I haven't had the opportunity to go through one of these, in a game, and I'm wondering what the actual deal is like, in games you might've played. I understand that you can do the whole process via Hit and Run, and Repelling Boarders, if that's more your speed/style, but if you wanted the players, as a group, to have a more involved investment in it, I'd suppose they will go over. Most people aboard ship don't seem to wear armor, or have the same degree of firearms, but I'd expect they'll have numbers. Thing is, the ship is possibly huge, and with potential passageways Rhinos could move around in, and doors/bulkheads thicker than my house, with signs practically saying "hackers/melta-charges ONLY!!!", it could take some time. I've flipped through all the books RT has, minus Soul Reaver, and sure, some of them involve moving through ships, but most of these are wrecks, and without their native crews. Granted, after a few hours of serious space combat, the enemy ship might not be too different, but I don't know how much control the ship's owners will have. How big of forces are likely to intercept you, however often, as you try to make your way the miles to either the bridge, the enginarium, or the holds? Can they just close the big doors, remotely, and leave you stranded? Vent that little area, depriving you of gravity, and air, if not blowing you out, into space? If its the Imperium, or Orks, standard doctrine would almost seem to demand sacrificing decent portions of the crew, to save the whole ship. What's likely to defend various sections?

I'm certainly asking for story purposes. If my story group wants to finish their Tau arc, they will likely have to, eventually, board the Spear of Truth , to defeat Kor'O Bork'an Eld Ar Shi Kais, and defeat his fleet, prior to pulling off a similar stunt aboard their station, the Hidden Truth , to capture Aun'O T'olku Li'n Da'ya Shan, and sue for peace, since he can order the Tau to withdraw (sorry, it's fun to get to use the silly-long names ), and I'm trying to imagine what sort of action, roadblocks, and more, they'd be likely to expect, but, like so many of my silly questions, regarding my story, I assume anyone else could use similar material to flesh out actual boarding actions, in games. With ship size, and occasionally crew size, I'm not even always certain how some of the raider vessels pull off the stunt of hitting transports, to say nothing of frigates+. I haven't seen rules in the book for crew size vs. combat capable percentage of class types, but the raiders, having amongst the smallest crew compliments, and still needing regular joes to operate their ship, like any other, hardly seem like they should have enough people to disable another ship, even a transport, which still often feels like it would be bigger, and then loot, and run. Once ships get bigger, and crews more militant, it seems it should spiral out even worse. In my case, the good guys will be sporting a cruiser, a light cruiser, a sneaky frigate, and probably a raider, even if they don't have the Navy's further support, but the Tau are likely to have a station, any planetary support they might've established, to back it up (never really sure how much of that your "typical" militant world can bring to bear on a single target), a battleship (the aforementioned Spear of Truth ), its usual escort compliment, and whatever other Tau vessels are left, and present, above Kesh M'yen J'Karra (their initial colony world, in the Expanse). If the Eldar are already out of the equation, they can't even really run for it, as their home is pretty far away, though I have a way to work around it, but I can't imagine, on my own, what these boarding actions will really be like, and how much one must invest to pull it off? As I said, these will be more militant groups fighting each other, rather than raiders trying to hit and run, and both sides have a pretty definite need to win, while both will be on their ships, and have possibly the most control over the interior of such, as opposed to dead ships, or ones so damaged as to just be static battle sites.

I'm sorry for just babbling on, but it's something I could certainly use some assistance with, from the people who have done in-depth boarding actions, and, as I said, I'm sure other people could easily make use of any of it, too, for actual games they are planning. How beat up should an enemy ship be, prior to trying to board? What sort of opposition is typical? How should you go about it? Thanks much.

