The Guide to Kill Team Specialists, Part 2: Combat, Zealot, and Medic

Welcome back to our weekly Kill Team Tactics series! This week, we’re continuing our multi-part series covering Specialisms in Kill Team. We’ll be talking about how to evaluate and choose them, and which ones are worth paying points for if you’re using higher-level abilities. Last time we looked at Demolitions, Sniper, and Heavy specialists. This time we’re looking at Combat, Zealot, and Medic specialists. We’ll be going through their Tactics, Abilities, and any particularly fun builds involving them that you should consider.

Something we didn’t really touch on last time that’s worth mentioning is that, for the most part, upper-level specialists generally aren’t worth it. They aren’t even allowed in competitive play, but given how point scaling works for level 2+ specialists in kill team (4 points is a lot), it’s usually the case that you’ll be better off taking another body rather than upgrading a specialist even further, and unless it takes to level 2/3 to make a specialist worthwhile, you’re generally spending extra points on high-level specialists to “win more” when it isn’t really necessary. That said, there are some interesting combos that can arise from having higher-level specialists and we’ll talk about that here.

 

Combat Specialists

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Combat specialists are exactly what their names sound like – they’re made for getting into melee combat and taking out targets up close. Most of their abilities are tailored around making them even better at combat. Besides a funny interaction making them into basically a cactus, you’ll be using this on something already good at fighting and making them amazing.

Unique Tactics

Level 1: Up and at ‘em! (1CP)

After attacking with a friendly model, you can immediately attack with your combat specialist if they have not fought yet. This is really good for getting a combo off in the event of a bunch of models charging each other and it’s a really big mess, or if your combat specialist got charged but another model of yours did a charge. It’s just neat to have if your combat specialist can’t fight first. B

Level 2: Defensive Fighter (1CP)

Reduce this model’s attack characteristic by 2. Enemies must re-roll successful hit rolls against this model. I’m legally required to state that re-rolls happen before modifiers, which in this case doesn’t really matter because not many things in this game give +1 to hit in the Fight Phase. Either way, this is completely and utterly hilarious as an ability, something that hits on a 3+ goes from hitting 2/3rds of the time to just under half, and it gets even funnier against flesh wounded targets or things that have -1 to hit (due to the modifier rules). There’s also a really funny trick you can do with an ability, but we’ll get to that later on. B

Level 3: Deadly Charge (1CP)

Roll a dice after a successful charge, on a 5+, this model deals a mortal wound to a model that was charged. You can just kill something before you even start combat, which is actually a double edged sword. If you use this when you’re just charging a single target and you get them out of action, then you’re just free to get shot by every enemy model that’s in range, so don’t do that. You’ll probably want to use this when you’re charging multiple targets, or Harlequins, due to their invuln save. Basically, it’s another decent, situational tactic. B

 

Abilities

Level 1

Expert Fighter – Add 1 to this model’s Attacks characteristic. Literally every Combat specialist wants more attacks, literally anyone who does any sort of melee wants more attacks, this is in the absolute top tier of level 1 abilities. A+

Level 2

Martial Adept – Add 1 to hit rolls for this model in the Fight Phase. This is generally really good, most combat specialists hit on 3s, so this gets them up to 2s, and even for the ones that normally hit on 2s, this lets them essentially ignore their first flesh wound. Or in the case of Marines, their second. A

Deadly Counter – As long as this model isn’t shaken, any time an enemy model rolls a 1 to hit this model in the Fight phase, roll a D6; on a 5+, the model making the attack suffers a mortal wound after all their attacks have been resolved. A nifty way to make your opponent regret attacking you, and at the very least, could force them to spend a CP for their trouble. It’s not quite as good as Martial Adept, but the upside is that it unlocks both Killer Instinct and Bloodlust, which are fantastic abilities to have. B-

Level 3

Left Path

Deathblow – When attacking in melee, to wound rolls of a 6 inflict a mortal wound to the target. This is pretty much the only subpar ability in this tree. The only real use for it is if your faction doesn’t really have very good close combat weapons for your specialist, and you just intend to drown them in dice instead of using 1 damage weaponry to hopefully hurt them, compared to everything else in the tree, it’s not great. C

Combat Master – Add 1 to this model’s Attacks Characteristic for every enemy model within 1” of them at the start of the Fight Phase. So this is Expert Fighter (already a great ability), but with the possibility to be anywhere from twice to…nine(???) times as good. You generally want to set up multicharges due to how Injury rolls work, so this will add at least 2 attacks to your model, which is amazing. And then if someone tries to wrap your Lictor or Harlequin for whatever godforsaken reason you can pop Decisive Strike or Up and at ‘em! and end up like Neo from the Matrix. A

Right Path

Killer Instinct You can reroll failed wound rolls in the Fight Phase. Amazing, there’s nothing else to say. A

Bloodlust – You can re-roll failed charge rolls for this model. Another great ability, this entire tree is amazing. A

 

Recommended Builds

Striking Scorpion Exarch with Biting Blade
Credit: Alfredo Ramirez

Combat Specialists are sort of weird, in that you can’t use them to make a bad unit good, but instead you use them to make a good unit even better, mostly by smoothing out unlucky things that can happen (such as failing a charge, being minus to hit, or getting some unlucky wound rolls). You can throw good points after bad, but there’s nothing in this tree that makes, for example a Guardsman with a Power Sword a monster in close combat, except for one specific, weird build. But first, we’ll just go over a couple of good melee models that get even better.

Striking Scorpion Exarch

So a fully kitted-out Striking Scorpion Exarch is completely and utterly bonkers: It costs 33 points, just a few points less than a Combat Specialist Wraithblade, but we can compare them and see just how much better it is for the Scorpion. The Scorpion will be running Expert Fighter, Warrior Adept, Combat Master and Killer Instinct. The Wraithblade will have Expert Fighter.

The Wraithblade gets 5 attacks (2 base, 1 for Expert Fighter, 1 for Fires of Wrath and 1 for Ghostswords). The Striking Scorpion Exarch also gets at least 5 attacks (3 base, 1 for Expert Fighter and 1 for Combat Master). Before anything happens at all, the Exarch has a chance to do a mortal wound on a 6+, this doesn’t count as an attack, so if it only results in a flesh wound, the Exarch can still smash their face in. 

The Wraithblade hits on 3s, with no re-rolls, with a negative modifier for being obscured. Meanwhile the Exarch hits on 2s, and 6s allow another attack to happen. The Exarch also suffers no negative modifier for being obscured.

Both models function at S6 with an AP of -3, however, the Exarch can re-roll wounds, and then, as the icing on the cake, their Scorpion’s Claw does D3 damage, while Mirrorswords do 1. Meaning on average the Scorpion’s Claw has a 75% chance of putting something of action, while the Ghostswords only have 50%.

 

Assuming both of these models charged a pair of T’au Fire Warriors and split their attacks accordingly, let’s see how it would go:

Wraithblade

Fire Warrior 1 (2 attacks): 1.33~ hits → 1.11~ wounds → 50% chance to put out of action

Fire Warrior 2 (3 attacks): 2 hits → 1.66~ wounds → 50% chance to put out of action.

25% chance to kill both models

 

Striking Scorpion Exarch

Mandiblaster: 8.4% chance to put a model of action.

Fire Warrior 1 and 2 (3 attacks): → 2.91 hits → 2.84 wounds → 75% chance to put out of action.

51% chance to kill both models

Of course, due to the Injury Roll bottleneck, and the fact that most of the combat bonuses exist to mitigate variance, (except for Combat Master), the Scorpion gets even better the more stuff you charge (so those attacks don’t go to waste). Of course, consider Bloodlust as well.

 

Khorne Berserker Aspiring Champion

This one’s a no-brainer: Give your Berserker Champion a chainsword and a power maul (costs the same as a chainaxe but has a better strength bonus), plus the Icon of Wrath so he can re-roll his charge distances, and then send him in like the human buzzsaw he is. Even at level 1, the extra attack is doubly good on a Berserker. Despite what we said earlier, you could run this guy at level 3 with Expert Fighter, Martial Adept, and Deathblow, and use Deathblow to mitigate the fact that you don’t have a lot of good multi-damage options as Chaos Space Marines.

 

Tyranid Lictor

Lictors work great as Combat specialists, where their Grasping Claws give them a really great reason to want +1 Attack and their Chamaleonic Skin helps them get into combat without being shot up. At higher levels, you want to get to Combat Master, so you can take advantage of the Lictor’s larger base to get into combat with (and murder) multiple enemy models.

Stop Hitting Yourself

This is the ‘weird build’, it works with pretty much any model in the game, but in an ideal world, you want it on either something that’s relatively beefy (high toughness, invulnerable save, feel no pain, high wounds), or something that’s hard to hit (minuses to hit). Do not pick something that’s actually really, really good at combat (well you can, if you’re drowning in attacks and just want to be a jerk). Either way, you run Expert Fighter and Deadly Counter, then, at the start of the Fight Phase, use Defensive Fighter. The amount of attacks you make will tank, but enemy attacks will become dramatically less effective, as we’ll see now.

WS2+ = 83.3% → 69% to hit (31% chance to roll a 1)
WS3+ = 66% →  44.4% to hit (27.7% chance to roll a 1)
WS4+ = 50% →  25% to hit (25% chance to roll a 1)
WS5+ = 33% →  11.1% to hit (22.2% chance to roll a 1)
WS6+ = 16.7% → 2.78% to hit (19.4% chance to roll a 1)

So, you both lower the amount of actual hits the enemy will make (good), and you give them a 20-30% chance to roll a 1, which is where this gets really funny. If a hit roll of 1 gets made by an enemy against you, they suffer a mortal wound on a 5+, which is then a straight 50% chance to put a model out of action. The rules don’t properly specify if you make only a single roll no matter how many 1s were rolled, or if you roll for each 1 rolled, but I’m inclined to believe it’s the former, which sort of blunts this, but it’s still a really funny thing to do. While this is probably most useful on things that aren’t really that good at combat, I used it on a melee Dire Avenger Exarch to just be a big hassle, for example, it’s really funny on something like a Howling Banshee Exarch, where you also run Killer Instinct and Combat Master. You lose 2 attacks, putting you on around 4, but enemies are -1 to hit re-rolling successes, before you even get into flesh wounds, and remember that modifiers happen after you’re allowed to re-roll, so they’ll be missing even more against you.

Don’t base an entire strategy around it, but definitely consider it if you want something funny to fool around with.

 

Zealot Specialists

You ever get so angry that the electricity in your veins causes your eyeballs to explode? Credit: Zuul the Cat

At level 1, Zealots look a lot like Combat specialists, using their ability to get +1 Attack and +1 Strength on the charge to win combats decisively. As they move higher up in their skill trees however, they start to accrue more abilities that can make them surprisingly durable or provide some interesting utility.

Unique Tactics

Level 1: Killing Frenzy (1 CP)

Used when you pick a Zealot to fight in the Fight phase. Until the end of the phase, each time you roll a 6+ to hit, you get to make another attack with that same weapon. This is a pretty useful ability when it’s passive, but less so when you need to spend a CP to activate it. If you’ve got the ability to drop 3+ attacks with your Zealot it can be helpful for pushing through some extra damage. B-

Level 2: Martyr (2CP)

When this model loses its last wound, you can either shoot with one of its weapons (as if it were the Shooting phase), or pile in and make one attack (as if it were the Fight phase). There are a couple of really funny things going on here. Firstly, this happens before injury rolls are carried out, meaning you can do your big, bad martyrdom and then just suffer a single flesh would and essentially be completely fine. Secondly, this doesn’t specify that you have to lose your wound from an enemy attack, you can take damage by jumping too far down a ledge and have that count for triggering this. Keep in mind though, you can only either make a single attack, or shoot with a single weapon, so you generally want to use this with either a really powerful single shot weapon and hope you get lucky, or something with either a lot of shots or something that hits automatically. 2 CP is also pretty hefty all things considered. B-

Level 3: Terrifying Rampage (2CP) 

Use at the start of the Morale Phase. If your Zealot has taken an enemy model out of action in the preceding Fight Phase, each enemy model within 6” must take a Nerve Test. Order of Operations in Kill Team means that if you get this off and force a model to become shaken, it will only count for the purposes of the upcoming Break Test for the entire Kill Team, since right after that, all models that are shaken become unshaken. So basically, this is only useful for trying to force a Break Test, probably most likely on a castle that’s had its morale linking network compromised. If you have no idea what the last sentence means, just don’t use the stratagem. D, unless you are Hannibal Barca Quantum Leaping into a Harlequin player during a game of Kill Team, in which case B

 

Abilities

Level 1

Frenzied – Add 1 to the Strength and Attacks of this model on a round in which they charged. While this is partly situational due to the fact that you have to charge, most melee models in the game want an extra point of strength, and all of them want an extra attack. If you’re aiming to kill things on the charge and ping-pong around the board, this is fantastic. A+

Level 2

Exultant – Opponents must re-roll unmodified hit rolls of 6 when within 3” of this model. Here’s a little chart to show how this modifies hit chances:

WS2+ = 83.3% → 80.6%
WS3+ = 66% → 61.1%
WS4+ = 50% → 41.7%
WS5+ = 33% → 22.2%
WS6+ = 16.7% → 2.78%

So, the worse your enemy is at hitting you, the better this ability is. Meaning it’s not good at all against actual melee specialists (unless you stack flesh wounds on them), but is absolutely devastating against WS5 and 6 (Fun fact: The only WS6+ model in Kill Team is the Eldar Heavy Weapon Platform). Consider pairing this with negative hit modifiers to really make it effective, or just bully T’au with it. Note that this doesn’t specify a phase, so if you manage to stay within 3″ of a unit that wants to shoot, it’ll affect them too until they step away. D → B+ depending on what faction you’re playing against.

Flagellant – This model ignores lost wounds on a 6+. Standard 6+++, always useful. Not much else to really say about it. Incidentally, this does stack with any other sources of ignoring wounds, which can create some hilariously degenerate combos. B+

Level 3

Left Path

Puritan – You can re-roll hit rolls in the Fight Phase against models you do NOT share a Faction keyword with. Faction keywords are extremely granular, so this works unless you’re playing an exact mirror match. If you are, it’s naturally garbage, if not, it’s decent. Note also that it does not specify failed hit rolls, so you can just reroll everything and not have to worry about modifiers. F in a mirror match and B in a normal game.

Rousing – Add 1 to the Leadership of friendly models within 6”, as long as this model is not shaken. Higher leadership is something that’s useful, but this doesn’t really enhance your killing power, you could stack this with the LD bonus from being close to friendly models and give your friendly melee a pretty hefty bonus to Leadership, but that’s about it really. C

Right Path

Fanatical – This model automatically passes Nerve Tests. This has its uses if you want to range ahead of large team and are worried about being caught without support. Then again, you’re probably just going to die if that happens. It’s hard to recommend this over Strength of Spirit, but in the right teams it can have its uses. C+

Strength of Spirit – Subtract 1 for injury rolls made against this model. This is a really good way to help ensure your Zealot sticks around to do some damage as the first time they’re injured standing behind cover there’s only a 1 in 6 chance of losing them. Especially funny on Necron Immortals, for reasons we’ll discuss below. A

 

Recommended Builds

The True Immortal

This one is pretty simple – a Level 3 Immortal Zealot with Frenzied, Flagellant, and Strength of Spirit. Flagellant is actually overkill here but you need to take it. Strength of Spirit forces an opponent to subtract 1 from injury rolls against your Immortal. Being obscured makes that -2. On an unmodified roll of a 6, Reanimation Protocols kick in and your Immortal is restored to 1 wound remaining with no Flesh Wounds, making it effectively unkillable (as if its 6+++ save wasn’t enough). You can do this on a Flayed One too, but it strikes me as more useful on an Immortal with a gauss blaster.

(Note: Your Immortal can still die, it just won’t ever be from the first Injury Roll, assuming it’s Obscured. A roll of a 5 once it has suffered a flesh wound would get knocked down by 2 and then bumped up by 1, putting it at 4, and thus out of action.)

Smash “Cap”

Give a Space Wolf Veteran Sergeant a Jump Pack, Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield. Run them as Frenzied, Flagellant, Strength of Spirit and Puritan. Just so you know, this is gonna set you back 45 points. But you get a model with 12 inch range, 4 attacks on the charge, hitting on 3s (Default 3, -1 for Thunder Hammer, +1 due to Space Wolves), re-rolling fails if you’re not fighting Marines. You’re wounding pretty much everything in the game on 2s, AP-3, and a flat 3 damage (which has just under a 90% chance to put anything with 0 flesh wounds out of action). Whatever you charge this at will die. Of course, you have that sticky issue of being 1 wound, but…that’s what’s Flagellant, Strength of Spirit and Martyr are for.

 

Combat vs. Zealot?

Generally speaking, Combat and Zealot are both fine choices at level 1 for a dedicated combat specialist, but which you choose (and how you choose to equip them) will vary depending on your list and your opponent’s list. Generally speaking, Combat specialists are more reliable since their abilities work all the time regardless of whether they charged, while Zealots need a little more finesse and clever play to make sure that, if you’re going to get charged by something, at least you charged something else first.

The other major consideration is the strength at which you’ll be attacking. A +1 bonus to strength can be a game changer, but it can also be kind of a dud depending on the matchup. For instance, a Deathwatch Blackshield with a power maul and storm shield isn’t the best candidate for the Zealot specialism, since moving from S6 to S7 makes no difference in your wound roll against nearly every model in the game. On the other hand, a Wych Fighter with hydra gauntlets gets that much scarier by moving from S3 to S4, and if you luck into the right combat drugs to push to S5, all the better.

The main point here is this: if Zealot will get you to a meaningful strength breakpoint on the charge against your anticipated target, take it. Otherwise, go for Combat – Zealot’s higher level abilities and tactics generally aren’t as quite as good as those in Combat, and being able to benefit from your level 1 ability even on turns when you didn’t charge is incredibly useful.

There are a few other factors worth considering: if you have access to an ability that gives you a better consolidate move or some other method that will let you reliably get into melee range without charging, you won’t get the +1S anyway. If you’re trying to daisy chain combats like this, or anticipate being in combat more than one round without your opponent falling back, Combat will be much more useful and can let you fight in the Hammer of Wrath phase if you brought another model in to charge in subsequent rounds.

 

Medic Specialists

Blood Angels Apothecary
Blood Angels Apothecary. Credit: Jack Hunter

As their name implies, Medic specialists specialize in keep your team alive, with a variety of buffs to improve their longevity and keep them on the table. This theoretically makes them useful for kill teams with smaller model counts, where individual models are much more valuable. In practice, their primary use is for buffing Leaders and Combat specialists using their level 1 Tactics, which can super-charge a model charging in, helping ensure it makes charges and making multi-charges more effective.

Unique Tactics

Level 1: Stimm Shot (1 CP)

Used at the start of the Movement phase on a model within 2″ of a friendly Medic who isn’t shaken. You get +1 to your Advance and Charge rolls for that model, and +1 Attack until the end of the round. This is very helpful for launching your combat specialist at the enemy with an extra Attack and ensuring they’re more likely to make it into combat. Extra helpful if you’re planning a multi-charge, and priced to move. This tactic is essentially the reason to take a Medic specialist at any level of play. A

Level 2: Painkiller (2 CP)

Use at the start of the Movement phase to give a model within 2″ of an unshaken level 2 Medic +2 Toughness until the end of the battle round. Potentially helpful for boosting the survivability of a key model in your Kill Team for a round, but at a pretty high cost. B

Level 3: Emergency Resuscitation (2 CP)

Use when a model from your kill team dies within 2″ of an unshaken level 3 medic. That model suffers a flesh wound instead. This is flat-out excellent and it’s almost always going to be worth 2 CP in order to keep a model around. A

 

Abilities

Level 1

Reassuring – This model is never treated as being shaken when taking Nerve tests for other models in your kill team. This is OK but very situational, and if it wasn’t for the level 1 tactic, it’d be a good reason to skip having a Medic in competitive play altogether. If you’re running a melee ‘castle’, you can take the Medic’s shaken test first, since failure won’t matter since it won’t deduct leadership for any other friendly models, and will still give a plus for things it’s close to. It’s not amazing, but it’s a nice little buffer. B

Level 2

Field Medic – As long as your medic isn’t shaken, roll a D6 when a friendly model within 3″ of your medic takes a wound. On a 6, that wound isn’t lost. A 6+++ aura is always useful, and makes for very tough-to-dislodge castles. A

Anatomist – Re-roll wound rolls of 1 for this model in the Fight phase. A very useful ability on melee specialists, but not necessarily what you want on your Medic. How useful this is will depend largely on what faction you’re playing and who your medic is. C

Level 3

Left Path

Trauma Specialist – As long as your medic isn’t shaken, when an Injury roll is made for a friendly within 3″, roll an extra dice and use the lowest result. Really helpful for keeping your team on the table early on, where your chances of survival before taking any flesh wounds jumps by 50%. Given that you’ll be pairing this with Field Medic, it can make for some very durable castles. A

Triage Expert – A campaign-specific ability, this allows you to roll a D6 every time you roll a “dead” results on the Casualty roll after a Kill Team game; on a 4+ they make a full recovery instead. This is very nifty if you’re playing a campaign and using the out of action rules and worthless otherwise. F outside of campaigns, B otherwise

Right Path

Interrogator – Another campaign-specific ability, only much less useful: At the end of each battle you win, if this model was in your kill team and not out of action, roll a D6. On a 5+ you get +1 Intelligence. Being one of the few ways to gain resources in Kill Team campaigns (if you’re using the terrible core rulebook rules, that is) makes this marginally interesting, but not enough that it’s worth ever spending points on. F

Toxin Synthesizer – Before deployment you can pick up to D3 models on your kill team to get +1 to their wound rolls for melee attacks until the end of the battle. This is a fantastic ability that can help you get a lot of extra mileage out of your Combat and Zealot specialists when they’re suddenly able to wound on rolls of a 2+ with the right weapons and ability combinations. A

 

Recommended Builds

The Circus is Finally in Town

Medics are sort of interesting because on their own, they don’t really offer a lot of really good combat stuff, but when paired with actual melee specialists, they really, really come into their own. The points cost here will absolutely make your eyes bleed, but it’s time to send in the clowns.

A Harlequin Combat specialist, a Harlequin Zealot specialist, and a Harlequin Medic specialist cavort into an enemy team. They are all level 4 and armed with Kisses, let’s go over how they perform.

Combat Specialist: Expert Fighter, Warrior Adept, Combat Master and Killer Instinct. 6(!!!) attacks at least on the charge, hitting on 2’s. Counts as S4 but Toxin Synthesizer lets them add 1 to the total, wounding T4 on 3+ and T3 on a 2+, you can flip this over to a caress to wound everything short of Death Guard and Custodes on a 2+ (at the cost of less damage). Standard 4++, but now gets a 6+++ and much better odds for Injury Rolls due to Trauma Specialist

Zealot Specialist: Frenzied, Flagellant, Strength of Spirit, Puritan. 5 attacks on the charge, hitting on 3s. A Kiss puts them at S5, meaning they wound pretty much everything on a 2 or 3 and they get to do D3 damage. Where they get interesting though is just how unkillable they are. 4++, combined with a 6+++ that you can re-roll. Then when they actually lose that wound, you can use Martyr to pile in and attack again, before your Injury test is roll 2, pick lowest, with a -1 to the result. Then in the worst case, pop Emergency Resuscitation to just make it a Flesh Wound anyway.

Medic Specialist: Reassuring, Field Medic, Trauma Specialist, Toxin Synthesizer. A ‘mere’ 4 attacks for this model, hitting on 3s, wounding T4 on a 3+ (assuming you get a good roll for Toxin Synthesizer). Sadly there’s not really enough room to take Anatomist to get that sweet reroll 1s to wounds, but the real value here is the offensive, defensive, and morale buffs it offers your other two specialists, as well as a good few possible wounds as well, since even a ‘weak’ Harlequin is really, really good at close combat.

The Deathwatch Trio

Medics have some interesting tricks for keeping people alive, but their best abilities come from buffing other powerful combat characters. In this build, we’ll look at combining everything we’ve seen today. In this build, we’re using two Deathwatch Veterans and a Deathwatch Intercessor (note that Intercessors got the ability to be Medic Specialists in the Kill Team FAQ). It’s an expensive combo, costing you an additional +8 points for your specialists, but we’ve tried to save points where we can and you’re probably running a 5-model Deathwatch Kill Team either way. With this trio we’ve got an extremely hardy group of Deathwatch fighters who can press forward without worrying about being gunned down thanks to 3+ invulnerable saves and a 6+ to ignore wounds on top of Transhuman Physiology. This is the ideal setup if you’re playing the Take Prisoners mission and need to capture a bunch of enemy units.

Medic Specialist: Intercessor with Bolt Rifle, Level 2: Reassuring, Field Medic. This gives you the focal point of your combat castle, where the storm shields and 6+++ aura from the Medic allow you to trudge forward and shrug off fire until it’s time to Stimm Shot the Zealot or Combat specialist and send them into the fray.

Combat Specialist: Storm Shield, Power Maul, Level 2: Expert Fighter, Warrior Adept. The Power maul helps you offset the lack of a Strength boost while the Warrior Adept ability means you’re hitting on a 2+.

Zealot Specialist: Storm Shield, Power Sword, Level 1: Frenzied. No need to overcomplicate things here points-wise. We’ve already got Field Medic to give our Combat and Zealot specialists the 6+++, so we don’t need Flagellant. The Zealot can also make better use of the power sword’s AP-3, getting +1 Strength on the charge.

 

Next Time: Leaders, Comms, Scouts, and Snipers

That wraps up part 2 of our guide. Next time we’ll wrap up our look at the basic specialist classes, looking specifically at the four remaining specialisms before we move on to the first set of Commander specialisms. As always, if you have feedback for us, feel free to add it in the comments section below, shoot us a note on social media, or send us an email at contact@goonhammer.com – we’d love to hear from you. Otherwise, happy hunting!