Tactica Thursdays: 02 Battle-Forging our Kill Teams

Welcome back Rangers to our second installment of Tactica Thursdays, last time we discussed the movement phase. This week we are going to focus our attention on building a proper Command Roster.

What's in a Roster?

So you have a few games of kill team under your belt and you are feeling on top of the world, then you come up against something that is unexpected and you are not prepared for it. You actually may not have felt like that, but I will admit it took a while for the concept of the Command Roster to sink in myself. If you are playing matched play then you need to sit down and make a Command Roster for your Kill Team that is comprised of twenty models that are available to you. Points at this point don't matter because what you are doing is preparing for your next match, tournament or campaign. This is the time to make sure we have all of our grounds covered, but what exactly are all the different grounds to cover?

First thing we should look at is what kind of weapon options we have available to our specific army, if you are limited to a certain amount of gunners you should probably take all the different combinations of that model. I will use Dark Eldar for my example, the Kabalite Gunners are allowed to take either a Blaster or Shredder, and another one is allowed to take a Dark Lance or Splinter Cannon. We can only have two max gunners on the table when we play our match but that doesn't mean we can't have all four options in our Command Roster. This is one of my favorite parts of Kill Team so far, because it gives you options on how to deal with your opponent whoever it may be.

If we are dealing with a horde Kill Team, they will usually have average stats with low armor saves. A blaster and dark lance would pierce through them effectively, however it isn't as efficient as we would want it to be. The task better suited for the job would be the Splinter Cannon and Shredder combo that way we are shelling out more shots to potentially take out multiple units in one turn. In the reverse order if we are dealing with an elite Kill Team then we want those high strength, high damage outputs so that we can kill at least one unit a turn.

It's a Horde of Zombies!

Not only can we fill our Rosters with all the best toys that will come in handy for all different match ups we can think of, we should look at some of the combos we can deal with the Specialisms. You can only have three on the field at a time, but we could fill our roster out with only specialist. (Don't plan on winning much with 4 models) Some of the specialist often pair well with each other, such as Comms and either Sniper or Heavy, the plus one to hit with either of their natural perks are fantastic. Running a Veteran, Combat and Zealot for an in your face hit squad also sounds amazing, but it may not have full potential if it's just going to get shot off turn one by your opponents gun line.

There are going to be times when you just have bad match ups and having all the best options to deal with everything you can mitigate the damage to potentially help you achieve victory. Some armies with the more expensive guys will have an easier time building list, but if you rely on horde then sometimes you will have to really think about your specializations. I believe that you can find all the best synergies with a lot of though and experience in the game. Campaigns are a great way to balance between fun and somewhat competitive play, just make sure you only start off with twelve guys on your command roster.

Tactical Thursdays: 01 Kill Team Movement

Welcome back everyone, hope everyone is having a great week. This week has been very busy, building new terrain boards and continuing working on my Dark Eldar Kill Team who is still yet to be defeated in campaign! I am going to aim for a tactical article every Thursday to help everyone get their heads around all the different things that you can do to maximize your advantage on the board.

What's In The Phase

Movement is a pretty straight forward phase that isn't as exciting as other phases that make your opponent pick up models, however it is probably the most important phase. In Kill Team you roll initiative and the winner gets to move their models first, if you are playing with a shooting army this will give you the advantage of setting up firing lanes first. When you have to deploy in table quarters you should be thinking of moving as many models into the opposite quarter as possible to start maintaining board control. Moving second gives you the opportunity to move out of the firing lanes and set up to exploit a potential weakness.

There are a few different options each model has during the movement phase. They can advance which allows the unit to add a dice roll to their movement, this limits them from shooting with any weapon that isn't assault. Some armies have access to a lot of assault weapons and have high movement speeds, combining these two will result in a extremely high threat range. 

Any units that are in combat with the enemy may choose to fall back from combat, moving up to your maximum movement and at least an inch away from enemy models. Falling back is your screening unit's best friend, if they manage to live through a combat phase with the enemy, they can simply hop back and expose that pesky assaulter for you gun line to mow down. However, if your unit was charged this battle round he can not fall back.

You may find yourself with units that are exactly where they need to be, this is where you would want to ready them for shooting. Readying models get to shoot before any other non-readied units in the following shooting phase, even if your opponent has initiative and they moved all their models closer to you. A simple readying of your forces would let you shoot all those pesky vermin coming closer before they got to shoot.

Let's look at a few other rules about moving to help us get the most out of our movement phase. In the advance rules section of the book we can see a few things about terrain. As always when you set up the battlefield you should discuss with your opponent(s) what kind of terrain is what, such as that set of rocks is dangerous terrain. There are four types of terrain, however the only two that you should really be concerned about, Difficult Terrain and Dangerous Terrain.

Difficult terrain can be beneficial to put your vulnerable gun line behind to potentially slow down an assaulting army, or even stop them in their tracks and get some free shots off with Overwatch. Dangerous terrain can provide all of the above benefits and it can even dishing out a mortal wound for extra salt in the wounds.

Moving over terrain is also possible if the terrain is more than an inch you have to use part of your movement allowance to climb up, and have to end with a flat surface, all of that counts for your movement. I have found if you are going for a weird move just grab a spare model and measure it out and break it down for your opponent on what your intentions are, that should eliminate any confusion. However if it just a barrier or small wall under an inch and half tall or deep you can just leap over it, thus helping you move further without measuring up!

Taking Charge

Kill Team has a slight difference from Warhammer 40,000 in that you declare charges in the movement phase instead of a charge phase. Choose your targets, you have a threat range of 12 inches and don't need line of sight to assault into close combat. If you can't see them just remember you might have to move around a corner, so keep that in mind for your movement. Once you have declared your targets, your opponent gets to make a reaction, either Overwatch or Retreat. Overwatch allows your opponent to shoot at bs 6+ in an attempt to stopping their assailant in a storm of bullets. Retreating is like a fall back move, except you can only move back 3 inches, I believe this can be a real threat for Tau. Having anyone within 6 inches, that can shoot Overwatch into the charging unit, to have the target just retreat back, serious bait and switch.

 When the smoke dies down for the failed attempts to stop their assailant, your models now roll 2d6 and this will represent their total charge movement. It's important to remember that you must finish the charge within 1 inch of an enemy model, however you can not end within 1 inch of another model if you did not target it. If they do have other models, you can assault one who is the furthest up, then pile into the next target at the start of the fight phase, however you can only target the unit that you actually targeted. The model that was piled into can make attacks at your model, this is the risk, the reward would be able to attack them in the next fight phase if they have not left you alone.

If you can not get within an inch of your target model then the charge is failed, you can move up to your max movement as long as it's closer to one of your model's targets. Hopefully you can get them to cover because they will be just a sitting duck there for your opponent to shoot or count attack.

That is all that you can do in the movement phase, hopefully all of that might have expanded your mind on all the different options at your disposal. The biggest thing to remember in the movement phase is to have a plan of where you want to go, hug terrain and keep your eye out for potential firing lanes/actual lanes. Think about unit's threat ranges, this is easy to figure out, add their movement to their weapons range, draw a circle around them in your head and that is anywhere they can attack you from. Use this to create the space or close the space to gain you a slight advantage in the upcoming phases.

Please leave a comment if you want to continue the discussion, I will update with pictures and examples after I take the time to get the additional content created.