AT43 Addict

In AT-43 you spend most of your time taking and holding points. getting RP are essential to getting your reinforcements on the board and VP are essential to winning. Enter the point holding unit. Its job is to get to an exposed VP point as fast as possible and hold onto it for dear life. Every faction can field such a unit and it is essential to have one in your force.

These guys take indirect fire weapons so they don’t all have to be exposed to enemy fire, and can help slow the enemy’s advance. They also should have a large number of troops as they will be holding onto those VP points that will be highly contested and WILL take some nasty indirect fire in an attempt to dislodge them.

Examples of point holders are:

• UNA: 12 Star troopers with flamers and medics
• Therians: Grim golems with flamers
• Red Blok: Krasnye Soldaty with grenade launchers and medics (Captain Vrachov optional)
• Karmans: Anakongas with flamers (Guru Lucius optional) or Wendigos with grenade launchers (Lucius optional)

These units will be extremely tough to dislodge either due to large numbers and/or stealth and will also be very difficult to advance on due to their indirect weapons. The Point holder will need to be backed up with an anti AFV unit as these pose the greatest threat to dislodging them.

The point holder is a key role in any AT-43 army, sure lists that let AFV’s control points are great for grabbing RP points quickly, but when it comes to holding onto a fiercely conteded point, nothing beats the combo of a large unit with medics/stealth and indirect weapons.

I was giving a demo of some larger scale battles and decided to do a 3 way free for all in order to demo the rules. We didn’t play with reinforcements or VP as the goal was to get the core rules down so many of the strategic elements weren’t represented in this battle. That being said it was a ton of fun.

Setup

The setup featured a lot of terrain, the way AT-43 is supposed to be played. We used a collection of home made terrain, Necromunda scenery and crates. The density of terrain represents a decent board for at-43. it opens up a lot of tactical avenues and will make for a really fun game.

Armies

We used a Therian Cypher list with Tiamat, Atis, Grim Golems, Incubus Golgoth and some storm golems.

RedBlok was vanilla with Urod, 2 Sierps, Dragomirov Kolossus with Lt Dragomoria, min sized krasnye repair squad, and a full size RPG soldaty squad.

The Karmans were also vanilla with 4 kaptars, 8 wendigos with grenade launchers + cornelius, an easy trike, k-shooters and a king buggy.

We didn’t want to complicate things using support squads and what not so we played the core lists of each army pretty much. See the Full report after the jump

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The karman Type 3 infantry are extremely powerful heavy hitting units. Unlike their counterparts in other armies, each unit only has 2 models. They make up for this drawback by having an enormous amount of firepower and as much armour as a toad. Grounding is their worst enemy, as most weapons wont be able to damage them at all. Karman K-units now have the stability ability which makes them ungroundable, just like TacArms.

K-Fighters

They are the jammer equipped variant of the K’s. With  4 shots per model they are able to put out a lot of jammer fire. Jammers don’t have the range that ZZ-guns do though so you’ll have to be a little closer to your target than normal. Coupled with Jindo-Un this unit can easily capture enemy afv’s with one salvo.

K-Warriors

They are equipped with mortars making them the long range anti infantry choice. Again with 4 shots a piece they are easily able to create a max sized template that hits for 2 impacts, or able to engage at least 2 units of infantry when they fire strength 7 is also able to hurt all battle suits. This puts them a notch above the Wendigo Grenade launchers in terms of indirect effectiveness as they can actually dent red blok kolossus.

K-Shooters

They are armed with ZZ-Guns what sets them apart from a kaptar unit’s heavy weapons is they get an additional shot each and also are able to use concentrate fire in order to re roll their failed damage tests.  This damage re-roll is extremely valuable as it ups their damage potential by about 50%.  Throw karmic warrior on these guys and the chance of not doing damage becomes virtually 0.  They are also the cheapest K unit which opens up space in the other slots in your army.

K-Burners

They are highly specialized flamer equipped battle suits. They are very mission specific as they need to be within 25 cm in order to unleash their flames. They do not pack any more punch than the Anakonga or Yeti flamer teams but they also give you increased armour and the Super power grips for close combat action. This comes at a higher point cost than the Yeti or Anakonga teams but can pay off if used against units that have low strength weapons.

All of the K units have their uses though the K-warriors and K-Shooters are the most versatile.  If you want to run a small wendigo unit, taking K-Warriors will give you some great additional grounding power. Similarly if you want to beef up your anti afv capabilities the K-Shooters are really the way to go. K-Fighters are great but you must be using Saint Anuman / Jindo Un with them. This goes for pretty much any Jammer unit in the Karman force. Don’t take jammers without him.

Thinking of playing Karmans? Got the models in the 800 point starter and want to expand to a full 2000? This guide should point you in the right direction and by the end you’ll have a nice 2000 point army list that is not only useful but only contains the essentials so you can start playing at 2000 points without spending a lot of extra money on models that might collect dust on your shelf.

