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Has there ever been a rogue trader army? We've heard of rogue traders with entire flets of ships, icm imagine some of them could field a few thousand points of armies easily.

A rogue trader army could have xenos mercenaries, imperial guard renegades, some chaos forces, and who knows what else, in addition to the regular forces of a rogue trader, armed crewmen with boarding weapons and armor in addition to anti boarding forces.

Officers in power armor? Why not?

A rogue trader could mass up a pretty sizeable and varied fighting force, icm surprised we donct see rouge trader armies.

I believe they're called soup these days, but without the fluff....

I think there's rules allowing you to field the contents of the Kill Team: Rogue Trader box as a detachment.

The purpose of Rogue traders is to go outwith the imperium and trade with people and xenos and explore.
On a more personal level their purpose is to maintain or improve their families position and wealth.

Taking part in long drawn out war's is rarely profitable business when your the one paying the bills.

Much better to do a bit of show of force and throw some cash around to get what tou want. It also makes it much easier to comeback and get more should they prove to be more valuable than you thought.

The Elucidian Starstriders from Kill Team: Rogue Trader can be used in 40K. I don't know if you can reuse any of them or if they are characters (I haven't gone too in-depth in that codex/index). But, if you were to buy several of that same Kill Team, you could, in theory, put together probably a 1000 point Rogue Trader army.

SG

The starstriders are all 1/army so you can only really get a couple of hundred points out of them. Its pretty flavourful to run various imperium units like scions and inquisition with them though

Most armies with some humans in them can be rogue trader armies. Most of the time they start out inside the imperial hierarchy including military officers, and then the Imperium tells them to keep it up but go freelance. They’re not just merchants they’re like incubators for wars of conquest, they’re conquistadors. they go out and see what there is to be exploited or taken by force. Former priests do it by becoming freelance missionaries, former lords general do it by becoming freelance generals. They can acquire campaign length command of proper Imperial forces at the strength of multiple regiments of guard or a company of marines.

pelicaniforce wrote:
They can acquire campaign length command of proper Imperial forces at the strength of multiple regiments of guard or a company of marines.

Source for this last bit?

Seraf wrote:

pelicaniforce wrote:
They can acquire campaign length command of proper Imperial forces at the strength of multiple regiments of guard or a company of marines.

Source for this last bit?

Way back to Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader. Space marine commanders could be Rogue Traders, and a typical retinue of a Rogue Trader could include a company of space marines (pg 170)

Just another entry which could be included in a proper Imperial Agents or Agents of the Imperium army (which could consolidate a heap of random Imperium stuff).

 John Prins wrote:

Seraf wrote:

pelicaniforce wrote:
They can acquire campaign length command of proper Imperial forces at the strength of multiple regiments of guard or a company of marines.

Source for this last bit?

Way back to Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader. Space marine commanders could be Rogue Traders, and a typical retinue of a Rogue Trader could include a company of space marines (pg 170)

I don't think that's a thing anymore.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

Seraf wrote:

pelicaniforce wrote:
They can acquire campaign length command of proper Imperial forces at the strength of multiple regiments of guard or a company of marines.

Source for this last bit?

Way back to Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader. Space marine commanders could be Rogue Traders, and a typical retinue of a Rogue Trader could include a company of space marines (pg 170)

I don't think that's a thing anymore.

1) Well, I can pretty much make it with 8es SOUP rules.
2) Nothing says the army I make has to represent the "Now".
3) If you want I can make up some fluff about how my RT with a contingent of SM aboard/commanded by a SM got lost in the warp & have just now returned to the current 40k year.

So yeah, still a thing.

Seraf wrote:

pelicaniforce wrote:
They can acquire campaign length command of proper Imperial forces at the strength of multiple regiments of guard or a company of marines.

Source for this last bit?

Imperial Armour 9, from 2010.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
the covenant that the Marines errant have in that book is formed in M38 so it’s not a relic of way back in the scouring era, it’s a modern practice. There just isn’t a rogue trader codex so they don’t write about it, like they don’t write about the Orders Pronatus or the Scholastika Psykana

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

Seraf wrote:

pelicaniforce wrote:
They can acquire campaign length command of proper Imperial forces at the strength of multiple regiments of guard or a company of marines.

Source for this last bit?

