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So I am going to try an convince a friend to get into Kill Team, and I don't want to hook them up with a lower-tier faction.
Is there any sense yet of what is going to be fair to play?

I don't want a repeat of my experience with 8e and back the slowest horse in the race (cough Grey Knights).

Will be difficult to say for a while. I think Nids look strong simply due to having such a varied roster. Whatever the meta ends up being, they should have a reasonable build.

Given that we lack a lot of play data, it's hard to make a call at this point. I'm guessing it'll be a lot more balanced than 40k or SWA simply because everyone's coming out at once. However, if you want my preliminary assessment:

-Harlequins seem likely to be very strong, for similar reasons that they were in SWA. Lots of minus to hit inherent in the game system+4 up invuln+50% chance to not be dead means these clowns are TANKY and the weaponry they're armed with particularly the fusion pistol means that the targets they charge into have a tendency to get real dead real fast. They have multiple ways to deny overwatch (18" charge means they can comfortably charge from out of the range of the most punishing weapons like flamers, ignoring terrain means they can declare charges from behind walls and just koolaid man through, plus the flip belt's falling rules mean if they can get up above an enemy they can jump down on them and land within an inch)

-Elite factions will have pretty big advantages in campaigns because of how heavily you can start to tailor against certain enemies. Deathwatch can after a few campaign games have a pair of frag cannons, a pair of infernus bolters, vets equipped with sniper bolters regular bolters and shotguns all ready to go and each game they can tailor their team to exactly what they're fighting. Meanwhile more limited teams like Grey Knights MUST bring all power armored bodies with mostly storm bolters, even if the deathwatch they're facing show up packing a whole bunch of combi-plasma guys.

-Pure shooty teams might struggle in the short playzones, particularly Tau. The core problem with Tau I predict we're going to see is that they're going to have a really hard time hitting anything especially with that initial markerlight hit they need to make the rest of their weapons more reliable. I think Necrons, again just like in SWA, and possibly also loyalist marines will run into this issue where melee focused teams can close really fast, not take many casualties thanks to injury rolls and then the more elite shooty teams will not have enough bodies to throw in the way of the encroaching enemy. A tau Breacher, which would seem to be perfect for KT, will basically just get one shot at his 3" range and then won't be able to shoot at all. I predict Tau teams will be HEAVILY reliant on stealth suits and drones to bodyblock enemy charges (on the models who can just Fly out and keep shooting on the following turn) and because of the existence of Cultists Chaos Marines will prove to be regular marines +1.

Safest bets (IMO):

-Orks. When shooting caps out at BS6, orks are happy boyz.

-Harlequins. Reasons I listed above. Fusion pistols ftw. Charge 3d6", if you don't quite make it oh well, just get within 3" and make the enemy super duper dead.

-Chaos Marines. Good mix of melee and the best ranged weapons, can have cultists to bodyblock and pad up the squad's numbers so the CSMs can perform the fancy "20% of the squad" actions.

-Thousand Sons. I actually think this will be a really fun little team, operating similarly to a generally more elite chaos space marines. Warpflamers and soulreapers are nice, and All Is Dust is likely to be the bomb against stuff like guard lasgun spam.

-Deathwatch. AFTER the first few games which might be rough. As deathwatch you want to aim for MAXIMUM MOOKAGE. I would aim to run just a single specialist any game you can get away with it in order to have 2 new fireteam members with 2 other active fireteam members (Deathwatch generally rolls with 6 guys). Get your fireteam numbers pumped up by any means necessary until you can fully tailor your gear to your opponent.

-Skitarii/Guard/GSC: I'm putting these all together because they're primarily shooty factions with some melee specialists and a lot of bodies. Seems like it'd be tough to go wrong.

Factions I'd avoid until we see how the game pans out:

-Loyalist Marines. On paper, CSM and Deathwatch seem to do everything they do better. Maybe they don't get closed on and murderized in melee every game? We'll see.

