Which of these concepts do you prefer while playing out mass combats and why?

Although Units are less abstract (and more logical), I am still tending towards the Hordes concept because they can fight individuals, as opposed to Units. What about you?

I prefer Units, Hordes are too abstracts.

I haven't really tried Units, but I love Hordes. The fact that their sheer mass of numbers prevents characters from Dodging and Parrying means there is finally something for them to fear, even with their heavy bolters and Biolightning

I haven't used Units yet. My problem with the Horde rules is that it deals overwhelming damage to a single figure, rather than spreading the damage around- necessary to overcome a Space Marine's massive damage soak, but pretty unrealistic and frequently insta-kill in DH ...

Sebashaw said:

I agree, but how do you handle the fact that Units cannot fight individuals?

Eureka!

I think these two concepts are applied in the following situations:

1) Units are used when a lot of NPCs need to fight each other (excluding individuals).

2) Hordes are used when an individual is opposed to a lot of NPCs.

The question is: how do I convert hitpoints/toughness/sheer numbers into the Horde Magnitude?

Adeptus-B said:

You say that like it's a bad thing...

Joking aside, a Horde does not have to apply all it's ranged attacks at one target. And it has to be a pretty big horde armed with some big bloody guns shooting at a rather wimpy target in order to insta-kill, no?

egalor said:

Basically I would say a 50 strong Imperial Guard platoon would be about Magnitude 30

FFG do seem to take a slightly different view from mine, a more "heroic" or "epic" one as far as Space Marines are concerned. They statted an Imperial Guard Company (300 men at last official write up) as being Magnitude 50 (or was it even 30?).

It was 50.

But FFG's stance on hoards seems to include, how moralized and determined to win the hoard is. Meaning "hits" on the hoard don't always hit someone, maybe it just made the trooper decide to duck or something. 50 Mag, is still way too low for 300 guardsmen. 120 feels good to me, but I don't have an actual rule to convert numbers to mag.

That said Units work well if the PC's are leading some sort of battle, or large numbers of NPC's need to fight each other with rules, or a REALLY large scale battle happens. Hoards don't support aircraft or vehicles.

Hoards for everything else.

borithan said:

Where'd you see a company as being 300 men? 3 squads plus 1 command squad = 35, yes? Or am I misremembering?

DFK said "Where'd you see a company as being 300 men? 3 squads plus 1 command squad = 35, yes? Or am I misremembering?"

A platoon = 1 command squad + 2-6 squads + optionally 0-2 special squads (6 man teams with heavy or special weapons)

A company = 1 command squad + 2-6 platoons + optionally more special squads.

Rites of Battle lists an infantry company as 200-300 or so men at magnitude 50.

I believe the intro adventure in the DW book has a platoon at 20, but I could be misremembering that one.

I think Units and Hordes (as problematic as the latter may be) are both necessary for the reason egalor has pointed out, so the only question for me is how to convert them. Fortunately, that one does seem pretty obvious: Power = Damage, Strength = Magnitude, Morale = appropriate Horde Feats when above/below a certain threshold.

I just don't think the two systems were actually meant to work together, so there will probably be no perfect formula for conversion and everyone will be required to guess the most appropriate value. Not that this should be hard to do, though.

I'm currently toying around with a conversion of the "Fields of Blood" realm management rules - if everything works out it'll end with ruleset that incorporates Units and Hordes that use a combined creation process with compatible stats... If only amazon would send me BFK already so I can take a look at the full rules - apparently that book sold out faster than letters of absolution during the holy days of Saint Drusus.

DFK! said:

Now, this could easily have just been "how the codex does it" rather than a description of what they do in the background (especially as the 2nd edition codex suggested the traditional 3 squads to a platoon and 3 platoons to a company), and it is certainly how I regard the current codex's very strange mega platoons, but in the background section they had a display of a Cadian Regiment (the 8th?) on full parade. Each of the companies was in fact built on 6 platoons of 55 guys each. Now, regiments vary, but I would take the Cadians to be the model of how Guard regiments should be organised.

I have only experience with Horde rules, but I have successfully used them in my (high rank) DH campaign.

