Warhammer Heroes Strike Force Justian Review

Ever wanted to collect your wargaming miniatures training card style? Well, now you can. The latest Warhammer 40,000 miniatures come blind packaged in the new Warhammer Heroes boxes. There are 7 Space Marines to collect, and when completed, they make up Strike Force Justian a brand new unit for Kill Team. In this article, we'll tell you how to collect them, and how they operate on the tabletop.

We've covered Kill Team in depth since the last edition, and you can read our guide to all the current Kill Team products, or check back to where the previous season of Kill Team started with the Gallowdark in our Kill Team Into the Dark preview.

Kill Team is a skirmish wargame, set in Games Workshop's larger Warhammer 40,000 setting. As a skirmish game, Kill Team features a small number of elite troops, fighting special operations battles, rather than huge battles fought with entire armies. If you want to check out the Kill Team rules before you buy, Games Workshop has made the core rules available to download for free.

What Is Warhammer Heroes?

Warhammer Heroes are blind boxes of Games Workshop miniatures. This means that until you open it, you're not sure which of the 7 available miniatures you'll get (we discuss how to collect them all below). Previously, there were 4 seasons of Space Marine Heroes as it was known, which started in Japan but were made available to the rest of the world due to demand.

Each Warhammer Heroes box comes with a sprue for a single Space Marine, a construction and details booklet, and 2 stats cards for use in Kill Team (1 in Japanese and 1 in English). While the stats provided are for Kill Team, these miniatures are also completely usable in Warhammer 40,000 and can be added to your existing army by using the stats that already exist for those miniatures. In 40K, some of them need to be part of squads, but you can supplement them for other members of those units in order to add some pose variety, and each member of Strike Force Justian comes with 2 head options, helmed or unhelmed for extra variety.

How Do I Collect All Of Warhammer Heroes Strike Force Justian?

Like trading card games, if you buy enough packs of Warhammer Heroes, eventually you will get them all, but you can also buy a retail display box of 8 and you will get all 7 plus an extra (we got an extra Brother Vignius, and we'll update this article when we find out if that's standard or randomized across the brick). If you are having trouble tracking them down, then just like trading cards, you can look to trade at your local Games Workshop or game store with others who are trying to complete the collection.

As a point to note, Warhammer Heroes will only be available to buy from retailers in the United States, Germany, Japan, China, and Australia.

Where Are The Rules For Warhammer Heroes Strike Force Justian?

Each Warhammer Heroes Strike Force Justian box comes with a stat card for that operative, which contains the whole datacard you would normally find in the rules for that kill team. The back of the card also details a Strategic or Tactical ploy.

Strike Force Justian doesn't have any team-wide abilities or equipment options like other kill teams do, this is because this group of special operators are designed to be easy to play straight out of the box for beginners. Each stat card also has a link to the Kill Team lite rules, which apart from dice and a measuring tool, is all you need to start playing straight away once you have the complete kill team.

There aren't any Spec Ops rules or Archetype/Tac Ops for Strike Force Justian, which plays into the Kill Team lite rules as they don't use them. Each datasheet does have the Specalisms triangles still included at the bottom, so there's nothing stopping Games Workshop from releasing these as a download in the future.

What are the Warhammer Heroes Strike Force Justian Troop Choices?

Strike Force Justian has 7 available operatives, which include 2 leader choices and 5 other operatives. Players can choose any 6 from those 7, but only the Captain and Sergeant can be the leader, and they can both be taken in the same kill team.

Strike Force Justian's leader choices are:

• Captain Justain - The Captain is the highest-ranking marine available out of all the Space Marine kill teams. He comes armed with a power fist, with 5 attacks, and a plasma pistol for some close-up fighting. Justin can also fight twice each phase and has a 4+ invulnerable save to enable him to get close. His Rites of Battle ability also generates an additional command point for you each turn.
• Sergeant Marius - The Sergeant is the same as the Captain stats-wise, but comes armed with a bolt rifle and can fire twice each turn. 

Unlike other Space Marine kill teams, Strike Force Justian includes a mix of armor types, and its troop choices are:

• Brother Acules - The Heavy Intersessor of the team, wearing the durable Gravis armor. His save is the same as the rest of the kill team, but Acules has the most wounds at 18 and a slightly slower movement. With the heavy trait and ability to fire twice with the heavy bolter, early positioning, and limited movement is the way to go with Acules.
• Brother Flavian- Flavian is an Eliminator, clad in Phobos armor that allows him to retain an additional defense dice when in cover. Armed with a bolt sniper rifle with 3 fire options for all situations, they all have silent, allowing Flavian to shoot from conceal.
• Brother Decian - Decian is an Assault Intercessor, armed with a heavy bolt pistol and chainsword and the ability to fight twice in combat, Decian has one goal, to close with the enemy.
• Brother Thysor - Thysor is an Intercessor, so can shoot twice with his bolt rifle, which has piercing 1 on a crit, and a single-use smoke grenade for added obscuring terrain to help get your close combat marines get safely into combat.
• Brother Vignius - Vignius is another Intercessor, armed with an auto bolt rifle that can also shoot twice. The Auto bolt rifle comes with ceaseless, so can reroll all 1s to attack, which makes him very accurate across the turn.

What Are Our Final Thoughts On Warhammer Heroes Strike Force Justian?

I love the blind buy nature of Warhammer Heroes, the fact that we get a new kill team out of it, and even more so that it's designed for new players to simply add to the lite rules and start playing. I really hope we get another season of these so there's another similar style kill team to battle against. Strike Force Justain's mixed loadout is pretty solid, they do lose out against the Chapter Tactics that the Intercessor Squad has access to, which can be complex so I understand their omittance from this entry-level team. 

Strike Force Justian are extremely beginner-friendly. Easy to pilot, few rules, very forgiving, and good at both ranged and close combat.

Should I Buy Warhammer Heroes Strike Force Justian?

If you're a 40K Space Marine player and want some awesome-looking additional miniatures, then yes. Strike Force Justian are a great collector's piece, and if the previous Space Marine Heroes packs are anything to go by, they will be popular. The fact they double up in Kill Team is also great and they should be your go-to kill team for introducing new players.

The copy of Warhammer Heroes Strike Force Justian used to produce this preview was provided by Games Workshop.