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How do!

Not looking to propose rules or owt, instead just idle wondering about how a Mercenary Army might look in 40K. And not necessarily one restricted to just being allied in.

On the face of it, we’ve a reasonable number of existing units. For example? Eldar Corsairs, Blood Axes, Kroot, Kin/Demiurg/Squats, renegade and private army humans (for instance, say a Rogue Trader and his household force), Jokaero, Eldar Rangers, Incubi, maybe even particularly sneaky Brood Brothers, Renegade But Not Chaos Alligned Astartes.

But how would you take such existing elements and make a cohesive whole, with its own identity rather than a Heinz 57 of a bit of everything?

You are going to have the same units. The random hodge-podge. I’d differentiate it by having HQs tied to detachments. Which would have strats etc tied to fhat way of fighting.

So you might have a rouge trader vs. an eldar pirate. Vs. an orc freebooter vs. renegade humans. All hiring units from the same basic pool. But the eldar detachment might give you some movement tricks, the orc a little choppier, etc.

And of course the whole book could be used as allied ala dogs of war.

Just some random ideas.

You could start with "look". The same colour scheme across the board. That suggests MONEY, which could also be the binding factor - think Necromunda gangs x supersize?

Balance could be tricky - tempting to hire the best of the best for each function (which of course enough money could buy) but ruleswise maybe throw in a little mistrust aka animosity or ... there used to be a battle rule about firm allies / allies of necessity?

Mercenaries looking like their own thing is kind of the point. If you want cohesion, you would equip the hired help with your own gear like Tau do with Gue'vesa. That's not especially practical the more varied your mercenaries get, so you'd want to look into easy add-ons that can be applied to any soldier regardless of gear. Shared banners, paint, markings like Death Company where the X marks the spot your guys are not supposed to shoot. Discriminate on your recruiting criteria and only recruit those mercenaries who wear red or blue or green in some capacity.

Ok, we talking about actual looks?

There are already armies with this problem. Look at an aspect heavy craftworld eldar army.

Uniform basing goes a long way.

Common design elements. All wires red, all tubes blue. Same brown leather for pouches. Guns with the same metallic. Even if the armor is different, the models look like they are still part of the same force.

I’m not sure if a common overall pain scheme would fit, unless the whole group is being outfitted the same. But in that case the eldar corsairs would be using the same armor as the humans? I think not. It might be fun to have the same environment camouflage, but different versions. Everyone kitted out for desert warfare, but the elves in tiger stripe, guard in chocolate chip, freebooters just splodgeing paint on. Same pallet, different applications.

I would argue that we don't need a mercenary army in 40k, especially a Dogs of War type army. We already have Imperial Agents, which admittedly is an army made up of only Imperium units. That's already a hodge podge and an incohesive army. Of course it could be much better if more effort had gone into writing the codex.

Lore wise I'd be concerned about a mercenary army fighting as one army. Eldar and humans teaming up is more or less plausible, less so once you throw Orks into the mix too. I realise Blood Axes do side with humans in the lore sometimes, though I can't see it working on the tabletop.

Despite the massive range that 40K has there are still gaps of course, which could fit as mercenaries. I would just have them as allies or even in the codex for specific armies. For example I wouldn't let Eldar Corsairs or Exodites ally with anything but other Eldar armies.


If we really were going down the road of a mercenary army then I agree with others who say that the paint scheme / uniform is one way to go to make it look more or less cohesive.

I'd say look and overarching theme, as in, making for example a motorised army of mercenaries, where, while most of its element could have got dinstinct origins, the army as a whole would be geared and function in a particular and cohesive manner. That way, you either get different choices from several codices for different flavours of the same motorised units, or you can use one codex as the bulk of the army and use the "strapped on" elements as those providing the lacking versatility. Say for example an artillery heavy guard with ork foot soldiery recruited by the filthy heretic that that business man is. Send the inquisition, quick!

Well the easy way is to create the Tau Foreign Legion. Or Tau Auxiliaries.

Basically take a faction already known to work with many different xenos forces and have them utilizing a mercenary force. You've got the foundation for why different races would join alongside why they'd then share similar styled equipment and so forth even though they might have different body shapes and so forth.



Now of course this actually cuts out most of the big popular races besides humans.





