Our thanks to Games Workshop for providing our team with these new Orruk Warclans releases for review.
The Orruk Warclans are the first Age of Sigmar release of 2025, and alongside their new Battletome comes a trio of new kits. There’s a faction terrain kit and a Manifestation lore which both serve double duty across the two factions in the book, and there is also a new Kruleboyz-specific character in the form of the Hobgrot Slittaboss.
In this article we’re going to be looking at building and painting the new kits. If you’d like to learn more about their rules on the battlefield and what’s been changed in the new book, check out the Battletome review dropping at the same time as this piece.
Hobgrot Slittaboss
The first thing to note about this kit is the new form factor – although it’s still sized to hang on a rack of blister packs, the sprue is contained in a printed cardboard box rather than a clear plastic clamshell, massively cutting down on the amount of plastic used in the packaging to just the stickers sealing the box. This is a smart move from Games Workshop, the Warhammer hobby often feels quite plastic-dense so it’s nice to see attempts being made where they can be to reduce any unnecessary environmental impact.
Onto the kit itself: This is your fairly standard small foot hero. The pieces are contained on a single compact sprue with no build options, and it’s a matter of a few instruction steps and 20 minutes or so to get him assembled. The model goes together well, with pretty much all of the joins well hidden once it’s together. The only part that felt slightly non-intuitive were the finger-like reeds growing from the end of the tree trunk: these are moulded onto the hilt of the sword, and felt like they needed a bit of encouragement to snap into the right contact points on the tree. It’s clear where they should go, and they do locate well once they’re in place, but just be careful not to snap them during assembly.
Once together, I primed my miniature in Grey Seer, as the Slittaboss will be joining my existing Warclans collection and I wanted him to stay consistent. I base coated him with a variety of Contrast paints, most notably Nazdreg Yellow for the skin, Blood Angels Red for the tassels and Kroxigor Scales for the helmet decoration. The venom on the sword was fun to paint – I opted for a bright Ironjawz Yellow followed by Striking Scorpion Green over the top to give a kind of sickly, luminous green tone.
The rest of the model was filled out with other GW acrylics, and highlighted up to make him parade ready. Once based, I washed the whole model with a thinned down mix of black and flesh washes. You might have seen this referred to elsewhere as “marine juice” thanks to its provenance as an army painting tool in GW’s Horus Heresy team. I use it on all of my Warclans models as I think it gives them a slightly grimier feel, helps to dark-line the models and cover any slightly sloppy Contrast application, and also ties them into the warm tones of the bases.
After that it’s just a Steel Legion Drab base rim and a matt varnish, and he’s ready for the table. I really enjoy this model – it’s nice to see some more development of the Hobgrots in the Kruleboyz faction, and he looks supremely confident in his ability to lead (backed up by that grisly trophy rack, if you needed evidence!) I also adore the gigantic sword that’s easily taller than he is – Warhammer excess at its finest.
Bossrok Tower/Skaregob Totem
The Orruks finally get their faction terrain piece, and it’s a fun one. Able to be built as a Bossrokk Tower for the Ironjawz or a more sinister Skaregob Totem for the Kruleboyz, either build ends up with a chunky platform that’s perfectly sized for one of your infantry heroes on a 40mm base. I do think it’s fun when models get a bit of playset energy like this, asking you to put other models onto them to represent them being garrisoned. Both builds of the tower are a solid 8 inches tall, so they’ve got real presence on the battlefield.
The build is a pretty simple affair, although the sheer size of some of the pieces can make cleanup a bit time-consuming. The legs and main rock all slot together well to make a really sturdy base: at no point does the model feel like it’s at risk of falling apart, and once dry it feels really sturdy in the hand.
With the main platform attached it’s then a simple choice of choosing whether to build the Ironjawz or Kruleboyz variant. These parts all slot on quite simply, so if you wanted to do some light magnetisation of the jaw decorations and the mask you could have the pieces swappable for use with both armies.
Alternatively, the builds are close enough together that you could feasibly try to make a kind of amalgamation of pieces from both so that it fits with either army – if I was doing this I think I’d probably leave off the mask and the metal jaw, add the metal spikes to the sides of the jawbone, and do some quick green stuff filling of the holes that would otherwise support the hanging moss on the Skaregob Totem. This should leave a tower that’s clearly very Orruk-themed without leaning too hard into either aesthetic, although I think it would be fair to argue that you’re robbing it of a bit of character by doing so.
