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Made in gb
Battleship Captain




Had a few games of Kill-team recently, and thought I'd post up some thoughts - and, more importantly, hope to pick the brains of assorted dakka-dakka-ites for other gems of hard-won experience.

For reference: Kill-Team means the rules as defined in the Black Library Kill-Team ebook. There have been several versions of Kill-Team down the years, but these are the current, official ones.



Remember you're on your own - with models not being in a unit, anyone can shoot anyone (unless they're out of line of sight, or whatever. Any model with a heavy weapon is well advised to choose a heavy weapon with a range advantage over enemy small arms and set up well back on the board because he or she has no warm bodies to catch incoming bullets. Marines aren't bad, toughness-wise, and guard heavy weapon teams at least have two wounds, but this really impacts Eldar Guardians, Ork Boyz, Chaos Cultists, Imperial Guard Veterans, and any other special or heavy weapon carrier likely to fold if hit by a bolt round.

Remember you can't split fire - Very little you're likely to encounter in kill-team needs the application of (for example) twelve splinter cannon rounds off a fully-armed Dark Eldar Venom. Yes, you're almost garuanteed to kill one model, but, when faced with a mob, killing one guardsman four times over doesn't really help you when you've used over a third of your kill team to do it. Antipersonnel heavy weapons like heavy bolters and scatter lasers are good for their reach, but lose their normal crowd control properties.

You will, sooner or later, face a tank - You don't need a meltagun or chainfist. "Tank" is overstating matters - specifically, the vehicles you can encounter in Kill-Team are:
Astra Militarum - Chimera, Scout Sentinal, Taurox, Taurox Prime
Adepta Sororitas - Immolator, Rhino
Chaos Space Marines - Rhino
Chaos Daemons - Hellflayer of Slaanesh
Dark Eldar - Raider, Venom
Eldar - Vyper Jetbike
Inquisition - Chimera, Razorback, Rhino
Militrarum Tempestus - Taurox Prime
Necrons - None (the Triarch Stalker is legal, but it's impossible to fit it and a legal unit which can include a leader in 200 points)
Orks - Warbuggy/Wartrakk/Skorcha, Trukk
Space Marines (inc variants) - Razorback, Rhino, Land Speeder, Land Speeder Storm
Tau - Devilfish, Pirahna
Tyranids - None (obviously)

Nothing, most importantly, can't be hurt by a space marine punching it. Anything can be hurt by a thrown krak grenade. The only real risk to a tank is immunity to lasgun/autogun/splinter fire, and immunity to bolters on tougher tanks, meaning you will need to get close. The Devilfish is probably the most dangerous thing you can face, as you'll need to assault it (or get behind it) to hurt it with standard issue weapons. On the plus side, it has no fire points, so if your opponent wants to hide inside he's not achieving anything.

Ultimately, ignoring tanks is a lot more viable than it is in normal 40k - most armies standard issue kit will deal with the kind of armour you can bring. The only time I would say you're ignoring them too much is if you're literally unable to hurt an AV10 target - if your force consists of gaunts, grots, guardsmen (without krak grenades) or cultists, because one quite popular kill team you need to be ready for is two land speeder storms, trukks or venoms with squads in them that have no intention of getting out. At a minimum such a force needs to be able to wing an AV10 vehicle at stand-off range (a heavy weapons team or two with autocannons, krak grenades, something like that).

Grenades are good - A worst-case scenario for some kill-teams is a cultist squad, grot mob or guard platoon. With 30+ models on the board, bringing down enough opponents to cause break tests is difficult, making their low leadership kind of redundant. Heavy bolters don't let you split fire, so they're just massive overkill. Blasts and templates are better than you'd think - you have to bunch up to bring numbers to bear, especially if you want to get into rapid fire range - but flamers suffer from "shoot me syndrome" and, more importantly, lose their ability to affect the wider board. Frag grenades, on the other hand, become awesome because every model can now throw one. A marine tactical squad mass-throwing grenades can devastate close-packed cultists, grots or termagants. Equally, though, beware of horde armies which have grenades of their own! Imperial Guard and Orks have frag grenades as standard and can make a right mess as a result; no-one, even if they're in power armour, wants to be on the receiving end of 20+ frag grenades.