For a Tau ship especially, I would expect them to prepare the old fashioned approach of "They closed the door!" on your players. Also the book is very clear that a ship can depressurize anything because a Fire is such a big risk that they need to be able to quickly empty a burning section of the ship. The Tau might not go for that approach, but it stands to reason there would be something. In addition if you're on there for too long they can just put a huge volley of Tau warriors behind one door, or flank you from behind, or any number of actions to stall you. Eventually you'll run out of ammo, or their ship will move on to effectively capture you. Given the length of the ship, and that you can expect sealed hatches to be quite common - since after all a breach can happen anywhere - it will take a long time to get anywhere.

There could be lots of improvised traps on the way. Empty a load of promethium between two sealed sections, and then when your party boards through it they ignite the promethium, which if you manage to put 50kg in there (perfectly reasonable) creates a 50d10 damage blast that at least one poor player has triggered. Or they can electrify the floor, reverse the artificial gravity, drop a door from above they didn't know was there... And then when they finally do reach the bridge, they find the ship has been evacuated, and a countdown timer very, very close to 0...

My crew have done a few boarding actions, but usually it's during the stage of the ship being in critical, and they're working to prevent the last stragglers from scuttling it so they can either salvage the wreck, or capture some potent artifact.

In my opinion, the closest real world comparison to boarding a ship in WH40K is highly intensive fighting in build up areas such as during the most harrowing phases of the battle of Stalingrad. To this we should add the complications of no artillery support, no air support and little or no armor support: it will almost all come down to the individual boarders. And to put a cherry on the pie, the environment in which these fights occur can be controlled (as stated above) with things like depressurization, reversing gravity, flooding them with burning prometheum....a true nightmare.

That being said, some part of the ship will be relatively empty and allow for 'rapid' advances. Defenses will probably be concentrated around choke points and vital systems. Expect the bridge, plasma and warp drive, weapons and vital life support to be very heavily defended indeed.

So what form will a fight take? One thing is clear, you can't use your whole crew in the offence. Or if you do so, you will leave your own ship for grabs. The same does not apply to the defense: everyone will have to fight and considering the universe of WH40K, probably will fight. Surrender isn't really an option when facing Ork/Dark Eldar/Rak'Ghol....you name it. So the attackers can expect to face a very determined opposition. They do have the advantage of the offensive though. This should not be underestimated, as this allows them to determine the time, place and method of their attack. Furthermore, they are likely to be far better organized for their mission. A well handled and well armed platoon of armsmen can easily take on a far greater number of gun crew standing by their weapons. When seen from the operations room, you will probably see the less well defended areas of your ship light up as boarders enter and take over, until they hit the spots where your defenses are concentrated. Once that happens, the speed with which the attack develops will probably drop drastically. Instead of gaining ground relatively rapidly, the attackers will need to find a way to crack these solid hardened positions, which is quite hard for infantry without decent support. For the defenders, this would be the moment to launch a counterattack, if possible on the enemies flank or rear. However, if there are no forces with which to counterattack a ship might be doomed. No defense can be held indefinitely by a purely passive stance.

So, how can we translate this into rules (for the boarding rules are grossly inadequate). There are some ideas I am playing with. I am thinking out aloud here, and this is not finished in any way:

- First and foremost, this is a game. So players should have a chance to shine.

- Secondly, while this is a game, the rules should reflect the relative reality of the game world. Otherwise, the suspension of disbelief shatters and with it, the game.

- Thirdly, the rules should be as simple as possible. This game is supposed to be fun, not number crunching

Considering those three elements, by thoughts are slowly coalescing around something like this. But they are far from finished:

- The boarding value of a ship is dependent on a) the present crew strength b) the quality of the crew c) the presence of specialist fighters. This gives us the first problem, crew strength. We cannot possibly use the rules as given, for these use a percentage, which results in the idiotic notion that an undamaged raider with a 100% crew strength has an advantage over a slightly damaged Grand Cruiser with a 80% crew strength (of course, there are some modifiers, but the notion is ridiculous). The most obvious solution would be to give each ship a crew strength comparable to its hull points. The quality of the crew is easier. We can just use the rules as given. So if we'd take a raider with 30 crew strength and a crew quality of 40, the ship would have a boarding value of 70. If I apply the reasoning from above (you can't easily empty your whole ship) we might complicate this a bit by allowing only half the crew to participate on the attack, unless you decide for an all out assault (which would leave your own ship utterly defenseless and unable to do a thing). So we get a normal boarding strength of 15+40=55 and all out boarding strength of 70. A defender always defends with its all out boarding strength.

