Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-25686730-20141125054012/@comment-6078851-20141126130614

yeah but as badass as nork dedogg is he's still somewhat of a dumbass too :) while bio-engineered ogryn astartes would never be as smart as human astartes, given that their general IQ sits around the same level as that of a grape, they're intellect would be massively improved to bring them on par with at least baseline humans.

such a contingent of ogryn astartes would indeed be awesome shock troops but i'd have to agree with Supah that it would never work. part of the things that makes ogryns so useful to the imperium is their loyalty, but such loyalty is sorta linked with their lack of intelligence - i've always thought of ogryns as analagous to dogs, extremely dangerous if angered, loyal to a fault, and as dumb as a post - but if their intellect was increased through astarte-fying then that gives them the ability to see how much they are used for the gains of others which could lead to envy, jealousy, anger at their lot in life, and quite possibly rebellion. and if it came to rebellion they don't have to be as smart as human astartes to be very good at killing them: i think it's entirely probable that a single ogryn astartes would be able to take out a 10 man squad of human astartes. so that 30 ogryn contingent, if they rebelled, would need 3 whole companies to take them out :P