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So.....you could argue this is a pretty short thread, what with there being a choice of two units with basically no options.

I was looking at a campaign weekend - the warhammer world crusade weekends - and thought for some reason I'd like to try a rogue trader centric force, and was wondering how it would do.

Astra Cartographica is unashamedly designed for Crusade games, I think, having faction-specific agendas and requisitions but no faction-specific tactical objectives or matched play relics. Unfortunately for any sort of Matched Play games it suffers from the (slightly bizzare) choice of making the voidsmen-at-arms elites not troops, making the only astra cartagraphica detachment you can easily field in matched play a vanguard and even that only just because you're limited to 3 units of voidsmen-at-arms.

I was hoping to allow thoughts on using Cartographica units as Agents of the Imperium, as well as a primary faction in their own right.
I think for the latter, it only really works for small games (obviously), and the best way to make them work would seem to be to bulk out detachments with UNALIGNED stuff.

In a matched-play-legal list, you can add up to 1 unit of Spindle Drones, 3 Guardian Drones, 3 Ambuls, 3 Borewyrm Infestations and The Archivist without changing the detachment alignments of stuff you add them too.

The Spindle drones are the most important; because they're troops they allow a patrol detachment. This lets you take at least one detachment for free and it allows you to pull in some other Agents of the Imperium - my brain says an Ordo Xenos inquisitor because a) it fits narratively, b) it adds a psyker if you have a psyker-boosting Archeotech Curiosity, c) it potentially opens up rerolls to hit via To The Exclusion Of All Else and d) between Esoteric Lore, Mental Interrogation and Strategic Excrucitation an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor has lots of options to generate command points.

Has anyone used either Cartographica heavy forces or the unaligned gribblies much?

Astra cartography will see some play as an agent of the imperium option in certain lists. Custodes for example may benefit from a cheap objective holder

You are wrong though in a matched play list you can't add the unaligned units because each detatchment asside from fortification must share a detatchment keyword.

The only way you can run those things is in an auxiliary and its not worth it

Astra cartographic as a detatchment is max one hq and 3 elites and even maxed out is not enough to be mono in a 400 point game