Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hey guys, I didn't see a threat specifically about matched play yet, so i figured i'd start one. The game is small enough and the armies similar enough that I think a general thread has some value.

Looking through the rule-book matched play information, some things stood out to me:

1. Building your roster of 20 guys that you then have to choose from for your battle forged kill team before the actual game begins seems like the most tactical part of kill teams. It also seems to give elite forces the advantage of being able to tailor their list somewhat based on the match-up, which is neat. For example, a grey knights force is always going to be about 5 models, but you can pick from any of the 20 war-gear combos you pre-selected to best face your opponent (picking anti-horde weapons, melee weapons, multi damage weapons, etc). Someone playing a 20 model horde will not have this flexibility.
2. There seems to be a bit of a tactical mini-game during the battle forged kill team creation process to decide if you want to play at under 100 points in order to gain extra command points. Having the 1 command point per turn plus the one for having your leader on the board gets you two per turn, but I imagine having 1-2 extra on the first turn might be powerful in some situations.
3. Picking your leader seems like an interesting process. In matched play, it seems like having your leader stay alive is an important priority for the +1 CP per turn, but there might also be some merit in having the leader be decent in melee, as the leader stratagem allows you to fight with the leader + another nearby unit at the same time, which seems powerful. I'm not sure this is worth the risk of having him die and not getting +1 CP later on in the game, since that seems to be the main thing the leader is good for (since you don't get to move past lvl 1 in matched play).
4. Since you only get to pick 3 specialists in addition to your leader, but there are 9 options, there seems to be some tactics around this part too. Comms, Heavy, Demo, and Sniper stand out to me as pretty good, especially with comms buffing something like the sniper.
5. Combat seems very powerful in kill team, because most of the time you will be able to use your normal WS, compared to shooting with all of it's negative modifiers.
6. Horde lists with lots of cheap models seem viable, but without special abilities on many models, their shooting is likely to be very poor until they get very close. More elite forces seem like they will be able to use their CP abilities and bonuses to actually do damage effectively. Horde melee seems more scary to me at first glance than horde shooting, due to how effective melee seems to be.
7. Weapons with very short ranges really get punished by the negative to hit modifiers (like meltaguns) unless you have a way to ignore them (like being a heavy weapon specialist).
8. Weapons with more than one damage seem quite strong, as they multiply the chance of a model actually dying. Lots of shots and mortal wounds do not do this, since extra shots are ignored once a model is reduced to zero wounds.
9. Multi-wound models seem very durable, due to the relatively low number of multi-damage weapons most factions have access to.
10. Having a "buddy system" where you have certain models hang out with each other seems important, since you seem to gain a number of bonuses and unlock stratagems by being near other models.

What else do you guys have to add to this? Did i miss anything important or get something wrong? What kind of 20 man rosters have you guys been playing around with so far? What weapons and specialist combination seem to be the most powerful? What do you think the meta will look like?

It's obviously still early in the release of this game, so i imagine we're all still figuring it out, so thoughts, theory-crafting, and math-hammer are all welcome.

Don't forget how useless Pistols are.

Can't fire after charging, can't fire after being charged.

Most models witt them literally can't/won't ever shoot them.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
Don't forget how useless Pistols are.

Can't fire after charging, can't fire after being charged.

Most models with them literally can't/won't ever shoot them.

True, though it seem to me that if you get charged during the opponent's turn and survive their attacks, a pistol doesn't seem like a terrible thing to have around since falling back is so punishing and so few units have fly.

A point blank plasma pistol + some melee attacks back on your turn is likely to be pretty decent. Also keep in mind that a plasma pistol is only 1 point and bolt pistols are free.

- in campaing mode your models are getting more and more expensive while the 100pts treshold doesn't change which means that you're probably play with less models that you began with. This may be the bane of horde armies with the Fire Team system.
- fushion pistols are harlequin's best close combat weapons against tougher enemies.

szym wrote:
- in campaing mode your models are getting more and more expensive while the 100pts treshold doesn't change which means that you're probably play with less models that you began with. This may be the bane of horde armies with the Fire Team system.

