Competing in a Codex World with an Index Army

At this point, Games Workshop is roughly a third of the way through their codex release schedule. So far what we've seen are some powerful Stratagems and army specific rules that have taken the game by storm. While the pace of the releases has been fast and furious, many armies are still left without these key abilities that have allowed armies to take the next step in the competitive environment. With the last codices still a possible 6-7 months away, those of us with Index armies need to adopt strategies that let us compete and hopefully mitigate some of our deficiencies.

I won't mince words here, Index armies are in a rough spot. Only having access to 3 stratagems, a  watered down set of faction benefits, and no "Chapter Tactics" so to speak, leaves many armies hamstrung and forced into a handful of builds to be competitive. Don't get me wrong, as a T'au player I actually really like our Index in so far as Index armies are concerned. However, we are effectively limited to 3 Stratagems (I had actually forgotten about the interrupting combat one), probably just  1-2 viable Warlord Traits, and a handful of special rules to compete. Double shooting units, negative to hit modifiers, crazy combos for Turn 1 charges have become the norm across the new Codices. While optimism abounds, we still have to figure out how to effectively survive until a new Codex arrives. So today, I'm going to step you through my process for building an effective Index army. I've already done this twice for Orks and T'au, both of which left me very pleased with the end results. Let's dive in!

Start at Page 1 and Work Forward

When dealing with a problem, it's usually a good idea to start at the beginning. That's incredibly applicable here as the first page (after background) of each Index entry typically covers all of the army wide special rules. Mob Rule, For the Greater Good, etc. are all going to be on page one. Looking at this page can give you a good idea of how GW generally expects the army to work, which means they probably have other built in rules that play into that style. This is our first road marker.

1. Analyze the Special Rules

There's a lot of good information on this first page that will drive decisions later on. For instance, the Orks have two army wide (or mostly army wide) special rules: 'Ere We Go and Mob Rule. This lets them reroll charge distances and treat their leadership as equal to the number of Boyz in their unit (or surrounding units), respectively. So just from reading these two rules we can discern two things. First, Orks want to be charging into close combat. Second, they want a lot of models. Now these certainly aren't the only things we'll be looking at when we go through the units, but they will help us filter units through the army's overall goals.

T'au on the otherhand, have different benefits that swing the opposite direction from Orks. For the Greater Good and Bonding Knife Ritual are their two special rules. These let them fire overwatch in support of another unit being charged and auto pass morale checks on a 6, respectively. As a bonus, you'll also find the rules for Markerlights adjacent to these two rules. What I take from this is that T'au are built around smaller units supporting each other with overlapping fire and the use of Markerlights. The expectation being that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, if played correctly.

I'm writing this as I travel for Veteran's Day weekend so I only have my Xenos 2 Index and won't be able to dig into many other armies. I'll try to sprinkle in some Genestealer Cults as well, seeing as their Cult Ambush rules can provide for some scary reinforcement shenanigans.

2. Units and Twists

Now that we have a baseline for the army, we can start diving into the units. There are two primary goals here: 1) get a feel for what is available and 2) identify special rules and tricks in the unit dataslate. For the first point, we're going to be looking at some basic characteristics: movement, wounds, BS, etc.. We need to know what our best units are in each slot from a pure numbers standpoint. Also, for an army like Orks where benefits come from having a lot of models, we want to check unit size (min and max). Being able to take up to 30 Boyz per squad is going to play right into what we're trying to do with the army.

The second goal will be looking into each unit's special rules and how they relate to the overall army baseline. Orks again have a perfect example of this in their Weirdboyz. Energy of the Waaagh! is a special rule where every 10 Orks within a certain distance add 1 to the result of psychic tests. Keep this in mind along with how Smite works. I'll be addressing this in the next section. But going back to getting large numbers of Boyz into combat, Weirdboyz also have the power "Da Jump" where they can basically throw a unit across the board and place them outside of 9" of an enemy unit. Do this with 30 Boyz Turn 1 and your opponent suddenly has some very difficult (albeit it brutally straightforward) decisions to make.

T'au have units that are capable of Infiltrating up the board, Ghostkeels and Stealth Teams, which immediately put the pressure on your enemy's line. Being able to deploy on 75% of the board and get in range of valuable back field units is an ability that can't be overstated. Stealth Teams can often win you the Relic mission outright or guide in battlesuit reserves to strike at close range to an enemy unit.

