AT43 Addict

So the word from rackham is that unpainted model kits are coming for the whole range of at-43 minis. This is great news for those that love the modelling aspect of table top games. With at-43 you will soon be able to get the best of both worlds.

These will be launched along side the new resin kit arm of rackham.

The release wave for cogs and Oni have been revealed as well. Cogs will start showing up in wave 11, while Oni begin to make their appearance in wave 15. I for one am very excited by this news.

So with the realease of CHO 111 comes a lot of new Cogs info. There is a brief overview of the faction and they supply their base platoon pattern.

• Infantry *
• infantry */**/***
• infantry */*** or  AFV *
• AFV *
• AFV */***

Interestingly the Cogs have no type ** striders at all.

The Cog standard units are equally effective in melee combat as they are at distance. A quantum pistol is worth, in terms of rate of fire, an MG of any other army. The quantum blades are among the best melee weapons in the entire galaxy.

Strong weapons, lots of shots, fearsome melee weapons. Sounds like they are shaping up to pack quite a punch. The Type ** and *** infantry are range specialists laying down heavy fire.

Interestingly there are no officers for the Cogs, only heroes. The heroes act as the officers for a unit and a unit my include as many officers as you want, so long as there are no two officers of the same type. At least this is how I interpret the text. This means that getting “officers” could be costly for the Cog forces.

After reading the forums a bit I came across some more info about how the cogs will play. The juiciest bit relates to how cover works for the cogs. Apparently cogs get no cover save from being around cover, but they may use the take cover drill anywhere they want and get a 3+ cover save. Sounds like enemy commanders might want to load up on flamers and indirect fire as these guys will be tough to shoot to death with direct fire weapons.

This army is shaping up to have a unique play style that sets it apart from the currently existing armies. Good on Rackham for keeping the new armies unique.

Lets face it, stealth is a real pain. Not being able to achieve any hits until you are within range 1 can put a damper on anyones day. There are ways of dealing with it though, some obvious and some not so obvious.

First up the standard stealth detection units. These units can hit stealthed units as normal. They include Red blok Dragonov Kommandos, Red Blok Zviezda and UNA with triple lens helmets.

The important thing to realize though is that ALL units can “see” stealth, they just can’t see them well enough to hit them. This makes any unit with a template weapon capable of inflicting damage on a stealthed unit. The two types of weapons are indirect fire weapons (grenades, grenade launchers, mortars etc…)  and flamers.

We’ll cover the non flamer weapons first. If shooting at a unit that has stealth that is outside range 1, all your shots are counted as missing. This means that the blast deviates a minimum of 10 cm and scatters as normal. If the opponent’s unit is sufficiently large and/or your blast template is sufficiently large you will still hit the stealthed unit. This makes the 7 cm blast weapons from the Cobra Snake and the 10 cm blast from Dotch Yaga especially dangerous.

Flamers are unique as they do not require a shooting test to hit. They may be fired at their full range of 25 cm even though this distance is outside the range 1 band for being able to shoot a stealthed target without missing.

As a side note. You can still teleport with Atis into a stealthed unit, you can see them just not very well.

So there you have it, even the armies without stealth detection can still deal with stealthed units. mortars, flamers, grenade launchers are all effective at hitting stealthed units outside the range 1 band.

The Karmans have a wide array of Buggies available to them, knowing when to take the right tool for the job is paramount in being successful with the Karmans. Breaking down each buggy, it’s strengths and weaknesses, will help a Karman commander decide what the best buggy to take is.

King Buggy

Weighing in at 400 points this is the cheapest option available to the Karmans. Don’t let its lower point cost fool you though it is a very capable unit. Armed with twin ZZ Cannons and Twin Flamers this unit is used best when pushing towards the enemy. The nice thing is that this guy tends to attract fire away from your other units. No one wants those twin flamers to hit their troops.

Pros:

• Low Point Cost
• Flamers for dislodging infantry

Cons:

• Must get in close for maximum efficiency, otherwise it is simply a jungle trike with more Frame points

Jungle Buggy

The Jungle buggy is an AFVs worst nightmare. with 4 zz cannons putting out 8 shots, this is enough to ruin most anyone’s day. Those extra ZZ-cannons dont come cheap though, weighing in at 525 points its more than half the cost of a jungle trike over the king buggy. This guy does best sitting at the back of the field laying down a lot of accurate anti afv fire. It will become a very high priority early on as it will completely dominate firing lanes, making any afv or battle suit wary to poke its head out.

