Hi Everyone,

I am coming to a point in my DH campaign where the acolytes are investigating phenomena on a frontier world/warzone. The planet is a homebrew creation in the Adraanti nebula, and to suit the tastes of my group this planet plays on some of the more steampunk elements of the setting. Anyway, the climax of the adventure will be during a large gettysburg style battle, fought between two ideologically different but not heretical factions. The choice is there for the party to just go about their business amongst the shrapnel but as they have made friends and allies in the nearby township, I imagine they will want to get stuck in during the battle.

My question is whether you could think of ways in which I can mess with the horde rules to create a convincing battle between two armies? Will it work?

I was thinking of having large units representing individual hordes, depicted simply as small cards with the details on them of what strength that horde is. As the horde gets depleted you can easily draw on the card any changes in the numbers, disposition, etc. Talk about ultra low tech 40k!

You can either gloss it over more or do it that way.

The characters might feel really disconnected with the battle though that way if they have no control over either side. You could potentially get them to help/command one or more of the hordes, so they actually have a stake/decision in the battle more.

Just to ask the obvious, but have you considered just gaming it out with the Epic wargame rules? Otherwise my suggestion would be to pick up some other mass combat rules, but they RPG or wargame, and go for a little bit of conversion.

Beyond that, as Suijin implies, don't bother with "gaming it out." Have your horde-units with their differing strengths etc. but work with a system of Turning Points that are influenced by the significant characters (which one presumes the MArnies, or the PCs anyway, are). Codex Astartes rolls, tactics and strategies rolls, communications rolls, artillery or ortillery, air defence, etc. All can be used to create a convincing battle.

For example, a strength/magnitude x vs. y horde-unit where x>y is going to generally win assuming all other equal factors. If x>>y then they're going to win faster unless there is an exceptional window of opportunity or turning point that is exploited. Perhaps they call for reinforcements (roll) and must be successfully reinforced by horde-unit alpha led by the Ultramarine Assault MArnie? The Apothecary successful rallies combat ineffective troops on the right flank to lay down suppressive fire (Medicae + Intelligence roll?).

It can be as planned or as fluid as you want, but if you wanted to map it out then a couple of opposing flow charts engaged by Turning Points might make it quite fun especially if the PCs are involved with the initial planning...

Just a thought.

Kage

Using Final Sanction as an example, Hordes can simply cancel each other out, maybe, using Kage's suggestion, of allowing the PCs to make Tactics or other rolls that basically turn the tide.

Ex. Two Mag 40 hordes attack each other. The PCs setup some strategy and passed their skill checks. The PC's group beats the other, wiping the enemy out while being reduced 25-50% themselves.

Later on, two different Mag 40 hordes are facing each other. One is lead by a PC. He charges and attempts to kill the enemy leader in single combat as a morale booster, but rolls poorly and fails for a few rounds. Eventually the PC side is broken and both hordes are wiped out.

With a really bad check or strategy, the PC side might be wiped out, leaving the enemies with some remaining troops.

All solid advice. If you want to develop the idea of an integrated approach to Hordes, I would reiterate that there are some mass combat systems out there that can really make this type of "gaming it out" to be so far in advance of the wargame and the Horde rules that it might be worth exploring. Of course, that also requires a bit more work up front (which I would love to see if you were willing), but I can understand the desire to keep things simple.

Kage

To me it seems that all it takes to determine how often a horde hits another horde. Which should be way more often than hitting a lone individual.

In ranged combat a horde might hit another horde D5 times, for example. Melee should be more deadly, so maybe 3 attacks against each other, each D10 if it hits and manages to score at least one wound?

What more would be needed?

Alex

ak-73 said:

For improved scaling by Horde size:

"Every hit dealt by a Horde reduces the target Horde's Magnitude by a value equal to 1/10th of the attacking Horde's Magnitude score, rounding down. For example, a Magnitude 30 Horde of Cultists attacking a Magnitude 40 Horde of PDF Troopers would reduce the PDF's Magnitude by 3 with every hit."

