Kill Team: Soulshackle Breach Points

[Brother Tyler]

I was extremely fortunate to purchase the last Soulshackle box at my local GW yesterday. This is the third of four Gallowdark expansions for the Kill Team game, following Shadowvaults and Into the Dark and preceding Gallowfall. As with the two previous expansions, Soulshackle includes the basic Gallowdark terrain as well some elements that are exclusive to this set. One of the key additions in Soulshackle was breach points. These allow operatives to create breaches in walls, creating additional maneuver possibilities within the zone mortalis that is the space hulk codified as the Gallowdark. (Warhammer Community article)

 

However, there are only four breach points that are possible, and these are fixed on each mission map (with some missions not including breach points).

 

Now this makes perfect sense when you consider the model limitations – Games Workshop included the breach points as additional terrain elements on top of the standard Gallowdark terrain. Constrained to the use of plastic models for representing breach points, and including these as additions to the regular Gallowdark terrain, and considering the other terrain elements that are in this box (four controls and the hatchway jammers), there was limited plastic space that could be added to the box.

 

The in-universe rationalization, I suppose, is that other wall sections and hatchways are more durably constructed, preventing any attempts to breach them.

 

That rationalization might not sit well with you (it doesn’t sit well with me). And it doesn’t sit well with these meltabombs, meltaguns, and any number of other battlefield tools/weapons that the forces of the 41st millennium use to defeat heavy armour.

 

A better solution, I think, would have been to represent breach points via counters. Under this construct, there would have been rules for breaching walls and hatchways; and instead of removing the breach piece from a limited number of wall sections, players would have marked the resulting breaches with these counters (one on each side). A single sheet would have allowed for far more than four breaches on the map, and these might have been placed along wall sections or hatchways, allowing for far more flexibility for players. The downside to this is that the placement of breach points would have been far less predictable, making breaches a bit more potent, though this would still have been limited by the number of models equipped with the means to create breaches and the number of turning points in the game. Counters are much less immersive than actually removing a piece of a wall, creating a physical breach that allows for easy recognition and better assessment of the resulting changes to line of sight, but they can be used in greater quantities and locations than physical models.

 

Despite the drawback I perceive the limited number and location of breach points, however, they are a very interesting addition to the game and create interesting tactical considerations for players. They can be very cinematic in the potential to cause harm to operatives on the other side of the wall. Canny players, however, will avoid putting their operatives within range of the potential breach points.

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

If I recall, counters are used for a breaching mechanic in the Navy killteam from the previous box. I'd need to double check, but from memory the guy with the chainfist can mark a wall with a token that counts as a hole, as well as being able to weld doors shut and cut them open for a set 1 action point.

 

Or maybe it's the grenade guy that can make a hole. One of the two.

 

Either way, interesting that they didn't use it as a universal mechanic.