Tactical Strike
There’s a seemingly little-known set of rules in FW’s Horus Heresy Book 3: Extermination entitled Tactical Strike, which I just recently encountered, and tried out tonight. And I want to talk about it because it is an experience I’ve been craving and has been right under my nose all this time, and I feel like it is a great entry point into playing Horus Heresy games for anyone who is on the fence about it.
Tactical Strike combines the best parts of Kill Team and Combat Patrol, set against the backdrop of the Dropsite Massacre. You get 150 points to spend on 3 character models, and in your first mission you get 300 points on other stuff, which can be anything except characters and superheavies. The best bit, is that unlike Kill Team, you do not have to buy minimum sized units. Each model is purchased individually. In-game, each model can be a unit unto itself, but you can also form units of multiple models, even if they are different types. And something we didn’t use (but makes for exciting possibilities) is the ability to pick models from multiple Legions in a single force. So lots of ways to make very small, characterful forces.
It’s got a light campaign system attached with benefits and consequences for your leaders based on their performance, and an experience system of sorts where you accrue Action Points which can be spent in-game for bonuses and re-rolls, or saved up for stat gains on your characters. And it also has resource management, tying in with the theme of the hunt for the survivors in the aftermath of the Dropsite Massacre. If you get low on supplies you start running out of ammo (restricting you to snap shots), slowing down movement, and having a smaller points allowance for your non-character models. We haven’t gotten into that part yet but I can see that evoking the feeling of desperation for survival.
In our game I took a mixed but quite Terminator heavy Salamander force against my brother’s Raven Guard which was basically just a bunch of Seekers and Mor Deythan. I got shot to bits. Granted, we forgot a few rules, but it was a lot of fun and a very different way of playing. At that level, every model and roll really mattered, and every loss was keenly felt.
The only thing I think I’d like to see is a more detailed injury and advancement system for the character models, but that’s easy enough to add. The scenario system is also pretty vague in terms of actually assigning objectives but I think that’s due to it being more of a narrative framework than something for pick-up games. That said, we rolled for one main objective each and it worked well enough.
So anyone out there who is or knows a Heresy player should definitely give this a shot, especially if you like the Kill Team/Necromunda type games. It’s what Kill Team should have been.
