Signatures4

"Ambush!" is the one Regiment-Order Catachan adds to the Voice of Command menu, and the sharpest blade in it. When an officer issues this Order to a friendly fighter that is set up hidden, that fighter immediately reveals and makes a shooting or melee attack with +1 to Hit, ignoring the target's cover — the spring of the trap, resolved before the enemy can react. It is the reward for the Regiment's patience: the hidden killer, held in the terrain across half the battle, loosed at the exact moment it hurts most.

Where Cadia keeps the full generic Order menu, Catachan trades that breadth for this single knife-edge. A Catachan Captain carries two Orders a round and a Sergeant one; an "Ambush!" spent well guts a target the foe believed was safe, then leaves the rest of the gang still unseen and still waiting.

Born of the Jungle is the rule that makes Catachan the ambush it is named for. It is no new resource — no tokens, no pool — but the way the whole Regiment fights. At deployment, up to half the gang may set up hidden, placed in or behind terrain and left off the board until it acts or is revealed; while hidden, a fighter cannot be shot. The Catachan fighting knife, in the hand of any fighter who carries it, re-rolls a failed Wound roll against a target of Toughness 3 or less — the practised gutting-stroke of soldiers raised where everything bites back.

The Regiment leans its Voice of Command into the close kill rather than the massed volley. Its officers spend their Orders on "Fix Bayonets!" — a free charge and an extra Attack — and on the Regiment-Order "Ambush!", which springs a hidden fighter into a strike the enemy never saw form. Catachan does not direct a firing line. It closes, and it closes from the dark.

Aura of Discipline: while a Commissar — or the Company Commander — stands upon the field, the fear that would scatter a mortal line is held in check by the certainty of his authority. Friendly non-officers within 6" of him automatically pass Nerve tests and re-roll a failed Cool test, standing where an ordinary mob would break and run. This is not the buff economy of Orders but the raw discipline that keeps the expendable line in the fight. Once per battle the Commissar may perform a Summary Execution: a friendly within 3" that has just failed a Nerve or Cool test passes it instead — at the price of that fighter taking a Flesh Wound, the Emperor's mercy delivered as a las-round. When the Commissar falls, the discipline he enforced falls with him, and the courage of the men around him is once more their own.

Voice of Command: the Imperial Guard do not win fights by fighting — their officers win by making a hundred lasguns fire as one. During its activation, instead of shooting or fighting, any officer — a Leader or an officer-Champion — may issue one Order to a friendly non-officer within its command range, either its Initiative or a flat 9", extended to 18" by a vox-caster; a Company Commander, as the senior voice, may issue two. Line of sight or a vox link is required. The Order modifies that fighter's next action this round — a massed volley, a marked shot, a free move, a rally, concentrated fire, or a bayonet charge — and then it is spent. An officer cannot act and command in the same breath, nor bank an Order for later; a subordinate may carry only one at a time, and any Order unused at the end of the round is lost. Nothing accumulates. Kill the officers and the Orders stop the instant they fall.