As part of a semi-series looking at the Imperial Armo(u)r books and the unique forces you can field with them (such as the Armored Battlegroup, Siege Regiment, Dread Mob, and Tyrant's Legion), I'm picking one of the most popular ones this time around, partly because I've gotten a request to do so and partly because it's pretty sweet.
The Death Korps of Krieg, originally printed in Imperial Armor 1 and eventually given an update that is available online, is supposed to represent a massive, entrenched foot army that uses heavy artillery support and rock-hard soldiers to hold the enemy off. Although it is superficially similar to a normal Imperial Guard army, much like the other Forge World lists some small changes make critical differences in how the list can function, so let's go through and take a look at things.
(Oh, and to stave off the inevitable complaints: no, I am not "missing the point" of the Imperial Armor books. Good rules are not incompatible with good fluff. Taking an honest look at the rules associated with something does not magically diminish its other aspects; it's simply an assessment of how useful these rules are in the game and whether they do what they say they do.)
Army-Wide Rules
Like the regular IG list, the DKoK can use Orders, with all of the same rules and restrictions. With the unique army composition, however, this does raise a few odd questions, such as whether Orders can be issued to Arillery-type units (such as Heavy Mortars and Quad Guns.) Presumably either they can't or it does not affect the guns, but if it does it could give you some interesting tactical advantages.
That aside, DKoK also benefit from several unique rules. For one, they are pseudo-Stubborn, always ignoring penalties to Morale checks in close combat (but not outside of it, oddly) and units may ignore the restriction on regrouping if under half so long as they are within 6" of an officer. Lastly, although this is not exactly a "rule," all basic troopers have +1WS compared to their IG counterparts, so they generally clock in at WS4. Combined with Stubborn, this makes them a fair bit harder to break in melee, although it won't be uncommon for this to work out poorly for you- a 10man unit will almost certainly take two turns for the enemy to chew through, meaning they get to re-charge on their own turn with no chance to shoot them. However, it also means that you can use Combined Squads without necessarily needing a Commissar, so there is some potential points savings.
The DKoK also lacks the usual transport options that IG has, i.e. Chimeras. Instead, units of five or fewer models have access to the Centaur, which will be discussed in the Troops section. To summarize, however, it's a Fast tank that carries a Heavy Stubbed and can also shoot one of the squad's guns on the move, so potentially handy.
On to the army list!
HQs
Company Command Squad
Ten points more expensive and sets the standard for heavy/special weapons in the Krieg army: Heavy Bolter, Autocannon, or TL Heavy Stubber for heavies, and one of your choice for specials. The lack of Lascannon for your heavies here is slightly annoying but really, it doesn't matter that much. However, only getting a single special weapon in the squad is very sucky and it's what makes the CCS a major step down for DKoK; they can still be usable because of the orders, but you aren't nearly as inclined to slip two into every list. You can still get the various Advisors, but you have a lot less reason to want them- your army is mostly bad at reserves, so Astropath is worthless (unless you do the Drill gimmick) and you don't have unique characters to protect, so Bodyguards are fairly pointless. Masters of Ordnance and the Fleet both have some potential, however, since they can complement your strategy- the question is whether you want to sink 100pts+ into a small, vulnerable unit that can only sorta protect itself with a transport. Answer: quite possibly not.
Commissar-General
A Commissar Lord with a different hat on. However, with your CCS being middling, passing out Ld10 is not that bad a deal, and you can always buy him some Stealth Pants. Definitely worth considering.
Death Korps Quartermaster
60pts for a dude and his three Servitor buddies; you can give him a Centaur if you want. What's he do? Give everyone within 6" of the unit Feel No Pain. Oh... oh shit. Guardsmen with FNP? In large numbers? That could be really, really dangerous. The only real limiters are that it doesn't work if he's in CC/broken or if the lead guy is dead (so Telion, Vindicares, and torrent shots will be annoying.) Still, you can try and hide them behind things and pass out a large FNP aura (four models can potentially spread 12" wide...), so this is a very top-end choice. Running this and a Commissar-General to keep your guys alive and in line is a strong choice.
Death Rider Command Squad
100pts for five Rough Riders with 6++ saves and the ability to reroll difficult terrain. They can also give orders, but are only a Junior Officer and thus don't get the super-good ones (although with rerolling DT and Run, Run, Run they have a very large, very reliable charge radius.) At the end of the day, however, they're still trying to be a Guard melee unit and thus really aren't worthwhile. Bitchin' models, though.
