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 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Without points there is never a reason to take another Trooper over one of the specialists.

I think you guys are making some unfounded assumptions here.

In the PC game Squad, your squad leader gets a special kit, and then everyone else can take either a basic rifleman or one of the various specialists. You could be a medic, grenadier, sniper, machine gunner, anti-tank, and so on. So why would anyone take rifleman?

Simple- he gets an ammo bag that can resupply anyone else, in a game where logistics are pretty important. Suddenly your medics aren't running out of bandages and your anti-tank isn't running out of rockets, and that's a big deal. The basic rifleman is a force multiplier that doesn't get any special weapons or abilities but is still useful to have. And his basic rifle is an all-rounder choice that can situationally be more effective than a specialist in the wrong context (eg a sniper in close quarters).

Let's not jump the gun and assume that the basic trooper will be just a lasgunner and a strict downgrade versus the specialists- this isn't 40K. It remains to be seen what else they get that might make it a legitimate choice.

I need to point out one thing here - the reason this is making your kill teams more homogenous or taking away your freedom of choice or whatever *isnt* because of a lack of points, its because they gave you what is basically a force organization chart to follow.

They could just as easily have given you a master faction list where you can mix and match from Ork Kommandos, Ork Flash Gitz, Ork Tankbustas, and Ork Burnaboys, etc. Likewise, they could easily have given you a more flexible system that let you build your Kill Team from 2-3+ small fireteams of 2-4 models each using this same sort of roster system.

All without points.

But they didn't. Personally, I'm okay with it, but I understand why others are not.

Kommandos can still show up in the standard "Greenskins" list as well. It seems like they might get a different setup though from the Kommandos list.

Everything I've seen so far has been excellent, including the new way to build teams. It reminds me of stargrave crew limits.

The idea that this reduces your ability to use your current 40k collection is plain silly. If you've got a 2k army of any faction, I'm sure you have the models to represent a kill team under this system easily.

People assuming maxed operatives over regular mooks are the way to go 100% of the time are assuming that the way those operatives play will be optimized to the victory condition of every mission.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Taking guard specifically, I worry that unless there are more Fire Team options then all Guard lists are going to look very similar. Using the Guardsman Fire team only, and taking two teams, you are always going to choose

7 Regular Troops, 1 of each Operative, and 1 leader, for a total of 14 troops. The only choice is what your leader is equipped with.

Without points there is never a reason to take another Trooper over one of the specialists. If you splash in Scions it might be a bit more varied, but this feels like it's going to be easier to solve for the "best" combo.

The reason to field troopers rather than specialists is that you can activate multiple troopers in one turn, as opposed to a single specialist.

That community article title sure is cringey. I get that it's a fluff piece advertising the new rules but it's one dear leader away from DPRK propaganda.

Yeah, I can already hear all these angry screams about death of balance with no use of point system in Kill Team.

Bah, at worst it will justify an extension book by putting points back for "equal game / tournament balance" in one year or two.

Good thing is since they don't bind the rules to 40k's mechanisms anymore, the use of special weapons aren't necessarily better than basic ones. Depends of range and number of attacks, mostly...in Warcry, warriors with lots of attacks were favored because it's a stable death by many cuts. I'm expecting the same for the new Kill Team.

Theoretically I think things can be balanced without points. Flamers, Melta, Plasma all have their roles, and you take the one you need for the mission. In practice, you get situations where why not plasma all the time? And without points, you don’t even get a discount for the flamer.

In a situation where you are picking from a roster, I think it might be a little more feasible to run without points. It’s not like you are building a TAC list blind (where you go plasma, because it’s good almost all the time rather then niche specialist picks like melta/flamers). If you know that you are going into a horde fight, the flamer might be the better call, and be worth the slot that could have been used.

I don’t have a whole lot of faith in GW’s ability to equalize choices though. I suspect we are going to have a few “good” picks that are going to float to the top for play, and the rest just linger on the roster.

But I’ll wait to see the whole picture. They might get it close enough that it’s playable. At least with people not going out of their way to break the system.

 catbarf wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Without points there is never a reason to take another Trooper over one of the specialists.

I think you guys are making some unfounded assumptions here.

In the PC game Squad, your squad leader gets a special kit, and then everyone else can take either a basic rifleman or one of the various specialists. You could be a medic, grenadier, sniper, machine gunner, anti-tank, and so on. So why would anyone take rifleman?

Simple- he gets an ammo bag that can resupply anyone else, in a game where logistics are pretty important. Suddenly your medics aren't running out of bandages and your anti-tank isn't running out of rockets, and that's a big deal. The basic rifleman is a force multiplier that doesn't get any special weapons or abilities but is still useful to have. And his basic rifle is an all-rounder choice that can situationally be more effective than a specialist in the wrong context (eg a sniper in close quarters).

Let's not jump the gun and assume that the basic trooper will be just a lasgunner and a strict downgrade versus the specialists- this isn't 40K. It remains to be seen what else they get that might make it a legitimate choice.

