Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Skitarii(7E)/Kill Team

Why Play as Skitarii

Words, Words, Words

Useful Skitarii Rules and Equipment

Doctrina Imperatives are not used in Kill Teams, so alter your strategies accordingly.

Ranged Weapons

• Phospher Blast Pistol: 5 Points for a single heavy bolter shot. Not too bad, you'll be wounding most enemies on 3+ and ignoring the armour saves of several factions. Even better, if the enemy model has more than one wound and you manage to scratch them: they have -1 cover save and charges against them can be re-rolled until your next turn.
• Radium Pistol: One shot of the radium carbine. There's little to no reason to take this over the Phospher Blast Pistol.
• Arc Pistol: For twice the price of the other pistols, you are paying for +1 strength and one worse AP than the PBP. You will find wounding enemies even easier with the trad-eoff that many models will get their armour saves. That said, this does have haywire which gives this weapon some boosted utility.

Melee Weapons

• Taser Goad: The cheapest melee option and one that you can feel safe taking without also taking a pistol. Gives +2 strength as well as having the taser special rule where a successful to hit roll of 6 becomes three hits instead of one. No AP to speak of, but that's why you want the volume of attacks
• Power Sword: More useful on a Vanguard rather than a Ranger due to the Toughness debuff Vanguard have. It straight up ignores all armour saves in Kill Teams. However, you're trading away volume of strength 5 hits from the Taser and the decent strength and AP alongside utility of the Arc Maul
• Arc Maul: Pretty expensive in a 10% of your points kind of way (not including the cost of the character and other possible equipment he will be carrying,) but you are essentially getting a Skitarii that smacks like a heavy bolter and can easily glance a vehicle to death without worries.

Special Weapons

• Arc Rifle: The cheapest of the special weapons and arguably has a place in any list that fits in Skitarii. Decent strength and mediocre AP alongside Haywire makes this incredibly versatile. You will be able to instant death guardsmen, skitarii, basic tau, etc. while also taking down their transports. Better yet, you can take two of these in the same points allotment that will nab you one plasma caliver.
• Transuranic Arquebus: Costs as much as a powerfist, but in this game it's actually worth a lot more than in basic 40k. Whereas a unit with a TA will feel obligated to camp in a corner and forgo their other benefits: in Kill Teams your TA user can camp freely with no effect on the usefulness of your other models. AP3 and sniper means that this weapon has an excellent chance to hurt whatever it targets. Give it the Ignores Cover Weapon Specialist trait to maximize the effectiveness of this weapon to a horrific degree. Furthermore, with its range of 60" you will be hitting anything within line of sight everywhere on the board.
• Plasma Caliver: Beautiful in large games, arguably overkill in Kill Teams. You will be hosing mooks with three shots, ignoring the armour saves of all models, and wounding most on 2+; but at the same time you are paying a premium for a weapon that without specialization will kill the bearer. Potentially useful, but really consider how you are going to use this and keep in mind taking more than one is pretty silly.

Special Issue Wargear

• Refractor Field: A 5+ invulnerable save for a couple of points. This is the bare minimum obligation to your Alpha/Princeps in order to make Slay the Leader that much more difficult.
• Conversion Field: An invulnerable save that is one better than the refractor but for twice the points. Also forces blind tests on nearby units on a success. Can be quite handy in negating enemies trying to krump your leader. Assuming they can fail an initiative test, that is. If you are kitting your Leader for melee, take this definitely. Otherwise, a Refractor Field and decent use of cover can be sufficient.
• Digital Weapons: A Single re-roll to hit in melee for the same cost as a conversion field. Do you plan on being stuck in melee? Consider taking this especially since Rangers and Vangaurds are WS 3. Otherwise save the points and grab something else.

