Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

if they can sell terrain at this price its clear that the individual terrain sets are totally a shameless money grab.

Why include terrain every expansion? just keep things separated and at sensible prices.

The new meta is sell £100+ box sets now then split it with a HUGE price increase.

Pass on both.

Wait, these don’t come with rules? My interest just went down significantly.

Probably a good thing for my budget.

Voss wrote:

No, the whole pricing scheme isn't even vaguely that coherent.
Consider this and the Ash Wastes box, their various component breakdowns (anyone really think the minimal Ash Wastes terrain is worth $240?) and the $299 HH box coming next month (which is 40 marines, 10 terminators, a big tank and a dread. Oh, and rules and whatever).

Somehow they vastly over-value terrain in individual...

It makes sense if you understand how they work out sales prices. They are a combination of production & design costs versus expected / forecasted sales in the products lifetime.

Despite having fairly similar production costs to the items in the KT set, the new Heresy kits will easily outsell those terrain kits over the next decade, likely by a significant order of magnitude. Even if the HH launch box goes out of production there's still a guaranteed audience of customers buying the individual kits as they cover both main factions in the game.
Meanwhile a much smaller fraction of GW customers are building their own tables with plastic terrain, let alone with this specific terrain.

As an example; if it costs GW around £50k to design & produce the contents for each of these boxes. They may expect to see £100k in sales for the KT set but £400k sales for the HH set. Guess which receives more aggressive pricing?

 Nevelon wrote:
Wait, these don’t come with rules? My interest just went down significantly.

Probably a good thing for my budget.

No, these boxes don't come with the full Kill Team rules. Here are the relevant passages from the store page:

1x 96 page Kill Team: Moroch Rules manual: take the fight to the corrupted world of Moroch, a key defensive point in the Nachmund Gauntlet, with background material for this stronghold world and the forces that clash over it. This manual also includes new rules, datacards, and background tables for the Phobo Strike Team and Blooded kill teams, as well as additional killzone rules and Shadow Operations missions set on this war-torn planet.

You'll need a copy of Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team Core Book to make full use of this supplement.

The very first box, Octarius, had the rule book and gaming aids to go with the models and terrain in the box. The following versus boxes are only models and terrain along with a book that has rules for the included teams and kill zone. If you want the rules for Kill Team, you'll either need the separate rule book or the Octarius-derived starter set.

Which sucks as GW happily prices the Kill Team boxes close to the first one (or at its price after the price increase a few months back), but you don't get the game and have to pay around a third more on top of it to get into Kill Team if you want to add the rules and aids to your new box. This has the side effect that the Kill Team boxes, Octarius excluded, don't actually offer much of a discount if the included book is useless to you, or you have to complement it with another purchase. You're basically required to have a use for everything included or else you're likely better off waiting three months for the individual kits.

Pricing aside, it doesn't make sense for GW to continue to put the Kill Team Core rules in the quarterly Warzone box. Ongoing players already have the rules and don't need another copy every quarter. It's a waste of space, weight, and cost and thus profit to include it.

As for the pricing difference between a big battle box and the individual kits, just about everything in life is more expensive the less you buy. Six single sodas are more expensive than a 6-pack. Two 6-packs are more expensive than a 12-pack. That doesn't mean you are being gouged when you purchase a single soda at a store that sells all 3 sizes.

 Geifer wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Wait, these don’t come with rules? My interest just went down significantly.

Probably a good thing for my budget.

No, these boxes don't come with the full Kill Team rules. Here are the relevant passages from the store page:

1x 96 page Kill Team: Moroch Rules manual: take the fight to the corrupted world of Moroch, a key defensive point in the Nachmund Gauntlet, with background material for this stronghold world and the forces that clash over it. This manual also includes new rules, datacards, and background tables for the Phobo Strike Team and Blooded kill teams, as well as additional killzone rules and Shadow Operations missions set on this war-torn planet.

You'll need a copy of Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team Core Book to make full use of this supplement.

The very first box, Octarius, had the rule book and gaming aids to go with the models and terrain in the box. The following versus boxes are only models and terrain along with a book that has rules for the included teams and kill zone. If you want the rules for Kill Team, you'll either need the separate rule book or the Octarius-derived starter set.

Which sucks as GW happily prices the Kill Team boxes close to the first one (or at its price after the price increase a few months back), but you don't get the game and have to pay around a third more on top of it to get into Kill Team if you want to add the rules and aids to your new box. This has the side effect that the Kill Team boxes, Octarius excluded, don't actually offer much of a discount if the included book is useless to you, or you have to complement it with another purchase. You're basically required to have a use for everything included or else you're likely better off waiting three months for the individual kits.