- To this basic boarding value, we would have to add c) the presence of specialist fighters. Imperial Guard, Skitarii and - obviously - Space Marines would add enormously to a ships boarding value. Imagine said raider, with a 15.000 odd crew of professional ratings . An Imperial Guard regiment of 5.000 well trained and well armed troopers would do far more than add a measly +10 to a roll. Those 5.000 professional soldiers would easily have double the fighting value of the basic boarding value of the ship. Space Marines and their like are a class apart. They are the ideal forces to fight in a boarding operation. Their high quality, armor and weaponry would also give the a far better shot at defeating those well defended choke points that would be the basic stumbling blocks of any assault.So we would need to give those extra fighters a real and possibly decisive role in the fight.

- Now that we have the relative strength of the two parties, we can talk about their tactics. This is the first major decision and roll for the players. I'd love to give the players two options here. Firstly, they can choose the swashbuckling rush. This will allow for dash, glory, cinematic moments of cool and practically, speed. But even if successful, such a rush asks for greater losses. Secondly, they might use careful tactics. This will be more thorough and should cost less casualties, but will be slower. I am considering to use opposed rolls modified by the final boarding and defense values. The parties can choose between using their command ratings (to rush in gloriously) or their tactica Imperialis (using well considered tactics). Say we continue the example above. The party's raider boards (basic boarding value 55, Imperial Guard regiment rated at say 30 for final boarding value of 85) a transport (crew 40, quality 30, one turret for a defense value of 75). Deciding to use his great command skill off 73, the Rogue Trader decides on a glorious assault. He rolls his command modified by his boarding value 73+85 for 158 versus the defense roll - as there are no characters of note on the transport we use the crew quality - of 30+75. The rolls are 99 versus 68, so smartly, our player goes for a re-roll and gets 36 vrs 68. Our player has 12 successes against a mere 4 of the transport, a full 8 degrees of difference.

- The next step would probably be to inflict casualties and/advance in the ship:

Casualties would be applied to both sides. Boarding won't be free, even if successful. Each success on the roll will inflict 1 points of crew strength. So for starters our players will lose 4 crew strength, the defenders a whopping 12. Added to this, the players will lose some crew strength for choosing the glorious but dangerous frontal assault. At least 1, but perhaps more, not sure about that.

Next would be the advance in the ship. In my opinion, this advance should be represented by an accumulation of successes, with ships being given a defense strength depending on their size and preparation. Say something like 6 for a normal transport or raider, 8 to 10 for a frigate, 16 to 20 for a light cruiser and so on (again, I am thinking out aloud). In our example, the transport would have been taken in one fell swoop.

- Further successes could be accumulated by special player actions: this is the moment for dramatic RP and bolter fire. Challenging enemy captain to individual combat, leading a storm troop in an assault on that strong point blocking the way, inducing mass panic in the minds of the defenders/attackers and much more.

- Finally, there should be a morale check with the losing side rolling on their command value. Loosing that roll would mean surrender when facing human opposition (or at least opposition to whom one might conceivably surrender) or more crew loss for the defender and accumulated successes for the winning side when facing Xenos and the like. The crew won't go for a wholesale surrender against Orks, but might panic and loose ground.

So, in short:

- Determine effective boarding value and effective defense value

- Make an opposed Command/Tactica Imperialis roll

- Subtract losses for both attacker and defender

- Accumulate successes greater than the ships defense strength. If need be, continue to the next round

- Loosing side makes a Command check. On a failure the loosing sides retreat or surrenders/loses more ground and crew depending on the enemy.