The other option is to have a proper mercenary army. I think to design them you have to think about them outside of the battlefield first. How do they meet; why do they unite; how do they operate in downtime out of battle; how do they cope with different situations and so forth. Basically to design a mercenary force think of them outside of battle. Battle if the small easy bit; its outside of it which is tricky.

An Ork ally in battle is fairly easy to work out; but an Ork ally or company in a mercenary force outside of combat? You have to ask a lot of questions and the answers to them start to fill in how you might unify them in equipment appearance with the other factions.

Orky Allies?

A form of Oddboy.

Since their earliest days, Orks have always been prone to preprogrammed passions. Everyone starts off as a Yoof/Boy. And as they age, their passions begin to define their place in Orky Society.

Proper Oddboyz are the best known extremities of this, producing the Ork with the relevant know-wotz to ensure their society is as robust at their bodies.

But, the Clans may also be an expression of that same genetic programming. With Orks not being born and parented as other species, and certainly little in the way of a formal education, the Clan leanings again help to order their otherwise entirely anarchic society.

We then have specialists, such as Tankbustas, Speed Freeks, Flyboyz*, Burnboyz, Kommandos etc.

And for a few? Freebooters and Flash Gitz. And it’s the Flash Gitz that drive this, as whilst not exclusively, they heavily skew toward coming from Bad Moons, the wealthiest of Clans (indeed, it’s having your teef grow fast that defines an Ork as a Bad Moon), who naturally can afford more equipment compared to other Clans, and because your Boss is going to have plenty wealth, you’re less likely to be clobbered and your shiny new shoota “taxed”. Flash Gitz are those whose avarice eventually gets on the nerves of even a Bad Moon Warboss.

But what of the other Clans? Here I’m afraid I’m largely speculating, and I don’t necessarily have an analogous unit for each. But Goffs are noted for being no-nonsense, and having lots of Skarboyz, low ranking Orks not quite Nob, but too ‘ard to be a mere Boy.

Blood Axes have a preponderance of Stormboyz

Evil Suns? Speed Freeks and Flyboyz (not 100% if it’s still the case, but for a decent while any Ork happy to fly a vehicle was seen as a right odd ‘un)

But what if especially military obsessed Blood Axes felt a need to leave their tribe, to learn how other races conduct warfare. And so off into space they go, serving as relatively more trustworthy Orky Mercs than Flash Gitz or Freebooterz. Those Orks I can see willing to at least try other people’s tech. Though naturally I don’t think it would all of five minutes before their Spannerboy is fiddlin’ and improvin’ and Orkifying it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


But what if especially military obsessed Blood Axes felt a need to leave their tribe, to learn how other races conduct warfare. And so off into space they go, serving as relatively more trustworthy Orky Mercs than Flash Gitz or Freebooterz. Those Orks I can see willing to at least try other people’s tech. Though naturally I don’t think it would all of five minutes before their Spannerboy is fiddlin’ and improvin’ and Orkifying it.

I like this idea for maybe a squad of orky allies who are there to learn from other races. I like how the loota models have bits of guns taken from other armies such as the imperial guard lasgun and the tau fusion blaster incorporated into their deffguns.



I think it would be cool to see orks with more obviously looted weapons that have been turned into orky contraptions as part of their "studies"

While I don't think this is something that's very doable in 40k (they tried to do an army full of themed specialists and look how that turned out for Deathwatch) but I think it would be right at home in Kill Team.

You could do something like, taking a limited number of units from each race, Human, Kroot, Aeldari, Drukhari, Ork, maybe a limit 1 Space Marine, and then you can assign a specialist role to each unit that combined with the race they are makes a profile for them.

It would be a great idea for anyone who loves customizing and kitbashing.

 Tawnis wrote:
While I don't think this is something that's very doable in 40k (they tried to do an army full of themed specialists and look how that turned out for Deathwatch) but I think it would be right at home in Kill Team.

You could do something like, taking a limited number of units from each race, Human, Kroot, Aeldari, Drukhari, Ork, maybe a limit 1 Space Marine, and then you can assign a specialist role to each unit that combined with the race they are makes a profile for them.

It would be a great idea for anyone who loves customizing and kitbashing.

