As the title suggests, I'm breaking down Kabalites. For starters, these guys are just cool models. The spikes and blades are elegant on them, black with silver highlights look amazing, and proper blood effects can take a fairly under the radar unit and make them a centerpiece. Add in the glowing trim (the green of the Black Heart, for instance) and you have a truly stunning set of models. The downside, of course, is that they are cheap and many, and fragile, so you can sink a tonne of effort into some models that see half a turn of field time, and that is discouraging to me.
Now, aside from the aesthetic value, these guys form the core of your army in two ways: they give you a cheap, accessible scoring unit that can, for a measly 540 points, put six ten man scoring units on the board. That said, this is foolish, because it ignores the damage dealing potential and strengths of these models. They have a phenomenal statline for their points, with 4 WS and BS, I5, and the potential for feel no pain. Toughness 3 causes problems, and the weak armour saves mean bolters rob you of it. They wield splinter rifles, wounding on 4's always due to poison, with 24" and rapid fire, and 1 out of every ten may take a dark lance or splinter cannon, which gives off heavy 6 or assault 4 also poisoned shots, and allow you to take a blaster or shredder. This poison gives you a huge advantage, because it will cause approximately the save number of wounds on ANY target, and in your tactical thinking it makes it easy to simply allocate wounds in your head without worrying that toughness will change results - for instance out of every 15 shots, 5 should miss, and 5 should fail to wound, so you can simply allocate each shot as 1/3 of a wound when determining where to lay down your fire.
So, we know they are cheap, fragile space marines, with bolters that are worse against low toughness but better against high toughness. Now my three breakdowns of use - subjectively - are maximized splinter shots, infantry swarms, and the Mr Clean (all purpose). These are not mutually exclusive, for example an infantry horde lends itself well too massed splinter fire and if you're putting so many points into one unit then you're best served by making that unit able to deal with many different situations. My personal use is the massed splinter fire most often, as I find that a 10 man squad in a raider with a splinter cannon, sitting at 170 points with nightshields on the raider, is a force to be reckoned with. A dark lance gives you rhino popping power or an instant death weapon on lonely characters and the fact it is on your transport means you can pick one target then allow the troops within to target a group of infantry. Being both Fast and open topped, this allows your troops to all fire, fire powerfully, and make maximum use of the speed and jink save to give your paper plane some survivability.
Firestorms are great, with 20 kabalites able to put out a massive 30 shots per turn at 24" or an insane 48 at 12" or in overwatch. Throw in a Haemonculus and put them in cover and you have a 250 point unit with dual saves and huge firepower. This is a good squad to put the Duke in. This squad is a good reserve choice, since it is most lethal at short range and despite some survivability it can be whittled down quickly and while not expensive, they aren't cheap. They also don't have the Dark Kin mobility I wax eloquent about. Just follow that golden army rule about synergy and this can be a devastating tool.
Finally, the all purpose. This is, in my opinion, best used in small games where you cannot afford to put enough specialist squads on the board. By all purpose, I mean they can pose a viable threat to anything on the board, at least in enough quantity that your opponent must take them into account when planning. Commonly this is a squad of ten with cannon or lance and blaster, with a sybarite wielding a power weapon or agonizer for close combat stiffening or else an independent character, mounted in a raider. These squads are expensive, but the versatility allows them to very quickly tally up their points in kills. These guys are the doom of mechanized lists, and they can function well against heavy points cost units like terminators and warlords with entourage, the forced saves and the removal of good saves (2+) allowing them to give that edge to another unit. I tend to run these squads in mid-field, using mobility and firepower to finish the jobs my heavier offensive units start. They mop up small units of elites very well, and are great at taking the last hull point or wound off a tank or monstrous creature.