- Repeat until one side retreats, surrenders, loses his whole fighting strength or finds itself driven back (negative number of accumulated successes) or overrun (more accumulated successes than its defense strength).

Quite a list to be honest, but still feasible. What I like about it, is the important role of the player characters while keeping it (very) hard to board a cruiser with a raider. In the whole attack, the players will decide on the way they attack and make that vital first roll, can influence the fight personally by adding to their sides accumulated successes and can in extremis save the day by their personal command skills. Furthermore, the need to accumulate successes should mean that the fight could sway back and forth, with the boarders winning some and then losing some but keeping that toehold on the ship.

A bit long I fear. And still open for a load of improvement and testing.

My way's a bit simpler: I use the RAW (Like I always try to) and add some detail. The RAW basically handles boarding actions as a series of opposed command rolls (RT pg. 215). That's fine from a "Big picture" perspective but feels lacking if the Explorers want to feel the viceral thrill of a close combat boarding action!

I took a lesson from Battlefleet Koronus and run boarding actions as a series of flashpoints that ultimately provide a bonus or penalty to the Command roll. Boarding actions tend to follow a clearly defined pattern so I have broken it down to three phases from which I develop flashpoint scenarios. they are as follows:

1.) Breaching : whether you subscribe to short range boarding pods (As per the BFG computer game) or magentic cables and boarding tubes, the participating explorer(s) and at least one squad (I use the formation rules from OW:EOI) set up and breach the enemy ship either at an airlock or directly on the hull.

2.) Advance: The Squad (And any attached explorers) advances through the hallways and non-critical spaces of the ship. Resistance and terrain will have differing effects as noted in the prior post with one exception: No Captain in his right mind would set fire to his own ship if he wanted to keep it intact!

3.) Critical objective: The Squad (And any attached explorers) assaults a critical objective (Bridge, engineering, etc.) This area will be guarded at least one member of the owning ship's "Command staff" and any "Bodyguard" units that individual may have. Explorers will be joined by an additional 1d5-2 friendly squads and the victor of this battle receives a +20 on the subsequent command check.

Each flashpoint follows a similar process: One explorer (Typically the Captain) is designated to make the command rolls for the battle. This character may NOT participate in flashpoint battles unless the battle is held during a "Critical objective" (See above) and the Objective is the space (Typically the bridge) that the explorer is stationed in.

Each scenario, Except the critical objective, provides a +10 to the victor's opposed Command roll which is rolled immediately after the flashpoint scenario.

Roll 1d5+2 This is the number of rounds the explorers have to complete the scenario by either killing or driving off any opposing forces. Failure to achieve victory in the alotted time is considered a loss and provides a +10 to the enemy's Command roll.

Explorer's who are critically wounded during a flashpoint scenario have their fates tied to the victory or loss of the scenario. In the case of an friendly victory, the wounded explorer is picked up by ship's crew moving up from behind. They are assumed to be stabilized and deposited in the ship's med bay. Skills such as Medicae can be used on them as necessary at that point. In the case of a loss however, the Explorer is assumed to have been captured by enemy forces and their fate depends on the nature of their captors!

Flashpoints progress according to their number. In the case of a victory, (As determined by the Command roll and subsequently passing a morale check for the loser) move from scenario #1 to #2 etc. in the case of a loss the track progresses backword. Note that it is entirely possible for explorers to find themselves defending against a counter boarding attempt on their own ship!

Combat continues in this manner until one side either surrenders or a ship's crew pop. value reaches zero. If any Explorer's were captured during the battle and the Explorer's subsequently captured the enemy vessel, they are obviously returned. (Although their wounds will not have been treated. Meaning potentially, fate points to stop bleeding, or other unfortunate consequences.)

Boarding Actions -- What Are They Like?

https://youtu.be/dbn-Ox1XawI?t=85

Boarding Actions -- What Are They Like?

https://youtu.be/dbn-Ox1XawI?t=85

Yup! pretty much!

Oh no. Nonononono. No. Most definitely not.

