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 Crimson wrote:
I would love to have a proper 40K skirmish game, but Kill Team isn't what I want. It is just 40K in small scale, there is nothing unique to it. I want something between Kill Team and Necromunda, I want official Inquisimunda! I want a game where you can use some some 40K stuff, but there is a lot of customisability and ability to wield all sorts of weirdoes.

I do wish they would revise the original Rogue Trader book into something new that covers the smaller encounters of 40K. As well as hive gangs it could focus on Commoragh gangs, Inquistion purges, Gene-cult infiltrations, Corsair raids, Harlequin interference, Sisters of Silence hunts, Navigators and - naturally - Rogue Traders. The selling point could be to allow a unit to break up into individual units and to then form up again, a tactical decision to sacrifice mobility and coverage for stronger leadership, morale and concentrated fire.

True, if they did do away with Kill Team then it wouldn't be so bad as we would still have Necromunda, but hive-gangs are a bit limited in their scope and we naturally want a bit more than that without going into full-on 40K. And players would like that game that does encourage kitbashing and diy scenery projects, while exploring the non-military escapades of the 40K universe. With the reappearance of the Ambull and Zoat, they could release new versions of the manual's classic bestiary, such as the Astral Hounds, Grynx and even the Ymargl Genestealer.

So glad I still have that classic tome, because there is definitely something there that is left untapped.

I do wonder if they’ve just paused Kill Team to avoid encroaching on the release of 9th Ed. They may well release stuff later in the year/early 2021 once we’re clear of the release window.

If Killteam is the intro game I'd wager once 9th is out then they'll bring Killteam back too with a new version to be the new intro game once again.

Though with Corona things are likely a bit messed up - much like how we've clearly an extended gap before we get the Necron and Marine codex for the new boxed set and start of the game etc...

I could see KT being redone with a lot of the elements from crusade.

Yeah I see WarCry and Underworlds as a source of new models, plus as Overread said the problem for KT is that it relies on existing unit boxes so to build something interesting you need multiple boxes, while WarCry sets are complete- you can add to if you wish. The current KT starter is really boring -a box of primaris and a box of Fire Warriors isn't that interesting a build, the terrain is cracking though. The Rogue Trader box was more interesting, if they had followed it up with other faction team boxes it might have worked a bit better. Hopefully they are revamping KT and we will see something new soon. I'd love them to bring out Squats, Inquisitors retinue, Eldar Corsairs, Chaos Renegades etc..I don't really have time for building armies now but small forces played on boards look brilliant.

Maybe the plan is to bring out a new Killteam box out for Christmas after 9th has firmly launched..

I like that idea of using Rogue Trader as the setting/basis - it was a lot wilder and the universe was bigger and less defined with all sorts fo oddities around. Maybe we will se something in a later reveal, bound to have something to show in October for the run up to Christmas/New Year..

There were faction team boxes.
Drukhari, Space Wolves, Tau, Necrons, Scions, Orks(they actually had two! this was the first one though), Tyranids(theirs were Genestealers but specifically were Tyranids rather than GSC), and Deathwatch.

The original KT starter set(the current one is the second one and brought the Wolves and Tau sets into the starter) had a box of Skitarii Rangers/Vanguard and Genestealer Cult Neophyte Hybrids plus a whole heck of a lot of scenery.


After Rogue Trader(Starstriders and Gellerpox), we got the Commanders expansion which put a bunch of character blisters into a box format with traits and stuff.
Then we got to Elites.
Elites brought in a Death Guard box, Thousand Sons box, the second Ork box, and a second AdMech box(which was the only way to obtain the Techpriest Manipulus) and GSC box(only way to get the Kelermorph).

I want to say there was a Custodes box but I can't recall. The only three I know didn't see boxes were Chaos Marines(vanilla), Harlequins, and Aeldari...which was super weird because they were in from launch.

They were all units people already had, the rules within weren't great, the setups wouldn't translate well over to 40k proper(things like Pulse Blasters with Carbines and Rifles), etc were kind of a Big Deal. The boxes were effectively just a good way to get a piece of scenery and a unit of models at a discount.


This has a complete listing of everything under the 2018 heading, in case you're interested in seeing what everything was.

What needs, IMO, to happen with KT? I don't know. But there needs to be a 'hook' like WarCry has. Even when there wasn't every single faction involved in WarCry, it was an easy way to start because of the fact that the warbands lent themselves to you playing just them.

With any luck, Kill Team will be crossing over with Crusade. The two seem to be opposite sides of the same coin for my money.