It’s a shame. I had pretty much talked myself into getting into KT. But the cost for this box was stretching things as it is, and shelling out the extra cash for the rule, bits&bobs, etc is just too much. And yes, I know there is ebay and other sources.

I don’t mind paying GW for models. But the rules get me. Especially as I’m a slow painter. By the time I get a force ready to table, the game might be dead. Especially the specialists.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 alextroy wrote:
Pricing aside, it doesn't make sense for GW to continue to put the Kill Team Core rules in the quarterly Warzone box. Ongoing players already have the rules and don't need another copy every quarter. It's a waste of space, weight, and cost and thus profit to include it.

As for the pricing difference between a big battle box and the individual kits, just about everything in life is more expensive the less you buy. Six single sodas are more expensive than a 6-pack. Two 6-packs are more expensive than a 12-pack. That doesn't mean you are being gouged when you purchase a single soda at a store that sells all 3 sizes.

I understand it would be wasteful for players already in the game, but having cheep rules in a core box helps lower the cost of entry into the game. Is it worth reducing profits a little for older players to get fresh blood?

If you want the rules, tokens plus two teams, you can get the way cheaper starter set. I'm actually glad that I don't get more worthless paper with the box as I don't even play the game. I know this is a bit of a "I got mine" attitude but as the starter box with the excellent Krieg and Ork Kommandos exists it shouldn't be too difficult to get an acceptable entry into Kill Team.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Wait, these don’t come with rules? My interest just went down significantly.

Probably a good thing for my budget.

No, these boxes don't come with the full Kill Team rules. Here are the relevant passages from the store page:

1x 96 page Kill Team: Moroch Rules manual: take the fight to the corrupted world of Moroch, a key defensive point in the Nachmund Gauntlet, with background material for this stronghold world and the forces that clash over it. This manual also includes new rules, datacards, and background tables for the Phobo Strike Team and Blooded kill teams, as well as additional killzone rules and Shadow Operations missions set on this war-torn planet.

You'll need a copy of Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team Core Book to make full use of this supplement.

The very first box, Octarius, had the rule book and gaming aids to go with the models and terrain in the box. The following versus boxes are only models and terrain along with a book that has rules for the included teams and kill zone. If you want the rules for Kill Team, you'll either need the separate rule book or the Octarius-derived starter set.

Which sucks as GW happily prices the Kill Team boxes close to the first one (or at its price after the price increase a few months back), but you don't get the game and have to pay around a third more on top of it to get into Kill Team if you want to add the rules and aids to your new box. This has the side effect that the Kill Team boxes, Octarius excluded, don't actually offer much of a discount if the included book is useless to you, or you have to complement it with another purchase. You're basically required to have a use for everything included or else you're likely better off waiting three months for the individual kits.

It’s a shame. I had pretty much talked myself into getting into KT. But the cost for this box was stretching things as it is, and shelling out the extra cash for the rule, bits&bobs, etc is just too much. And yes, I know there is ebay and other sources.

I don’t mind paying GW for models. But the rules get me. Especially as I’m a slow painter. By the time I get a force ready to table, the game might be dead. Especially the specialists.

I've been there with Chalnath. I eventually bought it when I saw it in stock for a reasonable discount, but without the Kill Team rules I have no incentive to look into the game and expand my choices with future purchases. With the shoddy quality of their rules I'm certainly not going to buy any rules from GW unless they're in a discounted bundle box where I can talk myself into buying it for the models, the thing GW is actually good at, and getting the rules as a free bonus along the way. It's the only reason why I have the current 40k and AoS rules.

Yeah, it's a shame. You'd think they'd want to get as many people into the game as possible to get more model sales, but apparently book sales must really have a big impact on GW's bottom line for them to continue selling rules as they have in the recent past.

 Nevelon wrote:
I understand it would be wasteful for players already in the game, but having cheep rules in a core box helps lower the cost of entry into the game. Is it worth reducing profits a little for older players to get fresh blood?

yeah, but those are not core boxes but expansion boxes for those already in the game
the same way army boxes (combat patrol or whatever they are called now) don't come with the core rules, because they are not meant for new people starting the game but for exiting players to expand

so those that are already playing Kill Team and are now waiting for their faction to get an actual Kill Team outside the Index, this is the box (if you cannot wait for the stand alone release)

Those Traitor Guardsmen are amazing, that's one sweet kit. Its a missed opportunity that they did include a traitor decal sheet. I'll definitely be getting some when they get a solo box.

 Sersi wrote:
Those Traitor Guardsmen are amazing, that's one sweet kit. Its a missed opportunity that they did include a traitor decal sheet. I'll definitely be getting some when they get a solo box.

Not many places to stick decals. :( Hopefully, when the inevitable Traitoris armour comes along, there'll be a sheet then.

