Welcome to Vantage Point, a new series that climbs up into the minds of Kill Team’s designers and removes the Conceal orders on their tactical insight. This week, the Warhammer Studio’s Elliot Hamer has strategic wisdom for the Veteran Guardsmen, letting you get the best out of this skilled but fragile kill team.
Elliot: Veteran Guardsmen is a kill team that must work together to maximise their potential and become greater than the sum of their parts. This means you have to play them a little differently to other factions as you can’t rely on a single operative to do the work for you. To dominate with Veteran Guardsmen, you need to think many activations ahead, choose the right time to perform key actions, and ensure your operatives fulfil their individual roles for the team as a whole.
Here are a few key tips that can help you get the most out of the Imperium’s largest fighting force.
Establish and Utilise Your Operatives’ Roles
Individually, an average guardsman isn’t very flexible, so assign roles to your operatives and use them in ways that complement this.
For example, a guardsman with just a humble lasgun isn’t going to be dealing high damage, but one with a plasma gun, a remote mine, or krak grenade can. Use the latter for engaging the enemy, and the former for controlling ground and achieving mission objectives.
Use Your Gunners Carefully
While it can be tempting to pull the trigger at the first opportunity with your GUNNER VETERAN operatives, their lethality can make them a prime target for the enemy.
Here are some key ways you can use them carefully:
Deploy them with a Conceal order when they have a good view of the killzone and use the Infiltrate option in the scouting step. When one of your gunners is activated, change to an Engage order, perform a Shoot action, then a Normal Move action to dive back behind Heavy terrain.
Use the Signal action from the COMMS VETERAN operative to boost their Action Point Limit (APL). Then perform a Normal Move action out from Heavy terrain, a Shoot action, then a Dash action back to safety.
Keep a MEDIC VETERAN operative nearby. If a valuable gunner gets incapacitated, a medic can drag them to safety and revive them.
Use the threat of your gunners to deter your opponent. A meltagunner who is safely concealed is a serious counter-threat to an aggressive enemy operative thinking of pushing your line. Even if that gunner doesn’t get to shoot, their mere presence has done a job.
Control the Killzone
Think about board control, in particular with TROOPER VETERAN operatives. Veteran Guardsman kill teams can take up to 14 operatives, offering you a mighty 28 action points and the ability to dominate objective control.
Use operatives to perform mission actions, control objective markers, block enemy movement, slow the enemy down by charging them (even if you don’t fight them!), bait the enemy, and force your opponent to make tough decisions on which target to prioritise.
Does your opponent shoot at the exposed GUNNER VETERAN operative or the TROOPER VETERAN operative controlling an objective marker?
Focus Your COMMS VETERAN
Look to maximise this key operative, and don’t be afraid to pass on their Relay Orders ability. If there’s a crucial operative who could benefit from an additional action point, but who isn’t currently valid for the Signal action, you may need to move your COMMS VETERAN closer (which is something you can’t do if they’ve relayed orders).
Using the Signal action at the right time can then turn the tide of the battle:
With an extra action point, a DEMOLITION VETERAN can move up, plant their mine, dash back, and detonate it – all in the same activation.
With an extra action point, a GUNNER VETERAN can move out, shoot, then dash back out of Line of Sight.
With the modifier to their APL lasting until the end of their next activation, a friendly operative can have an APL of 3, allowing them to control objectives over an enemy operative with the standard APL of 2.
Time Your Activations
Having 14 operatives means you often have the last say on activations in each Turning Point. Force elite, low model-count teams to commit first by activating your less important operatives, then activate your more vital operatives freely without the threat of your opponent reacting.
So long as you’re wary of your opponent’s ability to Overwatch, there’s little they can do to prevent you from implementing your plan towards the end of a Turning Point.
Thanks very much for the tactical know-how, Elliot. If you haven’t made the jump into Kill Team’s cinematic skirmish combat yet, Kill Team: Octarius offers an all-in-one experience with miniatures, terrain, rule books, and all the accessories you need to start your elite team of clandestine operatives. Then, give your Warhammer 40,000 units a spec ops story of their own with the Kill Team Compendium, featuring rules for 19 factions.
Vantage Point will be back soon with more strategic brilliance from the Warhammer Studio. Until then, keep your kill teams at the ready – there’s no knowing what will happen when the action moves to the Chalnath Expanse.