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We keep meaning to start a kill team league, but either something comes up or we have another event coming up or people are afraid of playing kill team. The biggest problem I'm running into is that people that are less familiar with kill team wanted to do a few practice rounds before we decide if there'll be a buy-in, how long the league will run, if we're doing any special limitations, and most importantly if it will be any fun. Between 5 of us we've played each other, the league will likely have 10-12. I told everyone this will be a casual league, unlikely to have much of a buy in, and if it does the focus will be a coolest list combined with sportsman award.

The immediate problem I'm already running into in testing is that there's already been a massive escalation in competitive levels of the test lists. Originally I played against some pretty nice kill team lists for GK, marines, tau, nids, orks, and necrons. I used a standard ravenwing list (so rerollable 4+ at best, nothing too crazy as testing had shown) as well as a 2 vet squad list. Everything seemed pretty even, fun games every time. After those early test games, some months went by where we kept making plans (with delays) and doing some pickup games of it here and there, and only now am I finally able to (possibly) start the league. I asked everyone what lists they were thinking of running now that they had played a bit and things are.... questionable. Two eldar scatbike lists, crons have wraith spam, a daemon list of all screamers, the GK dropped (he said GK aren't good at KT), tau stealth suit list, marine grav bike list (which actually will suck against a lot of these lists, outside of scatbikes maybe, but still). Ork player was the only one not going crazy, as outside of tons of bikes (which he isn't running) nothing too crazy is available, and he wanted to run a fun list as we had planned.

I decided, after talking to them, I'd see how the escalated lists worked using a dumb list of my own, black knights and a darkshroud (rerollable 2+++ bullgak) and it was either a sweeping victory (against tau and marines) or a slaughter of my army by the screamers. Not sure how the scatbikes/wraiths will work out. It is very obvious, however, that this will not be fun for everyone.

The ultimate question, then, is if I should just run it as is, change some things up to limit dumb lists, just change it to be a no-holds-barred thing that less people (including myself) will play in, or drop it altogether? I know for a fact that some of them won't be willing to weaken their lists (as "they might lose all their games"), and this really isn't in the spirit of what I wanted it to be. Really thinking about, the only options I'm actually considering are to plan a league and missions that I won't participate in (that will likely end in people quitting or hating kill team) or pass the reins on to whoever, if anyone, will take them. People will get mad if I create rules to limit cheese, as I can't make it perfectly balanced outside of banning certain lists.

I'm just really upset about this. I thought human decency and sportsmanship would prevent this, but some people just care too much about winning to make the game enjoyable for the less competitive (and no, I most definitely will not tell people they aren't allowed in the league if they don't tone it down, that seems really mean). This has genuinely killed a part of me.

Well, first a question so I fully understand, is this a league run for prizes or anything like that? That kind of reward brings out the competitive hardline in people.

That said, I think you're at the heart of matters. If you are unhappy with where you are going, you are right to put the brakes on and figure out something that makes you happy. My thoughts would be to find the players who want to go for a narrative experience and in the spirit you want, and set up a group with them to play with.

 curran12 wrote:
Well, first a question so I fully understand, is this a league run for prizes or anything like that? That kind of reward brings out the competitive hardline in people.

That said, I think you're at the heart of matters. If you are unhappy with where you are going, you are right to put the brakes on and figure out something that makes you happy. My thoughts would be to find the players who want to go for a narrative experience and in the spirit you want, and set up a group with them to play with.

A bit more of what I mentioned about prizes, likely the only award (and I told them all this) will be a combination of cool/fluffy list and sportsman. A voting on which list is your favorite (can't vote for yourself) combined with a sportsman award, considering something based on a vote at the end of your favorite three people to play against, although I was still discussing this point. You are awarded for not being TFG and nothing else. And I was 100% clear on this.

Still, for some reason unknown to me, people want to run the most frustrating lists to play against that they can think of. It truly baffles me.

Only potential other award would be a best painted, going off of how well the paintjobs of the group fit together as well as your general things. Chosen by the store owners.

Couple options.
1) Have a no-holds-barred league. Couple power gamers duke it out, everyone else sits it out.
2) Don't have a league.
3) Have a chill out league. Be honest and upfront about the expectations. Have adult conversations, be firm, take input and adjust accordingly.

