Editing Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Kill Team(8E) Imperium (section)

===AM Strategies===

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'''Meltaspam and Volleyspam:'''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">At 8pts, an ordinary guardsman with a meltagun has a fair chance of deleting any model in the game should it hit. As counter intuitive as it might sound, making a scion with a meltagun your sniper is actually a quite viable choice, since you're capable of reliably hitting on 2's even when advancing to close range. However you'll be giving them to regular guard in most cases and handing Volley guns to your Scions.  

The core of this strategy is based around two elements. Good use of full cover to break LOS and strategic use of orders and the universal strategy Decisive Shot.
The latter is tied closely to whether you've won or lost the initiative and your enemies CP reserves. As a rule of thumb, if the enemy ends their movement phase with 1CP or less, and they have an isolated unit within 12 inches of you, that unit is dead.

Decisive shot provides priority shooting, so even if the enemy has readied that unit to shoot, you can shoot first and therefore, if you send in a scion with a +2 to hit melta, there is literally nothing the enemy can do to save their unit but hope you roll 1's.

The game has few invulnerable saves and due to how flesh wounds work, a multi wound model that loses all it's wounds in one shot is just as screwed as a single wound model.
Once your enemy is aware that you can walk forward and delete units, they'll likely start treating your melta's with more respect.
Fortunately for you, you're capable of forcing unfair trades.

Again, should the enemy win the initiative and decides to instead ready all their guns against your onslaught, you can move two units forward into optimal melta range. As before, using decisive shot to win initiative on one unit, and using move move move to relocate the other before the enemies readied shot goes off, hopefully leaving them without a valid target.

In this, do not be afraid to trade units with your enemies. Meltagun toting guardsmen are cheaper than any of your enemies special snowflakes- although the same doesn't necessarily apply to scions. If you win initiative, don't move closer than 9 inches to an enemy without good reason.

Considering the options available to your opponents, you can expect people trying to counterpick with long range firepower. Bear in mind, that a standard kill team board is only 30" by 20" and should have plenty of terrain offering full cover, so this isn't a dealbreaker. Anything with a range of more than about 24" inches has the same threatened area, if lower accuracy as long range weapons. Hence let's first cover your matchup against the best ranged weapon in the book, Frag Cannons. 


''Frag cannons''', which fire high explosive [[cheese]], come to 21 points with the marine attached to them. Outside of 12 inches, they will kill you and medium infantry. Inside of twelve inches, they will kill any heavy infantry and inside of 8 inches they will kill you, your family and your dog. Probably will be FAQ'd, but until then they aren't completely unbeatable.

Their primary weakness is they come attached to 1 wound MEQ's.
The optimal configuration for a frag cannon team is a normal, Heavy, a Comms and a Sniper backed up by a Leader with a normal bolter. From your box of boys, should you expect to face seal team Chedder, you have two basic options. Pick your specialists to work outside of 24 inches and try and plink the enemy down (which in guard doesn't work due to the weapon options on offer), or go danger close with melta and plasma. Your enemy will be on a common turn of shooting, be hitting on 2-3+ often with re-rolls of 1's.
Due to ignoring the penalties of the first flesh wound, anything less than a confirmed kill is meaningless, as by the time a second flesh wound is inflicted, it's fairly likely that the enemy will be closing to use their 2d6 autohitting mode.

The issue with trying to outrange fragspam as any faction is the aforementioned size of the table and terrain density. A marine with a frag cannon can move and be in range to hit anything on the board, with the accuracy to hit it outside of 12". They can be in flamer range within two turns, and then you're at the mercy of an average of 7 S6 hits splitfired at everything you love and care about. If they win the initiative, expect to be facing high accuracy readied shots and aggressive placements.

If you're trying to fight at range your choice is to either duke it out with them or move to break LOS. Bear in mind that should you instakill a deathwatch and the player has CP remaining, the player will take another round of shooting with them. Moreover as AM, you only have one weapon which outranges your enemy. Sniper rifles. You can also only take them on regular guardsmen, but taking them eats into the number of actually useful weapons you can field.

Having considered what we can't do, lets consider what we can do. 4 scion gunners with hot shot volleyguns are 13 pts a piece and under most circumstances won't go any worse than a 4-5 to hit.
In a 100 pt game you can take 4 scion gunners with hot shot volley guns, at 13 points a pop. On average considering the buffs on offer, terrain, range and cover and heavy weapon movement penalties, you can expect your scions to be regularly around BS4. A single scion who shoots at this strength is capable of putting one wound on a marine. Should the enemy be in cover, you have about a 60% chance of inflicting a flesh wound, which means basically nothing for Astarte shooting.

