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Ok so in a upcoming planetary empires campaign I am playing, I am looking for ideas for dispensable and cost effective kamikaze units. The armies will be capped at 1500pts, with no minimum value besides adhering to FOC. Any units lost or casualties taken are persistent and have to be purchased with pts gained from controlling more tiles.

Im electing for a strategy of victory through attrition, a few full forces and spam a bunch of small forces to claim territories quickly. I expect my tiny forces to be engaged and either die or do a fighting withdraw. So what I am wondering is some units that you guys think would go well to either:
1) volley shots at the enemy and hop off the table edge after a few turns, so i can just keep pecking at their forces and swarm around them. Minimum losses, maximum kills and then bug out before they close to finish me.
2) or to suicide themselves, hopefully taking more points with them. This is to weaken the enemy force and make it easier for my full sized armies to sweep them

I can only take one codex. Most likely it will be Wolves. I could also try and use my GKs, tau or deamons (tzeetch / slannesh), but I would be hard pressed to make a good 1500pt list of GKS. My tau would get utterly destroyed in the meta group. Deamons could work, but id prefer the SW unless you guys can point out something in any of the other codexs im missing that would make it fantastic for this campaign type.

So far all ive come up with is a retreating force of: LF missle spam, and guys in razorbacks that will drive away at the first sign of trouble. Or a suicide force of Long fangs, GH's in drop pods, and a outflank of scouts so can cherry pick expensive thigns with meltas and plasma guns. Even though I would like to come up with something more interesting for the retreating force them just LF missle spam, I cant think of any other unit that would do even half as well in the SW codex to pump out lots of shooting and run away like they can. One fun rule we have is the force can not move without a HQ, so i was thinking of throwing some snipers in the mix to peg their HQs to death and immobilize their armies.

So any suggestions are welcome, any of those codex's, any crazy ideas, any units. The whole point is to cause the most chaos possible and bleed the other guy for as much as possible for taking that tile.

I know that for Codex Marines one of the best suicide troops are squads of Sternguard with Combi-weapons in a drop pod. If you are careful, they can easily take out than their points value in enemy models in a single turn, and may potentially survive to fight on, especially if you can use the pod as a roadblock (no guarentees, however). What I would personally suggest would be either a squad of 5 with 5 combi-meltas or a squad of 10 with 6 combi-meltas and 4 combi-flamers/Heavy Flamers or 4 combi-plasmas. Mathematically speaking, a single meltagun fired at under 6" has just less than a 20% chance of destroying an AV14 target with no save (I can't remember, but I think it works out to about 19.444%, and when you are dropping in you can usually position so that a target offers a lower AV and no cover), so if you take a squad of 5 it gives you about a 98% chance of killing an AV 14 target outright (and with smart drop tactics you should be able to ensure that the sternguard can arrive within 6" due to their 6" deployment). For the squad of 10, I like a split of 3 combi-meltas and 2 of the other weapon if you combat squad. 3 combi-meltas gives you a 60% chance of blowing even the toughest targets up, allowing you to more effectively split your fire to blow up 2 heavy vehicles. Alternatively, if your first squad wiffs on the high-priority vehicle (such as a land raider) the second squad can attempt to destroy it instead of going after a weaker vehicle. The decision between flamers and plasma depends on what army you expect to face and how you think they will try to deal with the Sternguard after they have shot. You generally want flamers for really horde armies and armies that are likely to assault you next turn, and plasma for shootier armies. I'm not sure how such a unit would work for SW, but it is something to investigate.

Unfortunately, the only unit that can take mass combi meltas is a elite unit. So i could do just that, but i still would have to have the 1 HQ and 2 troops that would have to either run away or pretty much die just the same, but with only 1 special weapon per squad.