This also makes krak grenades fantastic for anti-armour work. Three or four guys, each throwing krak grenades, is an anti-armour threat not far short of an expensive and vulnerable autocannon, meaning that tanks will be very hesitant to get close to grenade-wielders.

Keep Sarge Safe - Your kill-team leader is no tougher than normal. Which means he's generally no tougher than the rest of the kill-team members. Given his leadership bubble for break tests, even a point of leadership can make the difference between half the team fleeing the board and not, so keep him protected, preferrably out of line of sight.... for mobs, anyway. A cultist champion will still go down like a sack of nurglings from a bolt round. A space marine sergeant can take slightly more risks - and he's good enough in a fight to be worth taking those risks with. Most importantly, with And They Shall Know No Fear giving you a reroll on break tests, losing him isn't crippling. If you have an option to toughen the guy up, take it. Ork Nobz in eavy armour take quite a bit of killing (unless someone brought a missile launcher).

Ulitmately, unlike a multiwound, artificer armoured captain with warm bodies to hide behind, your leader is a pretty easy kill, and is a high priority target because he still has Slay The Warlord (well, Slay The Leader, anyway) pasted on his forehead. Be careful with him.


Any other thoughts or experience people want to share playing kill-team?

I'm mulling Ideas for a Tyranid Kill-Team at the moment. With the models I have available, I'm probably going with four tyranid warriors with deathspitters and scything talons, plus a brood of 15 termagants with fleshborers or 12 hormagaunts. The tyranid warriors are a nice, tough model for the leader and specialists - I imagine I'll take a guerilla specialist with scout or infiltrate to get some forward synapse quickly if I take hormagaunts; they'll quickly outrun the warriors and will definitely need to be under synapse cover once they get into a melee or will risk losing several models to sweeping advances if they lose combat. An indomitable specialist is good - either feel no pain or eternal warrior (one of the few models in kill-team where this is a good call!) depending on whether I'm expecting missile launchers, and a weapon specialist for some general improved dakka.





Termagants expended for the Hive Mind: ~2835
 
   
Made in il
Warplord Titan Princeps of Tzeentch






Don't the team leader get an extra wound IIRC?

Anyway, killteam is odd. many mechanics outright brake in it and are not directly referred to in the codex...

can neither confirm nor deny I lost track of what I've got right now. 
   
Made in gb
Battleship Captain




In previous versions he has, but not in this one. He gets a "mini warlord trait" instead.

Most of the mechanics have also been tidied up to ensure that they don't break the game anymore:

~ Psychic Solitude removes Brotherhood of Psykers entirely as a rule.

~ The Warp Storm Table and Champion of Chaos don't apply.

~ Power From Pain and Resurrection Protocols have a modified version designed to work at this scale.

~ You cannot spawn or summon additional models (so no daemonology shennanigans) and start in reserve (other than outflankers) or enter ongoing reserve (so no yo-yo swooping hawks).



One comment to amend my thoughts above - you can split your shots between different targets if you're a weapons specialist who's taken the Split Fire rule. This makes it a tempting choice for a heavy bolter team, shuriken cannon jetbike, etc, etc.


Termagants expended for the Hive Mind: ~2835
 
   
Made in us
Screamin' Stormboy



Stuck in wit da boyz

Going to ground is really good in kill team.
It only affects one model at a time and it will save your ass.

Best team I've seen is ork tankbustas.

If brute force doesn't do it, you're not using enough.  
   
Made in hu
Dakka Veteran




That a Heavy bolter/Autocannon can't target multiple enemies is really stupid. That's why (light) machine guns are created for.
   
