Musings on GW's Kill Team

At the beginning of September, my mates and I purchased the latest edition of Games Workshop's Kill Team, the skirmish game set in Warhammer 40K universe. We tried it later in October, and we essentially loved it. Everyone but Frontlineminiaturist, indeed, but more on that later in this post.

The set up of our first ever game. As per the core box, Death Korps of Krieg confront Ork sneaky Kommandos.

Veteran Guardsmen are a real treat for the eyes.

One of our friends already painted his Kommandos: nice!

Grey buildings and green skins match perfectly together.

What did we like? Grimbeorn and I, who particularly talked about this new system in the past months, appreciated the general division of the game in three clear phases, the action system which allows the player to mix and match the actions of his operatives freely on the battlefield, the alternate activation of the miniatures but overall we loved the campaign system.

On our second game, Grimbeorn fielded the Orks and I tried Death Guard (my 40K army). The heretic Marines lack in all the trickiest special rules the opponent has, but they're nice to play too! Disgustingly Resilient is a real pain in the ass (for the enemy eheheh 😈).

The Kill Team Compendium allows you to deploy Kill Teams from every 40K faction, and eventually it woke in us the desire to create every single one of them. Just like the Mordheim fever, we have too much hobby in our hands.

Another Orks vs Death Guard match for Grimbeorn and me. We played a lot to understand the mechanics and complete a game in all the four turning points (aka turns).

We also tried some multiplayer games, without great adaptation from the core manual and first campaign book (the second has already been published but we didn't get it yet). They run smoothly, even if they're sensibly longer than just two players game. Obviously, a more skilled handling of the rules always comes to help!

We mainly played the scenarios from Octarius, the first campaign manual. It's a nice setting, with a cool story and some good side objectives in the scenarios. Also, it provides detailed map with pre generated terrain, making it really simple to set up and start playing.

Experimenting a four players game on two joined regular battlefield: Death Korps (with Grimbeorn's unmistakable square bases), Death Guard, Ork Kommandos and Chaos Space Marines. A very long (too long) game, it was nice but we just accomplished the first turning point in one hour and a half.

Frontlineminiaturist's new entry: Chaos Space Marine! Previously he tried Adeptus Custodes (which are a really tough opponent, as always).

Some criticism came from Michele about the fighting system, which according to him doesn't count properly model's armour. Truly, hand-to-hand combat in Kill Team focuses on the model's ability to fight rather then his defences, so he's kinda right; however, we appreciated the dynamic and think that more armoured models do not suffer from disadvantages in combat.

In 2022 we want to play some Kill Team, alongside our usual hobby commitments, and possibly to expand our collection (I already have plans on an Imperial Fists Kill Team, as you can see here). Grimbeorn built everything in the core box during last December, and we want to do a speed painting session of the various scenics soon. I mostly finished them, so... it's a matter of time.

My built Kill Team scenic elements. Only the oil pump missing! Then I'll prime them black and proceed with Grimbeorn on the speed painting.