Elites
Death Korps Grenadier Squad
Stormtroopers. Except instead of getting Pistol + Lasgun, they only get the latter. I... I guess to stop them from being unbeatable in CC? You get an option for Vox, which I don't think Stormtroopers have (but so what?) and you don't get the special rules that make ST's useful, so that's a big downer. You can take a heavy weapons team and/or Demo Charge, though, which makes you... oh, worse than both ST's and Veterans. You can get paired special weapons, but not at a discount, so there's not really much reason to take these guys. Heck, you don't even get Autocannons, Heavy Bolters, or Plasmaguns.
Heavy Mortar Battery
Well, for starters they're Artillery, which means you better go back to the rulebook and read up on that stupid section. They are also Immobile unless you purchase Centaurs for them (which doubles the cost so they can... pretend to be Griffons?) So for 50pts each, you get a S6 AP4 large blast that you can reroll scatter on, and up to four of them per slot. Cheap? Sorta, 2/3 the price of a Griffon. Good? Sorta. Minimum range and immobile are potentially an ugly combination, but it does provide good anti-infantry. However, there is some competition from the...
Heavy Quad Launcher Battery
...Like these guys. Same cost, etc, but instead of one S6 large blast you get four S5 small ones, and you can only shoot two out of three turns. (Oh, and the Pinning test is at -1.) These are generally going to be better against things you disembark, but worse against anything else. 50pts/model is also not a particularly amazing price against mechanized armies; you may just run them in onesies and twosies.
Troops
Infantry Platoon
Just like the Platoons you know and love from IG, but no Special Weapon Squads or Conscripts. Details below.
Platoon Command Squad
Like the CCS, the PCS has a couple critical differences: it can't get a heavy weapon at all and it can only get two special weapons. Both of these are major downgrades, but it also suffers a 10pt cost increase, just like it's big brother; at this point you are paying 60pts for a pair of Melta or 50pts for two Flamers, and with effectively no way to protect them. You will not be terribly happy about having these guys around, but it's something you have to suffer through.
Infantry Squad
Gets the same 10pt tax as everything else. No heavy weapon option, but you still get a special. Does that seem shitty to you? It sort of is. The important thing to remember here is that Infantry Squads, unlike in IG, are just bubblewrap, nothing else. You are going to have to take other units to bring actual firepower, so you can't sink too many points on these guys- however, for what they are, they are pretty reasonable. You still have Combined Squads and are naturally Stubborn, so you can really hang around a long time even without a Commissar. (Remember you're only Ld8 unless there's a Commissar-General nearby, however. Ld8 Stubborn is not all that reliable.) Note also that you can get Power Fists, which are a HUGE upgrade from Power Weapons.
Heavy Weapon Squad
65pts. Heavy Bolters for 15, Autocannons for 15, TL Heavy Stubbers for 15, or Lascannons for 30- this actually puts you basically on par with the IG costs for these weapons, although you can't get Missiles (boo-hoo.) The really interesting part, however, is that they have the Combined Squads rule, meaning you can slide them into Infantry Squads for ablative wounds, Leadership boosts, and Vox support. This is a HUGE change from standard IG and, while maybe not enough to make the army great (static shooting armies just aren't), it goes a long ways towards redeeming both it and some of the other units.
Death Korps Engineer Squad
(Entries from here on out are not part of the Infantry Platoon.)
What's this, something new? Five guys, 60pts, up to five more for 10pts each. They can get a Mole Mortar (a crappy small blast barrage gun) for 5pts, a Demo Charge for 20pts, or Gas Grenades for 20pts (d6 hits at d6 strength and I10 once per game when they assault.) Basic armament is Carapace + Shotgun, which isn't awful, but not exciting, either. However, they do unlock the...
Hades Breaching Drill
50pts, 11/10/10 tank. You can bring up to one per Engineer squad, but you can have several "attached" to it (all of whom arrive via its special rules.) It always shows up via Deep Strike, laying out a S10 AP1 large blast where it arrives, which oddly has the Melta rule but can't actually get the second penetration die because it has no range. Weird. Anyways, it ignores Difficult/Dangerous Terrain and anything that survives its blast gets pushed out of the way, and any Engineers you attached to it can walk out of its arrival point starting the following turn. (Just to make the Trygon look shitty, they can act as normal and blocking the hole does nothing but delay them until it's unblocked.) The Drill has a Blast Meltagun on the front of it and can Tank Shock or Ram (always counting the hit as S10) and is limited to moving 6" each turn (but can always fire its gun.) What's all this nonsense add up to? Well, there's no arguing that the Drill isn't a powerful AT weapon, but it is fragile and Engineer squads are lackluster at best. So, if you want to use them you need an Astropath for better arrival chances and you're betting most everything on getting some major damage in on the turn you arrive; if you don't, your fragile mans and tanks will get cut up pretty badly.