One of the first questions most Karman players have is Anakongas or Kaptars, closely followed up by Yetis or Wendigos. For a starter list I would recommend going with Kaptars and Wendigos. Kaptars have higher strength and more range and therefore make a better all around unit. Wendigos have higher strength access to grenade launchers as well as maser strike. Yetis are very good but situational.

Karmans – Karmans (2000 AP)

Platoon 1
- 4 Kaptars (Mentor)
- 8 Wendigos (+ Venerable Cornelius, 2 Grenade Launcher)
- 2 K-Shooters (Mentor)
- 1 Easy Trike (Mentor) / (proxy jungle trike)
- King Buggy (Mentor)

I built this list to be compatable for zero proxies, I know some people don’t like to play with them. If you do allow proxies i would use a jungle trike and use the extra points on karmic warrior for the wendigos.

The King buggy is a great all around buggy. Its flamers are what set it apart and make it better than the Thunder buggy. in this list you’ve got K-shooters so having a Jungle buggy is a bit of overkill. For a comparison of all the buggy types see the battle of the buggies.

Tracy over at AT43Comic is reporting that the Dotch Yaga has been slated for a March 2009 release. The newly revealed release plan now has Dotch Yaga slated for release in May, Let the waiting begin!

The Molot is the Twin flamer Type * afv for Red Blok. It is very devastating when used correctly and there are a few things you can do to make them even more useful. I always field at least 2 of them this is because often times, by the time they reach their opponent they have so many pieces hanging off of them that if I had one it likely wouldn’t make it at all.

The next thing to do is back them up with Urod and min sized krasnye with engineers. This armoured column should constantly move towards the enemy as fast as possible. You force your opponent to focus on the Molot’s or Urod. If they focus on the Molots, Urod will be able to repair them, and if they focus on Urod the molots wont be taking any fire. Always force your opponent to make this type of choice, it will help guarantee that some of the units arrive in one piece.

If Urod leads the charge be sure to use shield formation. He has higher armour than the molots so you will take fewer damage over all if the lighter armoured units are benefiting from cover.

Have a goal in mind, usually this involves torching a key point holding infantry unit, If you are running Frontline once your afv’s destroy this unit they will be able to hold the point themselves. If you aren’t running frontline make sure to have an infantry unit that is backing up this armoured column.

Molots are a great asset to many red blok lists, they are feared by all and a well played unit of them can take away your opponents ability to gain Victory Points.

The King Mammoth is the Karman Type *** AFV and it packs quite a punch. With the surprisingly high armour of 16 (high for Karmans anyways) it can survive all sorts of fire. Couple this with some impressive weaponry and you’ve got the perfect death machine. It is armed with 4 light flamers which can be used to create a curtain of flames (more on this later) and a heavy ZZ-Cannon that has 4 strength 17 shots.

Curtain of Flames is an interesting ability. When it is activated it obscures visibility of the King Mammoth and any units that are behind it. This works only for the side of the mammoth that the flamers are mounted on so you must be careful how you position it.

The best way to defeat the curtain is to shoot the Mammoth on overwatch as the curtain is considered to be down while it moves.

This ability provides some much needed cover to Karman troops to advance and shields the king mamoth from fire until it can bring its heavy weapons to bear on a target. The King Mammoth is a great addition to any Karman list and provides both heavy firepower with a great special ability.

There is a new scenario that came down in CHO114 called Traffic Jam. It encorporates some neat weather effects that will really make this one interesting. You can also bring down a full unit of AFV’s from reenforcement for whatever RP points you currently have, this should make for some very fast action. I can’t wait to try this one out.

There are a few errors in the actual scenario but it is pretty clear that the text for the “clear” weather effect and the “fog” weather effect should be reversed. Fog will give a -1 to your accuracy and clear weather +1.

This one is for all factions so get at it!

I also want to mention that I’ve started a new section dedicated to these scenarios so its easy for players to get at them.

So you’re a fresh Therian commander and want to know what the deal with Hekat summoning is. This ability will cause much frustration for your opponents as you are potentially able to bring a new type * AFV onto the board each turn.

For the cost of 4 LP you may take a type * AFV model that is not currently a part of your army and place it next to the Company Commander where it will be able to activate on your next turn. Only the Company Commander can use this routine so it is not possible to spawn multiple Type * AFVs in a single turn.

The spawned Type * AFVs are not alphas so they do not have any access to routines themselves. if you want to be able to use the rush routine with them the Company Commander must be the one to do it. Similarly, these summoned Type * cannot repair themselves, instead relying on the Company Commander’s routines. Remember the Company Commander is the only one that can use routines on other units in the army.

Another thing to note. If you are going to be summoning type *’s, having Sigma Urash around is extremely useful. Sigma Urash is the only Therian capable of using fusion on 2 afvs of different units. This means having him around will let you fuse those 2 half dead Hekats into a Type ** AFV of your choice.