Friday, April 16, 2010

Chaos Space Marines Units and Tactics: Kharn the Betrayer!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Old School here with my final unit entry in the Chaos Space Marine Units and Tactics series. After this one, I will be posting some army lists and tactics that utilize the basic principals in this series. Anyway, on to the Betrayer.
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Kharn the Betrayer has a special place in my heart as he once helped me turn a scary fight against a Nob biker list (Back when they were really scary) into a victory - just by being on the field as a massive distraction, but aside from being a distraction, Kharn has something going for him that no other model has in close combat in the 40k universe; HE NEVER MISSES!
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Sure, he might take a berzerker down on occassion, but you have to love the fact that when he swings - no matter the result - sombody is gonna bleed! Realistically what it means for you is that you now have a 165pt model that hits the enemy on a 2 with a fist full of S6 powered hits on the charge. Add him to a squad of zerks and you are officially one of the most threatening units on the board.
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Which brings us to How to Field Kharn in your army: The key to making Kharn worth his points is either keeping him alive or using his first assault to take out the worst hammer unit the enemy has - if you do it right, you can have your cake and eat it too.
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I like the straight forward approach with Kharn, which is the very obvious approach; put him in a Land Raider with some Berzerkers and send him up straight up the gut! Now, sure you can pack him in with plaguers or with noise marines, but to really keep him alive against those powerfist-wielding sergeants out there, you need to kill everything you assault.
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The formula used to make this happen is Kharn + Zerks with a power weapon champ. The mass press of power weapon hits and wounds combined with the squad should force enough tough wounds to kill anything from a tyranid MC to a 5 man of TH/SS termies.
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But now your ass is in the air, but Kharn is still alive. Walkers can get to you, but if you are running your list with mutual support (see earlier CSM Units and Tactics articles) then you should have a DP or a GD (or both) nearby to deal with that. The point is that the enemy can't single Kharne out and he is still able to get to the next battle and start clearing objectives or can join another squad or split and kill a weakened foe.
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Standard caveats to special character units apply to this post (I think most of the time you can do better with a DP or something). That is my two cents on Kharn. I like him. I have run him more than any of the other SCs in the CSM codex and I recommend him to anyone who hasn't run him before. Comments and critisism encouraged.

1 comment:

  1. I love Kharn. He is simply murder for most assault. If I ever start a Chaos army, Kharn will be my center piece and the army will build around him.

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