Their initial purpose seems to be:

A) Allow multitudes of weaker creatures to pose a threat against very tough individuals

B) Allow those same tough individuals to wade through scores of lesser enemies in a minimum of time and effort.

For this purpose, at as abstract level as possible it works fairly well. Space Marines are attacked by 60 Magnitude of Tyranids, whom they can defeat with bolter fire, while only 10-20 actual hormogaunts acting as individuals takes al ot longer time to deal with, even if each one is very unlikely to hurt a space marine at all. Now if 60 Mag of Hormogaunts are supposed to represent maybe 100 or more of the creatures (a creature that is also immune to Fear and fight basically to the bitter end), how can just 4 Space Marines firing just 30-50 rounds of bolter fire kill so many in just a single turn?

It becomes even more extreme when Blast and Flame weapons are used - which even normal people can use to great effect. Also, while this could be a good representation of a mob or even a tightly packed alien swarm, modern soldiers don't fight like that. Heck, even 18th century musketeers did not fight like that, as it would be too easy target against cannon fire.

Another issue is the underwhelming amount of damage needed to inflict a "hit" - a single point. Works ok for Space Marines who generally deal 16+ damage with penetration to boot, but normal autoguns can do the job almost equally well, at least against less armored foes. A bunch of cultists with TB 3 and robes will be automatically damaged by such a gun, even without manstoppers.

A possible solution is to use the DH mob rules for non-Space Marine characters: Damage twice= 1 hit, or 10 or more damage equals kill. I actually think that's a bit harsh so maybe reduce the damage needed to 5 - which is essentially an average hit with autogun/lasgun (assuming TB 3 for enemies). An acolyte with a Heavy (human) Bolter will still be very effective against a Horde, but there will be a small chance of ONLY wounding on a hit.

So in my experience the best solution to make these rules a bit less insane is to:

1. Reduce the number of creatures 1 Magnitude represents. For soldiers, 1 Mag should not be less than 1 soldier unless they are extremely tight.-packed.

2. Use more Hordes. Instead of 1 120 Magnitude Horde Representing 2 Platoons of Imperial Guard, divide them up on 30 Magnitude units or even less. Seperate them over a larger area so area weapons are a tad less effective (but still works well against a single Horde).

3. Hordes attacking other hordes don't do extra damage, but deal extra hits equal to Magnitude/10, and gets 1 more for every 2 DoS. A large number of people shooting at another huge number of people should be able to hit at kill more people.

These rules could probably be worked alot more on and tested, but these are my initial ideas. Of course I have yet to use the horde vs horde rule but it can crop up if acolytes or SM have allied Hordes.

With allies, you could possible simulate a cell of acolytes fighting with a platoon of Imperial Guardsman against a threat without bogging down the combat too much or risking the acolytes being one-shotted right away from concentrated fire. The goal in this case would be to take down the enemy Horde's fast so your own survives... should your side withdraw or be defeated the remaining acolytes would be in deep do.

What I DO like about Hordes though is that they increase the danger posed against individuals that are otherwise tough enough to face multiple enemies. A guardsman with TB 4 and Guardflak armor will not be seriously threatened by 4-5 men firing at him with lasguns, but if faced with an actual Horde (think the Bolivian army effect) he needs to be lucky to make it unscathed.

The reason for this is the abstract nature of armor in this game (an open face helmet protecting all of it), and the less-lethal nature of combat where the heroes have both TB to ignore damage altogether as well as Wounds as a buffer before they can even get seriously damaged. While this works well in general for GMs that don't want their players to burn FPs every session, it is less fitting when the acolytes are faced with overwhelming numbers and can laugh it off an escape almost automatically. This is even worse when primitive weapons come into play, but that's a whole other can of worms.

That's it for now, thanks for bringing up this discussion. I wish I knew more about the Troops mechanics from RT, sounds interesting.

I really like these three proposed points! That should work nicely - though I wouldn't change the amount of damage required to inflict a hit: Magnitude levels don't have hitpoints, and if you dismiss everything below, say, 10 damage, it might take way too long to wear a Horde down.