-Tau. Boy oh boy do I hope Tau are a little better than they look. It just seems like a huge investment to try and get Markerlights on stuff, and like your mainline shooty units will struggle mightily without them. Also, the general sameyness of nearly every gun they have access to...here's hoping group overwatch and Flyers tanking for people against melee work really well.

-Craftworld. This one depends on how a particular rule works. If their Battle Focus lets them count as READIED after they advanced, Craftworld is going to be buuuuuuuuuusted. But I suspect "Ready' will be an action you take during the movement phase, and not a default if you didn't move. And then they're another pure shooty elite faction with limited access to melee.

-Necrons. What do we say to pure shooty elite factions with limited access to melee?

-Grey Knights. I just don't see what the other elite marine factions (Deathwatch, Thousand Sons, Death Guard) don't do better than these dudes. All storm bolters might help vs hordes? But the problem is, two out of three of those other factions can bring their own dang horde, and use them to screen/tie up enemies.

For right now, we don't know how strong each faction will be, since there's almost no play data yet or people that have multiple matches under their belt. It's just too new. When 8th edition first came out, people were thinking that the Eldar were just so much weaker, and that Space Marines were the highest tier you could be, while Guard were good but manageable. After 2 months, solid opinions formed, ready to be shaken up by the quick string of codexes. Kill Team is going to be VERY similar. Anything people think right now is likely to be at least 33% WRONG, 10% RIGHT, and the other 57% will be somewhere in between.

I think factions that can crank out 10+ bodies will be the go to factions and I feel like you’re gonna want one CC Specialist per every 5 guys. But this is strictly based on the couple of podcasts that have talked about Kill Team instead of the ETC/BAO this past couple weeks.

I think the more elite factions are going to be powerful until the first guy fails a save and the damage output drops, just like in SWA. And I think for Chaos the Heavy Stubber And Heavy Bolter will be worth their weight in gold. And that Chaos will use beseech the dark gods on the Heavy Bolter guy every single game.

But I’m gonna hold off on building anything Kill Team specific until I play it. My first list will probably just be 18 cultists and two CSM, one Plasma and one Leader, just to learn the rules.

from leaks and just guessing, T sons, grey knights, and deathguard are going to be top teir.

T sons because their base weapons are pretty brutal, and all is dust makes them tough and mobile with heavy weapons since they can move and unload with their soul reaper. On top of that their warp flamers is going to be brutal against anything thats clumped up since you can spread out your hits.

Grey knights are going to be bonkers simply because there does not seem to be a rule of 1 in Kill team, which means every one of them can smite.

Deathguard are going to be a bunch of dicks because they are rocking T5, which is rare in the game, with a 3+ and a 5++

As mentioned elite armies are going to have an advantage here. Another army thats going to be strong, but is really easy to counter will be sketarii because they can run 6 of those sniper ass holes.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
from leaks and just guessing, T sons, grey knights, and deathguard are going to be top teir.

T sons because their base weapons are pretty brutal, and all is dust makes them tough and mobile with heavy weapons since they can move and unload with their soul reaper. On top of that their warp flamers is going to be brutal against anything thats clumped up since you can spread out your hits.

Grey knights are going to be bonkers simply because there does not seem to be a rule of 1 in Kill team, which means every one of them can smite.

Deathguard are going to be a bunch of dicks because they are rocking T5, which is rare in the game, with a 3+ and a 5++

As mentioned elite armies are going to have an advantage here. Another army thats going to be strong, but is really easy to counter will be sketarii because they can run 6 of those sniper ass holes.

I'm going to disagree on a couple counts.

1. There is a rule of 1, baked into the language of the psychic phase. in the psychic phase, you may select a single psyker to cast a power. GK will not be pumping out five smites a turn, just one they can cast from any member. That, and their hard cap on 5 guys (base price doesn't allow you to fit more than 5 in 100pts) will hinder them IMO. Additonally, unlike the 4 you can get out of deathwatch, they can only have 2 gunners, which means you can't have a team's worth of psycannon dudes and a team's worth of incinerator dudes, which would be invaluable in a campaign. Deathwatch can have 2 frag cannons and 2 infernus bolters in a campaign, which is awesome when you're swapping between a horde army opponent and an elite army opponent. I don't think GK will be terrible, I just think DW will prove to be them, but functioning far better because their loadout is much more flexible.

