kodos wrote: just that they took more time to put random pieces of rules/idead found elsewhere together does not mean they took the time to make it a decent product instead of just releasing what they had as soon as possible
It's entirely possible to spend a lot of time and effort on something and still have a terrible result if you are incompetent enough.
kodos wrote: just that they took more time to put random pieces of rules/idead found elsewhere together does not mean they took the time to make it a decent product instead of just releasing what they had as soon as possible
It's entirely possible to spend a lot of time and effort on something and still have a terrible result if you are incompetent enough.
And it is definitely far easier to feth up designing a completely new thing from scratch rather than building on a thing that has already been tested and proven to work somewhat decently.
GW has produced some excellent games, like Titanicus.
I think where they're not constrained by ancient and ill-fitting rules they can do some excellent stuff.
I hated the last edition of Killteam, and the primary reason I think comes from them trying to stick to 40k whilst also adopting newer and better game mechanics, ultimately just resulting in the worst of both worlds.
I remain hesitantly hopeful that it will be a fun game in it's own right.
lord_blackfang wrote: Maybe GW is just more confident that the stats of these two particular weapons are balanced
Everything else is either under/over powered, but these guys are great!
I hope that the mechanics for “balanced” are the same. While I’m not a fan of millions of different universal special rules, I like the ones they have to be consistent. It bugs me when you need to remember the corner cases, on what should be a straight forward thing.
I think it's more likely for two differently named rules to do the same like maybe lethal and rending both critting on 5s and being differently named because one's for melee and the other is for shooting, than an identically named weapon rule doing different things depending on whether it's a melee or ranged weapon. The latter seems to crop up in GW games more as a result of leaving legacy rules unfixed, rather than something that is put into a new rule set by design.
But I guess it doesn't hurt to join you and say at least I hope so.
The Red Hobbit wrote: it's weird that high movement Eldar don't get..a better movement speed.
But they could have. In two different ways. And that's why the new measuring system is so great.
That's what was so surprising to me. If you can have 2x2 for standard humans and 3x2 for fast infantry then who would be the poster child for that? My first thought was the faction that has had the highest infantry movement rate in every edition of the game, but I guess that's asking for too much. I was also hoping that high Init factions would have an APL of 3, but nope on that too. Hope they don't feth over Tyranids too.
Oh well, I like most of what I've seen in new KT but the Eldar design decision seemed out of touch to me.
Extra APL seems to be a way to let elite armies participate with a more similar number of actions to the more numerous armies, not necessarily to represent fast reflexes.
I honestly don't think GW put any consideration into it beyond that.
Expect some news on Kill Team soon(tm). They had posted up a thing on Twitter that showcased a bunch of the cards for the various factions.
I didn't save any, unfortunately, and the tweets themselves are deleted but can read off some of the stats from the thumbnails I sent someone. Rubric Marine(Warrior) 3 Circle, 2APL, 1GA, 3 DEF, 3+Sv, 12W.
All is Dust: Lotta words, summary is that the Operative gets to be a 2+ save versus shooting attacks with a normal damage of 3 or less. Favoured by Change: 5+ Invulnerable Save
Inferno Boltgun: 4A, 3+WS/BS 3/4DMG AP1 Fists: 3A, 3+WS/BS 3/4DMG Chaos, Arcana Astartes, <Great Cult>, Rubric Marine, Warrior keywords. Shieldy bit(I want to say it's Stalwart?) and Marksman specializations
It seems kinda poorly designed when maybe 90% of the models are going to have 4 of the stats be identical.
This also kinda confirms that Sv is supposed to represent your armor, not how good you are at avoiding being shot, and wounds represent toughness. So the close combat rules ignoring the Sv makes no sense.
Yeah, really not a fan of that "abstraction".
I still hold out hope that it'll all work out and be a fun game, even if a little counter intuitive at times.
Primarily fluff and an excuse to flog shots of the scenery. Cover, Obscuring, Traversable, and Vantage are terrain keywords (that can apply to specific portions of the terrain), and there's such a thing as "Scramble Over" and "Charge Over" actions, but no real rules crunch is given for anything but the Traversable "pay (circle) movement to move over this" that we already saw. C-, only read if you like pictures of pretty terrain.
The wording on the vantage point has me curious if it provides a mechanical benefit or if it's just the usual "you have better Line of Sight but so does the enemy".
Since it's a specific terrain type I'm guessing there will be something tied to it. Maybe something event related like like a piece of terrain suddenly collapses this round.
kirotheavenger wrote: I went back and watched a video on the reveal stream, and you can see more statlines for the Veteran Guardsmen.
Pistols are all range 6/hex
Laspistol; 4A, BS3, D2/3.
Bolt gun/pistol: 4A, BS3, D3/4.
Plasma Pistol (low): 4A, BS4, D5/6, AP1
Plasma Pistol (high): 4A, BS4, D5/6, AP2, Hot
Chainsword: A4, WS3, D3/4, Balanced.
So there's a clear distinction between the Bolt Pistol and the Plasma Pistol, at least - the Bolt Pistol is more accurate but the Plasma Pistol causes more damage. Shame that the Laspistol seems pointless when compared to the Bolt Pistol.
Ork collectors, and hobbyists looking to expand their selection of terrain pieces, will want to get their hands on Kill Team: Octarius as much for the terrain as the incredible models. Combine them with the Mekboy Workshop, and you’re well on your way to a full-blown Ork scrap town
Hum... all the barricades and scrap piles in the box are in fact from the Mekboy Workshop.
Albino Squirrel wrote: It seems kinda poorly designed when maybe 90% of the models are going to have 4 of the stats be identical.
This also kinda confirms that Sv is supposed to represent your armor, not how good you are at avoiding being shot, and wounds represent toughness. So the close combat rules ignoring the Sv makes no sense.
It's looking more and more like CC ignoring Sv is because of the decent volume of attacks that even Gunners can make in CC would be a bit much.
Ex:
Fists on the Marines that had the profile today? 4 attacks. Even the Neophyte had 3 CC attacks at 4+ from their gun butt. The Grot Kommando had the least impressive statline being 3A with a WS of 5+ and Dmg of 1/4.
Kanluwen wrote: Looks like they just decided to go ahead and post all the images.
Reiver(Warrior)
Spoiler:
Rubric Marine(Warrior)
Spoiler:
Chaos Space Marine(Gunner)
Spoiler:
Kommando Grot
Spoiler:
Neophyte Hybrid(Gunner)
Spoiler:
Bit surprised/disappointed the Reiver doesn't include any rules for the optional Grav-chutes and/or Grapnel Launcher they can take, nor anything for the Shock grenades or sonic waves that are specifically called out in the fluff bit.
Also, why do none of these datasheets acknowledge that these models clearly have sidearms modelled? I would assume you could have armed your marine with a combat knife instead of "fists" if all Veteran Guardsmen get a Bayonet... Looking at this I get the feeling the compendium rules are just there to allow everyone to play with their existing Kill Teams but they're saving the "proper" rules for specific new Kill Team kits to be released down the line.
kirotheavenger wrote: I went back and watched a video on the reveal stream, and you can see more statlines for the Veteran Guardsmen.
Pistols are all range 6/hex
Laspistol; 4A, BS3, D2/3.
Bolt gun/pistol: 4A, BS3, D3/4.
Plasma Pistol (low): 4A, BS4, D5/6, AP1
Plasma Pistol (high): 4A, BS4, D5/6, AP2, Hot
Chainsword: A4, WS3, D3/4, Balanced.
So there's a clear distinction between the Bolt Pistol and the Plasma Pistol, at least - the Bolt Pistol is more accurate but the Plasma Pistol causes more damage. Shame that the Laspistol seems pointless when compared to the Bolt Pistol.
That's very interesting, I didn't expect them to do different BS for different weapons on the Veteran. For the CSM their plasma weapon has their normal BS.
Ork collectors, and hobbyists looking to expand their selection of terrain pieces, will want to get their hands on Kill Team: Octarius as much for the terrain as the incredible models. Combine them with the Mekboy Workshop, and you’re well on your way to a full-blown Ork scrap town
Hum... all the barricades and scrap piles in the box are in fact from the Mekboy Workshop.
The big bits are different aren't they?
The scatter terrain is taken from the Mekboy Workshop, but the buildings and oil pumps are new with Killteam, and the crane bench is unique to the Workshop.
Ork collectors, and hobbyists looking to expand their selection of terrain pieces, will want to get their hands on Kill Team: Octarius as much for the terrain as the incredible models. Combine them with the Mekboy Workshop, and you’re well on your way to a full-blown Ork scrap town
Hum... all the barricades and scrap piles in the box are in fact from the Mekboy Workshop.
The big bits are different aren't they?
The scatter terrain is taken from the Mekboy Workshop, but the buildings and oil pumps are new with Killteam, and the crane bench is unique to the Workshop.
Sure, but having the same unique looking stuff three times... But well, I like the terrain, though I need to desorkify it for my plans.
The gretchin looks like fun. Tower on the other side of the board? Shoot and woooosh.
Well it's nice that Loyalists and CSM finally get the same number of wounds. I'm surprised Rubrics have the same though, I figured since there's no Toughness they'd have a higher Wound count then plus the All is Dust rule.
The Red Hobbit wrote: Well it's nice that Loyalists and CSM finally get the same number of wounds. I'm surprised Rubrics have the same though, I figured since there's no Toughness they'd have a higher Wound count then plus the All is Dust rule.
As that would have made them more resilent in close combat, I guess this wasn't the intention of the designers how to use them.
This I think is great, seeing the marines not having to much difference gives a bit of design space.
Would like them to do knifes and stuff, even if it isn’t on a model, I am sure players could understand that a soldier having one isn’t that odd,
But positive all the same.
Terain layout is bland and boring, I hope they at least acknowledge some better terrain. So we don’t need to put in rules for why a ork cannot jump over the high building.
Looks good tho for what we getting, not much use for me.
kirotheavenger wrote: I went back and watched a video on the reveal stream, and you can see more statlines for the Veteran Guardsmen.
Pistols are all range 6/hex
Laspistol; 4A, BS3, D2/3.
Bolt gun/pistol: 4A, BS3, D3/4.
Plasma Pistol (low): 4A, BS4, D5/6, AP1
Plasma Pistol (high): 4A, BS4, D5/6, AP2, Hot
Chainsword: A4, WS3, D3/4, Balanced.
So there's a clear distinction between the Bolt Pistol and the Plasma Pistol, at least - the Bolt Pistol is more accurate but the Plasma Pistol causes more damage. Shame that the Laspistol seems pointless when compared to the Bolt Pistol.
That's very interesting, I didn't expect them to do different BS for different weapons on the Veteran. For the CSM their plasma weapon has their normal BS.
The CSM's a Gunner, though -- Its Plasmagun is mean to be a strict upgrade from a Bolter, because it's limited in how many Gunners you can take by the Fire Team composition. The Bolt Pistol and Plasma Pistol, on the other hand, are meant to be equivalent (because there's no points paid) side-grade options with different optimal use cases/pros-and-cons on the same Sergeant that you get one of either way.
Which is why it's disappointing that the Las Pistol is so awful. It's not a difference between the a vanilla model and the limited-per-squad model, the way the Plasmagun is; it's a difference between options for the limited-per-squad model. It would be like if the Plasmagun was a strict upgrade from the Meltagun, as the better analogy between the Pistols and the Plasmagun. Instead, we get a Plasmagun that is versatile at full range, a Meltagun that's killier and has a higher damage ceiling at close range, and a Flamer that has a low per-model damage, but can hit multiple things, providing good tradeoffs at the Gunner slot, and a Sergeant who has the option between high damage, medium accuracy, medium damage higher accuracy (good tradeoffs so far), and poor damage mediocre accuracy (oops, never take this).
All that said, I was surprised that they're doing different accuracies on the same model, too, given that historically WS/BS have been linked to the person, not the gear. But it's a game mechanics surprise, not a game balance one, if that makes sense.
Oh for sure, I was surprised since WS/BS is typically on a per model basis. Sure you might have a melee weapons with -1 to hit, but an infantry pistol with a worse BS, now that's a surprise.
I had forgotten there are no points to worry about so your explanation makes sense that the Bolter and Plasma Pistol being options need to be balanced one way or another without involving a +5pt bump.
I stopped hating on this with the last article, but am still not interested. This change happened because the article made me realize that KT was a skirmish system but is now a board game, so it should be evaluated with board game not miniatures war game criteria.
Curious what the normal gameplay loop is going to be with models that have APL>2, given that you can't repeat actions. what's the third action you're generally going to do? Shoot-Charge-Fight?
the_scotsman wrote: Curious what the normal gameplay loop is going to be with models that have APL>2, given that you can't repeat actions. what's the third action you're generally going to do? Shoot-Charge-Fight?
Yea that seems to be it. Or Move-Charge-Fight, or Move-Move-Shoot. (I believe they've said that Move can be repeated)
Bit surprised/disappointed the Reiver doesn't include any rules for the optional Grav-chutes and/or Grapnel Launcher they can take, nor anything for the Shock grenades or sonic waves that are specifically called out in the fluff bit.
Also, why do none of these datasheets acknowledge that these models clearly have sidearms modelled? I would assume you could have armed your marine with a combat knife instead of "fists" if all Veteran Guardsmen get a Bayonet... Looking at this I get the feeling the compendium rules are just there to allow everyone to play with their existing Kill Teams but they're saving the "proper" rules for specific new Kill Team kits to be released down the line.
This is an interesting idea. Is the Compendium there to allow you to play the old core rules Kill Teams and new rules will accompany Warcry-like Kill Teams? If so, why again did an AoS adjacent game get better support than the breadwinner 40K? I'd have rather had six specific kill teams with a compendium and more to come rather than the minimum effort that was shown in this box set. Again Kommandos and Veteran Guard show what the game was supposed to look like making everything else kind of half baked.
Blastaar wrote: It's nice to see my avengers are slow and meh.
The more rules are previewed, the more KT 2.0 looks like it was slapped together in a hurry.
This edition took more effort to made than the previous edition, which is a 90% copied datasheet from normal 40k.
That's why I am playing Necromunda. Unique models and unique pre- and post-match sequences.
Shadowwar Armageddon (LOL!) and both of it's successors, KT1 & KT2, are just lazy copy-paste affairs to let "Little Timmy" sniff a bit of 40K air.
the_scotsman wrote: Curious what the normal gameplay loop is going to be with models that have APL>2, given that you can't repeat actions. what's the third action you're generally going to do? Shoot-Charge-Fight?
Yea that seems to be it. Or Move-Charge-Fight, or Move-Move-Shoot. (I believe they've said that Move can be repeated)
I haven't seen where they've suggested Move can be repeated (though I've seen other people on the internet speculating that it can).
Regardless, we do know that at least some objectives will require interacting with an action, so Move -> Shoot -> Win sounds like a solid way to use 3 actions. Fall Back (2 AP) and Shoot works nicely, too for your shooty guys who your opponent tries to tie up in melee.
Systems that work with cancelling dice often have the opportunity to take actions that let you get bonuses (re-rolls, free cancels, etc). So if we see a dodge or take cover action, Move -> Shoot -> Hunker Down sounds like a winner's move, too.
That said, the models we know get 3 APL are definitely factions that like to blur the lines between melee and ranged specialists -- Space Marines are notorious generalists, so the notion of Move -> Shoot -> Charge is really nice for them. Custodes even moreso.
They may pull from BSF as well and have an "Aim" action that lets you ignore Cover bonuses. Certainly be useful for 3APL units, or even just a Sniper with a good field of view.
BrookM wrote: Guard veterans have access to spotters, so happy days for people wanting to run snipers.
I believe the Spotter Veteran is a forward observer for a mortar battery. When I pause the preview video at 00:50:04 or so, I can barely make out "forward observers" and "mortar fire teams". One of the weapons has a special rule with a white circle, so possibly an area effect.
the_scotsman wrote: Curious what the normal gameplay loop is going to be with models that have APL>2, given that you can't repeat actions. what's the third action you're generally going to do? Shoot-Charge-Fight?
Dance. There's a whole dancing phase that's yet to be revealed, but you didn't hear that from me.
The Red Hobbit wrote: Well it's nice that Loyalists and CSM finally get the same number of wounds. I'm surprised Rubrics have the same though, I figured since there's no Toughness they'd have a higher Wound count then plus the All is Dust rule.
Rubrics don't have higher-than-normal toughness, that's only Death Guard so we should expect Plague Marines to have more wounds than normal.
kirotheavenger wrote: All is Dust will make them pretty resilient to any sort of small arms fire though.
Noteworthy that All Is Dust appears to be worse than it is in 40k, where it also improves the invuln save to a 4+. Very different game so might not matter but it does make me a bit paranoid about the rule in the codex since I was hoping it'd get buffed...
Bit surprised/disappointed the Reiver doesn't include any rules for the optional Grav-chutes and/or Grapnel Launcher they can take, nor anything for the Shock grenades or sonic waves that are specifically called out in the fluff bit.
