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1. Are there any online discussion groups that are more active? Or is Kill Team simply not that popular?

2. Is anyone playing Commanders? I seem to be the only one local who purchased the book. The rest of the community isn’t even talking about the expansion.

There is no way to gage popularity at the moment. It’s popular with those that have it. I don’t know about the US, but here in the UK, none of us have been able to get the starter box since August. So if it seems like interest is dying down, it’s due to GW’s utter incompetence to produce more of the game. It would be far more popular if they would only bother to produce their own game. This game could be massive. I know myself and a lot of my friends used to be into GW stuff 18 years ago and this was bringing us back, if only we could get hold of it.

Gateway games only work if you have that gateway open.

There is a kill team reddit that sees some discussion, as does warhammer competitive reddit. However the Kill Team reddit has more people posting painted minis than discussion

2. Commander is bad. It takes everything good about Kill Team and throws it in the trash with unkillable super characters.

It's pretty popular around here. More people are playing KT than 40k, though many obviously play both. No idea about the discussion venues, but we use commanders fairly regularly (and haven't run into any issues).

 DarknessEternal wrote:
2. Commander is bad. It takes everything good about Kill Team and throws it in the trash with unkillable super characters.

What characters are you talking about? Most of the dangerous ones cost more than an entire normal KT, leaving you with plenty to counter them. Or use your own commander, since each player does get one.

There's nothing Tau or Necrons can do to fight a Deathwatch Master, for example.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
There's nothing Tau or Necrons can do to fight a Deathwatch Master, for example.

A watchmaster is 125 points at the barest minimum.

Tau have access to fusion and, at the most basic, can bring 18 fire warriors for that much. Shoot him to death? He's not weathering many rounds of all that fire coming his way (and remember, this is just what you can bring for his cost, you have the rest if your team to contend with the rest of his). He'll only be killing a fire warrior a round, so you win that fight. Not to mention the game, with all those objectives your 18:1 model advantage nets you.

Necrons can also being a lot of firepower for 125 points, or, if you want to go toe to toe with him, a level three melee overlord one rounds him with average dice. Four attacks that hit on 3s, wound on 2s, rerolling 1s on both, and three damage means one dead watchmaster as soon as he fails two 4+ invulnerable saves. Any 6s you roll to wound deal 3 mortal wounds, taking him to one failed save territory. Burn a cp for Haymaker and you can kill him in one hit if he fails the invul, since you're now damage 6 for that attack.

Try actually playing it a few times and you're gonna see how your mathcraft doesn't survive real life.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Try actually playing it a few times and you're gonna see how your mathcraft doesn't survive real life.

I have? As I said, we use Commanders fairly regularly, and super expensive characters just aren't that big of a deal. You either have your own to counter, overwhelm them with bullets/attacks (bullets are often the better choice, obviously, since most of the expensive things are pretty murder-y in melee), or just ignore them and win the game while accepting that they're going to mulch a few sacrificial pawns that you set up as speed bumps.

Granted, I don't personally play Necrons, but that doesn't change how it works out. In that Watchmaster vs. Overlord instance from earlier, whichever commander gets the drop on the other should win, so the game comes down to who plays it better. Which seems about right in what's ostensibly a game of skill.

What instances have you personally encountered that have been unwinnable? You do get to pick your team after finding out who/what you're fighting, don't forget.

Not liking that the "scale" of KT is expanding is fine, too, if that's your actual problem with the expansion. Everyone has their own preferences and ideas about what they want out of a skirmish style game, after all (I have my own issues with the game, though not necessarily this one), but claiming that it fundamentally breaks the game is disingenuous.

I think KT is quite popular. I see old players returning, and new players use it as a step on point. The fact that the base game is not awailable means it has sold more then antisipated.

In Norway we havr had problrms getting the commander rulebook, indicated they did not account for the demand. With prrhaps thr exception of the commanders the game is cheap by gw standars.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
There's nothing Tau or Necrons can do to fight a Deathwatch Master, for example.

Gonna disagree with this. Even on a small board, he's not that fast of a model and he can really only kill one model at a time unless you bunch up. At his cost he really won't have any back up even playing at 150. Tau can definitely either shoot him to death or just play the mission and win on objectives.

