FAQ updates these days sure do seem like stealth drops, huh? Today GW released a pair of updates – an updated FAQ for Codex: Orks, and an updated version of the 2022 MkII Munitorum Field Manual, the doc that has points for every unit in the game. Because the former doesn’t highlight or show off text which has been removed and the latter doesn’t highlight changes at all, you’d be forgiven for wondering what actually changed. Well good news, dear reader! We’ve got you covered with a quick rundown of everything you need to know about the changes.

Codex Orks: Freebooterz were un-nerfed

Players were somewhat baffled by the changes in the prior round of FAQs, which seemed to kick the faction while it was down, changing their Competitive Streak ability from giving units +1 to hit each time an enemy unit was destroyed to the ability to re-roll hit rolls of 1. This is a big shift and immediately puts the kultur back on the menu for Ork players – though not necessarily in a way that’s good for the meta. More on that in a bit.

There are also two highlighted changes in the FAQ that were in the prior FAQ released in early July, so if you missed them the last time around, here they are again:

Codex Orks: Groundshaker Shells only apply to the ‘Eavy Lobba

A change to the Groundshaker shells makes it so the Stratagem only applies to the ‘eavy lobba, and not the other weapons. The only unit with that weapon is essentially the Hunta/Kill Rig, so if you were using it to buff all of their ranged shots, you’re going to be out of luck there now, though that particular interaction definitely seemed unintended and a bit of a stretch.

Shokk Rifles now only do 1 mortal wound for any number of 1s to hit

This is an improvement – now if you’re unlucky enough to roll multiple 1s, you’ll only take a single mortal wound.

In addition to these, there was one change to the Munitorum Field manual, i.e. the document with all the point costs for the game’s units.

Ork Points: Kustom Jobs cost points again

One of the more confusing aspects of the Points update released earlier this month was that it was completely missing point costs for Vehicle and Mek Kustom Jobs. I suspect this happened because those aren’t currently replicated in the points section in the back of the print edition of Codex: Orks (which would be hilarious), but either way the way rules are printed in 9th edition, not having points costs means that the upgrades themselves were free. That has been changed now – the only apparent update to this new points doc is that point costs have now been re-included for those upgrades, but unlike what we saw for most of the game’s other factions, these haven’t changed in cost from the Codex (other factions generally saw a 5-point drop in each of these).

This pretty much stinks for Ork players but it also doesn’t really matter much competitively. Kustom jobs weren’t really worth buying as upgrades outside of Nitro Squigs, so making them free gave a compelling reason to add them, so it would have been helpful to at least meat the faction halfway and give them reduced costs. This doesn’t really change much, though it could be a small hit to the speedmob lists that had seen some slight resurgence – though whether you even got these free depended heavily on how your TO was ruling the lack of point costs for Kustom jobs.

What Does it Mean?

On the whole, this is good news for the Orks, but potentially bad news for everyone else. Orks have been enjoying a resurgence in the meta despite the huge CP drop in Nephilim that makes their high CP costs unworkable. The Freebooterz nerf in the last FAQ pushed the kultur out of the space in favor of Goffs, but adding them back into the space potentially opens that door back up for them.

As a faction, Orks are in a good place right now competitively: They a pair of incredibly powerful/easy-to-score secondaries in Nephilim and anyone who’s played against Goffs will tell you how Get da Good Bitz is basically 15 free points and Da Biggest and Da Best can easily be worth 10+ if you can keep Ghaz around. Likewise, in addition to Goffs we’ve seen early success from blood axes and Evil Sunz speedmobs in Nephilim and as a whole the faction has jumped dramatically, going from a 0.37 TiWP ratio to 1.37. They’ve also gone from a 44% win rate in Nachmund to 47% in the first month of Nephilim while generating a healthy number of podium placings.

The question now is whether we’ll see Freebooterz lists make a comeback or if things are going to stick with Goffs for the time being. However with the vehicles and indirect fire shooting still significantly nerfed from where it was at before the December dataslate, it’s unlikely we’ll see a major resurgence for the kultur. If we do, it’s likely to be in speed mobs as a replacement for Evil Sunz, where you pretty much have to run two planes to avoid spilling into a second detachment points-wise and the buff to the wazboms is still very significant (though Sunz probably still win out). We’re unlikely to see a return to the buggy lists of old, but we may see a bit more variety in the Ork lists that can compete.

On the whole if you’re an Ork player and find this to be a bit of a nothingburger well, it kind of is. The Freebooterz getting un-nerfed is good, the kustom jobs showing up at their original point costs is bad, but neither matters all that much in the grand scheme of things.

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