Rebel Fleets

The Rebel fleet rules attempts to model what this fleet will look like and play on the board. Large ships are hard to come by. Older ships are brought out of mothballs, cleaned of any chaotic taint, and pressed into service. A certain air of desperation clings to the whole enterprise. Playing a rebel list offers the opportunity of pulling ships from the history of the Imperium, but provides unique challenges of maintaining allied relationships and keeping your own people in line.

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Loyalty in the Imperium can sometimes be a commodity. For every sector that obediently sends its tithe to Holy Terra, there is another that ponders the question, “What’s in it for me?”

And every so often, disobedience blossoms into full fledged insurrection and piracy. After all, if everyone respected the Emperor, there would be no need for the Inquisition.

Sometimes, a Prince will decide it’s time to elevate himself. Or a Governor’s allegiance is no longer to the Imperium, but to himself. Naval officers of a sector will suddenly support their new masters or find themselves orbiting a planet without the benefit of a ship. The resulting fleet will be a motley collection of current ships of the line, auxiliaries, and anything that can be pressed into service from a once loyal sector.

Alliances will be made with less than savory characters. Ships will be pulled out of reserves, cleaned up and pressed gainfully into service. The biggest and best ships will be hard to come by, and will be closely guarded by the new government.

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Special Rules

Stalking Horse

Allied ships that are part of the fleet don’t have the same level of enthusiasm for the conflict as the rebels. If the Allied ship is crippled (taken half its points in damage) or the overall fleet has lost half its ships, it will begin to consider its options.

Every turn the ship is crippled, or the rebel fleet is at half of its point value or less, roll for leadership. If the roll succeeds, the allies will decide that the battle is no longer in their interest; they will either flee or attack.

Roll on the following table:
1-5: Flee the field - Discretion is the better part of valor, the ship will disengage by the most expedient means available.
6: Attack former comrades - The alliance has collapsed in a flurry of anger and recriminations. The ship will turn on its former allies. The allied ship is now under the control of the opposing player.

Paint isn’t Structural

Don’t feel obligated to maintain a coherent livery with a Rebel fleet. Rebels are not proud about where their ships come from, and are willing to take cast offs, hand-me-downs, or even, shall we say, less than legitimate channels of acquisition. The Arch-magos may complain, but sometimes we have to deploy a ship before all the appropriate consecration of paint has been applied.

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Leadership

Rebel Leader

You may include one Rebel Leader in your fleet, who must be assigned to the most expensive ship or squadron. If the fleet is worth 500 points or more it must include at least 1 Rebel Leader. Rebel Leaders spend a lot of time keeping their coalition together, and start with -2 leadership.

Rebel Leader +10 pts

The leader gets one re-roll. They can have more re-rolls for the additional cost noted below.

One extra re-roll +20 pts
Two extra re-rolls +40 pts

The vessel carrying the Leader has his personal protective force on board, and gets a +1 against hostile boarding actions. By the same token, it gets a -1 on boarding actions from the rebel ship.

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Ships

0-1 Battleship, Grand Cruiser, Battlecruiser or Heavy Cruiser

A fleet may include a single Battleship, Grand or Heavy Cruiser from either the Imperial or Chaos list. You may include this ship if you have at least 3 regular cruisers in the fleet.

This ship pulls leadership from the Rebel list.

O-1 Allied Ship

Rebels may make an alliance with a non-Imperial representative. You may include this ship if you have at least 3 regular cruisers in the fleet. The non-Imperial factions are:

• Eldar
• Tau
• Rogue Trader
• Chaos
• Ork Cyclops Cluster Fleet

The Allied ship may not use any of the fleet re-rolls. They are not restricted to nor benefit from the leadership values of the rebel fleet and must use the unmodified leadership from the fleet lists of their respective races.

This ship is under different command from the rest of the fleet, being allied. Because of that, this ship may take any marks or advantages that are typical of that race, and leadership is rolled as that race. Fleet rerolls may not be applied to this ship, and if this ship has rerolls it may not use them for other ships in the fleet.

This ship may not squadron with other ships of the fleet.

This ship is subject to the Stalking Horse rules

0-12 Cruisers

Tyrant Class Cruiser 185
Gothic Class Cruiser 180
Lunar Class Cruiser 180
Carnage Class Cruiser 180
Inferno Class Cruiser 180
Murder Class Cruiser 170
Slaughter Class Cruiser 165
Strike Cruiser 145
Endeavour Class Light Cruiser 110
Endurance Class Light Cruiser 110
Siluria Class Light Cruiser 100
Dauntless Class Light Cruiser 110

Escorts

At least half your fleet (in points) needs to be composed of escorts. You may include any number of escorts in your fleet in squadrons of 2-6. Ships should be squadroned by type, unless there are no others of that type, and then it may be squadroned with another.

Idolator class raider 45
Infidel class raider 40
Gladius class frigate 45
Firestorm class frigate 40
Sword class frigate 35
Havoc class frigate 35
Falchion class frigate 35
Hunter class destroyer 40
Cobra class destroyer 30
Iconoclast destroyer 30
Viper class destroyer 35

Ordinance

Any ship with launch bays may choose to have them launch any mix of Fury interceptors and Starhawk bombers. Some ships may carry Shark assault boats at an additional cost. Ships with torpedo tubes are armed with ordinary torpedoes.

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Campaign Rules

For campaigns, Rebel players are very similar to Imperial players.

Start with a sector. They can take advantage of Refits or Other as an appeal, but Reinforcements are limited to reflect their inability to call upon Imperial resources. Reinforcements are granted on a roll of 6. This represents the difficulty of producing or finding a replacement without the vast resources of the Empire of Man.

Eat the Rich

Rebel players have a campaign option to capture an enemy ship and add it to their roster.

In order to capture a ship, the Rebel ship must initiate what is essentially a specialized boarding action. The damage done by a boarding party is considered to be disabling a system rather than actually destroying it.

The Rebel player must declare that the attack is to disable rather than destroy. Systems that are disabled must be tracked differently than systems that are destroyed in a normal boarding action.

Disabled systems can be rerouted/repaired faster than normal damage. During the damage control phase, the player of a ship with disabled points is able to repair the ship with a d6 roll of 4+.

If a ship is reduced to 0 points, but has at least one disabled point, it is considered captured. The owning player may fire upon a captured ship. Any damage made on a captured ship will convert a disabled point to a destroyed point.

If a captured ship manages to leave the board or survive a conflict, it will be added to the Rebel’s player roster after it is repaired. The Rebel player must expend points to repair the ship, but only damage points. So if a ship has 5 points of damage and 3 points of disabled, only 5 points need to be repaired.