Honestly I wouldn’t be that surprised if GW kind of just let KT die as they push more people towards Combat Patrol as the intro to the game. I could see them maybe publishing a few WD articles now and then for new units for KT and keeping it in print for a while, but with all the emphasis placed on Combat Patrol I feel like they are trying to move people away from KT as an intro to 40k.

 silverstu wrote:
The Rogue Trader box was more interesting, if they had followed it up with other faction team boxes it might have worked a bit better.

The Rogue Trader models were great, but the issue with the faction with the Kill Team was that there were not rules for generic Rogue Trader faction, you could only play those specific people as they were with zero customisation. I was super disappointed with that.

My absolutely wild, pie in the sky speculation is that we're going to get a "WarCry 40k" with the Eye of Terror as its environs with a Kill Team reboot.

We know there are still Imperial forces fighting on Cadia, we know there's the Croneworlds, there's the Daemon Worlds, a few Tomb Worlds, etc. There's more or less a reason for every faction to get involved fighting around it.

It would be a great way to introduce Inquisitors in plastic, with each of the Ordos getting a warband box. Hell, you could match the original 6 Warbands(Iron Golems, Untamed Beasts, Splintered Fang, Unmade, Corvus Cabal, and the Cypher Lords) from WarCry just by doing Radical+Puritan sets!

It would also be a great way to bring in some 'themed' Cultists for each of the Chaos Marine factions. Thousand Sons spell-seeker Cultists, Khorne Berzerker Cultists, Emperor's Children Cultists, 'Generic' Cultists/Renegade Guardsmen for the main CSM, and lastly Death Guard 'Plague Doctor' Cultists.

Having the campaigns being themed around the Cultists of each Chaos Legion fighting each other to pave the way for their masters to be able to bring a new world/region on a Daemon World into the fold or the other forces preventing it would be ace without making it be super lore important. Just say the worlds are "in a state of constant conflict" and boom.

The only factions really left out would be the Tau and Tyranids, but even then...we just need a lore bit about a warp tear on the Eastern Fringe depositing forces in the EoT and baaaaaaam.

I always got the impression Daemons were so strangely kept out of Kill-Team's core teams to sell them in an Inquisition expansion, but it doesn't seem like Rogue Trader did all that well and thus the bigger expansions were, presumably, tossed in the bin.

 Sabotage! wrote:
Honestly I wouldn’t be that surprised if GW kind of just let KT die as they push more people towards Combat Patrol as the intro to the game. I could see them maybe publishing a few WD articles now and then for new units for KT and keeping it in print for a while, but with all the emphasis placed on Combat Patrol I feel like they are trying to move people away from KT as an intro to 40k.

Pretty much what I'm expecting as well. Maybe in a couple of years we'll see a Shadow War: Armageddon situation where they tossed out a new version before the new 40k edition to rake in some sales.

 Irbis wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:
The thing is that Kill Team is explicitly 40K in skirmish mode which actually puts off some new players because it’s so blatantly also a gateway game.

Now, if there was a 40K Warcry equivalent, it might well do better to focus down to forces that typically operate at a similar scale like inquisition warbands rather than reusing units from the bigger game.

The trouble is finding a place where you can have multiple factions without a clear “good guys vs. bad guys” distinction. Necromunda would be an obvious location but not a lot of Necromunda players would be happy with that…

The sad thing is, they already hit the jackpot in terms of gateway game - one of plastic HH boxes had excellent skirmish system that worked very well with 40K miniatures. Sadly, very few people had given it a chance. If they used this one, instead of 'more complicated 40K' Kill Team had, I bet the game would be far more popular.

As for setting, multiple good suggestions above, but by far the best one would be on Terra - we know Custodes capture things from all over the Galaxy and make them fight each other (with Custodes sometimes joining in) to observe how they think and fight - why not use this relatively new lore bit?

Yeah, I really like the core mechanic in Betrayal at Calth, it’s just a bit too closely tied to the hex grid. That said it could turn into a great skirmish game if you changed the squad designation a little. The tactical choice of which weapon effect to apply was particularly interesting.

 Crimson wrote:
... but there is a lot of customisability and ability to wield all sorts of weirdoes.

This runs contrary to GW's design ethos.

Warcry is the end goal: Set models with set weapons. Specific miniatures. Virtually no customisation for anything.

Necromunda is an aberration, and any game that follows will be closer to Warcry than 40K.

 Crimson wrote:

 silverstu wrote:
The Rogue Trader box was more interesting, if they had followed it up with other faction team boxes it might have worked a bit better.

