Translating old armies to new – Deathworld Veteran crunch

[apologist]

As I understand things, most of the troops units now have a <PLATOON> keyword as well as a particular regiment – e.g. <CADIAN> or <CATACHAN>. Since orders interact with the former, rather than the latter, there's no reason the new Castellan (with <CADIAN> baked in) can't issue orders to a <CATACHAN> infantry unit, right? Similarly, there's no inherent problem with using counts-as models for the 'Regiment-locked' units, beyond the other player's permission, and access to particular Stratagems, is there?

 

How do 'normal' Infantry squads work? Do you still give them a <[Regiment]> keyword?

 

I ask because I'm interested in fielding an army themed around the old Death World army list from Codex: Catachan at some point. Is there a fundamental rules problem with doing such?

 

The obvious answer is 'depends on your gaming group', so to clarify that: I play in a theme-heavy group, so there's a general laissez-faire attitude to things – in short, no-one's going to object if I use a Catachan model with the Castellan officer rules, and I'm not all that fussed if I can't use a Catachan-specific stratagem with said officer. I would, however, like to know that the army is as 'legal' as possible, and I'm not doing changing anything beyond semantics.

 

TL;DR – I wanted to start a discussion on how the various Troops choices in the new Codex work together in rules terms. What can and can't each do?

 

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A bit of background – the Deathworld army list

Codex: Catachan (rather confusingly) had a generic Death World army list, of which Catachans were just the most famous example. It shared a lot of the then-current Imperial Guard army list, but had some changes and additional units. The ones I'm interested in are:

• Slight changes in how the Officers were fielded – more flexible command squads (2–4 members) for the Senior Officers, and no command squad at all for the Platoon officers. 
• Catachan Devils – Exceptional and elite, these were the equivalents to the Veterans in other regiments. 5–10 strong, and able to take lots of special weapons and non-standard kit like shotguns, autoguns and close combat weapons, as well as having a few extra rules.
• Assault Teams – Akin to the old Special Weapon squads, these were 3–6 strong and able to take multiple special weapons plus a demolition charge.
• They were also able to take platoons of 'normal' Catachan infantry squads.

 

Now, trying to translate an already slightly quirky list from another edition into a completely different one is very unlikely to work exactly, so I'm more concerned with capturing the spirit of the thing.

 

Trying to get my head round things, I'm mentally substituting the various keywords for more generic terms. So <CADIA> is <SHOCK TROOPS>, <CATACHAN> becomes <JUNGLE FIGHTER> and <KRIEG> becomes <VETERANS>.

 

Translating that back to the old Codex: Catachan, are there any rules problems that would arise from taking a list like this?

 

 

HQ

• Senior Officer – Using Castellan rules
• Junior Officer – Using Command Squad rules.

Troops

• Catachan Devils – Using <VETERANS> (i.e. DKoK infantry rules) to allow for all the weird weapons and additional kit like medikit.
• Assault Team – Using <SHOCK TROOPS> (i.e. Cadian infantry rules) for special weapon in place of heavy weapons
• Catachan infantry – Using <JUNGLE FIGHER> 
• Catachan infantry – Using <JUNGLE FIGHER> 
• Catachan infantry – Using <JUNGLE FIGHER> 

 

[Emperor Ming]

13 minutes ago, apologist said:

HQ

• Senior Officer – Using Castellan rules
• Junior Officer – Using Command Squad rules.

Troops

• Catachan Devils – Using <VETERANS> (i.e. DKoK infantry rules) to allow for all the weird weapons and additional kit like medikit.
• Assault Team – Using <SHOCK TROOPS> (i.e. Cadian infantry rules) for special weapon in place of heavy weapons
• Catachan infantry – Using <JUNGLE FIGHER> 
• Catachan infantry – Using <JUNGLE FIGHER> 
• Catachan infantry – Using <JUNGLE FIGHER> 

 

Might be better to use the catachan inf as inf squads, as the catachan datasheet is rubbish to say the least

 

But your example would be fine as long as people could tell the difference between stand in cadians and stand in deathkorps

 

 

[duz_]

26 minutes ago, Emperor Ming said:

Might be better to use the catachan inf as inf squads, as the catachan datasheet is rubbish to say the least

This definitely seems to be the best option for legacy regiments unfortunately 

 

The biggest issue will be differentiating the different squads if you plan on using all Catachan models but switching their data slates 

[apologist]

Brill, thank you both. In terms of differentiation, I think there’s a few prompts I can take from the old Codex – the Devils there were marked out with camouflage paint on their skin, for example.

 

That’s part of the reason why I thought using the actual ‘Catachan’ datasheet for the majority of the basic infantry would be sensible – that way, there are a couple of exceptions to a general rule, rather than everything being an exception!

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Infantry squads do not get any regiment keyword.

 

but based on what I’m reading you’ve got it spot on.

 

the Catachan datasheet sucks so I wouldn’t use it.

 

if you want a death world themed regiment with fluffy rules I’d go with recon operators and veteran geurillas to build a usable and fluffy death world army.

[Noserenda]

IS there actually much difference between the various infantry squads aside from loadout? 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Noserenda said:

IS there actually much difference between the various infantry squads aside from loadout? 

They have a regimental special rule.

CSTs get exploding 6s, krieg have a mini-transhuman and Catachans have basically brutal strength.