2. Thousand Sons ignoring moving with heavy weapons doesn't really matter because you can have anyone move and shoot with heavy weapons by making them the Heavy specialty. Even in one-off skirmish games.

CWE
They are going to be either busted or trash based on how 'readied' works. As stated above. They're a shooting army. With 12" range standard, 18" on their elite guys. Their 2 special weapons help.

Guardian Defenders will be the cheap shotgun units. The boltgun will outperform them (doesn't get -1 to hit at 12" like the ShuriKat will). Great if BF means readied. Die in droves to push even chaff models if it doesn't.

If CC is great, Storm Guardians could finally have a place. A3 Guardsmen (using a chainsword) for only +1 point. Pistol isn't terrible. But nothing amazing.

The DA Exarch will be murder. 4 Shuriken shots for not that many points. 2W with a 4++ for cheap.

Rangers will be hard to kill. THings will be shooting at them beyond half range (-1 to hit) into cover (-1 to hit). With the Cloak (-1 to hit), they'll be fishing for 6s. A couple of them force your opponent's hand. A full fireteam of them will get overrun though.

Platforms, not sure of yet.

I'm sure CWE will be OP someway, somehow though.

Tau:
Drones may be why they win. You can front your other units with drones, most likely. Lots of shots for good overwatch, so even if charging is too easy, they can shoot. But what really matters is your "important" models can't be charged with these in the way (bodyblocking). Now, if only they had Fly, so they could shoot when they fall back (they do). With the "flesh wound" thing, they aren't taken out of action automatically on a single wound - so your bodyblocking can last longer. The above is good reasons why Tau have major shortcomings, but Drone-fronted fireteams might be scary.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
from leaks and just guessing, T sons, grey knights, and deathguard are going to be top teir.

T sons because their base weapons are pretty brutal, and all is dust makes them tough and mobile with heavy weapons since they can move and unload with their soul reaper. On top of that their warp flamers is going to be brutal against anything thats clumped up since you can spread out your hits.

Grey knights are going to be bonkers simply because there does not seem to be a rule of 1 in Kill team, which means every one of them can smite.

Deathguard are going to be a bunch of dicks because they are rocking T5, which is rare in the game, with a 3+ and a 5++

As mentioned elite armies are going to have an advantage here. Another army thats going to be strong, but is really easy to counter will be sketarii because they can run 6 of those sniper ass holes.

I'm going to disagree on a couple counts.

1. There is a rule of 1, baked into the language of the psychic phase. in the psychic phase, you may select a single psyker to cast a power. GK will not be pumping out five smites a turn, just one they can cast from any member. That, and their hard cap on 5 guys (base price doesn't allow you to fit more than 5 in 100pts) will hinder them IMO. Additonally, unlike the 4 you can get out of deathwatch, they can only have 2 gunners, which means you can't have a team's worth of psycannon dudes and a team's worth of incinerator dudes, which would be invaluable in a campaign. Deathwatch can have 2 frag cannons and 2 infernus bolters in a campaign, which is awesome when you're swapping between a horde army opponent and an elite army opponent. I don't think GK will be terrible, I just think DW will prove to be them, but functioning far better because their loadout is much more flexible.

2. Thousand Sons ignoring moving with heavy weapons doesn't really matter because you can have anyone move and shoot with heavy weapons by making them the Heavy specialty. Even in one-off skirmish games.

The rule of one is baked into the BrB but we have not seen psyker rule for KillTeam, remember its a whole new game with new rules rule of 1 might not exist. Also the moving and shooting the heavy was not really the main thing that makes them good, its the 2+ armor against damage 1 weapons and their bolters and flamers that are -2, makes almost anything not a 3+ dead. But dont forget that anything over half the range of your weapon is at a -1 to hit, plus if they are in cover thats another -1. if you are running your heavy and he moved, thats ANOTHER -1 to hit. T sons get the advantage of not needing to bother with heavy weapons specialist.

 Backspacehacker wrote:


The rule of one is baked into the BrB but we have not seen psyker rule for KillTeam, remember its a whole new game with new rules rule of 1 might not exist. Also the moving and shooting the heavy was not really the main thing that makes them good, its the 2+ armor against damage 1 weapons and their bolters and flamers that are -2, makes almost anything not a 3+ dead. But dont forget that anything over half the range of your weapon is at a -1 to hit, plus if they are in cover thats another -1. if you are running your heavy and he moved, thats ANOTHER -1 to hit. T sons get the advantage of not needing to bother with heavy weapons specialist.

I've read that the Psychic phase is only for a single Psyker per player. That Psyker can use multiple powers as stated on their sheet, but they can't use the same power twice.

The other nice thing about Tau drones is because they aren't in a fire team, they can be freely added in as "new recruits" in any game. The grav-inhibitor drone, recon drone and gun drone will be the go-to drones, with shield and marker drones basically never used because shield drones don't get their 5+ fnp vs the mortal wound from Savior Protocols (making them pointless) and the marker drones don't get move and fire heavy weapons (meaning they'll be pretty much always hitting on sixes..at which point I'd always just go fishing with 4 pulse shots.)

Recon drone seems like an auto-take (Costs as much as a regular gun drone but gets 2W and grants ignores cover to one of your pathfinder gunners) and the grav inhibitor drone as well. Shame you can only have one of each.

I am really, really, really hoping I'm wrong about Breachers but they. look. awful. instead of slightly retooling their gun with Kill Team in mind, making it a single profile with 15" range that gets +1s -1AP if within 10" and +2S -2AP if within 3", it's effectively 3 separate weapons where you choose the profile. If your breacher charges in to within THREE INCHES of an enemy and fires the "I'm right up close" profile, YOU GET -1 TO HIT BECAUSE THATS LONG RANGE. Oh wait, breachers get a special stratagem, maybe that helps - nope, it gives a reroll to wound with your S6 weapon that you're hitting on probably 5s or 6s with.

so right now, it's looking like Breachers are basically "pay the same price as a fire warrior, but your My Gun Works range is 5" instead of 15" (or 18" if you bring the accelerator drone)". I really want to like them because I love the concept of close ranged shotgun tau, but..man, does GW seem to love to screw them at every turn, which is just wild because they're supposed to be the Sexy New Reason To Get The New Kit.

Imperial Guard will be insane because 4 Scion Gunners can take plasma guns, 3 Special Weapon Gunners can take plasma guns, 1 Guardsman Gunner can take a plasma gun, then the 2 sergeants can take plasma pistols and give orders.
100% Disgusting.

 Ratepe wrote:
Imperial Guard will be insane because 4 Scion Gunners can take plasma guns, 3 Special Weapon Gunners can take plasma guns, 1 Guardsman Gunner can take a plasma gun, then the 2 sergeants can take plasma pistols and give orders.
100% Disgusting.

Oh hey look guard broke the game! Par the course.

 w0nderland wrote:
So I am going to try an convince a friend to get into Kill Team, and I don't want to hook them up with a lower-tier faction.
Is there any sense yet of what is going to be fair to play?

I don't want a repeat of my experience with 8e and back the slowest horse in the race (cough Grey Knights).

Thousand Sons are pretty solid. +1 save versus D1 weapons, the Soulreaper doesn't have movement penalties, and they get psychic access.

 Ratepe wrote:
Imperial Guard will be insane because 4 Scion Gunners can take plasma guns, 3 Special Weapon Gunners can take plasma guns, 1 Guardsman Gunner can take a plasma gun, then the 2 sergeants can take plasma pistols and give orders.
100% Disgusting.

