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As the title says. I know that the IA books tend to be incredible books filled with tons of cool stuff, and I'd love to browse through one at some point. There's a GW store in my city, so if the IA books are available there, it might be nice to check one out to see what the contents are like before I shell out a lot of money for one.

If they're not, then I'm wondering: which IA books have information on orks? I just got back into the hobby, and I'm trying to consume as much ork fluff as possible.

They tend to have hem in the UK, but not all of them.

I picked up IA11 when it came out from a GW store but phoned ahead before travelling. I would suggest you do the same.

The other alternative is to call and ask them to order it for you to collect at a later date.


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Oh and Orks are in IA8.

Good read with some great machines in it.

The GW in NYC carries them, but I don't know if they all do.

My store carries the more recent ones, however only some are open to browse through, IA11, for example was sealed, call ahead to be safe.

Thanks for the helpful replies! Looks like my best bet is to call/contact the store before stopping in.

IA8 is an awesome resource for orks, and includes the Dread Mob army list. At the GW near me, they stock a limited range of IA books.

The gw in manhattan carries them, but in limited quantities

Depends on the store manager is the only correct answer to "Do GW stores carry WD books?"

Imperial Armor 8 is Orks versus IG. Raid on Kastorel Novem.

Funnily enough I found the IA8 book to be perhaps the worst in the series (perhaps with the exception of IA4 and the middle Vraks book). Not in terms of the models/pictures which are awesome, but just because of the incongruence between the comical nature of orcs and the pseudo-'real life military record' way in which the FW books are written.

"Pictured here is Wuzbag Jizzbuckit as he fires his mk4 pinkskin-krumper during the parallel advance of the 18th mounted Elysian division. The phrase "zog off you oomies" can be seen clearly inscribed on the underside of his armour."

For Ork background you want the 1st edition Ork books (Waaagh the Orks, and Eeeere We go), if you can find them. Absolutely beautiful books, and never equalled as reference material for Orks IMO.

I've never really been a huge fan of the comical ork point of view. Thankfully the current codex tones down the funny, and to me at least, focuses more on the "brutal murderers" aspect of ork kultur.
Some of my favorite ork fluff actually is the stuff from Armageddon, where you find out how brutal and terrifying orks can really be when they're swarming a planet by the millions.

The current codex has plenty of funny stuff in it - the ork going back in time to kill himself so he can have a back-up of his favourite gun (thus erasing himself from history), the biker ork jumping in through the cockpit of a titan and destroying it etc. Admittedly somewhat less than there used to be, but then the book is a fraction of the size of the older, original backgound tomes.

You could make the argument that the 'comical' nature is a fundamental component of orks, and really one of the 40k universe. In amongst all that darkness and destruction, they were a small spot of bright green that would make the whole thing lighten up a little, and helped to create that satirical concept that is at the heart of the 40k universe. At least, compared to going back to their original conception the current background for them is remarkably 2-dimensional, and most important I feel lacking 'imagination'. Forget the last Dark Angels codex, worst thing Gav Thorpe ever did was change orkdom to 'they come from mushrooms'. Now, 'ork kulture' is for them to run forward screaming until they kill or be killed, its like it's been stripped down from a complex JRPG and fully fleshed out world, into some kind of 2D side-scrolling shoot-em-up.

Although I realise that it is very much a subjective and personal thing! I guess things evolve in time, and the 40k universe these days does have much more of a mock-serious tone than it once did. Still, I deny that anyone can read those original two ork background books, and not having a big grin on their face while they are reading it.

There are a couple of scans of the old books which are in this thread: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/210/342983.page

Oh, I'm going to have to disagree with the whole "they come from shrooms" thing being bad. For me, this is one of the key aspects of the Orks that makes them 'work' as a alien species for me.

A lot of the humor of the orks is, for lack of a better way to put it, from the Ork's perspective. To the poor humans being burned, there's nothing funny about it, but to the orks, they can find the sight of the "humies runnin' round shouting and falling down" comical. How is it that the ork mindset can find this comical, even when it happens to other orks?

Orks emerge, relatively fully-developed, from spores. They don't nurture children, have families, or experience a period of personal vulnerability when they are young. In ork society, anything small and weak is a grot, and it's going to stay a small, weedy grot for its entire life. You don't teach it, or nurture it; you give it a good kicking. Psychologically, this means that orks don't form, or even NEED to form, the bonds of empathy and compassion that a species that rears it young (and educates its young) needs to form.

Not to say that child-rearing societies can't be cruel or evil, but those societies still have to have some way of making adults care for children, or the children don't survive childhood. Ork culture doesn't have any need to tolerate weakness in any form. There's no benefit in 'coddling' any members of ork society. This creates a brutal, uncaring species that doesn't have any of the maternal/paternal urges that are so common to, heck, all mammals, and even some reptiles, etc.

