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I was told that there was an Ork Warboss who United a huge amount of orks and took on the Imperium whom they called the beast, one reason because of his size and ferrousity, but I was also told he was pretty smart for an Ork.

My question is, how smart was he? Are there any novels that go into detail about this? I know there are most likely 40k novels about the war of the beast but they probably don't go into that.

 Jazzylee wrote:
I was told that there was an Ork Warboss who United a huge amount of orks and took on the Imperium whom they called the beast, one reason because of his size and ferrousity, but I was also told he was pretty smart for an Ork.

My question is, how smart was he? Are there any novels that go into detail about this? I know there are most likely 40k novels about the war of the beast but they probably don't go into that.

Orks aren't dumb, but their technical intelligence is largely intuitive - that's how mekboys build tellyportas and custom force fields, not by knowing what the physics is but by slapping stuff together that 'feels right'.

Ork tactical ability is probably on the same level. They understand tactics intuitively, and the better the leader the better he his at guessing what the enemy is up to and how to counter it. Remember that psykers can predict the future, and the ork race is highly psychic, so ork leaders could base their battle plans on visions of the future provided by the Waaaagh.

So while an ork leader might not be able to solve, say, a sudoku puzzle to save his life, he could execute a flawless battle plan to bring a planet to its knees, and that's what matters to orks anyways.

 John Prins wrote:

 Jazzylee wrote:
I was told that there was an Ork Warboss who United a huge amount of orks and took on the Imperium whom they called the beast, one reason because of his size and ferrousity, but I was also told he was pretty smart for an Ork.

My question is, how smart was he? Are there any novels that go into detail about this? I know there are most likely 40k novels about the war of the beast but they probably don't go into that.

Orks aren't dumb, but their technical intelligence is largely intuitive - that's how mekboys build tellyportas and custom force fields, not by knowing what the physics is but by slapping stuff together that 'feels right'.

Ork tactical ability is probably on the same level. They understand tactics intuitively, and the better the leader the better he his at guessing what the enemy is up to and how to counter it. Remember that psykers can predict the future, and the ork race is highly psychic, so ork leaders could base their battle plans on visions of the future provided by the Waaaagh.

So while an ork leader might not be able to solve, say, a sudoku puzzle to save his life, he could execute a flawless battle plan to bring a planet to its knees, and that's what matters to orks anyways.

Right, I keep forgetting that orks have that weird power to make whatever they want from the weirdest things work, something about their will power working with their pskyer powers, correct?

 Jazzylee wrote:

Right, I keep forgetting that orks have that weird power to make whatever they want from the weirdest things work, something about their will power working with their pskyer powers, correct?

Pretty much. It's not like an ork can totally violate the laws of physics, they just seem to bend them a bit so that their very imprecise engineering doesn't explode/fail on the immediately. So their non-uniform ammunition works just fine in their guns, and engines don't vibrate themselves to pieces. I remember an old bit of fiction about a mek hammering nails into an engine until he got it to work. Maybe he subconsciously knew where the nails needed to go, maybe he was just imposing his will on the engine by hitting it with a hammer (and nails).

I remember a blurb where the Adeptus Mechanics were picking over the remains of Ork weaponry, and found a shoota that had no discernable means of loading ammunition, but still was firing when Orks used it.

 Jazzylee wrote:
I was told that there was an Ork Warboss who United a huge amount of orks and took on the Imperium whom they called the beast, one reason because of his size and ferrousity, but I was also told he was pretty smart for an Ork.

My question is, how smart was he? Are there any novels that go into detail about this? I know there are most likely 40k novels about the war of the beast but they probably don't go into that.

Orks get more powerful the more of them there are..
During the war of the beast ork culture also exponentially expanded... they built super powerful war moons. They had diplomats. They were very intelligent.
The Beast orks were mostly described as being massive and powerful, rather than any comments on smarts , but they did trick and annihilate imperial forces many times.
Admittedly the imperials did stick to the usual tactic of throw everything at it and hope it works.

Well, you can read about the beast in "The Beast Arises" but generally speaking he was highly intelligent & nothing really like what you'd think about Orks in general, being that highly ascended. I don't remember how often they outright state how smart he is in the book, it's more a read between the lines type of deal most of the time. But considering they had emissaries during his reign and tried to get Terra to sign their own surrender they were very much not just basic Orks under his reign.

He was a primeork (something Ghaz might become), capable of speaking high gothic perfecty and basically outsmarted all of humanity to the point were Terra almost fell.

The ceiling of an Orks intelligence is extremely high evidently