Thursday, August 5, 2010

My first Kill teams

By TheGraveMind 


I played my first game of Kill teams on Sunday. There were only a few people who had their full armies there, so after a while we gathered the people who had enough for kill teams, and it ended up being a 3v3 kill team game. Three Nid players vs 2 chaos and 1 BA marines. Yes, I had my Nids out that day, Seeing as my Marines are on the work bench.

I was limited on what I could field, as I only brought my 1.5k tourney list. I had gotten a Game in against the Magician's Deamons. I won the game, but as it was put, his dice beat him, not me. And it is true, but also the way deamons are. I shot four shots from two hive guard, hit and wounded with all four, and he failed all four 3+ armor saves on his Blood thirster. His skulltaker was the last model to come in from reserves, so I was able to brace and bubble with gaunts.

Originally for the kill teams game I was just going to use Death Leaper, cause I thought would be awesome, and maybe not that great but fun for sure. Well we read through the rules, and you cannot use reserves. Great! that means all forms of Lictors are out, and they are our iconic Kill team unit. All I had was gaunts and hiveguard. Well 4 hive guard are exactly 200 points, I went with that. After two rounds I realized I had no synapse and should have been testing. With that realization I looked at the codex after the game, and man, Nids now suck in Kill Teams. We can't use Lictors, and most things need synapse. Pretty much there are only two main options. Genestealers, and Warriors. The other two players both had warriors, so we ended up with a draw, because three wounds can suck up so much. Genestealers aren't that great, cause now they only have a 5+, so they hug cover, so they have Imitative 1 on the charge.... fail.

The best thing you can field is Doom of Mal, but then you get yelled at for cheese. And don't forget to give him Eternal warrior to make him broken. If I ever play kill teams again, I'm probably going to try out yrgmal stealers, cause I just remembered about them, and they might actually do well. The other options is to work on some Marines, but that kind of defeats the point.


So I find it silly that a new codex like Tyranids struggles so much with Kill teams, while an old codex like Necrons is pretty much unbeatable. FYI, just take 4 fast destroyers, and hit the easy button.

So overall Kill teams is a fun game variant. When you have 1v1 it is an awesome quick little game, that can give great character to some of your models. It is something I definitely want to try out some more, and maybe use to introduce my friends to the game with. What are other people's experiences with Kill team?

5 comments:

  1. More and more, the Nid book seems to me like a 4.5 edition codex. Sort of like Warriors of Chaos are. Sure, you can compete. If you take a variation on this standard list...

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  2. Kill teams is pretty much all I play anymore. It does take some adjusting, due to oddities in each list. You usually need a "gentleman's agreement" as to what can and cannot be taken.

    I like what Big Jim has been doing with his modifications at Galaxy in Flames.

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  3. Indeed. Big Jim is on top of this one.

    So far, I've found that list quirks start to iron themselves out once everyone gets on the same page.

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  4. I found the same problems crop up with the official version of Kill Team. having to buy things in squads doesn't help the situation at all either.

    So I set out to make a few house rules to fix some of the glaring problems. That has now barreled outta control into creating a skirmish variant of 40k.

    CounterFett and B.smoove, thanks for the plug!

    Cheers,
    -Jim

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  5. I would argue against disallowing Lictors - their rules say they must start in reserves even if the mission disallows it, similar to Drop Pods and the like. Unless KT says "even units that must start in reserves can't", you can do it. Codex still trumps core, and all that.

    As to 'stealers - I have to disagree again... but that's more speaking toward my style. I never (or only once or twice) upgraded their save, so I'm used to working with a 5+ on them. Coupled with their new cheapness and/or extra killiness (run the numbers on them with Toxin Sacs - they're the most killy-per-point 'stealers we've ever had), I think they're a pretty solid bug.

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out dang bot!

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