Kill Team 2018 in July

[The Other Dave]

Prices're leaked:

Core box is $130 US - basically the same as the Necromunda core set, so something like 17,000 yen
Core book is $40 - same as First Strike, so 5000 yen-ish
Kill Team boxes are $60, so maybe 7500 yen?
Killzone boxes are $80 - same as Know No Fear, so 10,000 yen-ish

About what's expected, really, and probably continuing their trend of good deals in packaging. The Killzone terrain set isn't a no-brainer purchase for me, but a box of reavers plus a bit of terrain for 7500 yen looks potentially tasty.

[The Other Dave]

Looks like the news embargo has lifted, and there's lots of unboxings and discussions going around on the intertubes. Here's a pretty good Let's Play that also shows off all the box terrain, which is not only very pretty but of which there is a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fi4w6lVERg

Game looks solid - sort of a hybrid of 40K and NuNecromunda, with a real back and forth to activation and lots of granularity, specialists, cover effects, wound and morale effects, and all that good stuff. It sounds like for campaign games, your kill team will have a particular objective, which depends on your faction, that you have to work towards, and different specialists have different skill trees - not as random as skills for Necromunda or whatever, so you don't have the eternal problem of your heavy getting a strength bonus.

From the faction previews up on the site, it looks like they're restricting what models you can take almost entirely to "standard troops available in plastic boxes," and the commentary suggests that they're limiting equipment to stuff that comes in those boxes, which you can see where they're coming from anyway - simplicity and balance (nobody gets Terminators, f'rex), plus being able to play anything allowed in the rulebook without having to break into your bits box.

Looks like I could now do AdMech, Marines, Chaos Marines, or Guard entirely easily, plus Genestealer Cultists if I pull in a Purestrain or two from the Tyranid list, which apparently you can!

[The Other Dave]

A bit more spam / hype from Dave!

People with advance copies of the rulebooks are sharing them on YouTube, so I took a look to see what kind of kill teams I can put together with the models I have. They all look pretty dang tempting!











(The insidious thing, naturally, is that doing this kind of makes me want to pick up a box of the dual-build Acolyte / Metamorph box for the GSC.)

[Primarch]

Well, it looks like you are pretty set for Kill Teams. It does seem like you are close to breaking your 3 Games rule though. 40K, Shadespire, AoS and now Kill Team?

So, asking as someone who hasn't been paying much attention, why should I care about KT and not Newcromunda?

[The Other Dave]

I'm sort of fudging the rules (about number of games I get into), since KT doesn't require any actual expenditure on my part? (Yeah, yeah, goalpost-moving, I know, heh.)

As for KT vs NM, I haven't actually read the new Necromunda rules in any detail, but basically:

First, of course, you can use your existing 40K models rather than buying a new bunch of dudes for a new game (although OTOH I'm sure all of us have old Necromunda gangs in boxes somewhere too).

The rules look interesting and engaging. Basically 40K, yeah, but there's alternating activation in the shooting and fight phases, with the ability to "jump the queue" - if you don't move in the move phase, you're "readied" and can shoot before any models who did move, and if you charged you get similar priority in the fight phase.

It seems to deal with the "things get unwieldy" problem NM has with advancement, while still keeping things granular and tactically interesting. There's no random advancement or rolling for skills and such - instead, your specialists have access to a skill tree as they advance, getting a bonus of your choice at each level (the usual stuff like ignoring penalties to hit from moving heavy weapons, giving allies bonuses to their morale rolls, and so on) and also giving you access to a stratagem at each level as they advance. (You're also pretty limited in the number of specialists you can take - only a leader and three specialists on the board, with the rest of your guys like troops in "fire teams" - kind of like Mordheim in that respect - it's also a bit like blood bowl and new Necromunda in that you'll have a larger roster of fighters than you can bring to any one battle, so you can swap guys out as needed.)

It also deals with the death spiral in NM and SWA by making recruitment of new fighters free - there's no resource management, and you can always get green fighters (including specialists and leaders) if your guys die. The only thing you lose is their experience. So even if you get stomped in a given battle, you'll always be able to field a full 100-point team in the next. Also, everyone always only fields 100 points, so as your guys level up and their costs increase, you'll be bringing fewer guys to the battlefield. Basically, a given game will always be balanced (well, theoretically anyway), while you still get to make individual fighters in your kill team more powerful over the course of a campaign.