The Rogue Trader models were great, but the issue with the faction with the Kill Team was that there were not rules for generic Rogue Trader faction, you could only play those specific people as they were with zero customisation. I was super disappointed with that.

It always felt to me like RT had been developed as a standalone game, possibly with a bespoke ruleset, and was shoehorned into KT at the last moment, that's why it meshed so poorly.

 Sabotage! wrote:
Honestly I wouldn’t be that surprised if GW kind of just let KT die as they push more people towards Combat Patrol as the intro to the game. I could see them maybe publishing a few WD articles now and then for new units for KT and keeping it in print for a while, but with all the emphasis placed on Combat Patrol I feel like they are trying to move people away from KT as an intro to 40k.

As wonderful as combat patrol is, its still going to cost a lot more than kill team to get started; £40 rulebook, £60 start collecting box and £25 for one codex. If a player wants to try out another faction its going to be another codex and start collecting box on top of that. Its possible to be up-and-running with kill team for £50, and most of the factions are already covered in the core manual.

GW would also be effectively withdrawing a top contender from the highly popular skirmish market, which also represents their flagship product, 40K.

You could be right and GW does drop it, but they would definitely be shooting themselves in the foot by doing so.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
... but there is a lot of customisability and ability to wield all sorts of weirdoes.

This runs contrary to GW's design ethos.

Warcry is the end goal: Set models with set weapons. Specific miniatures. Virtually no customisation for anything.

Necromunda is an aberration, and any game that follows will be closer to Warcry than 40K.

And which is the most popular of these specialist games? That's right, Necromunda! It has a lot of 'your dudes' appeal. I hope that they get the hint!

Right now GW are trying to arrest control their games back from their communities.

They're changing the base rules for Blood Bowl to take the power away from the BB community.

They're changing the board sizes that games of 40K are played on.

They're about to release a book where playing the game requires you to bring half the terrain. And they're about to release new terrain boxes that appear to mesh with that new book (if that box doesn't = "half the terrain" by GW's standards, I'll be amazed).

Everything GW is doing at the moment is about ensuring that they have control over how their games are played. They want to dictate terms, and this is why Warcry is GW's ideal game. Underworlds is similar, as you have no options in that game outside of the cards, which they supply.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 silverstu wrote:
The Rogue Trader box was more interesting, if they had followed it up with other faction team boxes it might have worked a bit better.

The Rogue Trader models were great, but the issue with the faction with the Kill Team was that there were not rules for generic Rogue Trader faction, you could only play those specific people as they were with zero customisation. I was super disappointed with that.

It always felt to me like RT had been developed as a standalone game, possibly with a bespoke ruleset, and was shoehorned into KT at the last moment, that's why it meshed so poorly.

It's funny but Rogue Trader felt the most like how they introduced Kill Team to new players.

Preset 'Kill Teams' with a mix of equipment and skills. Look at the boxes to see how goofy things could be in them, remembering that they did have preset Kill Teams if you chose to go that route.

 Mr_Rose wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:
The thing is that Kill Team is explicitly 40K in skirmish mode which actually puts off some new players because it’s so blatantly also a gateway game.

Now, if there was a 40K Warcry equivalent, it might well do better to focus down to forces that typically operate at a similar scale like inquisition warbands rather than reusing units from the bigger game.

The trouble is finding a place where you can have multiple factions without a clear “good guys vs. bad guys” distinction. Necromunda would be an obvious location but not a lot of Necromunda players would be happy with that…

The sad thing is, they already hit the jackpot in terms of gateway game - one of plastic HH boxes had excellent skirmish system that worked very well with 40K miniatures. Sadly, very few people had given it a chance. If they used this one, instead of 'more complicated 40K' Kill Team had, I bet the game would be far more popular.

As for setting, multiple good suggestions above, but by far the best one would be on Terra - we know Custodes capture things from all over the Galaxy and make them fight each other (with Custodes sometimes joining in) to observe how they think and fight - why not use this relatively new lore bit?

Yeah, I really like the core mechanic in Betrayal at Calth, it’s just a bit too closely tied to the hex grid. That said it could turn into a great skirmish game if you changed the squad designation a little. The tactical choice of which weapon effect to apply was particularly interesting.

I really enjoyed BaC and wished they did more with it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Right now GW are trying to arrest control their games back from their communities.

They're changing the base rules for Blood Bowl to take the power away from the BB community.

They're changing the board sizes that games of 40K are played on.