If you are trying for a league without an emphasis on win ratios, don't reward wins. I understand that it can be difficult to tell people no, that's why being upfront about expectations is so important. If they know that it's not a face kicking league but don't have the respect to tone it down, telling them to kick rocks should be much easier.

Maybe limit the number of models your allowed, having 50 Gretchin and 5 Runtherds running around is a pretty impossible to kill

I was going to suggest some things until I saw "best painted". Now I hope this fails

 kingbobbito wrote:
Still, for some reason unknown to me, people want to run the most frustrating lists to play against that they can think of. It truly baffles me.

Winning is fun.

I have to agree with your prediciment.
I played a Kill Team tournament recently in which most people did adhere to the 'keep it nice' and it was great fun.
But there was that one guy packing the Eldar Warp Spider list, who scarcely even got shot at (I myself managed a to let off a single bolt round that entire game).

But beyond only taking the people that want to play ball, you don't really have any options. You can't restrict all the cheese without either restricting a lot of not-cheese and just further driving out the for-fun players, or by on an individual basis allowing/rejecting lists. Which would get very frustrating to the players who a get list rejected.

Could have a list of the worst offending options (e.g. scatbikes, wraiths, screamers, black knights, grav bikes) and say that no more than half your force can be composed from these (or maybe no more than a min-sized unit with no upgrades?)

Would probably limit craziness fairly simply, but you'd just need to make sure you did this for EVERY cheesy option that people could conceivably bring. I'm not sure what else is high-level in kill team as I don't play it...

A hard cap on model numbers would probably be a good idea also - just in case of someone bringing 50 gretchin or 66 brimstone horrors

I don't think there's any way around it because people are innately douchebag. My GW ran a 40K escalation League about a month ago. No Buy in no prize support just a fun way to get games. They allowed Unbound. We had people bringing flyers at 500 points, two super characters, all dreadnoughts, and someone even brought magnus the red at 750 points.

They are doing an AOS escalation League now and allowing no restrictions. Already one guy has brought a kunnin rukk at 500 points. There are talks of people bringing nothing but forgeworld monsters.

It is my opinion that any sort of structured event will bring out the worst people as somebody always wants to win it and say even if they only get bragging rights and nothing else that they "won"

NivlacSupreme wrote:
I was going to suggest some things until I saw "best painted". Now I hope this fails

As someone who mostly hangs around in Dakka's P&M section, I don't understand what the problem is.

Do you think using the Herald's of Ruin Kill Team might help? I am under the impression while it deviates from the core rules of 40K even more, it was set up to be more balanced overall. Plus, every player could see what any other faction can bring more easily and know what to expect Of course, this won't change the ultra-competive mindset of such players, but might limit that damage.

You could also completely devoid prizes from winning and losing. To help facilitate more balanced play you could give a prize to the players of the closest game. Conversely, you could give another prize for kill team with the most interesting backstory via 500 words or less blurb. Basically, taking all emphasis of winning and moving it on what you do want out of the league.

HoR is a pretty good answer; it takes away the squad size restriction (so armies with expensive units like GK aren't stuck with one or two legal kill-team builds in their entire book), it has Core/Special restrictions to limit things like a team entirely composed of Necron Wraiths, and you don't have the abuse potential in the global list of free special rules.

The only practical solution for the official Kill-Team is to manually go through and request people avoid using particularly degenerate units/builds, but you could catch out a lot of them by requiring players to take a Troops choice. Scatterbikes and Conscript/Grot-mobs would need to be addressed separately but you don't have to worry about lists composed entirely of Bikes, Centurions, Wraiths, battlesuits...

I really would recommend going for HoR, though; you've got a lot more freedom to build, everyone gets multi-wound commanders and cool wargear upgrades, you've got Mordheim-style climbing/jumping rules, everything's split up and clarified to avoid the purchased-as-unit/deployed-as-unit problem, vehicles are more constrained, and psykers are implemented (though with a heavily restricted/toned-down set of powers) so GK and Tzeentch Daemons are allowed to play.

Could introduce a mechanic where players swap armies after each game to play against the list they created? That'd help shift the emphasis more to strategic playing than list building.

