Building Kill Teams for family

[Frostglaive]

I've been playing 40k for about 12 years now, since I was 14. My family never really supported the hobby, but never condemned me or anything for it. Mom just never got it, Dad used to play D&D so he got it to an extent (but just never wanted to put in the time and effort for it), and my sister thought it looked stupid. It was very much a "You do you" thing. 

 

Well, 12 years later... I somehow convinced my sister to actually try out Kill Team. She shockingly expressed interest in at least trying it out once when I brought the game up with her. More so to try and understand where I'm coming from with this, understand my fascination with 40k. And in another odd twist of fate, she suggested we turn it into a family game night... which my parents both agreed to. So yeah, next month I'll be teaching my family how to play Kill Team! They'll probably never play again after that night, but the fact that they are willing to step into my little nerdy world for once and try to understand it a little better... it means a lot to me honestly.

 

And thanks to getting an awesome tax return this year, I'm pulling out all the stops for it. Instead of using my limited collection of AdMech and... well, AdMech, I went out and bought a bunch of various xeno races to makes some teams (pre-building lists). Sister picked Asuryani (or space elves as I explained them to her), Dad said Orks, Mom settled for Tyranids (or space bugs as I explained them). Although I'm probably going to pull an executive decision and give her T'au instead. She'd hate 'nids.

 

I'm also building some other teams as well (Harlequins, couple different Marine lists, Servants of the Abyss (I already have Blackstone Fortress, figured why not) and Guard). Partially to give them some options just in case, and also because I want to show off Kill Team to some other friends as well that expressed a bit of interest... and because I want to have a bunch of different Kill Teams for myself when I play against my gamer friends.

 

Our game night is next month once my parents are on vacation from work. Gives me time to buy everything I need, as well as build and paint all the models. Which is going to be an interesting challenge in itself. I haven't really painted any xenos models before, other than Necrons. So this will be a nice test of my painting skills.

 

I'm really excited for this! I get to share something that I love with my family, who initially never cared for this but are now at least willing to give it a shot for me. 

 

So since this will most likely be a one and done game with them, I'm probably going to be cutting out some of the rules to keep things simpler. Specialisms and Stratagems will probably not make an appearance, and I'm genuinely considering taking out the Morale Phase entirely. It really depends on what they're wanting to do. We'll see though. Also going to keep the missions easy as well. First game will just have a couple objectives (I forget which mission has the 4 objectives on it. I'll look it up later), free for all, 100pts. If they actually want to play a second game, I have a fun little idea for a 3v1. They each have a 100pt KT, teaming up against me with either a 250 or 300pt KT. Figured I'm already going to get ganged up on in the first game, might as well make it more entertaining for the second if it happens.

 

What do you guys think? Any suggestions or ideas for this?

[Panzer]

I think you should definitely build at least one Marine team. They are few models so easy to handle for beginners and overall simply solid. There is nothing they are really bad at and they are actually quite durable in Kill Team.

[Frostglaive]

I did plan on building a couple actually. A pure Primaris team (since I have the models for it somewhere in my apartment), as well as Deathwatch and Grey Knights (since it's literally just one box each and I'm good to go). Again, this is partially just so I can have KTs of multiple factions for myself and my buddies that I know will be more consistent in wanting to play the game. But I also figured I'd go with what the family actually chose initially as well, and have a few back up options just in case.

[Rogue]

That all sound brilliant.

 

I agree that keeping specialists and tactics out of it is a good idea, although I've found that hanging onto command points purely for tactical rerolls has worked even for beginners.

 

The other thing that's worked well for me is cheat-sheets - a side of A4 with all the mechanics on it: what each stat means for a person and for a weapon (ie WS - score needed to hit in combat; BS - score needed to hit when shooting, and so on); and how the strength versus toughness thing works.

 

Having that in front of you has made the game much easier to follow for the people I've introduced to kill team. For my wife at least, she felt like she understood what was happening, rather than just being told random numbers to roll.

 

(Speaking of which, I've found that non-players tend to understand 'hits on 3s' as 'hits only on 3s' rather than 'hits on 3s or better')

[Gederas]

A recommendation: If you buy the Kill-Team Bundles, you get the necessary models and their data-cards with them. Along with some terrain.

 

It's what my friend who was running a Kill-Team league at my FLGS is doing.

[Brother Navaer Solaq]

i would avoid building the grey knights. there are not too many psykers in the game. If you want the games to be easy to understand removing the pyshic phase from the game would help things out.

 

factions to avoid adding if you are playing with beginners:

* grey knights

* thousand sons

 

i am running the same idea. kill team is a good gateway game.

 

there is already people from other forums that have cheat sheets for kill team so it is easier for gamers to reference abilities.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I would also avoid deathwatch - they really suffer from "toys before boys" such that the deathwatch in our store league struggled to win any games.

 

Basically, due to their points the deathwatch teams I played against only have 5 models, and while each model was individually powerful, the team really struggled to take and hold objectives.  As well, for the most part they aren't any more survivable than normal marines meaning they will take casualties and when they do they will debilitating.  That, and their low numbers can make it easier to simply avoid particularly dangerous models (for example, in my games I made sure to stay out of the frag cannon's auto hit range, or space my models more than 2" apart so that he could only take out one model no matter how many hits he rolled.

 

Now, if all the players are beginners, they may not be able to play against the deathwatch team's weaknesses, but it still seems like a poor choice for beginners given its inherent fragility to casualties.