Pros:

• 8 ZZ Cannons will melt anything that gets in its way

Cons:

• High Cost

Thunder Buggy

The Thunder Buggy is a blend of both king buggy and Jungle Buggy. With 2 ZZ cannons and 2 Drum Guns it can deal with infantry, battle suits and lightly armoured afv’s. Weighing in at 425, I find this buggy excels at dealing with UNA. The drum guns can wound toads on a 5+ tacarms on a 4+. if you are hoping to hurt anything with armour greater than 11, consider paying the points to take the Jungle Buggy or save yourself 25 points and take the flamers on the King buggy and get in close.

Pros:

• Drum guns are great against UNA
• only 25 points more than the King buggy
• Can be effective from medium-long range

Cons:

• Drum guns ineffective on targets with moret than 11 armour (need 6 to wound)

There you have it. All of the buggies are useful in different situations. Depending on what sort of army list you build you may want the overwhelming power of the Jungle Buggy, The Infantry Routing of the King buggy, or the hail of drum gun rounds from the Thunder Buggy. The most important thing is that you have a plan for how you are going to use your buggy to its maximum effectiveness. If you dont then the points are simply wasted.

Previously I wrote about the basics of the activation order. With the release of operation frostbite there are some additional rules that change things a little. When you have two units that can be represented by the same card you may choose which unit to activate when that card is turned over. You do not need to pick ahead of time which card will represent which unit.

Some players are claiming that this removes some strategy from the game. This is true, but it does streamline play a little. if you have 2 identical units on the board there is no need to mark which is which, you simply pick one to activate.

Personally I preferred the rules the old way but I suppose I will get used to this new rule. It doesn’t change a whole lot, and remember unless you’re playing a tournament just use a house rule, that’s what I do.

So Rackham has formed into a new Company, Rackham Entertainment. You can read the press release for yourself, though its in French. UPDATE the english version is available here (Thanks Tracy at at43comic.com).

What I get from this is that Rackham been bought out and their Europe distribution network is ready to roll out right now, where that leaves North America is anyones guess (I wrote about Fantasy Flight Games and Rackham’s split earlier). We’ll just have to wait and see. The English release mentions they will be working hard to ensure retailers get their product and that they will be working on establishing more organized play.

UPDATE: Reps from Rackham Entertainment are supposedly in North America working out the distribution kinks. It looks like it is full steam ahead for Rackham.

Cry Havoc #108 had some examples of the cogs base paint scheme. While these images are far from what will be released when the models are out, it gives a good idea of the direction Rackham is going in.

What we know about the Cogs so far is that they are heavily into genetic engineering, how this plays out remains to be seen. Its nice to see that they will have some melee capabilities as well. More info on the cogs as it becomes available.

Jungle Trikes have bencome a new favourite of mine in my Karman lists. The stats are impressive, for 200 points you get a unit with double the firepower of a fire toad that can fly over obstacles. The drawback is that they are made of glass but when used correctly it doesnt matter.

The fast hit from reserves is how I use them best. They have a 30cm movement and on most missions you can easily get the 200 RP to bring one on your second turn. When I bring them on I dont plan on them surviving very long so I make a bee line usually towards the enemies battle suits. With karmic warrior and the rerolls of the ZZ guns you are pretty much guaranteed to hit with all your weapons at close range. 15 strength will wound even the dreaded kolossus on a 3+. Not too shabby for a 200 point unit.

against armies that dont have missile launchers you can also have them hang around at the back of the field and take potshots all day long, just use their high movement to keep as much distance between your opponent and the trike and you’ll likely get a few rounds of fire un harassed. Arceo lists are ideal for this as you can give the trikes “take cover”.

There is no middle range for these guys, its either charge towards auto hit range and hopefully take a round of AT fire off your buggies, or hang back and let cover and range give you the advantage. Regardless of how you play them they’re a huge asset to a karman commander. I wouldn’t leave home without them!

Last week it was revealed that FFG was no longer going to be distributing At-43. Many in the community became worried that this might be bad news for the game. Currently Rackham is under the French equivalent of Chapter 11 while they undergo restructuring. Being in this state they are not allowed to reveal any of their plans publically. They exit this phase on the 28th of October.

An email that went out to all of the community evangelists (Sentinel program) seems to have made those people very excited. While they can’t reveal anything about the email until the 28th judging from the reaction some very exciting good news is on the way from Rackham regarding AT-43. I for one can’t wait to see what Rackham has in store!

