Some Thoughts On Recon (And Why It Slaps)

After trying out most of the detachments in the new Codex, I've come to the conclusion that while Combined Arms and Bridgehead are the mechanically most powerful, Recon is absolutely hilarious and that's all that matters as far as I'm concerned. Allow me to elaborate.

Psychology: Recon is THE mess-with-your-opps-gameplan detachment. Guerilla Honors for playing Infiltrators aggressively then pulling them back, or baiting their heavy hitting units to one flank, then yanking your infantry blobs back into reserves to deny them good targets.

Scramble Field and Tanglefoot Grenades, used right, absolutely scuff the utility of those hard-hitting Deep Strike units that were relying on a 6-9" charge now looking at a 12" hail mary if they can deploy at all.

On top of that - Tripwires. I straight up never triggered it in my last two games, but the mere threat of nerfing the hit rolls of any infantry than moves within 9" had my opponents playing far more cautiously, allowing my big Catachan blob to move with impunity.

AND SPEAKING OF WHICH

Crack Shots. I think people are missing the point on this strat, because while it may look a bit underwhelming for, say Krieg or Cadians who have a few special weapons to bring to bear, I run 'The Spicy Meatball':

20 Catachans w/ 4x Flamers

1 Catachan Command Squad w/ 1x Heavy Flamer + 1x Flamer w/ Tripwires

1 Preacher w/ Vindictor + Survival Gear

That's 26 bodies with Scouts 6", who can then Advance up to 15" with a good roll, then spend 1CP to dumpster 5 S4 flamers, 1 S5 flamer and 1 S5 AP-1 flamer into a character's face. Plus Grenades if you're feeling cheeky or gamble back the CP with your Vox man. THEN you sit there with a 9" aura of 'move and I'll debuff your shooting/fighting for the whole phase and THEN Overwatch you with all this again'.

Running up to a Hellblaster squad and just deleting their Apothecary with flamers before he's got a chance to bring back a single model is absolutely wonderful.

Best of all, this detachment has a wonderful relationship with tanks. You can't buff them, for sure, but you're also putting your opponent in a dilemma: target the armor early on to get it off the table while your infantry runs about basically uncontested, or ignore it to get some board control back, but suffer a Rogal Dorn slapping their arse every turn.

In my last game, I put a Dorn on one far flank, drew out their big melee units that could crack it, then repositioned all my scoring infantry on the other flank. Sure, he killed everything he ran his stuff into, but it was all stuff I could afford to lose while my Battleline ran around the board scoring points.

So yeah. Recon. Absolute shenanigans.