The obvious answer to this is to buff accuracy further and focus fire. The obvious problem with this is if you and your opponent are taking turns shooting, the odds are on his side- you need two rounds of shooting to take him out, he only needs one to take two of your models out. Even if you increase one models accuracy so that it hit's on 2's, you're still likely to only inflict a flesh wound. If you try to take a decisive shot, even if you've got a volley gun hitting on 2's, you're still left with a coinflip as to whether your target will actually die if they're in cover.

Basically, exchanging fire like this will cause you to lose models faster than your enemy- but fret not, for that's where the melta tactics we discussed earlier come into play.
This also works with plasma, but if you plan to use specialists, Melta will get more Milage. If you plan for them to die the moment they leave cover, then rapid fire that overcharged plasma by all means. If you start forcing one for one trades, where win or lose the enemy is left with only one target to shoot at, then you can grind them off the board. Using comms and orders a normal 8pt guardsman who's walked into range can decisive shot at an impressive +2 to hit the target he's flanked.

Against '''other factions''', your tactics will vary significantly, depending on whether or not you want your specialists to be part of team Melta or team Volley Gun. Meltas are overkill for '''orks''', but on normal troops either melta or plasma is still worth taking since it will prevent anything surviving with flesh wounds. Your enemy may either spam deffguns or bring a heavy deffgun loota and buff him with comms. In the latter case, focus him down first, and unless the comms is armed with a big shoota, ignore it. The only other unit you really need to worry about is a nob with a combi-skorcha. If said nob gets into range and you've blobbed up behind cover, Dakka Dakka will occur, and tears will flow. Don't give him the opportunity.

Your safety distance in a given movement phase is 9 inches. Even though orks re-roll charges, they aren't exactly flush with ways of getting extra moves. Play smart, the major threats are the same durability as basic boyz, so prioritise between specialists and anything which will start next turn within 9 of one of your units.
Be careful of any sneaky grot objective capping that might occur if they've backed you into one side of the board.

'''Nids''' are a tougher nut to crack. They're better equipped to get into CC with you. Volley guns are still the name of the game, but you'll want to back them up with flamers, since even if they should double move, if they charge from 9 inches, you can simply fall back and they'll need 11 to get to CC.
Melta should still be brought, since they make Lictor's cry.

Against '''any CC army''', if you win the initiative, unless your leader is capable of ordering 'get back in the fight' or you have other specialist/activated abilities handy, do not bother falling back from any combats you might be in. <s>Your enemy will simply re-charge you, you don't get overwatch and will just end back in the fight with the enemy hitting first.
If you lose the initiative,</s>. You can't charge again if you started the movement phase within 1" of an opposing model (even if they leave your model by falling back). Relevant rule: "When you pick a model to move, if that model started the movement phase within 1 inch of an enemy model, it cannot make a normal move" Core rules p.22.  You should always fall back from any given combat and let the rest of your army shoot the now gormless CC sitting in the open.

'''Deathguard''' are stupidly tough, to the point where consider strongly taking more high damage weapons and aiming for high accuracy close range exchanges can be advisable- though be wary of poxwalker spam, either as soft cover or objective capping. If the enemy has an entire team of poxwalkers for some bizarre reason, you can kite them around the board as you whittle them down; no charge phase and similar base movement scores, along with orders means they'll struggle to actually catch you. If they do catch you, expect a quick and painful death at the hands of a [[cheese|Flail of Corruption-toting Plague Marine Combat Specialist with +1 to all hit and wound rolls, especially as you're T3 Sv 5+ W1 facing a possible 9 S6 AP -2 D2 attacks, and DttFE can result in them getting '''another''' d3 attacks on you on a hit roll of 6]] (shoot those guys first).

'''Eldar''', should you actually hit them, will find it difficult to endure volley guns.
If they're trying to slink around and exchange shots from cover, show them whose boss, use comms and the sniper CP buff and split the resultant +2 to hit shots against all the units that they thought were safe simply because they happened to be 22 inches away and obscured. Due to flesh wounds they have a fair chance of living making this less than 'optimal', but seeing you perform such a feat may cause your opponent to make a misplay, and also if that's the first shot in the shooting phase, any survivors will find it harder to return fire.

An interesting combo is to use a demolitions volleygunner with orders and Comms, for and impressive result 3's to hit against units at long range and in cover, and with +2 to wound against units in cover. Said gunner will wound basically anything on a 2, making it a force to be reckoned with, particularly against enemies in cover inside 12" (which is anyone who was planning of charging into CC next turn) since they're both hitting and wounding on 2's and shredding armour.

