Editing Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Skitarii (section)

==Tactics==
* This army is composed entirely of Walkers and Infantry . Good thing they have Move Through Cover. The Rangers are a ranged force, and benefit from advancing behind a wall of Vanguard, in cover. Vanguard will be running quite a bit to get into range, but with 3 plasma calivers, an Omnispex and a Relic Pistol, you have forged a serious amount of [[rape]]. Infiltrators seem to quite good at disabling and murdering units. With Dunestrider, Infiltrate, Steath, and that stat reducing skill,they can screw over a unit of your choice in your opponents force. Ruststalkers excel at destroying units in CC, but suffer from AP5 (albeit with quasi-Rending) in the first round of combat, so beware! Will destroy termies if they survive the onslaught, whicch can be difficult. The Onagers appear to be your main source of anti-armor, be that flyers or tanks, what with their nasty weapons and magic "By our powers combined!" invuln save. Make a gunline of them, and pump out the dakka.  The Ballistarii can hound light infantry or TEQs depending on your weapon choice and can be decent Anti Air in a pinch.  The Dragoons could be a force in melee with their +3S Tesla hits and I6 on the charge, but don't underestimate a full squad of jezzails (made even more potent with the Ironstrider Cavaliers formation).

* The Battle Maniple has 1 optional Fortification available to it.  An Aegis Defense Line with a Comms Relay seems like the best (and cheapest...70pts) choice, especially if you take the Ironstrider Cavaliers formation.  An Imperial Bastion is always a nice LoS blocker and a few Transuranic Arquebus from up top/inside could be nasty for enemy transports.  If you don't have anything in reserves, a Quad-gun can add to your AA.  An ammunition dump can help negate the 3 Plasma Calivers Gets Hot shots. Never underestimate the power of a Void Shield Generator. Just stick it near the middle of the army and laugh as it blunts a few rounds of shooting. Going for the Relay option lets you get 9 void shields, but for a bucket of points.

* Think Eradication Beamers are underwhelming guns? Use them for mind games instead! Three Onagers with Eradication Beamers can play merry hell with enemy movement. No sane player will risk putting expensive tanks within 9" of your Onager squad, while infantry blobs will love them dearly and get close to them to avoid the big pie plates. Combine that with some Vanguard to shoot down the infantry headed your way and some Cognis Lascannons to hunt down the tanks keeping their distance and you can easily dominate the game. Or combine with some allied Conversion Beamers to trap the opponent in a fuck-you field.

* Taser Lances can be made useful if you use them right, too. Sure, no AP seems bad, but you don't hear Tyranids complaining about the lack of AP on their Flyrants' Devourers, do you? Taser Lances, especially on large Dragoon blobs, can deal a lot of Glances and Pens to vehicles. Nothing short of a Land Raider / Monolith can comfortably deal with a fuckton of S8. And thanks to Dunestrider, they could be charging on turn 2 if the enemy is too dumb to keep enough distance.

* Get yourself an allied '''Space Marine Librarius Conclave''', that's three to five Psykers as one formation and they can pool their spells together to get better Warp Charge activation rates, roll everything on Divination. Prescience helps out with the Plasma Calivers' Gets Hot, Foreboding is pretty much your favorite Warlord Trait ''Emotionless Clarity'' dialed up to 11, but what you are looking for is Misfortune. Remember why Radium Jezzails are so awesome? Correct. Because Rad Poisoning and Rending stack to Auto-Wound twice with AP2. Use Misfortune, shoot at the afflicted unit with Vanguard and every single Rad Carbine becomes a three-shot version of that. Gigantic clusterfuck turned to gigantic ''armour-ignoring'' clusterfuck. Plus, you know, Psychic Hood saturation to the max. Bonus points for slapping Cawl's Memento Morispex on one of the vanguard-joined characters to gain Monster Hunter, and reroll all non-6s to almost double the amount against MCs.

* For any and all Allies shenanigans that don't involve stuffing the Skitarii into transports, remember that the Scout special rule works if ''at least one model in a unit has it''. Now, you don't have any ICs to give other armies the luxury of Scouts, but it does mean that you can Scout together with any allied ICs.

* Until an FAQ killed it, the Skitarii Maniple once gave fortifications Scout, which allowed people to abuse 12" forward-deployed Void Shield Generators and Bunkers. However, even without the additional 12" redeploy, "slingshotting" units with bunkers is useful; deploy with a unit embarked in the bunker, set the escape hatch within 12", then disembark your troops at the escape hatch 12" away on top of getting an additional 6" move.

* Keeping tarpits as allies might help you get away with using Protector Imperatives more. Screening grots are cheap and the midgets let you fire over their heads without giving enemies cover, but they'll run like hell if someone slams a door nearby.

* Forget everything you think you know about Imperium (or even xenos for that matter) gunline armies that you've played with or against in the past. Skitarii actually take a surprising amount of thought to play competently and stand a chance of coming out on top. You need to play to their biggest strength AND weakness -- the short range of your troops' guns. Vanguard can't afford to sit behind an Aegis, nor do they have the ded 'ardness to march through open terrain. What they DO have is Scout and Crusader thanks to their Skitarii Maniple, which means you can close the distance faster than most realize. That being said, your best bet to keeping your units from being blown away is to keep them behind and in cover as they're moving...the more line of sight blocking terrain the better. Expect to take casualties, but if you can get enough units forward then you can pressure your opponent into a corner. Even Eldar can't do their run and gun cheese when there's no room to maneuver around your soldiers.
** A risky but doable tactic would be Onagers with Manipulator Arms as walking cover. Or go for allies with Kastelans and Bullgryns, or [[DISTRACTION_CARNIFEX|Holy Requisitioners and Drop Pods]]

* TROOPS!!! Your troops are your biggest asset, even more than in other armies. I've found that a 2:1 ratio of Vanguard to Rangers is the best composition for most point limits, though at lower levels you're better off running solely Vanguard for the damage they can inflict.

* A note on Vanguard/Rangers. Bare bones Vanguard stastically out damage nearly every unit type better than similarly equipped Rangers. Against MEQs, the Radium Carbine kills one more Marine per round of shooting (3.24 vs 2.178, the difference in a Morale check). The only place where the Galvanic rifle is decidedly better than the Radium Carbine is against Fire Warriors and Aspect Warriors, assuming they're not in cover (8.71 unsaved wounds vs. 6.6). If you know you're going against either Tau or Eldar and know your opponent is going to field those units, load up on Rangers. Otherwise maintain the 2:1 ratio as noted above. 

* Get yourself a HQ with terminator armour through allies, this can be a librarian or even an inquisitor, put them in a Secutarii unit and place them at the front side. Now enjoy your 2+ re-roll able saves as long as you got at least 5 or more Secutarii in the unit. Reducing the strength of incoming hits with -1 even migrates the chances of your terminator dude being instant killed by a high strength weapon. Also should your opponent fire an AP2 weapon you can always look-out sir it on your Secutarii. Even better is that Grav weapons have less effect since the majority has a 4+ armour save. Fluff demands you to take a Techpriest Dominus, which is a self-repairing terminator captain on steroids.

[[Category:Warhammer 40000 Tactics(7E)]]
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