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Has there ever been an option to play a rogue trader army? I understand that rogue trader can command fleets and lead some level of war or crusade

Take Inquisition and then a bunch of Scions and fliers. Bam, done.

In 2nd edition a Rogue Trader was an HQ option and they could be armed with pretty much anything you wanted. Mine had a bright lance and power armour

They can be recreated by any imperial.force you want.

Annoyingly the three actual Rogue Traders with rules don't share useful keywords with anybody.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Annoyingly the three actual Rogue Traders with rules don't share useful keywords with anybody.

Who are they?

It’s funny cos rogue trader has been there from the start. They would be really fun for narrative play

Depending on the edition you could use Inquisitor rules as a fairly close approximation. I would just deny yourself psyker upgrades.

You can make a Vanguard out of the Elucidean Starstriders. Elucia Vhane is an HQ choice; she has a tech character, a medic and an assassin, which are all elites, as well as a squad of voidsmen, which are troops. Altogether, they add up to 15 PL. They can ally with other Imperial The even have 8 bespoke strats. As per battle brothers rules, this detachment can ally with other Imperial detachments without forgoing Battle-forged status, though it would break monofaction bonuses.

Unfortunately though, the Starstriders are the only group that has this option. Like Vhane, Janus Draik Neyam Shai Murad are both HQ, but they don't have a keyword that gives them access to retinue the way she does, and only Rogue Traders have the Astra Cartographica keyword.

It's also worth noting that there are no rules for generic Rogue Traders, so "counts as" is your only option if you want to make your own.

Also worth mentioning that Kill Team: Rogue Trader is no longer available- and that's the Starstriders. Now that Blackstone has ended, Janus and Neyam are on the chopping block.

Most casual players wouldn't mind letting you create a Team keyword for Janus or Neyam and extending that keyword to a handful of units so you could build and army.

But the best thing GW could do to solve these problems is release an Imperial Agents dex that include the named characters as well as a generic Rogue Trader. A range to support it would be nice too. A generic box of henchmen that could be used as Rogue Trader or Inquisitorial retinues.

Over on Bolter and Chainsword, there was a special project for Rogue Traders in Kill Team, and they've created an amazing PDF book. That's Kill Team, not 40k, but it should scratch an itch.

There isnt a good way to represent a Rouge Trader in standard 40k.

You can play them in Kill team however, as thats what you would see from a RT anyway.

A small elite force, dropping down to a world to loot something.

A real rouge trader would have no more than 150 personel drop down to a planet in most situations. If they ever needed more than that, they would hire a merc group and drop them down or call the imperium or mechanicus to do something.


Most live their lives aboard their own starship, visiting distant ports in search of info on treasures they can unearth or bounties they can collect.

Their crews are the most diverse cast in the Imperium, often having a wayward xenos or even an Adeptus Astartes who have lost their clan/chapter and were convinced to stick it out with the only person who could support them and give them a life.

You're underestimating how big 40k starships are and the kind of armies they carry. Rogue traders sometimes do have a hefty army and invade worlds, not just a maximum of a mere 150 troops.

The 1st edition RT book happily put rogue traders in command of small fleets, with "a typical retinue would be an entire company of Space Marines (100 warriors) plus two companies of ordinary imperial troops all with standard vehicles and auxiliary equipment."

Most of the time Rogue Traders aren't in range of Imperium or Mechanicus support. Their job is to be out on the fringes, even out of range of the Astronomicon. They're functionally independent warlords, under contract to bring back anything of value to the Imperium, or even conquer worlds if they can.

mrFickle wrote:
Has there ever been an option to play a rogue trader army? I understand that rogue trader can command fleets and lead some level of war or crusade

One of the first army lists ever in 40k back in 1st editions days.

Rules are fairly weak for the few named characters we now have

People who become Rogue Traders are already high ranking imperial officials like Lords General, Cardinals, and Admirals. After they become rogue traders they continue most of their activities but now on a freelance basis. Just like... real imperialists... they are going to do things like find human societies and convert some combination of the people and the government to following the imperial creed. they’re doing this, once again like real imperialists, to get real material gains for themselves and the Imperial interests who fund them.

Ships and armies need someone to invest in them. The rogue traders get this investment from places like the Ministorum, Administratum and Mechanicus, and the lesser adepta like the Navis Nobilite, the Sororitas orders, the navy, etc.

Commanding marines isn’t just from the ‘80s and ‘90s either. In codex: space marines the Ultramarines Captain Idaeus and fifty marines including terminators are under the nominal command of rogue trader Santez Krave, and in the Imperial Armor Badab books the Marines Errant have a company attached to rogue trader Ecale.

