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So ive played it a couple times and am building terrain and a bunch of killteams

All the times i played i had to teach the game and with all the tactics, specialists and upgrades it is quite a lot to think of everthing.

So as a sort of entry version i was thinking of leaving out specialists. Also only give 1 CP per round and only use the base 6 tactics. Im also thinking this change would make it easier to do big multiplayer battles.

To do narrative scenarios with this version i would also add a rule where your ‘leader’ would have instead of the usual tactics and passive 1CP have a rule instead where he only gets taken out on a 6 on an injury roll (with penalties from flesh wounds applying).

If these missions develop into a campaign specialists could be earned maybe even upgrading to a commander eventually.

Has anyone tried to change the cover system though? Personally i really find the current system too simplistic. Maybe upgrade the bonus to the injury roll for hugging cover. Im thinking of being the umpire and doing ad hoc judgment calls on this depending on how much of the mini is covered.

Anyone tried using killteam for something similar? Obviously i would also open up the chocies that can be combined from datasheets and allowing lots of ‘counts as’ choices.

I think you have the right idea for simplifying intro games by leaving out specialists and restricting tactics, but I would just leave the leader the way it is. Maybe have it so you get 1 CP per round if your leader is alive. Making them go out of action on a 6 would make them way too tough to kill. Likewise I’d leave cover alone. Being obscured already affects hit, wound and injury rolls so it’s very important to the game and it’s also important to learn to play it the right way according to the rules. Changing the way cover works would drastically change the balance of the entire game.

I have a very specialized narrative game to teach Kill Team where the new player's team has to stop Tzeentch cultists from summoning demons. I keep it simple for the cultists having no specialists nor command points for them. Although, they do actually summon 1 Pink Horror at the end of round 1 (no smite/psybolt, just Prescience) that splits into lesser horrors as they are slain (just an interesting bit of fun that I haven't seen affect the game much as a single horror is that scary). The new player has a free round and terrain advantage and is very much favored for them to win.

As for the new player, they have their specialists and tactics if it is their personal kill team. If they are using mine and brand new to 40k, they get their choice of a Skitarii or Dark Angel teams for now, but I am working on finishing my Tau, GSC, and Necron kill team's if they want to use any of those instead.

I don't see any need to change the cover rules. Models already get -1 to be hit and -1 being killed on the injure roll while in cover. This means a lot of factions are rolling 5/6s at the start of the game (since long range is a thing) with only a 1/3 (1/6 against Necrons) chance of out right killing a model on the injury roll. Add the fact, many factions have tactics that allow degrading injury rolls down to flesh wounds too ant it could be very tough to actually remove models. However, yeah sometimes bad luck happens and a model gets removed right away. That is pretty much all miniatures games.

I like that cover is a binary thing in Kill Team with the assumption that unless you maneuver or have the ability to ignore cover, you will be taking an penalty. I don't need nor want several layers of cover basically making things 6 to hit and/or kill anything. Due to the small board size, I think the game is decently balanced between ranged and melee combat with a slight lean toward melee. I definitely don;t think it needs to make melee even more powerful.

Kill Team is a fairly simple game. So is 40k. It is just that Kill Team doesn't have all the know, switches, toggles and other busy box elements of regular 40k. It is one of the elements I like best about Kill Team. I can put my CSM marines on the board and get slaughtered in less than an hour having fun not being bogged down by things like, 'Is that dudebro in more than 50% cover?'.

I guess immediately tweaking cover is a bad idea. It does work fairly well as is tbh.

But has anyone tried to do 4-5 player games without the specialists and only allow the basic tactics available to everyone? Would the game still run in a reasonable timeframe (max 3 hours, lets say)?

Im also planning on a terrain heavy table that will be larger then just two boards together. This likely will make the game a bit longer.

@saturmorn This is the kind of scenario. Sounds really cool! Im thinking something similar except it would be multiplayer. So for example 150 points of chaos trying to get a ritual started but several other forces are trying to stop the ritual and steal the sacrifice for their own reasons.

Another rule tweak ive thought about that would make the game a little more intuitive is removing the pistol restriction to just be able to shoot whenever they want in combat. Would that really unbalance anything? So far I dont feel pistols do anything.

Dirk wrote:

But has anyone tried to do 4-5 player games without the specialists and only allow the basic tactics available to everyone? Would the game still run in a reasonable timeframe (max 3 hours, lets say)?

Only problem with 5 players is where do you put the fifth player? Unless your board is pentagonal, there's going to be some problems with deployment. As for the time frame, if everyone already knew the rules, I wouldn't expect a 5 player game to take longer than 1.5-2 hours.

Dirk wrote:

Another rule tweak ive thought about that would make the game a little more intuitive is removing the pistol restriction to just be able to shoot whenever they want in combat. Would that really unbalance anything? So far I dont feel pistols do anything.

Yes, it would unbalance things. Models have their cost based on the rules. You'd be making every model with a pistol better without changing their costs. This is a bad idea.

Are the points costs balanced tho? Most of the weapons cost next to nothing. In pretty much every killteam your best bet is taking the big guns as much as possible if you want a competive list. The game is good but the points costs clearly arent well balanced.

As for 5 players. I’d put one in the middle but give some extra defensive advantage so the other players dont simply gang up on the middle player. The right objectives should help with this too.

This issue I see is that many pistols are crazy powerful (looking at you Eldar). The allowing pistols to shoot regardless allow removed one of the strategies Kill Team has which is to charging every round.

While Kill Team isn't particularly well balanced and very subject to wild dice luck swings, I think the designers wrote the pistol interaction rules the way they did to make the somewhat useful even if you find yourself in CQC not so much as make that the way many factions are going to win close combat.

However, I get it. Playing Chaos Space Marines I rarely get the opportunity to fire the pistols in close combat because my opponent is either reinforcing the fight or I am charging into the next fight. At the same time, it can take a bit of work to finally crash into the tau gunline which would really sad to get gunned downed in the shooting phase as they unloaded with their pistols.