Every time my Poxwalkers or Cultists level up, they’re getting sacrificed and replaced by fresh recruits that don’t pay a 25-33% premium to reroll 1’s on their t-shirt saving throw

Likewise, where the tier three skills and tactics are weak, I’ll probably try to postpone level ups to avoid losing a redshirt

 Cephalobeard wrote:
Don't forget how useless Pistols are.

Can't fire after charging, can't fire after being charged.

Most models witt them literally can't/won't ever shoot them.

Don't forget that Deathwatch Bolt pistols cost more than Boltguns for whatever reason

So I played my first game of this on Saturday, great fun. Question about Necrons though... so they're basically immortal against multidamage weapons?

If your last wound is taken out by a multidamage weapon, you roll a number of Injury dice equal to the damage of the shot. My Flayed Ones got shot by Fusion Blasters, each time did 5 or 6 wounds.

Reanimation Protocols state that any unmodified roll of a 6 during an Injury Roll does not remove the model, and instead removes all flesh wounds.

So when I get shot by something with Damage 6, I roll 6 dice and if one is a 6 (statistically pretty likely), I'm just fine? Seems.... strong.

Requizen wrote:
So I played my first game of this on Saturday, great fun. Question about Necrons though... so they're basically immortal against multidamage weapons?

If your last wound is taken out by a multidamage weapon, you roll a number of Injury dice equal to the damage of the shot. My Flayed Ones got shot by Fusion Blasters, each time did 5 or 6 wounds.

Reanimation Protocols state that any unmodified roll of a 6 during an Injury Roll does not remove the model, and instead removes all flesh wounds.

So when I get shot by something with Damage 6, I roll 6 dice and if one is a 6 (statistically pretty likely), I'm just fine? Seems.... strong.

Strong against high damage weapons, not so strong compared to other armies' special rules.

 mrhappyface wrote:

Requizen wrote:
So I played my first game of this on Saturday, great fun. Question about Necrons though... so they're basically immortal against multidamage weapons?

If your last wound is taken out by a multidamage weapon, you roll a number of Injury dice equal to the damage of the shot. My Flayed Ones got shot by Fusion Blasters, each time did 5 or 6 wounds.

Reanimation Protocols state that any unmodified roll of a 6 during an Injury Roll does not remove the model, and instead removes all flesh wounds.

So when I get shot by something with Damage 6, I roll 6 dice and if one is a 6 (statistically pretty likely), I'm just fine? Seems.... strong.

Strong against high damage weapons, not so strong compared to other armies' special rules.

Still, not a bad rule at all. The first Injury roll you take when Obscured only takes you out on a 5, and LD10 across the board makes shaking pretty unlikely. I'm gonna keep at em until I figure out what I want to do for a painting project (probably Marines of some sort).

 Cephalobeard wrote:
Don't forget how useless Pistols are.

Can't fire after charging, can't fire after being charged.

Most models witt them literally can't/won't ever shoot them.

I can't find where is says chargers can't shoot pistols. You can't shoot if you were charged.

stratigo wrote:

 Cephalobeard wrote:
Don't forget how useless Pistols are.

Can't fire after charging, can't fire after being charged.

Most models witt them literally can't/won't ever shoot them.

I can't find where is says chargers can't shoot pistols. You can't shoot if you were charged.

You can't shoot if you made a charge attempt, regular shooting unit restrictions.

As Requizen said. It's not a Pistol restriction, it's an overall rule. It just compounds how useless I find pistols in Kill Team.

 mrhappyface wrote:

Requizen wrote:
So I played my first game of this on Saturday, great fun. Question about Necrons though... so they're basically immortal against multidamage weapons?

