So, this is mostly a "how do you?" more than a how does the book say, but I am curious. How do you deal with enemy units health in combat? On the one hand, I could see a large group of Dominate schmoes using something akin to Magnitude, rather than keeping track of Wounds and Health, but smaller groups, say squads, only seemed to work with Eldar, where their numbers needed a boost against Space Marines, and Dom don't. When your players fire at NPC grunts, do you treat them as characters, tracking health and what have you, or like Comrades, who die very easily? If they get to be more like your players, and less like their comrades, why? If every other soldier is durable, why are Comrades so tissue paper?

Granted, this assumes that I am reading rules right, and three real hits will kill a Comrade, barring special things (Ogryn Comrade). They can take cover, and whatnot, to hopefully not get hit, but their bullet-sponging abilities seem lacking. Are enemy soldiers as squishy in your games, or are all Comrades just that much redshirt/whiteshield?

Most of human NPCs tend to die just as quickly - you have good chances of killing a severan dominate rifleman with TB3 AP4 and 10 wounds with one precise 3-shot burst of your trusty lasgun with d10+5 AP2. You might as well treat NPCs as dead as they reach 0 wounds instead of using crit damage tables to make enemy redshirts die from 1-2 well-placed flashlight shots or 1 hit with half-decent weapon.

Also, comrade is getting hit only on doubles, and even then you can try and evade this attack.

I only count critical damage for bosses, or people who matter. Everyone else just gets wounds.

Orks need their crits though, otherwise they are little harder than guardsmen.

Use Mook points, (I'm assuming you know it.) Basically assume an enemy can shug off a hit of less than 10 damage after soak, and is killed by anything more. Add extra mook points for tougher foes.

I also use d10 rather than d100 stats and a TB+AV stat called Resistance on NPCs which is negated by Pen and halved by hits to unarmored locations.

THat way it's:

DAM - (RES-Pen) = <10 fine / >10 injured/dead.

Cuts down on irritating stalls in combat action while mathematically inept GMs (like me) scramble for a calculator.

Orks need their crits though, otherwise they are little harder than guardsmen.

Eh, OTOH I don't think it's a good idea to make orks obscenely tough, even as much as I'm a fan of the greenskins.

I use the formation rules in EOI with a couple of mods. I treat basic troops as wounded (Like comrade) and killed on the next hit if the initial damage is less then twice their TB. (Stolen from the original DH2 beta). Any hit that doubles their TB kills instantly. Elites get wounds then Crits disable. Master lvl enemies are the same as PC's.

I tend to use modified hoard rules for everything. The unit has a magnitude equal to 1 point per person in the unit. In addition to the horde rules in DW the horde may suppress as a free action, and special/heavy weapons are not included in the 2 ranged attacks the horde is allowed. Any hit that would pass T+AV removed a magnitude point.