Not entirely true. You could have Logan Grimnar to give you wolf guard as troops. Expensive, but can be quite worth it.
As for throw away troops you can use some fenrisian wolves. Won't do much more than soak fire until they get into melee, but I've used them effectively to soak up some over-watch then charge in with something a little better, like my Calvary.
You can also give your wolf priest saga of the hunter, giving him (and the squad he's with) the ability to outflank. Come on with a full squad of bloodclaws from the rear with melta/plasma/whatever then charge next turn. Priest also gives them hatred... or was it preferred enemy? I can never remember which... both of the unit's I've suggested aren't usually considered good choices, but they're large squads who are fairly disposable.
You can also use a rune priest to living lightning his warlord/hq every turn until he's gone. Combine that with a squad of sniper-scouts and you should be able to focus on him enough to take him down. As a mid-range army hit and run tactics are what SW are built for.
I also run a vindicator for some S10 pie plate fun.
I've been focusing on Sw due to a) you seem to want to play them, and b) they're what I know

Ally with IG, use squads of conscripts and Chenkov.
Endless hordes of utterly disposable, replaceable men, I choose you!

Agreed with Daedricbob, have your first idea be with SW's or whatever army you decide as a fast assault army, and then just load up on Chenkov's conscripts (literally as many as you can possibly take) deem them your suicide squads, and watch as your opponent get's tabled by ranks of 50 exploding men at a time - who will come back the next turn and do it again!

In fact, screw it - just make ALL of your army footslogging IG with explosive flakk jackets and take 300 conscripts. Then, call it a day.

Guys, he said only one codex. So no allies.


I'd say go with whatever gives you the strongest weapons.

So, hide a cheap hq and 2 small troops. Then drop some long fangs in the corner. Shoot the biggest targets and walk off the board. Game lasts maybe 2 or 3 turns.

Essentially you want to hit hard while staying close enough to your board edge so you can exit at any point. Because of that you don't want drop pods or any type of deep strike capability because the units would end up too far away from your edge to facilitate a retreat. Which means heavy weapons like las cannons and missiles. Make sure whatever you target you will kill in one round. No protracted fire fights.



Assuming, of course, that retreating doesn't lose points.

Suicide troops.... aren't Lone Wolves suicidal?

Marbo.

Always cost effective.

 Spyral wrote:
Suicide troops.... aren't Lone Wolves suicidal?

Yea, they give up a kill point for surviving

Try getting an allied detachement of IG, then bring a maxed conscript squad, and whichever commander allows you to respawn them when they die
(That's a reasonable 50-150 conscripts if done right)

Cheknov and Conscripts!

 BlapBlapBlap wrote:
Cheknov and Conscripts!

That's the one!

The OP doesn't have a imperial guard codex.... I think your best bet would be a long fang gunline, (low cost Hq and 2 low cost troops), possibly an aegis defense line for cover. just walk away if things look bad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
With alot of longfangs of course

Problem is you only have Space Wolves and I don't know many things there that you can spam.

You know what you could spam. Grots. If you had the Ork Codex. only 540pts for 6 troop choices full of them.

He said GK too. Coteaz and lots of suicide henchmen squads, backed by psyflemen dreads.

Coyote81 wrote:
HeHe said GK too. Coteaz and lots of suicide henchmen squads, backed by psyflemen dreads.

Is that like guardsman spam? I ask because spamming human bodies to achieve an objective is simultaneously the most fethawesome and grimdark way to win, imo.

Selym wrote:

Coyote81 wrote:
HeHe said GK too. Coteaz and lots of suicide henchmen squads, backed by psyflemen dreads.

Is that like guardsman spam? I ask because spamming human bodies to achieve an objective is simultaneously the most fethawesome and grimdark way to win, imo.

It is like guardsmen spam, but better you don't have to take as many guardsmen to get the same amount of special weapons.

Doesn't Canis Wolfborn make Fenrisian Wolves (non scoring) troops? That's your HQ and Troops right there, though you'll still want some basic Grey Hunters for objectives.
They might not be all that amazing but they're fast and cheap, and Canis himself packs a wallop.

Suicide Troops:
Deathmark squad and a Harbinger of Despair
160 points for Veil of Darkness (Deep Strike deployment)
230 points for a Night Scythe (fly on and deploy... Invasion Beams... can fly 24", deploy, and shoot same turn)

You can take conscripts and infantry squads as allies for this. You can take Al'rahem and max out the platoon for a large number of low cost infantry that all outflank as a unit.

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
You can take conscripts and infantry squads as allies for this. You can take Al'rahem and max out the platoon for a large number of low cost infantry that all outflank as a unit.

Again, read the thread, one codex ie No allies and of all the listed codeci the IG isn't one of them

The Chaos Dex gives you the cultist-as-disposable-troops option...