When an Ork Combat Patrol Sends Us Down a Rabbit Hole
We had one of those very relatable Warhammer moments recently: a simple “let’s look at Orks” turned into confusion, detective work, edition archaeology, and of course some quick hobby math.
It started with Stas noticing that Orks in Warhammer 40,000 feel a bit closer to Orruks than he expected. Which, honestly, is not a bad place to start if you’re orbiting around green skins and trying to figure out which version of the faction really clicks with you.
Michał jumped in immediately with moral support and the extremely noble offer of becoming a one-man visual guide to the faction by sending low-res screenshots of every army. True friendship in the grim darkness of the far future.
The mystery of the two Combat Patrols
The real confusion started when Stas found two different Ork sets in two different official places:
- one listed on the store that he liked a lot less,
- and another one shown in a downloadable PDF that looked much better.
That kind of thing can be genuinely confusing when you’re trying to buy into an army. You think you’ve found the set you want, then suddenly it turns out that the cool version might not actually be the one currently on sale.
Here are the two screenshots that kicked off the whole discussion:
Michał pretty quickly identified the more exciting-looking one as the old Combat Patrol from 9th edition, dating back to 2021. In other words: yes, it was real, yes, it was official, and no, it was probably not something you could just casually add to cart anymore.
The bad news: out of print
Once we established that this was the older box, the next question was obvious: can you still buy it?
Apparently not in any normal way. Michał couldn’t find it in regular sale anymore, and the aftermarket situation sounded a bit absurd — with boxes reportedly floating around for about $400 on eBay.
That’s one of those classic hobby moments where a discontinued box starts gaining mythical status, even when the contents themselves are not impossible to collect separately.
The slightly better news: you can probably build it yourself
Naturally, the next step was pricing out the contents piece by piece. Michał did the fast breakdown for the old Ork Combat Patrol:
- Warboss in Mega Armour – 118 zł
- Deffkoptas – 174 zł
- Boyz – 2 × 125 zł
- Deff Dread – 220 zł
That gave a total of 762 zł.
So the conclusion was a bit funny:
- on the one hand, buying it unit by unit is not especially cheap,
- but on the other hand, it still looks wildly more reasonable than paying collector prices for the old sealed box.
At that point the eBay pricing became even more mysterious. If the contents can be assembled for roughly half of that aftermarket price, then what you’re really paying for is the rarity, the nostalgia, and the satisfaction of getting the actual box.
But can it still be played in 10th edition?
This was the other important part of the discussion, because there’s not much point chasing an old Combat Patrol if it no longer functions in the current format.
Stas found rules references suggesting that the old Ork set corresponds to Gordrang’s Gitstompas, with 10th edition Combat Patrol rules available online.
Then Wilini checked the official Warhammer 40,000 app and confirmed that Combat Patrol: Gordrang appears there with rules. So the practical answer seems to be: yes, you can still play that patrol in the current edition.
That’s honestly the best possible outcome for anyone who prefers the lineup of the older box. Even if the original package is gone, the patrol itself still seems to have a life in 10th edition.
Our takeaway
This was a very classic purchase dilemma:
- the currently sold box doesn’t always match the one that grabs you,
- older boxes can be weirdly expensive on the secondary market,
- and sometimes the smartest move is just to recreate the set from individual kits.
There was also a very useful side note from Michał: sometimes you can accidentally assemble a Combat Patrol just by buying units you like. Apparently that may have happened to Wilini in the past, which is both funny and also not the worst shopping strategy we’ve ever heard.
So if we were in Stas’s boots, we’d probably do this:
- confirm the exact unit list for the old patrol,
- confirm the current 10th edition rules support,
- compare the cost of separate kits versus hunting for a boxed set,
- and only then decide whether the premium for the old box is worth it.
Usually, it probably isn’t.
But also… Orks are Orks, and sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants.
Final verdict
The old Ork Combat Patrol may be gone from normal retail, but it doesn’t look dead at all. If you like that composition more than the current offering, it seems entirely possible to collect it manually and still use it in 10th edition Combat Patrol.
Which is not the cheapest answer — but it is a much better answer than paying $400 because a PDF made us fall in love with an old box.