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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
Agreed.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/08/04 22:45:08
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.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/08/05 02:36:49
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.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/08/05 07:24:02
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.