With '''Harly's''', avoid taking refuge inside structures, otherwise you may find yourself in the unpleasant situation of your enemy walking over the roof to drop straight onto you. Should the harly player win initiative and successfully enter CC, consider moving all your other units away from the doomed one to avoid being immediately charged next turn. Terrain is basically meaningless against them, so although their pistols are deadly, you're in a strange situation where open space is safer than cover that might ultimately lead to your units getting boxed in- even considering factors such as intervening terrain in melee. Expect the Clowns to take full advantage of their mobility and the existence of difficult/dangerous terrain in kill team.

These are one of the units that Melta's don't shine against due to the whole invulnerable save thing and only having one wound anyway. These are also one of the few units you might want spend CP on to hit your overwatch on 5-6's. Don't expect flamers to see much use on overwatch thanks to the Harly's 3d6 charge, and because they ignore units as well as terrain. Grenade launchers aren't bad against them, nor are flamers, however, don't expect to get the opportunity to use the latter.

Remember, if you win the initiative, but can't avoid being charged for whatever reason, you can use a more expendable unit to counter-charge the enemy, and thereby prevent them getting into CC with multiple units at once. The difficulty of facing Clowns is heavily tied to the objective and board setup. If for whatever reason there's 500 bucks worth of assorted terrain in your killzone, good luck. What you can hope for is that the table/objectives force a situation where a Harly cannot end their movement phase outside of LOS in an unflankable position or in CC, at which point your guns will slice through them like butter.

If you want to actually go on the offensive against Harliquens with a ranged setup, you ''must lose the initiative'' in order to be able to advance for shooting without the danger of being charged before you get a shot off. If you manage to catch one off guard by advancing up to where one is hiding, then you may end up rolling against your opponent on the decisive shot- with a fusion pistol blast being the price of failure.

One thing to bear in mind is that since harlequins are so fragile, pistol fire in CC can kill them before the fight phase, and the Harly player will be unwilling to kill you before the end of the shooting phase, if doing so would leave him outside of combat and therefore vulnerable to being shot.
Secondly, with 'Fix Bayonets' if you do have a CC guardsman, then he has the opportunity to fight before the xeno's can even think about shooting.

While the odds aren't great, it's nonetheless one of the best uses for that strategy, should you have nothing better to do with your order. If you're playing with the 'exclusive' IG tactics provided in the IG kill team box, Sir Yes Sir has interesting potential for winning the fight phase outside of the fight phase. However, Harly's have one advantage that we haven't covered yet, which is that keeping your leader out of harms way behind solid walls doesn't do anything. On a standard game-board, this can mean that he'll be getting charged by a space elf through two buildings and a promethium pipe as early as turn 2. Expect them to do this every time and at the earliest opportunity. There's no good general way to deal with this, as if you want to support troops with orders, you must remain within 12" and objectives will often require you to do things that don't involve camping the far corner of your deployment zone. 
In summary this is potentially one of your most difficult matchups.


'''Dark eldar''' are interesting. You don't really care about poisoned, since you're not known for your toughness anyway. Going for volume of fire over damage here is the temptation, but, it's not a terrible idea to continue with plasma/melta simply because of their merit as weapons which will almost certainly kill their targets and deny the privilege of a flesh wound. This is more important than against, say Clowns, not only because they lack an invulnerable save, but because compared to you, they can't take nearly as many special weapons. You'll want to use a heavy scion with an accuracy buff to attempt a decisive shot snipe on their gunners before they can make their points back with their splinter cannons.
These guys are like Nid's for CC, in that flamers can deter a charge, simply because the odds are against anyone charging in from outside flamer range due to the reaction rules.
Be wary of their troops trying to position to make charges that avoid overwatch. Also, and this applies to any eldar player, if they start bundling their troops out of LOS with 3 CP in their bank, then they're planning to attempt a decisive shot followed by fire and fade.

It's worth being wary of players who aim for morale damage as a priority- but don't obsess over it. Consider your options if you start being denied your special abilities due to units becoming shaken, but don't let it stop you from making the best plays you can.
Hot shot volley guns will cut through these guy's like a knife through butter.
If you're looking to catch an enemy off-guard, there's a special, but, not necessarily advisable tactic that bears mention here. Since CC is the safest place to be, players may seek to take refuge in it to wait out the shooting phase, leading to multiple models charging into combat with a single enemy model, eschewing cover if they can make such a charge reliably and it will put them closer to the main enemy force. No enemy with any smarts will use pistols if it will take them out of CC while there are models who can shoot at them still alive.

However, bizarrely enough, should a model with a plasma pistol decide to overcharge and die for it, they can leave an entire wad of units just sitting out in the open as a big fat juicy target.
It's a long shot strategy, but one your opponent is unlikely to see coming- unless they've read this page of course.