Or alternatively, you could introduce a handicap system where each win you have means you have 5pts less to picky your army with in the next game, and each loss means you have 5pts more. That'd ensure that the more competitive players can continue to field their cheesy lists, but more fluffy players will have more reward for playing their fun but suboptimal options.

Having lots of emphasis on fluff + painting will help too, but I think only to an extent.

I think it's best to have the game mechanics encourage more balanced play rather than expect a large group to all have a gentleman's agreement - it means you can still try and think up the best tactics for winning the missions, which is fun.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
...it deviates from the core rules of 40K even more...

Barely. HoR could be read as a supplement to 40k that's about the same in scope as Zone Mortalis or Cities of Death, if it didn't repackage all the army lists; it just adds Mordheim-style climbing/hiding rules, an optional campaign system, and a more detailed set of rules/clarifications for how the game is altered by having single models operating alone (e.g. models must take Pinning tests for friendlies killed nearby, models with multi-shot weapons may divide fire between multiple targets, effects that normally work on a 'unit' affect a target model and anyone within 3"...).

Wayniac wrote:
I don't think there's any way around it because people are innately douchebag. My GW ran a 40K escalation League about a month ago. No Buy in no prize support just a fun way to get games. They allowed Unbound. We had people bringing flyers at 500 points, two super characters, all dreadnoughts, and someone even brought magnus the red at 750 points.

They are doing an AOS escalation League now and allowing no restrictions. Already one guy has brought a kunnin rukk at 500 points. There are talks of people bringing nothing but forgeworld monsters.

It is my opinion that any sort of structured event will bring out the worst people as somebody always wants to win it and say even if they only get bragging rights and nothing else that they "won"

Yes, because people who like to play the game competitively are "innately douchebag" and are "the worst people".

I swear, a bigger bunch of whiners and cry-babies cannot be found outside of 40K. If you want to start a league but reduce the competitiveness of it, then have a set of rules that state that - don't expect people to just psychically understand not to bring strong lists. In fact, judging from the builds you mentioned, it seems like a lot of those lists would match up well against each other, so it seems like you're the only one with a complaint. Not everyone just wants to have a fluffy game based on what YOUR opinion of that might be, lots of people like to field a good list with a chance to win every night. This happens in literally every game with a power scale.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
...In fact, judging from the builds you mentioned, it seems like a lot of those lists would match up well against each other, so it seems like you're the only one with a complaint...

For the record if you go back and read the original post the OP is worried that the GK and Ork player(s) are getting forced out by the competitive escalation, which seems like a perfectly reasonable complaint to me...

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
...In fact, judging from the builds you mentioned, it seems like a lot of those lists would match up well against each other, so it seems like you're the only one with a complaint...

For the record if you go back and read the original post the OP is worried that the GK and Ork player(s) are getting forced out by the competitive escalation, which seems like a perfectly reasonable complaint to me...

Sure, but if the group can come to a power consensus, that should resolve itself so everyone is on the same page.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
...In fact, judging from the builds you mentioned, it seems like a lot of those lists would match up well against each other, so it seems like you're the only one with a complaint...

For the record if you go back and read the original post the OP is worried that the GK and Ork player(s) are getting forced out by the competitive escalation, which seems like a perfectly reasonable complaint to me...

Sure, but if the group can come to a power consensus, that should resolve itself so everyone is on the same page.

But the group hasn't, half of it has.

If people stopped robbing people, we'd have a lot less robberies.

What he's looking for is a way to run a league where the power level is low enough that the "forgotten" armies can play and compete too.

PourSpelur wrote:
If people stopped robbing people, we'd have a lot less robberies.

What he's looking for is a way to run a league where the power level is low enough that the "forgotten" armies can play and compete too.

So a set of agreed-upon guidelines beforehand, yes? If discussions about the type of game people want to play is so common-place amongst 40k players, it makes sense that a league would also have a set of rules for things like army lists.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
In fact, judging from the builds you mentioned, it seems like a lot of those lists would match up well against each other, so it seems like you're the only one with a complaint.

This is definitely not true. As I mentioned, the issue with cheese in kill team is that your own power list will utterly destroy some lists while not being able to touch others. My rerollable 2+++ list means any list that relies on shooting to win will outright lose every single game, but any list that focuses melee will stomp me because screamers/wraiths beat black knights in melee. Low model count armies like mine or the wraiths won't cause sufficient casualties to mobs, while the screamers will eat through them in 2-3 turns.

