Kill Team: Gaunt's Goats After Action Report #1

Welcome back to the Officers Mess! Gaunt's Ghosts have taken to the battlefield for the first time and so today's post is a brief after action report. I failed in my attempt to get a practice game in at the club on Friday and so I attended Saturday's Kill Team Day at Warhammer Kingston with an untested force!

My roster for the day was pretty straight forward:

Quite shooty, but as I discovered during the day, not shooty enough!

The Kill Team event was being held as part of Warhammer Kingston's 25th anniversary festivities. 12 people turned up to play Kill Team, the winner of which got to face off in an event match against some guests from GWHQ who would be playing the Studio's Gellar Pox Kill Team. The guys bought all the Studio models from the Rogue Trader set, and they are lovely. There are some pics on the store's Facebook Page.

Game 1 was against a Death Guard Kill Team comprising a mix of Plague Marines and Poxwalkers in the Sweep and Clear mission.

As can be seen from the earlier picture, the Goats made a hard push on one flank which the Nurgle forces sent melee forces to intercept, under the cover of their Gunner with his Blight Launcher (who is nigh on invulnerable courtesy of the Cloud of Flies tactic. A couple of other Plague Marines stomp off after other objectives.

Combat soon ensues!

Leader Goat throws himself into the fray, eventually taking out the Scythe wielding monster with an overcharged plasma pistol to the head.

Alas this is the Goat's only moment of glory in the game; my opponent's dice are rolling hot and mine are not! I lose 5 Goats to injury rolls, and promptly fail the Break test. Game over man! To add insult to injury (roll) my opponent is well placed on objectives, capping 3 to the one I was holding at the time.

My opponent was great fun to play against, and had a lovely looking force.

Onto game 2! This time it's against a fellow Imperial Guard player, with a mix of Scions and regular troopers in the Take Prisoners mission. He's making better use of the large number of special weapons available to a Guard team, including 3 plasma guns (gulp!). Take Prisoners is a very odd mission in that to claim VP you need to isolate and take out your opponent's models in the Fight phase.

The Goats deploy with a small fire base on the top of a ruin, and out of line of sight of the opposing gun line.

My opponent deploys his forces in two halves as well, one forming a very shooty fire base, the other more mobile.

The Guard gun line all Ready whilst the other section moves across the road into cover. The Goats skedaddle off the roof to join their comrades on the ground to avoid the incoming fusillade of fire!

Turn 2 and the Goats move on the flank and open up, attempting to nail the models opposite them. I advance a couple of regular troopers in front (just to the top of the picture below) to provide some cover for the more valuable specialists and gunners behind.

The strategy is semi successful and I take 3 or so models out, including the opposing Leader.

The fire base is forced to move out from their ruin to get any sort of Line of Sight onto my models. Again my opponents dice run hot and over a couple of turns I see over half my force deleted. Here's the Out of Action pile:

Hardly a flesh wound to be seen! I am forced to Break Test, and true to form I fail the roll. Unlike the previous game this isn't an automatic loss! My Goats spend a couple of turns failing nerve tests and my opponent fixes bayonets and attempts to capture the bleating survivors in assault. On the very last dice roll of the final turn my opponent takes out a single trooper and wins by 1 measly VP! 

2 games down and 2 losses.  Will Game 3 be any better?

The third and final game finds me faced off against 1000 Sons in Terror Tactics. This is an elite team consisting of a Tzaangor Twistbray, an Aspiring Sorceror and a number of Rubric Marines. This mission revolves around either Breaking your opponent's team or winning via VP for killing models and having your models escape the battlefield via your opponent's table edge.

I have to confess I got so into this game that I forgot to take any photographs during the action. I did take a couple of pictures after the match however. These are lovely models; the Aspiring Sorceror would go on to win Best 40K Model in the painting competition.

The strands of fate wove in the 1000 Sons favour right from the outset; the Icon of Flame nailed two models in two turns with straight 6s generating mortal wounds, and the Sorceror's psybolt claiming a 3rd. 

My first turn shooting was relatively miserable, causing a flesh wound here or there. On turn two I decided to commit fully to the mission and legged it across the table, advancing everyone and using Move, Move, Move orders. 

Alas I lost more models, and promptly failed my Break test again.  3 games and 3 losses gave me the Wooden Spoon!  I'm not too disappointed however; I enjoyed all my games whilst learning a lot about Kill Team which I'll use in future matches.

I entered the Goats into the converted Kill Team modelling/painting competition. Whilst they lost to a very deserving (and lovely) Inquisition War Band I did receive a lot of complements about the Goats during the day; people really seem to enjoy seeing them on the table top so I'll continue to work on them.

The Gaunt Goat Roster as it stands needs toughening up on a few counts:

• More special weapons, particularly Plasma for consistent multi damage to force multiple injury rolls and to deny Marine saves.
• More bodies; I can't improve the Goat's saves (and all my opponents are packing multiple low AP weapons) but some more bodies will raise the number of casualties to be conceeded before Break Tests are forced.
• I also need to investigate if there's any means of improving Leadership or mitigating Break Tests. 

So lots to consider; one path will lead towards some non-Scion based Goats being added to the force, whilst another means learning to play with the elite and fragile Scion only Kill Team. I think I'll have to explore both. There will definitely be more from Gaunt's Goats in the future!

Thanks for reading as always and please stop by again soon for more thrilling Goat tales.