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This topic kind of came up in another forum from a guy looking for ideas for Tau auxiliary alien kill teams. The OP was kind of vague for what he was looking for, models or rules, so after adding things like Skaven, Beastmen, the eyeless sea elves, and the medusa murder elves for models, I also suggested he could really take any other kill team rules and run with them as "Tau" auxiliaries (most people who touched on rules seemed to stick just with Tau). An example I gave was that, if he wanted to, he could make super buff Firewarriors that were created from Tau experiments on captured SM gene seeds and just use SM scouts from the SM list to justify augmented Firewarriors (think like how Battletech has big, beefy Elemental soldiers engineered by the Clans while their Mechwarriors are generally enhanced in other areas). Playing them straight as is might be a challenge but somethings can be justified, like they get guns that fire Kroot rounds because the Ethereals are worried these warriors might see themselves as too superior. Though I suggested that you could also house rule changes like dropping their WS by 1 and giving them access to Pulse weapons, if their opponent was willing.

This was an off the cuff idea of what the OP could theoretically do with KT, but it got me thinking about how viable homebrew kill teams lists might be. I mean homebrew armies are a daunting task for someone to design but a kill team would be much easier. Rogue Trader seems to imply that GW isn't opposed to the idea of making teams that might not make it as a larger faction. So this makes me wonder if we might actually see more homebrew elements for the game than we have seen before, if GW continues to support KT. There are a lot of low hanging fruit that I think GW will probably get to like Arbites, Hrud, Eldar Cosairs, Non-Chaos Renegade SM options, etc. I think there are a lot of other ideas that could be created by enterprising players that GW might not touch like death cults, a high lord's private guard, original Xenos ideas, Chaos Orks and Eldar, and other wacky ideas like the one I described above.

Do you think we might see an upswing in homebrew content thanks to KT? Is there anything you might like to see?

I'm going to make a team of the kids from the young adult novels that generated such a gak storm of nerd rage when announced.

Winning games against said ragers will be exquisite.

I mean, the Heralds of Ruin folks have written up Arbites, Enslavers, Feral Orks, Rebel Grots, Kroot, Necromunda gangs, newbie Assassins, Rak'gol, Rogue Traders, Slann, Skaven, Thunder Warriors, Laer, Megarachnids, Olamic Quietude, and Storm Scions for their skirmish format, it isn't that much of a stretch.

No. 99% of homebrew stuff is trash. It's either poorly designed, poorly balanced, or some appalling Mary Sue fanfic about the creator's pet faction. Or all of the above. Kill Team doesn't change this, so Kill Team won't make the trash any more acceptable.

 Peregrine wrote:
No. 99% of homebrew stuff is trash. It's either poorly designed, poorly balanced, or some appalling Mary Sue fanfic about the creator's pet faction. Or all of the above. Kill Team doesn't change this, so Kill Team won't make the trash any more acceptable.

To be so adamant to defend FW you are too fast to spur gak into all fan-made stuff.

Maybe is because you have spent a ton of money on FW and you need to justify your own purchases?

 Galas wrote:
To be so adamant to defend FW you are too fast to spur gak into all fan-made stuff.

Maybe is because you have spent a ton of money on FW and you need to justify your own purchases?

Or maybe because FW is official, while fan-made trash is not. And, as low of a bar as GW's official rules set for quality, most fan-made stuff is even worse.

 Galas wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
No. 99% of homebrew stuff is trash. It's either poorly designed, poorly balanced, or some appalling Mary Sue fanfic about the creator's pet faction. Or all of the above. Kill Team doesn't change this, so Kill Team won't make the trash any more acceptable.

To be so adamant to defend FW you are too fast to spur gak into all fan-made stuff.

Maybe is because you have spent a ton of money on FW and you need to justify your own purchases?

What's FW got to do with it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I mean, the Heralds of Ruin folks have written up Arbites, Enslavers, Feral Orks, Rebel Grots, Kroot, Necromunda gangs, newbie Assassins, Rak'gol, Rogue Traders, Slann, Skaven, Thunder Warriors, Laer, Megarachnids, Olamic Quietude, and Storm Scions for their skirmish format, it isn't that much of a stretch.

