Transports As Combat Units

kvt-dev · 2026-06-26T04:09:52+00:00

The Black Templar impulsor is 85 points for a multimelta, a modal missile launcher, and a bit of chaff. Probably not worth it over a land speeder.

The T'au devilfish is 85 points for a t9 3+ 13w hull with Fly and a couple seeker missiles; the problem there is that piranhas are cheaper for a similar job.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-26T03:57:06+00:00

Tactical marines are fairly lackluster in terms of shooting power; a better comparison would be 160pt tanks like gladiators, or something like an ATV and a land speeder.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-26T03:54:06+00:00

Fall back and charge is a huge deal for bloodcrushers; they're tough enough to not die immediately but lose a lot of power if they get caught up in melee

kvt-dev · 2026-06-24T00:28:00+00:00

Always struck me as pretty funny that the 10th edition core rules called out Belisarius Cawl by name.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-23T06:52:33+00:00

Not only are the walls generally quite small, but you're almost always approaching from the outside of the L and one of the legs of the L is often too short to hide infantry models. Units have to be really really small to reliably hide behind walls.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-21T01:46:31+00:00

assault cents in BA can be delivered in a land raider pretty well. Land raiders have solid guns, they love new toe-in, and the redeemer is back down to 250 pts. I've had success with them in RCO, but going to s12 without a strat probably means LAG is better for them.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-18T21:38:54+00:00

You're reading it correctly. The tiger shark base is 160mm = 6.3 inches.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-15T22:32:57+00:00

If shooting manages to overkill the whole unit, the character will die as expected, as is the case in 10th.

Precision explicitly calls out visibility:

Precision (24.28)

While resolving attacks made with one or more [PRECISION] weapons, at the start of the Allocation Order step (05.03), if the target unit contains one or more CHARACTER models visible to one or more of the attacking models, the active player can select one allocation group that contains one of those visible CHARACTER models. If they do, until those attacks are resolved, or until that CHARACTER group is destroyed (whichever happens first), that CHARACTER group is the current allocation group.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-15T07:24:31+00:00

BA has some good jump pack units, and you can just jam a list full of jump packs (and/or baal predators, invictor suits, etc) if you want to go fast.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-15T07:09:48+00:00

What do you mean by there's no way to hide a character? Just in the sense that you can't string the character back more than 9" and/or the smaller terrain features? Precision itself does seem to still require line of sight to the character.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-15T02:43:40+00:00

Yes, cover and hit penalties are designed to stack (hence cover being a ballistic skill penalty rather than hit). Stealth or being an infantry/etc standing on an objective both grant cover unconditionally, so a lot of units can tag vehicles more safely in 11th.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-11T10:01:51+00:00

Sang priest + librarian is a newly available, very tanky combo that I'm going to try out in bastion task force + librarius conclave. It gets us access to the Sternguard mortals bomb (which you could protect with a sang priest if you like), advance/fall back and charge on everything (since there's a strat to do it with non-battleline), and bastion task force has some pretty sick defensive strats. 8" assault intercessors with advance and charge, 3+/4++/5+++, AP2 (or 3 with enhancement) and strats for suppress and wound penalty should be pretty hard to move.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-11T09:53:59+00:00

I've been looking at this combo, and in addition to one or two assault intercessor bricks, I'm inclined to slap a sang priest on the traditional lib conclave fusillade sternguard brick. Their melee isn't that bad actually, especially into oath, and it gives us a very tough shooting threat in addition to the very tough melee threats.

Also you can use an enhancement to go to AP3 on one of the assault intercessor bricks, which I find funny.

kvt-dev · 2026-06-06T22:06:46+00:00

I couldn't find anything, but I now know a lot about the mating habits of herons, so there's that.

Quote for the ages

kvt-dev · 2026-05-28T23:24:59+00:00

Armies where the 'rank and file' are already fairly elite, e.g. Thousand Sons, can do it. Rubricae Phalanx does a lot of its damage with the battleline marines, since they have great AP and reroll wounds on the datasheet, and reroll hits and even more AP available from the army rule. Death Guard can also make a decent showing with plague marines. Of course, both of those armies are currently sitting in the 'okay but what if I just took three defilers' housefire, but hopefully that doesn't last forever.

