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Troops · Infantry

Ork Tankbustas

Orks addicted to the thrill of blowing up armour, hunting the biggest tanks they can find with rokkits, magnetic bombs, and explosive-strapped squigs.

A Tankbusta is an Ork Boy who has developed a single all-consuming obsession: the destruction of enemy war machines. The bigger and more dangerous the tank, the more irresistible the target, and a Tankbusta feels the same primal rush blowing up an armoured behemoth that a feral Ork feels bringing down a rampaging squiggoth. It is a mania as much as a specialism, and it makes Tankbustas both invaluable and faintly unnerving to keep around, since a fully armed one in search of a kill is not always patient about waiting for the right target.

Their tool of choice is the rokkit launcha, a stout tube that lobs an unreliable rocket in roughly the enemy's direction, though a Tankbusta's arsenal rarely stops there. When the rokkits miss one time too many, and they do, he reaches for tankbusta bombs, heavy magnetic charges slapped onto a hull with a fatal clang, or unleashes a bomb squig, an ordinary attack squig festooned with explosives and pointed at the nearest vehicle to detonate in a spray of fire and shrapnel.

Tankbustas wear their kills the way a hunter wears trophies, bolting scavenged armour plate to their bodies, stringing looted bolts and cogs into crude jewellery, and hammering rivets into their own hide to tally each vehicle they have wrecked. After a successful hunt they indulge in the ritual of being tanked up, feasting on the wreck's dead crew and swigging engine oil straight from the smoking ruin, a celebration every bit as grotesque as the obsession that drives it.

Notable Orks charactersMeet the heroes and legends who lead this faction.