First off, Only your Leader (whoever that is, doesn't have to be a sergeant) can issue an order in the shooting phase. You can spend your 2 command points on "Sir Yes Sir" to make it affect all models within 2" of the target model, or you can use whatever the other one is called to make them issue a second order, but then you're done.

By my math I can get those 10 models in my team, plus the one tempestor sarge but he doesn't have the points for his plasma pistol. So I assume he's gonna issue the order and stand in the back.

So I've got my ten plasma gun dudes, and I've got them in some kind of quantum formation that they're all within 2" of some guy in the middle, with the officer in the back somewhere. And I'm guessing we're issuing the "reroll 1s to hit" order on them so they can use their plasma guns with less chance of getting insta-OOA'd by a 1.

Doesn't this seem like a thing you could counter relatively easily? For starters there's no character protection for that officer, so I could just shoot him with something and suddenly all the plasma guns can't overcharge or they'll risk popping themselves. For another, you've guaranteed that every single multishot weapon I have can just spread those shots around to every guy so I don't overkill with any of my shots. Also, melee rush teams exist and you're not Tau, if someone charges you you've got 2 shots with your plasma gun before that melee trooper ties up 2-3 guardsmen or more with the pile-ins. It'd probably be more, tbh, if these guys are all in a cluster I'd charge someone relatively near the center with my Harlequin, shred that one dude and basically take his place with the consolidate move, tying up half the dudes in the clump.

I'll give you this, it definitely seems like the kind of thing the internet would lose its mind about.

That amount of plasmaguns is pretty damn nasty even without overcharge though...

the_scotsman wrote:

I was just mentioning the amount of plasma they can take, there would be no reason to take the tempestor (Thanks for the math check!). So 8 plasma guns and a plasma pistol with 10 points left over if we wanted to max out on plasma potential.
The orders are great for those re-roll 1s, and you can use it within a 12" range, so why would you put your officer in harms way? Also clumping all your guys together like that would be silly.
I don't even think you need to overcharge unless someone foolishy gets within a 12" range in line of sight. Wounding GEQ on 2+ and MEQ on 3+ with a -3ap is nothing to scoff at; hitting of course is a different story, but having 4 Scions with 3+ BS helps.
That being said, my friend can 100% run that list, so I would be curious on how to break it.

 Ratepe wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

I was just mentioning the amount of plasma they can take, there would be no reason to take the tempestor (Thanks for the math check!). So 8 plasma guns and a plasma pistol with 10 points left over if we wanted to max out on plasma potential.
The orders are great for those re-roll 1s, and you can use it within a 12" range, so why would you put your officer in harms way? Also clumping all your guys together like that would be silly.
I don't even think you need to overcharge unless someone foolishy gets within a 12" range in line of sight. Wounding GEQ on 2+ and MEQ on 3+ with a -3ap is nothing to scoff at; hitting of course is a different story, but having 4 Scions with 3+ BS helps.
That being said, my friend can 100% run that list, so I would be curious on how to break it.

Either by having something fast enough to trap him in melee, or by out ranging him and dancing outside of his range would be my guess.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As a caveat: I should mean outside of rapid fire range at least. Most game boards will result in people being inside of 24" most of the time.

The sketarii sniper list, or hell even marine scouts would brutalize that plasma list. You are only going to be hitting them on 6 if they are in cover.

 Ratepe wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

I was just mentioning the amount of plasma they can take, there would be no reason to take the tempestor (Thanks for the math check!). So 8 plasma guns and a plasma pistol with 10 points left over if we wanted to max out on plasma potential.
The orders are great for those re-roll 1s, and you can use it within a 12" range, so why would you put your officer in harms way? Also clumping all your guys together like that would be silly.
That being said, my friend can 100% run that list, so I would be curious on how to break it.

You would clump them because you want to use sir yes sir? Otherwise all your plasma guns are losing most of what makes them useful which is the D2 making out of actions reliable.

A plasma gun is all well and good on a sniper specialist but I'm not seeing why spamming them on your whole fire team is OP, I'm sorry. There's a hidden strat here I'm not getting.