I’m in the mood to work on some Kruleboyz at the moment, so after snapping photos of both builds I opted to glue my tower together as the Skaregob Totem. Like the Slittaboss, I primed it in Grey Seer and started slopping on Contrast paints. I did diverge a little bit from my usual process here – for the black-green rock that forms the heads I opted to mix Black Templar and Striking Scorpion Green to get a dark green colour, and applied it through an airbrush to get a uniform coat. This was drybrushed up through Caliban Green, Warpstone Glow, and Moot Green (an all-timer trio) before getting a final wash with thinned Black Templar and then some fine edge highlights with the brighter greens again. I feel like this gave the rock slightly more depth, rather than just painting it a flat colour and highlighting it up.
Elsewhere on the model, the wood and bone were great candidates for some more drybrushing for quick results. After its basecoat of Wyldwood the wood was drybrushed Baneblade Brown with a final light drybrush of Karak Stone to catch the sharpest edges. Kroak Green and Athonian Camoshade washes were then blobbed on randomly to make the wood look more swampy and weathered. The bone was based in Aggaros Dunes before highlights of Ushabti Bone and Screaming Skull.
With the details picked out, the Skaregob Totem also got an all-over wash of the marine juice and a coat of matt varnish, and it was ready to go. I also added some Blood For The Blood God technical paint to the mask, mainly because I use quite a lot of blood effects on my other Orruk Warclans models and wanted to carry that over to this too.
Overall this was fun to paint, which is more than I can say for some previous pieces of faction terrain I’ve owned! There’s a good variety of textures and materials to work on, and despite the criss-crossing woodwork and straps, there’s actuallly pretty good access. If you’re painting the Skaregob Totem I’d recommend leaving the wooden mask off for painting, at least until you’ve painted the rocks – you can see a surprising amount of them past the mask, but it would be a real pain to get a brush in there. My only other concern was some of the sculpted nails – these add a lot of character, but I snapped a couple with some overzealous drybrushing. Luckily, they were an easy fix, but go carefully.
Orruk Warclans Manifestations
The Foot of Gork has been a long-standing feature of Orc/Orruk factions in Warhammer’s fantasy settings, including having a cardboard template in Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It’s existed by name in the Age of Sigmar for quite a while now, but this Battletome marks its transition from an evocative spell to a full-blown model on the table. It’s a cracking model, and it’s joined by the Gork-Roara, a malignant hovering Orruk skull that buffs wizards and screams at things, and the Morkspit Marsh, a magical mire that appears out of nowhere to bog down the enemies of the Waaagh!
These manifestation models are full of personality, and go together simply. There is a join line down the middle of the marsh where the two halves come together, but it’s well designed enough that although it’s just about noticeable on my finished model, it’s not distracting. There are some options on the Morkspit Marsh to make it more Ironjawz or Kruleboyz themed – I opted for one of each and in my opinion it’ll slot nicely into either army.
One thing I really like about these sculpts is how the Foot and Marsh are self-contained pieces rather than being placed on top of a standard GW base. We’ve seen this with some endless spells as far back as Malign Sorcery, but these feel like some of the most interestingly-shaped ones we’ve seen so far.
After building and priming, I got to work painting them to match the other models. There is a lot of stone on these models, both disturbed by the Foot of Gork and surrounding the Morkspit Marsh, and I opted to paint both of these as well as the skull of the Gork-Roara with the same airbrush/drybrush/wash/highlight method as the skulls of the Skaregob Totem. I also went over the foot itself and the marsh pool with this airbrush coat, although I painted them a bright contrast yellow first to try and get the sense of some radiating energy. I think by the time they’re finished this has mostly been covered up, so I probably could have saved some time there.
Beyond that it was just the usual filling in of details and painting quite a few skulls – I kept finding more that I’d missed. There is an unfortunate Steelhelm face down in the marsh, which is a great opportunity to upset a friend with a Cities of Sigmar army if you want to copy their scheme and make a statement. I went for a pink and black scheme with some bronze accents, which I don’t think I’ll be trying to replicate on a full army any time soon.
One thing to note on the Morkspit Marsh and Foot of Gork – because of their integral bases, the mostly very detailed ground texture becomes a bit smooth towards the edge as it transitions into the vertical parts that need to be pulled from the injection moulding die. I decided to go over these edges with some Stirland Mud just to add some more uniform texture, and it blends in well after painting. These were finished off with the usual marine juice wash and matt varnish combo.
Final Thoughts
All three of these kits are great additions to the Orruk Warclans range, and slot in well alongside the existing models. The Manifestations really add to the feeling of Waaagh! energy pervading the armies, and the Bossrokk Tower and Skaregob Totem both feel like something that could be convincingly assembled as a show of strength on the battlefield. The Hobgrot Slittaboss adds some extra depth to the smaller, yellower side of the Kruleboyz range, although it might be a while before we’re quite ready to run an all-Hobgrot army.
If you have questions, feedback, or you want to let us know what you’re excited for with the new Orruk Warclans release, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
