Strike Force Justian is a faction for the tabletop miniature skirmish game Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team by Games Workshop. They consist of models from the “blind buy” Warhammer Heroes 4 series of miniatures.
Strike Force Justian is a kill team of elite Space Marines, each representing a pillar of Adeptus Astartes infantry tactics, from the heavily armored Brother Acules to Brother Flavian, the sniper of the squad. The team even features the awe-inspiring Captain Justian, a highly decorated officer armed with a power fist and a plasma pistol.
In the game, Strike Force Justian is a simple, but powerful kill team suited for players who are new to Kill Team as a game system. Each operative has only a few, easy to use abilities, and you also don’t have as many options to choose from for your roster as you normally would.
In the future, the team will get a full rules release with equipment, abilities and so on as a free downloadable PDF (and we’ll update this guide as soon as that happens), but until then, if you want a strong kill team that’s extremely easy to just pick up and play, Strike Force Justian might be just the kill team for you.
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Abilities of the Strike Force Justian Kill Team
Strike Force Justian doesn’t have any faction-wide abilities – but it might receive some in the future, when its rules receive a free update. We’ll update this space when that happens.
Operatives of the Strike Force Justian Kill Team
When you select the operatives for your Strike Force Justian Kill Team, pick 6 of the 7 available operatives listed below (only one of each kind), and then give either Sergeant Marius or Captain Justian the Leader keyword. These are the only restrictions:
You don’t have to choose loadouts or anything like that – you only have to decide which operative you aren’t taking with you. We recommend letting Brother Declan stay at home, but more on that below.
Captain Justian (Optional Leader, 1 per Kill Team)
Captain Justian is one of your Leader options for Strike Force Justian. His stats sit in the middle of what you’ll find in the kill team, with 15 Wounds, a 3+ Save and an Action Point Limit of 3.
His loadout, however, is pretty impressive, featuring a 2+ Ballistic Skill Plasma Pistol and Powerfist with 5 Attacks, 7 Critical Damage and the Brutal Special Rule, which means it can only be parried by Critical successes.
Justian has three Abilities: Rites of Battle gives you an additional Command Point each Turning Point if he is in the killzone (on the battlefield). Shock Assault lets him perform two Fight actions in an activation, which is great with that Power Fist, and Iron Halo gives him a 4+ Invulnerable Save.
Rites of Battle makes Captain Justian a must-have for your kill team, and he is a truly heavy hitter in close range and melee, but just remember you don’t have to make him your Leader for any of his abilities to work.
Sergeant Marius (Optional Leader, 1 per Kill Team)
Sergeant Marius is another Leader option for Strike Force Justiran. He has the same stats as Captain Justian, but he is equipped with a Bolt Rifle with Ballistic Skill 2+ and the P1 Critical Hit Rule, which gives the Bolt Rifle Armour Penetration 1 on a Critical Hit, as well as the humble Fists melee weapon. Marius is very straightforward when it comes to Abilities: Bolter Discipline simply lets him perform two Shoot actions in an activation.
Marius is less of a flashy Leader than Justian, but being able to lead from the rear with a Bolt Rifle rather than having your Leader exposed in close combat is a pretty good argument for making Marius your Leader.
Brother Vignius (1 per Kill Team)
Brother Vignius has 1 less Wound than Marius and Justian, and he is equipped with the Ceaseless (lets you reroll hit rolls of 1) Auto Bolt Rifle which he gets to Shoot twice in an activation due to his Bolter Discipline Ability. Vignius doesn’t have to best of loadouts, but the unlimited range and Ceaseless does give him a lot of reliability when it comes to having eligible targets to shoot at and hitting them.
Brother Thysor (1 per Kill Team)
Brother Thysor is just like a Sergeant Marius with only 14 Wounds, in the sense that, otherwise, he has the same stats, Ability and loadout (with a Ballistic Skill of 3+ rather than 2+, though). His only unique feature is the Smoke Grenade Unique Action, which lets him pay 1 Action Point place a Smoke token close to him and then make an area around it Obscuring if every Cover line for a Shoot action is drawn through it. It’s a one-time use action, but it can come in handy when advancing under fire, and even without it, Thysor has the nice P1 Bolt Rifle for some reliable shooting.
Brother Declan (1 per Kill Team)
Brother Declan is supposed to be the Assault specialist of Strike Force Justian: He has a P1 Heavy Bolt Pistol and a Chainsword with 5 Attacks and 5 Critical Damage, and the Shock Assault Ability lets him Fight twice in an activation.
Declan’s problem, however, is that the actual Assault specialist of Strike Force Justian is Captain Justian himself, who has better shooting and melee weapons than Declan, in addition to his better stats and Abilities.
In short, unless you’re really, really eager to make a close combat kill team, Declan is the most expendable operative in your roster.
Brother Flavian (1 per Kill Team)
Brother Flavian is the invaluable sniper of Strike Force Justian, with only 12 Wounds, but with the Camo Cloak Ability which lets him retain an additional dice as a succesful normal save as a result of Cover when he’s being shot at while being in Cover.
