Kill Team Guide: Using your Medic and Heavy Specialists

The Heavy is exactly what you’d expect; the juggernaut with the biggest gun they can find laying down a hail of bullet hell. The medic… well, less of a doctor and more of a Painboy.

Here are some of the ground rules before we go into discussing the Specialists.

I’ll only be talking about them in terms of Matched Play, which means the following:

• Tier 1 only, so only the first ability and level 1 Tactic
• Only 4 Specialists per team
• One must be a Leader
• Each specialist must be unique in the Kill Team (i.e. you can’t field 2 Combat specialists)

Heavy Specialist

I’m sure the designers had the Heavy from Team Fortress 2 in mind when they planned this! A straight up buff for any Heavy Weapon user, with some rather interesting uses for Special Weapons carriers with multi-shot Assault weapons.

• Relentless: This model does not suffer the -1 penalty for shooting with a Heavy Weapon after moving in the proceeding movement phase, or for Shooting in an Assault weapon after advancing.

A no-brainer take if you’re fielding a heavy weapon. Movement is much more important in Kill team than 40K, and a static model will get caught in all kinds of nasty crossfires whilst not being able to get clean shots of their own. This ability will allow them to move and fire the big gun without penalty.

However, the second half of this makes it rather interesting for certain factions. Assault weapons being able to shoot after Advancing without penalty adds a good dimension of mobility and damage projection that shouldn’t be underestimated. I can certainly think of the pain a Plasma Caliver can deliver for the Ad mech!

Of course, you can also use this on a standard Assault weapon trooper to give you an edge in mobility. A White Scars auto-bolt rifle Intercessor or Dire Avenger would welcome this trait, being able to get into half-range faster with their double shot weapons.

Which brings us to their tactic.

• Tactic: More bullets
• Use this when your Heavy Specialist is chosen to Shoot in the shooting phase
• Add 1 to the number of shots
• Does nothing with 1 shot weapons
• Cost: 1CP

So no double tapping rocket launchers for you, but still quite useful.

Your mileage with traditional multi-shot heavy weapons, such as the Heavy bolter, is going to be somewhat limited. An extra shot on a single damage weapon is probably not going to help much, where there are better places to spend your CP. Make no mistake, it is still useful, but it doesn’t make you the bullet hose you’re imagining.

Where this tactic shines is with multi-shot, multi-damage weapons such as plasma and auto-cannons. The high damage helps make the CP spent more efficient. So much so, I’m sure Space Marine players will be annoyed they can’t field Hellblasters in Kill Team!

A very slight niche for this, which I don’t recommend because it wastes the Heavy ability, is combining this with flamers. An extra shot which doesn’t roll to hit is quite helpful, but I’d only use this if you’ve run out of imagination for other uses.

Medic Specialist

At tier 1 this is less of the healer you’d expect and more of an off-hand close combat model. Less useful than the other Specialists, and possibly one you can pass up.

• Reassuring: This model is never treated as being Shaken when taking Nerve tests for other models in your kill Team.

Startling underwhelming as an ability, and likely to be something you’ll forget. When you compare this to the tier 1 abilities of the other Specialists it really does seem very situational, and certainly not helpful for what you’d be giving up with other Specialists.

With that said it can help ease a bit of Morale phase pressure for low Leadership Kill Teams. The issue is that it only comes into play when a model is in desperate trouble already… and does nothing to help the model itself get out of trouble.

Hopefully the tactic makes up for it.

• Tactic: Stimm-shot
• Use at the start of the Movement phase
• Pick a model with 2-inches of the Medic that is not shaken
• Add 1 to Advance rolls, charge rolls
• Add 1 to Attacks
• Cost: 1CP

Well… that’s a bit better. You’d be able to turn a regular soldier into a Combat specialist for a turn, and have slightly more reliable charges too. Keep in mind this lasts until the end of the round, so if you have Tactics that can allow your model to fight again then this becomes more efficient.

Combine with Combat Specialist for a buzz saw, but I can see that 2-inch range causing more problems than it’s worth.

The wording of the Tactic says that the target must be a model within 2-inches of the Medic and doesn’t specify that it can’t be the Medic themselves. It might be a little costly in CP, but this would make your Medic a second-string Combat specialist.

Suggestions

The pairings are clear with these two. Your Heavy will work well with any shooting buff Specialist such as the Comms, whilst the Medic plays more nicely with the Close Combat guys.

The choice between a Demo Spec and Heavy will come down to weapon choice. Flamers and single-shot weapons tend to favour the Demo spec, whereas the Heavy will want something wit multiple shots to make the most of that Tactic. Arguably the Sniper makes for a better single shot weapon carrier, provided you’re happy to sit still all game.

I would generally pass over the Medic. Certainly useful if you’re going all out on the close combat aspect in your kill team, but really not the doctor you were hoping for.

I could be wrong though. If you have any suggestions about how the medic actually works well with specific factions, let me know in the comments below. We’ll be moving on to specific Faction guides by the end of next week, and anything you can tell me before then would be helpful.

After the weekend (barring any huge shifts in the 40K world), I will be talking about the Scout and Sniper. One of these is useful right away, whilst the other is pretty much only good if you’re playing campaigns.

Until next time!

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