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Hey guys. Been on a bit of a burn out from 40k for a few months while I gorged on grand strategy games, reading A Song of Ice and Fire etc. and just being really interested in the feudal system and how it worked. So do you think it is plausible to base a 40k army and its tactics / fluff on the structure of a medieval army? For instance: (a really brief draft for understanding)

Feudal Levy Structure: Purpose:

Lord Commanders / Marshalls Command, tacticians, presence

Light Infantry Skirmish / Harrass / Delay Advance / Screen Heavy Infantry
Heavy Infantry Tight Formation Fighting / protect LI or Bowmen

Bowmen Ranged defensive / offensive fire
Horse Archers Constant harassment / flank attacks

Light Cavalry Harrass / Rout infantry
Heavy Cavalry Break through infantry formations



What armies do you think would suit this? Space marines come to mind for me, but also Imperial Guard, which could probably be a conversion for an actual Imperial Feudal World or something.

Anyway, thoughts?

A feudal levy army? I think you mean:


Arrogant HQ with elitist bodyguard

A few heavy cavalry/elite troops

A whole lot of under-equipped foot soldiers


What 40K army? Chaos Space Marines. With 75% of the army being cultists.

IG or Chaos (With cultists).

The IG codex talks about how EVERY planet in the imperium, no matter how big or small, or how technologically advanced needs to give troops over every year for the guard. Some of them ARE medieval or barbarian worlds who put forth guys wearing chainmail and swinging axes around.

You could very easily make a "counts as Guard" army with medieval looking models.

Lord Commanders / Marshalls
-Lord Commisar
-Creed/Straken?
-High Ranking CCS officer

Light Infantry Skirmish
-Ratlings
-Penal Legion
-PIS


Heavy Infantry
-Grenadier Vets
-Stormtroopers


Bowmen
-Heavy Weapons teams
-Special Weapon Squads
-Ratlings?

Light Cavalry
- Easy. ROUGH RIDERS! (Make sure to bring Kamir)

Heavy Cavalry
-LEMAN RUSS BATTLE TANK.



You could fluff the gak out of a gaurd list. They lend themselves the best to "roleplay" armies if only for their flexibility.

Yeah but no so boring and one sided as having 75% of your army being cannon fodder :L that's the type of 1 dimensional 40k army I am trying to get away from. An army that Is more like multiple flanks and formations working together to beat an opponent through tactics and formation, not just "lel I I spam you huehuehue"


Automatically Appended Next Post:
That ig looks really good for it, will start looking at some bits

Black Templars? maybe with IG ally for the light infantry part? BT is basically Teutonic Knights in space to begin with.

Can you do it? In theory, yes. I suppose if you really want to you can make a themed list as long as you don't care about ever winning games with it.

Should you do it? No. Medieval army concepts are best used with fantasy/historical games where formations are important, movement rules involve careful planning to get those formations into position at the right time, flanking and direction of attack matter, melee combat dominates so that screening units are useful, etc. Those things just aren't true in 40k. Instead of formations and careful planning you have free-form groupings of models and movement rules that let you just move directly from A to B, direction of attack is irrelevant, the game is dominated by shooting between units that have no interest in charging, etc. Your strategies and "theme" unit choices aren't going to be appropriate and you aren't really going to be able to play the kind of of game you have in mind. What you're really going to have is a bunch of "theme" units that get massacred by a proper 40k army.

I would recommend counts-as Dark Angels allied with Imperial Guard. Historically, most feudal forces consisted of the local Lord, his retinue, and a small force of professional men-at-arms. Peasant levies were only brought to bear in large conflicts, and only for a limited amount of time - troops could not sustain themselves forever. Why not go with a Dark Angels chapter consisting of Knights (Terminators or Bikers, depending on if you want mounted men or not) and a handful of Scouts (representing the men-at-arms). Your levy could just have a blob of IG representing local recruits.

In fluff terms, just say your fellows are on a feudal death world - not unlike the original DA planet - and the best men (who are often nobles trained from birth to fight) are inducted into the chapter. When the chapter faces a serious threat, they might raise regiments from the local PDF (your peasants in this case) to help them out.

In game terms, you could very easily have a solid hammer and anvil strat - a blob of IG sitting with a 'Marshal' (or Lord Commissar) on an objective, while your flashy knights roam around and smack things.

In modeling terms, just make your chapter look feudal, work in some Empire or Grey Knight bits, and there you go. You might hit an awkward overlap between game and fluff at times, but that's your call. Power lance biker sarges might look awesome and be baller as hell, but might not work the best.

Gafencu wrote:
I would recommend counts-as Dark Angels allied with Imperial Guard. Historically, most feudal forces consisted of the local Lord, his retinue, and a small force of professional men-at-arms. Peasant levies were only brought to bear in large conflicts, and only for a limited amount of time - troops could not sustain themselves forever. Why not go with a Dark Angels chapter consisting of Knights (Terminators or Bikers, depending on if you want mounted men or not) and a handful of Scouts (representing the men-at-arms). Your levy could just have a blob of IG representing local recruits.