They're about to release a book where playing the game requires you to bring half the terrain. And they're about to release new terrain boxes that appear to mesh with that new book (if that box doesn't = "half the terrain" by GW's standards, I'll be amazed).

Everything GW is doing at the moment is about ensuring that they have control over how their games are played. They want to dictate terms, and this is why Warcry is GW's ideal game. Underworlds is similar, as you have no options in that game outside of the cards, which they supply.

Stopping snaffling all the tinfoil. Nobody needs more hats.
Nobody is going to break down your door and take control 'back' or force table sizes on you.

Also relevant (because nothing says Play This One Way like showing off creative stuff):
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/08/18/johnny-fraser-allens-awesome-orruks/

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/07/23/wizards-gnomes-and-weta-workshop/

There's no conspiracy, because conspiracies are underhanded and clandestine.

There's nothing secretive about what GW are doing.

Selling models, which people can do what they want with?

Voss wrote:
Selling models, which people can do what they want with?

You're being intentionally obtuse here.

As I said, Warcry represents what GW wants their skirmish games to be. Necromunda is the aberration. If they think they could get away with it, Necromunda would have set gangs with no options, but right now the Necromunda community wouldn't accept that.

It'd take another edition to get to that level of change, a bit like with the new BB rules.

With Kill Team I think GW's plan was always to support it for about 18 months and that's it. It did really well early on and in places, like mine, did pretty well over the long haul. The game has some quirks in the mechanics, but I found it generally more enjoyable that 8th edition. I suspect that GW is probably going to lean on Combat Patrol and Crusade (Crusade is going well in my area even if it is only TTS play) for getting new players until at least next year. I don't really expect there will be a Kill Team 2021 Annual, but I do think there's a good chance of an updated 9th edition version of Kill Team then. I am personally okay with Kill Team aping 40k's rules with unique twists (except Kill Team's LoS complications I hated explaining how you can see a unit with a gun barrel, but that unit can't use that same gun barrel to claim cover). I can see how that doesn't appeal to everyone.

I am less enthused about Kill Team generating a new game system like Warcry did. Chances are I will have be the one learning the rules well enough to teach others which I never could bring myself to do with Warcry. Even though I have the starter and most of the Slaves to Darkness Warcry Cultists for my AoS army. I simply can't be bothered to learn the rules for Warcry (simple as they are) and nobody at my gaming store seems interested in learning them either. That's not to say I don't want to play Warcry, I just don't want to be the person that has to teach the game to everyone else as well. Every year I fade further and further from really caring to learn games well enough to teach them and just want to play or be taught them. I most certainly would play Warcry, or a version of Kill Team like that, if it were the case. As it stands, I kinda want to move away from playing Kill Team (which I have played a couple hundred games probably) to going back to both 40k (3 full armies) and AoS (1 army plus Lumineth when they are released) once pandemic restrictions are eased.

I do have to agree that Betrayal At Calth was rather good game. I would have liked to see that system expanded further into 40k for more miniatures board gaming. I suppose it was never a decent gateway game to GW though. I liked it for the minimum setup time and foot print things that allow my non-table top gaming friends agree to play it more than even Kill Team or Space Hulk.

SamusDrake wrote:

 Sabotage! wrote:
Honestly I wouldn’t be that surprised if GW kind of just let KT die as they push more people towards Combat Patrol as the intro to the game. I could see them maybe publishing a few WD articles now and then for new units for KT and keeping it in print for a while, but with all the emphasis placed on Combat Patrol I feel like they are trying to move people away from KT as an intro to 40k.

As wonderful as combat patrol is, its still going to cost a lot more than kill team to get started; £40 rulebook, £60 start collecting box and £25 for one codex. If a player wants to try out another faction its going to be another codex and start collecting box on top of that. Its possible to be up-and-running with kill team for £50, and most of the factions are already covered in the core manual.

GW would also be effectively withdrawing a top contender from the highly popular skirmish market, which also represents their flagship product, 40K.

You could be right and GW does drop it, but they would definitely be shooting themselves in the foot by doing so.

Oh I agree wholeheartedly that Kill Team has an easier entry barrier and that is a good thing for getting people into the game. I also agree that GW would be shooting themselves in the foot by letting it die (as opposed to updating it to a cleaner rule set). It’s just my speculation on the manner of what I think will happen, rather than what I want to happen.

If what Kan was speculating about, a Warcry like 40k game set in the EoT was to take place I would be all over that. I love the idea of KT, but often find the squads kind of uninspiring and don’t think the rules are particularly good in that they are overly cumbersome in a lot of places and result in a small footprint skirmish game that often takes way too long to play.

