The Cortax

"A rough alliance of roving alien mercenaries for hire, the soldiers of the Cortax are available to the highest bidder, sometimes changing sides once or twice over the course of a conflict or even a single battle. Yet, for all their seeming fickleness, the Cortax are a highly sought after force within the Calixis Sector, for they provide an easily deniable, cheap source of soldiers, with little in the way of morals or qualms about their victims…"

- The Radical's Handbook , p.135

So, my Deathwatch campaign is set in the Calixis Sector, and I'm gearing up to have the Killteam run into the Cortax. I'm assuming from the description (and the few lines above are about all the info I have to go by) that they are an army of mixed xeno-types; I'm picturing them as mainly being made up of exiled Orks, Kroot, and Enoulians (from the Dark Heresy supplement Creatures Anathema ), with a smattering of Loxatl (from Mark of the Xenos ), Sslyth (from the Rogue Trader supplement Koronus Bestiary ), Hrud (my homebrew stats are here ), Scythians (another Calixis-specific species mentioned in Radical's Handbook that I'm creating details for).

The bulk of the army will be fielded as Hordes; my question is, should I make each Horde homogenous (i.e. consisting of a single xenotype), or should I create mixed Hordes, with averaged stats (both personal and weapon)? The downside, as I see it, as that the xenos will lose some of their destinct character this way; the upside, though, is that this could lead to some uncertainty on the part of the PCs: they may know how Orks or Kroot fight, but not how a joint Ork/Kroot/whatever else unit fights. Also, the Cortax army will include some individual character types (a cunning Sslyth commanding officer, a stealthy Dark Eldar assassin, etc.), plus a few single-species units (Ork Nob bodyguards for the commander, a Hrud sniper ambush, Loxatl rough terrain patrol, etc.), so not every unit will be mixed- plenty of individaul character there.

Thoughts…?

A Horde gets to make one Melee Attack action against each enemy within melee range, and it gets to make one Ranged Attack action plus one additional attack action for every 10 points of magnitude. If the unit contains a mix of weapons, then I don't see any problem with resolving each attack with a distinct set of weapons. However, bear in mind that the Horde damage bonuses improve due to the size of the Horde. It seems unreasonable to add +3d10 damage to a single plasmagun attack that represents the Horde's single plasmagun specialist!

It may perhaps be better to treat specialists as individual characters in the Horde. As a rule of thumb, these character's move along with the mass of the Horde but take their own actions. They can be singled out from the Horde with a Called Shot. Apply an additioal penalty to the attack roll requal to the attack roll bonus for the Horde's size: The bigger the Horde, the harder it is to single out one individual.

-K

kjakan said:

Right, that's absolutely true for specialists/ heavy weapons within a Horde; what I'm asking about are mixed types of 'grunts' within a Horde. Do you think it will 'read' more interesting to players to face five Hordes of mixed xenotypes, or should I just go with one Horde of Orks, one Horde of Kroot, one Horde of Enoulians, one Horde of Loxalt, and one Horde of Scythians? In the former case I plan on averaging their personal and weapon stats (or, since the description of the Cortax in The Radical's Handbook says that they take payment in weapons, I might just have them all armed with Imperial weapons…); do you think that will be an interesting challenge for my players- not knowing how a mixed Horde will perform until the shooting starts- or should I keep all of the xenos seperate, and have the challenge be deciding which order to attack which Horde? If I go with mixed Hordes, I'll probably add a varient of the Animosity rules from Warhammer Fantasy, to represent infighting amongst the different races, with the possibility of them losing Actions and/or Magnitude.

Honestly I'd go with single units of one creature. On the table top most units are fielded as one 'race' type, so this may be a more familiar set up for your players (think Tau Empire, you don't find Kroot mixing in with Tau firewarriors for example). Most races, even in a combined army would probably operate the same way, with each one playing to its races strengths (unless you want to represent them as a disorganised mob, in which case the Pale Horde may be a better villain for you…), prefered methods of fighting, and also bridging the inevitable language barrier such troops are likely to have - remember, 40k doesnt have a language equivilent of Traveler's 'basic' that most races know.

For example Hrud would make a good 'pathfinder' type unit, whilst the Orks are the shock troops etc etc.

If you are insistent of running them as a mob unit, or you just want to have the come across a mixed group then I would take a leaf out of table tops book again and use the majority toughness for the creatures in the unit, unless the kill team specify they are targetting a specific type of creature (which requires a lot of book keeping on your part. How many creatures of each type are in the unit? What are they armed with? What is each ones role in this mixed squad) based on whats left. Unfortunately having a 'mean' stat line for the horde based on the sum of its creatures seems too abstract not to break the suspension of disbelief in the game (one gretchin in a unit would drag the entire teams average down for instance, unless you do it per creature/magnitude point, but again EFFORT!)

The hordes mechanic is meant to alieviate this kind of book keeping to allow for faster combat against multiple low ranking opponents. Creating a horde where you have to keep track of each member just seems to be doing it backwards.

Adeptus-B said:

The latter certaily gives a better impression of a mixed Horde. Averaging out the characteristics of the Horde troopers and their weapons seems a bit bland, but should work. An alternative is to keep all the characteristics distinct, and instead make a quasi-random table to determine what type of alien menace is performing the action, e.g.:

• Ork
• Scythians
• Kroot
• Ennoulian
• Kroot
• Ennoulian
• Ork
• Scythian
• Scythian
• Kroot
• Ork
• Ennoulian

Each time you need the Horde characteristics, such as when it takes a hit or takes an action, start by picking one alien at random and use it's characteristics. For the next instances pick the next aliens on the list. At the end of the list, loop back to the beginning. For example, when the Battle-Brother's are attacked in close combat the first may get attacked by an Ennoulian, the next by an Ork and the last by a Scythian.

-K