Black Cohort

I am surprised this happened, though given it took like 18 months for the core rules, it seems too little too late.

that does mean, at least for the moment that the party will be down its apothecary, who perhaps needs to focus on trying to save any of the wounded marines they have in Sus-An and could still be available for out of combat healing assistance. Since Mazer was playing a raven guard we probably need either one of those or a Salamander to add.

I think one of the first things that needs to be established is what exactly do the Eldar look like in this time period. Some of the Horus Heresy stuff seems to suggest that by that point "Modern" craftworld culture is basically in place already.

no worries, I would rather have people know their limits, then try to give it a go and not have the bandwidth.

I see no reason why the two ideas can't both be developed, the Fall and its aftermath would be a super cool thing to explore more. as for more modern craftworlders one thing that has always been weird to me even in rpgs is how few eldar are pskyers and I don't know if the rules ever capture how fast they act.

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.