CFKT I: Crimson Fist Kill Teams (part 1)

With the revision and republication of the 40K Kill Team rules comes a second wind for me in playing my Crimson Fists.  (Well, the new codex helped a little bit too.)  Actually, Kill Teams offers a new opportunity to play a lot of different armies, even more so than the Allies rules, because you can make small 200 point teams without having to invest in 2000 point armies. 

Some of the things I like about Kill Teams:

   * Running small squads of special ops bad asses.

   * Being able to field a team from every conceivable army without investing a lot of money in them.

   * Same for painting: A good way to motivate myself to paint is by specialist team.

   * The new rules for specialists is well done, categorizing and limiting certain abilities across the team.

   * Creating characters.  Characters is my favorite part of any game, so having a team where potentially everyone can shine and I can grant unique abilities to create even shiner characters is great fun for me.

The units I will likely draw from for a Marine Kill Team:

   Troops: Scouts.  These guys are perfect for the black ops role, and are the cheapest unit point-wise, so they compliment the more expensive guys for squeezing two units into 200 points.

   Troops: Tac squad.  Well obviously.  Nice thing about this 6^th ed codex is you don’t have to take a full squad of 10 to get a special weapon.  And the models are slightly cheaper points-wise, so you can get more of them in your budget.

   Elite:  Sternguard.  My first choice (next to scouts), as they come with specialist ammo.  Perfect for adapting to different scenarios in a spec-ops role.

   Fast Attack:  Assault marines.  Jump in, tear ‘em up, jump out.  And, like the CSM codex, we can now arm up to two with special weapons, making them way more flexible.  So in a squad of five, three (including the sergeant) can have special weapons.

   Fast Attack:  Vanguard vets.  For a slight point increase (only 10), you can upgrade those assault marines to veterans.  And every model in the squad can be uniquely armed, which is way cool, but also expensive.  Plus I can still equip some with jump packs for a mere 3 points, but not be obligated to make them all jumpy.  (That’s my interpretation anyway – they’re all individuals and it says “per model” so...)

   Dedicated Transports:  Razorbacks and Land Speeder Storms fit well here, especially the Storms.  Though they suck up a big chunk of your 200 point budget.  (Of course, you and your buddy can always agree to boost that budget to 225, 250, or whatever.)

   Another possible Elite: You could also take a full Legion of the Damned team, which would be cool and even fluffy to run alone, but since they can’t deepstrike in KT...  Not my first choice. 

In part two I’ll come up with some characters and list possibilities.