The Grinding Advance is the doctrine that makes a Krieg gang unlike any other: casualties do not slow the attack — they are the attack. Krieg fighters never take Nerve tests, standing firm where another gang would waver, and the gang never makes Bottle checks, fighting on to the last man however many it has lost. There is no morale to break, because the regiment has already spent it. Layered onto the officers' Voice of Command, the doctrine leans their Orders toward forward movement — Move! Move! Move! and the falling mortar barrage — so that every round the line takes ground rather than holds it. The counterplay is simple and bleak: the enemy cannot rout the Korps, only kill it, and killing a gang built to be spent is slower work than it looks.
Signatures4
Into the Guns! is the one Order unique to the Korps on the Voice of Command menu, and it is exactly what its name promises. When an officer issues it, a single fighter — or a group of Conscripts within three inches of one another — makes an immediate free Move directly toward the nearest enemy and may shoot at the end of it, ignoring Pinning entirely as it goes. It turns the officers' authority into raw forward momentum, sending the masked ranks walking into fire that ought to stop them. It grants ground-taking and killing in one breath; its price is that it only ever points the Korps forward, into whatever is doing the shooting.
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.