Made in gb
Battleship Captain




CYBORK wrote:
Going to ground is really good in kill team.
It only affects one model at a time and it will save your ass.

Best team I've seen is ork tankbustas.


Indeed. Certainly, with light infantry, if you take a wound that'll ignore your armour save, you might as well go to ground because it might save you and the alternative is just being dead.


a heavy bolter or autocannon can shoot at multiple targets but only if the guy carrying it is a Specialist with Split Fire - which makes it a tempting choice despite it competing with Relentless, Ignore Cover and Feel No Pain.

And yes, it is silly, but then Kill Team uses 99% unmodified 40k rules, and 40k units can't split fire without special rules; you might as well ask why the rest of the tactical squad have to waste bolt rounds on the land raider whilst Battle Brother Jeff meltaguns it.

Termagants expended for the Hive Mind: ~2835
 
   
Made in gb
Humorless Arbite





Hull

Numbers are exceedingly important in Kill Team.

Out of the Kill Team Games I've played, Numbers seem to be the biggest factor towards victory.


   
Made in ca
Ork Boy Hangin' off a Trukk




Toronto, Canada

Have you tried the Heralds of Ruin version of Kill Team?
I find them much more enjoyable for Kill Team campaigns, but the GW version works pretty well for one off games.
   
Made in gb
Battleship Captain




 Otto Weston wrote:
Numbers are exceedingly important in Kill Team.

Out of the Kill Team Games I've played, Numbers seem to be the biggest factor towards victory.



Agreed on that point, but I'll add two other comments there:

Numbers and ranged firepower. The problem with lone models with lots of firepower is massive overkill - a stormbolter firing at a lone guardsman has a good chance of wasting a killing shot in a way that it wouldn't if fired into a 20+ mob of guardsmen.

By comparison, being on the short end of the range stick still sucks as much in kill team as it goes in regular 40k. Since assaults can only kill a single model, and (unless you're facing a massive numerical blob) your opponent can disperse to the point that flamers aren't too much cop, close range units like pistol/sword combinations aren't up to much save as objective grabbers. Guardsmen with their massed lasguns are very dangerous, as are Kroot with pulse rounds.

The best counter to numbers is (a) grenades and (b) a tank. If you've got a unit with a serious numerical edge, 99% of them won't be able to hurt an AV11 tank (or at least won't be able to do so from range). Combine with crowd control weapons on said tank (havoc launcher/heavy flamers/Target locks) and you've got a serious threat that they'll struggle to do anything about.

Termagants expended for the Hive Mind: ~2835
 
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





Toronto

Hunam0001 wrote:
Have you tried the Heralds of Ruin version of Kill Team?
I find them much more enjoyable for Kill Team campaigns, but the GW version works pretty well for one off games.


QFT. Heralds killteam is far and away the best version of the game. If you're going to play a splinter ruleset like this, might as well play one that's designed accordingly.
http://heralds-of-ruin.blogspot.ca/p/kill-team-rules.html

   
Made in ca
Ork Boy Hangin' off a Trukk




Toronto, Canada

My only issue with the Heralds version is that the roster of things you can include, makes it slightly more open to abuse/power gaming than the GW version.

But then playing a campaign greatly mitigates this.
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





Toronto

The latest Horus Heresy book also has a pretty decent killteam rules (can't remember what its actually called off the top of my head)
Good for dipping into 30k without the massive investment.

   
Made in gb
Battleship Captain




 McGibs wrote:
The latest Horus Heresy book also has a pretty decent killteam rules (can't remember what its actually called off the top of my head)
Good for dipping into 30k without the massive investment.


Tactical Strike, I think?
That one's very much set up for a campaign rather than a pickup game, as it tracks things like ammo, armour spares, etc.

It also potentially lets you take a skirmish version of Corax as your skirmish "force", which is disconcerting to see.

Termagants expended for the Hive Mind: ~2835
 
   
 
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