Also, why do none of these datasheets acknowledge that these models clearly have sidearms modelled? I would assume you could have armed your marine with a combat knife instead of "fists" if all Veteran Guardsmen get a Bayonet... Looking at this I get the feeling the compendium rules are just there to allow everyone to play with their existing Kill Teams but they're saving the "proper" rules for specific new Kill Team kits to be released down the line.
This is an interesting idea. Is the Compendium there to allow you to play the old core rules Kill Teams and new rules will accompany Warcry-like Kill Teams? If so, why again did an AoS adjacent game get better support than the breadwinner 40K? I'd have rather had six specific kill teams with a compendium and more to come rather than the minimum effort that was shown in this box set. Again Kommandos and Veteran Guard show what the game was supposed to look like making everything else kind of half baked.
I wouldn’t be that surprised to see more Kill Teams like the Veteran Guard and Kommandos (and hope we do). You could do something similar to them with a box of Eldar Rangers (which could also fill the need for them in plastic for 40k), or do fully unique teams like an Inquisition team or what not. I imagine that the reason Warcry got 6 teams out of the gate (and eventually 2 more) is because I believe the other factions were tacked on, and the original game was meant to only be Chaos cultists and their ilk battling it out. And no one would have been interested in that if there were only two faction choices. GW probably didn’t feel the need to do a bunch of the unique teams right off the bat with 40k because the huge back catalog of miniatures people have access to (and also this way less people being upset about not being able to use their old KT stuff). Hopefully more flavorful Kill Teams like the ones in the starter come out soon, because I agree with the rest of the stuff looking a bit so-so.
Been trying to catch up with this new Kill Team as initially it did interest me.
Couple of questions about the actual fire/kill teams, if people are pretty sure the pics shown in the warcom articles are the actual kill teams:
Adeptus Custodes have 1 fire team of 2 Custodes, each with different loadout (1 sword and shield & 1 with spear). A 2nd fire team of 5 Sisters of Silence, each with the same loadout, a flamer?
I’m not familiar with weapon options in Kill Team but is it possible to arm the Sisters differently? The kit has swords, bolters and flamers. Just curious why they gave all 5 flamers, are they that good?
Ad-Mech the pic shows 6 Rangers and 3 Sicarian Infiltrators and 1 Sicarian Ruststalker for a total of 10 figures making up a Kill Team. Would that be 1 fire team or 2?
lost_lilliputian wrote: Been trying to catch up with this new Kill Team as initially it did interest me.
Couple of questions about the actual fire/kill teams, if people are pretty sure the pics shown in the warcom articles are the actual kill teams:
Adeptus Custodes have 1 fire team of 2 Custodes, each with different loadout (1 sword and shield & 1 with spear). A 2nd fire team of 5 Sisters of Silence, each with the same loadout, a flamer?
I’m not familiar with weapon options in Kill Team but is it possible to arm the Sisters differently? The kit has swords, bolters and flamers. Just curious why they gave all 5 flamers, are they that good?
Ad-Mech the pic shows 6 Rangers and 3 Sicarian Infiltrators and 1 Sicarian Ruststalker for a total of 10 figures making up a Kill Team. Would that be 1 fire team or 2?
You are going to be able to assign your weapons load out as designated by the list. Sisters more then likely have a bonus for flamers, ( just guessing) or it was just a fluke.
The Custodes... I'm not even going to guess, seeing as 1 Custode was worth a squad of Space marines. They are armed with a bolter/polearm, wrist bolter, or something like that.
As to the ten- More then likely, that's 1 team. The "fire team" concept for Killteam goes to figure/unit. They probably get a leadership bonus, based on a unit leader, but other then that, it's a Ad-Mech, so you get some bonus Omnissiah bonuses.
BrookM wrote: Guard veterans have access to spotters, so happy days for people wanting to run snipers.
I believe the Spotter Veteran is a forward observer for a mortar battery. When I pause the preview video at 00:50:04 or so, I can barely make out "forward observers" and "mortar fire teams". One of the weapons has a special rule with a white circle, so possibly an area effect.
Spoiler:
Interesting, did not know that. On the one hand, pity that there's not some more synergy between models, but on the other.. I know who's getting the flare gun in my team.
the_scotsman wrote: Curious what the normal gameplay loop is going to be with models that have APL>2, given that you can't repeat actions. what's the third action you're generally going to do? Shoot-Charge-Fight?
Dance. There's a whole dancing phase that's yet to be revealed, but you didn't hear that from me.
It's a nice nod and throwback to an older, more obscure supplement, though I am sure some people will bitch about it to no end.
lost_lilliputian wrote: Been trying to catch up with this new Kill Team as initially it did interest me.
Couple of questions about the actual fire/kill teams, if people are pretty sure the pics shown in the warcom articles are the actual kill teams:
Adeptus Custodes have 1 fire team of 2 Custodes, each with different loadout (1 sword and shield & 1 with spear). A 2nd fire team of 5 Sisters of Silence, each with the same loadout, a flamer?
I’m not familiar with weapon options in Kill Team but is it possible to arm the Sisters differently? The kit has swords, bolters and flamers. Just curious why they gave all 5 flamers, are they that good?
Ad-Mech the pic shows 6 Rangers and 3 Sicarian Infiltrators and 1 Sicarian Ruststalker for a total of 10 figures making up a Kill Team. Would that be 1 fire team or 2?
Right now I think that is just photographing models for advertising.
There is no way two custodes could be balanced with that many sisters. And I don’t think 4 in a kill team would be fair currently from what we know on the small maps.
So I suspect they may have a single fire team, with a mixed unit option or single type options as we see.
Sisters loadouts are weird as is with not that much choice. So I cannot see them being very limited.
They could also see a primary fire team and a secondary fire team, with having to take one a each to avoid some of there issues. Sorta as there unique trait.
This is mostly me speculation based on what we have now, they may have a bunch left to even stuff out a bit better.
Since all fire team compositions are tied to what bits come in a single kit, I'm pretty sure sisters will have access to all the weapon options for every model.
tauist wrote: Since all fire team compositions are tied to what bits come in a single kit, I'm pretty sure sisters will have access to all the weapon options for every model.
I would like to see them give access to the pistols as a upgrade with the swords. Rather than have them without, don’t think it would be a ballance issue :(
But sisters don’t even have anything that could be a issue here like heavy weapons I would think.
Thanks for the feedback and speculation guys. I think at this point in time more details are needed before I start assembling anything or planning purchases.
I've been trying to kill 2 birds with 1 stone so to speak with regards to a combat patrol size detachment and double up for kill team but there's still a few too many moving parts unknown with kill team fire teams. Anyway August isn't too far away so I'm sure answers will be revealed soon.
Bit surprised/disappointed the Reiver doesn't include any rules for the optional Grav-chutes and/or Grapnel Launcher they can take, nor anything for the Shock grenades or sonic waves that are specifically called out in the fluff bit.
This is the data sheet for Reiver (Warrior). I imagine that means there are other specialist Reivers with those bits.
The thing I find a bit weird is listing combat knives and fists. Knives appear to be a straight-up better option, and I thought all Reivers had knives...
Bit surprised/disappointed the Reiver doesn't include any rules for the optional Grav-chutes and/or Grapnel Launcher they can take, nor anything for the Shock grenades or sonic waves that are specifically called out in the fluff bit.
This is the data sheet for Reiver (Warrior). I imagine that means there are other specialist Reivers with those bits.
The thing I find a bit weird is listing combat knives and fists. Knives appear to be a straight-up better option, and I thought all Reivers had knives...
Yeah, it makes sense. The addition of "(Warrior)"must have the purpose of distinguishing it from specialists, as otherwise what's the point of adding that. It does reinforce the idea for me that the compendium Kill Teams will just be "placeholders" until bespoke KT boxes come along for other factions, though.
As for the fists and knives thing, in 40k Reivers can either have the pistol and knife, or the carbine (and pistol). The carbine option does not get the knife (except for the sergeant, I believe). Equipment selection rules aren't specified on the datasheet, though, so not sure if RAW in new Kill Team you can't just have both the carbine and the knife - in which case the fists are redundant. But I assume they want you to follow the modelling options for Reivers as they are in 40k.
Bit surprised/disappointed the Reiver doesn't include any rules for the optional Grav-chutes and/or Grapnel Launcher they can take, nor anything for the Shock grenades or sonic waves that are specifically called out in the fluff bit.
Also, why do none of these datasheets acknowledge that these models clearly have sidearms modelled? I would assume you could have armed your marine with a combat knife instead of "fists" if all Veteran Guardsmen get a Bayonet... Looking at this I get the feeling the compendium rules are just there to allow everyone to play with their existing Kill Teams but they're saving the "proper" rules for specific new Kill Team kits to be released down the line.
This is an interesting idea. Is the Compendium there to allow you to play the old core rules Kill Teams and new rules will accompany Warcry-like Kill Teams? If so, why again did an AoS adjacent game get better support than the breadwinner 40K? I'd have rather had six specific kill teams with a compendium and more to come rather than the minimum effort that was shown in this box set. Again Kommandos and Veteran Guard show what the game was supposed to look like making everything else kind of half baked.
They already said other KTs will get game specific upgrade sprue like kommandos and krieg later. That's when we will see full upgrades and rules, probably. I will facepalm really hard if GW didn't fix reivers for 9th edition codex because melee bits for it will be released later
lost_lilliputian wrote: Ad-Mech the pic shows 6 Rangers and 3 Sicarian Infiltrators and 1 Sicarian Ruststalker for a total of 10 figures making up a Kill Team. Would that be 1 fire team or 2?
It has to be 2, not only different units, but KT of 20 models that good would be really insane.
Rubrics don't have higher-than-normal toughness, that's only Death Guard so we should expect Plague Marines to have more wounds than normal.
Ah shucks, my mistake I was thinking they were T5 on account of not having any bodies. Great point that All is Dust isn't as strong as the 40k version, I'm curious as to why since it didn't seem that powerful for a Skirmish game.
Rubrics don't have higher-than-normal toughness, that's only Death Guard so we should expect Plague Marines to have more wounds than normal.
Ah shucks, my mistake I was thinking they were T5 on account of not having any bodies. Great point that All is Dust isn't as strong as the 40k version, I'm curious as to why since it didn't seem that powerful for a Skirmish game.
maybe they will go a different route with KT? once you start playing with the fundamental gameplay like they have, they might as well use different mechanics to represent the same in-lore ability. Maybe some form of damage reduction, or ignores criticals, or even a penalty to shooting them (to represent the difficulty of getting a meaningful hit on a target that can ignore most fire?), or maybe they dont suffer form stat degradation (which i understand is going to be a thing in KT 2), to show their indifference to damage right up until it kills them?
thier a few ways they can play this, we will have to wait and see.
Rubrics don't have higher-than-normal toughness, that's only Death Guard so we should expect Plague Marines to have more wounds than normal.
Ah shucks, my mistake I was thinking they were T5 on account of not having any bodies. Great point that All is Dust isn't as strong as the 40k version, I'm curious as to why since it didn't seem that powerful for a Skirmish game.
maybe they will go a different route with KT? once you start playing with the fundamental gameplay like they have, they might as well use different mechanics to represent the same in-lore ability. Maybe some form of damage reduction, or ignores criticals, or even a penalty to shooting them (to represent the difficulty of getting a meaningful hit on a target that can ignore most fire?), or maybe they dont suffer form stat degradation (which i understand is going to be a thing in KT 2), to show their indifference to damage right up until it kills them?
thier a few ways they can play this, we will have to wait and see.
They may also have faction ability’s to choose as well. I think it’s likely as GW likes that as a design.
Objectives article. Unsurprisingly, we see objectives that require actions, giving further info on "what am I supposed to do with 3 APL?" Win.
Interestingly, the Consecrate Ground action grants an extra APL for the turn, so refunds the action used to take it, while offering points and a buff to help hold the objective point. Alright, cool.
The secondaries are a bit more interesting, in that they let us see some of the narrative stuff the game is trying to convey with its objectives. We've got 2 points for issuing a duel and winning, 2 points for stealing intel off a downed soldier and surviving to report it, and 2 points for using the battle as a distraction to send a unit off to make mischief in the backlines while nobody's looking. I like that the latter two require you to perform them while away from the action; this gives some counter-play if you opponent can guess what you're up to, and puts some restrictions on when you can do it in the chaos of the fight.
The fact that some of them can be partially completed, but require further support over the game to get the second point is nice, too.
We don't see enough, yet, to determine whether there's a good enough internal balance to make interesting choices based on opponent matchup, or whether there are less interestingly Secondary auto-takes based on your own faction, but the spread in variety means that I can definitely see that some are bad matchups for some factions and more appealing for others -- you're hardly likely to want to send one of your Custodes off on an Interloping mission, for instance, but an Imperial Guard team or a crew with Poxwalkers can more readily spare a model.
This reveal honestly leaves nothing but a bad taste in my mouth.
Firstly, ridiculous 'branded' language for basic gameplay concepts. Feth off with "Turning Point", it just obfuscates a basic principle of games.
Absolutely agree. Not only is it replacing a perfectly serviceable and well-understood term, it also looks really clunky in text.
I love how little info they're now giving us with each new reveal. Reminds me of the endless previews for 9th edition, which ran out of decent content after about a week.
i've complained about this before in another thread on this forum, but the way they are using the shapes rather than the actaul distances is frankly annoying. I get it, they've eliminated long range measuring and brought everything down to something you can fit on their new measuring tool, which if fine, it might well be easier to use than a tape measure (i'm giving them benefit of the the doubt, and withholding judgement on that until i've actually tried playing with it), but i wish for god-emperors sake, they'd put the real world distances next to those symbols, because i am reading those tactical objectives and i'm having to stop, load up the page where they explain the conversation chart to actaully understand those orders. I mean, how hard is it, really, to go "within SQUARE(2") of enemy"?
it doesnt help the shapes chosen dont (in my mind) bear any resemblance to the distances. why triangle for 1", circle for 3"? i'd have put those the other way around, circle for 1", a triangle for 3", and swapped the square/2" with a large X (ie two lines) and the pentagon/6" with a hexagon (six sides). That to, me makes more sense, and creates a "sides = distance" relationship that works better for tying the two together.
anyway, rant over, onto the actual rules:
I havn't played many games with secret objectives like this, so it will be intresting to see how easy (or not) this is to implement. the existence of at least one objective that requires the enemy to get behind you might incentivise players to care more about flanks and trying to prevent breakthoughs, which i suppose is more "realistic" in that troops should be worried about being flanked. that said, it sounds like it might punish more elite factions slightly if they can't get enough bodies on the field to block all lines of approach. I can pretty much guarantee that custodes are going to be putting at most 3 bodies on the feild, for example, so sneaking around them in a suitable crowded battlefield is going to be easy 2VP for a more numerous enemy. I suppose the question then becomes if thier are secondary objectives that play to the strenghts of a elite army, like "hold this postion" or something. We might well see some objectives becoming auto-includes on some factions (a very fast army might love the interloper objective, etc)
Firstly, ridiculous 'branded' language for basic gameplay concepts. Feth off with "Turning Point", it just obfuscates a basic principle of games.
Absolutely agree. Not only is it replacing a perfectly serviceable and well-understood term, it also looks really clunky in text.
As a counter-point, adding in a distinct game term that is explicitly defined helps resolve confusion among people learning the rules second- and third-hand about the difference between "turns" and "rounds" in a game that centers around alternating activations.
I agree, every time I get to one of those shapes when reading my brain has to pause, switch from "english" to "abstract concepts", understand that circle is a distance, then switch back to continue reading.
It's really annoying. I hope I'll get used to it but I somewhat doubt it.
The shapes are one thing, but with the language used. It’s just unpleasant to read.
One or the other would have been great.
They have done nothing with the shapes at all, but need the reference as well.
Otherwise it’s standard stuff with nothing unexpected, looks like will need work to get a good game out of it I am thinking.
On the blood letter, is fighter a new typing ? Will have to go back. Will be interesting to see if demons get some effort put in will be what gets me in or out on that I am thinking.
On the Bloodletter front, they have a 6+ Sv, but a 5+ Invuln. Does this imply that terrain or some other rules will offer beneficial modifiers to Sv values?
Kaffis wrote: On the Bloodletter front, they have a 6+ Sv, but a 5+ Invuln. Does this imply that terrain or some other rules will offer beneficial modifiers to Sv values?
yes i think they do, i seem to recall the terran piece mentioning taking cover as being at thing, so i'd assume that cover still grants save bonuses. Plus, having a bigger invulnerable save than normal save is sometimes a thing in regular 40K as well. I know a few factions have it, normally on things like deamons or other units mainly protected by powers rather than armour.
This reveal honestly leaves nothing but a bad taste in my mouth.
Firstly, ridiculous 'branded' language for basic gameplay concepts. Feth off with "Turning Point", it just obfuscates a basic principle of games.
Secondly, secondary objectives. I hate these. They're just an annoying faff.
