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So, I have been reading the IG codex and I see several conflicting things when it comes to Regiments Defecting.

First off, the book declares that the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy are entirely separated in order to make a full scale rebellion very difficult.

Second, Regiments are segregated by type (IE: Infantry, Drop Troops, Armor, Artillery) so that if a Regiment defects they do not have the power of combined arms and are thus much more susceptible to a counter attack by the Imperium.

How ever, they go on to talk about the Marcharius Heresy, and how it took the Imperium over 70 years to quash his generals and their forces. So despite all the Imperium's segregation and bureaucracy, full scale rebellions can still occur.

My reason being, I want to make my possible IG army a traitor legion. But I will have Tanks, Fliers, and all types of troops. From a fluff stand point how exactly would I work this out, since all regiments are segregated and what not? And If I decide to really start flooding income into said army (to apocalypse proportions), how could I justified my traitor legions being so successful?

Do you guys catch my drift?

A war band, common amongst defectors who arent like a huge chapter. a few separate groups come together under one person and then bing bang boom you got a warband the rivals entire crusades in size. (yes i realize its an extradition but still)

^ This - also, the force separation only works up to some level. At some point, command is united at the fingertip of just a few people or even just a single officer. Case in point, the Lord Solar appointed for command over critical war zones.

Also, there is the possibility that a regiment could rebel and simply take control of other assets. Like, only showing their true colours after they have already boarded the transport that would have taken them to another world, or even just the thoughts of rebellion only forming as the regiment is already underway.
"Overheard two of the crewmen talking. They're going to ship us off to the Pyrus Reach." - "What the ... no way, that's a meat grinder!" - "The Major thinks so as well. Listen, we've got a plan ..."

 GalacticZ wrote:
So, I have been reading the IG codex and I see several conflicting things when it comes to Regiments Defecting.

First off, the book declares that the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy are entirely separated in order to make a full scale rebellion very difficult.

Second, Regiments are segregated by type (IE: Infantry, Drop Troops, Armor, Artillery) so that if a Regiment defects they do not have the power of combined arms and are thus much more susceptible to a counter attack by the Imperium.

How ever, they go on to talk about the Marcharius Heresy, and how it took the Imperium over 70 years to quash his generals and their forces. So despite all the Imperium's segregation and bureaucracy, full scale rebellions can still occur.

My reason being, I want to make my possible IG army a traitor legion. But I will have Tanks, Fliers, and all types of troops. From a fluff stand point how exactly would I work this out, since all regiments are segregated and what not? And If I decide to really start flooding income into said army (to apocalypse proportions), how could I justified my traitor legions being so successful?

Do you guys catch my drift?

The groups that defected in the Macharian Crusades weren't individual regiments but rather entire Army Groups, they had a lot of resources and good commanders (many of Macharius' former generals).

So how do you guys think I should handle my armies fluff, if I were to create a Traitor Army?

If you read through the Iron warriors omnibus they have the skull harvest, basically a big battle royal where the winner gets every other army to join his war band, if you want a few outstanding characters you could do that. plus if you want allys to help get you started you could include them through this.

Chaos? It could be a reasonable excuse for traitor guard.

If it were me I'd have the generally weak-minded guardsmen be influenced by a commander with a cause. Someone with great charisma and battle experience that they believe fighting for him is better than for the Emperor.

The Inquisition, those guys are the douches of 40k, right next to dark eldar.
Ur army fought some enemy, the inquisition came in to help, you guys won, some of ur guys sorta defected to the enemy or something during the fighting, inquisition decided to liquidate ur forces because of this (e.g. 1st War of Armageddon), ur guys caught whiff of the idea, rose up and killed the inquisitor and his forces, decided to join chaos for the freedom it brought (the imperium is really strict ), etc.

 Novelist47 wrote:
The Inquisition, those guys are the douches of 40k, right next to dark eldar.
Ur army fought some enemy, the inquisition came in to help, you guys won, some of ur guys sorta defected to the enemy or something during the fighting, inquisition decided to liquidate ur forces because of this (e.g. 1st War of Armageddon), ur guys caught whiff of the idea, rose up and killed the inquisitor and his forces, decided to join chaos for the freedom it brought (the imperium is really strict ), etc.

Please try to use proper spelling and grammar on Dakka.
At any rate you could do this fairly easily. They had a disagreement with the Inquisition and legged it before they could be caught.

That reminds me of this communique from the Armageddon 3 campaign, even.
Granted, no regiment rebelled there, but the note about the effects on troop morale is still interesting.

A General and an Admiral got together over a pint and read a book about Chaos. Badabing badaboom, you've got a Guard and Navy Chaos Coalition.

You need to first distinguish what you mean by a traitor force. Do you mean one which is now following Chaos or one which has just rebelled against the Imperium for possibly non-Chaos related reasons? There is a difference. It is easily believable to imagine that high level officers or admirals may decide to carve out a pocket empire of their own with the forces under their command. The rank and file may not even know they are in rebellion, and could even in fact view any Imperials attacking them to be the real rebels. Given the vast spatial and temporal scale of the Imperium, it is possible that such a rebellion may go unnoticed for some time, maybe beyond the lifetime of the original rebels.

Aside from pure selfish reasons of power and wealth, it is conceivable a rebellion might occur due to idealistic reasons. Despite the Imperium's attempts to stamp out such ideas, there are still mentions of subversive movements promoting things like "progress" or "democracy". There is also the influence of the Recongregator faction of the Inquisition, which might promote such a rebellion due to their beliefs that they need to improve the Imperium through change and progress and weeding out the corrupt entrenched interests. Similarly, the Istvaanian faction of the Inquisition might promote such a rebellion, not caring whether it succeeds or fails but simply that it provide conflict for the Imperium to test itself against and in doing so strengthen itself. Finally, do not overlook the fact that Imperial Guard and Navy commanders are still humans, despite the propaganda-like descriptions of people living only to do their duty. They could end up having local loyalties or sympathies to the areas in which they are posted, and end up siding with local interests over the demands of the wider Imperium.

The division between Guard and Navy is a barrier but not insurmountable. The division weakens the likelihood of any small scale rebellion amounting to anything in the large scale, due to the inability of individual regiments of rebel Guard to get off-world or fight using combined arms, and the reliance of the Navy on fleet facilities around established worlds for repair and resupply. However unity of command is still achieved at a high level, such as when it comes to a Crusade. This does however suggest such a combined arms rebellion would be a top down affair, rather than a populist rebellion flowing up.

also sometimes entire planets or systems, with the resources to train and equip any kind of guard regiment turn traitor and they can then supply an army of any composition