- First and foremost, this is warhammer. Weapons make no pewpewpews and leave clean bodies afterwards. Weapons use exploding bolts that rip open chests, fire searing beams of energy that burn horribly or shatter in thousands jagged spines of xeno shards. Boarding is gritty and deadly, cruel and merciless.

- Tactics: I mean, really. Just crawl to the side and stand there with puny pea shooters? A normal Imperial Crew would already have its heavy stubber ready, probably in a quickly reinforced position. And what are those attackers thinking. Don't they know that you start every opposed entry with a couple of hand grenades? With a quick follow up of serious firepower. Heavy flamers do wonders to clear out halls.

- Arms: Besides the personal weapons mentioned above, we have quite a bit more. Dreadnoughts for example. They have little going for them during a fight in the open. They are slower than tracked vehicles and mount less firepower. But in the bowels of a ship, ****, there they might be useful. And no door is to small if you have a powerfist.

- Uniforms: I rest my case. Should not even have to make this point.

*winks*

Cute!

I think I understand your point to be that 40k is a lot more hardcore than SW. Fair enough. I believe that particular clip did illustrate the general breach, advance, conquer theme I described above! (In this case the rebels failed their morale check on turn 2! ) Also remember that Star wars came out in 1977 and movie studios generally didn't understand everything that happens during a 'dynamic entry'. Believe it or not, at the time, lucas film was considered fairly dark since it depicted combat wounds, dismembered limbs etc. (The later movies are another matter! )

I actually talked to a Navy guy about this exact point. He was a member of an anti-terrorism detachment on his destroyer that basically spent three years searching suspected pirate vessels in various crappy locations around the globe. The fact that RT boarding actions take place in space make them even more dangerous because of decompression issues mentioned above, but here are a few of the things he pointed out to me:

1: A little bit of explosives goes a long way in an enclosed space. If the ship is large enough to take the blast, and boarders were sufficiently aggressive, it was considered standard practice to wire a half kilo of c-4 to a hatch and blast whoever was coming through it into a paste. The victim hatch was chosen carefully, but in some circumstances it was considered worth it to lose the equipment in a compartment. Considering the size of 40K ships, this can be considered a commonplace sort of trap. Erathia detailed the destructive capability of 50kg of promethium, but a grenade boquet is easier to set up and has the potential to shred enemies by the squad, especially considering there is little room to dodge.

2: The basic design of naval vessels, with the frequent hatches and small doorways can turn any rapid assault into a slow grind with the simple action of tack-welding a hatch shut, or a plate of steel over a bulkhead stanchion. Cover is easy to find, and easy to make, as most everything is metal and therefore, with a little prep time, easily fortifiable. Certain areas of the ship will be designed with the specific purpose of being choke points, and these choke points will be very easy to reinforce if a tech-priest decided to peel up some deck plating for barricades. Also, mostly metal construction leaves the option for ricochet shots. My friend mentioned that there are plates strategically placed on U.S. vessels so that a shotgun can be fired at them and the pellets will fragment and ricochet around a corner, spraying enemies with less lethal, but certainly still frightening and potentialy incapicitating fire.

3: Home field advantage is magnified greatly in a boarding action. Unless the enemy has detailed plans of the ship being boarded, it is easy for them to get lost or turned around, especially considering the size of 40K ships. It would not be difficult at all to trap, decompress, or otherwise push enemies into a specific chamber where they could be engaged by overwhelming force. Crew size, as mentioned above, is also critical, as boarding a grand cruiser with 130K crew would be unthinkable unless you had a great deal of specialized troops, such as a few regiments of IG from a hive world who can handle compartment-to-compartment fighting or a couple dozen space marines for brutally effective surgical strikes. When the entire crew, minus of course those needed to run critical systems, is fighting back, the reality of flanking or enveloping attacks becomes a frightening reality when one considers the 'tween decks and the modility advantage they offer. On a slightly related side note, boarders stumbling into a nest of several hundred helghast is just as effective at stopping their advance as a prepared defence. Same for daemons... having a haunted ship with a tenebro maze that is then warded by the radical inquisitor that built the ship to keep the haunting spirits in the maze, where they can screw with boarders is pure lolfun, especially when the ship also has compartmentalized shadowblind bays... hiding the barracks (no trade bonus, essentially barracks with a higher power and slightly higher space requirement) for easy counterattacks. That player used to let himself get boarded, just to deplete the enemy crew before he counterattacked. It happened so many times that the maze got haunted by real daemons and was completely impassable while the ship was in warp space. Wandering a little off topic, but it goes to show that you never know what you are going to find on the other side of the hatch.