Agree with the weird name. Hard disagree on secondaries. These are great.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
xerxeskingofking wrote: i've complained about this before in another thread on this forum, but the way they are using the shapes rather than the actaul distances is frankly annoying. I get it, they've eliminated long range measuring and brought everything down to something you can fit on their new measuring tool, which if fine, it might well be easier to use than a tape measure (i'm giving them benefit of the the doubt, and withholding judgement on that until i've actually tried playing with it), but i wish for god-emperors sake, they'd put the real world distances next to those symbols, because i am reading those tactical objectives and i'm having to stop, load up the page where they explain the conversation chart to actaully understand those orders. I mean, how hard is it, really, to go "within SQUARE(2") of enemy"?
it doesnt help the shapes chosen dont (in my mind) bear any resemblance to the distances. why triangle for 1", circle for 3"? i'd have put those the other way around, circle for 1", a triangle for 3", and swapped the square/2" with a large X (ie two lines) and the pentagon/6" with a hexagon (six sides). That to, me makes more sense, and creates a "sides = distance" relationship that works better for tying the two together.
Yea I like it less and less. The rules will basically force use of the template for a while.
The more I read about this new version of Kill Team, the more I find myself browsing for Infinity miniatures. Like I have a strong urge to splurge on some Yu Jing for some reason.
What's stopping someone from picking the commando grot as an interloper and getting a free 2 points? I mean it sounds like the grapple has infinite range.
Sledgehammer wrote: What's stopping someone from picking the commando grot as an interloper and getting a free 2 points? I mean it sounds like the grapple has infinite range.
It would need terrain in position to work, so it works once. And no one plays you where it works again.
Sledgehammer wrote: What's stopping someone from picking the commando grot as an interloper and getting a free 2 points? I mean it sounds like the grapple has infinite range.
It would need terrain in position to work, so it works once. And no one plays you where it works again.
Also, overwatch. I really like the decisions you have to make to be able to stop something like that. You're going to be working hard to get an angle on that grot before he gets line of sight to a clear spot on your board edge.
Sledgehammer wrote: What's stopping someone from picking the commando grot as an interloper and getting a free 2 points? I mean it sounds like the grapple has infinite range.
It would need terrain in position to work, so it works once. And no one plays you where it works again.
Also, overwatch. I really like the decisions you have to make to be able to stop something like that. You're going to be working hard to get an angle on that grot before he gets line of sight to a clear spot on your board edge.
Sledgehammer wrote: What's stopping someone from picking the commando grot as an interloper and getting a free 2 points? I mean it sounds like the grapple has infinite range.
It would need terrain in position to work, so it works once. And no one plays you where it works again.
Also, overwatch. I really like the decisions you have to make to be able to stop something like that. You're going to be working hard to get an angle on that grot before he gets line of sight to a clear spot on your board edge.
Have they confirmed overwatch is in the game yet?
There's a unit with a special rule that specifically mentions Overwatch (Dire Avenger)
Sledgehammer wrote: What's stopping someone from picking the commando grot as an interloper and getting a free 2 points? I mean it sounds like the grapple has infinite range.
It would need terrain in position to work, so it works once. And no one plays you where it works again.
Also, overwatch. I really like the decisions you have to make to be able to stop something like that. You're going to be working hard to get an angle on that grot before he gets line of sight to a clear spot on your board edge.
Have they confirmed overwatch is in the game yet?
There's a unit with a special rule that specifically mentions Overwatch (Dire Avenger)
It does concern me as a concept though.
It may totally discourage aggressive action both sides turtle up and wait to get the first shot off.
On the other hand it would remove a lot of the advantage of going last in an AA game.
Indeed. The last edition of kill team made it feel like if you weren't readying all of your ranged weapons you were at a huge disadvantage to someone who was. I'm looking forward to this with the hope that fire and maneuver is more viable than it has been.
Still haven't seen a single use of distance shapes that couldn't have been done the same or better with a number.
Oh, ye of little faith, just you wait. There will be a mind-blowing mechanic that uses these shapes to maximum effect and it will be clear that it couldn't be done any other way.
Still haven't seen a single use of distance shapes that couldn't have been done the same or better with a number.
Yea, so far they have absolutely wasted the design space they opened up here. I almost feel like they started doing something "good" and at some point were told to divert away from that, but left half of the "good" stuff in.
Man these shapes instead of distances are extremely hard to read. I'm with Kiro here, I have to pause when reading when I come to the shape then remember it's referring to a distance.
I also really enjoy BSF which uses shapes to represent the die you are using, so reading these is extra painful.
The Secondaries look interesting, but I'm not a big fan of what they described with bringing your Kill Team. Sounds a lot like "Well if you're bringing that, then I'm bringing this" which in my opinion puts a speedbump on just starting and playing the game.
Listen I am as salty and bitter as they come but i honestly think this new KT is going to be GWs best product released in more than two decades.
Skirmish games have developed a lot through this time. And since we know GW doesn’t pay their game designers, they best they can do is to grab other people’s ideas and bolt them onto GW models.
Thus we have the new KT. Which for all its legalese looks to have a great interaction system.
What will drag the game under is the fact that the range of models available for use is tiny and that will assuredly be expanded through paywalled released randomly thrown out every couple years that eventually breaks the game with power creep and other poorly thought out design choices.
But KT2 is going to be such a breath of fresh air in comparison to the trash fire of 9th edition 40K and all tedium that game entails.
What will drag the game under is the fact that the range of models available for use is tiny and that will assuredly be expanded through paywalled released randomly thrown out every couple years that eventually breaks the game with power creep and other poorly thought out design choices.
I agree with everything you've said, but really don't understand this point. I see it cropping up over and over again.
Am I missing something? I don't see how this game won't be 100% playable with standard 40k kits.
What will drag the game under is the fact that the range of models available for use is tiny and that will assuredly be expanded through paywalled released randomly thrown out every couple years that eventually breaks the game with power creep and other poorly thought out design choices.
I agree with everything you've said, but really don't understand this point. I see it cropping up over and over again.
Am I missing something? I don't see how this game won't be 100% playable with standard 40k kits.
I am just assuming they will follow the path of old kill team and expand the units with an "elites" and "commanders" expansions which, if not properly designed into the game at the start, can throw the whole meta out of order.
For example Tyranids have no units in KT2 that have psychic abilities (based upon how they work in 40k anyway). It seems reasonable to assume they will eventually get some. I just would have liked to see more units available for play at the game's release instead of them being expanded over time to keep sales flowing.
I do wonder how they will fit Elites into Killteam with this list building.
I don't actually think they designed this game with shapes in mind, at all.
I think they designed this game to use a 'combat gauge', which seems a logical decision. Then someone thought "how can we make sure that people buy our combat gauge? I want you to use shapes".
So they went back through and replaced every number with a shape.
Still haven't seen a single use of distance shapes that couldn't have been done the same or better with a number.
Yea, so far they have absolutely wasted the design space they opened up here. I almost feel like they started doing something "good" and at some point were told to divert away from that, but left half of the "good" stuff in.
I think its more like the 'keywords' they introduced into the main game. Someone told GWdevs they're a big trend in modern game design, but they didn't actually go and look at how people use them. So they just hover out there, used for a handful of subsystems and a lot of wasted potential. Or in some cases (like marks of chaos) killing off lore/flavor subsystems entirely.
It feels like an alarm program that doesn't send out any alerts when the sensor is tripped, because no one bothered to write the 'send alert' part of the code. They have the sensor, and they can detect when it gets flipped, but... nothing actually happens because they didn't take the next step.
What will drag the game under is the fact that the range of models available for use is tiny and that will assuredly be expanded through paywalled released randomly thrown out every couple years that eventually breaks the game with power creep and other poorly thought out design choices.
I agree with everything you've said, but really don't understand this point. I see it cropping up over and over again.
Am I missing something? I don't see how this game won't be 100% playable with standard 40k kits.
I am just assuming they will follow the path of old kill team and expand the units with an "elites" and "commanders" expansions which, if not properly designed into the game at the start, can throw the whole meta out of order.
For example Tyranids have no units in KT2 that have psychic abilities (based upon how they work in 40k anyway). It seems reasonable to assume they will eventually get some. I just would have liked to see more units available for play at the game's release instead of them being expanded over time to keep sales flowing.
Ah, I see what you're saying. I was confused. Agree that that's probably going to be the route.
kirotheavenger wrote: I do wonder how they will fit Elites into Killteam with this list building.
I don't actually think they designed this game with shapes in mind, at all.
I think they designed this game to use a 'combat gauge', which seems a logical decision. Then someone thought "how can we make sure that people buy our combat gauge? I want you to use shapes".
So they went back through and replaced every number with a shape.
Gregor Samsa wrote: I am just assuming they will follow the path of old kill team and expand the units with an "elites" and "commanders" expansions which, if not properly designed into the game at the start, can throw the whole meta out of order.
While they are absolutely sure to expand this, they've taken far more care for balance in this edition than they ever have, so I'm thinking a far more measured approach this time.
Gregor Samsa wrote: I am just assuming they will follow the path of old kill team and expand the units with an "elites" and "commanders" expansions which, if not properly designed into the game at the start, can throw the whole meta out of order.
While they are absolutely sure to expand this, they've taken far more care for balance in this edition than they ever have, so I'm thinking a far more measured approach this time.
I agree, despite my grumbling about the range symbols. they've made a clear and deliberate choice to divorce themselves form the basic 40K mechanics, and to effectively start again form the ground up, with the hope that this will create a system that has better internal balance at the expected model counts than one that was basically vanillia 40K forced down to a lower model count than it was designed for and alternating activations bodged into it.
the mechanics of this game are not new to wargaming in general, certainly, but they are, mostly, new to games workshop*, so its clear they are willing to move this out of their comfort zone to use what they think are good ideas form other systems. I dont think the removal of limits to long range fire, or the lack of points, or even the symbols im bitching about are Bad Ideas That Will Ruin The Game, just different that how 40K does things, and I honestly hope this works well and creates a fun, fast paced skirmish game that becomes a nice little profit maker for GW and something i can reliably find games of in my local stores and wargaming clubs for when i cant be bothered to lug a huge army around or havent got 3 hours to spare.
* for example, the only other GW game i can think of where fights were opposed rolls, rather than hit/wound/save, is LOTR.
Warcry uses AA (although so does Necromunda). The thing that reminds me of Warcry is the attack sequence.
Always rolling 3-4 dice, 6s cause crits, defence mostly comes from wounds.
From what I've seen so far though, I prefer Warcry's execution. In Warcry units have an "attack" and "defence" value, 'to-hit' is based off of the interaction of those (just like strength vs toughness in 40k). Any hits deal damage, 6s dealing critical damage.
I think having a fixed to-hit and separate defence roll is likely to just slow things down without materially changing things, whilst also surely leading to the oddity of armour providing no protection at all in melee.
But that doesn't rule out Killteam being fun in it's own right of course.
Warcry is a tedious slap fight until someone manage to crit more than the other guy and knock him out, crit deal absurdly high damage compare to the non-crit slap attack. Only a handful of fighters have a decent non-crit attack.
The toughest fighter in KT is probably a Cusrodian Guard and he only has 18 wounds, in Warcry a tough guy can have 30 to over 40 wounds! The damage in Warcry is lower than KT and mostly from melee. They probably realized that people want to see things killed instead of watching a slapping competition reenactment.
Ive enjoyed my games of Warcry, that's not been my impression of it. The ability dice are also pretty cool imo.
My main issue with the game was the random nature of mission draws meant that fairly often one player would win basically as soon as the mission was drawn. "Seize and keep the objective? I have fly, you don't, I win!".
Given a Custode's save, I imagine they're going to be very tough to bring down with shooting.
How vulnerable they'll be to melee remains to be seen, but certainly in 1v1 combat they're going to be pretty impervious, especially if equipped with a stormshield.
Chopstick wrote: The toughest fighter in KT is probably a Cusrodian Guard and he only has 18 wounds, in Warcry a tough guy can have 30 to over 40 wounds! The damage in Warcry is lower than KT and mostly from melee. They probably realized that people want to see things killed instead of watching a slapping competition reenactment.
That's interesting, so about 1/2 the wounds of a tough model in War Cry and the damage is much higher. Sounds like they want to keep 40k Kill Team very killy.
I'm really looking forward to trying my first game with the new rules, since this is a specialist game now for the most part its shaping up to a having a unique feel of play. Here's hoping it's not turbo-killy though.
xerxeskingofking wrote: i've complained about this before in another thread on this forum, but the way they are using the shapes rather than the actaul distances is frankly annoying. I get it, they've eliminated long range measuring and brought everything down to something you can fit on their new measuring tool, which if fine, it might well be easier to use than a tape measure (i'm giving them benefit of the the doubt, and withholding judgement on that until i've actually tried playing with it), but i wish for god-emperors sake, they'd put the real world distances next to those symbols, because i am reading those tactical objectives and i'm having to stop, load up the page where they explain the conversation chart to actaully understand those orders. I mean, how hard is it, really, to go "within SQUARE(2") of enemy"?
it doesnt help the shapes chosen dont (in my mind) bear any resemblance to the distances. why triangle for 1", circle for 3"? i'd have put those the other way around, circle for 1", a triangle for 3", and swapped the square/2" with a large X (ie two lines) and the pentagon/6" with a hexagon (six sides). That to, me makes more sense, and creates a "sides = distance" relationship that works better for tying the two together.
anyway, rant over, onto the actual rules:
I havn't played many games with secret objectives like this, so it will be intresting to see how easy (or not) this is to implement. the existence of at least one objective that requires the enemy to get behind you might incentivise players to care more about flanks and trying to prevent breakthoughs, which i suppose is more "realistic" in that troops should be worried about being flanked. that said, it sounds like it might punish more elite factions slightly if they can't get enough bodies on the field to block all lines of approach. I can pretty much guarantee that custodes are going to be putting at most 3 bodies on the feild, for example, so sneaking around them in a suitable crowded battlefield is going to be easy 2VP for a more numerous enemy. I suppose the question then becomes if thier are secondary objectives that play to the strenghts of a elite army, like "hold this postion" or something. We might well see some objectives becoming auto-includes on some factions (a very fast army might love the interloper objective, etc)
If you're using the measuring tool, why do you need to know what the numeric distance each shape corresponds to is? All you really need to know is the distances in relation to one another (i.e. whats shorter/longer than what). This is really where better "logic" in the allocation of shapes would have helped (i.e. an increasing number of sides on the shapes instead of the seemingly random pattern they selected).
If you're using the measuring tool, why do you need to know what the numeric distance each shape corresponds to is?
Same reason there are different teaching and learning methods. People learn and retain information in different ways, but the most important thing is context. With wargames, the most common context is distance.
Lots of people like their numbers and use them to ground themselves in the system. Suddenly taking that away for a new system (and, importantly replacing it with an illogical system of unrelated colors and shapes) actively interferes with the ability to understand and relate to the game.
Its one of the big reasons why new games get a lot of crap for not being in Imperial or Metric measurements (or both). The game company has suddenly lost a good chunk of the audience on one side of the Atlantic or another.
Rule systems in overt legalese and naming systems in gibberish rather than natural language are similar problems that come up a lot. Undercutting nearly everybody with something as basic as numbers is a _really_ puzzling decision.
If you're using the measuring tool, why do you need to know what the numeric distance each shape corresponds to is? All you really need to know is the distances in relation to one another (i.e. whats shorter/longer than what). This is really where better "logic" in the allocation of shapes would have helped (i.e. an increasing number of sides on the shapes instead of the seemingly random pattern they selected).
Because forcing people to use a proprietary gauge to make any sense out of your system is a stupidly greedy decision and I imagine people don't want to bend the knee to GW in this particular case.
If you're using the measuring tool, why do you need to know what the numeric distance each shape corresponds to is?
Same reason there are different teaching and learning methods. People learn and retain information in different ways, but the most important thing is context. With wargames, the most common context is distance.
Lots of people like their numbers and use them to ground themselves in the system. Suddenly taking that away for a new system (and, importantly replacing it with an illogical system of unrelated colors and shapes) actively interferes with the ability to understand and relate to the game.
Its one of the big reasons why new games get a lot of crap for not being in Imperial or Metric measurements (or both). The game company has suddenly lost a good chunk of the audience on one side of the Atlantic or another.
Rule systems in overt legalese and naming systems in gibberish rather than natural language are similar problems that come up a lot. Undercutting nearly everybody with something as basic as numbers is a _really_ puzzling decision.
Where's the vitriol and complaining about games like Star Wars using a measuring rod, and the variously sized movement rods?
Where's the vitriol and complaining about games like Star Wars using a measuring rod, and the variously sized movement rods?
Maybe it has something to do with Star Wars Legion and other games using the rods in way that is logical instead of confusing and pointless.
I don't know how long Legion rods are in inches or centimeters because I don't need to. The rods are named Range 1, Range 2 and Range 3 and it isn't difficult to guess which one is shortest and which one is longest. Also separate rods are probably more convenient to use instead of sides of a trapezoid, three of which are used to measure distances and one is not.