I am a bit saturated by the current 40k meta now, so lately I just hang back and work on stuff till after someone is done playing their proper 1500-2000 pt game, and play a Killteam match afterwards. I find the game much more enjoyable and rewarding. Having a model painted up an dreads for the table is much more of an accomplishment than the chore of getting tabletop ready for a Tournament. And the game play is just more cinematic. Last 3 player game I had was my Primaris home brew chapter, another Ultramarines Primaris team, and a T'au team.

The Ultramarine player charged headlong into the Tau, and it became my job to "subdue" the Marines, for the honor of the Chapter! Best game I've played in a long while. All just for fun.

Alot more fun than the bubble wrapped Knight lists...

Bit Commanders hasn't really kicked off that much. It has worked for me though, and Ill now have a few Primaris Lieutenants and characterson the way to the tabletop soon, when I had zero interest in Primaris Marines earlier this year.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
There's nothing Tau or Necrons can do to fight a Deathwatch Master, for example.

Gonna disagree with this. Even on a small board, he's not that fast of a model and he can really only kill one model at a time unless you bunch up. At his cost he really won't have any back up even playing at 150. Tau can definitely either shoot him to death or just play the mission and win on objectives.

Commander missions are 200. Also, Commander missions all boil down to who's commander is more of a badass.

Think you're Cadre Fireblade is going to kill a whole bunch of guys?

I'm saying if that's the case, use the 200 points to just take more normal guys. Again, the Watchmaster is one model with limited shooting and a slow movement speed. He needs to get into combat to kill things and with good positioning he's not going to be able to fight more than one guy at a time.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Also, Commander missions all boil down to who's commander is more of a badass.

Think you're Cadre Fireblade is going to kill a whole bunch of guys?

That's not true at all. There's one narrative mission that's literally a duel between commanders (hint: it's called Duel of Honour, where a Fireblade starting in melee with a Watchmaster is screwed), but narrative/open games are completely story driven, so just have your T'au politely decline the offer. And even then, you can still win after the Fireblade gets stomped by shooting the Watchmaster and a few of his friends to death (since they also give up VP and the Watchmaster will be standing out in the center of the board, alone).

All the matched play missions end with breaking your opponent, so even the most commander-centric of them can be won just by shooting the couple of cheerleaders the big bad brought (or, you know, just shooting the enemy commander to death with your massive firepower advantage). It's not any worse than having to advance off the far side or OOA enemies in melee for T'au. Being able to bring an extra 150+ points of dakka compared to your opponent's one melee beatstick should actually make those occasional awkward matches that much easier to win.

Campaign rules use all the Narrative missions.

I don't see a watch master doing much vs my ork kill team that has 3 power klaws and puts 20 models on the table?

or my Admech team that also has like 15 models including 3 plasma and 7 multi wound melee

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Campaign rules use all the Narrative missions.

What's your point? You're told to choose a mission together, and then, if you can't come to an agreement, roll on a chart. And even after all that, you can still easily win the mission that was your absolute worst case scenario: a mano-a-mano duel between commanders on turn one. The 150ish point Watchmaster has fun killing 20ish points of Fireblade, then gets blasted off the map. That's an amazing trade for the T'au player.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Try actually playing it a few times and you're gonna see how your mathcraft doesn't survive real life.

you picked one of the worst characters in the book for this though.

Like, even on the level of a model soloing the enemy army, the genestealer patriarch/broodlord is a better choice for speed, surviveability, and killing potential.

the watch master is simply too slow. A couple of heavy weapons will kill him before he's in you lines.

I simply do not comprehend the style of Kill Team games you folks are playing and any debate will be pointless since we are not playing the same game.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
I simply do not comprehend the style of Kill Team games you folks are playing and any debate will be pointless since we are not playing the same game.

Setting all arguments aside: what parts of Commanders don't you like and what sort of negative play experiences have you run into?

No hyperbole and no judgement from either side; maybe then we can get to the bottom of things and figure out where our differing opinions are coming from.