Kill team elites is now a few months old and people are getting to grips with the new units and options, so I thought it was about time to throw my opinions out there. This won't be a full on review of every unit in the book, as I a) don't know much about them or how they play and b) don't really care either. So what I will be covering is the units I do care about, namely the new guard options and old school Marine options. I won't be covering commanders as I don't play them and I won't be covering the new primaris units, as I don't own them or plan on owning them anytime soon.
First up I wanted to follow up on a point I made in the last post about kill team: elites, that this should really have been commanders part 2 and that it that there are 34 commanders and 38 elites in the book. So, there are actually more elites than commanders. If you take out the GSC section it becomes even more weighted towards elites, as the GSC section is all commanders, 6 of them infact. So maybe I was a bit premature in calling it commanders part 2 and should have called it "kill team elites (with quite a few commanders)".
Anyway, on with the review and first up are chapter tactics. Now, I play guard, Marines, admech and deathwatch, with a team of chaos in for good measure, so I will go over these options, as well as looking at grey knights, as I plan to field some of them soon.
I'll start with deathwatch and grey knights as they are simple, mostly because they only have 1 chapter tactics each. Grey Knights for the most part are a bit of a gimmick army, being one of the few who can use psychic powers. With there "chapter tactics" enabling them to cast 2 powers and also add 1 to the casting rolls and deny rolls. While this is great, it does kind of make the army in to a one trick pony. The Deathwatch tactic, know as mission tactics, enable you to pick a data sheet and reroll 1's against those units. This can be useful, especially when your hitting on 3's or even 2's with buffs. This can be very useful against teams that have limited data sheets they can use but some teams have lots of data sheets, which is less useful. On the whole not a bad tactic.
The Marine tactics can broadly speaking be split in to two categories, shooting and melee. For shooting we have the Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, Ultramarine and Raven Guard and for melee we have White Scars, Space Wolves, Blood Angels and Black Templars. The Salamanders and Iron Fists are the odd ones out as they could be applied to either. I'm planning two Marine kill teams, one scout one, which is ready for painting and one more elites team. The scout team will be a mixed roster of shooting and melee units but will usually be fielded as either a shooting team or a melee team and so I will possibly need two tactics, one for each element of the team.
Of the shooting tactics, there are some that stand out more than others. The Ultramarine tactic for example does not jump out, as although the leadership buff is useful, the ability to shoot when falling back does not feel very useful. Similarly, the Imperial Fists ability to ignore the injury roll modifier, while useful, does not jump out as a tactic. Ignoring modifiers for range or for being obstructed would have been better and would have pulled me more towards this tactic. So that leaves Dark Angels or Raven Guard. The Dark Angels tactic is good, but it restricts your movement, more or less forcing you to stand still. The Raven Guard tactic is also good, especially in the first round or two but after that it is next to useless, as most units will have closed to within half range. Of these 4 tactics, it's the Dark Angels that I'm drawn to most of all. Getting to re-roll 1's is useful but I'm unsure if sacrificing movement is worth it. The tactic that really stands out as the best tactic of my shooting units is actually the Salamanders tactic. This gives you a free re-roll for one hit and one wound roll per phase. This means that you effectively get 2 free command points per phase, or up to 4 per turn (2 in the shooting and 2 in the fight phases). I think that this is going to be a great tactic and can see it being used quite a lot.