The main feature of his datacard is his Bolt Sniper Rifle, which has three profiles: Executioner lets you reroll one of your attack dice and the No Cover Special Rule, Hyperfrag turns it into a Blast Triangle/1 Inch weapon, and Mortis gives it Armour Penetration 1 and 3 Mortal Wounds per critical hit.
All the sniper rifle profiles have Heavy and Silent, which means Flavian can Shoot while having a Conceal order, but he can only Dash in the same activation as firing the weapon. Basically, you have to position Flavian somewhere where he can see most of the battlefield, and then let him stay there and pick off targets.
Finally, Flavian has the Adjust Optics Unique Action, which lasts one Turning Point and prevents enemies from being Obscured when determining Line of Sight for Flavian’s shots.
Brother Acules (1 per Kill Team)
Brother Acules is the Heavy Intercessor of Strike Force Justian, with a P1 Heavy Bolter that can split its attacks between different targets, and the Bolter Discipline Ability which lets him Shoot twice in an activation.
Acules is also the tank of Strike Force Justian, with only 2 Circle/4 inch Move, but with a whopping 18 Wounds.
Ploys of the Strike Force Justian Kill Team
Strategic Ploys
And They Shall Know No Fear
This lasts for one Turning Point, and has two effects: You can ignore all modifiers to the Action Point Limit of your operatives, and your operatives are never treated as being injured. Definitely a Ploy to keep active during the last couple of Turning Points of a game.
Tactical Doctrine
This lasts for one Turning Point and lets you reroll one of your attack dice for all shooting attacks made against targets within Pentagon/6 inch range of the shooter.
Devastator Doctrine
This also lasts for one Turning Point, and lets you reroll one of your attack dice for all shooting attacks made against targets outside of Pentagon/6 inch range of the shooter.
Assault Doctrine
This lasts for one Turning Point, and lets you reroll one of your attack dice ecery time you fight in combat with an operative who has made a Charge action in the same activation in which the combat occurs.
Tactical Ploys
Wrath of Vengeance
This lets an incapacitated friendly operative make a free Shoot action before being removed from the battlefield. This can be made more effective by using it in the same Turning Point as the Strategic Ploy And They Shall Know No Fear, so that the incapacitated operative can Shoot as if it wasn’t injured (being injured makes the Ballistic Skill of an operative worse) before it is removed.
Angel of Death
This lets one friendly operative perform a free Fight action.
Transhuman Physiology
This lets you retain one successful normal save as a critical save in one defense roll against a shooting attack.
Equipment of the Strike Force Justian Kill Team
Strike Force Justian doesn’t have any equipment options yet, but might receive them in the future.
Tac Ops of the Strike Force Justian Kill Team
Strike Force Justian doesn’t have any faction-specific Tac Ops, or even Archetypes, at the moment, but might receive them in the upcoming free update. Until then, you can still use them for casual play by agreeing to a set of Tac Ops for them with your opponent (Goonhammer suggests using the Intercession Squad Tac Ops and Archetypes as a stand-in).
Playing the Strike Force Justian Kill Team
Strike Force Justian is wonderfully simple to play: most of the operatives are just good at either shooting or fighting, and the Doctrine Strategic Ploys just help you nudge the team in the direction of being good at either charging into combat, short-range shooting or long range shooting.
Strike Force Justian is an elite kill team in the sense that you only have 6 models in your team, but Wrath of Vengeance can boost the survivability and objective control of the few models you have by quite a lot, and Wrath of Vengeance even gives you some extra firepower as a bit of consolation when one of your few and precious operatives are incapacitated.
The kill team does lack some finesse and versatility, and even though everyone has an Action Point Limit of 3, all the operatives are designed for killing things rather than taking objectives or other kinds of “advanced” tactics that go beyond just incapacitating enemy operatives.
The kill team does lack some finesse and versatility, and even though everyone has an Action Point Limit of 3, all the operatives are designed for killing things rather than taking objectives or other kinds of “advanced” tactics that go beyond just incapacitating enemy operatives.
At the time of writing this, Strike Force Justian isn’t ready for competitive play. Tac Ops are missing, and the lack of equipment options means most Justian kill teams will play in the same way, since the simplicity of its operatives offer little opportunity for variation and experimentation in your roster.
If you’re new to the game, however, this kill team is great for learning the game, since it boils the game down to moving and shooting, rather than doing lots of Unique Actions or bending the rules too much.
Buying and Assembling the Strike Force Justian Kill Team
Building the individual models in the Strike Force Justian Kill Team is easy: They’re push-fit models with only a choice of two different heads for each model, so you don’t even need glue for them! If you want them to look good painted, though, we’d suggest clipping the little plastic pegs off the bits and gluing them together, since this will minimize gaps in the miniatures.
Purchasing the models for Strike Force Justian is another matter, however:
Since they’re blind buy (you don’t know which model is in each box), and they’re not sold in Warhammer Stores or on Games Workshop’s webstore, you’ll have to find an independent retailer for them, and then either keep buying individual boxes until you have what you need, or buy an entire display box of the blind buy boxes, which will give you 8 models, which contain all the models for the team and one double of a random miniature.
In that sense, it’s pretty clear that the Kill Team rules for Strike Force Justian were made to give collectors something to do with their Warhammer Heroes models, rather than the kill team being designed with the game in mind.
Other great resources:
