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.

Later in the year, I'll be running a Kill Team event/tournament. Nothing too big, and it is supposed to be a fun side event to the main 40k tournament, but there will be prize support.

Is there anything we should watch out for in terms of keeping armies to a 'fun' play level?
I ask this because we did a trial run a few days ago and one player (which might have been me) took a kill team consisting of 8 Screamers of Tzeentch. This was... dominant. There were some turn one tablings. As such it has been 'banned' from future events. From this we've decided to limit the number of non-infantry models a kill team can take, and the number of multi-wound models a kill team can take.
Does anyone have experience with a Kill Team event and what restrictions (if any) there need to be?

The 40k kill team rules aren't that good really for competitive play . Its fun and all but you do not wan to start the near impossible task of balancing / fixing it yourself.

A good alternative would be just to play the heralds of ruin version.

http://heralds-of-ruin.blogspot.nl/p/kill-team-rules.html

When my GW store does it they say no 2+ saves, no invuls above 3+, no combined armour values above 33, no monstrous creatures or flyers, no psykers above level 2 and no summoning.

And even then someone always managed to break the game somehow.

Yeah there are just too many ways to break Kill Team that you would have to make sportsmanship the clear #1 prize for the tournament to dissuade people from spamming power units.

HoR is a little more balanced but still not perfect. For instance, you can take a bunch of terminators or obliterators and if your opponent didn't take any AP2 they're screwed.

Also very important for KT is that you're going to want about 2/3 board coverage for terrain. Depending on how big the tournament will be that may be really tough for many game clubs.

I'm not trying to dissuade you from running the tourney, just pointing out that there are a lot of moving parts to take into account if you're looking to make it a "fun" tournament. You might be better off telling everyone to go cutthroat and be done with it

Kill Team isn't a terribly well designed army Comp. There are lots, and lots of balance problems, and it is hard to build effective armies from several codexes (Tyranids, Grey Knights).

The Break test is really punishing against some armies (IG, Orks, Tau), and matters next to nothing to others (Demons, Space Marines).

If you want a more open and balanced Kill team, your best bet is probably to look at one of the redesigns like "Heralds of Ruin": http://heralds-of-ruin.blogspot.com/p/kill-team-rules.html

---------------------------------

More of a direct response to your question.

Kill team no-funsies break down generally into 3 categories.
1) Overly meched up.
5 Tau Piranhas. It's quasi impossible to beat, and has the tools to beat any other kill team. The problem is is AV 11 everywhere. They have the non-vehicle models in the form of gun drones.
5 Space marines in a Rhino + a Razorback. Av 11 is the only target until you pop the rhino, and since you can shoot out of it, the army can still do good damage.
Here is a less problematic, but still meched up list: 10 Ork Boyz in a Trukk + 5 Tankbustas in a Trukk.

2) Too much Alpha Strike.
I'm guessing your screamers fell into this category, though I could have probably beat that list fairly easily with my Scions or Orks.
7 Eldar jetbikes with Scatter Lasers.
6 Tau Stealth Suits.

3) Players that don't understand Kill team, and build really, really bad lists.
This happens when players take expensive units and pile on the upgrades. I'm guessing this was the case for your opponents in your Screamer test games. For instance.
5 Harliquins with Fusion Pistols and Caresses.
5 Purifiers all with Hammers
5 Deathwatch Vets w/ 3 Heavy Thunder hammers.
5 Chosen w/ 3 Lightning Claws.

ETA: Despite GW's Kill Team sucking pretty bad, we've actually run a bunch (7 or 8) Kill team events that generally turned out well for almost everyone.

I would stay away from base kill team, warp spiders GG.

If you want to run a more balanced one, run herald of ruin, but for the love of god exclude assassins.

The only issue I take with Heralds of Ruin is its more about retrofitting existing 40k collections down into a smaller scale game than a good way to play 40k with a small investment. To that end, I have a preference towards the GW Kill Team, but I do agree it needs some work.

Primarily, the missions are terrible and the biggest thing in need of a fix. Beyond that, the biggest army composition problem comes from the inability to adapt between swarms and heavy armor. Taking armor cracking often leaves you severely lacking in attack volume and vice versa.

