Kill Team mini tournament

[Commander Sasha]

I ran a Kill team home tournament today for myself and 4 lads, and it was great fun.

House rules/variations:

1) 220 points each, otherwise F.O.C. as Battle Missions book

2) 4'x3' table; actually our normal one chopped in half for 2 games at once.

3) Deployment from short edges, to avoid getting in the way of the other game, deployment 12" from own edge, infiltrate, scout & reserves as per normal 40K mission.

4) Battle Missions rules for end of game.

 

Each player had 2 games, and scoring was as follows: the winner received points for all his models remaining on the table, and the loser had the same number subtracted. This made the second games more exciting, as 2 losses didn't necessarily mean you would come last, and draws were very unlikely!

 

Grey Knights got mashed, Dark Angels were unlucky, Berzerkers did OK, my Skavenids came 2nd, but the Orks ran away with it. 3 bikers and 20 boys just couldn't be stopped at such a low points level!

 

The whole thing, including list building, set up, 5 skirmishes and pack up took spot on 3 hours, and attention levels never wavered.

 

I love Kill Teams!

[Commander Sasha]

It's gotten me thinking...

I know it's only 40K Lite, but the afternoon saw 4 young gamers using gunline, van/rearguard, Hoplites, wolfpack, and various other classic strategies, pretty much by accident, and I can see it being a really good training ground for full games; when playing a normal 1,500+, there is so much going on that it is hard to separate and remember individual tactical elements, at least for newcomers (myself included).

 

I'd be very interested to hear comments from some more experienced players about Kill Team, both theory and experience, as you don't get good at martial arts by just fighting; training, spending hours doing one move or combo, testing methods to saturation, and so on are essential. Only when you have a good command of a large repertoire do you enter your first competition.

 

I'm hoping that some of you Tactica authors apply your knowledge and ideas to this thread; It could lead the way to a "Tactica 101" for young or new players who want to move from random sluggers to good players.

[lord gunthar]

I have played several kill team games as of yet, they are very entertaining even though you have a lot less models than usual as you still have a lot of units to move around and chance REALLY comes into play, eg in normal 40k if you fail an armour save in a combat usually that will not affect the combat to much but in a kill team failing one armour save could be the difference between winning and loseing the game. I found the special rules that you can grant invdividuals rather interesting as well, in one game my tactical marine with a plasma cannon failed almost all of his armour saves and he only managed to survive because i gave him fnp. It is an incredibly interesting twist on 40k and for those who havent tried a game of it yet i recomment you do soon.

 

Lord gunthar

[the jeske]

the rules for small games are very simple . more shots the better. an uber killiny venguard sgt means nothing , if it dies like any normal sm. it was one of the first few things I learned [back almost 20 years ago when I started to play wfb] , str 3 weapons spamed work better the smaller the game played. trying to play with 4 vet bikers with ss plasma guns etc is not a good way to build a kill team list , because even with all that gear even a single model dead could mean a quarter of your army lsot . 10 csm with cool gear and ultra grit seem powerful till you notice a guant spam army or IG troopers can bring 40+ models [and each one of those has a chance to kill one of your guys and with 5th ed cover rules they dont die very fast] . but of course those horde armies tend to die fast in hth , that is why speed is an important factor for . runing/fleet is important , BA with their jump pack troops do ok too.

 

This is more or less the basics and like all small point games , kill team also has problems with non meq armies. a squad of csm with 3 termis in support vs a tactical +some bikers is balanced. a kroot +suits build that can never be catched [or the same done with eldar jetbikes] is really hard to balance out.