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So for Regimental doctrine, it says that if you are using a regiment not listed to use whichever one best fits your regiment. If I were to say choose the Catachan doctrine, would I also be able to use Catachan regimental orders and strategems?

No and No. Selecting the Brutal Strength Doctrine for your Regiment does not make it a Catachan regiment. Only Catachan models make take Catachan Relics, be targeted by Catachan Orders, or take Catachan Warlord Traits.

Yes you can. While there is an "AKCHULLYYY"-esque way of thinking that says you technicaly cant you are unlikely to actually come acriss that. In a case where you're worried just say you're using the CATACHAN keyword. It makes no difference to gameplay.

With the exception of the storm-troopers trait you may as well just say that you're using "CADIAN" with a desert scheme or what have you. If you do want to have your own "CUSTOM" regiment you only get the doctrine benefits, not any of the regiment specific orders, characters, traits etc etc.

Weird, the Catachan order would fit perfectly with the Red Cowls but I guess it just doesn't work like that.

I think it is pretty clear that custom regiments are supposed to benefit from those things but the rules are badly written and don't actually allow it if you follow them to the letter. Reasonable opponents should be fine with it. If you are facing an unreasonable opponent then you have to pretend that your units are literally Catachans, regardless of their paint scheme.

Technically only <CATACHANS> can benefit from the Catachan relics, stratagems, etc. However, in practice, nobody (possibly outside of tournaments at GW HQ and one or two people who like arguing online) is going to stop you using the full Catachan rules, relics, orders and stratagems for a homebrewed regiment.

The really weird thing is there's nothing stopping you just using the Catachan keyword anyway and having your own head-canon that they are actually the Red Cowls, or whatever. I have a SM army that uses Blood Angels rules but isn't painted red. According to the Codex I can only use one of the relics and none of the special characters. However, there's also literally no real preventing me calling my alternate-scheme SM Blood Angels, with the exception of the rules GW uses for their own in-house tournaments.

As said above, to the letter of the rules, your <Red Cowls> are not <Catachan> - they, like any custom regiment, can benefit from Brutal Strength (the only regiments that don't have access to Brutal Strength are named ones that aren't Catachan), but they still don't have the requirements to use the <Catachan> stratagems, relics, warlord traits and orders: they're still not <Catcahan>, they're <Red Cowls>.

Now, this doesn't apply if you just say, "nah, they have the <Catachan> keyword, but I'll be referring to them as 'Red Cowls'" (essentially playing count-as), or if your opponent (IMO, reasonably) just lets you use all the <Catachan> abilities - again, playing count-as.

The only actual time I'd ever ask you to actually choose between <Red Cowls> (only getting the Doctrine, and nothing else) and <Catachan> (getting everything) would be if there was some ability that negatively affected <Catachans>, or if, somehow, the <Red Cowls> gained an actual official named character or ability.
If you were going to play your Red Cowls with ALL of the Catachan rules, but then when something negatively affects units with the <Catachan> keyword, you say "well my guys aren't Catachan, so they're fine", I'd call foul. Likewise, if the Red Cowls actually got an official named character, I'd expect you to play <Red Cowls> and not Catachan-count-as.

Custom regiments cannot use regimental orders even if they are using that regiments doctrines. You also lose the ability to take special characters. The only time you should ever take a custom regiment is if you want the Storm Troopers doctrine, otherwise just take a proper regiment on your army list and your dudes fluff is just fluff.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Custom regiments cannot use regimental orders even if they are using that regiments doctrines. You also lose the ability to take special characters. The only time you should ever take a custom regiment is if you want the Storm Troopers doctrine, otherwise just take a proper regiment on your army list and your dudes fluff is just fluff.

Exactly this. If you want to use the regimental orders just treat your guys as Catachans for rule purposes, even if they are not the same in the fluff. Just make sure to properly inform your opponent if you do not use the official Catachan models.