Warhammer 40K: Just How Bad Are Krootox Riders?
Today we look at the poorest of fellows, the lowly Krootox, and find out just how much GW hates the simple creatures.
Krootox Riders Overview
Krootox Riders come with a somewhat-reasonable statline, though this belies other flaws. They have a decent movement value of 7″, faster than most units in the game. Weapon skill 3+ is above-average, but ballistic skill 4+ does them no favors. A strength of six is likewise pretty impressive for a Tau unit, and toughness five is certainly not bad but is not really enough by itself. Four wounds is a solid compliment, and four attacks is quite good. However, leadership six and a 6+ save are both abysmal, and combined with other factors relegate the Krootox to theme lists or Kroot armies. At 25pts per model in squads of one to three, Krootox are a wholly unimpressive choice.
Special Rules and Wargear
Krootox come with only one special rule, which they share with all other Kroot units- namely Ambushing Predators, which gives them a pregame 7″ movement. This is certainly not a bad rule to have, as it can get them into position more quickly or react to an enemy counter-deployment, but it certainly isn’t enough to save them.
Krootox are all armed with a Kroot Gun, which is essentially a downgraded Autocannon or Missile Pod. With 48″ range, S7, AP-1, and Dmg2 as well as two shots, it has an acceptable profile but hardly one that Tau are really struggling to get access to. They also have Krootox Fists, which are AP-2 Dmg2 melee weapons- given their melee stats, this actually makes them vaguely respectable in a fight, if it comes down to that.
Krootox Rider Uses
Krootox are, unfortunately, one of the worst units in the game right now. This is for a number of reasons, but unfortunately they are all ones that are unlikely to see a solution anytime soon, or possibly ever because of the constraints on their design imposed by GW.
The biggest problem is that they are extremely, extremely vulnerable. Although T5 and four wounds is not awful, their pathetic save means that even casual fire directed their way can easily obliterate them and makes the prospect of trying to trade up with a Krootox all but impossible. This is further exacerbated by their status as Cavalry- they cannot pass through breachable walls the way most units can (nor fly over them) and thus will find themselves heavily limited by most types of tournament terrain. Worse yet, they also won’t benefit from cover most of the time, and their model is large enough that staying out of sight is no trivial feat.
Now layer in on top of that the fact that the multidamage weapons that are out there to prey on Space Marines are extra effective against Krootoxen, as are most all of the anti-vehicle/monster tools, and you have a unit that gets the worst of all worlds- it dies to light, medium, and heavy firepower with equal facility, so there really is no such thing as a bad gun to use against it.
All By Myself…
Krootox used to bypass this issue by being part of Kroot squads- as in, they literally were just another member of the unit, effectively an embedded heavy weapon. But Games Workshop decided that was not how they wanted to do things in the more recent editions and went out of their way to split all of the Kroot off into their own separate units- a decision that worked out beautifully for Kroot Hounds and absolutely doomed the Krootox. Without 10-20 ablative bodies to stand in front of it, a Krootox is dead the moment it shows itself to the enemy, which also precludes any real chance of them getting to use their close-combat prowess.
And speaking of damage output, the Krootox’s… isn’t great. With the Autocannon and Missile Pod both having gone up to AP-2 base, the Krootox is still sitting down at only -1, and against all of those Marines out there that’s achieving precisely nothing at all. You can’t even compensate for their poor ballistic skill with Markerlights, since as an Auxiliary unit they can’t benefit from them, so they are often going to step out from behind something, plink off maybe a wound or two, and then get vaporized.
Strange Bedfollows
To really drive home the point of how bad they are, they are in the same slot as Crisis Suits. Now, they obviously don’t actually compete for that space in any meaningful way, for all the reasons listed here and also because you can get them slot-free by including a unit of Kroot Carnivores, but having them right next to each other certainly makes clear just how worthless Krootox are. Crisis suits are only a bit more expensive base (albeit coming without guns), but have better stats in almost every respect and benefit from sept traits and markerlights and can mount guns far more efficiently and are faster and have deployment options and have stratagems and auras to benefit them.
Final Thoughts
Krootox, put simply, are not an efficient way to deliver firepower. Given that “delivering efficient firepower” is a pretty good summation of what the Tau codex does and has always done and the main reason a lot of people play it, it really should be no surprise that they are not just a bad unit but a completely unpopular one that hasn’t seen a new sculpt in ages and is unlikely to get one in the foreseeable future. Their design and lore has pigeonholed them into the niche of “worse-than-normal gun on a fragile chassis”. Unsurprisingly that package has not ever been attractive to Tau players.
I think that if you are hoping to see the Krootox become viable in 10th- or possibly ever – you are hoping in vain.
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