Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus – Enemy Faction Profiles (LRE)

Guide to Enemy Faction Profiles (LRE)

I will be looking at the mob units (not characters) of each enemy faction that you may encounter in an LRE and discuss their attributes and potentially useful tactics against them.

My examinations of these mob units will be partly based on their base stats, which can be found on the Tacticus wiki.

Where they are not found, I will run my own ad-hoc calculations to give an approximate value of their base stats by comparison to my own characters and their base stats.

The reason for doing this is that you will be shown the rank of enemy units (i.e silver II) before starting a battle but not their numerical stats.

By comparing their base stats to those that a player might be more familiar with, this will give a better idea of what to expect from your opponents before starting a battle. I will be comparing base stats only; hit count and trait/ability effects will not be factored into this.

Along with base stats, I will also list hit count and pierce ratio, with the values for these stats in ranged combat in brackets where applicable.

Black Legion

Overview 

The Black Legion are one of the easier factions to face, in my opinion, chiefly due to the fact that, with the exception of Bloodletters, none of the standard mob units you’ll be facing have impressive pierce ratios and that means that as long as your characters have decent enough armour, they should face fairly low levels of health attrition. 

The main focus in your battles will likely be avoiding getting hit by bloodletters as far as possible.

Traitor Guardsman

Base Stats:

• Health – 25
• Armour – 5
• Damage – 15
• Movement – 3
• Range – 2
• Hits – 1 (2)
• Pierce/% – 1 (10)

The base stats for these units are those of a Cadian guardsmen spawned by Yarrick/Creed/the Malleus Launcher all reduced by ⅜. In more visceral terms, they are as tough as a sniper drone and deal about as much damage as a shield drone (but with two hits).

These units are feeble in both offence and defence with low pierce and low hits, making them very ineffective against anything boosted by tall grass or a Big Target. 

Generally, they can be ignored in favour of any other target as if they are posing a threat then you are probably already well out of your comfort zone. 

That being said, they can be added into battles at inflated rank compared to everything else, in which case they function like glass cannons and should be expressly targeted as their relative frailty makes them easy to kill even at high level.

Chaos Terminator

Base Stats:

• Health – 90
• Armour – 23
• Damage – 19
• Movement – 2
• Range – 2
• Hits – 2 (4)
• Pierce/% – 15 (20)

Characters with closely matching stats to these units are Makhotep, Asmodai and Actus.

In other words, reasonably tough but with poor damage output per hit. The fact that they only have a pierce ratio of 20% max (15% min) means that their damage output is pretty trivial when they’re on their own. 

The main danger they pose on their own is their ability to deep strike and attack in the same turn; if you have any weaker/wounded characters exposed to multiple high ground positions two hexes away, a batch of terminators teleporting into those hexes and attacking them all in the same turn could spell disaster.

The other hazard with them is their draw fire ability, which can make skull indicators promising guaranteed kills/overkills against enemies standing next to them false as the indicator does not take the effect of the ability into account. 

In addition, the artificial toughness lent by this ability can make it harder to mow through higher-priority targets like Havocs and Bloodletters before they can start dealing heavy damage. Make sure to hit them with low-damage, multi hit attacks to strip them of the protection of their Terminator Armour trait before finishing them off with more powerful attacks.

If they are in positions where they block more powerful enemy units from moving in to attack, however, it can be beneficial to leave them alone.

Havoc

Base Stats (Approx):

• Health – 80
• Armour – 19
• Damage – 13
• Movement – 3
• Range – 2
• Hits – 2 (8)
• Pierce/% – 1 (20)

Characters with closely matching stats to these units are Aethana, Morvenn Vahl and Aun’shi.

These guys are real trouble at range as they deal 8 hits, suppress and have the Heavy Weapon trait to boost their damage once they have hunkered down. 

Even at a mere 20% pierce ratio, the sheer number of hits can lead to quick attrition of your characters. 

For perspective, they do the same amount of damage in one attack as an equivalently levelled Kharn (not taking his passive into account), so this is a lot of damage even at a low pierce ratio. When Heavy Weapon kicks in, it gets even worse.

Their high hit count also means that a character will have to have the Camouflage trait, be next to a Big Target and hiding in tall grass just to cut their damage output in half, whereas only one of these conditions would need to be met to achieve the same against a traitor Guardsman. Meeting all of these conditions simultaneously in practice is an entirely different question.

If you give these guys the opportunity to exceed the armour cap of your characters significantly with their damage, they will shred those characters rapidly. Be especially wary of them taking high ground and any effect that their Heavy Weapon trait might have as well.

