During regiment creation, would it have been better to select a regiment type and your company type seperately?

So you get general training that is standard across the whole regiment, this would give you your skills and talents.

Then you choose the company (which could actually be some sort of support detachment rather than a full company) which gives you your additional gear and maybe a pertinant skill.

The point for this would be two fold. Firstly it being further level of customisation, so as an armoured company you could be part of a siege regiment or armoured regiment and each would give a different focus.

Secondly you could allow units from 2 different companies to be mixed in the squad, so a for a recon regiment most would be from a light infantry company while 1 was from a sentinal detachment. That's how your standard recon squad as defined would go but they could equally all be light infantry or sentinals.

Obviously it changes the set up a lot and it's not as simple as attaching it now. For example you might need to split doctrines between company and regiment level to account for a different cost of companies.

The regiments themselves might not actually cost anything and just be balanced between themselves and there might be an overall increase in the starting skills.

According to the fluff of the Imperial Guard, your regimental type is your company type. Every company in the regiment is the same. For example, in an infantry regiment, you will only have infantry companies. No armour, no mech, no recon, no nothing. Just infantry. Every other thing that shows up next to the infantry will come from another regiment. No exceptions.

The only thing I can imagine is small specialist units, but even they would be lokced into the same category (so an ifnantry regiment won't have an armoured unit, no matter how small it is). So no, I think the current, rigid regimental structure is actually pretty fluffy.

That's not how I had seen it, on whole regimental basis at least. 'Company' wasn't exactly the best word to really as they are often not full companies.

There's aren't many full descriptions of a regiment, I wish I could show you the Order of Battle for the Vaust Campaign of 19 Mordian Armoured regiment from Imperial Armour 1.

As it is you can follow this link.

http://htmlimg3.scribdassets.com/1kcncbon4vts5n/images/4-ff5e8ba59b.jpg

So how I see it working,

If we assume the the 19th Mordian is basically the same as the the Mordian armoured in the book then this makes sense.

Firstly in choosing an armoured regiment some players must be from apriopriate regiment type before a single second detachment.

For an armoured regiment between the players and their comrades they must form a full crew for at least one Leman Russ (4 or 6 men, they get one Leman Russ for every 4 or 6 pc's and comrades) before the secondary detachment is selected. Players must be in the same detachment as their comrade.

Beyond the primary company players can choose a secondary detachment based on the regiments order of battle, for the Mordian 19th these would be (that are kind of covered already) are:

Mechanised Infantry

Artillery

Anti Air

Recon (sentinal or Salamander)

Currently you would just treat them as selecting the same homeworld, commander, training doctrines with different regiment types and equipment doctrines (although it would be preferable to spilt them into Regimental and Company doctrines) and additional equipment for the squad is shared but one detachment may have some additional equipment from having extra points.

So with a 4 player group they could either (assuming they run specialisations with comrades) have two Leman Russ, 1 Leman Russ and 4 Sentinals, 1 leman Russ 1 sentinal and 3 on Recon infantry (in a salamander), 1 Leman Russ and 4 man Mechanised Infantry squad, the combinations are huge and that's just for this regiment.

I'm just thinking of ways of integrating infantry and vehicles in less restrictive manner.

I slightly missed your point, sorry .

According to the Imperial Guard codex:

"An Imperial Guard regiment is largely uniform in its composition. Ifnantry regiments, for example, are unlikely to contain much or any heavy artillery, whilst tank regiments contain little or no infantry. Success requires Imperial Guard regiments to work together. Whilst this interdependence may at first seem like an inehrent weakness, it is necessary precaution."

"Support units, such as heavy weapons platoons and much valued specailist units, such as battle tanks, artillery and abhuman squads, may be attached to a company for a single battle or entire duration of a campaign. These are rarely permanent additions and are attached as needed by the regimental commanders. It is a common practice, especially amongst armoured and artilelry regiments, to break down several companies and second them to infantry forces, in exchange for platoons to provide close supprot from the attentions of enemy troops."

So as I see it: regiments are unifromized, but companies could be "borrowed" by other regiments. Companies can mix and match then, but they still remain the company of their original regiment with their own command structure and all. So while I guess a "hybrid" unit is possible, the parts of these units will report to different officers and generally, they will do their own thing. What won't do well for the integrity of the Squad…

Basically from a narrative (or even tabletop wargaming) point of view, you can mix your troop types together because you are looking at a military campaign from a macro level. You might have a single leman russ supporting your 100 guardsmen, or a mechanised company that also has artillery support, but at this scale its fine to mix and match.