In fluff terms, just say your fellows are on a feudal death world - not unlike the original DA planet - and the best men (who are often nobles trained from birth to fight) are inducted into the chapter. When the chapter faces a serious threat, they might raise regiments from the local PDF (your peasants in this case) to help them out.

In game terms, you could very easily have a solid hammer and anvil strat - a blob of IG sitting with a 'Marshal' (or Lord Commissar) on an objective, while your flashy knights roam around and smack things.

In modeling terms, just make your chapter look feudal, work in some Empire or Grey Knight bits, and there you go. You might hit an awkward overlap between game and fluff at times, but that's your call. Power lance biker sarges might look awesome and be baller as hell, but might not work the best.

Guardians of the Covenant (DA successor) have their chapter fortress on the fuedal world of Mortikah VII.

I thought a little about this a while back - my idea was to build a list based roughly on Eastern Roman Empire armies, with a focus on heavy cavalry. One thing you'll have to accept is that 40k is primarily a shooting game, so you're going to have to get a lot more done with shooting than an historical feudal army did. Here are two possibilities:

1. Grey Knights codex.

Coteaz to unlock henchmen as light infantry. Storm bolters on them, so they might actually have an in-game effect. Now that you can have allies, you might replace with Guard.

Terminators or paladins as heavy infantry.

Interceptors as medium cavalry.

Dreadnoughts as artillery.

Dreadknights (with teleporter) as heavy cavalry. Might use teleporting terminators or paladins, too.


2. Space Wolves codex.

Canis Wolfborn as the lord.

Dire Wolves as skirmishers/light cavalry.

Grey Hunters as medium-heavy infantry.

Thunderwolves as heavy cavalry.

Think your best bet would be any Inquisition army. You can literally build it just about any way you want to.

The Tyrant's Legion army list from the Badab War books is exactly what you are describing. A few elite space marines leading a bunch of chumps with stub guns and heavy stubbers.

Merclock wrote:
Yeah but no so boring and one sided as having 75% of your army being cannon fodder :L that's the type of 1 dimensional 40k army I am trying to get away from. An army that Is more like multiple flanks and formations working together to beat an opponent through tactics and formation, not just "lel I I spam you huehuehue"


Automatically Appended Next Post:
That ig looks really good for it, will start looking at some bits

Possibly Eldar might work here. They may not have the feel you are looking for, but they are an army of specialist that survive by applying the right unit in the right place. Dark Eldar might work too, but to a lesser extent than Eldar (although their codex is LEAGUES more powerful)

If you want to run formations in 40K and actually have some level of benefit to counter the sheer drawbacked-ness of it then you want DA w/ IG allies.

Heavy calvary charge? Try a land raider crusader with company command squad and libby in it with the 4++ 3" bubble. This can combine with tanks for a "heavy calvary" or with either ravenwing attack bike (with banner of devastation) or black knights (with banner of fortitude) for "light calvary". You will want to know something about moving in formation to maximize the banner/4++ bubble on the surrounding elements.

Want light foot run an IG platoon kitted out with azreal in it you will have 50+ guys with 4++ saves it is a little like a tercio, cept with flashlights, i.e. moves like a glacier hits like an avalanche. You could even model them as peasant militia. Not to mention IG have actual conscript units, talk about feudal war machine.

Finally deathwing knights are literally the only 40K unit that I know of that actually benefit from being in a base to base formation. You can put them in a phalanx and the rules actually reflect this.

Tyrant's legion is also not a bad list for this idea however it has it's own issues with being FW and thereby being a expensive book+not universally accepted. Cool list though.

If you really want semi-accurate Feudal Levy systems, you should play Crusader Kings II (There's a Song of Ice and Fire mod for it as well).

If you want to try to accomplish it in 40k, a lot of what you need to do is flavor your units and unit choices correctly. Having a lot of cultists can mimic a hastily gathered untrained peasant horde, but some of the more interesting aspects of a feudal army is that it's not a national army like we conceive of armies today: it's an amalgamation of several separate groups of fighting men, each owing allegiance to a lord, who owes allegiance to higher lords, and brought together by one dude at the top. The guy at the top is in command of the whole army, but is not really 'in command' of any one group other than his own bodyguard.

So how do we do this in 40k? We need to have an army that can have multiple 'feudal leaders,' have the capability for personalization and different units with differing capabilities. Ideally we'd like close combat, to further mimic the honor and chivalry that would govern the behaviors of many of the leaders.

I'd say that you want to go with Chaos Space Marines. You already have a lot of the structures -- a lord that commands respect over a disparate fighting force, champions that must 'challenge' for their 'honor' in glorious combat, untrained peasant 'cultist' forces, units that actually want to get into close combat. You'd probably want a Chaos Lord as your HQ, and several differentiated units of power armored dudes. This calls for not spamming Plague Marines, but having say, one unit of plagues, and some units of differently marked CSM. Kit out your aspiring champions to make them win combat, and make each one of them have flavor, and command them in different ways, according to their personalities.

This isn't quite tactics as in 'how to win,' but as in 'how to play your army in a certain style.' It's possible to pull it off, and possible to make an effective-ish army with it.