More Kill Team expansions!

Hey everybody!
It’s been a couple of days now since we’d seen the reveals of the next wave for Kill Team, so I thought I’d pop along here and take a look at what we can look forward to coming in the next few releases for the increasingly-popular skirmish game!

First of all, of course, it’s Kill Team: Commander. Already hinted at in the Rogue Trader expansion, Commander brings HQ choices to the game in what is, for me at least, quite a surprise move. If I’m honest, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about this new development, though for sure I’ll be picking it up in due course! From what we’ve seen at the Kill Team Open last weekend, we’re getting a wave of HQ choices that, crucially, are all available in plastic already, in named-hero boxes that will be packaged along with command cards or whatever they’re going to be called, in a similar fashion to the expansion boxes we’ve already seen.

We’re getting a Succubus for Dark Eldar, a Fireblade for Tau, an Overlord for Necrons, etc etc. It’s all a bit weird, somehow – when I first heard about the Fireblade, I thought sure, that sounds okay. He’s a tier-two sort of HQ choice, not the sort of flashy thing that a lot of armies can get. But the Overlord for the Necrons is pretty much the pinnacle of HQs for them. So it seems much more driven by what is available in plastic already for the faction, rather than what would fit the bill of a small-scale HQ choice who could be used in specific missions.

It feels weird to me, I think, because I like the idea of a Kill Team being led by the Leader that you choose when you’re making your initial list. It’s a mechanic that I had somewhat hoped wouldn’t be a huge deal when reading through the Rogue Trader book, but instead, I’m guessing these guys will be used a great deal more to build the team around, rather than only being taken in specific instances.

But what do I know – the expansion hasn’t even been released, yet!

For more information, be sure to head over to Chapter Master Valrak’s video on youtube, where he also mentions Kill Team: Inquisitor, which is basically a no-brainer, and will hopefully be a thing before too long!

Also on the radar, the more immediate radar this time, are the next Kill Teams to be released: Necrons and Tau! Having already picked up the Militarum Tempestus box, and having the Dark Eldar one waiting for me at the store to collect, I feel like I’m going to be very busy as I try to keep up with releases for my armies!

More so than with Dark Eldar, these boxes are definitely ones that I can get behind. It’s always useful to have more Fire Warriors, and I use Immortals as my basic troops, so I’m happy to see those instead of Warriors for the Necrons! I’ve not yet been happy with any of the Necron builds I’ve tried, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Tau kill teams lately, so have got a couple of things that I’m hoping to try out soon enough!

The Wall of Martyrs killzone is something I don’t think anybody imagined would be up next, though I guess it does fit with GW repackaging all of their scenery into these things, and I have toyed with getting the Imperial Bunker as something to just have to paint, so I’m thinking that this will be the first Killzone I will be getting – the Mechanicus and Munitorum zones I just bought the cards and board, not wanting to add to my scenery backlog!

I am a bit surprised at the pace of new releases for this game, as it has only been out for, what, two months now? We’ve already had so many things released, with the promise of yet more to come, that I find it difficult to see how GW will be supporting the line “for a long time to come”. I would assume, though, that the model will turn into something along the lines of the Rogue Trader box every once in a while, because I’m not sure how often people are going to be wanting to buy repackaged miniatures just in order to pick up a few tactics cards or whatever. The current model cannot be sustained for the long-term, and I think it would be particularly foolish if, for instance, once they’ve released the last Kill Team box in this current run, they then start over with alternative models for existing factions – so the next Tau box will come with Pathfinders, the next Dark Eldar box will be Kabalite Warriors, etc.

Someone mentioned expanding beyond the core manual, though, and having Fast Attack or Elite choices being introduced in a measured manner. I would love to be able to have a Crisis Battlesuit team – provided it was done intelligently, and allowed for some awesome narrative gameplay. Whether we get that sort of thing through something like Kill Team: Heavy Hitters, I don’t know. But it would probably be more of a headache to try.

Something that is very clear, though, is that GW have every intention of keeping the expansion releases as finecast-free as possible, so everybody complaining about the Necron box not having Flayed Ones is a little bit misinformed if they genuinely thought it would happen. Heck, every box released so far has been simply one plastic squad of either five or ten models that comes in its own box anyway, and a piece of terrain. Why people would think you’d get two Immortals and three Flayed Ones is just beyond me!

However, this does open up the very intriguing prospect that GW may use Kill Team as a way of releasing new models in the future. Rogue Trader might just be the tip of the iceberg, and maybe plastic Flayed Ones will be in the next Necron faction expansion…