I believe GW had good intentions but the choice of symbols was terrible and the whole system feels pointless when symbols refer to actual distances in inches anyway. This is what people are complaining about.
Personally I think that basing Kill Team gameplay on preset distances was a good idea, just poorly implemented.
Legion feels like you mechanically gain from using their movement rulers. They don't feel like they were crowbarred in just to sell those rulers.
Additionally, there's a starter set for every faction that has a good selection of units at good value, pretty much everyone starts there and gets movement rulers anyway. So they don't have to specifically buy these tools it's much less of an issue anyway.
For range you have more of a point. Each range band of Legion is just 6" and I tend to use a tape measure anyway, this does feel a little forced.
However, they still use logical numbers (1-5). This is a big deal as when reading rules my brain doesn't have to pause to process ("circle = 3, is bigger than square") which gets really annoying when reading Killteam rules and genuinely hurts my comprehension of the system as it's just harder to read.
And again, everyone starts with a starterset so they don't really have to buy range rulers. With Killteam a lot of people aren't going to be interested in Krieg, Kommandos, or Ork Terrain so aren't going to want the starter set.
I agree that discarding distances beyond 6" and working around a combat gauge is a solid idea. They just made a terrible decision using shapes.
i'm going to assume that they will make the gauge available for separate purchase, especially if its something its they have made central to the gameplay like they have. People are not going to shell out for the starter set JUST to get the gauge, they'll buy the separate rulebook, and if they can't get the gauge, then they'll either turn to 3 party makers for them (i mean, any CAD student could knock one together in half an hour, it would be trivial to knock one up), or use a school 6" ruler with the shapes drawn on.
I agree, but that's kinda the point.
You need to go out of your way to specifically buy a geometry combat gauge.
Why? So that rules read very poorly and disjointed?
The Red Hobbit wrote: Man these shapes instead of distances are extremely hard to read. I'm with Kiro here, I have to pause when reading when I come to the shape then remember it's referring to a distance.
I also really enjoy BSF which uses shapes to represent the die you are using, so reading these is extra painful.
The Secondaries look interesting, but I'm not a big fan of what they described with bringing your Kill Team. Sounds a lot like "Well if you're bringing that, then I'm bringing this" which in my opinion puts a speedbump on just starting and playing the game.
just backtracking a little here, but it sounds more like a case of "i have a death guard kill team with a 3 man plague marine fireteam, and a 7 man plaguebearer fireteam. i can bring one of those to this match", and his opponent is left to think about weather he wants to build against a few strong models, a larger number of weaker models (ie bet that one or the other will be deployed, but at a risk of guessing wrong), or go TAC style and accept less ability against whichever he chooses but not getting caught out by an unexpected selection.
So, basic list building meta-gaming, the same as everyone does anyway in 40K before most games.
I quite like the campaign system though, and being able to switch between campaign and matched play games but still collect (but not use in matched play) campaign effects is quite cool.
The problem with the measuring gauge is how fiddly it is to measure across non-flat surfaces. With all the terrain littering the board, using something as inflexible as a movement gauge is annoying. That's on top of the stupid system of unintuitive symbols they've used.
I think games like Legion and X-Wing get away with it more because they are at least intuitive. In the case of X-Wing it's kind of obvious what they add to the game too, with control of the angle of the ships, while also playing into one of the skills needed to play - judging movement paths. Where it's less successful is with a game like SW Armada where the movement tool is pretty long and fiddly and there's often a lot of models in the way. That still seems more intuitive than the KT approach though.
I also like the idea that narrative mode is actually a story for yourself, and that you can share it with others who are interested, but aren't stymied if others just want to play pick up games.
I’ve been following this thread from the beginning and I have to say I’m excited for this to new rule set. I really hope it all comes together as a fun and balanced game. I live a couple hours from any game store and me and all my gaming buddies are busy with families and work so we very rarely can all get together and play a game of 40k ( takes too long, too expensive, etc). If this KT2 is all their hyping it to be we might finally be able to do some regular gaming again.
Flinty wrote: I also like the idea that narrative mode is actually a story for yourself, and that you can share it with others who are interested, but aren't stymied if others just want to play pick up games.
From what I have understood, this is how narrative campaigns work in Warcry, 40k and Age of Sigmar nowadays. And I agree that it's an excellent approach.
Slipspace wrote: The problem with the measuring gauge is how fiddly it is to measure across non-flat surfaces. With all the terrain littering the board, using something as inflexible as a movement gauge is annoying. That's on top of the stupid system of unintuitive symbols they've used.
I think games like Legion and X-Wing get away with it more because they are at least intuitive. In the case of X-Wing it's kind of obvious what they add to the game too, with control of the angle of the ships, while also playing into one of the skills needed to play - judging movement paths. Where it's less successful is with a game like SW Armada where the movement tool is pretty long and fiddly and there's often a lot of models in the way. That still seems more intuitive than the KT approach though.
In X-Wing the gauges are intuitive and make sense for the type of game it is. There's momentum involved and no terrain to physically go up and over.
If GW had simply made the shapes match number of sides with distance, it would have been SOOOOO much better. I really just honestly cannot believe NO ONE involved with this game mentioned "hey guys and gals, shouldnt we make the distances correlate with the # of sides on the shapes? And just make circle either the biggest or smallest?" They didn't even have to make the # sides = inches, just more sides = longer distance would have been simple enough.
I'm sure it will be easier when I paint the shapes to match the colors, but man alive such a basic intuitive concept and they didn't do it.
Quasistellar wrote: I really just honestly cannot believe NO ONE involved with this game mentioned "hey guys and gals, shouldnt we make the distances correlate with the # of sides on the shapes? And just make circle either the biggest or smallest?".
now you assume that they ever played their own game
Base building, weapon upgrades, operatives needing rest to recover? Sounds like KT2 narrative is borrowing some pages from Xcom games.. I don't mind at all, always loved Xcom
tauist wrote: Base building, weapon upgrades, operatives needing rest to recover? Sounds like KT2 narrative is borrowing some pages from Xcom games.. I don't mind at all, always loved Xcom
I mean, KT1 already snagged Xcom's skill trees.
Fun fact, Xcom creators cited Necromunda as an inspiration.
tauist wrote: Base building, weapon upgrades, operatives needing rest to recover? Sounds like KT2 narrative is borrowing some pages from Xcom games.. I don't mind at all, always loved Xcom
I mean, KT1 already snagged Xcom's skill trees.
Fun fact, Xcom creators cited Necromunda as an inspiration.
Do you have any info on that ? I curious now. I assume it’s inspired by the white dwarf rules, but I couldn’t find any info on it.
tauist wrote: Base building, weapon upgrades, operatives needing rest to recover? Sounds like KT2 narrative is borrowing some pages from Xcom games.. I don't mind at all, always loved Xcom
I mean, KT1 already snagged Xcom's skill trees.
Fun fact, Xcom creators cited Necromunda as an inspiration.
Do you have any info on that ? I curious now. I assume it’s inspired by the white dwarf rules, but I couldn’t find any info on it.
tauist wrote: Base building, weapon upgrades, operatives needing rest to recover? Sounds like KT2 narrative is borrowing some pages from Xcom games.. I don't mind at all, always loved Xcom
I mean, KT1 already snagged Xcom's skill trees.
Fun fact, Xcom creators cited Necromunda as an inspiration.
Do you have any info on that ? I curious now. I assume it’s inspired by the white dwarf rules, but I couldn’t find any info on it.
The team sheet they showed only had one small box for "base", that was presented in the same way as "quirks". IE; just a fluff piece for your team.
It could be Warcom misunderstanding and/or making a mountain out of a molehill.
As for shapes, I wonder if the team didn't specifically choose shapes that were a poor fit, to try and encourage people using their shapes instead of normal distances. That is the whole point of shapes afterall. You're not supposed to be using inches.
Edit: looking at the sheet again, they're probably referring to "strategic assets" which is a large box and lists a medbay.
I'm sure it will be easier when I paint the shapes to match the colors, but man alive such a basic intuitive concept and they didn't do it.
indeed, the more i think about it, its just such a obvious concept that I can only assume MUST have thought of it, but they couldn't use it for some reason. Its quite possible that the most obvious set of shapes for basic ranges is, in fact, locked behind some sort of copyright protection. maybe some other wargaming company got their first, and that forced GW to use effectively "random" shapes because that progression isn't copyrighted.
kirotheavenger wrote:
I dunno how dramatic base building actually is.
The team sheet they showed only had one small box for "base", that was presented in the same way as "quirks". IE; just a fluff piece for your team.
i think the "type" of base is just fluff, but most of the mechanical advantages tied to the base are under the "stash" and "strategic assets" sections. things like the the rosary, the med bay, etc, those the the base building benefits. im guessing stash items will give specific in game bonuses to character that are assigned these items (maybe the trench shovel will improve the users cover save?), while the strategic assets will give between game bonuses (the med bay will obviously assist with healing wounds in some form)
tauist wrote: Base building, weapon upgrades, operatives needing rest to recover? Sounds like KT2 narrative is borrowing some pages from Xcom games.. I don't mind at all, always loved Xcom
I mean, KT1 already snagged Xcom's skill trees.
Fun fact, Xcom creators cited Necromunda as an inspiration.
Do you have any info on that ? I curious now. I assume it’s inspired by the white dwarf rules, but I couldn’t find any info on it.
xerxeskingofking wrote: just backtracking a little here, but it sounds more like a case of "i have a death guard kill team with a 3 man plague marine fireteam, and a 7 man plaguebearer fireteam. i can bring one of those to this match", and his opponent is left to think about weather he wants to build against a few strong models, a larger number of weaker models (ie bet that one or the other will be deployed, but at a risk of guessing wrong), or go TAC style and accept less ability against whichever he chooses but not getting caught out by an unexpected selection.
So, basic list building meta-gaming, the same as everyone does anyway in 40K before most games.
So I reread the paragraph in question and I believe you're right. My initial read was that you're going to look at your 20 man list and decide what specialist and loadout (plasma,melta,flamer) and decide while your opponent also decides. Some kind of annoying alternate activation where its: "Okay I bring this guy" "Oh, well in that case, I'll bring a melta" "Okay the next guy on my kill team is this" "Okay the next guy I'm bringing is this."
There's nothing wrong with that per say but it just adds a speed bump to actually playing the game, something I would not be a fan of occuring. I think you read it correctly though so that will dispel that concern for me.
tauist wrote: Base building, weapon upgrades, operatives needing rest to recover? Sounds like KT2 narrative is borrowing some pages from Xcom games.. I don't mind at all, always loved Xcom
I mean, KT1 already snagged Xcom's skill trees.
Fun fact, Xcom creators cited Necromunda as an inspiration.
Do you have any info on that ? I curious now. I assume it’s inspired by the white dwarf rules, but I couldn’t find any info on it.
There's a lot of moaning about the shapes, but honestly, once people get the game in hand and start playing it, your own brain is going to figure half this stuff out for you, and after a couple games you'll have it figured out. Oh no, a whole neuron or two might have to connect. Or worse, you'll come up with your own slang mid-game for describing and translating distances, and, again, if you don't want the gauge, you can just keep using a tape measure.
I'm not sure I'm sold on the narrative play. My ideal situation for narrative is something that me and my buddies play together, but it sounds like they're turning it into a solo experience. It's like if everyone in a DnD campaign went off on their own adventures instead of taking on the main storyline. I just worry that filling out these sheets will be a sort of lonely experience.
But, that said, I'm an experienced DM and game-runner, so it won't be an issue to put together some plot or bring my friends along to all do the narrative stuff together. It's kind of neat that people can do it at their own pace, as long as Bob can still have fun at level 2 while Andrew is already at level 10.
I really want some awesome themed narrative scenarios, and/or the tools to build them.
I've played Crusade and it honestly doesn't feel that logical to me. The overarching campaign goals just translate into arbitrary hoops to jump through in-game that don't really make much sense or correlate with what you're supposed to be doing.
xerxeskingofking wrote: just backtracking a little here, but it sounds more like a case of "i have a death guard kill team with a 3 man plague marine fireteam, and a 7 man plaguebearer fireteam. i can bring one of those to this match", and his opponent is left to think about weather he wants to build against a few strong models, a larger number of weaker models (ie bet that one or the other will be deployed, but at a risk of guessing wrong), or go TAC style and accept less ability against whichever he chooses but not getting caught out by an unexpected selection.
So, basic list building meta-gaming, the same as everyone does anyway in 40K before most games.
So I reread the paragraph in question and I believe you're right. My initial read was that you're going to look at your 20 man list and decide what specialist and loadout (plasma,melta,flamer) and decide while your opponent also decides. Some kind of annoying alternate activation where its: "Okay I bring this guy" "Oh, well in that case, I'll bring a melta" "Okay the next guy on my kill team is this" "Okay the next guy I'm bringing is this."
There's nothing wrong with that per say but it just adds a speed bump to actually playing the game, something I would not be a fan of occuring. I think you read it correctly though so that will dispel that concern for me.
I disagree, to me it sounds like you build a roster of 20 individual models. Then, after you know what mission it is and what army your opponent is, you're supposed to go away and assemble your fireteams in secret. Current Killteam has this exact same mechanic. There's no back and forth selecting operatives though.
We know people like Guard or Deathguard can bring two Fireteams to the same game.
I'm not sure I'm sold on the narrative play. My ideal situation for narrative is something that me and my buddies play together, but it sounds like they're turning it into a solo experience. It's like if everyone in a DnD campaign went off on their own adventures instead of taking on the main storyline. I just worry that filling out these sheets will be a sort of lonely experience.
But, that said, I'm an experienced DM and game-runner, so it won't be an issue to put together some plot or bring my friends along to all do the narrative stuff together. It's kind of neat that people can do it at their own pace, as long as Bob can still have fun at level 2 while Andrew is already at level 10.
I think your second paragraph is the more likely result. Sounds liked the system will work perfectly well for someone essentially narrating a solo campaign, but a group can take each of their individual strands and weave them together if they want.
Indeed. I'd imagine the narrative rules bring a framework into play which can be built upon for really engaging narrative campaigns, but used as-is will just be some sort of crusade-y levelup scheme without any real depth.
The bit about the spec ops missions spanning across several individual games sounded interesting though
Anyone wanna bet we will be seeing the preorder announced tomorrow night?
But, that said, I'm an experienced DM and game-runner, so it won't be an issue to put together some plot or bring my friends along to all do the narrative stuff together. It's kind of neat that people can do it at their own pace, as long as Bob can still have fun at level 2 while Andrew is already at level 10.
I hopethey will have some sort of narrative "underdog perks"/handicap system to counter-balance that, maybe some way to add your own extra perks for that battle, or a "get a free re-roll per turn per X perks difference" or something. thier are ways and means.
kirotheavenger wrote: I disagree, to me it sounds like you build a roster of 20 individual models. Then, after you know what mission it is and what army your opponent is, you're supposed to go away and assemble your fireteams in secret. Current Killteam has this exact same mechanic. There's no back and forth selecting operatives though. We know people like Guard or Deathguard can bring two Fireteams to the same game.
Yeah my only concern was an annoying back and forth of picking units which sounds like an unfun way to start every game.
I'm sure we were all wondering how "all offence, no defence" melee fighters would work.
It seems this is it. Although we don't know what either "Brutal" or "Reap" does, they sound like abilities that increase damage in some way. Combine that with A4/4+, which seems fairly mediocre, but high damage on those attacks.
So this repentia won't be landing that many successes (so not much to use for parrys), but any that are used for offense will hit like a truck.
I do wonder what the difference between "SR" and "!" is though, so far it seems like a distinction without a difference tbh.
kirotheavenger wrote: I do wonder what the difference between "SR" and "!" is though, so far it seems like a distinction without a difference tbh.
'SR' are special rules that apply to all hits (edit: or possibly all attacks?). '!' is for special rules that only apply to crits. So a weapon that does a mortal wound on every hit would have '1MW' in the 'SR' column, while one that does 3 mortal wounds on a crit would have '3MW' in the '!' column.
My understanding is that ! is a Critical Hit rule. So the Evicerator is Brutal all the time and has Reap 2 on Critical Hits. That's why the Lethal, improved chance to get a Critical Hit, is a SR (Special Rule) as opposed to a ! (Critical Effect).
kirotheavenger wrote: I do wonder what the difference between "SR" and "!" is though, so far it seems like a distinction without a difference tbh.
SR is presumably Special Rule. ! appears to be for on-crit effects. It's a little inference to get there, but it's consistent with every instance we know the rules for (special rules always apply, things that only affect crits are in the !), so I feel pretty confident about it.
As for the Eviscerator stats, that's more or less how I was expecting all-offense melee to work, though I was guessing maybe 3 dice at 3+ just so the high end of the bell curve couldn't score 4 hits, but still average out to 2. I'll take 4 @ 4+, though, as a Sisters fan, because that means more consistency as well as a higher proportion of hits being crits. The few successes, but high damage is exactly what I was anticipating, though. They'll really benefit from the attacker's advantage of applying the first success, though, killing even a lightly wounded human or aeldari with their first success if it's their swing.
