“Stop eating your Kroot Loops”

Kroot or “Stop eating your Kroot Loops”

Why use Kroot?
I’m not a Kroot hater. I have 40 assembled Kroot, 30 painted and 50+ Kroot desprued.
I’m a Kroot fan. But after using them in games, I gotta ask, are they worth it? Verse Spaz Marines, the Kroot die like lemmings into a blender. A space marine can break wind and an entire Kroot squad is wiped out.

But why field them?
They’re cheap. 70 points buys you 10 of them. Tactical uses: they form a cheap unit wrap, aka “Kroot loops.” This benefits if the Tau warrior is playing the Internet approved Tau Castle game. The Tau Castle just makes it easier for your opponent to win, but further details on the reasoning behind that will be offered in another post. The Tau Castle is just a bad deployment, mediocre group-think, but more on that another time.

Cheap does not forgive crappy. They have no save, for 45-55+ points PER UNIT you can give them a 6+. Those points equal most of Fire Warrior squad or a Crisis Suit.

What can make them not horrible:
The Best Use
The best use of the Kroot is to annoy your opponent. Nothing can distract/annoy/confuse your opponent like 32 units showing up on turn 2. Others might think, “That’s unreliable!” My Pathfinder Devilfish disagrees. On a 2+ they show up. Some might want to split the Kroot into smaller units to assure they get something on the proper table edge. Smaller units die quicker, it’s a good idea but I want my Kroot massed for safety and to raise that 25% casuality limit high. Also, every shot heading at the Kroot is one less at my Crisis Suits or Broadsides or Devilfish.

And bring them in as far away from your table edge as possible! Because when the unit fails it leadership check, because it will happen (quickly) you can still fire while retreating.

Those 32 Units have 3 attacks in close combat on a charge so 96 attacks. Moving in you can ring a transport and prevent debarking. And unless it’s a Landraider by volume you will pop it.

Standard Kroot Uses:
Hiding:
If there are forests or swamps on the table deploy as close to them as possible and Run into cover, get them into cover as quick as possible or kiss your 70+ points goodbye. The Kroot can then sit there and fire out of cover. Any unit assaulting into cover goes last in initiative. This means the Kroot get to take some opponents with them before they are murdered horribly. They can also shoot out of cover give you a 24 inch firing arc. That many shots is bound to hit something.

Contesting:
A ten man squad of Kroot can stretch a little less than 30 inches (1 inch base, unit cohesion) that can hold or challenge 1 or 2 objectives.

What else could I buy instead?
If you want to protect units buy a Devilfish, it’s 10 points more, armored and comes with 2 drones. 70 points is a baseline Broadside. And that TL Railgun will do damage, toss in 5 more points for the Multitracker and missiles away. Or get 6 Firewarriors and give 3 of them EMP grenades. Those Grenades can kill Mech. Or a Piranha with Melta.

So What?
If you’re going to field Kroot, either run into cover and pray the enemy ignores them, or fill up the unit and wreak havoc until they get shot at and run away like the French.

Sure you can build your walls out of them, but those walls will come tumbling down.