However this is an RP about squad level combat and so everyone is going to be from the same company of the same regiment. Yes technically your attached specialists aren't literally from the same homeplanet etc but theyve recieved the same training and been through the same ordeals as everyone else and so effectively use the same stats. At this scale you have other squad/platoon/company/regiments fighting in the same warzone as the players but they are background NPCs - ther to provide narrative and mechanical support to the players.

Also remember that there's a difference between a Regiment at the time of its founding, and the state it'll end up in. Rare exceptions (such as the Vostroyans) aside, a Regiment will not recieve reinforcements from the homeworld directly - instead, under-strength Regiments may be folded into one another, keeping the collective identity of the largest of them. After a couple of decades, mixed Regiments incorporating a variety of troop types (possibly even from multiple homeworlds) will exist in a long-standing warzone, simply due to natural attrition.

So, the Cadian 104th Infantry, a decade or so after it was originally raised upon the founding fields outside Kasr Tyrok, may consist of several companies of infantry, two companies of armour, a few mechanised infantry platoons, a scattering of recon elements (Sentinels and Salamanders)… which were at one point perhaps as many as a dozen distinct Regiments.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I think in the case of combined regiments, one will inevitably cannibalize the other. For example, in the IG codex, there is a story where Catachans were combined with Elysians and the jungle fighters had to adapt to the Elysian way of fighting because the DM gave them Valkyres.

According to the codex, combined arms regiments are strictly forbidden to prevent an effective rebellion. So I don't think that this can be violated by such an ordinary thing like simply combining regiments. That wouldn't make much sense, even by WH40k standards.

I think this is where fluff meets sales projections…..

In the original fluff, space marines lacked their own naval ships so they would always need the support of the Imperial Navy and regiments were single type organizations so they would need other regiments to form an all-arms battle group. All this in reaction to the Horus heresy when space marines and the Imperial Army could move & fight in independent units. With the new organization, units could no longer move or fight independently, reducing the chance of a major heresy.

Then the sales boys at GW realized this undermined sales of additional stuff like vehicles and ships so this was retconned. Now space marines buzz around in their own void ships and regiments are actually all-arms battle groups.

The Imperial Armour campaign books offer order-of-battles of regiments. For example, a Tallern Infantry Regiment from one of the IA books:

Regimental Command:

• Headquarters Staff
• Medical Company
• Signals Company
• Recon Squadron
• Attached Commissars, Priests and Tech-Priests

I Brigade:

• 1 mechanized Infantry Company + 8 Infantry Companies

II Brigade:

• 9 Infantry Companies

III Brigade:

• 8 Infantry Companies + 1 Training & Replacement Company

IV Brigade:

• 3 Medium Artillery Companies
• 1 Heavy Artillery Company
• 1 Heavy Mortar Company
• 2 Anti-Aircraft Companies

Non-Brigaded regimental assets:

• 3 Rough Rider Companies (Animal mounted cavalry)
• 3 Sentinel Companies (Light walkers)
• 3 Armoured Companies (Leman Russ battle tanks)
• 31 Munitorium Supply Columns

So you could play practically any type of 'company' in any type or regiment. Even heavy armour in a nominally drop regiment (Hermann Goring Parachute Panzer Division anyone?).

You seem to have a better memory than me Ranoncles. All of the example organisation charts I've ever seen had support detachments of different types and that goes waaaay further back than I'd care to imagine. I can't imagine that ever thought entirely infantry armies would be atractive to collectors.

The difference recently is that Forgeworld has actually started describing entire regiements in detail which I don't think they have ever done before.

I think N0-1_H3r3 made a good point. They may specifically have be entirely one company type when they are shipped off their homeworld but given support from other regiments as soon as they are deployed in the warzone.

And I'm happy enough for these support units to be considered part of the regiment for all intents and purposes, it helps the game in a lot of ways, even if to the Dep Munitorium consider them combinded temporarily (i.e. untill everybodie but the Regimental comander and their dog is dead).

It's only that there is already units that seem to be combinations of units already that I brough it up as a way of making it more flexible and more effective for the everyone in unit.