So, the chaos guard don't have melee weapon/auto pistol options to go alongside the lasgun troops? But they gave them to the BSF ones :(

 Nevelon wrote:
I don’t mind paying GW for models. But the rules get me. Especially as I’m a slow painter. By the time I get a force ready to table, the game might be dead. Especially the specialists.

Let me offer a slightly different viewpoint - if you're a slow painter, and unsure when you'll get the teams completed, there's an argument that you're better off not getting the rules with the box, but getting them later on. At least that way, when you are ready to get into the game, you can be sure the rules you pick up at that point haven't gone out of date due to an edition change...

 Shakalooloo wrote:

 Sersi wrote:
Those Traitor Guardsmen are amazing, that's one sweet kit. Its a missed opportunity that they did include a traitor decal sheet. I'll definitely be getting some when they get a solo box.

Not many places to stick decals. :( Hopefully, when the inevitable Traitoris armour comes along, there'll be a sheet then.

True, those shoulder pads are tiny. I was thinking some half chaos glyphs for the breast plates or cloaks; like they've painted on. They can be free-handed, but I'd still be nice though.

 Nevelon wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
Pricing aside, it doesn't make sense for GW to continue to put the Kill Team Core rules in the quarterly Warzone box. Ongoing players already have the rules and don't need another copy every quarter. It's a waste of space, weight, and cost and thus profit to include it.

As for the pricing difference between a big battle box and the individual kits, just about everything in life is more expensive the less you buy. Six single sodas are more expensive than a 6-pack. Two 6-packs are more expensive than a 12-pack. That doesn't mean you are being gouged when you purchase a single soda at a store that sells all 3 sizes.

I understand it would be wasteful for players already in the game, but having cheep rules in a core box helps lower the cost of entry into the game. Is it worth reducing profits a little for older players to get fresh blood?

I think from GW's perspective, it is better to have the new players shell out for a separate rulebook rather than have players who already have a rulebook flooding the secondary market with the free rulebooks they got via the Warzone boxes.

That and they make a Starter Set, so really, if you want a rulebook, you've got two options.

If they didn't make one, and the only box you could get was whatever 'seasonal' box was on sale at the time, then yeah, not having the rulebook would be stupid.

But, again, they have a book available, and the actual starter box has one.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That and they make a Starter Set, so really, if you want a rulebook, you've got two options.

If they didn't make one, and the only box you could get was whatever 'seasonal' box was on sale at the time, then yeah, not having the rulebook would be stupid.

But, again, they have a book available, and the actual starter box has one.

This sums up exactly what I was gearing up to say.

They would lose money on these boxes if the rules were in them. Look at all the existing players wanting the box.
New players (particularly going into a GW) are gonna be guided to the Starter.
(And if you like this box and it’s your first - Box plus separate Rulebook is the way.)

 Dysartes wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
I don’t mind paying GW for models. But the rules get me. Especially as I’m a slow painter. By the time I get a force ready to table, the game might be dead. Especially the specialists.

Let me offer a slightly different viewpoint - if you're a slow painter, and unsure when you'll get the teams completed, there's an argument that you're better off not getting the rules with the box, but getting them later on. At least that way, when you are ready to get into the game, you can be sure the rules you pick up at that point haven't gone out of date due to an edition change...

I feel like the current Kill Team rules, and the rules for all the factions in these boxed releases, are solid. Yeah, if you want to get into things and play competitively at a later point you're better off waiting, but if you just want to play with friends/family I think the current ruleset and what you get in these boxes is pretty much evergreen. There's not huge balance issues or anything. I think they make a nice little self-contained game that'll be playable for years to come regardless of if a new ruleset comes out.

deano2099 wrote:

I feel like the current Kill Team rules, and the rules for all the factions in these boxed releases, are solid.

and the White Dwarf teams; my Warpcoven Thousand Sons are super fun to play and I think I have a current win rate of maybe slightly over 50%. The last campaign game I played, while I annihilated the guard player but he still won by 3 VP's (despite me having 7 more battle honours than him!). The 10 fully realized teams (plus hopefully the 2 upcoming) are all very well balanced (veteran guard, kommando, pathfinders, novitiates, legionaries, corsair voidscarred, warpcoven, hunter clade, void-dancer troupe, wyrmblade, plus phobos strike team and blooded). KT2021 is probably the most fun/balanced in-print GW ruleset outside of Middle-earth SBG.
note relating to my experience: my group only plays Narrative with all teams currently in spec ops campaigns (some in their second).

jullevi wrote:
I certainly wouldn't have picked Fronteris big box if I had guessed that the scenery was going to be included in Kill Team this soon. As I don't want any more Fronteris terrain, looks like I am skipping this one and invest funds into Horus Heresy or pick Kill Team Chalnath from FLGS bargain bin instead.

