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I have both. I'm thinking they can work together fluff wise on the tabletop. Combine cadian and catachan models in the.command squad and have catavhans drop in the vendettas and have cadian veterans ride in the chimeras. Would this be something that could happen fluff wise? Any one else think its a cool idea?

Totally fine and there's a lot of fluff options there.

One is Cadians and Catachans are posted on the same world and form a combined unit. Maybe they've both taken horrible casualities and been forced together for form a viable force. Or maybe some clerk confused the two C armies and now they're like the odd couple.

Another way is to create your own regiment and explain the 2 uniforms somehow. Maybe the Catachan models are lower class workers who don't get proper armor and equipment while the Cadians are the vet squads and commanders. Or maybe the Cadians represent the new recruits who have all their kit while the Catachans represent the vets who've learned to get rid of those useless armor plates and go for mobility.

Awesome post! Now I don't fell so foolish about doing it.

I use the fluff of a battalion made up of many "downsized" units from here and there
My main force of gropos are cadian
My CCS is cadian
my vets are made of catachans
my hvy weapon teams are Krieg

many units brought together for a larger force

That's very interesting as well.

I use my Cadians a veterans with carapace armour and the Catachans as normal troops with flak armour.

Kinda makes sense to me if you are going to mix them as the Cadians have obvious body armour and the Catachans are more "Look at my muscles instead of shooting at me"

Yeah, those above are good ways of doing it. My addition would be something more like...


General: Butchered horribly to a man you say? SEND IN THE NEXT WAVE!!!

... out of curiosity, what are the units going in with the next wave?

Adjunct: Umm, I'll put in a request to get that information for you, sir.

*years later*

Adjunct: General, sir, I got the results back from who was in the twenty seventh wave of guardsmen from years ago. It was a mix of catachan and cadian units.

General: Oh, I don't care about that anymore. It's time to send in another wave. What are we up to now?

Adjunct: Umm, I'll put in a request to get that information for you, sir.

Fluff wise, No. The two don't mix. Catachans are not big on Commissars and such. Even the old Catachan codex had rules where you might loose your commissar before anything else.
Catachans promote teamwork but individualism as well. They are a unit, but, each is his own man.

Cadians. They are grouped no matter what. Each soldier is known by his regiment, platoon, squad. Not alot of leway there. Also, they adhere to rank and position.

I use them in separate platoons when I actually play with my mixed regiment Guard army. Mixing bits is a little rough since the Catachan infantry squad is scaled differently than the Cadian one. The Catachan heavy weapons and command squads are scaled right though, and make for some good and easy kitbashing. As for fluff, if you really wanted to include Commissars or whatever, you can write them off as not being from Catachan per se, just in a similar uniform. The plastic kits are meant to represent regiments from a variety of worlds. It's not just the Valhallans who fight in wintry conditions, or men from Cadia who wear hockey armor and use lasguns.

Also, because no one explicitly mentioned it, page 72 of the codex under "regimental colors" explains that you can take different guard units from different worlds and throw them together.

... you know... in case someone was actually that anally nitpicky. Odds are you probably wouldn't want to play against that kind of person, though.

Also, and I can't remember where I saw this, but there was something I read about how merging units can create desirable cross-specialization. The example they gave was something to the effect of a Harkoni/Catachan regiment, wherein the catachans taught the harkoni how to kill things in close combat, while the harkoni taught the catachan how to parajump. The end result was basically a regiment of ninjas that could deploy anywhere by grav chute and then silently stab everyone to death and exfiltrate before anyone knew they were there.

Awesome responses... I feel.much.better about my.mixed guard regiment. Thanks guys.

 martin74 wrote:
Fluff wise, No. The two don't mix. Catachans are not big on Commissars and such. Even the old Catachan codex had rules where you might loose your commissar before anything else.
Catachans promote teamwork but individualism as well. They are a unit, but, each is his own man.

Cadians. They are grouped no matter what. Each soldier is known by his regiment, platoon, squad. Not alot of leway there. Also, they adhere to rank and position.

Unless both regiments sustained heavy losses and were combined to form a single combat strength regiment. This is common practice in the Imperial Guard. Sometimes it works great, like the Catachan/Elysian regiment that became masters of rapid insertion jungle warfare, to units that hate each other and barely last a week.

It would be perfectly feasible that a Cadian and Catachan force would be combined this way.

MrMoustaffa wrote: to units that hate each other and barely last a week.]

... and even then, this is the imperial guard.

"The combined units were fighting ineffective due to conflict and were slaughtered to a man, you say? Then combine some more units and SEND IN THE NEXT WAVE!!!"

In fact during 3rd edition I did such a thing with my Catachans. They became a armoured fist unit. Background was that the Administratum messed up with a reinforcement request and my stalwart Colonel Wright got himself a couplement of Chimeras, Hellhounds and a Leman Russ Executioner freshly from the factory instead of the new recruits and Sentinels he expected. He made the best of it and mounted dozer blades and flamers where he could and "adopted" the vehicle crews into his unit after the delivering clerk was "lost in a tragical accident". It was fun - really!
Some of the crew really looked like Cadians (see the griffon tank). But they can be easily converted and mixed with catachan troops. The cadian helmet wearing helmets remind me of the old NAM-Series on TV...