4 A at 4+ is a slight improvement over their 2 attack at 4+ in current KT. With damage boost special rule they can one shot 7 wound fighter, which is fantastic.
So a zealot repentia will be pretty good in melee then! But I still think this system seems to favour melee combat over shooting, even this repentia will have better chance to survive against AP weapons than a regular guardsman.. Because all melee defense comes via inv saves, which will mostly be a thing for melee operatives.
Nope.
My money's on pretty much the same as 40k, your save can never be worse than that.
So invulns won't help in melee, but FNPs are useful in melee and so are the only defence.
Same for AP.
It's unfortunate that they've kept the 40k model of pretending not to use universal special rules though, given that they are using USRs for weapons.
Reckon we can expect it’s pre-order to be next weekend?
That's what I was hoping, but it looks like this weekend is the 1k Sons vs. Grey Knights box and codexes, based on yesterday's announcement.
Hopefully it'll be up for pre-order on the 14th, released on the 21st.
Edit: Derp, you said next weekend.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Social media put out an image of the Haywire Mine. Summarizing/transcribing the text here since I'm too lazy to upload it somewhere.
Haywire Mine is a 1AP action: Place a Haywire Mine token within (triangle) of this operative. This operative can only perform this action once, and cannot perform this action while within Engagement Range of enemy operatives. If this operative is incapacitated and removed from the killzone, remove its Haywire Mine token.
This operative is equipped with the following ranged weapon:
*DETONATE: Each time this operative makes a SHOOT action using its haywire mine, make a shooting attack against each operative within (square) of the cenre of its Haywire Mine token with that weapon. When making those shooting attacks, each operative is treated as being Visible, but when determining if it is in Cover, treat this operative's Haywire Mine token as the active operative. Then remove this operative's Haywire Mine token. An operative cannot make a shooting attack with this weapon by performing an OVERWATCH action, or if its Haywire Mine token is not in the killzone.
kirotheavenger wrote: Nope.
My money's on pretty much the same as 40k, your save can never be worse than that.
So invulns won't help in melee, but FNPs are useful in melee and so are the only defence.
Same for AP.
It's unfortunate that they've kept the 40k model of pretending not to use universal special rules though, given that they are using USRs for weapons.
I'll be honest the more I think about it the more I like 'your melee skill is also your melee defense". as a model. It means you can't throw mooks at highly skilled melee duellist combatants and be reasonably certain you'll whack a couple of them, like how in 40k currently charging a squad of cultists armed with lead pipes into a squad of extremely skilled combatants like Harlequins or Howling Banshees is probably a good trade for you points-wise.
kirotheavenger wrote: Ah feth, I didn't want to read the article as I knew from the title it was just going to confirm my fears.
Strategems.
Urrgh, I hate them.
Hopefully they're far more restrained than they are in 40k.
Completely agree. If it has to exist I'd much rather stuff like this was tied to pre-game purchases/decisions but the new no-points KT makes that difficult. It feels like a lack of confidence in your own game design to include this kind of thing. It's as if the designers don't think the game is already fun and tactical so they have to add in strats to give a veneer of decision making instead.
CSM Gunner shared on social media. 12 wounds, same stats on Flamer, Meltagun, and Plasma Gun as the Gunner Veteran Guardsman seen fuzzily on-stream, except the CSM gets a 3+ BS instead of the Veteran Guardsman's 4+. Interesting.
So in Matched play you get 10 "Equipment Points" (EP) before each battle to spend on special equipment for your models, like Markerlights, Trench Shovels, Grenades, etc. Every example in the article costs 2 EP, but there may be that cost more or less, of course (I hope so!)
In a campaign you need to earn such equipment as rewards for battles fought, but there's also more "Rare" options available, such as Auto-loaders and Arc units.
I like it. I assume this is also how stuff like Haywire Mines, Shock Grenades, Grapnel Guns etc. is implemented. Hopefully lots of options for customization, certainly beyond just the regular weapons the models can take!
Basically a pre-game points resource used to assign equipment to your models. (Wait, so we do have points?).
Seems cool enough.
Some thoughts though; Markerlight is such a piece of equipment. Does that mean Pathfinders don't start with them?
WarCom implies that Ceaseless (reroll 1s to-hit) makes a plasmagun more dangerous. This would imply that Hot does not trigger on 1s to hit, and instead would presumably trigger on high rolls? Curious.
Alternatively, WarCom is full of gak and Ceaseless makes a plasmagun about 6x safer, like reroll 1s does in regular 40k, who can say!
I do worry that the start of a game will be a huge faff though. You can't just turn up and play, no. You need to turn up then build your killteam then buy equipment. Only then are you able to actually start playing.
Yeah, this just adds more pre-game stuff to the start of the game, which I don't like. I'm also not a fan of GW's increasingly wordy rules writing. They've clearly seen how other games write rules but pretty much missed the point as usual.
I do worry that the start of a game will be a huge faff though. You can't just turn up and play, no. You need to turn up then build your killteam then buy equipment. Only then are you able to actually start playing.
Obviously that isn't the case, you can just pick a list you'd want to use in your next game(s) well before you actually turn up, of course. The option to tailor to your opponent is there, though. But I expect most playing this will already know who their opponent is going to be, or will have a largely set list to use with a few choices to make before starting the game. Shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes if you're well aware of all your options (I expect most will make a shortlist of options they think are going to be useful against a variety of opponents) - and just in case, I don't see how "too many options" could be a complaint when people complain all the time that this game will not have enough options...!
It's not the fact that the options are there, it's that it all needs to be after turning up but before the game (it's after you generate mission as well).
Sure you can not use the rules, but if that's tempting that just proves it's a bad rule.
kirotheavenger wrote: It's not the fact that the options are there, it's that it all needs to be after turning up but before the game (it's after you generate mission as well).
Sure you can not use the rules, but if that's tempting that just proves it's a bad rule.
But isn't that having your cake and eating it too? I'm not saying you don't use the rules themselves, just that you don't have to use them only after you actually turn up at the location where you'll play the game - you could do so earlier.
You either customize your team to the opponent and the mission you'll play, or you don't. Seems to me that's up to you and your opponent (unless you play pick-up games). I don't see what's bad about that.
I note quite the same is happening in Necromunda (which a lot of people are comparing this too): you either draw or hand-pick your crew from your full gang for the mission, and you will also need to draw/pick tactics. So there's also pre-game choices to make.
Given the nature of the point less, fireteam based list building, their is a strong possibility that most factions basically have only one build they can put in the field so it's kinda a moot point. For a matched play game you just show up with your squad. For a campaign/narrative game you have the extra steps of filling out the fire team from a larger roster but it again, most of the time you already know what guys you will want to play this time anyway.
kodos wrote: of course you don't need to use the rules GW provide and can just play something else
ignoring all the rules you don't like and there is no point in paying GW for a rulebook or say that you play KT
Obviously you'll be playing something else, if all these responses come down to is:
- "There's not enough options for choice when building your KT, I don't like that!"
- "I need to make choices before I get to plonk my models on the table, I don't like that!"
Why discuss this game at all when there seems to be nothing about it (whether it's known or unknown, optional or mandatory) that you like?
Using a general "you" here, by the way, and I don't want to imply anyone should be forbidden from engaging in the discussion, but I don't think this is leading anywhere, and will now bow out.
Insane Ivan wrote: In a campaign you need to earn such equipment as rewards for battles fought, but there's also more "Rare" options available, such as Auto-loaders and Arc units.
I like it. I assume this is also how stuff like Haywire Mines, Shock Grenades, Grapnel Guns etc. is implemented. Hopefully lots of options for customization, certainly beyond just the regular weapons the models can take!
The new Kill Team is trying ever so hard to convince us that their wheel is a better wheel, but even I can admit that this aspect sounds interesting.
This game seems to have a lot of things in it. I can only hope the end result will not become a kludgefest where an almost infinite number of "simple rules" make for a painfully cumbersome whole in practice.
At this point, I can't see KT2 as turning out be a very beginner-friendly game tbh
Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Phazer wrote: This seems a step back from plausible WYSIWYG, which is a shame in my opinion.
Don't you worry! I'm sure GW will be releasing all sorts of upgrade kits we can use to kit out all our models with.. And would wager that anything else might even be unofficial for tourney play sooner or later
So, gonna go out on a limb here and say that each fire team is actually based on a cost of 50 points from the previous version. I'm thinking that the options of special/heavy weapons are averaged by the available choices for that fire team. This means that each kill team will roughly be cost as much as previous kill teams--with completely different rules to play with.
From social, Stikkbomb [2 EP]
The operative is equipped with the following ranged weapon for the battle:
Stikkbomb A4 BS3+ D2/4 SR Rng (pentagon), Limited, Blast (circle), Indirect
tauist wrote: Nope, the weapon loadouts choices for any given fire team are dictated by the contents of the model kits. You're overthinking things.
Funny, most of these kits come with 10 models not seven. And that's the part I'm getting at. Seven Guard, four Dire Avengers, three Deathguard...all just a bit below 50 points with some room to tool them up. Two fire teams will be basically similar to a 100 point kill team from the previous edition, just no more Guard with more plasma than lasgun.
I sometimes feel like the only person who thinks plasma spam was not a big enough issue for this. Plasma spam is annoying, but the issue was that you circumvented a rule about limiting special and heavy weapons by mixing guard, scions, and having plasma be too available. All you had to do was cut the availability in half, either by halving guardsmen gunners, special weapon gunners, and special weapon scions, or just not letting you add scion or guard special gunners if they're taken by the other, or taking them out of special weapons.
I'm also still worried about 10 guardsmen vs. 10 kommandos, and hope they balanced it well enough for it to not be another paraiah's nexus.
tauist wrote: Nope, the weapon loadouts choices for any given fire team are dictated by the contents of the model kits. You're overthinking things.
Funny, most of these kits come with 10 models not seven. And that's the part I'm getting at. Seven Guard, four Dire Avengers, three Deathguard...all just a bit below 50 points with some room to tool them up. Two fire teams will be basically similar to a 100 point kill team from the previous edition, just no more Guard with more plasma than lasgun.
I was mainly talking about the weapon options. I'm pretty sure GW doesn't mind if you'll end up with redundant basic troopers.
Speaking of the price, I kinda thought the box would end up @ 155€. The price of the separate rulebook & compendium will make or break this one for me, if they'll end up costing close to a hundo I'll go all in on the box instead.. unless GW offers digital books this time round!
kodos wrote: of course you don't need to use the rules GW provide and can just play something else
ignoring all the rules you don't like and there is no point in paying GW for a rulebook or say that you play KT
Obviously you'll be playing something else, if all these responses come down to is:
- "There's not enough options for choice when building your KT, I don't like that!"
- "I need to make choices before I get to plonk my models on the table, I don't like that!"
Why discuss this game at all when there seems to be nothing about it (whether it's known or unknown, optional or mandatory) that you like?
Using a general "you" here, by the way, and I don't want to imply anyone should be forbidden from engaging in the discussion, but I don't think this is leading anywhere, and will now bow out.
Welcome to Dakkadakka.
Anyway, I do like this system. The thing is, even in KT 1.0, few people used the Roster system, even though it was AMAZING at helping the game balance.
Let's look at the guardsmen Fire Team for example, and how a Roster might look that would maximize the use of it. This will be assuming a few things, for example that the options in the box will reflect the fire team options and so on:
The Fire Team:
Spoiler:
The Roster:
Spoiler:
You've got Seven (7) Guardsmen in a Fire Team and you can take two Fire Teams in a Kill Team.
Of those 7 Guardsmen, any of them can be Troopers. 3 of them can be chosen from Comms or the various Gunner options, and of those, you can only include one of each (ie, one Comms, one Gunner Plasma gun, one Gunner Sniper Rifle). Then, you can also select a Sergeant instead of a Trooper, So an example Fire Team will look like this:
Since you already have the Sgt in one Fire Team, and that's your leader, you won't be able to take one for your second Fire Team.
Already we can see quite a few models that will need to be listed in your Kill Team Roster of 20 models. Let's put them into a Roster and then see how many we have to work with. This will be done without assigning any specializations to any models, just using the Fire Teams:
As you can see, each Trooper will need to be its own model so we can fill out the Fire Teams, so we'll want enough 'chaff' to be able to fill them out. Other than that, we have 6 more slots to add in other options that we can hot-swap into our Fire Teams to tailor them towards our opponent. In the Fire Teams above, we took two flamers, a melta, and a plasma, probably a good range of options for most enemies. But what if we're going up against Custodes? We'll likely want more hard-hitting AP weapons, like an extra Melta gun or an extra Plasma Gun. Let's also throw in a different loadout for our Sgt too:
With enough Troopers to fill out whatever two Fire Teams we want, and then filling out extra Gunners so that we can take what we need depending on the fight, we now have our 20-man roster. This means we can make Fire Teams using a wide combination of weapons, and three Sgt options give us different levels of hitting power depending on the situation. Even if you think you'll only use one sgt (plasma pistol + power sword) you can just swap the other sgts for multiples of the Grenade Launcher and Sniper Rifle Gunners to make your Roster.
Now, it gets a lot more complicated when you consider that a Kill Team can be made up of 2 Fire Teams of EITHER Guardsmen OR Tempestus Scions, which means suddenly those options become much tighter, since you'll likely want multiple options for your Scions too.
The balancing factor, however, is the 20-man Roster. People underestimate this. Yeah, you could just roll up and custom-make your Fire Teams out of EVERY OPTION available, but that becomes imbalanced. By creating your Roster, you're actually leaning further into balance by forcing yourself to make tough decisions between what you should bring to fill out what Fire Teams. You won't have enough space to make Fire Teams of all the combinations available (2 Gaurdsmen AND 2 Scion Fire Teams, for example) and will have to figure out what exactly you want to lean towards ahead of time. A Kill Team Roster of 1 Scion and 1 Guardsmen Fire Team will look very different than a Roster that uses ONLY Guardsmen or ONLY Scions.
I wrote up an essay in the past of why Plasma Spam Guardsmen wasn't as bad IF YOU USE THE ROSTER SYSTEM a long while ago. The long and short of it is that you can't suddenly swap in a different option if ALL YOU HAVE on your Roster are Plasma Guns. Going up against swarms of Hormagaunts? Suddenly those plasma guns aren't so useful. If you're not using the Roster system, your opponent would be none the wiser to all the flamers your army suddenly has, but if you are using the Roster system, your opponent can take advantage of your lack of flamers, or vice versus.
That's what makes this system so compelling, and it gets even MORE limited when you consider the specialisms and equipment point systems! When you plug in Specialisms, suddenly your options become MORE limited, if they stick with the previous 'One Specialism per Kill Team' method. For example:
Notice where I placed the Zealot and Sniper specialisms (this only being two of the available). If you take your Comms Alpha, then you cannot take your Power Weapon sgt as well, since you can only have one Zealot. Similarly, even if you want to take 2 plasma guns and 2 sniper rifles, the fact that you have Sniper on a Sniper Rifle and on a Plasma Gun means that those two operatives are going to be mutually exclusive. Spread out the other specialisms across your team and suddenly, gasp, you have limitations! Limitations in this regard are what separate the good players from the great players, and what keeps the game balanced IF YOU USE IT.
90% of the time, the people that didn't like Kill Team 1.0 NEVER USED THE ROSTER SYSTEM. I was able to convert a number of people to using the Roster system and, lo and behold, suddenly they were having a much better time because they understood the balance of it.
It is, hands down, THE most UNDERRATED system GW has produced.
Given the precedent set by the last KillTeam box, the actual Kommando and DKoK squads being "scalped" on eBay roughly 3 seconds after relase will be cheaper than the eventual stand-alone relase. At least that's something to look forward to, aye?
Man it's entirely possible that KT 2.0 ends up sucking but calling it a "zero effort ruleset" is just completely divorced from reality
Scrapping the design philosophy of the previous edition and starting over without the assumption that the game must feel like 40k can't even be described as low effort
privateer4hire wrote: So $200. Wonder if the core book will be $60. And the compendium is needed on top of the core unless you’re playing krieg or kommandoes, right?
Correct. The Octarius book that's included in the box, in all likelihood, is going to be strictly those two and all of their options plus a campaign or something of that ilk.
Arachnofiend wrote: Man it's entirely possible that KT 2.0 ends up sucking but calling it a "zero effort ruleset" is just completely divorced from reality
Scrapping the design philosophy of the previous edition and starting over without the assumption that the game must feel like 40k can't even be described as low effort
It's a zero effort ruleset because it won't be a full ruleset, but only the parts necessary to play DKoK and Kommandos.
Arachnofiend wrote: Man it's entirely possible that KT 2.0 ends up sucking but calling it a "zero effort ruleset" is just completely divorced from reality
Scrapping the design philosophy of the previous edition and starting over without the assumption that the game must feel like 40k can't even be described as low effort
It's a zero effort ruleset because it won't be a full ruleset, but only the parts necessary to play DKoK and Kommandos.