In the end it turns into rock/paper/scissors, where some lists always beat other lists. A TAC list will lose to just about any of the specialized lists.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
So a set of agreed-upon guidelines beforehand, yes? If discussions about the type of game people want to play is so common-place amongst 40k players, it makes sense that a league would also have a set of rules for things like army lists.

How does one set rules to ban nothing but the most powerful lists, outside of "you arbitrarily can't use these lists because I don't like them"?

NivlacSupreme wrote:
I was going to suggest some things until I saw "best painted". Now I hope this fails

Why? Best painted is by far more worthy prize than most wins

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
...it deviates from the core rules of 40K even more...

Barely. HoR could be read as a supplement to 40k that's about the same in scope as Zone Mortalis or Cities of Death, if it didn't repackage all the army lists; it just adds Mordheim-style climbing/hiding rules, an optional campaign system, and a more detailed set of rules/clarifications for how the game is altered by having single models operating alone (e.g. models must take Pinning tests for friendlies killed nearby, models with multi-shot weapons may divide fire between multiple targets, effects that normally work on a 'unit' affect a target model and anyone within 3"...).

I've talked about HoR, but we have a couple purists that think fan-made rules are ultra-heresy, as well as some that are worried that since it's fan-made it'll be broken, even though it really is much less so than the official GW rules from what I've seen.

Wayniac wrote:
I don't think there's any way around it because people are innately douchebag.

Actually no. Even babies show sense of morals. Base human mind aims for good

 kingbobbito wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
...it deviates from the core rules of 40K even more...

Barely. HoR could be read as a supplement to 40k that's about the same in scope as Zone Mortalis or Cities of Death, if it didn't repackage all the army lists; it just adds Mordheim-style climbing/hiding rules, an optional campaign system, and a more detailed set of rules/clarifications for how the game is altered by having single models operating alone (e.g. models must take Pinning tests for friendlies killed nearby, models with multi-shot weapons may divide fire between multiple targets, effects that normally work on a 'unit' affect a target model and anyone within 3"...).

I've talked about HoR, but we have a couple purists that think fan-made rules are ultra-heresy, as well as some that are worried that since it's fan-made it'll be broken, even though it really is much less so than the official GW rules from what I've seen.

I don't think you're going to find a solution that makes everyone happy. At this point, it sounds like you're going to have to pick the players you want to hack off and go with that option. It's unfortunate, but that seems to be the hard decision that comes with adminstrating a group.

You could run 2 leagues.
Pro circuit for the guys who want to wring every bit out of the codex they can.
Kiddie pool for the dudes that want to play chill games.

P.S. you'll find me in the kiddie pool

I thoroughly enjoy Kill Team, but I can understand your problems with Cheese Lists. If people can't make sensible lists you will have to lay down the law. If you are the organiser of the event then make some event rules! I would suggest the following:

1) Ban all vehicles or only allow transports.

2) Ban Fast attack choices -very harsh but stops mass bikers or landspeeders etc

3) Limit the model count or the amount of spamming the same unit or only taking minimum sized units etc

Etc. Etc.

Those are probably a bit too harsh but would cut out the problem army/units. Other than that fight cheese with cheese. They've brought their Red Leicester so go defeat them with a slice of Stilton! Make a list that is anti infantry and anti vehicle e.g. template flamers for infantry and some form of mobile anti tank weapon, knock out the priority units and then focus on the remaining. Dare I say it look for synergy, I hate synergy personally. I am a player that makes a Kill Team list for a fluffy background with cool conversions to make the team look plausible, but any synergy you can find, use it against those list killers.
Best of luck, don't give in! I love Kill Team and it would be a shame to let others spoil it for you.

I tried GW's killteam with my buddy. The first two games I had a chance putting 4+ models on the table but lost both games. The third game he put IF Sterngaurd on the table for a game where I threw a Snikrot and Kommandos and the results were mostly laughable, with no cover save, I started break checks on turn one.

There are certain levels of this game that have to be about forging the narrative. Kill Team is good for having a narrative.