I'm not sure if there's a fantastic solution to this, but I've often felt that it would involve some kind of additional restriction like 1 vehicle per team and/or a maximum model count. I've also been curious if changing the detachment to something where you have to take at least 2 of the 3 available unit types would help.

Gw's most recent incarnation of kill team already uses a detachment with sensible restrictions and all. But it doesn't really help you could still field all jet bikes if you are phil kelly. -> proof https://www.warhammer-community.com/2016/12/24/kill-teams-in-the-office/

No bikes. Of any kind. Tomb Blades, Jetbikes, Bikers. Remove them, and Kill Team becomes very balanced.

Thing that annoys me about GW kill team is the no 2+ I mean, cmon terminators were built for this.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Thing that annoys me about GW kill team is the no 2+ I mean, cmon terminators were built for this.

I disagree completely. There are so many armies that are not competitive in normal 40K that become competitive in KT for the fact they have AP3 weapons. Tempestus Scions, Noise Marines, Thousand Sons...

Yea, but also you would only have 5 models, 2+ on terminators is not that scary. Plasma with sharp shooter.

A good rule is to make a list of units that have proven to be dominant or OP, then prevent people from making an army that contains only that unit (they have to include one other unit in the army). For example a Daemons list couldn't run a list of 8 screamers, but could run a list of 6 screamers and 3 bases of nurglings (in hindsight, that's still really powerful, but slightly diluted). What you can also do is modify stat blocks like HoR did, for example increasing the cost of the shadowloom, shield vane and nebuloscope upgrades on the Necron tomb blade to curb its tankiness and cheap cover ignoring power or moving Ork Lootas to elites so that they can be used. Remember, if you nerf instead of ban outright then you allow more options for players, but the more you do this the more you move closer to being better off just using the HoR rules to begin with.

In general KT is kinda broken, but as far as using it for a tournament it's only as broken as "regular" 40k and games tend to be fast and fluffy, so I'd support doing this in spite of balance problems.

Hi there, I ran a small tournament recently at my local store and the winner was the guy with like 25+ guards, and a commander in his Chimera. There was no way I could outshoot his guys and I was just drown in the lasguns. He could just send 10 guys at us to die while he just took the objectives with the rest. On the 4 matches he played he won them all by far.

So in our next tournament end of the month the staff limited the number of models to 15 (the said winner was planning at first to play an Ork list with even more models), we'll see how it turns out. I'll keep you hooked if I don't forget.

 Aaranis wrote:
Hi there, I ran a small tournament recently at my local store and the winner was the guy with like 25+ guards, and a commander in his Chimera. There was no way I could outshoot his guys and I was just drown in the lasguns. He could just send 10 guys at us to die while he just took the objectives with the rest. On the 4 matches he played he won them all by far.

So in our next tournament end of the month the staff limited the number of models to 15 (the said winner was planning at first to play an Ork list with even more models), we'll see how it turns out. I'll keep you hooked if I don't forget.

I played in a tournament against a similar list and won using 7 Noise Marines and a Rhino. Hitting on 3's, wounding on 3's with 3 shots per model is pretty effective at 1 for 1 killing ration.

Also worth noting the most powerful KT in the game right now are warp spiders and nurgal marines.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Also worth noting the most powerful KT in the game right now are warp spiders and nurgal marines.

You sure it's not 9 Tomb Blades? T5 Jet Bikes with a 3+, Ignores Cover, STR 5 rapid fire, twin linked shots?

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:
I played in a tournament against a similar list and won using 7 Noise Marines and a Rhino. Hitting on 3's, wounding on 3's with 3 shots per model is pretty effective at 1 for 1 killing ration.

Good thing there's something to counter them, but my Skitarii were drown in shots despite their 4+ and their 6+ FNP. I don't remember what happened to my Dragoon in this match but I think he met his demise early on. Otherwise the Dragoon is a seriously good unit to use, for 45 pts you can pop 4 S8 I6 attacks on the charge, I killed two sentinels in one match with it !

Still don't know how you survived tho, must have had lucky rolls or a table with more cover, because 7 marines for 25 rapid fire guys seems quite underwhelming. I don't know about their saves, standard 3+ I guess ? Do they have an inv ?

 Aaranis wrote:

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:
I played in a tournament against a similar list and won using 7 Noise Marines and a Rhino. Hitting on 3's, wounding on 3's with 3 shots per model is pretty effective at 1 for 1 killing ration.