Centaur
This plucky little guy is your dedicated transport; he's 11/10/10 and a Fast, Open-Topped Tank that comes with a Heavy Stubber. It can carry five guys, which is alright, if not great, and has all the normal options (which are horrible.) It also has a handy rule that lets you fire one weapon from an embarked squad as though it were hull-mounted, so you can go 12" and shoot a heavy weapon from the squad plus the Stubber- not at all bad for a little 40pt jerk. While it's worse than the Chimera in most ways, it can offer some protection to squads and its cheapness allows you to potentially take a bunch of them and get some armor saturation. Remember, it carries three models, so Heavy Weapons Squads can get inside and shoot out, despite nominally representing six guys each.
Fast Attack
Hellhound Squadron
Exactly like the IG version. However, you lack the competition of the Valkyrie/Vendetta, so these go up a notch- you might want some hulls to annoy people with and provide AT shooting.
Death Rider Squadron
Welp, they're ten points cheaper than the HQ version and... they don't have Orders. They don't really offer the army anything other than awesome models.
Cyclops Demolition Squadron
25pts per, each giving you one guy and one little bomb-tank; they operate individually. The operators can control their tanks from up to 48" away and are allowed to move them to within 1" of enemy units; during the shooting phase they can have it blow up, which works exactly like a Demolition Charge but doesn't scatter. Like artillery any glancing or penetrating hit destroys the mini-tanks, but if you pen it with a 6 the charge goes off; if you glance it with a 6, it merely explode as per a normal vehicle. Cool? Sure they are. Good? Well, not a lot of competition in the slot and they do bring a MEQ-killing blast, but you may be hard-pressed to get them to their target without either the operator or the tank getting killed. They are also one KP each for the operators, which could be problematic.
Heavy Support
Leman Russ Squadron
Same as IG. Because you don't have as many other tanks to shelter, these go down in a value a fair bit, but they are still worth thinking about at least.
Thunderer Siege Tank Squadron
Demolishers except without any of the useful rules. Don't bother.
Ordnance Battery
In lieu of the tank versions you get them stripped down to the bare minimum: guns and crewmen. They're treated as immobile artillery (sigh) with AV11, and you can pick Earthshaker (Basilisk) for 75pts or Medusa for 100pts (with 5pt Siege Shells option), with up to three per battery. Now, they are significantly cheaper than the normal versions, but in return you lose survivability (any glance or pen automatically kills you), become vulnerable to morale (they can kill your dudes), and are immobile. Worth it? No, not really. You might try to use the Medusa as a tank-killer... but being immobile and unable to direct-fire means the enemy will either have cover or be out of LOS. The Earthshaker will certainly annihilate anything outside of cover, but lots of other guns can do that as well. A single battery of Earthshakers might be worth considering, but these are not looking like a bright choice.
Bombard Battery
S8 AP3 7" blast, but only fires on alternate turns. This is the tank-mounted version and comes in squads for 145 apiece, but with a minimum range of 36" and being unable to fire on the move, it's really, really not worth it.
Heavy Weapons Platoon
Forge World seems to be at its best when it's not just regurgitating copypasta from other books. This, similar to the Infantry Platoons in the Troops slot, is one PCS and 1-4 Heavy Weapons Squads, with all the same options. Being unable to pull the tricks mentioned in the other section it's certainly a bit worse, but on the other hand it IS a way to just take a bunch of big guns reasonably cheap. Combined with other options from the book we can probably get enough AT to suffice and even possibly bring in some other guns to hurt people. Bravo, Forge World.
Considerations
Alright, so what do we have? Well, the army is very, very static- which isn't surprising given that they are a siege regiment. However, in the game this will make it difficult to respond to enemy deployments and claim objectives; we can try spamming Centaurs, but realistically that isn't possible. We can try and build a Wall of Mans and just sit behind it shooting, which isn't going to be great, but it's doable. Lastly, we can do some reserve gimmicks with the Hades Breaching Drill, and we can even try and hybridize these into other lists in order to take objectives and do a bit of tank-killing.
The lack of multiple specials (and ANY heavies) in our Command Squads is distressing, but it mostly means that we can't lean on them to bring firepower- that will have to come from our other squads. We get some pretty good bubblewrap, which we will have to be using to stave off enemy assaults. Our anti-infantry is fantastic, but that's really no surprise. If you play in an area with lots of BLOS terrain or fight the new Necrons constantly, your abundance of Barrage guns can be a hilarious way to annoy opponents as well.