The imperium isn’t capitalist, rogue traders aren’t just some import/export merchants. They’re like the East India companies of Britain or the Netherlands, or the hundreds of other companies set up to colonize Asia and the americas. They have their own private armies that use troops trained in the regular state forces, and they occupy huge swathes of land to force the people there to 1. Work for them for wages instead of working for their own country and 2. Buy (Imperium of Man) goods instead of making their own stuff.

mrFickle wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Annoyingly the three actual Rogue Traders with rules don't share useful keywords with anybody.

Who are they?

It’s funny cos rogue trader has been there from the start. They would be really fun for narrative play

There's Janus Draik from Blackstone Fortress, Neyam Shai Murad from Blackstone Fortress: Escalation and Combat Arena, and Elucia Vhane from Kill Team: Rogue Trader.

There was an army list for Rogue Traders back in 40k 1st edition (aka the "rogue trader" edition).

It allowed you to have Imperial Guard (army at the time) and marine units in your employ, as well as other units - like squats.
Marines on jetbikes or motorbikes, land speeder units, land raider units.

mrFickle wrote:
Has there ever been an option to play a rogue trader army? I understand that rogue trader can command fleets and lead some level of war or crusade

Sadly about your only option right now is to take IG (or Sisters, for more advanced retinue) book, model of Rogue Trader, and count it as a HQ from these books or use Inquisitor datasheet. Why GW insists on dumb 1:1 mini to rules ratio, I have no idea, they would sell a ton more if they opened them up...

 Irbis wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
Has there ever been an option to play a rogue trader army? I understand that rogue trader can command fleets and lead some level of war or crusade

Sadly about your only option right now is to take IG (or Sisters, for more advanced retinue) book, model of Rogue Trader, and count it as a HQ from these books or use Inquisitor datasheet. Why GW insists on dumb 1:1 mini to rules ratio, I have no idea, they would sell a ton more if they opened them up...

What do you mean by 1:1 mini to rules ratio?

They don't produce rules for something for which they have no model.

It's part of the fallout from their last legal gakstorm with Chapterhouse Studios that saw them lose about half of their absurd copyrights claims.
Yes, they "won" by shutting CHS down, but this was also the key thing that made them change ALL of their army names, all of their paint names, etc and made them switch to a "no model, no rules" policy.

Why does Burke Carter and a band of USMC marines come to mind when I contemplate this?

It could be done, especially in the dark millennium setting.,

Think about it: Cadia go BOOM!, imperium goes bye bye for a lot of the galaxy, terror, panic, breakdown of authority and of course literal chaos spreads. Planets collapse, anarchy reigns. Imperial forces are cut off from command and resupply. Dogs and cats living together....

What if the only organized, well armed and used to operating outside imperial authority power left were rogue trader forces?

Maybe they might step into the power vacuum with brute force and organize some sort of system to keep chaos and xenos at bay?

You could have rogue trader fiefdoms and kingdoms based around large, power RT vessels that had considerable forces onboard.

Maybe they can keep food moving and are therefore the de facto powers in some regions.

A rt army might be a real pot luck affair. Imperial guard forces, adeptus arbites and even militia forces might be common. You could have mercenaries like kroot or blood axe commandos. Maybe even the eldar don;t what chaos taking root in these sectors for their own reasons and offer aid. the tau empire might send in aid to prevent more dangerous powers rising, seeing the RT lords as better than alternatives. Hell, maybe the rogue traders were doing business with the tau before things went to hell, well, further into hell.

A rt army could be fun, with all sorts of forces in one army. You could have special detachment rules for xenos forces, maybe they can't come within 12" of the main RT army, mostly human, or Ld roles have to be made to prevent "unfriendly fire" incidents. Maybe limits on detachment forces as eldar will not fight alongside orks of even on thew same side.



Of course you could waterboard GW's suits till you emptied an ocean and not get them to do official rules for an army that would use existing models not new ones. (For the overly sensitive, that was a joke and not an actual call for torturing gw's suits. It 's just a joke about how absolutely incapable of doing rules that aren't written to make them more money they are.)

mrFickle wrote:
What do you mean by 1:1 mini to rules ratio?

The fact that squads from side games can only ever be taken as that exact squad from that game, and a single one only. It would actually be possible to make Rogue Trader army if the armsmen squad was generic (5-10 models, 1 model can take special weapon) but what they did is a single unique unit with number of models and guns exactly like in the box, no deviations...

Are there any stories about rogue traders turning to chaos