'''Necrons''' get to cry since for now as a faction, they have to take sniper specialisations on snipers and not more useful weapons. Reanimation protocols is annoying, as it is, it's actually ''More Likely'' to trigger should they get hit by high damage weapons [[wat]]. On top of that, 'Prime Reanimation protocols' needs clearer wording, since as it is, it could potentially block the activation of the reanimation protocol special rule.

Your priority target is their comms. They don't get to take heavies, but expect their comms to be buffing an immortal with a Tesla Carbine, since it lacks the 'unmodified' keyword from it's special rule (Not that it's a good thing, see below). Because of the wording on the comm's ability, it might even be an immortal buffing itself. Thankfully in matched play, their level 1 specialist choices aren't nearly as effective as yours. Flayed one's are scary in CC, but don't really have the tools that other races do to close the distance. Their weapons are the same range as yours, but as we've discussed because of orders and specialisations, as well as the fact that their weapons are all rapid fire, you will win a long distance shooting battle with relative ease. Let the hotshots do their job, use cover and occasionally the guard strat to maximise their hit penalties.

Your arrangement will be, 1 Volley heavy, 1 Volley sniper, a normal volley and a Volley Comms backed up by a leader. Comms buffs itself and the leader uses 2 CP (assuming you didn't need it for a decisive shot) to buff both the heavy and the normal volley, so all four reach BS+2. If both sides are at range and in cover, your enemy will have BS+5 with one shot per unit, with the exception of tesla guns. Tesla guns against units at range and in cover become rather pitiful, since even with comms, their special rule cannot proc, due to requiring a modified hit roll of 6. Since it is ''impossible'' for the enemy to roll above an effective 5 no matter what configuration they're in under these circumstances, they're not particularly threatening. Meanwhile, you have 16 shots at BS+4 which will wound 2-4 Necrons, and likely put two to rest for good. While your scions provide this barrage of firepower, you can move the rest of your group to play the objective, or simply provide great volumes of uncharged plasma. If the enemy doesn't advance, they'll spend 2-3 turns in the present state of affairs before they can close to "12 since their weapons are almost exclusively rapid fire not assault and therefore they'll be less inclined to advance.
Since you have the advantage in a straight fight, keep your mind on what the objective is, since that's the more likely way for your opponent to snatch victory here.

'''Tau''' possess, for now uniquely, flying units in the form of drones and stealth suits. You don't really care though since you aren't planning on engaging them in CC, right?
Same goes for their 'for the greater good special rule.
The rail rifle is the sniper rifle that everyone would actually want their snipers to take. Too bad it's on a unit with a base BS of 4.
Markerlights are scary, but, that's only until you realise that the markerlight itself still has to hit. It may have a range of 36, but it's a heavy weapon. So, if they've moved and you're in cover, that's 6's to hit and they've just wasted their entire shooting phase, to possibly give a bonus to hit against a single one of your models. If they proc the tactic, again it can get scary, but, they still have to roll 1d3, and it's still a bonus to hit against a single model. This is great and all, but, since in order to proc it in the first place, if involves designating a model to fire a weapon, if they do this they've likely just yielded you several consecutive turns in the shooting order, during which time you can actually frigging do some damage.

Finally, after all that, even if they get a maximum markerlight count on you, if a pathfinder sniper with a railgun fires at you from across the board, point out to your enemy that ''Rail rifles take penalties for long range''. This means that only if they bank 3 CP and manage to roll max on markerlights (assuming they managed to hit with them) will their snipers hit on 2's (you're in cover, right? If not, get in cover(Well, recon drones mean that you'd be better outside of cover actually so pay attention to that)). And if you still have CP banked you can always have your model use 'get down', reducing their accuracy back to 3. Should the enemy hit, they'll almost certainly kill you, but they'll have paid dearly for it in actions and CP.

Rail rifles and ion rifles are rapid fire 30" so look to punish them while they try to close to 15" using your superior BS.
While your scions handle their more fragile units, have your special weapons guard initiate decisive shot tactics against any stealthsuits with melta/plasma once more. Pay more attention to cover than usual during close range firefights against them since a round of shooting from one is entirely survivable if you happen to be obscured. If the stealth-suits are still alive once your scions have cut down their other kill team members, volleys will help clean up.
If the enemy has gone pathfinder heavy, strongly consider taking out recon/pulse accelerator drones that they might be hoping to use as soft accuracy buffs. Force them to fight on your terms.

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'''Counterplay:'''
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Strategies for playing '''against''' this faction go here
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