Yep - and they playtest & revise it their lists, like Yaktribe do for their Necromunda lists.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
To be so adamant to defend FW you are too fast to spur gak into all fan-made stuff.

Maybe is because you have spent a ton of money on FW and you need to justify your own purchases?

Or maybe because FW is official, while fan-made trash is not. And, as low of a bar as GW's official rules set for quality, most fan-made stuff is even worse.

So something, just by being official, it becomes instantly better? I kind of agree that of course official stuff will be consistently better than fan-made stuff. But just like not all official products are good, not all fan-made ones are bad.

 Galas wrote:
So something, just by being official, it becomes instantly better? I kind of agree that of course official stuff will be consistently better than fan-made stuff. But just like not all official products are good, not all fan-made ones are bad.

Official means it's part of the game by default, and the expectation is that you use it as-is. I don't know why you find it confusing that there's a difference between saying "we should play by RAW, not by fan rules" and "we should play by fan rules", or that I would argue for the first but not the second.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
So something, just by being official, it becomes instantly better? I kind of agree that of course official stuff will be consistently better than fan-made stuff. But just like not all official products are good, not all fan-made ones are bad.

Official means it's part of the game by default, and the expectation is that you use it as-is. I don't know why you find it confusing that there's a difference between saying "we should play by RAW, not by fan rules" and "we should play by fan rules", or that I would argue for the first but not the second.

But thats not what you said. You said that all fan made stuff is trash, thats what I was arguing agaisnt. Is absolutely reasonable to only play official stuff.

 Galas wrote:
You said that all fan made stuff is trash, thats what I was arguing agaisnt

I said no such thing. I said that most fan made stuff is trash, and I stand by that claim. One look at the proposed rules forum will make my point quite nicely. It's much easier to say "only play official rules" than to sort through the vast sea of trash to find the one good idea.

Getting people to play home brew over official is just hard even if its better than the official.

It sometimes is better but not everyone is going to agree with choices made same as people don't agree with official choices.

I think the new KT has truely awful unit and equipment selections/options with huge gaps.

will most people try a HR variant at our club - not easily.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
You said that all fan made stuff is trash, thats what I was arguing agaisnt

I said no such thing. I said that most fan made stuff is trash, and I stand by that claim. One look at the proposed rules forum will make my point quite nicely. It's much easier to say "only play official rules" than to sort through the vast sea of trash to find the one good idea.

You actually said that 99% is trash, which while true that that is technically not all, it's still like me saying that if I dig a hole in my back yard I'm 99% certain I won't find the Holy Grail there. I'm certain I won't find it, but the Holy Grail kind of implies a supreme being that could make me find it even if I didn't want to. Thus I'm only 99% sure. Then again I suppose I could have a psychotic break, so let's call it 98% sure.

The thing is, compared to an RPG, 40K doesn't really have a vast pool of people developing their own homebrew stuff. Let's face it, developing rules for entire armies is a big task that many might not even want to bother with. A Kill Team is significantly smaller which might draw more people to try. A larger homebrew community working on such projects will likely lead to other people looking into others works and providing suggestions and criticisms as they are looking at what others are doing. A bigger community will probably lead to better quality stuff in the long run.

Then again, you might be of the opinion that unless GW buys the idea from the creator and produces an actual book for it, it's crap. You might go as far as saying that even GW produced armies with no codex, like the Kroot Merc list from 3rd which stated it was designed to be fun but would be difficult to compete with, is crap. I can't help you there but homebrew things are supposed to be for fun so you don't have to play them and you likely won't ever see them at a tournament.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
To be so adamant to defend FW you are too fast to spur gak into all fan-made stuff.

Maybe is because you have spent a ton of money on FW and you need to justify your own purchases?

Or maybe because FW is official, while fan-made trash is not. And, as low of a bar as GW's official rules set for quality, most fan-made stuff is even worse.

As official as any expansion is anyway.