Except we've seen the basic Veteran Guardsman entry and they ARE just guys with lasguns.

It will be interesting to see if the potential of group activation of mooks is worth the opportunity cost of not taking more specialists.

Cautiously optimistic on the new list building they are introducing. It does make for the pre-battle part of Kill Team lightning fast.

I'm curious to see what the different speciality weapons look like, I'm hopeful they do a good job making every weapon have a purpose. It gets a little tricky if there's no range and now you're balancing weapons with similar roles such as Plasma & Melta or Flamer & Grenade Launcher.

As others have mentioned I'm thinking group activation will be quite useful and will be a reason to bring multiple mooks vice activating one specialist at a time.

It's infuriating that No Model/No Rule now impacts Kill Team composition.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
Cautiously optimistic on the new list building they are introducing. It does make for the pre-battle part of Kill Team lightning fast.

I'm curious to see what the different speciality weapons look like, I'm hopeful they do a good job making every weapon have a purpose. It gets a little tricky if there's no range and now you're balancing weapons with similar roles such as Plasma & Melta or Flamer & Grenade Launcher.

As others have mentioned I'm thinking group activation will be quite useful and will be a reason to bring multiple mooks vice activating one specialist at a time.

Except that Flamers and Melta *do* have range. Funny, that, almost as if it's by design to differentiate the two groups of weapons with similar roles you highlight. Now, whether it is a well-balanced tradeoff, we have yet to see, but it seems pretty apparent to me that the Meltagun is higher damage output with a 6" range vs. Plasmagun that's full-board, and knowing that Flamers are also 6" range and Torrent makes me suspect that Grenade Launchers will be lower damage potential but able to project their splash damage effect across the board.

Well it’s not much change to playing demons, guess they the lucky ones.

Wait, no 3+ shooting for vet? Wtf is going to make them different from another Guardsmen, wounds, Leadership, what the Hell?

 Irbis wrote:


........................................

Blastaar wrote:
I disagree. Do a guardsman with a grenade launcher and a guardsman with a plasma gun have the same value? The Kill Team team thinks so.

Completely wrong. New KT balances teams, not dudes. Designers know that even if one gun is broken, it will be on one model only (instead of old munchkin 12 plasma party), and opponent will have counterplay (shooting said model) instead of losing by default thanks to inferior options. You also have now real choices - do I pick dude with long las for long range in my gunner slot, or flamer for close range kick (when in old KT neither existed because it was WAAAC 12 plasma time, baby). Do I take melta for short range AT, or grenade launcher for versatility? Answer might change depending on opponent, or map, or scenario - and it's great, now you finally have no idea (well, you know what I mean) what opponent might field and you might see a lot more mixed kill teams that still look fluffy instead of rolling your eyes seeing 12 plasma gunners (and meat shield conscript to make the whole thing look even dumber) every single time.

I find it really funny and ironic that people blame format forcing diversity of options and troopers to somehow not 'being your dudes' when people who like fluff will jump on it and the only ones who won't like it will be dudes who bent fluff into pretzel to justify their 12 plasma copy paste clone gang

........................................

It homogenizes teams. it is unlikely all specialists will have equal in-game value despite this structure valuing all specialists equally. You know full well that, per my example, every guard sergeant in KT will carry a plasma pistol because there is no reason not to. Most likely, each KT will have one build that is most effective, and that will be that. So much for "customizability."

I find it really funny that you choose to be a donkey-cave and argue in bad faith, mischaracterizing peoples' arguments. I haven't seen any people crying that they can't spam plasma. The issue is that this pick X of Y method is very much not "your dudes." I don't have a stake in this because I haven't even fething played KT because its rules suck so badly, and will not be starting with the "reimagined" KT, partly because I can't build interesting squads.

Kaffis wrote:
Except that Flamers and Melta *do* have range. Funny, that, almost as if it's by design to differentiate the two groups of weapons with similar roles you highlight. Now, whether it is a well-balanced tradeoff, we have yet to see, but it seems pretty apparent to me that the Meltagun is higher damage output with a 6" range vs. Plasmagun that's full-board, and knowing that Flamers are also 6" range and Torrent makes me suspect that Grenade Launchers will be lower damage potential but able to project their splash damage effect across the board.

Oh I missed that part, thanks for pointing that out. I went back to the article with the Flamer and Torrent and noticed the distances are in symbols, ugh, that's a crystal clear example as to why these are painful and unnecessary. Which article had the Plasma and Melta?

 The Red Hobbit wrote:

Kaffis wrote:
Except that Flamers and Melta *do* have range. Funny, that, almost as if it's by design to differentiate the two groups of weapons with similar roles you highlight. Now, whether it is a well-balanced tradeoff, we have yet to see, but it seems pretty apparent to me that the Meltagun is higher damage output with a 6" range vs. Plasmagun that's full-board, and knowing that Flamers are also 6" range and Torrent makes me suspect that Grenade Launchers will be lower damage potential but able to project their splash damage effect across the board.