Boom-Boom Mountain
I'm doing this one first because it was specifically requested by the sender of the original email (hi, Jael, sorry I didn't reply to you personally) and because it's the most obvious. We avoid falling heavily into the Artillery trap, but we are still taking a decent number of them because we want some ways to kill things we have disembarked and because they can be reasonably multi-purpose. You really, really want some places to hide these units- corner deployments and BLOS terrain are your friends; Outflankers and similar special deployments are not.
1505pt Death Korps of Krieg
1 DK Quartermaster
1 DK Quartermaster
1 Quad Cannon
1 Quad Cannon
Infantry Platoon
-PCS
-Infantry Squad (PF)
-Infantry Squad (PF)
-Infantry Squad (PF)
-Infantry Squad (PF)
-Infantry Squad (PF)
-Heavy Weapon Squad (Lascannons)
-Heavy Weapon Squad (Lascannons)
-Heavy Weapon Squad (Lascannons)
DK Engineer Squad
-Hades Breaching Drill
DK Engineer Squad
-Hades Breaching Drill
1 Earthshaker Cannon
Heavy Weapons Platoon
-PCS (2 Melta)
-Heavy Weapon Squad (Autocannons)
-Heavy Weapon Squad (Autocannons)
-Heavy Weapon Squad (Autocannons)
(Built to 1500pts also at email's request.) Your large infantry platoon is supported by a pair of Engineer squads who can come in and claim things in the late game or rid you of an annoying tank- be careful where you place them, however, as you only have two. Ideally you want them to come in late, giving the enemy less time to shoot them- remember if the tank remains stationary on top of its "hole," the Engineers are not allowed to enter, giving you an option to force-delay them. Two bubbles of FNP combined with a fairly large number of bodies gives you pretty good resilience to anti-infantry shooting- remember, the infantry models in your Artillery units benefit from it as well. How you want to combine the units will depend on the battle and opponent, but commonly you will attach three Infantry Squads together to form a scary bubblewrap blob and then the three HWTs in 2+1 and 1+1 arrangement with the remaining Infantry Squads. However, some armies you may want to stay entirely separated and for others you may want to 1+1 them as much as possible for freedom in shooting. Your artillery is there to smash squads you disembark- Quad Cannons for Explodes results (which will have cover) and Earthshaker for Wrecked (which likely will not.) Your PCS carry Meltaguns for emergencies, but are otherwise fairly worthless- use them to get units onto objectives or volley Lasguns if you have to, but otherwise just hide them.
The Terrible Steeds of the Molemen
Although riskier, this army is potentially very, very silly and can absolutely devastate a parking lot or anything else that isn't ready for it. You are very much at the mercy of the reserve dice, however.
1750 Death Korp of Krieg
1 CCS (Astropath, Master of the Fleet)
1 DK Engineer Squad
-Hades Breaching Drill
1 DK Engineer Squad
-Hades Breaching Drill
1 DK Engineer Squad
-Hades Breaching Drill
1 DK Engineer Squad
-Hades Breaching Drill
1 DK Engineer Squad
-Hades Breaching Drill
Infantry Platoon
-PCS (2 Melta)
-Infantry Squad
-Infantry Squad
-Infantry Squad
-Heavy Weapons Squad (Autocannons)
-Heavy Weapons Squad (Autocannons)
1 Devildog
1 Devildog
1 Devildog
1 Leman Russ (HB Sponsons)
1 Leman Russ (HB Sponsons)
This list attempts to achieve armor saturation and the ability to arrive en masse from reserves in a single list, which is tricky but probably your best strategy. Having half a dozen roaming Melta platforms arrive in your backfield can be rather disruptive and can give the rest of the list a chance to do its thing; Russes and Devildogs aid in saturation and help you finish off disembarked squads. Your Infantry Platoon lets you keep a toe on a home objective and can rush in to try and sneak another one if necessary, but might very well better be traded for another Engineer/Drill pair and some more tanks- I fully admit this list is mostly just a first guess, with no real testing or experience.
Overall Thoughts
Well, certainly the DKoK list is better than the Tyrant's Legion and I would also rank it above the Space Marine Siege list, although it's probably worse than the Armored Battlegroup, Dread Mob, and Elysians. However, it is at least true to its fluff and provides a couple unique options, so I can't speak too badly of them; I just wish FW hadn't decided to hate on heavy/specials in the army so much and had given them at least one good Elites choice.
As it stands, however, it's a perfectly viable army to use in casual games and even at a tournament you won't be terribly disappointed by it, nor will your opponents cry about it unless they are gigantic whiny babbies (which, admittedly, a lot of Warhams are.) All in all I give the list a hesitant thumbs-up for managing to change the basic IG army without screwing things up too badly. Keep it up, Forge World- your models and books are beautiful, now if you can get good rules to go with them you'll have everyone happy.
