Introduction

Recently I have been having a ton of fun playing combat patrol at the gaming club, and I’ve hadgreat results in a string of recent Combat Patrol tournaments here in the Northeast US gamingscene. With this .PDF I want to introduce you to the Combat Patrol rule set, if you are notalready familiar with it, along with my experience in building your patrol and then applying it tothe standard combat patrol mission.

Combat Patrol?

So what is combat patrol? CP is a scaled downversion of Warhammer 40,000 that wasintroduced in 4

edition as a way to playsome quick games. For the new player to 40Kit is a great way to build up a small army andget used to the rules and mechanics of thegame. For veteran players it is a nicesupplement from “regular” 40K games as onecan play three or four in a single evening of gaming. The following rules are used in theCombat Patrol game and are played on a 4’ X4’ board with 25% scenery.

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Armies are no more than 400 points.

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You must have one Troop choice.

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You may have one HQ choice, but no more than one.

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Armies are not required to take mandatory unit choices. All other unit restrictions (i.e.0-1) apply.

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You may spend remaining points from anywhere in the Codex.

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No model can have more than 2 Wounds.

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No model can have a 2+ save.

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No Special/Unique/Named Characters are allowed in the Combat Patrol event.

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No vehicles with a total Armor value greater than 33. This is calculated by adding theFront, Side and Rear armor numbers. (Only count the Side once).

From here players roll for sides, deploy 12” in from the table edge, and face off against eachother. The games lasts six turns and at the end of the six turn the player with the most victorypoints wins the patrol. Victory points are calculated in the following way: destroy a unit and youget the full points that your opponent paid for it, take the unit below 50% and you get half thepoints your opponent paid for it. So, if you explode that Space Marine rhino you get 35 points,kill two Space Marines out of a unit of ten and you get 0 points, etc.Additional Combat Patrol information and variant fan based missions can be found on theInternet, and on GW’s main website. Now that you have been introduced, or re-introduced toCombat Patrol, let’s dive into building your patrol followed by an example of my 400 pointSpace Wolf list.

Combat Patrol List Building

The first thing that we are going to tackle with your combat patrol list is fitting both the fununits you want to play along with what is “needed” to win all in 400 points! In many waysCombat Patrol games, and especially tournaments are harder to build lists for since you arelimited in both points and units. If you are playing a 1750+ point game getting unit redundancy,movement, shooting, and assault power all into one list is easy since you have so many pointsto play with- in a CP list it becomes both part science and art. As always, I advocate playing themodel YOU want to play since 40K is supposed to be a fun game, but keep the following pointsin mind when building your list…

Transports

Utilizing light transports like Rhinos and Chimeras is the first step in a Combat Patrol list. Unlike“regular” 40K games where transports are about ferrying your models to objectives and acrossthe table, in CP they are about keeping the unit alive and safe from small arms fire until you areready to strike. Movement is less important on a 4’ X 4’ table where the mission objective is tokill each other, while protecting your models from a hail of rapid fire bolters is more important.For Space Marines armies the rhino is a great buy at 35 points base.Remember that vehicles are only to protect the unit inside, points spent on upgrades will onlyyield up more victory points to your opponent when and if the vehicle gets destroyed. For thisreason a razorback is not a good choice, or upgrading a chimera with extra weapons, as it willyield more VP’s.What if you don’t have a viable transport option like Eldar or Tyranids?