There’s a GW bargain bin in a Finnish LGS? Tell me more

But yes, this is a pass for me as well, I just don’t get that warm fuzzy feeling I need to get to part with this sort of cash. Tbh, I didn’t get it with Nachmund, initially, either, but when I figured out a use for part of the legion upgrade sprue, I had to go for it…

Small balance change

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/06/24/the-new-kill-team-balance-dataslate-is-here/

So no more spamming grenades as equipment options? Do some compendium teams have any other useful options?

I feel they have also not realised those are the only counter some teams have to stuff like 'quins who can get behind cover very easily.

Almost every team has some +1dmg options, not great, not terrible

Having done my fair share of 14 guardsmen loaded with krak grenades to their teeth, this is a good change. Also fits the general paradigm of no doubling up on specialists, which many grenadiers effectively become.

Maybe it's a necessary balance change but it's a really stupid idea from a fluff point of view. Grenades are standard-issue equipment, why does my entire squad have to share a single frag grenade? What's next, only half the models can have a lasgun, the other half have to pick up lasguns once the first wave dies?

CadianSgtBob wrote:
Maybe it's a necessary balance change but it's a really stupid idea from a fluff point of view. Grenades are standard-issue equipment, why does my entire squad have to share a single frag grenade? What's next, only half the models can have a lasgun, the other half have to pick up lasguns once the first wave dies?

I agree. Ideally, grenades should have been dealt with a different in-game mechanic than the current implementation. The current implementation seems like a failure if it results in grenades being the superior weapon in most situations. Elite troops all carry extra pistols and grenades, and this should somehow reflect their effectiveness in-game, as it is now, they need to be nerfed or they are "too good" LOL

CadianSgtBob wrote:
Maybe it's a necessary balance change but it's a really stupid idea from a fluff point of view. Grenades are standard-issue equipment, why does my entire squad have to share a single frag grenade? What's next, only half the models can have a lasgun, the other half have to pick up lasguns once the first wave dies?

wow I know this is from real life russia but that sounds perfect for a 40k regement and honestly death corps would fit that nicely. What was the book where the death korps fought the necrons and as they where being atomized they passed around a single melta gun so they could keep killing? Was a pretty cool scene.

Boosykes wrote:
What was the book where the death korps fought the necrons and as they where being atomized they passed around a single melta gun so they could keep killing? Was a pretty cool scene.

The book title is "Dead Man Walking".

 tauist wrote:

CadianSgtBob wrote:
Maybe it's a necessary balance change but it's a really stupid idea from a fluff point of view. Grenades are standard-issue equipment, why does my entire squad have to share a single frag grenade? What's next, only half the models can have a lasgun, the other half have to pick up lasguns once the first wave dies?

I agree. Ideally, grenades should have been dealt with a different in-game mechanic than the current implementation. The current implementation seems like a failure if it results in grenades being the superior weapon in most situations. Elite troops all carry extra pistols and grenades, and this should somehow reflect their effectiveness in-game, as it is now, they need to be nerfed or they are "too good" LOL

The current implementation is good, though. It gives grenades a solid niche where they shine and their damage output is relevant. Their range and limited availability, on the other hand, means they aren't the optimal move in every scenario during the game. This is a nice example of a limited use item that works fine. In a game of KT, which doesn't simulate careful military action but rather emulates fast and violent war fiction action scenes, it's better to have the big explosives as a spice here and there. Same reason why most comprehensive teams are made of unique gunners and specialists instead of spamming everyone with similar loadouts. In this design paradigm, it fits right in.

 Sherrypie wrote:
The current implementation is good, though. It gives grenades a solid niche where they shine and their damage output is relevant. Their range and limited availability, on the other hand, means they aren't the optimal move in every scenario during the game. This is a nice example of a limited use item that works fine. In a game of KT, which doesn't simulate careful military action but rather emulates fast and violent war fiction action scenes, it's better to have the big explosives as a spice here and there. Same reason why most comprehensive teams are made of unique gunners and specialists instead of spamming everyone with similar loadouts. In this design paradigm, it fits right in.

It's only good if you ignore the lore. The lore has it well established that special/heavy weapons are limited to a small number per squad but grenades are standard issue. And from a modeling point of view many units have grenades shown on every model. So the fluff says I have a squad with frag grenades for everyone, the models all have visible frag grenades, and somehow I'm only allowed to throw a single grenade for the entire fight and I have to decide before the fight begins which member of the squad is allowed to use theirs? And if that member dies before throwing the grenade the rest of the squad has to shrug and say "well, it would be nice to use these grenades I'm carrying but we don't have all the right paperwork filled out"?