Genestealer Cults are based around their ambush rules so anything that lets you more reliably get those 4+ results is something to look at. So from the first page we see that characters can accompany Infantry squads in the Ambush. We then look at units, specifically characters, and we see that the Primus has Meticulous Planner. This lets him reroll the result of the Cult Ambush table and apply the result to the Primus as well as the unit he's accompanying. This really helps you avoid the dreaded 1 on the table, as most of the other options can at least salvage some utility.

Special little twists that provide you with unconventional deployments or movement are what need to be prioritized here. The game is won and lost in the movement phase. All the other phases have to play off of where you position your units. If you're out of position, you've likely already lost. So give yourself every opportunity to get your units where they need to be.

3. Mortal Wounds

As you probably know, Mortal Wounds were introduced into 40K with the release of 8th Edition. I won't mince words, this is arguably one of the strongest mechanics in the game right now. Strangely though, many players don't seem to place a high priority on mortal wound generators. Certainly there are the Daemon/Chaos players who load up on cheap Brimstones and Malefic Lords to spread a significant number of Smites around the board, but most other armies seem to just use these Smite generators as filler. While this isn't a bad idea, Brimstones and Malefic Lords have proven that Smite and mortal wounds are a viable strategy in their own right. With that in mind, keep a sharp eye out for anything that causes mortal wounds or outright removes a model from play. 

I mentioned Orks and their Weirdboyz earlier which is a perfect example of what I'm talking about here. If you checked out the link to my Against the Grain - Orks, then you've seen I'm running a lot of Orks, and by a lot I mean that our friend the Warboss Hinkel doesn't have enough painted to field it. So that Energy of the Waaagh rule? Yeah it's very likely we'll be getting an additional 3 to 5 on the result of the dice. Now of course this means that Perils of the Warp is going to happen (that's why Painboyz are there) but what it also means is that there will be at least 4D6 mortal wounds dished out every turn. That's an average of 14 mortal wounds every turn. That's really good.

If you read this blog at all, then you've likely seen my articles on T'au and their seeker missiles. Honestly, building that first Against the Grain list is what developed this process. Seeker Missiles are straight forward, get two Markerlights on a target, fire Seeker Missiles at the target, every successful hit is a mortal wound. The downside is they're one use only but if you build your list around that alpha strike, you will be able to reliably remove a centerpiece model on the first round of the game. I've been able to do this with Magnus, Imperial Knights, a Fire Raptor, and various other tough/expensive units.

Genestealer Cults is a strange one in this regard as my read through found very few mortal wound generators. Two melee weapons did jump out at me though: the Heavy Rock Drill and Heavy Rock Cutter. The Drill has a cool cascading mortal wound effect where if a model takes a wound, roll a dice and on a 2+ it takes a mortal wound. If this first one is successful, roll a second dice and on a 3+ it takes another mortal wound. This process continues until the roll is failed or the model dies. Pretty handy little weapon. The Cutter has a very interesting special rule, if the weapon causes damage against a non-vehicle model you roll a D6, if the result is higher than the number of wounds remaining then the model is removed from play. That's a potentially devastating rule against wounded monsters and heavy infantry. The only units that can take these weapons are the Acolyte squads from what I can tell so they're somewhat limited, but this is solid utility.

4. Cost: Supply and Demand

Now we know several things: we know in broad terms how the army is supposed to play, we've found units with rules and abilities that play towards the strengths of the army, and we've found ways of generating mortal wounds to reliably cause damage to our opponents. These are all great building blocks but we haven't actually priced anything out yet. A unit might have fantastic stats, but if it's too cost prohibitive to run then it has to stay on the shelf (I'm looking at you Riptides).

I'd recommend something I read in an article by Nova winner Andrew Gonyo. When building a list for the first time, build it to excess. See what you can actually do within the points limits and detachments. Can you fit 400 conscripts into a 2000 point list? You bet! Are you ever going to do that though? I really hope not. But figuring that out is a necessary first step in the list building process, you have to figure out what is possible before you can move on to what is reasonable. You can fit 400 Conscripts but would 200 do the job just as well? I can take 300 Orks but would it be better to drop that down to 120 and fill in the rest with Gretchen at half the cost? Piranhas are 5 points cheaper than Remoras with more wounds and shots but the Remora can fly and enter play via Stealth Protocols. Is it worth trading our Piranhas for Remoras if I'm building around Seeker Missiles? These are the sort of questions you'll have to answer when building your list, and these are questions that only you can answer.

