Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Imperial Militia and Cults (30k)

Why Play Imperial Militia and Cults

While not an overly powerful army, it is one of the most customisable armies you'll ever find outside of 40k Renegades and Heretics. These guys represent the miss-mash of military units found across the galaxy before anyone sat down and formalized the Imperial Guard. So you can build an army of cyber augmented Skitarii wannabes, a feral world regiment of jungle warriors, or even a full-fledged Chaos cult.

Special Rules

Provenances of War

This is where the modelling opportunities for this army come from. Your Force Commander can purchase up to two Provenances of War for a single cost, but massively impact the rest of your army, and can radically change the army build and the options you can take. Some Provenances lock out out of certain things, but some also allow units to buy their own unique options.

• Warrior Elite: All units gain +1Ld (max 9) and Militia Levy cannot be compulsory troops choices
• Gene Crafted: +1 str and +1 initiative but cannot take ever take FNP rolls, so Medicae Orderlies are absolutely useless.
• Cyber Augmented: All units gain a 6+ invuln save, or +1 to existing invulnerable saves, but they reduce run and sweeping advances rolls by 1.
  • Can't be combined with gene-crafted.
• Alchem Jackers: Gain the Stubborn USR and if a unit fails a Ld test due to enemy shooting, becomes pinned instead of falling back.
  • Frenzon: Any unit can purchase Rage but must perform sweeping advances (like this was ever a bad thing)
• Survivors of a Dark Age: Very powerful... Every eligible units gains +1 to their armour save, which essentially means Grenadiers are wearing Power Armour. The compulsory Troops must be Grenadier squads.
  • Advanced Weaponry Grenadiers and Command Squads can buy +1 Strength for their las weapons or rotor cannons. Grenadier squads and command squads can also purchase a Rhino or a Land Raider Proteus as dedicated transports. YES!
  • Can't be combined with Cult Horde or Tainted Flesh provenances
• Feral Warriors: The army gains +1WS, Ogryns gain +1 attack instead but cannot have more vehicle units than infantry
  • Blade and Fury All non-ogryn squads can purchase +1 attack for 25 points
• Abhuman Helots: All units gain +1 toughness but have -1 initiative
  • Discipline Collars Can be purchased for any unit that grants Stubborn but if they EVER fail a morale check on a double six, their heads explode and your remove the unit entirely.
• Cult Horde: (Traitors only) Massively changes what you can do with your army. All units gain Zealot USR and they must always charge if in range, even if they have fired weapons that would render them unable to charge (like Heavy or Rapid fire weapons), but they perform a disordered charge if they do. However, all units can ONLY make snap shots and cannot go to ground, so build your models accordingly. Furthermore the army cannot take grenadier squads.
  • Cannot be combined with Survivors of the Dark Age
• Tainted Flesh (Traitors only) All units gain Fear, Feel no Pain (6+) and Rending in melee, compulsory Troops MUST be Levy squads and cannot have more "non-levy" squads than levy squads, they can only take a Force Commander (required for the provenance anyway) and rogue psykers as HQs. They also gain access to Mutant Sp... Those
  • Cannot be combined with Survivors of the Dark Ages, Gene-Crafted or Alchem-Jacker

Wargear

Ranged Weapons

• Auxilia Rifle: the standard-issue rifle for most of your units. Just an 18" S3 Assault 1 gun. They are described as any weapon ranging from black powder muskets to esoteric lasrifles not seen anywhere else, Survivors of a Dark Age doesn't apply to it in any case. Kudos to anyone who actually takes fantasy empire muskets on their models and starts mowing down space marines with them.

Warlord Traits

1. Gain +1 Leadership (to max 9) and the army may reroll Reserves
2. One infantry unit get better weapons, and count their AP as one value better - so pick heavy support squads for AP3 Autocannons or Heavy Bolters or AP2 missiles
3. If the warlord ever dies, then the rest of his army gets Hatred from the remainder of the game.
4. The warlord gains Implacable Advance and Stubborn while within 3" of an objective.
5. Grab Fear and and It Will Not Die
6. The warlord can voluntarily fail any morale check and may also re-roll Run or Fall Back distances.

Unit Analysis

HQ

• 0-1 Force Commander: An independent character with a relatively poor statline, compared to every other unit in the Age of Darkness. But he's pretty customisable and you NEED him in order to purchase your Provenances of War, so you are going to have him

• Discipline Master Cadre: 2-5 near-commisars, they get attached to other units and add +1 LD, and allow for a LD reroll if they shoot some squad members. Oddly they're not as harsh as their 40k brethren, and while they cause D3 wounds to their unit, these wounds can be saved.

• Auxiliary Platoon Command Squad: six dudes, which can have four more added. No orders because this ain't 40k, they also don't get heavy weapon teams. But all of the mooks in the squad may replace their lascarbines/autoguns with a variety of weapons, like bolters or heavy stubbers.

• Rogue Psyker (Cult Horde or Tainted Flesh only) both like and unlike the Renegades & Heretics version. Yes if they perils they get possessed the same way. But these ones are independent characters, cause fear, have FnP, and can actually take proper psychic powers from Pyromancy, Telekinesis, Biomancy and Malefic Daemonolgy. They can even be upgraded to ML2

Troops

• Militia Infantry Squad: Twenty guardsmen with auxia rifles, no platoons, just one squad per slot. The sergeant gets customisation and can take things like hand flamers and power weapons. Also the squad can replace their auxilia rifles for something more substantial,like shotguns or lascarbines/laslocks.

• Inducted Levy Squad: 20-50 conscripts in sub-flak armour and auxilia rifles. They have the same options as regular militia but just don't bother because they're here as fodder. Which is what they are fantastic at, because they never confer any points for their destruction like by kill points or by first blood. Making them perfectly expendable.

