Kill Team 2021

[Mattb]

Yeah, I recently ordered one of the Cadian boxes with the new weapon/head sprue - my plan is to use them as the Veteran Guardsman team though. Like you said, a roster full of grunts will likely struggle quite a bit, but if you add a box of Scions you could have a full 20 man roster with 3 potential fireteams.

Although from all of the battle reports I've found so far it looks like the regular Guard/Veteran Guardsmen are pretty damn underwhelming, so I wouldn't put too much effert into them - unless you just really love the Guard aesthetic like I do.

[The Other Dave]

It's basically wanting an excuse to paint the models, yeah. The only really non-elite models I've seen in play so far have been poxwalkers, who are even (if actually only marginally) worse than Guardsmen, and they didn't do much but briefly gum up the gears in the Drukhari works. But then they also don't have ranged weapons and I didn't worry about keeping them in cover or anything.

I don't have the Octarius book - how are vet guards really different from regular guard? I know it's one 10-man fireteam plus an optional 4 guys with lasguns (or a couple support attacks instead), but what kind of specialists can you get in your 10-man fireteam?

[Karantu]

Oh look another interesting tool that generate pretty datacards using Battlescribe data.
Its pretty cool but the template I was playing around was supposed to be MtG card sized which was the point and these might not be readable at that size.
Here's what the website looks like.

[Mattb]

I don't have the Octarius book - how are vet guards really different from regular guard? I know it's one 10-man fireteam plus an optional 4 guys with lasguns (or a couple support attacks instead), but what kind of specialists can you get in your 10-man fireteam?

You get your Sergeant for the orders, your vox caster (he can spend an AP to extend the range of the order to everyone regardless of where they are), sniper, medic and the 4 gunners (plasma, melta, launcher and flamer.)

A part from them you get:
Confidant - he can become the leader if your Sergeant is killed and can choose another Guardsman to activate after him.
Hardened Vet - 5+ feel no pain and a bionic arm melee weapon.
Bruser - can ignore one normal hit in melee and gets a melee weapon with stun.
Demo Vet - can drop a mine and dash for 1AP.
Spotter - can call a mortar barrage or can choose another operative to treat an enemy as if they're engaged.
Zealot - rerolls all defence dice and has an aura that turns normal hits into crits.

I think it would be pretty easy to model them all with the Cadian kits and use them as either the compendium team or the vets. Im mostly interested in the veterans though because they have a ton of stuff for the Spec Ops campaign - unique assets, rare equipment, battle honours etc.

[The Other Dave]

So how many of your 10 guys can be specialist operatives? It seemed from battle reports that people were taking a couple few generic guardspersons.

[Karantu]

So how many of your 10 guys can be specialist operatives? It seemed from battle reports that people were taking a couple few generic guardspersons.

For the 9 other than the Sergeant you don't have to pick any generics if you don't want to according to the rules so it might've been an issue with what you can build with the kit included in the box. It shouldn't be a problem if you're using the Cadian kits.

[The Other Dave]

Hmm! Interesting.

It'll be interesting to see just how differently they do play on the field - it may be a neat experiment to build both a Vet Guard and a "Regular" Guard list with the same models and compare. TBH it looks like the bulk of the Veteran specialists might not have a great ratio of "added complexity vs added effectiveness," which is actually probably fine.

[Karantu]

The neat part about the regular guys is that they have a GA value of 2 which can come in handy in some situations.

[Jye Nicolson]

Honestly I think Guard + Tempestors and double up on guns is probably the way to go.

[Mattb]

Yeah, some of the specialists (bruiser, hardened, zealot, demo) don't seem that amazing, so I can definitely see it being more useful sometimes to just have a few GA2 guys hanging around.

Although I'm thinking 10 specialists + 4 free guardsmen ancillary support might actually be the way to go. I haven't see that one played at all in battle reports yet as the Octarius box only has 10 guys.

For my second kill team I'm seriously thinking about picking up a squad Chaos Marines and going with either Black Legion or Emperor's Children. I think it would be fun to balance out my Guardsmen with an APL3 team.

Actually, what are planning on running, Karantu? It sounds crazy, but Tau actually look pretty decent.