Good thing there's something to counter them, but my Skitarii were drown in shots despite their 4+ and their 6+ FNP. I don't remember what happened to my Dragoon in this match but I think he met his demise early on. Otherwise the Dragoon is a seriously good unit to use, for 45 pts you can pop 4 S8 I6 attacks on the charge, I killed two sentinels in one match with it !

Still don't know how you survived tho, must have had lucky rolls or a table with more cover, because 7 marines for 25 rapid fire guys seems quite underwhelming. I don't know about their saves, standard 3+ I guess ? Do they have an inv ?

I made a thread about how good my Noise Marines were. this is from that: "Game 2 was against Imperial Guard and it was hold 3 objectives, each one worth 1 point. I tabled him turn 3 as all of my models killed what they shot at and he failed break tests miserably. I won 5-0 (First blood, slay the leader, break the enemy, and 2 objectives held.) "

Basically I used the terrain to keep my guys out of LOS of his heavy weapons platforms and just kept killing his models. Didn't take long before he was forced to take leadership tests using Guard's terrible LD. He failed a little less than half, which ended up like Turn 1: 25 Models to 18 models, Turn 2 18 models to 12 models and then failed leadership tests taking him to 7, and turn 3 7 models to 6 and failed the remaining model's leadership.

 Aaranis wrote:
Hi there, I ran a small tournament recently at my local store and the winner was the guy with like 25+ guards, and a commander in his Chimera. There was no way I could outshoot his guys and I was just drown in the lasguns. He could just send 10 guys at us to die while he just took the objectives with the rest. On the 4 matches he played he won them all by far.

You see, to me, that's a PERFECT result! I have a friend who plays the Guard and his forces are normally terrible, so it's pretty great that his force is the top dog in Kill Team. Not only that, but even as the top dog the army still PLAYS like Imperial Guard! Drowning people in bodies is so rarely actually useful in 40k, but in Kill Team it's a real strategy. Rather than changing things up, run another tournament and see what happens. Inform newbies that the winner last time won with that list. You'll see things change all on their own just because people now expect that army. There's lots of counters to it that are still good for Kill Team:

#1 - Orks Mob: If numbers win games, Ork Mobs can win games, and they often do! The Orks in this match can fight the Guardsmen point for point, and due to True Line Of Sight, it's much easier to hide a boy than a whole mob, which helps get them into combat. Taking them with a Trukk is extremely deadly, as it massively improves their treat range, and gives nigh immunity to anything the Guard will field, so long as you avoid the Chimera's Multi Laser.

#2 - Space Marines: You win by objectives, and break people at 50%. Space Marines, even if they break, never will be pushed off the board due to And The Shall Know No Fear, while the Guard absolutely will! The Space Marines might be reduced to 2 models in this fight, but can still claim victory as they refuse to back down.

#3 - Necrons: What was that about Chimeras? It's a vehicle that doesn't ignore armour? Well here I am with a reasonable number of models that all happen to be dead 'ard, with massively high leadership, and a gun that will strip that Chimera bare in a couple of turns! Walk forward and laugh!

#4 - BIKES: See, this is a great reason to allow bikes in Kill Teams. Bikes will chew up that Chimera and special weapons by being much tougher, and can get into position to blow stuff up from side or rear armours, and can claim objectives. The Bike's weakness? Enemies with weapons that ignore cover at a range, which is very reasonable to have with the smaller and more elite forces. This provides a nice rock/paper/scissors dynamic.

Those are the ones off the top of my head. There are more. Moreover, the basics of these are things that everyone can do in one way or another. Almost all factions can put some kind of Horde, even Space Marines (10 bare bones Space Marines are quite strong when each of them can throw a Krak Grenade!). Grey Knights and Harlequins definitely can't, but almost everyone else can. Almost everyone can run a Deathwatch Style kill team, with few models that are devastatingly well armed. Every army can field a Fast army, whether it be by Bikes or Jump Packs.

Generally, there's only 3 forces to avoid using in Kill Team:
#1 - Grey Knights. Turns out that paying a ton of points for psychic powers you don't get to use is a big penalty.
#2 - Harlequins. Very elite, but not very tough, and can't Run & Charge like normal. Even if they could Run & Charge I don't think they'd be great in Kill Team.
#3 - Tyranids. Sucks that a major army is so manstrung in Kill Team. You can't take enough Warriors to actually do enough damage, other things are too specialized for a regular game, and your gumbies run without having a Zoanthrope around that can't function because it's technically from a Brotherhood of Psykers despite having a Unit Size option of 1 model.

Suggestion:
The ONLY suggestion I'd make to help give the Grey Knights and Tyranids a lift is to allow Brotherhood of Psykers to remain in effect, but the models from the unit are still considered to be a single unit for purposes of generating warp charge, or for Deny the Witch rolls. In this way, Grey Knights effectively always have a Psyker in their army so long as they have at least 1 model left alive (very fitting), and Tyranid Zoanthropes can be usable as intended. Doesn't help Harlequins much, I'm afraid, but you can "fix" them by allowing them to Run & Charge as they normally would be able to in just about ANY of their formations/detachments.

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:
I made a thread about how good my Noise Marines were. this is from that: "Game 2 was against Imperial Guard and it was hold 3 objectives, each one worth 1 point. I tabled him turn 3 as all of my models killed what they shot at and he failed break tests miserably. I won 5-0 (First blood, slay the leader, break the enemy, and 2 objectives held.) "

Basically I used the terrain to keep my guys out of LOS of his heavy weapons platforms and just kept killing his models. Didn't take long before he was forced to take leadership tests using Guard's terrible LD. He failed a little less than half, which ended up like Turn 1: 25 Models to 18 models, Turn 2 18 models to 12 models and then failed leadership tests taking him to 7, and turn 3 7 models to 6 and failed the remaining model's leadership.

Ah yeah if you can drop their numbers the Ld should even things up. I guess I was just two newbie to use movement more wisely.

There's a guy who's going to bring 6 Eldar Jetbikes, what is so OP about them ? I don't have a clue about their stats, if someone could enlighten me about that please ?

 Aaranis wrote:

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:
I made a thread about how good my Noise Marines were. this is from that: "Game 2 was against Imperial Guard and it was hold 3 objectives, each one worth 1 point. I tabled him turn 3 as all of my models killed what they shot at and he failed break tests miserably. I won 5-0 (First blood, slay the leader, break the enemy, and 2 objectives held.) "

Basically I used the terrain to keep my guys out of LOS of his heavy weapons platforms and just kept killing his models. Didn't take long before he was forced to take leadership tests using Guard's terrible LD. He failed a little less than half, which ended up like Turn 1: 25 Models to 18 models, Turn 2 18 models to 12 models and then failed leadership tests taking him to 7, and turn 3 7 models to 6 and failed the remaining model's leadership.

Ah yeah if you can drop their numbers the Ld should even things up. I guess I was just two newbie to use movement more wisely.

There's a guy who's going to bring 6 Eldar Jetbikes, what is so OP about them ? I don't have a clue about their stats, if someone could enlighten me about that please ?

Volume of fire and having a 4+ cover. Honestly, I dont think Eldar bikes are that good in Kill Team. The list I feel is unbeatable is 9 Necron Tomb Blades with Nebuloscopes and Shield Vanes.

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Also worth noting the most powerful KT in the game right now are warp spiders and nurgal marines.

You sure it's not 9 Tomb Blades? T5 Jet Bikes with a 3+, Ignores Cover, STR 5 rapid fire, twin linked shots?

Oh yeah, I'm sure, flicker jump is op as all hell.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Also worth noting the most powerful KT in the game right now are warp spiders and nurgal marines.

You sure it's not 9 Tomb Blades? T5 Jet Bikes with a 3+, Ignores Cover, STR 5 rapid fire, twin linked shots?

Oh yeah, I'm sure, flicker jump is op as all hell.

How far back do they get to jump and what's the rule on their guns? I forget.

 Yarium wrote:
#2 - Space Marines: You win by objectives, and break people at 50%. Space Marines, even if they break, never will be pushed off the board due to And The Shall Know No Fear, while the Guard absolutely will! The Space Marines might be reduced to 2 models in this fight, but can still claim victory as they refuse to back down.

Watch out for that, in Kill Team I think They Shall Know No Fear was reworked to "reroll failed Ld tests" to keep them in line with other armies. I don't have the rulebook though, so I can't be sure.

