How Could The Ork Colours Be Implemented?

Discussion

I’m new to 40k but have been wondering about the Ork colours in the lore and their effect when actually playing.

I know that they used to give effects to units but that was removed, but I think it’d be awesome if they added it back in but balanced it so they were minor benefits to reward painting models.

What are your thoughts about how this could reasonably be implemented in the game today?

I see it implemented in two ways:

  1. The colours act as archetypes for units, similar to selecting a weapon load out, you can select a colour. These would be minor improvements to models so that it’s not a complete advantage given by something so meta.

  2. We get a new detachment option (ie. Da Kolourful Kavalcade, Da Vibrant and Violent, More Than Just Green Tide, etc) the Detachment Rule laying out the effects of each colour and the stratagems revolving around it. This would allow a bigger boost to the abilities rather than them being minor, and the Enhancements could get pretty interesting.

As for effects:

Red: the classic +1” is nice, but this could be tweaked to rolling a d6 when selecting the vehicle during the Move step and on a 4+ it gains +1” to Move.

Yellow: for each yellow unit roll 2d6 at the start of your command phase, on a 10 or higher gain 1cp. This is just my first thought for ‘wealth’ in the table top sense, add a lot of yellow units and you have a higher chance.

Blue: these units (or models - would need to test the balance) can reroll one dice roll per turn. This means it wouldn’t be limited to just Hit, Wound or Save, it could be used on Battle Shock and other such rolls.

As for Green I’m not sure, “da best” is pretty vague so I’m keen to hear others thoughts.

And of course Purple: I want to say something silly like “these models have always been on the board, you the Player just can’t see them”. Realistically Stealth is the easiest, kinda basic, but it’s such a niche unit idea it’s hard to implement in my mind. I’d also love to hear people’s ideas on this.

The idea makes me want to make them very powerful, perfect stealth units, deploy with Deep Strike but no range from enemies, etc, but this is obviously way too over powered.

I also love the idea of having terrain bases with footprints but no minis and just painting those prints purple.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts, I love meta abilities like this, but the balance becomes weird.

Posted Jun 8, 2026, 12:26 AM UTC

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