction, rather than something looted. 

Of course, given that orks would quite happily regard a repaired battlefield wreck as ork-made, the distinction is, from an Imperial perspective, rather opaque.

***

[PICT CAPTURE CORRUPT]

The Gobsmasha cavalry tank is notable for two reasons: firstly, the four large wheels that give it an unmistakeable appearance – and the greatest speed of any common gunwagon – and the fact that they are nearly always crewed by young, inexperienced orks. 

The reasoning for this was unclear at the start of the war, but investigation believe the ork intention was to quickly harden so-called 'Wildboyz' – ork whelps who had little experience of warfare beyond hand-to-hand combat. The Gobsmasha was well-armoured enough to preserve them – both from the enemy and themselves – and an experienced ork veteran, or 'skarboy', would act as a commander to direct them.

Despite heavy losses amongst these easily-built and easily-replaced tanks, the orks built a steady stream of specialist tank crew, sufficiently eager and capable of taking the reins of handling vehicles from Ghazghkull's skarboyz, who were more valuable in the line.

***

Bad Moon Bonecruncha
@grinnialvex

Bonebreakas are closely-related vehicles distinguished by having a prominent melee attachment. This is usually a 'deathroller' intended for rolling over infantry, but as the example above shows, the orks proved inventive in adapting the concept to better combat the heavily-mechanised Steel Legion; substituting the roller attachments for vicious prow-rams intended to ram straight through Chimera armour or tip over Leman Russ tanks. 

The closely-related Bonecruncha is near identical, except that the battle cannon in the turret is substituted for twin-autocannon equivalents; similar to an Imperial Sicaran cavalry tank.

***

Looted wagons

A special note ought to be made of looted wagons, a subclass of ork vehicles that typically fall under the definition of gunwagons. Made from the vehicles of the orks' enemies, these seem to have particular totemic value to the boyz, and are often 'improved' at no small expense; weapons being torn out and replaced with 'proppa' ork-built variations, and engines replaced with louder, throatier equivalents.

A looted wagon apparently belonging to the Deathskull clan – the recovered serial numbers of the wreck reveal that it pre-dated the Armageddon campaign, and was licensed to the agri-world of Granca, conquered by the Junkyard Dogs. Given the kleptomaniac predilictions of the clan, it seems equally likely that this was acquired from the Junkyard Dogs as from the Imperium directly.
@giokahnni

Looted wagons came to form a huge part of Waa-Ghazghkull's armour complement, mainly based on Leman Russ and Chimera hulls taken from Armageddon Prime's factories or battlefield wrecks pressed back into service.

These were understandably reviled by the Imperials – particularly the Armoured Brigades who made special effort to persecture them – much to the seeming amusement of the orks, who adapted and began to use their looted wagons specifically to bait and taunt the Imperials, leading to the infamous massacre of the 2nd Division.

Looted Leman Russ utilised by the Junkyard Dogs and destroyed during the bitter fighting in the Siege of Hades Hive
@londonskroink

***

The tactics and weapons recommended by Imperial strategists changes as the war continued and the orks revealed innovations or unfamiliar marks to which the Steel Legion needed to adapt. Only a selection is presented above – more may be covered in a future article alongside more specialised ork vehicles, such as their super-heavy tanks, the so-called 'grot tanks' tankettes, and more specialist vehicles like the Gutrippa and Bowelburna that featured so heavily in the Sack of Helsreach.

***

'Emperor preserve and forgive me; I'm almost getting to admire those green bastards and their machines. What species would dare travel to a battlefield in something like that, let alone fight in it?'

Colonel Klensch, 75th Armoured