If your last wound is taken out by a multidamage weapon, you roll a number of Injury dice equal to the damage of the shot. My Flayed Ones got shot by Fusion Blasters, each time did 5 or 6 wounds.

Reanimation Protocols state that any unmodified roll of a 6 during an Injury Roll does not remove the model, and instead removes all flesh wounds.

So when I get shot by something with Damage 6, I roll 6 dice and if one is a 6 (statistically pretty likely), I'm just fine? Seems.... strong.

Strong against high damage weapons, not so strong compared to other armies' special rules.

Havent read the rule, but if it's worded how you say I would interpret it as a roll of a 6 doesn't take the model out of action and instead removes flesh wounds, but a roll of a 4 or 5 on any of the other dice is still going to take the model out of action. It doesn't state to ignore other injury rolls does it?

For example, if you get hit by a meltagun and opponent rolls 6 for the damage, you roll 6 times and get the following results: 6,6,1,2,4,3

Both of the 6's don't cause your model to be taken out of action and (I guess) cancel out the 1, 2, and 3 since the 6's remove flesh wounds. But you still rolled a 4 on one of those dice, which takes the model out of action.

Lemme know if I missed something.

You only use the single highest die for multi-damage weapons on the injury roll.

Ahh, now that makes sense, my error then.

szym wrote:
- in campaing mode your models are getting more and more expensive while the 100pts treshold doesn't change which means that you're probably play with less models that you began with. This may be the bane of horde armies with the Fire Team system.
- fushion pistols are harlequin's best close combat weapons against tougher enemies.

It also mentions that as the campaign gets along you can increase the points per match to a higher amount. Their suggestion was 150.

So are your communities using Command Rosters? I see a lot of people just posting 100 point lists, but the Roster seems to be a big part of Matched Play, and very much helps more specialized armies adapt to the mission/opponent.

Mine will 100% be utilizing the full Roster of 20.

I think a roster is key for tournament play, but Just in one off games you bring whatever list you want anyways

I have created a roster for campaign purposes

My group and I are running a 9 mission campaign and we'll be utilizing 20 man rosters. That will allow us to adjust on the fly between games a lot more quickly depending on what the mission is.

So how are Primaris in kill team?

I haven’t played kill team yet, but I think pistols might not be awful. I think there are plenty of situations where we might find models failing to kill each other in the assault phase, so finding themselves in combat in the following turn.

This remains to be proven, but bearing in mind that not every wound equals a kill, I think you’ll sometimes get pistol shots. And at that point, it’s a pretty big advantage to the person who has a pistol.

For example, imagine if a hormagaunt charges a fire warrior. Actually the FW has a decent chance of surviving the first round of combat... but then what? If he’s got a pulse pistol he has a chance of putting the homie down. If he just has to fall back then he can’t shoot.

I’ve got some other vague thoughts about how the game looks. We’ll see whether any of this is true.

It’s obviously quite a lot harder to get into combat. People can run away instead of firing overwatch. One cheeky option might be to use that 3” move to get behind another friendly model that the charger hasn’t declared a charge against. Then he’s not allowed to go within 1” of your friend, potentially making the charge impossible - and likely making it a lot harder. And of course if you’re moving second, the other player can just run away first.

BS4+ is a lot worse than 3+, as there will be negative modifiers a lot of the time. 5+ is sort of awful, but arguably at that point you’re happy to go with hitting on a 6 and any hit is a bonus.

Overall I think Primaris might be pretty decent. Good saves, good wounds/point, decent in both cc and shooting - at least against typical kill team models. There are lots of models that don’t want to be in cc with a primaris marine, but won’t have a lot of choice but to charge them. Shooting them out of cover will be extremely hard for anyone with 4+ BS.

Here’s a Primaris team I might try out.