I think the spore origin is very useful to making a universally brutal, universally callous race plausible. With Dark Eldar, for example, they can't just be EVIL ALL THE TIME, because, whether they are born or vat-grown, young dark eldar have to be raised and trained from infants by other dark eldar (or slaves, or whoever) who don't immediately just boot them in the head "fer being useless".

 Pacific wrote:
"Pictured here is Wuzbag Jizzbuckit as he fires his mk4 pinkskin-krumper during the parallel advance of the 18th mounted Elysian division. The phrase "zog off you oomies" can be seen clearly inscribed on the underside of his armour."

I lol'd...

I love the IA books, but yeah, trying to analyze the Orks in a serious manner will always lead to a chuckle or two.

I love my Orks, but they are strictly for comic relief.

Da Butcha, interesting post and indeed I have spoken to other people who feel the same way.

I guess it's a subjective thing, although what is undeniable is that the conception of Orks has changed somewhat over the years (specifically, probably from 3rd edition 40k onwards, or the 'po-faced' edition as I like to call it, with it's focus on grim space knights, and grim nasty elves).

Out of interest did you ever read the original 1st edition ork books? They were so tremendously characterful, and the reason Orks used to be so popular and perhaps even ultimately the reason for this forum, and the perpetuity of Dakka Dakka itself (I guess you will have to ask Legoburner! ) An absolutely tremendous sense of humour, and at least every gaming group used to have an 'ork player', whose character usually matched the bizarre but wonderfully converted/painted army that they used to play with.

These days it almost feels like we have gone from something from a Terry Gillingham movie, with characters both intriguing and bizarre, to an 80's action movie starring Dolph Lundgren who just stands firing a HMG from the hip and uttering mono-syllabic catch phrases as he guns down his enemies. Or, green Tyranids without the organization. In some ways it has produced a bit of a mis-match; like in the IA8 book as I said, and younger players coming into the game and commenting how the orks in DoW sound 'stupid'. Really now, I think they should do away with the London-docker accent (which doesn't really fit the rest of the background, and the way the conception of orks has changed) and just have them uttering animal grunts to each other.

 Pacific wrote:
worst thing Gav Thorpe ever did was change orkdom to 'they come from mushrooms'.

Gav Thorpe didn't invent that concept by a long shot. The 'fungus-based lifeform' concept predates his appearance.

Are you absolutely sure about that ArbeitsSchu? I know that change came along when I was taking a break from wargaming (3rd edition), but I'm pretty sure that I remember reading an interview with Gav about the changes to the Ork background, and him talking about his reasons for doing it. Quite possible that I have mis-remembered the subject of the interview and it was someone else talking though?

I remember when I first heard about the ork spore concept, and at the time I thought it was really dumb. Da Butcha makes some really, really good points though, and honestly, spores work much better IMO than the idea of ork women and children hidden somewhere, perpetuating the species.

While I appreciate some of the ork humor, I also think the other aspects of ork nature are really cool - they're probably the one enemy that the Imperium will never be able to get rid of entirely. Orks live to fight, and fight to live, and that's really all an ork needs. The thought of Ork empires out somewhere past the Imperium where there's nothing but green as far as your sensors can see is awe-inspiring and kind of terrifying all at the same time. Orks keep growing the more they thrive on conflict, and somewhere recently someone speculated about orks in these huge empires and how big they must have gotten through millennia of fighting.

*shrug* Orks are cool.

When I was in Missouri, the gw store I went to had imperial armor aeronautica and one other that I cant remember...

 Pacific wrote:
Are you absolutely sure about that ArbeitsSchu? I know that change came along when I was taking a break from wargaming (3rd edition), but I'm pretty sure that I remember reading an interview with Gav about the changes to the Ork background, and him talking about his reasons for doing it. Quite possible that I have mis-remembered the subject of the interview and it was someone else talking though?

I remember the mushroom thing from early Chapter Approved, and Ork background segments that pre-date (just) the clan system and those gorgeous Waagh The Orks books. This was 1st edition stuff. Gav Thorpe started at GW much later than that. Much much later. he might have re-worked it, but the concept is old school.

OK thanks, that's piqued my interest and given me an excuse to look through my old rulebook collection!

I remember stuff about the orks being partly vegetable/fungal in nature (their skin for instance), but not about them actually spawning from mushrooms. In fact I don't remember reading anything specific about that at all (the Ork books just mention ork settlements etc. but not anything more).

I think the "orks spawn from mushrooms" thing came from a White Dwarf article, as ArbeitsSchu mentioned. I just got back into the hobby after ten years out, so correct me if I'm wrong, but Chapter Approved was a WD article series, right? I vaguely remember reading that, and I was probably 18 or 19 at the time, which is why I thought it was dumb.