Grot

Grots (or Gretchin) are small, cowardly Orkoid creatures who are responsible for the initial construction and maintenance of Ork settlements before their larger kin fully develop. They are, in many ways, 40K's answer to the Goblin archetype, with the usual green skin, large noses, and so on.

Their role in the Ork ecosystem is like that wimpy tech geek who gets caught in the high-school locker room by the football team and forced to do their homework and endure endless wedgies, purple nurples, and swirlies. The life of a Gretchin fucking sucks as there's a high likelihood of you being shot, lit on fire, stepped on, eaten, or some combination of all of these. Due to the risky nature of their lives, Gretchins have developed a cunning, malicious streak a mile long; their entire society basically revolves around finding someone even smaller and weedier than they are to get stuck with the really dangerous jobs, but even the cleverest Gretchin is lucky to live for more than two years.

Battlefield Roles

By far the most common battlefield role for Grots is mobs of cannon fodder. Runtherds gather mobs of up to 30 Gretchin and "direct" them (usually with grot-prods) at minefields, or enemies that need to get bogged down in bodies.

Some Grots serve more specific functions than their brothers, because they possess skills that others don't, or just get lucky when the bosses divide up the work roster.

Artillery Crew

Grots who misbehave get sent to operate the Big Gunz that support Ork attacks from the rear. One would think that being away from the front lines would appeal to most Grots, but serving on the gun crews is, if anything, more hazardous than their usual duties -- for example, to fire a Zzap gun, a Grot must complete the power circuit with his own body. In any case, Grots who live long enough on the gun crews inevitably go deaf, and so they communicate via "sign language" -- that is, they hold up signs with what they want to say.

Killa Kan

The career to which most Grots aspire is to be hard-wired into the mighty metal shell of a Killa Kan. Unfortunately, old habits die hard -- Gretchin in Killa Kans are usually just as cowardly as always, despite being nigh-invulnerable to weapons that would have vaporized them before.

Orderly

Painboyz often "employ" a Grot to carry tools, spare limbs, and to generally be an extra set of hands (sometimes in the most painful sense of the phrase). Considering that their models are removed from the table once they are used, they probably also serve as an involuntary source of donor organs.

Pilot

Gretchin are better shots than Orks, so they are occasionally employed to pilot vehicles. They generally get stuck in little turrets hanging off the side of larger Ork vehicles, or acting as the pilots of so-called "Grot bomms" (they generally aren't told that the bomms explode on impact with the enemy -- or they are told, and the Orks take whatever Gretchin are crazy enough to stick around), but sometimes enough of them get together to make their own ramshackle tanks.

Rigger

Gretchin with an inkling of mechanical aptitude are used as maintenance personnel for vehicles, because their small size lets them squeeze into small spaces where a Mekboy won't fit. Since they don't take up much space, said riggers often get dragged along into battle and made to fix vehicles as they get damaged.

Why it sucks to be a Gretchin

1. You're a scrawny midget surrounded by bellowing aggressive morons.
2. You're named after the ugly chick in class who smells like rotten ass and dick cheese.
3. You may be used as live ammunition.
4. You won't live past the age of 2.
5. You may be eaten for the sake of lulz.
6. Your guns suck worse than the flashlights used by the Imperial Guard.
7. You and your friends will be used to clear minefields on a regular basis.
8. It's amusing when you go pop.
9. You may get stepped on or run over by vehicles. Whether or not such acts are intentional is entirely irrelevant.

On the Tabletop

Gretchen are an... interesting unit. On the one hand, their stats are decidedly mediocre. They're worse in almost every regard than just about anything else in the game. They only have a few things going for them: They shoot better than regular orks (wow, what an achievement), they're dirt fucking cheap, and everybody underestimates them. The basic squad gives you ten grots and a runtherd (a basic ork boy with a few useless special rules), but for less than the cost of a single terminator. For less than the cost of most army's basic troops , you can take two and instantly upgrade some unbound mech lists to battle-forged. You'll even get two scoring units out of it. Of course, they fall over to a stiff breeze, but your foes have to reach them first.

Grots are tiny models, easily given full coverage where most models would only get a cover save. A very typical tactic, popular from 5th ed and persisting to this day is to use them to hold an objective in some ruins on your side of the board while the rest of your army moves up to introduce your foe to their wide array of choppy bits. If you're lucky, the tiny models will be so hard to see your opponent won't even remember where they were, let alone his troops.

Alternatively they work well as meat shields, giving your shokk attack and big gunz a screen against assaults and direct fire.

Their guns are worse than flashlights, but with a little luck the horde of BB guns might take out one or two enemy models. There's nothing sweeter than killing a single assault terminator with a basic gretchen mob. Sure, they're all going to die in the assault phase, but you've still come out ahead in terms of points. Make sure to point this out to your opponent if it happens.

Gretchen are not for players who are shy about losing models or even whole units, for no more benefit than perhaps slowing down that bloodthirster for a single round. Then again, if that bothers you then the whole Ork codex is probably a bad choice for you anyway. Go play Imperial Knights or something.

Famous Gretchin

• Makari, long-time loyal companion of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka.