List building in Khador

By: Matthew (Welshhoppo)

 

Khador, as a faction, is in quite a good place when it comes to list building and what to bring along. As a general rule of thumb Khador ranks among the easiest of the factions to use. We are the ‘no-frills’ faction and as such that shows up a lot in the way we construct our lists. And if the poop hits the fan, the majority of our casters have the ability to fix the problem themselves.

I’m going to construct a 75 point list for casual use, and I’m going to explain my steps as I get from start to finish.

Step One, Pick a Boss!

Pick a warcaster. This is generally the easiest way to start your list off and it is definitely the best place to start. If you are just coming into Khador, you would do well to use one of the Prime Warcasters (Kommander Sorscha or Sorscha1, Orsus Zoktavir, The Butcher of Khardov or Butcher1 and Vladimir Tzepesci, The Dark Prince or Vladimir1) or Kozlov, the MkIII Battle box warcaster.

Because I’ve been running her a lot recently, I’m going to go with Sorscha1.

 

Step Two, To Theme or Not to Theme?

Recently Theme forces have been released, you gain benefits for using themes but you have to suffer from restrictions in your lists, unless you know what you are doing it’s probably best to leave themes alone. The Khador Theme, Winter Guard Kommand, it really good if you are bringing along Winter Guard, and pretty much only Winter Guard.

 

Step Three, Go Heavy or Go Home

Khador only has Heavy Jacks, in the story we cannot create the complex cortices used by warjacks that easily, so rather than risk losing them in puny light jacks, Khador shoves them in the slowest, heaviest, warjacks in the game. Khadoran jacks are pretty accurate in melee, but at range they can’t hit the broadside of a colossal. While your basic Khadoran jack is pretty cheap, the more complicated jacks are, obviously, more expensive.

Juggernauts are the typical Khador jack, and probably one of the most iconic jacks in Khador, but nearly all the jacks in Khador hit hard. And we have a few ways to make them hit even harder.

Now Sorscha is pretty good at helping things hit other things and a lot of the synergy from Khador comes between its warcasters and its units. Sorscha also has a Character Jack, Beast 09 who is basically a Juggernaut on Steroids.

Because steroids are good, I’m going to bring in Beast 09. I’m also going to tag along a Destroyer. It has one of the best guns in the game and whilst it can’t hit anything with it. Sorscha’s feat means he can, for at least one turn.

As for attachments, in faction we only have the War Dog, who helps your Warcaster survive melee. Otherwise we have Madelyn Corbeau, Reinholt and Sylys Wyshnalyrr. I do find the war dog to be a good all-rounder, so let’s stick him in.

So far, Sorscha’s army looks like this.

• Sorscha
  • War Dog
  • Beast 09
  • Destroyer

 

Step Four, Support me! (Or Not?)

Now, remember I said that Khador is ‘no-frills’? Well that boils down to an issue that we suffer from. We have very little in the way of support. Everything in Khador helps you hit things harder and faster. And that is it. Nearly every solo is a combat solo in addition to doing something else. In fact I would go so far to say that support for Khador comes after everything else.

 

Step Five, Bring The Meat!

So rather than bringing support and going from there, it is easier to go there and then bring the support. And Khador still has plenty of good units to be found in its ranks. We have one of the few dedicated sniper units, which are good for knocking out your opponent’s support. In addition we have lots of Winter Guard units, and more specialised ones that are better in specific circumstances.

Now, going back to Sorscha, she has a good spell for keeping everything in her Control alive. (Fog of War) but doesn’t do that much more for units. Except for making them stationary of course.

One unit that really benefits from this are the Doom Reavers. They have native berserk, so if you kill one guy, you get to make a new attack. Of course missing stops this chain. So if you can’t miss, the killing never stops. The biggest problem with Doom Reavers is that they will also kill each other. So it is worth bringing along their Command Attachment, who gives them the ability to stop weed whacking.

Also, it is worth bringing along some ranged units in order to whittle down the bad guys on the way in, so I’m also going to bring along some Winter Guard Rifle Corps, and Three Rocketeers.

It is worth noting that some people would have to bring as many rocketeers as you can possibly fit into a list, whilst this is a viable way to play the game, it is also quite boring to play with and play against.

So at this point, the list looks like this.

• Sorscha1
  • War Dog
  • Beast 09
  • Destroyer
• Doom Reavers
  • Greylord Escort
• Widowmaker Scouts
• Winter Guard Rifle Corps
  • 3 Rocketeers

 

Step Four, Support me!

Now we can get to the last part, what can we bring to help everything else out? We have Winter Guard, so it would be rude to not bring Kovnik Jozef along. We also have Widowmakers, so we might as well bring along the Widowmaker Marksman. If we are bring along that many snipers, what will one more hurt? There are a few Mercenary Snipers as well, Kell Bailoch and Alten Ashley. Ashley is pretty good into hordes, but Kell has Deadly Shot, so he can automatically hit for three points of damage. And he can do it twice. Combine this with the marksman and his widowmakers and you can automatically cause up to 13 points of sniper damage a turn. Or basically two full columns of any jack in the game. Groovy!

Finally, I’m going to bring some Greylord Ternion. They can help lower the defence of models, allowing Sorscha to get an easier freeze off. As well as having powerful sprays that can hit several models at once, potentially automatically too.

Finally, as I am 3 points short, I’ll bring in a minimum unit of mechanics to keep my jacks alive.

 

So here we have it, the finalised list.

• Kommander Sorscha – WJ: +29
  • War Dog – PC: 3
  • Beast 09 – PC: 21 (Battlegroup Points Used: 21)
  • Destroyer – PC: 14 (Battlegroup Points Used: 8)
• Widowmaker Marksman – PC: 4
  
• Kell Bailoch – PC: 5
  
• Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich – PC: 4
• Doom Reaver Swordsmen – Leader & 5 Grunts: 13
  
  • Greylord Escort – PC: 3
    
• Widowmaker Scouts – Leader & 3 Grunts: 8
  
• Winter Guard Rifle Corps – Leader & 9 Grunts: 13
  
  • Winter Guard Rocketeer – PC: 2
    
  •  Winter Guard Rocketeer – PC: 2
    
  •  Winter Guard Rocketeer – PC: 2
    
• Greylord Ternion – Leader & 2 Grunts: 7
  
• Battle Mechaniks – Leader & 3 Grunts: 3

Now, is this the only way to play Khador? Absolutely not, there is nothing stopping you bring only bringing warjacks or only bringing Battle Mechanics and so on so forth. There is no right or wrong answer, well unless you bring only Battle Mechanics, I doubt you’d get very far, but then again you never know.