In a way, Magnitude could probably better be described as the "wound levels" of a Horde unit and its individual members: 30 magnitude can be 30 hive gangers with 1 "wound" each just as much as it can be 10 Arbites with 3 "wounds", making the individual NPC last longer without changing the duration of the firefight. Thus the Magnitude term is probably a bit misleading, though that is likely a result of these rules being intended to be used more with cannonfodder waves than smaller but tougher groups of enemies. That said, whilst I'm still somewhat sceptical of the Horde rules' ability to represent groups of stronger troops, I've now (thanks to some past discussions on these forums) grown to like the concept either way, or am at least curious enough to toy around with them...

borithan said:

Perhaps I'm alone in this, but I always kind of assumed that Magnitude scaled non-linearly with number - I generally figured that a M60 Horde was more than twice as big as an M30 Horde.

BTW

Chastity said:

Yes this was my assumption as well, but when you think of it it becomes very illogical. It means the sum of the whole is much less than the part. It means that it takes only twice as long to kill 1000 hormogaunts as it takes to kill 100... that doesn't make sense. OK extreme example but it still stands. As it is, a full auto burst from an autogun can cause 10 hits, meaning 10 Magnitude. Against a Magnitude 30 horde composed of 50 that's 16-17 casualties (dead or rendered unable to fight). Against a Magnitude 100 Horde representing say 500 (which is probably alot more).. suddenly those 10 bullets killed 50 enemies.

And even IF bullets can penetrate and kill several people, there is just a limit how many people or worse, Hormogaunts it can kill. It just doesn't make sense. Also, if you use Hordes against DH characters you don't need as many enemies to make it seem epic - 100 enemies is enough against humans, even exceptional ones.

BTW did I mention I think Laspistols in general, and especially compact ones are underpowered? And these weapons are according to official modules the weapon of choice for rich nobles! Sure they are discreet and everything but since it is unlikely to injure a naked child much it seems completely useless as a personal defense weapon. Even with Hot-Shot they are not that impressive.

@ Lynata: The idea of the required damage is for an actual kill/incapacitating. Doing less than 5 damage doesn't mean it bounced off, it basically means you did 0.5 Magnitude damage. Thus iif you can't consistently deal 5 damage to an individual creature in the Horde it means it takes twice as long. However, if you are seriously unable to do this against a single creature, how are you supposed to be able to gun down droves of them?

For example, if you are armed with a Compact Laspistol (1d10+1) and you are fighting IG in Guard Flak, you will probably be unable to take down 1 Magnitude per round. Indeed most shots will not even penetrate their armor and TB, which also makes sense and is why you should not try to take on a platoon of IG, armed with nothing but a Compact Laspistols.

So, is there anyone who can give us an idea of what horde rules we can expect to see in DW: Mark of Xenos?

Friend of the Dork said:

Ah, now I get it - for some reason I thought your idea would result just in ignoring anything below that threshold...

Well, that is certainly an option to increase the difference in efficiency between various weapon types and even characters. It still feels a bit redundant in the face of armour and toughness already affecting this - but I would actually like this very much as an optional Horde feat! After all this could make opponents feel more unique, too. Perhaps the required damage could be some sort of abstracted "Tactics" bonus that the Horde gains from using cover etc.

@Alox: Do you think they would be revisited there ? I would more expect to see a revised version of Horde rules in the upcoming "Only War" DH supplement...

Lynata said:

I have read the following:

Presenting new rules and guidelines, the final chapter details how to utilise adversaries in a Deathwatch campaign, including the proper use of Hordes which will allow a GM to turn any kind of foe into a mob or combat formation of even thousands of individuals, Horde tactics, the rules for scaling up to even larger conflicts, and more.

Taken from this page: fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp

Oh, I see! Missed that so far.

Thanks for the heads-up - I'm curious to hear about the changes!

ok, a simple question.

Can Hordes and Units fight each other?

egalor said:

Nope - you would have to convert one into the other, using much guesswork due to both systems abstracting their respective fighters in different ways. Maaaaybe that "Mark of Xenos" book will try to bring both systems together (see Alox's quote), but I won't hold my breath just yet.

Lynata said:

Yeah I wouldn't hold my breath either.