A Better Kind of Chaos: Our Take on the Orcs & Goblins FAQ
We had a short but very on-brand chat recently about one of the most Orcs & Goblins topics imaginable: how much control they should actually have on the table.
And honestly? We’re pretty happy with the direction things seem to be going.
Impetuous: less convenience, more character
The big point in our discussion was Impetuous and what the recent clarification/change means in practice.
As Michał summed it up, this doesn’t really feel like a straight-up nerf. It feels more like a flavour correction. For a lot of us, the whole charm of Orcs & Goblins was never just that they were hard to command — it was that their army identity was built around unpredictability, infighting, and that constant sense that things might go gloriously wrong at any moment.
For a while, it felt a bit too easy to smooth that over. If you could just slot in a Black Orc Bigboss and suddenly keep everything neatly under control, some of that classic greenskin madness started to disappear. Sure, the Bigboss still brings a very solid Leadership 9 bubble, so this is not the end of reliability altogether — but to us, this looks like a step back toward what makes the army feel right.
Stas put it perfectly: yes, it was convenient to drop Black Orcs here and there, but it’s simply more atmospheric when there’s always some uncertainty.
And that’s really the heart of it for us. Not every rules change has to make an army cleaner or more efficient. Sometimes the best change is the one that makes the army feel more like itself.
Fanatics and entrenched Dwarfs
The other bit that caught our attention was the Fanatic interaction with entrenched Dwarfs.
This sounds niche, but these are exactly the kinds of clarifications that matter once games start getting weird — and with Orcs & Goblins, games always get weird.
The way Michał described it, the FAQ now explicitly states that when Dwarfs are entrenched and the rule says it works like difficult terrain (with exceptions), a Fanatic does not just die by moving into that unit. Instead, the Fanatic has to take the appropriate difficult terrain test.
- if it fails, then the terrain counts as difficult terrain for it
- if it passes, it behaves as though interacting with a normal unit
That’s not some giant dramatic buff, but it does feel like a pseudo-buff or at least a welcome rules clean-up and standardisation. And honestly, we’ll take that. Clearer interactions are good for everyone, especially in armies that already generate enough chaos on their own.
Why we like this direction
What we like most here is that these changes seem to push the game toward something we always enjoy in Warhammer: The Old World army-building: choosing not only what is strong, but what actually preserves the army’s identity.
With Orcs & Goblins, that identity should never be total discipline. It should be a little unreliable, a little explosive, and occasionally self-destructive in the most entertaining way possible.
That doesn’t mean the army has to be weak. It just means the randomness should still be part of the deal.
So yes — from our side, this looks like a good change. Slightly less convenience, slightly more uncertainty, and a lot more of that proper greenskin energy.
If you’re building Orcs & Goblins lists for The Old World, this is exactly the kind of update that makes us want to lean harder into the army’s personality rather than trying to iron it out completely.
And really, if your greenskins aren’t at least threatening to ruin your plan, are you even playing greenskins at all?