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I'm looking to make an Emperor's Wrath artillery company to ally with my Ryza Cult Mechanicus. The Catachans provide support on the planet Ryza against Waaagh! Grax and I'd like to make my company Catachan to stay fluffy.

So my question becomes: Do Catachans make use of large artillery batteries? I haven't found much evidence supporting that they do or don't. I'm looking at using 2 Basilisks, 1 Manticore and 2 Wyverns.

What are your thoughts/opinions?

Catachans in the fluff use lots of mortar teams. I don't remember mention of other artillery however I see no reason they wouldn't use larger forms of artillery to supplement the mortars when they're looking at a scorched earth strategy.

Preliminary bombardments before they send in the Jungle Fighters to sweep away whatever survived the bombing. Also might make traversing deathworld jungles easier if you bombed the hell out of them first. Kill the nasty beasties first.

I've always imagined Catachan Artillery like the Firebases in Vietnam. This hill that has been flattened (via bomb or even more artillery!) and then built into a base with artillery.


Speaking of bombing a spot to make room for a firebase.... I wonder if there is a 40k version of the Daisy Cutter Bomb? Or a MOAB?.... Just a giant bomb shoved out the back of a Valk or some big aircraft used to clear an area.

It'd probably be a bomb dropped from a marauder (an imperial navy bomber). They carry bigger bombs. Think B-17.
They could probably do it.
Otherwise orbital strikes can be used to clear terrain areas about as well as any other drop-short the imps field.

Valkyries are also NAVY aircraft, they're just more or less seconded to the guard command on planet.

15 hours refers (anecdotaly) to an artillery battery being used with Catachans, specifically to hunt giant lizards.

Typical and well known Imperial Guard regiments dispatched from their homeworld will have to know how to operate all the equipment available to them so that they can be outfitted for any combat scenario. Artillery isn't typical Catachan Doctrine, but they can use it effectively if required.

Plus, there were plenty of photos of Catachans next to artillery in the 5th and 6th ed codecies - if I find them I shall add them here

Thanks for the info folks! I appreciate all the excellent input. It all makes sense to me and I plan on going forward with a Catachan themed artillery company. I think it will be a lot of fun.

Thanks again!

No worries friend, hope you have what you need now

Here's an official Catachan Basilisk if you haven't found it already - hopefully you'll find it useful:

Look, it even has a heavy flamer mount, so you can burn those commi- oh I mean Tyranid Genestealers out of the jungle!

As Catachans are the Not-Vietnam/Korean War soldiers and we used to shell the gak out of areas before advancing, sure. Take some mortars and basilisks. Totes fluffy.

 General Annoyance wrote:
No worries friend, hope you have what you need now

Here's an official Catachan Basilisk if you haven't found it already - hopefully you'll find it useful:

Look, it even has a heavy flamer mount, so you can burn those commi- oh I mean Tyranid Genestealers out of the jungle!

Just so you know; that's an image from the main GW webstore.

The reason it has a Heavy Flamer mount? Because the Basilisk kit uses a new Chimera frame and a Tank Accessories sprue(the only current GW tank kit that comes with it still); which does NOT include the Heavy Bolter mount part. It only includes a heavy flamer as part of the Tank Accessories sprue, since the new Chimera kit's heavy bolter is mounted on the same frame as the upper hull that isn't included.

 General Annoyance wrote:
Typical and well known Imperial Guard regiments dispatched from their homeworld will have to know how to operate all the equipment available to them so that they can be outfitted for any combat scenario. Artillery isn't typical Catachan Doctrine, but they can use it effectively if required.

The IG fluff for actual organization is, simply put, a complete mess. One theme that stays constant is that most regiments (Tempestus aside) are recruited on a single world. The more "realistic" fluff, such as Imperial Armor books, usually makes it clear that any given planet may raise multiple different types of regiments. Most famously, Armageddon has the Steel Legion regiments, the Ork Hunter regiments, the Hive Gang regiments, and the PDF forces. The 5th edition codex floated the idea that each world only raises a single combat arm for tithed regiments (infantry, armored, artillery, etc) to diminish any given planet's ability to revolt. That's pretty patently not the case for the more famous worlds, as Cadians, Tallarn, and Steel Legion all use a full array of combat arms in the fluff.

That all said, what we know about Catachan is that it's a resource poor world, that produces waves of natural soldiers. The world is tough, but they also have a strong collective tradition that emphasizes teamwork for survival. It's also heavily implied that Catachan sends out a lot of regiments. One codex explicitly stated that the only real resource on the planet are it's soldiers. I don't think that all Catachan regiments are pure light infantry jungle fighters, if only because you simply don't need that many of that specialty. I'm also not certain that all Catachans are jungle fighting experts. to analogize to a historical example of a resource poor state that fought in a specific environment, the Finns won in the winter war in part because they were better able to use snowy terrain to their advantage, but while they had plenty of woodscrafty ski troopers, they also relied on fairly basic infantry that was used very well. I would imagine that some, or even many, Catachans are hardcore jungle fighters, but the rest are really tough, flexible light infantry.