 Peregrine wrote:
No. 99% of homebrew stuff is trash. It's either poorly designed, poorly balanced, or some appalling Mary Sue fanfic about the creator's pet faction.

Isn't that basically your opinion of GW rules too though?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
You said that all fan made stuff is trash, thats what I was arguing agaisnt

I said no such thing. I said that most fan made stuff is trash, and I stand by that claim. One look at the proposed rules forum will make my point quite nicely. It's much easier to say "only play official rules" than to sort through the vast sea of trash to find the one good idea.

The issue is that most people don't get things past the "what if" stage of rules writing so that is why it turns into a slog of wildly imbalanced stuff. Get a group of people together that want to make some home brewed stuff work and are willing to put rules changes through their paces and you would probably see a better end result.

The most important quality of homebrew rules is charisma and overall character of their creator. Actual balance comes second, as people get into endless OP/UP debates even over official stats, rules quality and FW. So, if you happen to be able to "sell" them to your opponents then you do them and play them. This is least likely within pickup culture and most likely in small groups of actual friends, not just people who recognize each other from FLGS nights. This is also why "count as" is more prevalent even within rulesets deemed so broken and unusable as GWs. I have made and played against a number of house dexes and reasonable ones are much more common than Peregrine thinks they are.

Posting homebrew dexes/rules on dakka however, is another story entirely, due to hostility of some regulars. So I don't expect to see a sudden flood of fully fleshed out homebrew kill teams here, but do expect stories about creating those in appropriate FB groups.

But we can most certainly expect all sorts of crazy conversion themes if Kill Team actually grows into third main game.

I’ve made some trash myself, and just lack the energy and interest to go back and revise it any time soon. I will generally agree with the sentiment. Though, not everyone is as... pleasant in real life as some of the posters on this forum are to each other, so ironing out kinks among those with mutual interests isn’t a big deal.

Honestly im hoping this is going to give the much needed kick in the pants to the HoR team to take the kill team game and make it what HoR was in 7th ed.

 Mmmpi wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
To be so adamant to defend FW you are too fast to spur gak into all fan-made stuff.

Maybe is because you have spent a ton of money on FW and you need to justify your own purchases?

Or maybe because FW is official, while fan-made trash is not. And, as low of a bar as GW's official rules set for quality, most fan-made stuff is even worse.

As official as any expansion is anyway.

Not an expansion.

Table wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
To be so adamant to defend FW you are too fast to spur gak into all fan-made stuff.

Maybe is because you have spent a ton of money on FW and you need to justify your own purchases?

Or maybe because FW is official, while fan-made trash is not. And, as low of a bar as GW's official rules set for quality, most fan-made stuff is even worse.

As official as any expansion is anyway.

Not an expansion.

I have a friend who always insists on using the Tyranids expansion even though I’d rather he didn’t.

 LunarSol wrote:

Table wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
To be so adamant to defend FW you are too fast to spur gak into all fan-made stuff.

Maybe is because you have spent a ton of money on FW and you need to justify your own purchases?

Or maybe because FW is official, while fan-made trash is not. And, as low of a bar as GW's official rules set for quality, most fan-made stuff is even worse.

As official as any expansion is anyway.

Not an expansion.

I have a friend who always insists on using the Tyranids expansion even though I’d rather he didn’t.

You don't see many people using the Tyranid FW stuff.

After reading through the faction rules for kill team, beleive me. I'm all for home brewing and house-ruling this travesty of a ruleset.

GW has once again told kitbashers to pound sand. I already had in mind my ideal Deathwatch kill team. Turns out they can't have any bolt pistols, chainswords, or Medic specialists, and only two out of the half dozen or so Astartes heavy weapons choices. I'll be house ruling those as valid options, and extremely open to other people's suggestions on how to fix their favorite factions.

 LunarSol wrote:

Table wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
To be so adamant to defend FW you are too fast to spur gak into all fan-made stuff.

Maybe is because you have spent a ton of money on FW and you need to justify your own purchases?

Or maybe because FW is official, while fan-made trash is not. And, as low of a bar as GW's official rules set for quality, most fan-made stuff is even worse.

As official as any expansion is anyway.

