Skills7

JUNGLE STALKER

This fighter has learned to become part of the terrain. It may set up hidden at the start of a battle, placed in or behind cover and left off the board; while hidden it cannot be shot or targeted. On the activation it chooses to break cover, it reveals to charge or shoot, and its first attack that activation is made with +1 to Hit — the ambush loosed from the dark. This is the killing edge of the death-world hunter: not the weight of the blow, but the certainty that the enemy never saw where it came from.

Dig In: the Guardsman's instinct is to get low and stay alive. If this fighter did not move during its activation, it counts as being in partial cover even while standing in the open, having gone to ground or scraped itself a hollow in the dirt. The skill turns patience into protection: a trooper who holds his position and refuses to be drawn forward is far harder to kill than one caught moving. It is the discipline of the entrenched line — hold the ground, present no easy target, and let the enemy come onto the guns.

Massed Fire: concentrated lasgun fire is more than the sum of its men. When this fighter and at least one friendly within 3" both shoot the same target, this fighter re-rolls a failed Hit — two guns trained on one foe finding the mark where one alone might miss. It rewards the Guard's native way of fighting: not the lone marksman but the firing line, bodies packed close and volleys layered until the target goes down. Sited among its squadmates and pointed at a shared target, an ordinary trooper's fire grows suddenly reliable.

Sergeant's Bark: the noise of an NCO holding the line by sheer volume. Once per round, when a friendly fighter within 6" of this fighter fails a Nerve or Cool test, that fighter may immediately re-test. It is a smaller, blunter discipline than a Commissar's aura — a hoarse shout that drags one wavering man back into the fight before he bolts — but it needs no officer's rank to use, and in a muster that fights in mortal bodies, one steadied trooper can hold a whole squad's corner of the line.

Steady Hands: the discipline of a veteran gunline passed to the crews around it. Friendly Heavy-Weapons Teams and Special-Weapons Troopers within 6" of this fighter may, once per round, treat their weapon as not Unwieldy, or ignore the penalty for moving and firing. It lets the muster's heaviest guns reposition and still put out fire, or loose the round they would otherwise have spent bracing. Around a steady hand an unwieldy weapon behaves — and the anvil of the Guard line keeps hammering even as it shifts.

Take the Objective: for the Guard, the mission comes before the man. This fighter re-rolls a failed Initiative or Cool test made to interact with an objective or to hold ground while an enemy is within 3" — steadying its hands over a demolition, a control panel or a held position when the fighting is close enough to break a lesser resolve. Where others waver at the decisive moment, a trooper with this discipline sees the task through, because the objective is what the muster was spent to take.

Voice of Command: this fighter has learned to command, not merely to obey. It gains the Voice of Command and may issue Orders exactly as an officer does, as described in the faction signature — a promoted veteran-Sergeant taking up the authority of the chain of command. During its activation, in place of its own shooting or melee action, it may issue one Order to a friendly non-officer within command range, buffing that fighter's next action before the Order is spent. The skill turns a rank-and-file veteran into another voice on the field, another source of the Orders that make a mob into an army.