Don't get too caught up in the idea of "efficiency." As an engineer, I can tell you that nothing will ever be perfectly efficient and at times that's for the best. Weapon A may cause more wounds on average than Weapon B for a lower price, or Unit X may be cheaper than Unit Y but this isn't the end all be all. Your meta may call for Weapon B far more often than Weapon A due to range or armor considerations. Unit X may let you get more bodies on the board but Unit Y has better longevity. Instead of efficiency, look more towards rate of return. Are you able to consistently get the result you want from the unit? Is it helping you win games or is it holding you back?

I'll jump back to my T'au for this final example. If you were to ask 10 T'au players what the most competitive tournament list is, probably 7 or 8 would say Commander Spam. Of those 8, half would likely say that you want to bring as many Commanders as possible. The other half would likely say 5 or 6 should do the trick. This is a perfect example of efficiency vs rate of return. The list with as many commanders as possible is far and away the most "efficient" list. You'll be putting a lot of high quality shots on target and hitting on a 2+, this sounds great right? Well in practice, no not really. The issue is when you try to become efficient in this manner, you become really good at doing one thing and not very good at doing everything else. The best success from the Commander Spam list has come from ~5 Commanders backed up by other elements to grab objectives. Some units simply exist to survive and babysit objectives, and that's valuable in a game where scoring objectives is ultimately how you win 75% of your games.

 5. Aura Buffs 

This was brought up by Robert in the comments and honestly this portion really needs inclusion. When you're already limited in the force multipliers available to you, it's imperative that you exploit the few that are available. With this in mind, be on the look out for any units that provide benefits to other units within X". This is the most common way you'll see these aura buffs written, but there are also some that are based off line of sight requirements. These will either be to the affected unit or to a target unit.

For Orks, the Warboss is a perfect example of aura buffs that play into the Army Goals we've been discussing. Not only do they allow nearby units to charge after advancing, but they also have a morale ability similar to a Commissar. This obviously lets more Boyz make it into combat much more quickly, which is what Orks want to do.

T'au have their share as well, including Savior Protocols which was arguably one of the best mechanics available when 8th Edition released. It's still a rule that many T'au players build around with Commanders and Y'Vahra. Basically, it lets a Battlesuit or Infantry model pass wounds off to nearby drones. No rolls necessary and the entire wound/shot is converted into a single mortal wound on the drone. Less than 10 points for an additional wound that can also shoot? I'll take 2 please. T'au have additional aura buffs for Ethereals, Commanders and others, but Savior Protocols is the real MVP in this regard.

Final Thoughts and a Warning

At the end of the day, this guidance is simply the process I've developed for working on my 8th Edition lists. I'm certainly not under the illusion that it's foolproof, but I will say that it helped me build a list that won me my first tournament. Take that as you will.

The important thing to remember is that ultimately you have to play the army, so don't take something that you won't enjoy running or that doesn't fit with what you're trying to do. Too many times I've fallen into the trap of playing a unit or list because friends have said something was really good. If you think something is good, play it. Make it work. Prove that it works, or if you can't make it work then walk away from it. But that's a call that you as a player have to make. A lot of players think Piranhas are a lackluster unit. I saw them as a fast Seeker Missiles platform with 12 S5 shots each. They're the backbone of my tournament list now. Like their namesake, they're weak on their own but terrifying en masse. With so few tools available, maximize every advantage you have. Play to the strengths of your army. Learn your weaknesses and compensate. I've said it before and I'll say it again, your success or failure is ultimately contingent upon you.

This leads into my warning. Avoid the Net List. I understand the allure, I've picked them up myself and run them. Sometimes with success and sometimes with crushing defeat. While it's worth knowing what other players are running and what is having success, keep in mind that net lists are typically brought to prominence by top of the line players. The vast majority of us are not on that level, there are very few lists out there that are auto win so success will still come down to the player. Being innovative and playing to your strengths will do more for your success then any amount of Net Lists will. Shout out to Dale Oser for living and playing by this. Rarely will you ever see him running the same list twice and I believe I'm correct in saying that he won an 18 man event recently with 45 Vespid and 100 Kroot. Be crazy, be unconventional, throw your opponents off guard while utilizing your best tools.

Hopefully this guidance will prove useful, I know creating this process has helped me immensely in transitioning from the Monster Mash T'au of 7th into the GrimDark days of Index play in 8th edition. A big thanks to Robert Chandler of Come the Apocalypse GT in Enterprise, AL for suggesting this article topic. If there's anything you want to hear about or any burning topics you want to see discussed, leave us some feedback on the blog or our Facebook page. As always, thanks again for reading!

Tau'va

This process was developed while working on the Against the Grain series and has allowed me to compete with top tournament caliber lists and players. Stay strong, keep the faith, and roll the hard six.