4: There is no such thing as wasted space on a naval vessel. Every cubic inch is allocated to something. Defenders must choose their battles or risk crippling their ship. Attackers have to worry about this too, as plasma reactors and macro cannon shells are not good things to be shooting. It would be very easy for an attacker to decide to cut a hole through the wrong bulkhead and cut power to a good chunk of the ship, disabling the gravity plating and making the ship vulnerable to the forces of relative acceleration, which is capable of tearing the entire ship apart around attacker and defender alike.

5: There is more than one way to scuttle a ship. Depending on how torn up the ship is during the battle leading up to the boarding action, there could easily be huge structural damage, making it very easy for a local magazine detonation (or something relatively easy for the defender to achieve) to be the straw breaking the camel's back and setting off a terminal chain reaction. There are several ways to scuttle a U.S. navy vessel, even including marked spots on the hull where explosives can be placed to crack the hull open across several bulkheads, resulting in the ship sinking in less than fifteen minutes. This was a design feature, apparently.

6: Comms are always dead. The size and composition of a naval vessel can easily degrade wireless communications, especially considering 40K scale.

Boarding actions are not something to be taken lightly in my games, often turning into entire sessions in and of themselves as players move from flash point to flash point, responding to the defenders actions while trying to push the attack. My players have played a lot of rts games such as the total war and dawn of war series, and our games of RT are more like Only War with self-defined objectives and ownership of any starship they can justify taking, with a little bit of DH investigative-style politicking and manipulating with covert overtones. Rules are taken from the three games and aggregated and homebrewed into something similar to DH 2nd ed, resulting in something where it is not unthinkable to plant a covert operative onboard a potential victim to rally the helghast into an uprising when the RT ambushes them six months later in deep space while the navigator is contemplating their next jump. Reasonably detailed deck plans are necessary as my players demand to be able to move units about the ship to peruse their goals, usually splitting up and taking command of house troops (if available) or ratings to take out specific systems. Models represent units that my players move around similar to space hulk, and as gm I have models representing units of defenders. Rather than roll a few times to determine the action, my players will roll tactica imp. at various points to decide how many 'action points' they get to use in the strategic turn to do things with their unit, eg. move forward x units as a nav. imp. warship check, dig in at the junction as a tac. imp and tech use check, engage enemy as bs or ws check, etc. Depending on wether or not comms are established, various players must act independently to achieve predetermined goals. Every strategic turn sees reinforcements for any group capable of fielding them, which is the only advantage I usually have as the opposition to my players' high-octane combat troops. Only a few times have I gotten to defend a boarding action with a ship that was truly prepared for it (my fav was the one with the t. maze disguised as vaulted ceilings) and those actions were truly brutal crew liquidations on both sides. As a defender, even managing to fire a single macro-cannon or lance shot from point-blank range can be devastating to the attacker as there is virtually zero chance of the shot missing, and the ability for the hull to withstand a magazine detonation meant that when boarders got too dense I blew the guts of the ship out (munitorium detonation in a grand cruiser) to remove the couple regiments of house troops working their way toward the bridge and had no fear of actually crippling 'my' vessel. Depending on how narrative your group likes to be, there are infinite opportunities to let the characters shine in combat, if the players accept a slower play style during boarding actions.