So you’re thinking of starting a Red Blok army but don’t know where to start? This article is for you. There are a few basic units that will fill out your Red Blok army that you will likely use no matter what type of list you want to take. Later I will go over a bare bones red blok list, it wont win you every game but if you’re on a budget it is a very good starting point to expand on later.

Captain Vrachov

This commander can either drive a Kossak or join a krasnye Soldaty unit as a third medic. He is very useful on foot and makes the unit he joins very hard to dislodge from cover.

Sgt. Tymofiyeva

When on foot in an RPG soldaty unit Sgt. Tymofiyeva gets the disruption ability. in addition she has interference which allows her to move any card in the opponents activation sequence (before it has been revealed) to another location. This can play havoc with their activation order and give you the upper hand. (especially nasty vs  UNA with Col stark as he must deploy first)

Kransye Soldaty

These guys have your only mechanics you’ll likely want a full unit of them as they also are very difficult to dislodge from cover when Captain Vrachov is with them. This gives them 3 medics and the ability to stay alive forever.

Urod / Kossak

You will need one of these type 2 AFV’s both are decent choices. If you get Urod you have some extra long range weapons and the ability to self repair, if you get the Kossak you can turn him into KK5 which can heal nearby troops (especially useful for getting kolossus to the battle alive). Urod will be more forgiving to mistakes as his repairs turn him into an absolute beast. If you take the Kossak though you may find you have trouble filling up a 2000 pt list without buying another unit of something if you aren’t using RPG kolossus.

RPG Soldaty

These guys get rockets and combat engineers they’re supposed to get in close and melt enemy AFVs. They have to get close like most red blok units as they have very poor accuracy. their standard weapons also have twice the shots of the krasnye so they will score double the imacts with their standard weapons over the krasnye. The combat engineer can blow up terrain to speed this units movement since you dont have to move around something that no longer exists. Blowing up cover is a good way to attack without triggering overwatch as well.

Sierps, 2 of them

Sierps are feared by any army that faces red blok. with 2 light mortars they have a strength of 6, enough to impact even karman type 2 infantry 50% of the time. If 3/4 of the shots hit from this unit you score double impacts. what isn’t killed outright will be grounded. With a unit of 2 of these badboys you can be sure to ground 2 infantry units a turn. In addition to this the sierps have the disruption ability which drains the Enemies LP pool by 1 point per sierp. This can constrain what the enemy will do with their LP and can be a game changer if you can snipe / kill their commander.

Kolossus, RPG or Dragomirov

Both of these kolossus are good choices. The Dragomirovs have one rocket launcher and one mgauss giving you 6 rocket shots and 9 mgauss shots to divide among your opponents. If you want some pure anti AFV firepower go with the RPG kolossus they get 12 rocket shots and once in close very little can survive that sort of onslaught. I prefer to have each unit dedicated to a certain task so RPG’s are what I would take, but if you’re on a budget the dragomirovs might be more flexible.

Dragonov Kommandos

With their Sniper rifles your enemy will think twice about exposing their commanders and battle suits. Keep these guys in the back and pick off high value targets. You can use AT-Gauss Guns with them as well if you need to beef up your AT firepower. They also get the disruption ability just like the sierps, each unit of Dragonovs can cause 2 LP of disruption if they take 2 electronic warfare specialists. This leaves them without medics so it is a bit of a tradeoff.

Final Lists

• 12 krasnye soldaty grenade launchers + captain vrachov
• 12 RPG soldaty +rocket launchers + Sergeant Tymofiyeva
• 9 Dragonov Kommandos + sergeant + sniper rifles
• Urod
• 2 Sierps + sgt

or

• 12 krasnye soldaty grenade launchers
• 12 RPG soldaty +rocket launchers
• 3 RPG kolossus + sgt
• Urod
• 2 Sierps + sgt

or

• 12 krasnye soldaty grenade launchers
• 12 RPG soldaty +rocket launchers + sgt tymofiyeva
• 3 RPG kolossus + sgt
• KK5
• 2 Sierps + sgt

or

• 12 krasnye soldaty grenade Launchers + captain vrachov
• 12 RPG soldaty +rocket launchers
• 9 dragonov kommandos + at-Gauss
• kossak
• 2 Sierps

(final list has a few points to spare)

As you can see all these lists are very similar and will let you get into the game with no wasted purchases. All the units listed here you will use and provide a fairly balanced starter army.