After Bloodletters, Havocs should be top priority targets and any opportunity you have to make sure they are blocked out of ranged firing positions by their weaker allies or are forced into melee combat with your units is a good one to take. 

In melee, they deal a mere two hits at 1% pierce ratio and cannot suppress, making Havocs very much an all-or-nothing character when it comes to ranged vs. melee fighting – deliberately absorbing their overwatch by moving into melee with them neuters them when going on the offensive.

Bloodletter

• Health – 39
• Armour – 0
• Damage – 25
• Movement – 3
• Range – 1
• Hits – 1 
• Pierce/% – 80

There aren’t any characters that can really be compared to Bloodletters, though in terms of damage you can think of them as doing 60% of the damage of Aethana at the same pierce ratio per attack.

The real danger of them is their ability that gives them an extra hit when moving into melee and a further additional hit against psykers. 2 hits at 25 base damage is close to Sho’syl’s damage output whilst 3 hits exceeds it.

This puts Bloodletters in the “Damage Spike” risk category, where they are capable of unloading a huge amount of damage into your characters in short order and may even kill them outright before they have a chance to heal. 

Killing Bloodletters that are assailing your front line only to allow additional ones to flood into the now-empty hexes will mean your characters will take more damage than if they simply allowed those Bloodletters to live and deal reduced hits from not being able to use their passive.

Paradoxically, mowing down hordes of bloodletters can lead to defeat where slowly grinding them down would not as long as you have a good healer. 

You will take more damage over the course of a battle than by mowing down, but the damage is more evenly spread out and will not contain so many potentially battle-ending spikes.

One final, highly effective weapon to use against them is absolute damage reduction, i.e. buffing your units with effects that reduce incoming damage by a numerical value rather than a percentage value.

Bloodletters deal relatively low damage and rely on high pierce ratio to wear down your units – a high level Jain Zar/Sibyll Devine passive can easily reduce their damage output to next to nothing. 

Sibyll is somewhat of a questionable investment past what you need for her campaigns, but Jain might be more worthy of consideration and her passive has the additional benefit of reducing enemy hit count as well. 

Sibyll’s passive affects friendlies adjacent to her, whilst Jain’s affects enemies adjacent to her, so Sibyll may be able to provide better protective coverage as well.

Black Templars

Overview

The Black Templars are a nasty foe to go up against as they are tough, impede movement with fire-based attacks, cannot be made to flee via battle fatigue and can deal considerably large damage spikes via their Initiate and Neophyte units.

As a whole, their principal weaknesses are those of low range and low pierce ratio. If you can find a location on the map without too many hexes within range 2 of your units, they cannot pile tons of ranged damage on you per round when turtling in the manner that other factions with range 3 units can.

Due to their low pierce ratio, given an opportunity to hide in a corner, the Templars are actually one of the easier factions to hunker down and employ the Grinding Method against. Just beware that once you start to come under fire, manoeuvring your characters will be difficult due to flame effects and so striking out at the enemy can risk getting characters stuck for too long in poor positions and potentially damage spiked to death.

Initiate

• Health – 60
• Armour – 12
• Damage – 24
• Movement – 3
• Range – 1
• Hits – 2
• Pierce/% – 15

Characters with similar stats are Varro and Vindicta, so they are fairly frail by character standards but still not bad as far as mob units go. Their passive ability also grants them an extra hit, so don’t underestimate the amount of damage they can deal based off of their attack stat alone.

The most dangerous aspect of these foes is their ability to move onto a hex, attack, and then displace to an adjacent empty hex. Don’t assume that just because a character has only a single empty hex next to them that they are immune to being attacked more than once in melee when facing them. 

As previously mentioned, this can be a source of battle-ending damage spikes and makes nooks all the more effective to set your defences up in.

Also of note is that they need an empty adjacent hex to displace into, so being completely surrounded by enemies is also a way to mitigate the danger of this – as long as you can survive being completely surrounded.

Initiate with Pyreblaster

• Health – 60
• Armour – 12
• Damage – 24
• Movement – 3
• Range – 2
• Hits – 1 (3)
• Pierce/% – 1 (25)

Same base stats as the normal Initiate. Their passive ability allows them to deal three flame hits to a target behind their initial target, whilst also setting both hexes ablaze and causing the characters on them to suffer fire damage at the starts of their turns.

This adds up to a total of 8 hits if the passive kicks in, which makes these chaps the most dangerous Templar mob units at range and thus a top priority for taking out. 

Their melee attack is a weak, 1-hit physical damage blow, and so if one does end up trapped in melee against your formation, you may do well to leave them alone and let them flail uselessly against your characters.

These units, along with their passive ability, can make charging up the map to a certain position you want to hold extremely difficult, especially if you are using low-mobility characters and/or attempting to move them through a choke point. 

Be prepared to move your characters one hex at a time in unfavourable territory, or maybe even get completely halted if your vanguard gets blocked off in melee – they won’t be able to move forward, and if they attack and their hex is on fire, their allies won’t be able to move past them.

When fighting against the Templars, especially in tougher battles, it may be sensible to assume that you won’t be able to get all the way across the map to a position you may want to hold thanks to Pyreblaster Initiates and that you should settle for something closer by.

Neophyte

• Health – 45
• Armour – 9
• Damage – 30
• Movement – 3
• Range – 2
• Hits – 1 (2)
• Pierce/% – 1 (15)

Slightly too weak to be well comparable to many characters, though the frail Volk and Maugan Ra are close in both toughness and damage per attack (ignoring pierce ratio).

Neophytes are the inoffensive, vanilla units of the Templars faction… once they have used their active ability.

A bunch of these units all unloading their active onto one of your characters in a single turn can spell a quick end for said character if you’re not careful, and this can be a common occurrence in LREs where enemies spawn in waves.

Another sting in the tail of this unit is that they can use their active ability in melee, which can catch you off-guard if you’re only expecting to be hit by their weak melee attack.

As a 3-hit attack, the power of their active can be significantly curtailed by tall grass when used at range 2; a big target buff will also slash the damage of it by a third and so is also pretty effective for enduring them.

The active will also set fire to the hex of their targets which, along with Pyreblaster Initiates, can make it even harder to move around the map once you start taking fire. 

Another reason to try and hunker down early on when facing these opponents.

The upside to these units is that any hit reduction defensive bonus on your characters will slash their ranged damage output in half, and at a measly 15% pierce ratio, these guys are quite survivable even if they have you boxed in.

Aggressors

• Health – 145
• Armour – 20
• Damage – 10
• Movement – 2
• Range – 2
• Hits – 3 (6)
• Pierce/% – 40 (20)

Aggressors are big, lumbering meatballs who will try in vain to tickle your characters to death. 

If you are trying to slowly grind through the Templars, these units will be your best friends on the enemy team.

Every hex taken up by an Aggressor plinking or slapping at you is a hex not occupied by a unit that can deal any real damage, so live and let live until you’re doing your final sweep-up if possible.

Alternatively, if you’re trying to clear through the Templars as rapidly as possible, they can function as annoying roadblocks with their Gravis armour and enormous health pool and the drop in damage output that their suppressive fire causes can hamper your units significantly. 

All in all, I’d still advise ignoring them if possible, for their low damage output and also as it is easy to get swamped by other, more dangerous Templars if you waste too many attacks trying to work through their health pools.

You don’t want to be praying to luck out on crits.

Death Guard

Overview

With the exceptions of Poxwalkers, maybe Blightlord Terminators and the named characters, fighting the Death Guard is much the same as fighting the Black Legion. I will therefore mainly focus on the different mob character type rather than go too in-depth about the faction as a whole.

Poxwalker

• Health – 30
• Armour – 0
• Damage – 35
• Movement – 2
• Range – 1
• Hits – 2
• Pierce/% – 1 

Hard to compare to a character, like bloodletters, but their damage output is equivalent to Tan Gi’da’s melee attack. Combined with their contagion aura reducing the armour stats of your units, Poxwalkers can deal hefty damage, though it is very much all-or-nothing as they have a mere 1% pierce ratio.

Poxwalkers are the glassiest of glass cannons and rely on overwhelming numbers to flood your characters. Characters with a range below 3 or no overwatch cannot attack a Poxwalker horde without risking retaliation from the next Poxwalker or two in line at the very least.

What you’ll want is characters and/or summons with long-ranged attacks to whittle them down from afar along with space to fall back into as they inevitably advance.

Characters like Burchard and Vindicta that can easily kill multiple enemies at once with their passives are valuable here, Vindicta especially as her passive can kill enemies at range 3 from her.

Vindicta’s usefulness is further compounded by her ability to lay flame all over the place and severely restrict the already low mobility of the Poxwalkers. 

Don’t let the flames lull you into a false sense of security, however, as once they die out you may end up with Poxwalkers rushing your units and attacking if you move them too far toward the enemy line.

Obvious characters to avoid bringing to fight them are ones that spawn squishy melee summons like the Winged Prime and an underleveled Snotflogga, as these will simply stray off and get turned into more Poxwalkers.

Being cornered by Poxwalkers is bad news; you’ll want to move your characters up the battlefield early and take advantage of their low mobility to whittle down as many as you can before you have nowhere left to run.

Imperial Guard

Overview

The Imperial Guard are a faction that excels at long range, and attempting to turtle up and wait for them to come to you is suicide. 

Lascannons have a range of four and Mortar Teams a range of five meaning your characters, once surrounded, can end up taking attacks from melee and ranges 2, 3, 4 and 5.

This sort of damage exceeds some of the worst damage spikes other factions are able to deal, and can be easily dealt every single turn rather than once every now and then.

Compounding the threat from the sheer number of attacks is the Emplacement trait of Lascannon and Mortar Teams, which increases their damage by 50% if they have not moved – essentially a souped-up version of Heavy Weapon.

You need to go on the offensive against the Imperial Guard. Their strength at range is matched only by their weakness in melee combat, and forcing them to fight face-to face will give you the best chance of survival against them.

The fact that every mob unit of this faction has the battle fatigue trait means that battles against them can be very much decided by RNG, so do not get put off too hard by failure. 

On the flipside of this, it is wise not to spend too many tokens trying to beat a battle in the hope that RNG will work in your favour this time – it probably won’t.

Setting up overkills by weakening targets before finishing them off with a powerful attack can be a valuable method for attempting to get as many Guardsmen to flee as possible…

Cadian Guardsman

• Health – 25
• Armour – 5
• Damage – 12
• Movement – 3
• Range – 2
• Hits – 1 (2)
• Pierce/% – 1 (10)

What these units lack in survivability (similar to a sniper drone, and not the same as the Guardsmen summoned by Creed or Yarrick, who have higher stats), they make up for in numbers and damage output.

The biggest threat these troops often pose is bogging you down before you can close to melee fighting range with the potent Cadian artillery units. 

They can deal an appreciably high level of damage, especially when overleveled, and should not be underestimated as a result – just because they are easy to kill, does not mean they should be beneath your notice.

The ease of killing standard Guardsmen is also useful to trigger battle fatigue in tougher, more dangerous neighbouring units like lascannons, which can be a far easier and faster means of getting rid of them than actually attempting to fight them if RNG is kind.

Always check the health stat of a Guardsman before attacking him, as he may be a vox-caster summon and therefore useful to keep alive.

Cadian Vox-Caster

• Health – 28
• Armour – 5
• Damage – 10
• Movement – 3
• Range – 2
• Hits – 1 (2)
• Pierce/% – 1 (10)

These little fellas are your best friends in the guard. 

Sure, their artillery strike ability can cause a lot of damage, especially when used en masse as they spawn in, but it is their ability to summon in Guardsmen that makes them so useful to exploit.

Oftentimes, their summons have base stats half the value of those of the Cadian Guardsmen spawning directly out of the spawn points, perhaps even lower.

Their damage output is laughable and compared to the sheer power of lascannons and mortar teams at range, it is infinitely preferable to have these guys shooting at you instead.

What I will generally do against the Guard is rush their spawn points, kill everything that isn’t a vox-caster and gradually let the map fill up with summons until any further units that emerge from the spawn points are forced into melee combat with my characters.

Guardsmen are impotent in melee, as are Lascannon/Mortar teams which actually do 50% reduced damage in melee at 1% pierce due to their Emplacement trait, and so this tactic is an easy ticket to victory if you can get there fast enough.

The most important mistake to avoid is triggering a vox-caster’s battle fatigue, so be careful whom you kill in terms of what they are adjacent to.

Cadian Lascannon Team

• Health – 34
• Armour – 9
• Damage – 12
• Movement – 1
• Range – 4
• Hits – 1 (1)
• Pierce/% – 1 (60)

Possibly the most dangerous mob unit of the Imperial Guard, the damage it deals is deceptive.

12 base damage per hit at 10% pierce is pretty unimpressive (Maugan Ra deals 9 damage per hit), but this is augmented in two ways by its Emplacement trait.

Firstly, the trait boosts its pierce ratio by 50% unconditionally, bringing it up to a punishing 60% that will deal considerable chip damage through armour.

Secondly, the unit deals 50% extra damage if it has not moved, bringing its base damage to the equivalent of two hits from Maugan Ra at a slightly higher pierce ratio.

Due to its high range, the Lascannon Team can easily have its pick of terrain to set up on and if you don’t have your characters on the highest ground possible, there’s a good chance they’ll be able to get bonus high ground damage against you too.