Relics of Mars

• Arkhan's Divinator: Useless in Kill Teams; move on
• The Phase Taser: A taser goad that forces wounded models to take initiative tests or be removed from play. Can be useful on any multi-wound models on the table but due to lack of models with 4+ wounds, you are perhaps better off looking elsewhere due to the decreased effectiveness.
• The Omniscient Mask: Gives your model Zealot. This is kind of a mixed bag. You can give it to your leader and have them auto-pass Break tests, but run the risk of redundancy that comes from the one leader trait you can roll. You can also put this on another model if you need to have a dedicated melee unit guaranteed to stay on the table.
• Pater Radium: Extremely circumstantial but possibly devastating. If the bearer lives long enough to reach the end of the Initiative 1 step, then any enemy models in combat with the bearer must each take a toughness test and take d6 unsavable wounds on failure.
• Phosphoenix: Arguably more useful in the close confines of Kill Teams than in the basic 40k game. The range is a paltry 6" but one shot becomes three on a successful hit. With AP2 and poisoned (3+) alongside the decent 5 strength means you will be hurting anything you hit at worst on a 3+. Also has luminagen and pistol benefits.
• Skull of Elder Nikola: Given that few enemies are going be fielding vehicles in any great number, this might be better off left at home. Though given the smaller confines of the table does give you a greater chance of hitting what vehicles are in play. Ultimately, this is a mixed-bag tool that you are better off leaving at home unless you know for sure that there will be vehicles aplenty.

Unit Analysis

A kill team detachment allows for:

• Troops: 0-2
• Elite: 0-1
• Fast Attack: 0-1

Troops

• Rangers: Relentless and Feel No Pain (6+)but otherwise Storm Troopers in hoods and robes. They come stock with AP 4 Bolters with 30" range as well as Move Through Cover and the useless-in-kill-teams Precision Shots. Probably your best bet in terms of basic infantry in Kill Teams. Their superior weapon range and AP tends to do better than Radium Carbines in the smaller scale of this game type. Also, Move Through Cover is quite a valuable asset to have. If you are running guns, use Rangers. They can take 2 Special Weapons at base unit size, but three at a full unit of 10. You are better off taking two units for the spare alpha and the ability to take 4 special weapons. See the Special Weapons table for general analysis.
• Vanguard: Cheapest infantry unit you can field, so take them if quantity is more important than quality. They have the same shtick as Rangers but swap out Precision Shots and Move Through Cover USRs for giving enemies in combat -1 Toughness, so if you want a melee Alpha your best bet is the Vanguard Alpha. All that said, Vanguard are still astoundingly points-effective for their cost. See the Rangers for Special Weapons

Elite

• Infiltrators:
• Ruststalkers:
• Secutarii Hoplites:
• Secutarii Peltasts:

Fast Attack

• Sydonian Dragoon:Simply one of the best vehicles you can field in Kill Teams. normally you can take these in units up to six, but in Kill Teams you can take at most three and still have enough points to meet the minimal requirements. It just matches the maximum total armour value a single vehicle can be allowed to have; it carries a native 5+ cover save that stacks with night fighting all of which makes it surprisingly resilient for an open-topped vehicle against non-dedicated anti-vehicle weaponry. IT moves with the Crusader USR and the Skitarii-unique Dunestrider which gives it +3" to its movement, runs, and charges. It has a searchlight for what it is worth. Weapons-wise, it starts with a taser lance but that can be swapped out for a Radium Jezzail.
  • Taser Lance: For when you want to experience the bliss of drowning your opponent in high-strength attacks. It's special rules means it strikes at double the Dragoon's base initiative on the charge as well as adding +3 to the strength of the attacks instead of the usual +2. So when charging, besides the obligatory Hammer of Wrath hit, you will be seeing 4 strength 8 iniative 6 attacks. Due to the weapon being a taser, any to-hits of 6 add an additional 2 hits. This weapon lacks AP, however, but with high-strength and volume of attacks, you'll usually be waiting for just one failed save.
  • Radium Jezzail: An interesting weapon. It's an AP 5 two-shot sniper with the radium special rule which means that a to-wound of 6 is automatically two AP 2 wounds. You can replace the taser lance with this for free. However, with the amount of shooting Skitarii can casually bring, do you really need more?

Building Your Army

Place holder text