It’s killin’ time!

Hey everybody!
It’s time for another game day blog, and today it’s time to finally take a look at Warhammer 40k Kill Team, the small-format variant from Games Workshop that got put out a little over three months ago now. I’ve been fiddling around with it all, and a couple of weeks ago I came up with some ideas for a couple of teams, which prompted the first half of this blog.

Before getting into the game rules etc, I just wanted to say a little about the new box for this variant. In addition to the 32-page rules booklet that details the various tweaks to regular 40k, the box contains two forces, Space Marines and Tau. The rules booklet features the dataslate rules for each force, but while the Marines form 190 points, the Tau Fire Warriors only come to 134 – though that doesn’t seem to account for the drones or the gun turret the Tau can set up. All of the special rules for these two armies (that are required to play a game with them) are included in the booklet, but the regular 40k rulebook is also included in miniature form. The value this box presents is remarkable – the miniatures alone cost £55 to buy as separate kits, but you also get the regular 40k rules and what looks like a really great mini-game, as well!

So let’s take a look at the game itself.

Kill Team is played with teams of no more than 200 points each side. Teams can only consist of troops, elites or fast attack, with some additional restrictions on vehicles and stuff. It’s all designed to have small bands of miniatures going against each other, rather than introducing any kind of ridiculous things in there like powerful characters and stuff.

Players buy their squad in the usual size, but each miniature acts independently on the battlefield. In addition, one is designated the “leader”, who has a table similar to the usual Warlord Traits thing in usual 40k. Three miniatures are then nominated as specialists, from a sort of menu of five different types – combat, weapon, dirty fighter, indomitable and guerilla – each of which has a set of rules that affect the game.

But apart from that, it’s pretty much the same as regular 40k with the rules for shooting and assault.

So what have I been doing with it recently?

200 points isn’t a great deal, of course, especially for someone like me who loves the Elite choices of most Codices out there! The further restraints on not including stuff like Terminators (no 2+ saves here) and Dreadnoughts (vehicles can’t have an armour value of more than 33) made me initially sad that I couldn’t field my Deathwing! However, my first thoughts for this project were still for Space Marines!

Space Marine squad: 
5-man Tactical Squad, one upgrade to veteran sergeant with power sword, one man equipped with a flamer, and
5-man Assault Squad, one upgrade to veteran sergeant with power sword and combat shield

So I’ve got 200 points here. I was going through all manner of iterations, leaving off the swords in case I could fit in more troops, thinking more bodies might be more useful than better-equipped ones. While the choice of vehicles is restricted, land speeders and rhinos are allowed, and at varying points I’d also considered putting each in my team!

My leader is the Tactical squad’s veteran sergeant, Dantoris. In addition the Assault squad’s veteran sergeant, Ottavius, is going to be my Combat specialist; the Flamer marine is my Guerilla specialist, and there’s a particularly dynamic assault marine (you can see him over the assault sergeant’s right shoulder in the picture above) who will be my Indomitable specialist. This may change, of course, but for now, that’s how I’m going to be rolling with these guys for the first game, at least!

As it says in the instagram post, I’ve decided to seriously build a Space Marines army now as a second army for regular 40k. For about 18 months I’ve been somewhat half-heartedly building an Ultramarines force, but have regularly been distracted by painting marines as White Scars and Novamarines, to say nothing of my ponderously-building Deathwing army! So I’ve finally decided to do it, and I’m starting out with Kill Team, because it’s an ideal way to start an army – as long as you have the correct models, you can still play games when your army is still tiny. I have been playing 40k more of late, using my Necrons, but I think this is a decent way to get some variety in my gaming. Once I have these two units painted, I can add to them while still using the smaller core for Kill Team.

So that’s where I’m currently at! I’m going to be painting these up as Novamarines as well, having started with the scheme earlier in the year but never really getting anywhere because I wasn’t 100% happy with it. I’ve had some ideas on how I can paint it differently, so that it looks more like the pictures and whatnot from the official lore, so I hope that I can start emulating that in the coming weeks!

Once I’ve played a few games, I’ll be doing a follow-up blog to this one with impressions on the gameplay itself. For now, I think it’s a really cool idea, and I’m really looking forward to moving ahead!

As a PS, don’t forget to keep an eye on my hobby progress blogs, published every Sunday, to see how my army is coming along!!