There is fluff that Catachan regiments will pick up armor and/or artillery when operating as more normal infantry. You'd probably never see a Catachan armored division, but if you look at both actual history (see Free French and Polish forces in WWII) and the fluff that indicates the wide cultural and language differences between regiments, it makes more military sense for even Catachan Regiments to have organic armored and artillery support.

I reckon the most fluffy artillery that the Catachans would use is proe wyverns and manticores more than anything. Wyverns becuase they would shred through treetop canopies and are a nice close range support artillery. The manicore probably because it has a very good scorched earth feel to it with cluster rockets and large range.

Overall there's no reason they wouldn't use it if they felt it necessary to the mission. And friendly fire by artillery is probably one of the most common form of it due to accidental locks onto vox signals (I hear the commisars like to broadcast their speeches a lot)

 Kanluwen wrote:

Just so you know; that's an image from the main GW webstore.

The reason it has a Heavy Flamer mount? Because the Basilisk kit uses a new Chimera frame and a Tank Accessories sprue(the only current GW tank kit that comes with it still); which does NOT include the Heavy Bolter mount part. It only includes a heavy flamer as part of the Tank Accessories sprue, since the new Chimera kit's heavy bolter is mounted on the same frame as the upper hull that isn't included.

Yup, that's where I took it from as evidence that Catachan Artillery exists

Good to know that, but I was mainly making a pretty crap joke rather than actually commenting on the composition of the model

@Polonius - Of course regiments from different worlds will have different specialities, and most of them will be categorised into a specific type (like Steel Legion having many mechanised regiments), but most of them will be expected to be able to change roles if they are given equipment that they usually do not use, or adopt tactics that they would not normally use (such as the Tallarn regiment that attacked a Chaos Space Marine position as light infantry because their vehicles were not given any fuel)

 Engine of War wrote:
I've always imagined Catachan Artillery like the Firebases in Vietnam. This hill that has been flattened (via bomb or even more artillery!) and then built into a base with artillery.


Speaking of bombing a spot to make room for a firebase.... I wonder if there is a 40k version of the Daisy Cutter Bomb? Or a MOAB?.... Just a giant bomb shoved out the back of a Valk or some big aircraft used to clear an area.

You mean like that big scud missile on the back of a chimera?

I think they also have their own version of agent orange too IIRC or i might just be thinking of life eater virus or that one anti MC poison shell.

 General Annoyance wrote:
@Polonius - Of course regiments from different worlds will have different specialities, and most of them will be categorised into a specific type (like Steel Legion having many mechanised regiments), but most of them will be expected to be able to change roles if they are given equipment that they usually do not use, or adopt tactics that they would not normally use (such as the Tallarn regiment that attacked a Chaos Space Marine position as light infantry because their vehicles were not given any fuel)

Exactly. One thing I never really thought about until today is that 40k's rules, models, and fluff all trend hard to the "hero" regiments. There's a well known phenomenon in historical gaming (and reenacting) where elite, unusual, or famous units are dramatically overrepresented compared to the "line" units that did the vast majority of the fighting and dying. Go to a WWII gaming event, and you'll see almost as many Ranger or Commando armies as you will Rifle companies. You can find more Fallschrimjaeger models on the market than you can find Hungarian, Romanian, or even Italian models, despite those nations having far more men under arms than the German Airborne.

So, I think 40k somewhat wisely focused the IG, not on the "typical" or line regiment, but on the hero or elite regiments. For IG, more so than any other army, every company is a "special snowflake," and the fluff is far more malleable to allow both for elite, specialized formations, and very precise combined armes detachments.

In reality, nobody would want to play force from the 97th Generica Regiment, as it would be a CCS, maybe one commissar, and then just waves of infantry squads with maybe a special or heavy weapon, conscripts, and a few heavy weapon teams. That's not a fun army to play, that's just target practice.

tbh it catachan tank regiments exist.... I'm sure Artillery regiments do too!

 Desubot wrote:
I think they also have their own version of agent orange too IIRC or i might just be thinking of life eater virus or that one anti MC poison shell.

No, you're right. It's called antiplant.
Mind you, using antiplant to clear a landing zone just doesn't feel as Catachan as Really Big Explosives.

On topic: I can imagine that a disproportionately large proportion of Catachan regiments are light infantry. However, under-strength regiments are often merged with other under-strength regiments. It would be entirely possible for a Catachan regiment (one with plenty of light infantry) to be merged with an artillery regiment from a similar world. After a few months, the troops could be indistinguishable.

There's also the matter of attrition. A possible scenario:
Get 3 Catachan brigades. They're Catachan, so they might have the same number of artillery pieces as two brigades of non-Catachan forces would have.
Throw 3 brigades into a campaign.
Wait a few months. The light infantry might have suffered proportionately higher losses than the artillery - the latter is further behind the lines, and the local orks think that "counter-battery fire" is a type of fruit. The result? One brigade's worth of Catachan light infantry, but with nearly enough artillery support as 3 Catachan brigades (or two regular brigades). Voila, an artillery-heavy Catachan brigade.