Of course, this would then be affected by things like multiple hits for Degrees of Success in melee or automatic weapons, or multiplied by the Blast value of weapons with that quality, and would mount up quite quickly.

I'm guessing more structure, but what do I know.

It always comes back to why you need a rules system in the first place.

Kage

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I wanted ranged combat damage to be low because in the end such a firefight should last many rounds. And the PCs should be able to inflict more damage than most hordes. Lastly, I figured having a dice roll for magnitude damage would be nice.

But then again the above was just an off-the-cuff suggestion by me. Giving it more thought might lead to different and superior suggestions than mine.

Alex

Thanks for the replies, I took on board some of the advice which was helpful.

It turned out slightly different than I expected... When does it not? But in general it worked really well. Originally, I had planned this as a Seven Samurai style encounter where the rather combat oriented Acolytes would try to help organise a rag tag bunch of settlers and colonists into a credible defense force. We had used this particular world as a setting for the majority of our campaign and the PCs had a lot invested in this one particular township known as Purdy's Town. I had left this episode open ended, but I had hoped that the Acolytes would get hooked into helping the settlers for the sake of it rather than as "just another job from the boss". It turned out that I was right and they set about organising defenses and exploring some excellent roleplaying opportunities locating and training fighters aswell as getting hold of decent gear. My favourite bit was them discovering that the nearby priory was full of IG veterans, all of which were slowly regaining theIr humanity through prayer and working the soil! Cue lots of persuading to get them to dig up their service rifles in the name of the Emperor!

Anyway, after a session they had proudly put together a reasonable army ( or set of hordes), give or take some victories and a few failures on the recruitment front. They had also managed to get some intelligence on the enemy (mercs, hired by the the agriculture combine). Next session we ran the battle...

What I will say is that it was fun... The players ran most of the hordes with me running about a third of the battle narratively. I did this to reflect how much control I felt they should have thanks to the earlier roleplaying but it played into my hands in the end, as I was able to keep them in the dark as to how this separate battlefront was faring due to the "fog of war". We had simple bits of card representing each horde with the details and stats of each horde on it, plus bonus bits of kit thanks to earlier horse trading. I told them that this was their battlefield view supplied by some heavily modified cherubim, thanks to the techpriest, which in the end accounted for their tactical advantages.

They won the battle, but at a huge cost in life, and now the township is severely damaged and under manned. In the end, I think the horde v. horde mechanic meant that it was always going to end in a bloodbath, which suits the setting I suppose. Narratively, it's the result I wanted as the players are really feeling the loss! More so than if I just hammered home the grimdark all of the time. The players really feel responsible for the bloodshed, although I thought they did really well in the circumstances. Now, people in Purdy's township are starting to point the finger of blame... I wonder what they will do...

Kage2020 said:

I would be interested by which systems you mean for future interest- this went well as a change in pace and might be a trick I pull out of the bag in the future. But yes, you're right, in the end I decided to keep it very simple. From a wargaming perspective, this was an extremely unfair fight, I might add. The players barely know the rules for Deathwatch so once they had built their army they had little idea of the relative strengths of their hordes. Actually, this added a layer of suspense and anticipation as the first hordes clashed. In the end, story won over game, if you know what I mean.

Bad Birch said:

As it always should, or at least IMHO. As to alternate systems, a number of options present themselves, be they from the Traveller system, the Pendragon system, or GURPS . Given that it's 40k, I would tend to lean towards Pendragon, but the "Horde" premise seems to break down and work with GURPS Mass Combat with more elegance, as well as adding more narrative options for the type of conflict that you describe.

On the other hand they're all crunchy to varying degrees. Even GURPS Mass Combat , while simple, is a bit too crunchy for my preferences (narratively-paced "Turning Point"-based conflict descriptions), but... Well, it might be up someone's alley depending on your objectives.

And if you're looking through Pendragon , you might want to take a glance at the lineage aspects of the game to create some more fun vis-a-vis the progenoids while you're at it.

Kage