??? The rules for other factions exist, they just got separated out to another book. I fully agree that that sucks but I doubt anyone who had anything to do with the rules design was involved in that decision.
Arachnofiend wrote: Man it's entirely possible that KT 2.0 ends up sucking but calling it a "zero effort ruleset" is just completely divorced from reality
Scrapping the design philosophy of the previous edition and starting over without the assumption that the game must feel like 40k can't even be described as low effort
It's a zero effort ruleset because it won't be a full ruleset, but only the parts necessary to play DKoK and Kommandos.
??? The rules for other factions exist, they just got separated out to another book. I fully agree that that sucks but I doubt anyone who had anything to do with the rules design was involved in that decision.
I'd call just cutting out a part of a bigger ruleset and plopping it separately and deciding you're done a pretty zero-effort type of action.
privateer4hire wrote: So $200. Wonder if the core book will be $60. And the compendium is needed on top of the core unless you’re playing krieg or kommandoes, right?
Correct. The Octarius book that's included in the box, in all likelihood, is going to be strictly those two and all of their options plus a campaign or something of that ilk.
Thank you. I wasn’t a million percent sure on compendium being required to play.
Anyway, I do like this system. The thing is, even in KT 1.0, few people used the Roster system, even though it was AMAZING at helping the game balance.
Spoiler:
Let's look at the guardsmen Fire Team for example, and how a Roster might look that would maximize the use of it. This will be assuming a few things, for example that the options in the box will reflect the fire team options and so on:
The Fire Team:
[spoiler]
The Roster:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
You've got Seven (7) Guardsmen in a Fire Team and you can take two Fire Teams in a Kill Team.
Of those 7 Guardsmen, any of them can be Troopers. 3 of them can be chosen from Comms or the various Gunner options, and of those, you can only include one of each (ie, one Comms, one Gunner Plasma gun, one Gunner Sniper Rifle). Then, you can also select a Sergeant instead of a Trooper, So an example Fire Team will look like this:
Since you already have the Sgt in one Fire Team, and that's your leader, you won't be able to take one for your second Fire Team.
Already we can see quite a few models that will need to be listed in your Kill Team Roster of 20 models. Let's put them into a Roster and then see how many we have to work with. This will be done without assigning any specializations to any models, just using the Fire Teams:
As you can see, each Trooper will need to be its own model so we can fill out the Fire Teams, so we'll want enough 'chaff' to be able to fill them out. Other than that, we have 6 more slots to add in other options that we can hot-swap into our Fire Teams to tailor them towards our opponent. In the Fire Teams above, we took two flamers, a melta, and a plasma, probably a good range of options for most enemies. But what if we're going up against Custodes? We'll likely want more hard-hitting AP weapons, like an extra Melta gun or an extra Plasma Gun. Let's also throw in a different loadout for our Sgt too:
With enough Troopers to fill out whatever two Fire Teams we want, and then filling out extra Gunners so that we can take what we need depending on the fight, we now have our 20-man roster. This means we can make Fire Teams using a wide combination of weapons, and three Sgt options give us different levels of hitting power depending on the situation. Even if you think you'll only use one sgt (plasma pistol + power sword) you can just swap the other sgts for multiples of the Grenade Launcher and Sniper Rifle Gunners to make your Roster.
Now, it gets a lot more complicated when you consider that a Kill Team can be made up of 2 Fire Teams of EITHER Guardsmen OR Tempestus Scions, which means suddenly those options become much tighter, since you'll likely want multiple options for your Scions too.
The balancing factor, however, is the 20-man Roster. People underestimate this. Yeah, you could just roll up and custom-make your Fire Teams out of EVERY OPTION available, but that becomes imbalanced. By creating your Roster, you're actually leaning further into balance by forcing yourself to make tough decisions between what you should bring to fill out what Fire Teams. You won't have enough space to make Fire Teams of all the combinations available (2 Gaurdsmen AND 2 Scion Fire Teams, for example) and will have to figure out what exactly you want to lean towards ahead of time. A Kill Team Roster of 1 Scion and 1 Guardsmen Fire Team will look very different than a Roster that uses ONLY Guardsmen or ONLY Scions.
I wrote up an essay in the past of why Plasma Spam Guardsmen wasn't as bad IF YOU USE THE ROSTER SYSTEM a long while ago. The long and short of it is that you can't suddenly swap in a different option if ALL YOU HAVE on your Roster are Plasma Guns. Going up against swarms of Hormagaunts? Suddenly those plasma guns aren't so useful. If you're not using the Roster system, your opponent would be none the wiser to all the flamers your army suddenly has, but if you are using the Roster system, your opponent can take advantage of your lack of flamers, or vice versus.
That's what makes this system so compelling, and it gets even MORE limited when you consider the specialisms and equipment point systems! When you plug in Specialisms, suddenly your options become MORE limited, if they stick with the previous 'One Specialism per Kill Team' method. For example:
Notice where I placed the Zealot and Sniper specialisms (this only being two of the available). If you take your Comms Alpha, then you cannot take your Power Weapon sgt as well, since you can only have one Zealot. Similarly, even if you want to take 2 plasma guns and 2 sniper rifles, the fact that you have Sniper on a Sniper Rifle and on a Plasma Gun means that those two operatives are going to be mutually exclusive. Spread out the other specialisms across your team and suddenly, gasp, you have limitations! Limitations in this regard are what separate the good players from the great players, and what keeps the game balanced IF YOU USE IT.
90% of the time, the people that didn't like Kill Team 1.0 NEVER USED THE ROSTER SYSTEM. I was able to convert a number of people to using the Roster system and, lo and behold, suddenly they were having a much better time because they understood the balance of it.
It is, hands down, THE most UNDERRATED system GW has produced.
Really interesting post, drbored. I would suggest that the roster used in this way is more of a limit on "low value" troops like Orks and Guard, and some teams could therefore be better limited by a roster size below 20 (Marines, Custodes, Necrons etc.)
privateer4hire wrote: So $200. Wonder if the core book will be $60. And the compendium is needed on top of the core unless you’re playing krieg or kommandoes, right?
Correct. The Octarius book that's included in the box, in all likelihood, is going to be strictly those two and all of their options plus a campaign or something of that ilk.
Thank you. I wasn’t a million percent sure on compendium being required to play.
My understanding is that the Compendium is a complete list of all the Kill Teams themselves, separated out from the main rules.
privateer4hire wrote: Without which you can’t play because you won’t have stats needed to build a team, weapons and equipment explanations, etc., right?
Literally no real idea at this point. We'll know next week, 100%, when the preorders get announced.
I wouldn't be shocked if there's something put out like the WarCry "cardpacks" for Compendium profiles so people can opt out of that book.
I saw the fire team roster bit and didn't like it, but was able to recognize it as that old 'change bad' monkey brain* in the back of my head acting up. Once I gave it a few days and came back it started to grow on me.
The shapes, on the other hand, just seem to get more inane every time I see them.
*To be clear I am not saying anything about anyone else who make dislike it, just myself personally.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arachnofiend wrote: Man it's entirely possible that KT 2.0 ends up sucking but calling it a "zero effort ruleset" is just completely divorced from reality
Scrapping the design philosophy of the previous edition and starting over without the assumption that the game must feel like 40k can't even be described as low effort
So that makes it the same as Dominion, or AUD$290 a pop.
Hmm... I should be able to get 2 for AUD$445.
MajorWesJanson wrote: Probably a conversion photoshopped. The watchtower and ork face on a pole part are both from the Stompa kit.
Weirdly GW's store was down for a day and half, but now that I've had time to check you are (sadly) correct here. The tower and face are just Stompa bitz.
Anyway, I do like this system. The thing is, even in KT 1.0, few people used the Roster system, even though it was AMAZING at helping the game balance.
Spoiler:
Let's look at the guardsmen Fire Team for example, and how a Roster might look that would maximize the use of it. This will be assuming a few things, for example that the options in the box will reflect the fire team options and so on:
The Fire Team:
[spoiler]
The Roster:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
You've got Seven (7) Guardsmen in a Fire Team and you can take two Fire Teams in a Kill Team.
Of those 7 Guardsmen, any of them can be Troopers. 3 of them can be chosen from Comms or the various Gunner options, and of those, you can only include one of each (ie, one Comms, one Gunner Plasma gun, one Gunner Sniper Rifle). Then, you can also select a Sergeant instead of a Trooper, So an example Fire Team will look like this:
Since you already have the Sgt in one Fire Team, and that's your leader, you won't be able to take one for your second Fire Team.
Already we can see quite a few models that will need to be listed in your Kill Team Roster of 20 models. Let's put them into a Roster and then see how many we have to work with. This will be done without assigning any specializations to any models, just using the Fire Teams:
As you can see, each Trooper will need to be its own model so we can fill out the Fire Teams, so we'll want enough 'chaff' to be able to fill them out. Other than that, we have 6 more slots to add in other options that we can hot-swap into our Fire Teams to tailor them towards our opponent. In the Fire Teams above, we took two flamers, a melta, and a plasma, probably a good range of options for most enemies. But what if we're going up against Custodes? We'll likely want more hard-hitting AP weapons, like an extra Melta gun or an extra Plasma Gun. Let's also throw in a different loadout for our Sgt too:
With enough Troopers to fill out whatever two Fire Teams we want, and then filling out extra Gunners so that we can take what we need depending on the fight, we now have our 20-man roster. This means we can make Fire Teams using a wide combination of weapons, and three Sgt options give us different levels of hitting power depending on the situation. Even if you think you'll only use one sgt (plasma pistol + power sword) you can just swap the other sgts for multiples of the Grenade Launcher and Sniper Rifle Gunners to make your Roster.
Now, it gets a lot more complicated when you consider that a Kill Team can be made up of 2 Fire Teams of EITHER Guardsmen OR Tempestus Scions, which means suddenly those options become much tighter, since you'll likely want multiple options for your Scions too.
The balancing factor, however, is the 20-man Roster. People underestimate this. Yeah, you could just roll up and custom-make your Fire Teams out of EVERY OPTION available, but that becomes imbalanced. By creating your Roster, you're actually leaning further into balance by forcing yourself to make tough decisions between what you should bring to fill out what Fire Teams. You won't have enough space to make Fire Teams of all the combinations available (2 Gaurdsmen AND 2 Scion Fire Teams, for example) and will have to figure out what exactly you want to lean towards ahead of time. A Kill Team Roster of 1 Scion and 1 Guardsmen Fire Team will look very different than a Roster that uses ONLY Guardsmen or ONLY Scions.
I wrote up an essay in the past of why Plasma Spam Guardsmen wasn't as bad IF YOU USE THE ROSTER SYSTEM a long while ago. The long and short of it is that you can't suddenly swap in a different option if ALL YOU HAVE on your Roster are Plasma Guns. Going up against swarms of Hormagaunts? Suddenly those plasma guns aren't so useful. If you're not using the Roster system, your opponent would be none the wiser to all the flamers your army suddenly has, but if you are using the Roster system, your opponent can take advantage of your lack of flamers, or vice versus.
That's what makes this system so compelling, and it gets even MORE limited when you consider the specialisms and equipment point systems! When you plug in Specialisms, suddenly your options become MORE limited, if they stick with the previous 'One Specialism per Kill Team' method. For example:
Notice where I placed the Zealot and Sniper specialisms (this only being two of the available). If you take your Comms Alpha, then you cannot take your Power Weapon sgt as well, since you can only have one Zealot. Similarly, even if you want to take 2 plasma guns and 2 sniper rifles, the fact that you have Sniper on a Sniper Rifle and on a Plasma Gun means that those two operatives are going to be mutually exclusive. Spread out the other specialisms across your team and suddenly, gasp, you have limitations! Limitations in this regard are what separate the good players from the great players, and what keeps the game balanced IF YOU USE IT.
90% of the time, the people that didn't like Kill Team 1.0 NEVER USED THE ROSTER SYSTEM. I was able to convert a number of people to using the Roster system and, lo and behold, suddenly they were having a much better time because they understood the balance of it.
It is, hands down, THE most UNDERRATED system GW has produced.
Really interesting post, drbored. I would suggest that the roster used in this way is more of a limit on "low value" troops like Orks and Guard, and some teams could therefore be better limited by a roster size below 20 (Marines, Custodes, Necrons etc.)
Absolutely. Ironically, in KT 1.0, you couldn't actually make an All-Grot Kill Team, or at least, were hamstrung for doing so. 20 Grots, at most, would back then cost 60 points. It'll be very interesting to see what a Fire Team of Grots can do.
Custodes will benefit from being able to take Sisters of Silence in a Fire Team as well, so there will be more to put on a Roster for various balance purposes. Marines just have a butt-ton of options. If you can't cherry-pick units, but instead must select them from Fire Teams, it's likely that Marines will have the HARDEST time balancing their Roster because of the limitation on how many Fire Teams they'll actually be able to fit on it.
In fact, I would BEHOOVE people to push Marine players to use the Roster system. Limiting a Marine player to 20 units, instead of cherry-picking from 10 different troop types across the marine army, will force them to hammer into what is important for them to achieve the objective and create balanced Fire Teams from their Roster.
It's a system that does, in fact, work as intended, and rather elegantly so. With the shift from points to Fire Teams, I think it'll be even more important.
According to the Kill Team website and "What's in the box" it has the full rulebook. Didn't they also say that the rule book is in the box, but you can get it by itself when you don't want the box?
If the prices are correct I may go for one box, mostly want that terrain, especially since it fits well with games of Stargrave too.
According to the Kill Team website and "What's in the box" it has the full rulebook. Didn't they also say that the rule book is in the box, but you can get it by itself when you don't want the box?
If the prices are correct I may go for one box, mostly want that terrain, especially since it fits well with games of Stargrave too.
The rulebook ("Core Book") should be in the box, as well as the "Octarius" book that will have rules for the Krieg (Veteran Guardsmen) and Kommando Kill Teams. If you want to play any other teams than those two, you'll also need to buy the Compendium - or, as I still suspect, wait until further "bespoke" Kill Teams are released with their own rules cards/booklets.
Absolutely. Ironically, in KT 1.0, you couldn't actually make an All-Grot Kill Team, or at least, were hamstrung for doing so. 20 Grots, at most, would back then cost 60 points. It'll be very interesting to see what a Fire Team of Grots can do.
Agreed, although games of 50 points were perfectly legal. The 100 point limit was exactly that; a limit that went hand-in-hand with the 20 model limit.
I'm kinda neutral on the roster.
On one hand, I see what they're doing and I think it's a good thing. I also think it'll work better if you don't need to pull out a calculator to build your team whilst hot-swapping.
On the other hand, it's a bit of a faff and the flat 20 is wildly different. Someone like Guard just has room for a few options, whereas someone like Custodes can create over 6 entire Killteams, with everything in between among the other factions.
But overall I think it's fine.
But I do dislike slapping equipment on top of that. IMO that's faff on top of faff and it just builds too high.
kirotheavenger wrote: I'm kinda neutral on the roster.
On one hand, I see what they're doing and I think it's a good thing. I also think it'll work better if you don't need to pull out a calculator to build your team whilst hot-swapping.
On the other hand, it's a bit of a faff and the flat 20 is wildly different. Someone like Guard just has room for a few options, whereas someone like Custodes can create over 6 entire Killteams, with everything in between among the other factions.
But overall I think it's fine.
But I do dislike slapping equipment on top of that. IMO that's faff on top of faff and it just builds too high.
It would perhaps make sense to limit "Elite" Kill Teams (Custodes, Necrons, Imperial Marines, Harlequins) to rosters of 10 models, and have the mixed teams (all Chaos Marines, T'au, Mechanicus, SoB) at 15. Or expand the roster of "horde" teams to 30, but that would mean you lose the need to make choices again.
If you wanted a bit more granularity, you could say that the roster size is 3x the fireteam size of the largest customisable fireteam.
So Guard would be 21, Marines 12, Custodes 6
Things which aren't customisable, e.g. Poxwalkers, could count as a half point. So if the Death Guard team is 3, your roster size is 9 and the Walkers would take up 3.5 roster slots, leaving you 5.5 slots to fill with DG. Might round down, in that case, so that you could have 2 walker hordes and a totally unmodifiable DG trio.
Having the gear options I think will be great for teams like daemons.
I would be willing to let them play with I if they go all out and get some fun stuff there to play with.
I think the reason the roster is 20, regardless of faction or model, is that it balances out the very elite choices over the course of a campaign.
For example, if you have 20 guardsmen on your roster and you can take 2 fireteams of 7, that means 14 of your guys in a campaign will be gaining experience and advances every game.
However if you play Custodes, and can only field a couple of them per game, the rest of your roster will take longer to gain advances?
This should then, in theory, balance factions out in campaign play?
Although this is an assumption on my part as i haven't seen the campaign rules yet....
'Horde' Killteams like Guard give away a lot of experience during battles, due to casualties. Whereas they spread what experience they get around their fighters meaning any individual levels up slowly.
