Overview

This project initially started as a discussion in the Kill Team forum, and it has languished for some time as I considered various options. I have reached several conclusions and am ready to begin moving forward in earnest: I want rules that are familiar to players of the Kill Team game. I don’t want to be chasing editions. I want rules that can be freely available without violating Games Workshop’s intellectual property rights. Just as I reached the point where I was ready to roll up my sleeves, GW announced Codex: Imperial Agents - it's as if GW was reading my mind. I really liked the rules that a group of us developed for Inquisitors and Rogue Traders in the 2018 edition of the Kill Team game. You can see some designer’s notes for those rules here, along with links to the files (in the Downloads section of the Bolter & Chainsword). My plan at this point is to use the Kill Team 2018 rules as a starting point, but with a few significant changes. Primary among those changes is shifting to a d10 (along with a d6 for some things). This will allow for some stats to be changed, differentiating the rules from the official rules and allowing for a bit more granularity. I originally considered going to a d12 because it would be much easier to adjust things, but I expect that d12s are far less common than d10s, so using the d10 is a compromise in the interest of accessibility. And while I'm looking at the 2018 edition of Kill Team as the basis for these rules, there are some other modifications I'm considering, including some elements of the 2021 edition. For example, though I don't like the rigidity of the fire teams construct, I can see incorporating aspects of it in both command roster and kill team composition. To illustrate, let's say I have a rogue trader. Her command roster would include a number of operatives, including two fire teams of voidsmen. When forming a kill team from her command roster, she could include any number of members of one fire team, but she could only include members of the second fire team if she includes all members of the first fire team. This is intended to reduce min-maxing. Or something like that (I haven't quite analyzed things to see what the numbers/limits should be - this is all conceptual at the moment). Command rosters wouldn't be 20 models. Instead, command rosters would be limited by points. An "average" command roster might be around 20 models, but a command roster that includes multiple expensive models might have far fewer, whereas one with loads of inexpensive models might have far more. A strategic element to all of this is that replacements might be very limited, especially some of the more exotic ones like daemonhosts, pariahs, Grey Knights, etc. So a command roster that has these hard-to-get operatives might be at a disadvantage if they suffer losses throughout a campaign. Campaign play would also focus on a variety of objectives, making flexible command rosters with a variety of abilities wise. I can even see mechanisms where players might have to split their command rosters into kill teams for concurrent battles, forcing strategic thinking in command roster composition and tactical thinking in kill team composition. Going back on my previous ideas, I think that the initial focus needs to be on the Inquisition and Rogue Traders, the game representing the internecine conflicts within the Imperium. I can see the Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Mechanicus as possible expansion ideas for later. I can also see Cults (Genestealer, Heretic, and Chaos) as a later expansion idea. I really want to make Space Marines and some other models (e.g., daemonhosts) truly terrifying (and expensive), more closely resembling their performance in the old Inquisitor game. They would be much more limited, however, ensuring a proper focus on the regular Joes. A lot of this stuff is purely notional at the moment, and it's probably fairly safe to say that I'm looking for people with common sense to keep me in check. My request for other members of this club is to be the voice of reason, to give me ideas, to tell me when things don’t work and when they do, and maybe to help playtest and provide pictures of finished miniatures/games. I’d like to use the Kill Team 2018 platform as a way to give players an option for something closer to the old Inquisitor game, applying the structure of the former with the variability and atmosphere of the latter. The ultimate goal is to create a living rulebook that hobbyists can download for their own gaming enjoyment. I’m going to trudge forward with this effort, alone if I have to. Any help I can get from members of the community is most welcome, however. As confident as I am in my own abilities, I am far from perfect and this effort will undoubtedly benefit from the participation of others.