Black Cohort

A friend of mine has published a 6-8mm ruleset that covers "modern" combat, called Battle Captains. https://www.wargamevault.com/product/510777/Battle-Captains It has official supplements so far for WW2 Western Front, Yom Kippur War and a post 2020 NATO vs Russia alt-history. The game is designed around having a core company, that depending on a bunch of factors (mainly the value of the two core companies and scenario) you bolt on additional forces either fully formed platoons or individual units) along with artillery and air support. The standard unit of the game is either a squad or a vehicle (basically most units in 30k/40k games would be 1 stand in Battle Captains); these are then grouped together into platoons. The rules can probably accommodate up to a warhound Titan as the largest unit. Mechanically the game works with alternating activations, with each activation usually impacting one platoon. Each side has a pool of dice of different colours, white for command actions, black for platoon actions, grey for moving multiple platoons, yellow for morale, blue for reactions, green for shooting. As the game goes on and bad things happen (platoons fail morale checks, not holding objectives, losing commanders or entire platoons), red dice get added to your pool; red dice are bad, and generally do nothing but take up space in your hand. At any point in time you have a hand of 5 dice to chose from for your next activation. In addition to the standard actions that everyone can do, every faction has a handful of unique options that help reinforce the feel of how various armies fight. I intend to design an unofficial supplement for it for the Horus Heresy (my friend gave me access to the calculations he uses to determine points values). A lot of the work is done, but I haven't painted enough LI stuff to play so finishing the supplement hasn't been a priority. In Horus Heresy, terms the basic core company for a space marine Legion would be a fairly standard demi-company (as shown in Betrayal) with 3 platoons that are each a command squad, 2 tactical squads and a support squad. Though Battle Captains is designed so that a faction generally has more than one core company, so other options could be various veteran, recon, assault, fast attack or armoured companies. Solar Auxillia's standard company would probably be mostly just lasgun Tericos, but would be significantly cheaper than the legion demi-company so is going to have a lot more bolted on for each game. Like with the legions, there could also be other companies as an option as well. I am happy to go into more detail if people are interested.

My intent is to use LI models with other rulesets, but LI rules sucking, and some of the weirdness with some of the models has really hurt my motivation to paint stuff even for using with other rules.

The more I have thought about LI rules, the more I am convinced the base rules are unsalvageable. Simple tweaking around the edges can't paper over the fundamental problems with the rules. I think this starts with no clear vision of what the rules are trying to do, this bleeds into things being weirdly detailed in some ways (we need how many different lascannon and autocannon profiles?) and very abstract in others (who cares what weapons you put on your Titans, they always cost the same even though some weapons are way, way better than others). Weapon range and movement speed make no sense. It feels like 0 testing was done for most of the game.

that means the whole band is back together then. Time to start re-reading stuff to make sure I remember everything I said before in character.

probably less choreographing larger battles and more important NPCs who stand out and have a bit more flair for being voiced by someone other than the GM, who has guidelines but freedom to maneuvre somewhat. Also I suspect it would be best to handwave the rest of the fight you are currently in, it mostly resolved anyway and jumping straight into combat will do nothing to help initial momentum.

This has been on pause for more than a minute, I don't see any reason why it would have to restart immediately. as for adding new people, so far I think everyone but @Urauloth has responded. So we would be adding max of 1, who would probably need to be a Salamander. On the other hand, depending on how things go, it may be useful to have other people show up for a period of time as a major character, like a planetary governor or admiral

So it would seem there is some interest in reviving this. Please post here if you are indeed interested in getting this going again.

weirdly the website did not notify me that you @ me I worry trying to restart would just get things moving again for a few weeks before dying off again. I think everyone would have to be on board if we were going to try.

You could do the core of Custodes and Sisters of Silence in one box. Though I see a box for the Custodes grav tank as well. back when people were first discussing the possibility of other factions I theorized this as a Custodes/SoS infantry box. One 1 infantry sprue the marines got: 1 command stand 4 tactical stands 1 plasma stand 1 missile stand 1 assault stand 1 terminator stand 2 dreadnoughts with a handful of spare bodies. Therefore I see no reason why you couldn't do something like: 1 Custodes Command stand 3 Custodian Guard stands 1 sentinel guard stand (2 piece like the missile launchers for the shields) 1 Custodes terminators 1 sisters with melee weapons stand (extra model to do a command stand version) 2 sisters with bolters stands 2 Custodes dreadnoughts

I do have a thought. What if this support formation thing is to test out a way they could release even smaller factions in some way. Like one of two boxes for stuff like Custodes or Daemons that exist purely in support of main factions.

I like the idea of these. Dancing around the allied 30% is a bit of a potential issue though.

I didn't mean that at LI scale a heavy bolter or autocannon should literally have unlimited range, more making the point that the range should be more than a guy on foot, or even with a jump pack can cross before you have a chance to respond. Assuming they were coming over open ground of course.

I have only played a few games of LI, but I do have a reasonable amount of experience helping develop and playtest wargames. I think the issues with LI start at a very fundamental level; I don't think anyone established a design philosophy for the game and no one person seems to be in charge of development of the game. If someone is in charge of the development of the game, they aren't doing their job very well. What is the game supposed to be? Why do the rules treat a stand of SA as literally being 5 dudes instead of representing a SA squad? Some things I think have to be addressed to make it a better game: - clear out weapon profiles, there should be one lascannon profile, one autocannon profile, and the entry for a unit should simply say how many you have and if it has an arc or the point defense trait - the game takes too long, like it is just very clunky to play - range vs movement speed make no sense; which feeds into my feel that none of the developers know what scale they are trying to model. In the real world even a basic military rifle is effective to 300 meters, double that if a whole squad is shooting. Any non-suppressed defenders can fire multiple mags of ammo in the time it takes to close that distance. Heavy bolters and autocannons should probably have ranges of if you can see it, you can shoot it; the problem is finding the enemy not the range of your weapon. I wonder if the game would be both faster and better if you activated a unit and did everything with it, move, shoot the whole bit.

the plan decided, the survivors surged into action. With Elvrit smashing into the door with the brute force that only an astartes at full sprint can achieve. There as a loud boom as something in the door holding it in place catastrophically fails. But the door has not hit ground when bolter fire from within the keep hurls down the entrance-way. At least two of the remaining Iron Warriors are making their stand here, perhaps 8 meters from the door. This is not the panicked fire of cowering mortals, it is the disciplined and accurate fire one would expect from a line legionary. Three rounds hammer into Elvrit's shield.

@Lysimachus I am going to need a strength check to see what you do to that door.