In a campaign like that, a Custodes is just going to forget about most of their roster slots as they don't need them. They just focus on the few operatives that gain experience.
Elite armies are at risk of suffering more from injuries. But they're less likely to suffer injuries on any given person. Plus, if there's a way to pay to remove injuries (like 40k Crusade), that means they can afford to pay to remove the few injuries they have and so basically don't care about them. Whereas the hordes like Guard are going to have to just suffer -1 on theri grunts or whatever because they can't afford to fix it.
They give us a little detail on melee as well, that counter attack ability clearly shows that all combats are 1v1.
I can only assume that 'ganging up' will provide some modifiers.
That Dakka Boy looks very powerful, basically a 3APL fighter.
Anyway, I do like this system. The thing is, even in KT 1.0, few people used the Roster system, even though it was AMAZING at helping the game balance.
This may be 100% true, but few people used it--practically no one outside of tournaments. The roster system was poorly explained and its limiting factor only mattered if you didn't just trot out the same kill team every game. (Which happens because you only played a single game at a time, you played amongst your friends, couldn't figure out the roster system or all of the above.)
As someone who struggled with the previous system and ultimately didn't use it, I can see the new system and its immediate utility. For starters it will be a list of models unlike the previous list, which I might have used the same figure to represent two or more roster listings. The new roster will consist of the minimum models I need for a fire team with options I think I'll need, but as you say I have to make wise choices because some models may be superstars but only in some circumstances and others could be quiet MVPs every damn game.
Also, I can see how the roster actually makes low model count fire teams even more elite, if they have actual load out options. You could have five Custodes fire teams for any occasion backed by a squad of wash and wear Sisters of Silence. Sure you're only ever going to have to deal with 2 Custodes at a time, but they will be perfectly suited to murdering your specific faction. Marines, OMG, one fire team near infinite choice. Basically a chameleon kill team that shows up with what it needs to murder you specifically.
According to the Kill Team website and "What's in the box" it has the full rulebook. Didn't they also say that the rule book is in the box, but you can get it by itself when you don't want the box?
If the prices are correct I may go for one box, mostly want that terrain, especially since it fits well with games of Stargrave too.
The rulebook ("Core Book") should be in the box, as well as the "Octarius" book that will have rules for the Krieg (Veteran Guardsmen) and Kommando Kill Teams. If you want to play any other teams than those two, you'll also need to buy the Compendium - or, as I still suspect, wait until further "bespoke" Kill Teams are released with their own rules cards/booklets.
30
I just wish that GW would for once do boxes like Star wars legion. Everything you need to play the unit in the box.. This book for every box and every thing is rediculous. Necromunda is so far out of hand everytime there is a new unit there is another $40-50 book you got to buy just to play with the $40 box of models you buy. Too many books. I wish Kill team would just mirror SWL but that would make too much sense. GW is a freaking book publishing company any more and it is getting pretty pathetic.
A 20 model roster works rather well regardless of elites or horde.
Limiting it to 20 models makes sure you can't suddenly take a massive horde of Chaos Cultists, Guardsmen, or Hormagaunts to cluster up the board.
Meanwhile, you're not wrong in saying that Custodes can make a lot of Kill Teams within the same 20 man roster, but that's just it. Custodes ARE elite, and should be able to fit their different options. At the end of the day, however, Custodes are Custodes, and they'll typically go down to the same sorts of strategies regardless of their equipment.
Give the Roster system a try if you pick up Kill Team. I guarantee it works better than you'd think at balancing the game.
While its great that KT has had its rules overhauled, this new edition is looking very bland and not much more than a quick excuse to advertise the new 40K warzone( as with Pariah Nexus ), which I doubt is really the location for Kill Team in the long term. I get the feeling that once the Kreig'n'Kommando set sells out on pre-order the following Saturday we won't hear about Octarius again in Kill Team...
Necromunda seems a better option, but its got issues in multiple and expensive rule books and quite honestly a game like Stargrave seems like a much better alternative to both Kill Team and Necromunda. One decently priced book( £16 on amazon ) and away we go...
As a side thought I'd be more on board with GW's skirmish games if they were more integrated with the Warhammer Quest series. Necromunda seems like an ideal setting for one of the Quest games, while the last edition of Kill Team and Blackstone Fortress felt like two peas in a pod( compatible models, alien creatures and an indoor arena ) which only needed the white dwarf rules to be included in the BSF game itself. Warcry and Cursed City seemed made for each other in a similar way, but sadly that boat sunk before it left the harbour, although there was at least a Cursed City campaign on WHC...
I think for a Necromunda-Quest game I'm wondering if 5-Parsecs From Home would be an ideal way of implementing that, rather than waiting for GW to make it happen...hmmm.
But in conclusion I'm just not excited enough to invest in this new edition of Kill Team. Maybe that will change further down the road but this isn't as good a launch as Warcry's.
Different games for different folks, Necromunda is a narrative campaign game while Killteam aim at being competitive with tournaments held by GW and make use of almost all 40k factions.
Chopstick wrote: Different games for different folks, Necromunda is a narrative campaign game while Killteam aim at being competitive with tournaments held by GW and make use of almost all 40k factions.
Coming from the Rogue Trader days I don't like it but there's no denying thats what GW has since done to 40K.
I dunno, Chopstick, maybe I'm trying to relieve the old days when they are just plain gone...
Chopstick wrote: Different games for different folks, Necromunda is a narrative campaign game while Killteam aim at being competitive with tournaments held by GW and make use of almost all 40k factions.
Coming from the Rogue Trader days I don't like it but there's no denying thats what GW has since done to 40K.
I dunno, Chopstick, maybe I'm trying to relieve the old days when they are just plain gone...
I'm with you (all the way back to Rogue Trader). Tournaments sprung up in the void between Rogue Trader and Warhammer 40K second edition and while GW encouraged it in so much as it could sell more miniatures there is no proof they believe that is the way the game should be played. I think we have sufficient evidence that GW has never cared about competitive tournaments in the way that some players do. Whether it's numerous role-play like games (Rogue Trader, Necromunda, Inquisitor, numerous Kill Team incarnations, early LotR games) or its complete disregard for "balance" in 40K. A lot of competitive players might have a hard time acknowledging that the original version of Warhammer Fantasy looks much more like D&D or a mash-up of WFRP and Necromunda.
Competitive players are a vocal minority in the hobby whose voice is amplified my the megaphone of the internet. But we also know that last years was a blockbuster for GW...and there was next to no formal competitive play. GW plays lip service to competitive play because it knows that its main customers don't play competitively.
PS: This doesn't mean they shouldn't try to balance stuff because who wants to play a game where you always lose because you took the cool looking elf-soldier over the ugly but powerful one. It just means that for most people playing with their friends it just has to be fun enough.
Chairman Aeon wrote: Competitive players are a vocal minority in the hobby whose voice is amplified my the megaphone of the internet. But we also know that last years was a blockbuster for GW...and there was next to no formal competitive play. GW plays lip service to competitive play because it knows that its main customers don't play competitively.
I won't claim to have experienced a broad enough cross-section of metas and players in the hobby to make definitive statements, but this notion that most people are in it for the more role-play or narrative experiences, and the competitive community only seems big because it's what gets play on the internet gives my inner skeptic pause.
Namely, I'm in 100% agreement that competitive looks representative of the hobby on the internet. But that begs the question, if it's a minority, why isn't the bigger alternative also a noticeable presence on the internet? Why is it only the competitive players who use the megaphone?
The obvious answer would seem to be that competitive players have a lot to talk about as they try to dissect the meta or argue about what's broken or not. Okay, sure. That's a factor, and it certainly provides fodder for content creators. But it's not the only thing you'd expect to be able to support content creators. We all know that painting has a thriving content creator community and a strong presence on the internet (one might even say an outsized presence, if one were to look at the average primered army at my local FLGSes). There's demand for other lore-focused formats, as the Black Library/lore overview/trivia channels demonstrate, and there's certainly an appetite on the internet to watch other people play games (hi, Twitch and Let's Play channels). So am I just missing the community of content creators who stream battle reports of their narrative crusades and Necromunda campaigns? Or is there some reason that some of this silent majority of fans doesn't crave (and provide) this content?
Occam's Razor would seem to suggest that most people don't approach the hobby from a narrative angle. Sure, the majority aren't WAAC tournament players, but I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that contrary to your supposition, most people play with matched play rules even casually at their kitchen tables.
In my experience like 90% of people are competitively kinded. Maybe not to the extent of hard core tournament players, but they're generally focusing on the better units in the codex, avoiding the worst, and not doing any overarching narratives.
kirotheavenger wrote: In my experience like 90% of people are competitively kinded. Maybe not to the extent of hard core tournament players, but they're generally focusing on the better units in the codex, avoiding the worst, and not doing any overarching narratives.
I'd say that mostly gels with my experience also. Damned near all 40k players I've encountered are competitive. Not necessarily tournament players, not necessarily WAAC, but competitive, yes.
Most of the fluffy bunnies I've met who are into narrative play don't play 40k, they play historics, LotR or are more into RPGs.
That said, over the years I've started to form the opinion that perhaps most of GW's customers aren't even gamers, forget about narrative vs competitive.
I think that some of the oddities that some folks are feeling, such as the artillery damage and some of the odd feel, have to do with their effort to balance this version for competitive play.
As a Titanicus player, I've seen some of the disconnect between their written word (fluff) and their game rules in stark relief.
schoon wrote: I think that some of the oddities that some folks are feeling, such as the artillery damage and some of the odd feel, have to do with their effort to balance this version for competitive play.
As a Titanicus player, I've seen some of the disconnect between their written word (fluff) and their game rules in stark relief.
It’s also not very interesting, so the mechanical disconnect is kinda all there is to talk about some of the things we know.
But in conclusion I'm just not excited enough to invest in this new edition of Kill Team. Maybe that will change further down the road but this isn't as good a launch as Warcry's.
I don't know what qualifies a launch as "good," but I found Warcry to be a very bland, simplistic take on fantasy skirmish rules. Compared to anything released in the last 10-15 years, it doesn't bring anything new or interesting to the table. The exception being the fantastic terrain/board generation system, which was widely disregarded by more competitive players anyway. Locally there were very few enthusiastic fans of Warcry...when a juggernaut like GW has a release less popular than a little-known indie game like Relicblade, you know something went wrong. The new version of Kill Team looks interesting. I like that they re-worked the systems, and divorced it from 40K. That absolutely needed to happen. I also like that the design team seems to have taken a page from some of the more recent, innovative skirmish games like Stargrave, Infinity, Malifaux, Tomorrow's War, etc. How well that translates into practice? I guess we shall see. I will at least give the new rules a try. I'm cautiously optimistic.
Warcry matched play & tournaments have zero interest in my local community. The narrative campaign leagues are quite popular though. Literally all of the Warcry play that goes on is either campaign or learning/demo games.
As for what it brings to the table, it's a lot of fun and people can use the AoS minis they already have. It doesn't need some special gimmick, it's a fun game with nice miniatures.
schoon wrote: I think that some of the oddities that some folks are feeling, such as the artillery damage and some of the odd feel, have to do with their effort to balance this version for competitive play.
As a Titanicus player, I've seen some of the disconnect between their written word (fluff) and their game rules in stark relief.
Titanicus has points and is modular, this seems much more restrictive.
Chairman Aeon wrote: Competitive players are a vocal minority in the hobby whose voice is amplified my the megaphone of the internet. But we also know that last years was a blockbuster for GW...and there was next to no formal competitive play. GW plays lip service to competitive play because it knows that its main customers don't play competitively.
Namely, I'm in 100% agreement that competitive looks representative of the hobby on the internet. But that begs the question, if it's a minority, why isn't the bigger alternative also a noticeable presence on the internet? Why is it only the competitive players who use the megaphone?
Because the guys buying kits to play with their friends in their basement don't go online to post about it. Online forums have always represented a small minority anyways. It just seems amplified, but it really isn't. If 100 people are online arguing about the meta, it seems like that is a big deal, but the thousands of guys buying minis who play at home or with their friends aren't being heard, because they don't care enough to be part of the conversation. Honestly, people playing against strangers in a store are a minority. Even folks who meet at the store usually are playing people they know.
People get worked up about the meta or such because that's just kind of how people are.They think "well, maybe I might...". Hell even I am guilty of worrying about whether or not something is "legal" or "meta" and I've never, EVER played anyone that wasn't a family member or close friend. Hell, I've never even had a tournament LEGAL army list in 21 years! So me worrying about "meta" or what they are going to do at LVO is outright absurd, but I've caught myself doing that.
kirotheavenger wrote:In my experience like 90% of people are competitively kinded. Maybe not to the extent of hard core tournament players, but they're generally focusing on the better units in the codex, avoiding the worst, and not doing any overarching narratives.
That's because that's who you play with and see.
A while back, Wizards of the Coast published their internal numbers regarding the Magic the Gathering scene. As loathe as I am to post from memory, the amount of players who take part in formal MTG events, starting with Friday Night Magic and up is shockingly low. The number was between 1% to 5%.
That means as HUGE as MtG is, all the people you see playing at the store for FnM and events and such represent a TINY fraction of the people who buy Magic cards. Magic would literally be a dead game if it only has the tournament scene.
Casuals are the bread and butter of EVERY hobby, full stop bar none. The people who are serious are always a minority. Check out this graphic from another game I play, Black Desert Online:
Black Desert Online has a (deserved, IMO) reputation for being a cut-throat PvP MMO. This is a chart created by the Korean developers, Pearl Abyss showing the percentage of the players in each Gearscore bracket. Gearscore is a measure of the characters power, with over 600 being considered minimum for serious PvP. Yet according to that graphic only 10.7% of the 20,000,000 who have played the game have achieved that. 36.8% have a gearscore lower then 499. I don't even know how that is possible, you don't even need to try to get at least 499. Only a tiny, tiny amount of effort is need to get into the 549 to 599 bracket, yet only 27.8% have bothered, and such a score isn't even considered good. It is basically just enough to get started and do lower end stuff. And these numbers aren't guesses, they are actual, real data from the game client as collected by the games creator and developer.
I think the big difference here, MtG is always competitive, even if not tournaments. I think this is where language is breaking down. Fighting games are competitive, even if you don't go to a tournament. I would guess that most people that play 40k want to win, just not so bad they dedicate themselves to a tournament level. Therefore, most would be competitive. But it is near impossible to get the stats for that.
Yeah that Guard preview leaves a lot to be desired, especially since I have no idea what the actual difference is with Vets and regular Guard, as stat wise they look exactly the same.
TheBestBucketHead wrote: I think the big difference here, MtG is always competitive, even if not tournaments. I think this is where language is breaking down. Fighting games are competitive, even if you don't go to a tournament. I would guess that most people that play 40k want to win, just not so bad they dedicate themselves to a tournament level. Therefore, most would be competitive. But it is near impossible to get the stats for that.
MtG is not always competitive. People play wacky theme decks. Include cards because they like the art. All sorts of ways.
The goal is to win. Even if you use wacky cards, or just include cards for the art. But the goal is to win. You might say that their goal is to have fun, and of course, that is the goal for everyone playing casually. But it is still a competition, where two players try to win, and is therefore competitive. Just like a majority (at least online) of how people play 40k.
Maybe I'm not getting my point across very well, but competitive does not mean you want to win at any cost, or winning is the only way they'll have fun, but the goal of the game is to win.
TheBestBucketHead wrote: I think the big difference here, MtG is always competitive, even if not tournaments. I think this is where language is breaking down. Fighting games are competitive, even if you don't go to a tournament. I would guess that most people that play 40k want to win, just not so bad they dedicate themselves to a tournament level. Therefore, most would be competitive. But it is near impossible to get the stats for that.
I've tried explaining this on Dakka before. If a game pits players against each other with the goal of winning, it's competitive. Period.Some folks just don't understand that point- or won't accept it. It makes discussing games more difficult, especially when the topic is balance.
TheBestBucketHead wrote: The goal is to win. Even if you use wacky cards, or just include cards for the art. But the goal is to win.
So you have a bunch of people who know they're not going to win a tournament go to a tournament. Either you say those people are fools for attempting something that they know they're going to fail at, or you accept that they're not there with the goal of winning.
For some of the people using wacky cards, their goal is "Let's find out what this does" or "I want to see what this does when I try it out". In some individuals, the drive to see the game mechanics in action matters more than the outcome of the game. "Oh, the other player won. Hmm. They were using that, that and that. Oh, that's interesting..."
Hell, it's why people still call things like Sorry! a game, and enjoy playing it--they want to see something interesting happen and they might win while they're at it.
"Competitive games are those in which players play against one another and where one player winning means another player loses. Two player games are often competitive, with a distinct win-or-lose outcome. Two-team games often have the same pattern, where one team winning means the other team loses."
The definition of a competitive game. I must admit, I was wrong initially. I said with the goal of winning. It doesn't need to be your goal. It just has to be an outcome. Note that this definition does not include ties, so it is not complete, but 40k and MtG are competitive, even if your goal is simply to have fun. The game of Life, Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, Poker, Age of Sigmar. All games that are competitive, even if your goal is not just to win.
