Warhammer 40k: Kill Team - The Game Itself Review

Read more...

Getting a 404 when I hit the ‘Read more’ button.

DarthJoJo wrote: Getting a 404 when I hit the ‘Read more’ button.

That's the score he gave it

The Shadespire pedigree was one of the reasons I was wary of Kill Team going in.

On paper, Shadespire looks like a Warhammer skirmish game of limited scope, using rules that put the economy of modern board game design into effect. In practice, it's an LCG with severely limited deck building options (which still requires the amount of study and base card knowledge a normal LCG requires), tacked onto a, to my mind, incredibly gamey and mechanical miniatures move and hold mechanism. As a consequence, it features a portfolio of casual play elements that, in practice, cannot be played casually at all. The necessity of having to build a deck before play means that Shadespire barely makes it to the table in my group. My friends just aren't going to adopt the rules of a completely new lifestyle in order to start playing it. This is in the same category as the barrier we had in enjoying Shadow War and Necromunda, both of which required us to learn 2nd edition rules and keep them mentally separate from the current edition rules.

Kill Team, on the other hand, is just a cheaper version of 40k 8e. The rules are not cut from a wholly different bolt of cloth, which is clutch. As you mentioned, Michael, I wish the mild tweaking of 8e had been in the form of subtraction (of hit, wound, save rolls designed with larger armies in mind) rather than addition (a fourth, new injury roll at the end). Still and all, I'm more pleased with this boxed product than with any previous Warhammer product. The limited scope of the play space alone makes it leaps and bounds better that the "I guess just go with 4 x 4" approach they've made with their other skirmish products.

I hope eventually they get around to giving Sigmar the same treatment, because Shadespire just doesn't scratch that itch for me. I'm glad Kill Team didn't come with custom dice or a meta-heavy card system.

That is absolutely true- one of KT’s biggest successes is that it is far more -integrated- into the core 40k game whereas Shadespire exists in a very different space format and concept wise. It requires completely different equipment and it has virtually no resemblance to AOS. That said, I think it’s better skirmish than the AOS skirmish rules were...which, in reflection, were an evolutionary step toward KT.

I’m actually finding myself wondering if I really want to play full 40k right now. KT completely satisfies me in that area, and it is so quick to set up and put up. My son and I play pickup games with the precon teams (50-60 points) and we are playing within 10 minutes, spending 20-40 minutes on gameplay, and packing it in in the last 10. The only thing I miss, really, is that it isn’t scaled for vehicles or Lords of War...so no Guilliman v. Mortarion epics or anything like that. But the trade off...its well worth it.

I actually haven’t even put a lick of paint on any of my new KT stuff. Everything is molded in color so it’s more board gamey in a way. I’ve actually thought about not painting it at least for a while since th backlog is so massive.

As for the rolls...I really do not know why GE is so beholden to the three stage resolution. The WS/BS roll paired with number of attacks/weapon type is great. But then you are rolling to compare the weapon’s strength versus toughness with an armor save on top of that. And then if you have FNP, Ethereal, Disgustingly Resilient or what we you have ANOTHER die roll screening the hits. This makes sense, somewhat, when you are rolling for 40 Plaguebearers that get an attack each. But not at all for a 1v1/man to man fight. The armor save seems to be the point where it gets doughy. It seems like there should be some way to handle that differently, like with units getting 1 or 2 auto blocks to maintain the concept and include the invulnerable save.

GorillaGrody wrote: because Shadespire just doesn't scratch that itch for me. I'm glad Kill Team didn't come with custom dice or a meta-heavy card system.

I skipped Shadespire for the same reason. It appears to be a good game, but it doesn't scratch the itch I have. Gorechosen may be simpler, but in this case comparatively, it's to its benefit.

That said, I despise 8th Ed too. Without an entire reworking of the design, I doubt I'll ever touch it again. I'm glad they went the route of just taking existing rules and tweaking them a bit, similarly to what they did with kill team in 4th Ed.

I do admire kill team and think it is better than how they handled it in 4th Ed. But we're still dealing with GW's stubborn need to stick with UGOIGO that works some of the time in certain games, but is hardly groundbreaking or even noteworthy.

Thanks for the review. I can comfortably give this a hard pass.

Personally I'm disappointed to hear that it's 40k lite. I was hoping for something more inventive and faster playing, which demanded some new strategies.

I'm particularly put off by the news it has lots of build options for all the factions. I'm done with that shit.

Shame, as it seemed a good excuse to get my hands on those sweet Skitarii miniatures and maybe get some plague marines. Maybe I'll invest anyway once I run out of things to paint.

Don’t discount it completely. It definitely moves and plays out differently than 40k. It is a terrain-heavy skirmish game with some abilities, card play and light customization in the mix.

The squad building is actually hugely optional. It’s pretty light anyway, with just a couple of factions having a ton of options, but that is balanced by having fewer unit types. Deathwatch and Plague Marines for example have all kinds of kit but not a lot of unit types. Necrons have more unit types but lesser options.

But either way, you can forgo the squad building completely and just play with the precon squads. You get AdMech and GSC in the box along with data cards already filled out but there are also special boxed for Astra Militarum (Scions), Orks (Burna Boyz), Tyranids (Genestealers), and Space Wolves (Reivers). They are roughly the same points (50-60), which is half a standard 100 point game, but I’m loving games at half points anyway. So you just build the kits to match the precon cards/characters and you’re good to go. They are all molded in different colors, so painting isn’t an immediate concer.

Kill Team has always been weirdly ass-backwards as an endeavor; first you need to buy the main 40k rules, then you need to have your own models, and a codex for their rules, and then some terrain, and then you get this extra supplement to play with a small subset of your army in a skirmish, with four different rulebooks between you and your opponent. Like, what??

This edition of Kill Team finally put it where it should be: the entry level. It's definitely the best 40k starter set they've ever made, even considering the Dark Imperium box, if only because it actually includes absolutely everything you need to START the game, and you can scale up to full 40k and be familiar with the rules as you do it.

The three rolls combat resolution is particularly stupid, as there's no difference where you fail. Whether you failed the to hit or the enemy made the save roll, there's no difference, except in a very, very few cases.

What intrigues me is the movement/combat dynamics though. That's something I have to try.