• Militia Grenadier Squad: 10-18 veterans with BS4, carapace armour and auxilia rifles. These guys do well to replace their weapons with something else due to their increased accuracy. The remaining two spaces are made up by adding special weapon guys.

• Fire Support Squad: your heavy weapon squads, just like with imperial guard, but as Troops choices with no platoon tax. Unfortunately as support squads they cannot be compulsory choices. They come in units of 5-10 teams and have the full range of guard weapons, including heavy stubbers and multilasers. This unit has awesome potential.

• Reconnaissance Squad: 5-10 veterans in flak armour and are a support unit. But they have scout, infiltrate, move through cover and the option to buy chameleoline. They may replace their lascarbines with shotguns or sniper rifles, I wonder which one you'll choose?

Elites

• Ogryn Brute Squad: 3-10 Ogryns with big sticks, flak armour and frag grenades. That's it. But the beauty of this in how they can be customised. You can buy power weapons, boarding shields and carapace armour and you've got something equivalent to bullgryns. Buy ripper guns and you've got normal 40k ogryns. You can even buy Heavy Bolters, that become 18" range assault weapons when held in their hands!!! Consider what effect the army provenances will have on them before you build them, but the combinations are nearly endless.

• Imperialis Auxilia Medicare Detachment: 3-6 guardsmen with medipacks and laspistol/CCW. No customistion beyond whatever provenances you take. You just deploy them separately to squads and get FnP. You are allowed to double up if you want to make certain a squad doesn't lose the rule.

• Engineer Auxilia: one if the few squads that gains no benefit from you provenance, so it is what it is. You get 1-3 Enginseers and 4-8 Servo-Automata, which are basically more customisable servitors that can take cool guns like phased plasma fusils or flamers. Engineers can take invulnerable sves and graviton/volkite weapons if they want, and they can fix stuff and gain bonuses for each servitor with a servo arm in the unit.

Fast Attack

• Arvus Lighter: only marginally better than the travesty of their 40k incarnation in that they can take guns and use them properly; this makes them like flying razorbacks with twice the transport capacity. You can take them as dedicated transports for grenadiers and to be honest, it might be worth it here if you can stomach forking out for a resin box when you can have so many other things.

• Auxilia Sentinel Scout Squadron: almost exactly the same as the guard option, three to six chicken walkers with a heavy weapon, no plasma cannons but you can take a multi-melta. You can also take combat blades granting them +1 attack, but taking open topped AV10 walkers into melee is still generally not a good idea.

• Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter: If you have one, field it as these are the business. They start off at BS4 which means their considerable firepower is going to come to bear more reliably, which now includes Kinetic Piercer missiles, which while only S6, are AP2, armourbane and heat-seeking which makes them twin linked against other flyers. While you could swap them for hellstrike missiles, you'd be an idiot to do so because of the drawbacks of the ordnance rule, but if you wanted more ground attack then sunfury missiles can be bought which are AP3 large blast and blinding but get hot. For added goodies, they can buy strafing run, so your nose guns hit things on the ground with rerollable 2s, and a flare shield which reduced incoming firepower by -1 strength.

Heavy Support

• Rapier Battery: all the multilasers, bug can be beefed up to quad bolter, laser destroyer or thudd guns. They're good and cheap, but at only Ld 6 and flimsy guardsmen crew they are going to fall over if something looks at them funny.

• Malcador Heavy Tank: bigger Leman Russes, also a fast super heavy vehicle that is not a Lord of War. You can upgrade it to AV14 on the front if you sacrifice the Fast rule, but you can also take a Flare shield which applies all over and is boosted against templates. These are great tanks, with a fair amount of customisation and make excellent support vehicles for even bigger baneblades or stormhammers.

• Battle Tank Attack Squadron: Leman Russes, everyones favourite, chosen from the vanilla, annihilator, exterminator, demolisher and vanquisher flavours. They've only got access to Heavy Bolter and Flamer sponsons, but hilariously they can replace the hull gun with a multi melts, which might be a good idea if you're taking an ordnance tank and just want a gun for snap firing, or even as a makeshift AA gun.

• Heavy Ordnance Battery: Immobile Earthshaker guns each with 4-8 crewmen who are subject to your provenance so of you're taking these hopefully your army has good leadership modifying rules since the crew only have LD 6 and abandon the gun if they have to fall back. You can have Medusa guns instead which is more cost for the same risk. Either keep these WELL out of the way, or bump their leadership as high as you can.

• Mutant Spawn: (Tainted Flesh only) oh shi- GLARBLBLBLBL... Ahem slightly lesser than they 40k chaos version, possibly because they started out as humans and not space marines. They don't get access to marks and have only I2, however these ones have IWND and Hammer of Wrath as well as being 5 points cheaper on a per model basis, albeit with a higher startup cost like everything in HH, but you can take them in squads of ten which makes them a very potent prospect in melee. Their mutation table has also been heavily modified; taking effect from the beginning of the game and cannot be changed. Ones give them only a 5+, but at least it applies out of combat. Twos make them reroll 1s for random attacks, bleh. Threes give them Rending, so hope for this one and you can possibly have a big squad of these tearing through virtually anything.

Allies

A few notes about the list, since it interacts with other armies in different ways depending upon what Provenances of War they have taken.

• If they've taken Tainted Flesh or Cult Horde, then they cannot ally with Loyalist forces, though they may count Codex Daemons as "Fellow Warriors".
• Cyber-Augmetics may count Mechanicum armies as "Sworn Brothers"
• Abhuman Helots only count Space Marine and Solar Auxilia armies as "Distrusted Allies"