Some might say that I'm moving goalposts, but I was wrong, thanks to your clarifications, and came to a better conclusion. Thank you.
TheBestBucketHead wrote: "Competitive games are those in which players play against one another and where one player winning means another player loses. Two player games are often competitive, with a distinct win-or-lose outcome. Two-team games often have the same pattern, where one team winning means the other team loses."
The definition of a competitive game. I must admit, I was wrong initially. I said with the goal of winning. It doesn't need to be your goal. It just has to be an outcome. Note that this definition does not include ties, so it is not complete, but 40k and MtG are competitive, even if your goal is simply to have fun. The game of Life, Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, Poker, Age of Sigmar. All games that are competitive, even if your goal is not just to win.
Some might say that I'm moving goalposts, but I was wrong, thanks to your clarifications, and came to a better conclusion. Thank you.
That's about it, yeah. Winning as the outcome is a better way of putting it. Sorry if my post came across poorly.
Soo, what time do WC usually post their "Next Week in Warhammer" articles? I'm expecting the preorder announcement today, followed by product pricing confirmations early next week.
Hoping the Compendium and the separate rulebook won't be stupid expensive..
Also, has it been confirmed that the Octarius box comes with a hardback rulebook?
tauist wrote: Soo, what time do WC usually post their "Next Week in Warhammer" articles? I'm expecting the preorder announcement today, followed by product pricing confirmations early next week.
Hoping the Compendium and the separate rulebook won't be stupid expensive..
Also, has it been confirmed that the Octarius box comes with a hardback rulebook?
TheBestBucketHead wrote: I think the big difference here, MtG is always competitive, even if not tournaments. I think this is where language is breaking down. Fighting games are competitive, even if you don't go to a tournament. I would guess that most people that play 40k want to win, just not so bad they dedicate themselves to a tournament level. Therefore, most would be competitive. But it is near impossible to get the stats for that.
I've tried explaining this on Dakka before. If a game pits players against each other with the goal of winning, it's competitive. Period.Some folks just don't understand that point- or won't accept it. It makes discussing games more difficult, especially when the topic is balance.
TheBestBucketHead wrote: "Competitive games are those in which players play against one another and where one player winning means another player loses. Two player games are often competitive, with a distinct win-or-lose outcome. Two-team games often have the same pattern, where one team winning means the other team loses."
The definition of a competitive game. I must admit, I was wrong initially. I said with the goal of winning. It doesn't need to be your goal. It just has to be an outcome. Note that this definition does not include ties, so it is not complete, but 40k and MtG are competitive, even if your goal is simply to have fun. The game of Life, Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, Poker, Age of Sigmar. All games that are competitive, even if your goal is not just to win.
Some might say that I'm moving goalposts, but I was wrong, thanks to your clarifications, and came to a better conclusion. Thank you.
That's about it, yeah. Winning as the outcome is a better way of putting it. Sorry if my post came across poorly.
What exactly is gained by drawing on this definition if you're trying to differentiate players based on their approach to and expectations of a game?
AoS 1st ed was largely not considered a functional game upon release and was widely considered attractive to only a certain set of players, one generally considered a minority (for which there is at least evidence given the commercial failure of the game and GW's unprecedented scramble to reintroduce proven elements to bring it closer to older games and turn things around). Could you describe the release version of AoS as competitive? Using that definition, yes. But would you? Did anybody actually do that?
You have to differentiate between dictionary definitions that only define things in the broadest, simplest terms and practical use of similar or identical terms in involved discussions. That definition doesn't differentiate between editions of AoS, and I'm sure you'll find that in practical terms AoS players very much differentiate between editions in terms of how competitive they can be played and have been played. Similarly, that definition does not allow any distinction between AoS, 40k, Infinity, chess, or any other two player/side game where one side winning means the other side loses. That definition isn't wrong, but it's non-functional for the goal of the usual discussions about the spectrum of player motivations and expectations of a given game.
You have to accept that in practical use competitive, as subjectively and ill defined as it is used, is applied only to a certain set of players and no amount of insisting that because a game is formally defined as competitive and thus all its players are competitive anything going to change about that*. Widespread use trumps dictionary definitions. That's how language works.
*That's nonsense, of course. If you could actually convince everyone to drop their informal use competitive and use the dictionary definition instead, you could very much effect change. You're just not likely to succeed in this.
tauist wrote: Soo, what time do WC usually post their "Next Week in Warhammer" articles? I'm expecting the preorder announcement today, followed by product pricing confirmations early next week.
I guess I think of “competitive” when winning is the only, or primary reason to play. While accurate, I think using the term for any time there are multiple players and win conditions is a bit vague and not particularly useful.
Casual vs. Competitive is a spectrum, not a binary choice. The world has more than WAAC netlisters and people pushing models around making “pew pew” noises.
It nice to have the option to play at the different levels. Obviously, you have issues when different midsets collide. This has been an issue for the entire life of GW. Balance is goal, and one that escapes them. Partially because they want to keep all the options to let you make your dudes come alive. Here on Dakka we tend towards the competitive side, but not exclusively. People who just love the models and don’t focus on victory, but just the fun of the game don’t need to know which option is mathematically most effective, or which strats get broken when used together.
I hope they get the balance close enough with the new KT that it’s fun to play. Both internal and external with the forces. While I think of myself as a casual player, I still crunch the numbers (but sometimes ignore them for fluffy/personal reasons). I hate must-take or trap choices, or when one army is just going to win over others in a rock/paper/scissors match.
I’m also interested to see how they sell this to people not getting the box. Not interested in either of the starter armies personally, and the terrain doesn’t match my table.
Black Desert Online has a (deserved, IMO) reputation for being a cut-throat PvP MMO. This is a chart created by the Korean developers, Pearl Abyss showing the percentage of the players in each Gearscore bracket. Gearscore is a measure of the characters power, with over 600 being considered minimum for serious PvP. Yet according to that graphic only 10.7% of the 20,000,000 who have played the game have achieved that. 36.8% have a gearscore lower then 499. I don't even know how that is possible, you don't even need to try to get at least 499. Only a tiny, tiny amount of effort is need to get into the 549 to 599 bracket, yet only 27.8% have bothered, and such a score isn't even considered good. It is basically just enough to get started and do lower end stuff. And these numbers aren't guesses, they are actual, real data from the game client as collected by the games creator and developer.
Is the graph active players, or all players?
Cause if it's all players, the answer is easy- the number of active players of any MMO is vastly outnumbered by the number of players who tried it once and haven't picked it up, or got bored of the grind halfway through. If it's all players, I'm in that graph, with my literal hour of playtime.
I don't know what qualifies a launch as "good," but I found Warcry to be a very bland, simplistic take on fantasy skirmish rules. Compared to anything released in the last 10-15 years, it doesn't bring anything new or interesting to the table. The exception being the fantastic terrain/board generation system, which was widely disregarded by more competitive players anyway. Locally there were very few enthusiastic fans of Warcry...when a juggernaut like GW has a release less popular than a little-known indie game like Relicblade, you know something went wrong. The new version of Kill Team looks interesting. I like that they re-worked the systems, and divorced it from 40K. That absolutely needed to happen. I also like that the design team seems to have taken a page from some of the more recent, innovative skirmish games like Stargrave, Infinity, Malifaux, Tomorrow's War, etc. How well that translates into practice? I guess we shall see. I will at least give the new rules a try. I'm cautiously optimistic.
The new rules I'm somewhat okay with( I like how they are handling shooting distance ) and as you say it remains to be seen how they hold up in practice. But thats not my beef...
As Kill Team players we were jealous of Warcry from day one as it recieved a proper theme, as it were, and the releases to back it up. We even got a look at some of the other warbands that would follow up the starter-set & rule book launch-releases.
Warcry can also at least exist on its own in a similar way to Necromunda; the chaos warbands battle for supremecy in the 8-Points, and is spiced up with mercenaries and beasts.
The only thing about the announcement/launch of Warcry I had criticized was GW not being clear as to what Warcry actually was and so I passed on it. Like others at the time it was a guessing game as to whether it was an AoS-version of Kill Team or Necromunda( some even suggesting Mordheim ), but as we know now it was pretty much both. In hindsight Warcry looks like a game that I should have jumped in with, but I stuck with Frostgrave instead( and AoS-Skirmish which is always a good laugh ).
Kill Team in hindsight, they've updated the rules but beyond that all we have to look forward to is rebuying everything we've already bought with the last edition, with the added expense that the core manual has now been split into two books; rules and factions( no doubt £20 each, and I still don't get my sodding howling banshees! ). It hasn't even got a proper starter set as its a limited product that is implied to sell out on launch day, and like Pariah Nexus, is aimed at 40K players. If there was any weight to GW saying that Kill Team is now set in the Octarius sector then surely the boxset would be designed to remain in print for at least the first season? I reckon it will be replaced in a months time with another starter set that plucks two random factions out of thin air with no relation whatsoever to Octarius - or anything else for that matter.
Y'know, I hope they prove me wrong, that I eat my words and cease being a bloody whinger. But so far I'm just not seeing it...
PS. As an additional thought, I've got this gut feeling that there will be a preview for next Saturday, so maybe my days of whinging are finally numbered?
BlackoCatto wrote: Yeah that Guard preview leaves a lot to be desired, especially since I have no idea what the actual difference is with Vets and regular Guard, as stat wise they look exactly the same.
It looks like Guard have more special rules, and sometimes more numbers. Whereas the Veterans have more specialists. For example the comms guy and the bionic guy.
Phobos wrote: Casuals are the bread and butter of EVERY hobby, full stop bar none. The people who are serious are always a minority.
I agree, however, casual and competitive aren't mutually exclusive concepts. Someone can be a filthy casual and still be a competitive player. Someone can be a serious player who puts in thousands of hours and is a fluffy bunny.
I think of it a bit like playing a game of basketball with my colleagues after work, or a game of lawn bowls at the work Christmas party. Everyone there is casual, we might only play once a month or once a year, but you can be damned sure it's competitive On the video game side, back in the day the mates and I would go rent a game for one of our consoles, grab a slab of beer, and spend the night playing, it was hardly serious but it was bloody competitive.
On the flip side, maybe a few mates will go down to the park and kick the footy back and forth, might even run some drills. That would be an example of not-competitive.
My experience is that 40k players are mostly competitive in the sense they are actively trying to win (not WAAC, mind you) and that is a primary driver in the game over any narrative storylines and whatnot, there might be a brief narrative at the start to set the scene for the battle, but once the battle starts the narrative is on a level of kids making pew pew sounds at each other.
That doesn't necessarily mean that the internet meta is representative of the local casual meta, isolated groups will form their own isolated meta, but it will still be affected by the terrible balance of the rule set they are playing to.
My reading is that the Veteran Guardsmen are a 1 Fireteam Kill team of either 10 models with Ancillary Support or 14 models of which 4 are Trooper Veterans and the rest are the various specialist available in the Kreig kit. The Imperial Guard Kill Team is a two fireteam kill team with choices of Guardsmen (7 models) or Tempetus Scions (unknown number of models).
My reading is that the Veteran Guardsmen are a 1 Fireteam Kill team of either 10 models with Ancillary Support or 14 models of which 4 are Trooper Veterans and the rest are the various specialist available in the Kreig kit. The Imperial Guard Kill Team is a two fireteam kill team with choices of Guardsmen (7 models) or Tempetus Scions (unknown number of models).
Yes, that seems to match what they say better than my interpretation. I suppose they want to make the 'starter' teams as simple as possible, so they are single fire-team kill-teams, while more 'advanced' ones have the option to take two different types of fire-team.
Marines only get one Fireteam in their gang, I think we've only seen the numbers for three gangs - Marines, Deathguard, and Guard, 2 of whom get two Fireteams and 1 gets one.
They spoke of flexibility in the article mentioning it, but if I had to pick whether Guard or Marines would be more flexible, I'd say the marines!
Worth mentioning that nothing says the "Veteran Guardsman" setup is limited to Krieg alone.
Krieg just seemed to be designed with it in mind.
Also worth mentioning, there's been some talk of Tankbustas and Grenadiers being the "general Kill Team release" in 2022 for both. They did something similar with AdMech & GSC, using the Kill Team branding to release the Manipulus and Kelermorphs bundled with an already released item.
Hard to say. We know there are 10 different 'units' you can pick models from for the Space Marines in Kill Team. We know Space Marines are a single fireteam Kill Team. We don't know how many fireteams options you have to pick between. Could be some strange ala carte selection rules. Could be Interessors/Assault Intercessors, Phobos marines, Heavy Intercessors, First Born, and Death Watch are 5 different fireteams of which you only get one.
Okay, I am at least impressed by the Kill Team Essentials kit. This is something I asked them for during the last edition and I'm glad they've seen sense to add for this edition. They've even thrown in some cool little barracades too!
They'll also be discussing the road map for future 40K codices on friday...
I appreciate GW offering all the contents of the Octarius book (sans the Octarius-specific addon book) as separates as well. But now I'm quite certain that the combined price of all the four individual items (Rulebook+Compendium+Cards+Tokens&Gauges) will already be quite close to the hundo mark, how much you'd reckon? Somewhere around 80€-90€ maybe?
The box going at 155€ will be quite a decent value proposition as far as the models and terrain are concerned
tauist wrote: I appreciate GW offering all the contents of the Octarius book (sans the Octarius-specific addon book) as separates as well. But now I'm quite certain that the combined price of all the four individual items (Rulebook+Compendium+Cards+Tokens&Gauges) will already be quite close to the hundo mark, how much you'd reckon? Somewhere around 80€-90€ maybe?
The box going at 155€ will be quite a decent value proposition as far as the models and terrain are concerned
Well that's the nature of discount boxes and why they are limited. How many separate stuff they would sell if discount box is readily available.
I think it's hilarious that they're doing a two week pre-order window and the box is probably going to spend thirteen days, twenty three hours, and fifty five minutes of that sold out online.
Edit: Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes for the "Kill Team Essentials" accessory box and cards to sell out?
tauist wrote: I appreciate GW offering all the contents of the Octarius book (sans the Octarius-specific addon book) as separates as well. But now I'm quite certain that the combined price of all the four individual items (Rulebook+Compendium+Cards+Tokens&Gauges) will already be quite close to the hundo mark, how much you'd reckon? Somewhere around 80€-90€ maybe?
The box going at 155€ will be quite a decent value proposition as far as the models and terrain are concerned
The box doesn't contain the Compendium which is probably at least another £25.
You can probably flog the Krieg and terrain on Ebay for a decent penny though. I expect there'll be a lot less demand for Kommandos, but the Krieg hype will probably make up for any 'loss' on them.
I dunno. I imagine we'll see both sides going for at least $80, though since it's confirmed they're releasing separately, maybe the scalpers will be a bit more generous
solkan wrote: I think it's hilarious that they're doing a two week pre-order window and the box is probably going to spend thirteen days, twenty three hours, and fifty five minutes of that sold out online.
Edit: Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes for the "Kill Team Essentials" accessory box and cards to sell out?
Yeah i never understood why GW makes pre-order windows longer than one day.
solkan wrote: I think it's hilarious that they're doing a two week pre-order window and the box is probably going to spend thirteen days, twenty three hours, and fifty five minutes of that sold out online.
Edit: Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes for the "Kill Team Essentials" accessory box and cards to sell out?
They said they've produced as many of the Kill Team set as they have Dominion, and that's still available online.
They never said anything about making loads of Hexfire.
They did say they made similar quantities of the KT box to Dominion, Dominion is still available so I expect this box won't sell out immediately. Even if you assume that Dominion didn't sell well or they overproduced it relative to the size of the game community, I think its fair to assume that the KT box won't necessarily sell like hotcakes, especially if this is proced at 125 GBP/199 USD - theres only 20 actual minis in it and a frighteningly large segment of the community doesn't consider terrain to be a meaningful return on value. Beneficial splits will be hard to come by as while everyone will want Kriegers and some may want Kommandos, few will want Ork terrain and finding people to carve up the contents of the box with in a way that gets the cost of the Kommamdos/Kriegers down below what it'll probably cost for those kits individually when they release in 3 months will be tough.
As for why its a two week preorder window, its for logistics purposes. The size of the production lot is larger than normal, which means it takes more time to push the product out of their warehouse and get it everywhere it needs to be by release day. It has nothing to do with giving people more time to order it, thats just a side effect of the process.
chaos0xomega wrote: They never said anything about making loads of Hexfire.
a frighteningly large segment of the community doesn't consider terrain to be a meaningful return on value
I play at my local club, I have no need of terrain, at all.
In spite of that I already have some terrain anyway. Enough terrain for a game.
So terrain absolutely is worthless for me.
If this starterset didn't have 3d terrain, and instead had a cardboard map like the original Necromunda or Pariah Nexus, at a correspondingly cheaper price, I'd probably buy it then.
will be what gets me in or out on that I am thinking.
There are few elements that are repeated, including one thing that's there 4 times.