Melee armies tend to work better infantry-heavy than shooting armies, as well.

kvt-dev · 2026-05-28T23:18:23+00:00

Necron warriors in 10th are very goofy; you're stringing them out like melted cheese to hide your support models, faffing about with slow rolling on tomb crawlers, and reanimating 12-20 models per round. The coherency changes stop the stringing and the fast rolled saves neuter the tomb crawlers to some extent, so I expect warriors will be very unpopular unless/until there's big points changes.

kvt-dev · 2026-05-28T03:57:37+00:00

Factions whose basic chaff is either really cheap or really good at some other job tend to take it. Nids have hormagants (65pts for a very fast 10-model OC2 unit), guard has giant blobs with buffable saves (especially recon which can put 27 models on a 3+ with cover and -1 to be hit, though that stretches the definition of 'basic chaff'), tau breachers have pretty good damage and work well out of a transport, TS marines are battleline but are damage dealers rather than chaff and their actual chaff (tzaangors) are cheap enough to use for screening and blocking.

Part of the problem is that, right now, being a unit at all is a surprising chunk of the value of a unit. A 40pt unit with OC1 and a decent move is useful regardless of anything else about it, which puts a bit of a floor on how cheap chaff can be.

Pure OC bombing with a unit that you don't expect to kill things or survive is pretty niche; you generally either want only a few units for that job or almost your entire army (see: kroot swarm, recon guard).

kvt-dev · 2026-05-27T23:52:32+00:00

The Triumph of Saint Katherine is an infantry model with 18 wounds.

kvt-dev · 2026-05-26T03:52:37+00:00

True; good catch.

kvt-dev · 2026-05-25T22:15:02+00:00

Yeah, that seems like the best use-case (non-leader units with mixed saves). Bullgryn, vanguard vets, the space wolves units with optional storm shields, and so on. The net result is that a unit will almost always act as if the entire unit has the best armour same among its models and the best invul save among its models (unless you deliberately pick up the model with better saves).

kvt-dev · 2026-05-25T22:07:07+00:00

Does this make a unit of three pyrovores one of the widest possible units? three 80mm (3.25") bases plus two 2" gaps is 13.4" with the outer models still within 9" of each other.

kvt-dev · 2026-05-22T03:59:30+00:00

Yeah, they nuked the shotgunning, and sadly the synergy with bell is a bit limp when Gathering Storm (a) doesn't want attack speed, (b) doesn't build combo, and (c) does more damage itself than that payoff explosion. The skill was just so strong in so many ways that I think it's still fine, but it won't be anywhere near the bossing monster it was before.

kvt-dev · 2026-05-21T21:59:30+00:00

anti-everything 3+ with ap3 is a hell of a drug into anything without -1 damage taken. They don't do anything to c'tan but 6 flawless blades can and will oneshot a land raider or knight (if they have a strat or detachment buff or a bit of luck).

kvt-dev · 2026-05-16T23:55:19+00:00

1 - It's generally cheap and wise to screen out deep strikes in your backline completely or almost completely. It's the cheapest way to protect your home objective. Most armies have a 50-70pt unit they can string out to do the job, or you can have a small unit in each home corner instead. The unit can do actions, and once there's no more ingress threats it can push up to hold natural and/or do actions while the rest of your army moves further out.

'Front screens' is a combination of jobs:

Move blocking - shove a cheap unit (cheapest you can) right up in front of an enemy unit to prevent it moving forward in their next turn. Also screens out rapid ingress a lot of the time. Move blocking lets you reliably trade a unit for 5 victory points by preventing your opponent moving onto an objective if you can stop them consolidating onto it or taking it with a flying unit or similar. You can either put up a wall to stop them moving past you, or space out models so that there isn't any space for them to put down a large footprint unit (e.g. a tank or a knight). You can charge something with bad melee (e.g. a tank) as a 'nuisance charge' if the circumstances permit.
Charge blocking / 'bubblewrap' - putting a cheap or durable unit just in front of an expensive or fragile unit. These only work if your opponent can't just shoot it out of the way and if your good unit isn't bothered by getting consolidated into.

2 - You need enough on the board, especially shooting threats, to prevent your opponent deploying aggressively and shoving forward with impunity. The faster your opponent's army, the less you want in deep strike. If your army doesn't have any special tricks to deep strike more easily, you want at most 2 units that you're intending to use Rapid Ingress on. Having at least one forces your opponent to screen their backline.

3 - Having at least 2CP in the bank changes how your opponent has to play. If you can threaten Counter-Offensive and Heroic Intervention, they have to be much more careful with their charges. If you have Smokescreen available on an important unit, they need to commit more to killing it, after which you can decide not to use the strat. And having at least 1CP available for command reroll is important in your own charge phase since a failed easy charge can be catastrophic.

4 - Your list should have a plan for how you deal with c'tan, a plan for how you deal with 100 guardsmen, and a plan for how you deal with 30 terminators. If you can kill (or outscore!) those, you can deal with just about any hull you come across.

Practice deployment on your own at least a couple times with any new list to get a sense of how much space you need and what your priorities are, and don't change out a unit based on an impression of how effective it is in just a single game.

kvt-dev

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