For the other half of my team, a melee tactic will be required. I included the Whatever Scars in this list, as part of the tactic is about being in combat but it does give you a bonus to advances which could be useful if your running a lot of assault weapons. However, the ability to recharge a model that has fallen back is very useful. The Space Wolves and Blood Angels are very similar, the former granting a +1 to hit and the latter a +1 to wound, both in combat only though. Depending on what weapons your using, will depend upon which works better. For things like Fists and hammers, then the Wolves +1 to hit would be better but for chain swords, the +1 to wound is better. As I'm probably going to be using chain swords or other similar weapon, the +1 to wound d of the blood Angels would be better. The Black Templars is also useful, as re-rolling your failed charges can make a big difference. In theory, the Salamanders tactic could also be used here and would be useful but I think there are better ones from the list above. For me I think that it really comes down to the Blood Angels or Space Wolves, as you can't wound if you can't hit and you can't kill anything if you don't wound it! As most of my scout force are armed with chain swords, using the Blood Angels +1 to wound, I think, is the best fit, meaning I will have two half's of the roster, one half with the Salamanders tactic and one half with with Blood Angels.
One last tactic to mention is the Iron Hands tactic, which can ignore wounds. However, it's a 1 in 6 chance and when you've probably only got 6 models on the table, it doesn't seem worth it. If your running lots of multi-wound models or lots of models then it could be worth it but with only a few single wound models it's a bit pointless in my opinion.
My Astra Militarum teams have a different problem. While I have two teams, one of them is made up completely of Militarum Tempestus and so is more or less locked to the MT Doctrine, as I wouldn't get any benefits from many other doctrine. This means that I really only need to find a doctrine for the other team. Again, the doctrines can be split in to two categories, although this time it's more shooting and other. Some of them can be eliminated quite quickly, such as the catachan's doctrine, as i have little intention of getting in to combat. The Mordian doctrine is also questionable. While it does give a good leadership buff, it also requires you to group your men up, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but does restrict you. The overwatch bonus is also not that great. The only other non-shooting doctrine is the Valhallans'. I'm not sure on this doctrine, as most of the time I've found that if they don't die, they become very ineffective with even 1 flesh wound. Yes, increasing the chances of passing a nerve test is great for keeping men fighting, especially when running large 16 or 17 man lists, it still seems unnecessary, as loosing a man or two to a nerve test doesn't greatly reduced the overall fighting force. I might have to play with this doctrine to be sure but for now it's not one I would consider.
The rest are shooting based doctrines and vary considerably. The Cadian Doctrine is the standard re-rolls for standing still which for a plasma heavy army is very useful. The Vostroyan trait is, I think, more effective in kill team than in 40k. Removing penalties for long range shooting means that you can actually shoot obscured targets at long range, which could make quite a difference to a game. The Armageddon doctrine definitely has a use, giving 50% extra rapid fire range but having no effect on the long range penalties. In kill team this extra range is more significant than in 40k and give a good advantage to the guard where weight of numbers really counts. The last doctrine is the Tallarn doctrine. This is another good doctrine but is more useful if you have lots of assault weapons but can still be used with other types. If you want to run a mobile army, then this is the Doctrine for you. In addition to these there is nothing stoping you from using the Militarum Tempestus doctrine on normal units although I think there are better doctrines to use on normal troops.
As my list is basically just a few special weapons and lots of troops, I don't have the bodies to run 2 separate doctrines, so I will only use 1. As listed above, the ones that stand out are Vostroyan, Armageddon and Cadian. However, even though I use a lot of bodies and tend not to move around much, I do like to have the option to move and with the Cadian doctrine I think I will be reluctant to move and so it's out. Vostroyan is good for early shots but that tends to only last a round or maybe 2 at most, so is of limited use. That leaves just Armageddon, which I think is a good compromise. The extra shots in the 12 to 18 range of set the -1 to hit and still give a good early game advantage. It also means that even in the late game when units are a lot closer in general, shooting across the board at those targets that are 13 inches away is still a viable option as well.
So of my two lists, one, the Inquisition based list, will be running the Militarum Tempestus doctrine and one, the guardsman based list, will be running the Armageddon doctrine.
Now I was going to go on and have a quick look at the AdMech and Chaos traits but there is already a mountain of text above, so I'll split the content in to a couple of posts and end this one here. Next up, a "quick" look at AdMech and Chaos traits followed but a post on the new Marine and guard units.
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