Reaver Sergeant - leader

Intercessor Sergeant with power sword - combat
Intercessor Gunner - Demolitions
Intercessor Gunner
Intercessor - Comms
Intercessor

Auxiliary grenade launchers are oddly good sniper guns. There’s no penalty for long range firing with grenades, and the board basically has nowhere that won’t be in range. The only problem is that you can only fire one per turn, but you are still allowed to bring two of them in case something bad happens to one. A demolitionist can fire frag grenades that wound T3 on a 2+ in some situations.

I found Adeptus Astartes options a bit lacking and made my SW list with Deathwatch options because they made a lot more sense. Sure there is the special ammo and infernus heavy bolter which kinda hamper that SW "immersion", but other than that it works better imo.

That said, is there something that SM do better than DW? Why would I want to pick a SM list when DW is available?

What is shooting like in kill team? I've not had a game yet but all the possible -1 to hit would appear to make it difficult to put people down that way?

fatbudda319 wrote:
What is shooting like in kill team? I've not had a game yet but all the possible -1 to hit would appear to make it difficult to put people down that way?

It's good enough, not OP. A Deathwatch sniper for instance can always count on firing at enemies in cover at BS3+ re-rolling to hit of 1s (as long as the enemy doesn't have another native -1 to hit.

In my first game we messed up how CQC works so I whiffed with my melee units but I still won through the use of a sniper and a frag cannon.

After four games with my Skitarii against various factions (Harlequins, T'au, SM and DW) I've noticed a few things. Keep in mind we're still all new at this.

Pistols: They're not useless at all. Rarely did a fight last less than two rounds, so I was always happy that my Infiltrators had their nice pistols with them (either S4 3 shots or S3 5 shots) to shoot at my opponent in CC. I had to play the Take Prisoners mission twice, against T'au and DW, and it's one more way to kill an opponent within 1". And while I fudged all my Hit rolls I shot 3 times with my Infiltrator in CC - all in the same fight against two Marines, in a multi-fight like that it allows you to neutralize one of your targets to focus on another in the Combat phase. At least the Infiltrator pistols are nice because of the number of shots. I'm unsure about Harlequins and the like though, I fought them once but I won and they died in CC before having a chance to shoot, and they were too far away to target me efficiently at their first turn.

Marines: They're tough ! I lost against a team of 6 Intercessors, that's 12W and that is a lot. With their 3+ and 2W you have to deal them three single Damage wounds before starting to handicap them. They're highly resilient to Morale tests too, although if you manage to sneak a -1 Ld against their Sergeant and wound enough models you can force them with Morale tests for the whole team and start handicapping them seriously. Speaking of which...

Morale: It's dangerously strong. I lost against the 6 Intercessors because while I controlled the Objective and theoratically won 3-0, at the last turn my team was Demoralised and his was not, so that's a victory for him. It was a tough blow as I managed to kill half his team and was winning on objectives. Definitely either keep your Leader away or buy Ld-boosting gear like Vox-casters and such. Marines are harder to demoralise but beware of Reivers, Infiltrators or other debuffing models. Probably Drukhari too, I don't know.

Shooting: Of course it's a big part of the game, I don't know yet how a fully-devoted to CC team would fare, but having a full shooting list definitely works. Depending on the amount and the nature of the terrain pieces you'll play with it can be easy to hide or just give maluses. In my last game against DW I had my sniper with arquebus (who can't move and shoot) stuck without targets because all the party was going on behind a huge piece of Mechanicus terrain. Be prepared to move, but of course deploy on the best positions to maximise your Prepared shots.

Played against Nids last night... while they aren't extremely shooty (not bad, but nothing special), dealing with W3 models in this game is quite a task for some armies.

I noticed in the LVO pack that Tactics were limited to those available in the rule book. Maybe that's only until all 16 factions have their starter sets out. Regardless, I found that interesting.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/08/03/3rd-aug-kill-team-tournaments-campaigns-and-more-near-yougw-homepage-post-2/

In my experience in four rounds not that many models die. So try to get to the objectives or near them and dont be too afraid to lose models. Im on round four now and only 2 tacticals are out of 7 and none of 6 plague marines.