Voss wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Right now GW are trying to arrest control their games back from their communities.

They're changing the base rules for Blood Bowl to take the power away from the BB community.

They're changing the board sizes that games of 40K are played on.

They're about to release a book where playing the game requires you to bring half the terrain. And they're about to release new terrain boxes that appear to mesh with that new book (if that box doesn't = "half the terrain" by GW's standards, I'll be amazed).

Everything GW is doing at the moment is about ensuring that they have control over how their games are played. They want to dictate terms, and this is why Warcry is GW's ideal game. Underworlds is similar, as you have no options in that game outside of the cards, which they supply.

...Nobody is going to break down your door and take control 'back' or force table sizes on you....

They don’t have to. All they have to do is make it so your opponents play using only the new rules, table size, etc. Not a problem if you have opponents willing to play older editions, off brand games and so forth. A problem though if your community insists on following GW’s official mode of play.

 Sabotage! wrote:

Oh I agree wholeheartedly that Kill Team has an easier entry barrier and that is a good thing for getting people into the game. I also agree that GW would be shooting themselves in the foot by letting it die (as opposed to updating it to a cleaner rule set). It’s just my speculation on the manner of what I think will happen, rather than what I want to happen.

If what Kan was speculating about, a Warcry like 40k game set in the EoT was to take place I would be all over that. I love the idea of KT, but often find the squads kind of uninspiring and don’t think the rules are particularly good in that they are overly cumbersome in a lot of places and result in a small footprint skirmish game that often takes way too long to play.

And truthfully, that's where Kill Team kinda falls apart for me. It's "squads" for all intents and purposes when people build their lists.

Yeah, yeah, yeah there's customizing and stuff but I rarely saw lists that weren't super-optimized stuff just being ported over from 40k proper. It might just have been my local community but that's not what I saw with WarCry. I saw people building to the warband they liked, not the squads they 'needed' for 40k.

I don't know how you solve that problem, because it will always be there as long as it's just 40k units ported over.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 privateer4hire wrote:

They don’t have to. All they have to do is make it so your opponents play using only the new rules, table size, etc. Not a problem if you have opponents willing to play older editions, off brand games and so forth. A problem though if your community insists on following GW’s official mode of play.

The whole table size thing is just nonsense anyways. It's a minimum table size. It can go larger.

 Kanluwen wrote:
The whole table size thing is just nonsense anyways.

It's not though. It's not when tournaments adopt the new sizes basically overnight, so much so that the people making mats start making mats of that size a couple of months (or less) later to meet the demand. It's not, as the post you quoted said, when communities at game stores start only using the explicit sizes as put down in the new rulebook.

Yes, games can go larger, we all know that, but so many people will start playing by the new sizes, which just happen to fit with the boards GW produce. And will just happen to fit with GW's new 40K expansion where you bring half the terrain, where, and I'll be shocked if this isn't true, one or two of the new Killzone boxes just magically happen to equal what GW considers "half" the terrain (remember that the new Killzone box comes with two of the new boards, which is, what, half a board by their new sizes?).

They're setting up a new game ecosystem where they dictate the exact sizes and requirements of games, taking it out of the hands of tournaments. Official support = follow these rules cannot be far behind.

So you can say "It's just a minimum" until you are blue in the face. "Minimum" will very quickly become "standard" (we can literally see that happening already in the tournament world, which I know you don't care about personally because you think they're all WAAC cheaters, but it's still important regardless of your own silly biases). And "standard" will very quickly become "only", especially at larger events/communities.

You mentioned "Official support" in the BB thread too where you also referenced this tenuous conspiracy, and how unfortunate it would be to BB to lose this official support. What exactly is this official support that NAF blood bowl / the 40K tournament scene gets from GW that they can't do without? I'd be interested to know what the various scenes will be losing should they decide not to cave to this nefarious GW power grab.

JWBS wrote:
You mentioned "Official support" in the BB thread too where you also referenced this tenuous conspiracy, and how unfortunate it would be to BB to lose this official support. What exactly is this official support that NAF blood bowl / the 40K tournament scene gets from GW that they can't do without? I'd be interested to know what the various scenes will be losing should they decide not to cave to this nefarious GW power grab.

Perhaps it would be better stated that right now the BB community doesn't need GW, and GW want to change that.

Whether they will be successful in such endeavours is another matter: GW's executions often fail to live up to their lofty concepts.

I never bought any KT boxes but I sure as heck did buy a ton of terrain from auctions. I am so happy I did.