Mission 003: A Bandit’s Life

Ah, the Bandit. Back in the days of yore, Bandits and Jaguars didn’t exist and Corregidor was a significantly different faction. Now, Corregidor and vanilla Nomads have a real midfield threat with an answer for just about anything you might face in an opponent’s list.

Scary HI or TAG? Glue it or stab it to death. Enemy hacker? Blow up its brain with a KHD. Hostile skirmisher with visibility mods? That light shotgun brings you up to a base BS of 18! I often say “My Bandits don’t fail me. I fail my Bandits.” Play them with carefully controlled aggression and expect to see some rewards!

The Mission

If you can, play Bandits outside of your usual faction, e.g. if you usually play Corregidor, include them in vanilla. If you play vanilla, try them in Corregidor. Or, if you want to be a rebel, try them out in StarCo! StarCo is basically Corregidor anyway. If you don’t have the models to do this, take two Bandits! Try out some of the less used profiles like the AHD or the one with mines.

Once you’ve done that, send some feedback to [email protected]. As always, non-Nomad feedback is welcome. Let us know how it is to face our Bandits!

Reminder: Please send some Bandit action shots for our writeup at the end of the month! One or two pictures will be just fine, in addition to whatever thoughts, battle reports, or other feedback you have.

Here’s some writing prompts to get you thinking:

• How do Bandits fit in to your Corregidor versus vanilla Nomads lists? Are you taking different profiles, or asking different things of them?
• What are your thoughts on throwing a Bandit onto the opponent’s side of the table? When is the risk worth it? How do you recover if you fail the PH -3 roll?
• What’s your favorite profile and why?
• What other units do you use to support your Bandits?
• What part of the Bandit’s toolkit do you appreciate the most?
• What was the coolest thing you’ve ever stolen with a Bandit, and how did it influence the game?

We’ve got some resin bases and more Micro Art Studios stuff to give away, and maybe a blister or two. The more respondents, the more prizes we’ll give away!

The Unit

The Bandit chassis is pretty impressive. They’re not going to win any awards for being heavily armored, but they’ve got a love of wetwork and the knife skills to back it up. Their BS is good for Nomads, clocking in at 12, and they have a PH of 13 which is great for dodging templates and for bringing the odds of infiltrating over the centerline to an even 50-50.

Now, the “downsides.” Yes, Bandits are Irregular. Yes, they’re WIP 12. Yes, that’s PanO WIP. To all those points, I say: “who cares?” It’s only a 5% difference in odds when making a WIP roll. As for being irregular, you’ll want to dump orders into your Bandits to get work done anyway. If you lose one while being aggressive, you didn’t lose a regular order.

There are three Bandit gearsets which we’ll cover briefly here.

• Light Shotgun, ADHL
• Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines
• Boarding Shotgun, E/Mauler

Light Shotgun, ADHL

The LSG/ADHL combo is decidedly the Bandit’s iconic loadout, and comes attached to all the specialist profiles. it doesn’t do a great job of covering rangebands out past 16″, but none of them do. In vanilla Nomads, the LSG/ADHL option is pretty unique kit aside from the Prowler Combi + LFT and ADHL option, which is pricier. The ADHL really lends some teeth to the Bandit–it lets you threaten TAGs and other heavily armored things that the LSG won’t scratch.

This kit is also what the specialists are outfitted with, which makes the hacker variants quite effective. The AHD and KHD Bandits are broad spectrum threats–they are CC specialists, can handle armor with their ADHLs, and they can threaten key pieces out of LoF with their hacking devices. The KHD is quite strong at eliminating a broad range of threats, but the AHD is not to be discounted as a midfield threat, especially in Corregidor.

The Forward Observer specialist sees a lot of use as a button pusher that is not vulnerable to hacking, but flash pulse in the midfield or at odd angles can be helpful in dealing with dog warriors or other, similar threats.

You can also have a pretty neat alternate sculpt for this particular Bandit as well:

Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines

This set of profiles is less common in vanilla, due to access to Zeros with similar kit. In terms of density of capability though, it’s quite effective. A single Bandit with this kit can project a lot of threat in the midfield and be used as a surgical removal tool or area denial piece.

In Corregidor though, the mines complement Morans quite well, as Koalas do not target markers. Corregidor wasn’t really hurting for midfield control, but this profile adds some nuance and additional capability to the sectorial’s tool suite.

Boarding Shotgun, E/Mauler

This Bandit profile has excellent armor hunting tools. E/Maulers are very strong against HI and TAGs, as are boarding shotguns. The boarding shotgun of course can be used to threaten links or clumped units, and when paired with an E/Mauler to force a dodge or shoot choice can be devastating. Some swear that this is the “only” profile to use in vanilla, but that generally is not a philosophy that we espouse here at the Bromad Academy.

Example Battle Reports

Here’s a collection of battle reports featuring some interesting interactions with Bandits, in addition to those linked above.

Mercenary Recon Corps – Bromad Academy Mission 003

Get your Bandits into the fight! Good hunting, Bromads!