Still early to tell, but Harlequins seems to be total bonkers. As our local best player already focused on building a KT with them I know they must be disgusting to face.

Worth mentioning with Guard is they have zero Combat or Zealot specialists, which means they effectively auto-lose one out of four matched play missions unless they're playing against another weak CC army.

I think thousand sons are potentially the strongest, rolling around with a 2+ save against most weapons makes them pretty durable and they've got AP-2 on their bolters. The only good way to kill them is spam overcharged plasma...which is probably the other best list.

I played a few matches with orks today and was pretty pleased with kommandos. Very easy to keep them obscured in cover for a -2 to hit and they are quite fast with the re-roll to charges. It also feels really good to always hit on sixes when opponents can find all sorts of ways to stack negative hit modifiers on things which you end up just not caring about. Close combat also feels really good when you have small boards, hard to hit kommandos, and the fact that there are far fewer sources of to-hit penalties in cc than there are at a range.

For matched play, the good factions are going to be the ones that can put together a pool of 20 models that then can can be used in some combination to handle all other factions. Assuming each player doesn't know which models the other person picks, but only sees their list of 20, this means the factions with the smaller numbers of models and wider variety of weapons are going to have the most flexibility and fewer bad matchups.

I played with Grey Knights and they actually felt pretty solid. I had Justicar with Deamon Hammer, Heavy with Psycannon, Demo with Incinerator (woo ap-1 flamer), Force Sword Zealot and another Force Sword PAGK. Biggest advantage is any of them can manifest Psybolt so you can knock out, or at least weaken, a target before shooting where you need it most. I think a more melee focused team with Falchions could be decent as well

Deathwatch felt pretty satisfying to play, Tau as I suspected they would be not so much.

I played Tau into Skitarii and the difference in power between Canticles of the Omnissiah and Tau markerlights was just staggering. One turn basically went like this

Mechanicus: Declare Canticles of the Omnissiah granting effectively one markerlight on everybody.

Tau: Ready up 2 markerlight pathfinders and 2 pathfinder gunners.

Mechanicus: Ready up 2 transuranic arquebi.

Tau: Fire with one markerlight, looking for a four. Miss. Reroll. Miss.

Mechanicus: Fire arquebus at a Pathfinder gunner, reroll a 1 to hit, wound and kill him.

Tau: Fire with the other markerlight, looking for a four. Hit him. Spend a CP to get additional markerlights, get him to the point you're rerolling 1s and ignoring cover.

Mechanicus: Use a friendly data-tether to ignore cover, shoot with the second Arquebus, kill the second Pathfinder gunner.

The ability to just passively declare "reroll hit rolls of 1 on everybody" and the ability to pair a skitarii special gunner with an omnispex to ignore cover basically allows Skitarii to get the possible benefits of the entire markerlight table just passively without expending any actions to do so. Tau have to expend the action of a 6-point model for a 50-50 (at best) chance to get a single marker down, then they have to spend a CP for that markerlight to be worth anything.

The basic gist I got out of it was that the implementation of Tau's 40k rules to Kill Team worked extremely poorly, even with the slightly buffed Markerlight table. If Tau have a viable build, it's most likely going to just be blandly spamming S5 AP- shooting from Flying platforms, ignoring the existence of special weaponry and markerlights.

So after some theory crafting I found also to add, that death guard has hands down the best melee unit in the game, that can absolutely brutalize imperium units.

A deathguard fighter can get exploding dice that can murderize thing, and honestly has lead me to believe that the flail needs to be changed to have a -1 to hit

To all the people that are crying over guard - are you aware that the 8 plasma list has no vox caster (and bad-ish morale) and only 9-10 T3 men, half of these with a 5+ armor?
It looks like a glass cannon to me, there are no LRBT here.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
To all the people that are crying over guard - are you aware that the 8 plasma list has no vox caster (and bad-ish morale) and only 9-10 T3 men, half of these with a 5+ armor?
It looks like a glass cannon to me, there are no LRBT here.

Especially with all the -1 to hit stuff they pretty much can never over charge