Thursday, October 18, 2018

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.

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