Way back to Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader. Space marine commanders could be Rogue Traders, and a typical retinue of a Rogue Trader could include a company of space marines (pg 170)

I don't think that's a thing anymore.

Maybe not, but making a problematic Space Marine Captain/Chapter Master into a Rogue Trader is just giving him a license to feth up xenos with his own, personal fleet. Good for getting him out of your area of space, at least. Go Rogue Trader OVER THERE!

But the Rogue Trader RPG also mentions that sometimes Space Marines assist Rogue Trader expeditions, so there's that.

Except the IA one they all look like old sources that I'm not sure are still official canon (of course everyone is free to make their own).

BTW my doubt is mostly about Rogue Traders having command on Astartes... That looks like too much of a stretch. On the other hand, Astartes in a rogue trader's expedition? Sure, but I don't think the rogue trader's will have any power on them.

I don't think a problematic space marine, whatever his grade, will be given the rogue trader title either. For those cases they have crusades.

There are three rogue trader models currently in print and all 3 are HQ choices, but that doesn't matter, since their Faction Keywords are Imperium and Astra Cartagraphica and none of them have any special exemption to the battle brothers rule. This means you can put all three in the same Supreme Command detachment, but it's literally the only detachment you can make with Janus Drake or Neyam Shai Murad since there are no other units with the Astra Cartographica faction Keyword.

Elucia Vhane has the Euclidian Starstriders Faction Keyword, and there are 4 other units with this trait: 3 elite characters and one 5 man + 1 dog troops choice. This means you can field the Starstriders as a Vanguard; Elucia has a warlord trait that gives her +3 command points, so if you field this Vanguard Detachment, you can get 4 CP out of it, and they even have 8 strategems.

If you field the Vanguard, however, there are not enough Astra Cartographica Models left to form the Supreme Command detachment, which means there is no way to field all 3 rogue traders and Elucia's retinue in the same army.

Either the Supreme HQ or the Starstrider Vanguard can be in the same army as any other Imperial detachment, which means that strictly on the level of game mechanics, it is absolutely possible to field either of these Rogue Trader detachments in armies with Space Marines and Imperial Guard and yes, you could even choose to make the Rogue Trader you warlord.

From my perspective, the limitations are kinda problematic. But GW has fixed the Battle Brothers rule for Assassins and Sisters of Silence; I suspect they'll fix it for the Inquisition in next month's Dwarf.

In fact, I am really hoping that they'll go further on the Inquisition. I'm hoping for at least 1 relic and 4 strats for each Ordo; rules to include them in armies of their respective chambers militant, either as allies, in which case they don't interfere with or benefit from the unit's chapter tactic equivalent, or as commanders, in which case they add the Ordo Keyword to all of the units of their respective chambers militant.

If they do that, then I can anticipate future WD articles will cover the same sort of updates for Rogue Traders. The reason the Starstriders have effective faction rules is that they were packaged as an established team. The BSF characters, however, were released as individuals, which would come to form a sort of kill team over the course of the game, despite a lack of shared keywords.

If Rogue Traders were updated in either WD or an Imperial Agents Dex, I suspect that GW would make a Starstrider type team out The BSF explorers and the Escalation explorers. I say this is likely because it is exactly what they did in the original Imperial Agents Data Sheet Download. I haven't check the updated download that just came out today; I'm kind of afraid to, because if the Imperial Agents Data Cards have been significantly changed, or outright removed, it could shatter my dreams of having 3 small Rogue Trader factions that could be fielded as kill teams or small but fully realized 40k detachments. I'd also like to see Rogue Trader become a Faction Keyword, rather than just a Keyword. Even if they did just that, and gave it to all the Starstriders as well as the Rogue Traders themselves, I'd be happy.

Pesonally, now that retinue models are a thing in Blackstone, I'm building kill teams for most of my Blackstone Models, but they have to recruit each kill team member in a custom BSF missions before they can form a team. Rauss and Rein can lead other Ratlings or just plain old guard; there's lots of Admech in the various boxes, as well as some Ministorum. Picture Taddeus, Pious Vorne, three arcos, a Mistress and four repentia? Pretty fly as a vanguard or a kill team.

You'd have to house rule Locarno, Drake and Murad to get them retinues that could be fielded as detachments, but I'm a campaign guy, so I can do that :-)