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.

List Building 101

    Welcome back recruits, I hope you have been enjoying the past week assembling your troops and thinking about all the awesome fighting and warmongering they are going to be doing! Everything should be coming along nicely, and you might be asking yourself where you go next after they are all sitting there assembled and looking awesome. We still have a lot of modeling left to do, basing, priming, painting, possibly sealing, storing, and transporting. I told you there was a lot to just the hobby side, but trust me it is worth it when we start breaking into the Meta.

    So there are a couple of tools that we are going to need if we want to start building army list that will one day be the number one list at the Nova Open! Let's see you should have the main rule book (BRB), all the codexes you would need for your army (since we get into different detachments for an army, more on that in future post), a blank piece of paper and pen (there are also programs, more on those in a future post). Now that we have all of our post age hipster gear, let's look at my small little force that I am going to refer to as the Scrubbing Bubbles.

Scrubbing Bubbles 1.0

   Now that our soldiers are here to clean the bathroom while we find the right song to listen to while we "clean". Let's look at what we have on the wet palette, starting from left to right front to back. The front squad is a Infantry Squad that has 1 Sergeant, 8 Guardsmen and 1 Special Weapon Guardsman, next to them is our Company Commander, then our Primaris Psyker. In the second row we have two more Infantry Squads and they are both the same with 1 Sergeant, 8 Guardsmen and 1 Special Weapon Guardsman. Lastly in the back, waving the last goodbye you'll ever see, it's our Leman Russ Battle Tank with a Demolisher Turret! Now that we have some structure and know what we are looking at let's go to our list and codex!

This is the first list I have hand written in a long time...

   The first thing we need to figure out is what type of Detachment we will be running, this is probably the most daunting thing when you first start building list. Turn your BRB to page 240 this will be where we find all the information about building a Detachment so that our army is Battle-Forged! When we build our army and it is Battle-Forged, it means we unlock some nifty features to our army and command points (CP)!!! Command points are where it is at, this is where our little snowflake bubbles can really be an individual. Since I have 2 HQ choices and 3 Troop choices, I am thinking I am going to build them into a Battalion Detachment so that I have access to +3 command points. 

We must take 2 Hq and 3 Troops MINIMUM

   Okay so some of you might be screaming at your monitor saying that Battalions actually give +5 command points, you are correct, however I have not mentioned anything about the FAQs until this point.  FAQs are essentially a patch to the game to try and make the game more balanced, this is something that is well known and essential to playing competitive, so take a few minutes read over the Big FAQ and your armies respective FAQ. As of the publication of this post the FAQ states you receive +5 Command Points for Battalion Detachment and +12 Command Points for Brigade Detachments. (After writing this little section, I can't think of a more clever way to introduce players to the FAQ, well played GW).

How about that Segue though?

   Okay now that we know we have our Army list spelled out with all of the units, we have them organized into a nice Battalion and even have ourselves 5 Command Points to spend! We need to get a little deeper into the list so that we meet up to the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) standard. This just means that what the models have on them is what you have them as in your list, so that you don't decide that that flame thrower is really a melta gun when it's next to the tank and not the troops. Funny how sometimes you don't play against the Daemons of Chaos and you still get the Changeling running around.

Want to stop troop spam? Have them write each one!

   So we take our Company Commander, his model has a Power Sword and a Plasma Pistol so we need to represent that on our list, don't forget to write down how many points everything is next to what it is. I am not going to put the points on the list for sake of not wanting to get into trouble. Then the Primaris Psyker has a force stave and a laspistol, there isn't really a need to write this on the list since it is in the Datasheet and it's not an upgrade, but we forgot to pick him some Psyker powers. We will give him Psychic Barrier and Night Shroud, or you can choose to role at the start of every match! We go all the way down and get to what we are looking at on top, if you have the Astra Militarum codex you can add all the points up and should get 438! 

Now that's a list

   Alright, since we are a Battle-Forged army we have to pick our Regiment! This is one of the areas Guard really shine, but also a really awesome mechanic that basically every army with a codex has access to. I went ahead and picked Cadian as my regiment, because I want my guys to sit back and just shoot, if any unit does not move it can re-roll 1s to hit. Combine that with the order of bring it down and you get a flat out re roll on misses which is huge for an army that only hits half of the time! I think that about covers the basics on how to write a list, if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them at the bottom!