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:
Volume of fire and having a 4+ cover. Honestly, I dont think Eldar bikes are that good in Kill Team. The list I feel is unbeatable is 9 Necron Tomb Blades with Nebuloscopes and Shield Vanes.

What's their armor saves and T values ? And weapons ? Each one can still only kill one dude, and I'm going to have 5 Vanguards, 5 Rangers and a Dragoon for him. That should do ?

 Aaranis wrote:


What's their armor saves and T values ? And weapons ? Each one can still only kill one dude, and I'm going to have 5 Vanguards, 5 Rangers and a Dragoon for him. That should do ?

Idk off the top of my head. I believe they are either T3 or 4. The guns are what you have to watch out for, IIRC.

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Also worth noting the most powerful KT in the game right now are warp spiders and nurgal marines.

You sure it's not 9 Tomb Blades? T5 Jet Bikes with a 3+, Ignores Cover, STR 5 rapid fire, twin linked shots?

Oh yeah, I'm sure, flicker jump is op as all hell.

How far back do they get to jump and what's the rule on their guns? I forget.

so in 200 points you can get

Death spinner which is WS5 BS5
and 9 warp spiders ws4 bs4

Flicker jump is done before the enemy fires shot, you get to jump 2d6, your opponent can not choose another target to shoot at even if you are out of LoS.

Basically you jump behind a wall, if they cant see you, to bad they cant shoot.

They guns are S6, AP - but, they use the models Init when determining damage, IE if your init is 3 its treated as T3 vs S6 weapon. On 6 its AP 2 and its assault 2. so whats those necrons init

Since kill team is meant to be played with lots of terrain, so its crazy OP.

 Aaranis wrote:

 Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:
I made a thread about how good my Noise Marines were. this is from that: "Game 2 was against Imperial Guard and it was hold 3 objectives, each one worth 1 point. I tabled him turn 3 as all of my models killed what they shot at and he failed break tests miserably. I won 5-0 (First blood, slay the leader, break the enemy, and 2 objectives held.) "

Basically I used the terrain to keep my guys out of LOS of his heavy weapons platforms and just kept killing his models. Didn't take long before he was forced to take leadership tests using Guard's terrible LD. He failed a little less than half, which ended up like Turn 1: 25 Models to 18 models, Turn 2 18 models to 12 models and then failed leadership tests taking him to 7, and turn 3 7 models to 6 and failed the remaining model's leadership.

Ah yeah if you can drop their numbers the Ld should even things up. I guess I was just two newbie to use movement more wisely.

There's a guy who's going to bring 6 Eldar Jetbikes, what is so OP about them ? I don't have a clue about their stats, if someone could enlighten me about that please ?

They are t4 3+ armor with jink if they need it for survivabiltiy.
They shoot 4 shots each at s6 and range 36" (in kill teams, basically table-range") for firepower
They move 12", could turbo boost to anywhere on the board if needed, and can jump/shoot/jump behind terrain, which should be reasonably heavy in kt games.

With a good grasp of tactics and an awareness of your opponent's speed and weapon ranges, you can easily win most matches without a casualty.


Even with that, I still fear the warp spiders more. Their shot dodging and guns that rend and wound 95% of the game on 2's are a bit OTT.

Edit: for reasons see the ninja'd post above.

 niv-mizzet wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
There's a guy who's going to bring 6 Eldar Jetbikes, what is so OP about them ? I don't have a clue about their stats, if someone could enlighten me about that please ?

They are t4 3+ armor with jink if they need it for survivabiltiy.
They shoot 4 shots each at s6 and range 36" (in kill teams, basically table-range") for firepower
They move 12", could turbo boost to anywhere on the board if needed, and can jump/shoot/jump behind terrain, which should be reasonably heavy in kt games.

With a good grasp of tactics and an awareness of your opponent's speed and weapon ranges, you can easily win most matches without a casualty.

Even with that, I still fear the warp spiders more. Their shot dodging and guns that rend and wound 95% of the game on 2's are a bit OTT.

Thanks ! Yeah that instakills my guys if they're AP4. Can't have the FNP against ID. I'll try to spread my guys out to always be able to shoot him anywhere, and charge all the time with my Dragoon.

I can see why people call them OP too, seems a bit long ranged for a unit based on speed.