Not an expansion.

I have a friend who always insists on using the Tyranids expansion even though I’d rather he didn’t.

An expansion is cities of death or apoc. You play a game of apoc. You do not play a game of chaos forge world units. Beyond this simple logic many forgeworld data sheets include a seal that states the unit is intended for regular use in 40k. And in most books it is also explained that FW products are intended to be used in base games of 40k.


Its why most people accept forgeworld as legal. Because it is. The holdouts will always be holdouts. Its best to just not play games with them.

 Commander Endova wrote:
GW has once again told kitbashers to pound sand. I already had in mind my ideal Deathwatch kill team. Turns out they can't have any bolt pistols, chainswords, or Medic specialists, and only two out of the half dozen or so Astartes heavy weapons choices. I'll be house ruling those as valid options, and extremely open to other people's suggestions on how to fix their favorite factions.

This is proving my point about bad fan-made rules. Your "homebrew" version consists of "fix my faction by buffing it", not a genuine attempt to add new content to the game.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Commander Endova wrote:
GW has once again told kitbashers to pound sand. I already had in mind my ideal Deathwatch kill team. Turns out they can't have any bolt pistols, chainswords, or Medic specialists, and only two out of the half dozen or so Astartes heavy weapons choices. I'll be house ruling those as valid options, and extremely open to other people's suggestions on how to fix their favorite factions.

This is proving my point about bad fan-made rules. Your "homebrew" version consists of "fix my faction by buffing it", not a genuine attempt to add new content to the game.

Adding bolt pistols is hardly buffing it. Adding Medics is hardly buffing. It's just adding equipment that some people feel should already be available to them.

If this is what you deem as "buffing", then by that logic, you could never add anything that wasn't strictly worse than everything else.

Please take the FW stuff elsewhere.

I suspect options will be added with later expansions, like what you feel is missing from DW. The factions do seem more like place holders until GW can take a more detailed look at them. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we ended up seeing an index style book that has a handful of related teams in greater detail (I don't think GW would do well if they tried to sell a codex style book for each team).

One thing that might be fun would be a Cabal style team where you might not get great variety of equipment or roles, but you would be able to take unique Xenos agents like a Slaugh who gets advantages for being a sentient psychic swarm. You could also use it to represent exotic mercs or pirates akin to Farscape.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Commander Endova wrote:
GW has once again told kitbashers to pound sand. I already had in mind my ideal Deathwatch kill team. Turns out they can't have any bolt pistols, chainswords, or Medic specialists, and only two out of the half dozen or so Astartes heavy weapons choices. I'll be house ruling those as valid options, and extremely open to other people's suggestions on how to fix their favorite factions.

This is proving my point about bad fan-made rules. Your "homebrew" version consists of "fix my faction by buffing it", not a genuine attempt to add new content to the game.

Adding bolt pistols is hardly buffing it. Adding Medics is hardly buffing. It's just adding equipment that some people feel should already be available to them.

If this is what you deem as "buffing", then by that logic, you could never add anything that wasn't strictly worse than everything else.

Of course it's buffing. More options is more power. And there's no reason to believe that it should be available, other than wanting a faction to be more powerful. It's very clear design that not every faction has access to every option.

 Peregrine wrote:


And there's no reason to believe that it should be available, other than wanting a faction to be more powerful

Yeah, just no. Most of the people who want more options want it so that they can have more variety. Shotguns or a chainsword & pistol combo for guardsmen won't make them meaningfully more powerful.

 Crimson wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


And there's no reason to believe that it should be available, other than wanting a faction to be more powerful

Yeah, just no. Most of the people who want more options want it so that they can have more variety. Shotguns or a chainsword & pistol combo for guardsmen won't make them meaningfully more powerful.

Exactly. For a game that promotes converting your team, it's pretty disappointing that those options aren't reflected in the rules, or that units that make perfect sense such as striking scorpions are missing (undoubtedly to appear soon in an "expansion"). It isn't the chances of winning, it's the variety and the fun of using those things. People probably will take it upon themselves to correct GW's mistakes in that regard.