New Kill Team!

We have another new edition of Kill Team coming soon, and it does look kinda tasty, I have to say!

It looks quite wonderful, for sure – Death Corps of Krieg vs Orks, and we have a box load of Ork shanty-town style terrain, too!

Now, I’m not an Ork fan, not really. They’re possibly the only faction in 40k that I’ve never really shown any interest in collecting, but these models have got so much character that I have been finding myself wondering if the time has come! I mean, look at them!

What has really piqued my interest though, is the plastic Death Corps models that are coming!

These really are some of the most beautiful, characterful models that I’ve seen for 40k in some time. Multipart plastic models that have the options to make regular guardsmen, but which come with a Veterans sprue that allow for all of the specialist models for Kill Team – I mean, this all sounds so perfect!

The thing is, my buddy James already has a Krieg army, and I have no interest in stepping on anyone’s toes. I also have no genuine interest in Orks, so this set – while initially full of excitement for me, has actually fallen off the wayside now, and I think I’ll most likely pass. Even when the separate boxes come out, I don’t really know if I’d buy the guard, as it would only really be for a painting project.

However, I’m really torn because this, perhaps more than any other box that GW has produced, is giving me strong board-game vibes, and I think it looks like an excellent game to keep for its own merits. The previous iteration of Kill Team had that to some extent, though I think that box was always seen as a launch set for the Sector Imperialis terrain, and recycled some Skitarii and Neophytes. This box feels much more like the miniatures are designed for the box, and not designed for 40k. But that’s probably just me!

I find it interesting that these models have almost been specifically designed for KT, though are perfectly usable in 40k – rather than the other way round. It’s led to some discussion on the Facebook group over whether we’re seeing something akin to Warcry. Intriguing, if we are – I’ve previously thought the future of Kill Team could have been in putting out “legendary teams” much like the Rogue Trader box, rather than continually drafting in different units from regular 40k.

It’s definitely exciting me to see the evolution of the game from my first encounter with the system back in 7th edition. Rather than being 40k lite, or some kind of weird tacked-on small scale game of 40k, we appear to be getting a genuine skirmish game that seems to have a real narrative focus. In the stream, it felt like they were placing a lot of emphasis on the narrative of what a kill team actually is, so I think it could be fascinating to see how they’ll handle this sort of thing, going forward. The last iteration of the game was very much centred on recycling existing content, with the very notable exception of the Rogue Trader box, and so we never really got anything that was actually new and exciting for the game – we just got a rules system to overlay onto 40k models, albeit very nicely marketed. The Death Corps, and (surprisingly, to me) the Ork Kommandos both feel very much like an actual Kill Team, something that I suppose has previously only really been seen in the Deathwatch lore.

Aside from seeing some vaguely whacky measuring rules, I don’t know anything about what we can expect so far, but I think having some genuine kill teams in this core box is setting the stage for what could be something special. If we do get expansion boxes along the Warcry mould, rather than the previous Kill Team method of repackaged 40k stuff, I think we could really be getting something good here.

I’m going to be keeping a close eye on this, anyway!

I think this could well be an interesting time for skirmish games in the 41st millennium!!