There certainly are problems with Agents, but I tend to think of Deathwatch as a separate problem than the idea of an Agents dex; no one complains that the Agents dex wrecked Sisters or GK, because it didn't. Put simply, the decision to take away the DW Dex is what screwed DW, not the release of the Agents dex. The book itself, while far from perfect, isn't actually all that bad.

I do think that non-human units have a place as mercs, and some even have narrative tools at their disposal: in WD 504, alternate rules were released for Kroot armies. Most of those rules were Crusade rules, but army composition is in there as well. The cool thing about these rules is that they involve the "Shaping" of Mercenary Pacts. You roll for an employer, an objective and a difficulty level. The employers you roll for are generic- they're described by relative power rather than race. But narrative campaigners could easily argue that the Kroot might work directly in the battlefield in cooperation with their employers from time to time.

Radical Inquisitors also provide a real gateway for Xenos units allying with Imperial forces. Like tell me Draxus doesn't have a unit of Aeldari Rangers and probably a unit of Corsairs in her Inquisitorial rolodex.

I actually think the potential is GREATER in 40k than KT. Full units of different species fighting together for common cause seems far more plausible to me than say, a team of one Marine, two Eldar, two Kroot, an Ork, a Flayed One and three guardsmen, that travels together an fights as a single cohesive team/unit.

Truth is though, I don't really know how I'd do it if I were in GW's shoes. I think you could do it as a White Dwarf article (or series of articles), or a digital download. I wouldn't do a full dex, because if you did, I think it would be hard to balance; they need the freedom to exclude it from tournaments in order to really experiment with the idea. And of course that means that any of the folks and stores that refuse to use Legends as GW indicates they are supposed to be used would automatically ignore it... Case and point: Legends doesn't entirely solve the Deathwatch problem, but it does go a long way.

The rest of us could get some mileage out of rules like that though.

i've thought about this a lot, actually. my idea is more pirate-themed than mercenaries specifically, but those have a lot of overlap.

first of all, Dogs of War-style regiments of renown. for the generic unit, i'd have a few different things from a few different places, like a couple of freebooterz units for melee and ranged, a bunch of corsair units (pulling from the old IA list), squats, some kroot, and a gaggle of human squads as the battleline/core. and then characters for each of the different species in the list

so in total, something like...
1-2 freebooterz units, and 1-2 characters
2-3 corsairs units, and 1-2 characters
1-2 squat units, plus a character
a kroot unit
maybe an extra t'au auxiliary or abhuman thing
humans with guns, humans with swords, scouty humans, maybe a chaff unit. and then for characters, you get a rogue trader and some levels of pirate hierarchy (captain, first mate, etc)

and then ships for the vehicles, of course

humans are supposed to be the core of the army, and then the rest are flavored as the mercenaries being hired or who joined in with the lot. going for a motley crew sort of vibe with the variety of species

Blood Axes used to be able to take a whole menagerie of Imperial mercenaries in Waaagh! Da Orks.

I don't think a mercenary group of different species would be a good idea in main 40k, but it would be a great idea in some type of 40k RPG or even Kill Team.

If you really did want a hodgepodge faction in 40k, reworking Genestealers or Chaos to be this would be the best idea lore-wise.

Loaxatol box set when

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Loaxatol box set when

Je n'ai aucune idée de ce que vous voulez dire, et s'il vous plaît, ne répondez pas en français, parce que je suis un Américain idiot qui a échoué à apprendre des langues au-delà de l'anglais.

https://wh40k-fr.lexicanum.com/wiki/Loxatl

here, yes, i did send it in french just because, and yes, I keep butchering english language as any self respecting frenchman would

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
https://wh40k-fr.lexicanum.com/wiki/Loxatl

here, yes, i did send it in french just because, and yes, I keep butchering english language as any self respecting frenchman would

Tu pensais que tu me vaincrais, scélérat ? Mon an de français de rattrapage et mes deux ans d'allemand introductif m'ont permis de déchiffrer le texte !

Ah mince, il m'a roulé.

Alright, I concede a point there

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Ah mince, il m'a roulé.

Alright, I concede a point there

J'ai pris un cours de français de rattrapage dans un collège communautaire pour impressionner une fille du Québec, qui j'ai découvert plus tard, ne parlait pas français.

I can read it, a little. Speak it? Not a chance.

Pas mal l'anecdote

Actually that's always a pleasure that someone gave himself the trouble to learn a bit of my language, kudos to you for that pal!