Oh I missed that part, thanks for pointing that out. I went back to the article with the Flamer and Torrent and noticed the distances are in symbols, ugh, that's a crystal clear example as to why these are painful and unnecessary. Which article had the Plasma and Melta?

You have to pause Adam's flip-through on the stream to see the Plasmagun and Meltagun statlines, they haven't been deliberately previewed.

 Nevelon wrote:

But I’ll wait to see the whole picture. They might get it close enough that it’s playable. At least with people not going out of their way to break the system.

Yep. It always terrible when playing what you want out of what's available within the rules of the system might break the game.

Actually that IS terrible. But its not a people problem. Its a design problem.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I need to point out one thing here - the reason this is making your kill teams more homogenous or taking away your freedom of choice or whatever *isnt* because of a lack of points, its because they gave you what is basically a force organization chart to follow.

They could just as easily have given you a master faction list where you can mix and match from Ork Kommandos, Ork Flash Gitz, Ork Tankbustas, and Ork Burnaboys, etc. Likewise, they could easily have given you a more flexible system that let you build your Kill Team from 2-3+ small fireteams of 2-4 models each using this same sort of roster system.

All without points.

But they didn't. Personally, I'm okay with it, but I understand why others are not.

E

Even with a "master faction list" we still wouldn't be able to customize each mini, nor would this address the issue with KT leaders having one profile that is strictly better than the other(s).

I like the idea that if I want to play whatever faction, I can go grab two boxes and be done with it. It makes the game more accessible.

 Egyptian Space Zombie wrote:
I like the idea that if I want to play whatever faction, I can go grab two boxes and be done with it. It makes the game more accessible.

I agree that it is good to be able to play with just a box or two of figures, but I dislike the notion of also being restricted to the contents of a box or two.

I will never understand this stupid "no Weapon in the Sprue, no Option in the Army" policy in Kill Team....

My biggest concern is that troopers will be better than specialists due to having group activation and being able to 2:1 an operative in melee. Wouldn't be the first time GW creates a new rule and it ends up being OP..

The way these leaks are building up, melee will be vastly superior to shooting. If this will be the case, you will see very static lists, guaranteed.

From my experience in Necromunda group activation has only very limited utility. Grunts will normally be best used activated to delay the actions of your specialists, so they can react to enemy moves.

We have no idea how multi-combat works, it could just as easily be like Necromunda where charging enemies with multiple cheap fighters is a great way to get your cheap fighters killed one by one for free.

In most AA games having more activations than your opponent is an advantage, so reducing that by activating multiple Troopers at once is unlikely to be a good thing.

The list building is theoretically fine but it does look to have some problems with how it's implemented. The biggest problem is the drip-feed of information. We don't know enough about the rest of the system to say whether things like Group Activation are a good reason to forgo taking Specialists. We also don't know what the relative power of the different weapons and abilities are in a given scenario but since you seem to pick your force after mission selection it still looks like there's very little reason to take regular guys over Specialists. I think that's going to lead to the optimum Kill Team selection for each faction being pretty easily solvable unless the mission design promotes vastly different types of games.

GW may well have thought about all of this and balanced everything around the holistic game experience but they're not really helping themselves by putting out tiny articles with barely any information in them a couple of days apart. Hopefully they start filling in the blanks sooner rather than later because each new reveal feels like it introduces more questions and problems than answers and solutions.

I really hope at some point you will see an expansion for an Inquisitorial kill team, i.e. Inquisitor & some followers. that would be the one thing to tempt me into buying this sooner.

 The Forgemaster wrote:
I really hope at some point you will see an expansion for an Inquisitorial kill team, i.e. Inquisitor & some followers. that would be the one thing to tempt me into buying this sooner.

But how enjoyable will it be to always field one fixed roster, identical to all other Inquisitor players? Because that's how it's gonna be if they make one.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 The Forgemaster wrote:
I really hope at some point you will see an expansion for an Inquisitorial kill team, i.e. Inquisitor & some followers. that would be the one thing to tempt me into buying this sooner.

But how enjoyable will it be to always field one fixed roster, identical to all other Inquisitor players? Because that's how it's gonna be if they make one.

better than nothing, but even with the current roster than can do a bit. They could have it just be 7 things from this list, can take up to two of each. Could be done and be interesting.

Same way if they put some effort into demons, just since deamonette all the same, doesn’t mean they cannot have 5 different versions. Lash whips and and demonic spines that fly out. And minor psychic singing that melts the mind.
Lots can be done with little effort even going strictly with no model no rules.
And they can have some more advantced teams with a bit extra to buy all the minis.

Apple fox wrote:
better than nothing

Is it? 'Cause this new Kill Team seems to be less "your dudes" and more "these dudes".

Kill Team 2.0 - 'A better wheel!'