So after a delay, the outreach session finally took place today. Despite how much I suck (more on that later), I think it went very well.

So how do I suck?

The overall summary of my suckiness is that I allowed myself to be distracted by other things. Admittedly, some of those were Real Life things and far more important than the game, but a significant chunk of the time I should have been devoting to preparing for the big day was devoted to some site stuff. I'm kind of excited about that stuff, though, so I'll get over it. The community will be seeing that site stuff Soon^TM, too. But a more detailed list of my failings is in order.

For starters, I didn't get my Legio kill team finished. I'm a paint snob and, though my skills are mediocre (at best), I won't play with unpainted (or unfinished) miniatures. I allowed myself to be distracted by far too many things to get the Legio models finished to a level with which I was satisfied, so at the last minute I dug out some miniatures that I painted over 20 years ago. They're not great, but they were "finished" to a battle-ready level. I have plans to improve them, but they're serviceable. I also had a bunch of other grandiose ambitions that I failed to achieve.

The other big area where I suck is that I totally forgot to take pictures of the game.

I didn't quite refresh my understanding of the 2021 edition of the rules to a perfect level, so a couple of things weren't quite up to snuff. It was a friendly game, though, and we realized midway through that we should have been doing a few things a little differently, but those mistakes didn't reduce anyone's fun. Indeed, they probably sped things up a bit, so the small errors may have been beneficial.

Things didn't quite go as planned, however.

First, it took longer than it should have to get to the game store in which we played (which is a really cool game store, by the way - Hole in the Wall Hobbies in Universal City, TX), partly because of the construction taking place on the freeways (there's always construction taking place somewhere on the freeways here) and partly because my GPS sucks. I got there early, though, since I'm experienced enough to plan for these things.

Then one additional player showed up, for a total of five (including me). That would have made things a bit hinky, so the four of them divided into two teams of two and I sat on the side and helped them learn the game. While it was disappointing to not actually play, the whole experience was well worth it and I don't feel that I lost out in the least.

While we were playing the 2021 edition of the game, we used a modified version of the Joint Ops rules from the current edition, splitting each player's kill team in half so that we didn't have operatives tripping over each other (and so that the game wouldn't drag out too long). Team Black (based on a coincidence of shirt colors) ended up as a fire team of Necron Warriors and a fire team of Repentia while Team Pink (again, shirt colors) ended up as three Intercessors and two Adeptus Custodes. For terrain, we kept things very simple and used only an old Space Marine statue (from the Cities of Death era), a bunch of barricades (again, from the Cities of Death era), and the actual small barricades for the 2021 edition of the game. They fought out a basic Open Play mission, with a quick movement to contact and deadly scrum.

The game ended up being called at the end of turning point three when Team Black had only one Necron Warrior remaining against one Adeptus Custode and one Intercessor. I think everyone was down on wounds, but the writing was definitely on the wall. All in all, it was great fun to introduce fellow hobbyists to a new way to enjoy the hobby. I'm certain that we played a few things incorrectly, but this wasn't a game "to win" - it was a game "to learn." And even though I was on the sidelines, it was great fun to be involved in the game and to watch as their delight in the game grew, cheering on good rolls and groaning at terrible rolls together while encouraging everyone to have fun. It's always great to spend time with good people.

Overall, they all said that they had a lot of fun and were very interested in adding Kill Team to their Warhammer 40,000 hobbying, so I'll consider it a mission accomplished.