Which leads to the last point, which is a big one for me - it looks like games take about 45 minutes or so, an hour if you include team management (so we'll double that and say up to 90 minutes if both players are new to the game), so a mini-campaign of 4 or 5 connected games on a single Sunday would definitely be doable. The problem with skirmish games with advancement, for our group, has always been not being able to actually play the game with interesting advancement, as we play so rarely, so getting in like two or three games on a games day just isn't enough to really interact with that part of the system.

So that's my "I haven't played yet but have been following along with let's plays and rules leaks" take, heh. It looks like it's a solid game.

[me_in_japan]

skill tree advancement was one of my favourite things about the Judge Dredd minis game. Nice to see GW taking up the idea.

I'm looking forwards to the small-ness of the game. Tiny play space, easy to fill with terrain, already got a bunch of minis I can use. What's not to like?

[The Other Dave]

And after a few days with the rulebook, I'm pretty well pumped. The rules themselves are basically what you might call "40K under a 1.5x zoom lens" - you get a nice added level of tactics and customizability in your specialists and the skills they bring to the table, you get to use things like cover and morale that are more-or-less abstracted out of 40K entirely, and basically-alternating activations should keep both players engaged in the game. (On the face of it, it's a bit odd that movement is IGOUGO while shooting is alternating activation, but with the very wide range in possible kill team sizes - marines, stealth-suit-heavy tau and warrior-heavy 'nids might have 4 to 6 guys, while guard or genestealer cults can expect to have 12 or more right out of the gate - could mean it's a way to avoid the pure superiority of larger forces that's a thorny problem in alternating-activation games in general, if you want to give the rules team the benefit of the doubt.) But it's still a pretty rules-light game in the end - I typed out the basic core rules as I am wont to do and they basically fill a single A4 page if you make the font kinda small. Most of the tactical wrinkles will come from your specialists and battle objectives, balancing mobility and shooting priority, and keeping an eye on morale, I think.

The campaign game, like I said upthread, is very straightforward while still allowing your spacemans to level up and get perks, and seems geared toward a relatively short campaign with a definite end point, while avoiding the dreaded power-gap death spiral through a combination of always-equal-points games and free recruitment of green replacements. The general lack of randomness in leveling up also gets a thumbs-up from me. (Although it's odd, again, that your mooks get random perks when they level up, but eh. They're just mooks after all.)

My only real gripe would be that it's a bit frustrating that there are some rules that aren't actually in the rulebook (there are some faction-specific and killzone-specific tactics that are only available on cards, and I don't think it would have killed them to include the actual rules for Sector Mechanicus and Sector Munitorum killzones in the book), but it's all stuff you could just type up in a word file and print out, and Reddit is a thing so it's very work-around-able. (Also the inclusion of the Guard special weapons squad meaning a guard kill team could potentially consist of 9 guys with 8 plasma guns with a few points left over is... let's say an interesting edge-case oversight.)

[kojibear]

If the game plays well, I can really see it being popular for its short play. Many of us enjoy the Grimdark but don't have the time and money to keep investing in the big armies and long games. Kill team may be the answer.

Dave, what is the turn activation again? Only shooting and assault are alternate activation?

[job]

I love what I'm seeing with Kill Team. I really want to jump in, however, in all honesty, I'm going to wait to bandwagon on this. If I see a critical number of players joining, then I won't hesitate to throw in for the rulebook and probably one of the neat terrain-unit-card/accessories kits their producing. What I want to avoid is getting excited, dropping some money on the rulebook and playing once every blue moon. A bit selfish, but I have a good number of games already and I need to be more selective of what horses I begin to back.

[The Other Dave]

If the game plays well, I can really see it being popular for its short play. Many of us enjoy the Grimdark but don't have the time and money to keep investing in the big armies and long games. Kill team may be the answer.

Dave, what is the turn activation again? Only shooting and assault are alternate activation?

Correct! Psychic might be alternate too, but it's not like psykers abound - I'll look it up if I ever play Grey Knights vs Thousand Sons, heh.