Forge Fathers: Building your first Strike Teams

Expert craftsmen and engineers, Forge Father technology is known across the galaxy for its consummate superiority. While Forge Fathers prefer trade to war, they are willing, as well as quite able, to defend their interests. Due to mandatory enlistment, all members of Forge Father society are skilled combatants, as capable of field-stripping a hailstorm rifle as they are at whatever other professional skills they may have chosen to develop.

Forge Fathers have access to a variety of powerful equipment. Additionally, they have access to many different types of leaders and troops. Because of their powerful equipment and skilled warriors, Forge Fathers can often expect to be outnumbered by their enemy.

In this article I will describe some general Forge Father strategies as well as providing two different 100 point strike teams.. While the Faction Starter provides many options for assembling and equipping your team, the Forge Father Faction Booster will help you to further fill out your strike team, providing additional options and manpower.

Know your strengths

Sun Tzu stated in his Art of War: “victorious warriors win and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war and then seek to win.” Selecting your strike team to suit your mission and opponent is important regardless of which faction you play, but arguably more so for the Forge Fathers because of the wide array of specialized roles their units tend to fill, and the relatively higher points costs of their basic units.

Taking objectives is difficult for members of the Star Realm, their short legs don’t carry them far, even when running. However, the right units are especially hardy and capable of holding an objective once they have reached it. Playing in this way means move command dice are invaluable. Forge Guard are especially good at holding objectives due to their 2 armor, 4+ Survive stat, and the Life Support ability. Watch out for weapons with Frag or Knockback as these can deny you VP without needing to actually injure your Forge Guard.

Because of their high point costs, you will routinely have a small number of models. This makes Scour missions especially difficult since you can’t carry as many items off the board. In this case, consider an all Brokkr list. Because of their relatively low point cost and penchant for being up front anyways, they make good scavengers. Throw a couple of smoke grenades in to cover your advance, and maybe try the Chief Brokkr to help you find the right item. He’s no slouch in melee either!

The Direct Approach

Alternatively, you could try playing toward Forge Father strengths regardless of the mission. Rather than trying to escape your opponent’s board edge, or loot valuable materiel, you could choose to simply crush your enemy. Steel warriors come with the best standard rifle in the game, a R6, rapid fire weapon with AP1. Their specialists have a wide variety of different upgrades available to them, suitable for any sort of opponent. Forge Guard have access to powerful weaponry, and have the survivability to use it turn after turn. Frenzy (1) makes Brokkrs powerful melee combatants, and for the same total cost as a Steel Warrior, those melee attacks become AP1 as well.

Your first Strike Teams

The following lists were built using only models from the Forge Father Faction Starter set. In the next article I will provide more in-depth strategies for each of these lists and talk about additional options available from the Forge Father Faction Booster set.

Expeditionary Survey Team

Heavy Metal

All of the models above can be found in the Forge Father Faction Starter, available to Pre-Order now! This fantastic set will be in all good hobby stores at the end of May!