Cadians kill team

A couple of weeks ago, a new Kill Team box was released, with Guard Vs Tyranids, or more specifically the Cadians Recon Squad Vs the Red Terror. Now I don't really care about the Nids but the guard is something different. Now, I'm a bit torn, as these are yet more Cadians, and could have been some many other cool models, Tanith first and only, Catachans, or even something like the Armageddon ork hunters could have worked (especially given 11th edition releases). Obviously I would have preferred Catachans, who would have been right at home here given their experiences with Catachan Devils!

The datasheet is a good one and has a few little tricks, which are very useful. There are five things that's jump out at me from my reading through everything. 

First, orders. When an order is issues to these guys, it does not finish at the next command phase as normal but continues until another order is issues, this means you can order it early game and just leave it alone, saving orders for elsewhere. This is really good and eases the orders conundrum. 

Secondly, the Vox-relay beacon. This is another very useful ability, which I can see being used one of three ways. Leaving it behind with some support units, such as mortars or lascannons, so you don't need to leave an officer behind. Place them up and axis of advance, so that units that move more freely away from officers, or sacrifice them by putting them somewhere you want your opponent to think your going to go. Whichever way you choose to play them, they are going to be useful and a reason to take multiple squads. 

The third thing to note, and one I almost missed, the lasguns have the Assault keyword. Now, is this a unit specific thing, a typo or the new lasgun profile? I suspect it will remain unit specific, but I'm surprised they didn't call the weapon something else, like recon lascarbine or similar, like they did with the Scion weapons. 

Next up, is Infiltrate. We don't have many units that can infiltrate, the only ones that spring to mind are Ratlings and Gaunts Ghosts, so a max of 4 units, 3 of which are not great. Being able to infiltrate up to three decent infantry squads will be very useful for us. 

Lastly, the ability for the squad to take twin snipers or a heavy weapon in the squad is also very nice. Personally, taking the missile launcher in the squad is really useful. Placing the unit in a vantage point in no mans land, ready to either snipe some enemy characters or hit a vehicle early game is really useful. You'll probably not kill the character or vehicle but knocking a few wounds off them can really help and give your opponent cause to be more cautious. 

At 80 points, I think they are very well pointed as well. I had thought that they would be more but I'm very happy with where they are. They are not going to be game breaking but they will be very useful, especially early game, while the rest of your infantry move up the board. 

One last thing that WarCom called out was their interactions with some detachment rules, the one they names was Ruthless Discipline. 

With this rule, the unit will pretty much always be re-rolling 1's, as you'll give them an order turn 1 and they will carry that through the game. 
 

Overall, this is a very good units. The main question is how long will it last before it moves to legends? That and what the 11th edition changes will mean.