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…?