The health bar of the unit being split into two artificially raises its toughness as well, as any unit that is incapable of dealing at least 50% health damage per hit to the Lascannon Team will take an extra hit to kill it compared to if it didn’t have the Two-Man Team trait.

The team is capable of overwatching on top of all of this, and will deal significant damage if you’re not able to move a character up into melee with the team to tank its overwatch shot at reduced damage and pierce ratio.

All of these factors combined make it plainly apparent that you need to close in with the enemy spawns points as quickly as possible to prevent the Lascannon Teams from massing and being able to cut down anyone you try and move toward them with overwatch.

They are completely toothless in melee, so clog up the spawn points to the extent where they are forced to meet you at punching range.

Cadian Mortar Team

• Health – 20
• Armour – 5
• Damage – 20
• Movement – 1
• Range – 5
• Hits – 1 (3)
• Pierce/% – 1 (15) 

The high base damage of these units, equivalent to Vindicta without their Emplacement trait active and Yarrick when it is, is compensated by their low pierce ratio. Nevertheless, they are able to deal up to 6 hits through splash damage via their passive ability Shrapnel, and this can still add up fast. 

As far as my investigation has gone, the splash damage can be expected to do around 50% of the unit’s listed base damage per hit; sometimes a little higher and sometimes a little lower.

The splash damage is randomly distributed over 3 hexes adjacent to the target and each hex affected takes 2 hits of blast damage as well as being suppressed – this can be very debilitating for your troops.

This can produce friendly fire, but the opportunity for enemies adjacent to your units to maybe be wounded isn’t enough of a justification to allow the mortars to hammer at you unchallenged.

They function very similarly to a lascannon team in terms of their potency at range combined with a lack of mobility and melee capability, and further emphasise the need to charge spawn points to shut them down.

In a way, they counter this tactic by suppressing their targets, so you may not want to bunch your characters up too much in order to avoid them all being suppressed by mortar fire and being unable to charge the enemy rapidly enough to prevent them from massing artillery against you.

Mortar teams should therefore be a top kill priority on your way to the enemy spawns.

Necrons

Overview

The Necron faction is a fairly easy one to beat when not conforming to deliberately tricky restrictions like Maximum 1 Hit. 

As long as you have multi-hitters/blast damage dealers that can handle scarab swarms easily, the only units you face that will really give you trouble are the Ophydian Destroyers and maybe the Deathmarks.

Necron Warrior

• Health – 30
• Armour – 10
• Damage – 4
• Movement – 2
• Range – 2
• Hits – 1 (2)
• Pierce/% – 1 (60)

These units rely on a high pierce ratio to deal chip damage, and thus their base damage is absolutely pathetic to balance this. 

Ophydian Destroyer

• Health – 140
• Armour – 30
• Damage – 46
• Movement – 4
• Range – 1
• Hits – 2
• Pierce/% – 80

I have already covered some enemies whose base stats are not comparable to those of any one character, usually in instances where they are extremely low or unusual, such as having zero armour.

The stats of Ophydian Destroyers, on the other hand, have no real contemporary because, like the average lunatic methhead, they are frighteningly high.

I will give context to each in turn; 

Health – The highest base health of any character is 125 for Corrodius and the Tyrant Guard. Maladus has a base health of 120.

Armour – The highest base armour of any character is 35 for Kut Skoden. Angrax has an armour stat equivalent to the Ophydian Destroyer.

Damage – By performing two hits, the Ophydian Destroyer dishes out around 90 base damage per attack. Yarrick deals a hefty 90 base damage, but at a mere 40% pierce ratio rather than 80%.

This all sounds pretty horrifying when combined together, and it can be if you are underleveled without a strategy to deal with them. 

I have mentioned being underleveled for a reason here: it is because the Ophydian Destroyers you tend to face in battle will be ranked a lot lower than their accompanying Necron Warriors, Flayed Ones and the like and so the monstrous base stats don’t actually end up being that scary. 

In the Indomitus Elite campaign, Ophydian Destroyers are typically several ranks lower than the trash mob units they are deployed alongside, and this holds true for LREs as well.

Regardless, they are still going to hurt you when they hit due to their 80% pierce ratio and high damage; even Gravis-armoured characters have trouble standing up to them, and if they hit from high ground you are really going to feel it. 

Their high movement also means that it’s difficult not to have your characters in range of them when they spawn unless you are surrounded or playing very defensively in your corner of the map, so you will need to ensure that they cannot damage spike an exposed character to death.

You will also, however, require space to move your characters into, as if they tunnel underground, you’ll not want any characters adjacent to where they pop out if you can help it.