Deathworlds - Codex: Catachans

 

The Codex: Catachans is one of those crazy things that Games Workshop did back in the days before the entire company was consumed by Matched Play and obsessed with being perfectly balanced. It's essentially what we would now call a Battlezone but disguised as a playable army. It's unique rules set essentially eliminates almost an entire phase of the army, and significantly changes another. Competitive players would go absolutely ape shit if they released something like this today.

But the really funny thing about this codex is that they then create a specific army, with brand new models and all, that is unaffected by this new Battlezone. I would love to have heard the Catachan player trying to convince their local game store to introduce more Deathworld missions into their repertoire.

The Rules:

The 9th edition updates:

I think we can pretty much use these rules straight out of the book, but there are some translations that need clarifications:

Replace skimmers with units with the FLY keyword. That's a pretty obvious one.

They dangerous terrain would give you a mortal wound on a 4+. Most rules like this are a 6+ in 9th edition, but I think deathworlds should be noticeably more brutal than just slippery ruins.

The vehicle rules are a little tricky. I'm thinking you roll for every 6" the vehicle moves and on a 6+ it takes d3 mortal wounds. I think it would be cool to make it even more risky and say on a 4+ it is immobilized, but that's not really a thing anymore in 9th edition. Units with the keyword TITANIC would be exempt from this.