Kill Team Kill Team: Hivestorm (New Edition)

[INKS]

"My gut instinct is that I don't like an expiry date on Kill Teams but I understand that they can't keep adding new teams without it quickly becoming unmanageable."

 

This is more or less where I also sit with it.

[Mogger351]

 

I understand that some people do need change and while I respect that I can say I can look at the resin Triaros Armoured Conveyor that sits uselessly on display in my cabinet downstairs and be glad that I don't get tired of looking at it. I've still not started work on the Kommando Kill team on sprue in my cupboard and while I'm a bit peeved that I won't get my money's worth out of them game-wise in Kill Team, as least in that case I can roll them into my Ork army where they will probably spend most of their time on display since I don't game often anyway.

 

This is a multi-faceted issue and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it yet. My gut instinct is that I don't like an expiry date on Kill Teams but I understand that they can't keep adding new teams without it quickly becoming unmanageable.

 

Out of genuine curiosity though, how long has that kill team been sat on a sprue in a cupboard?

[Magos Takatus]

 

 

Out of genuine curiosity though, how long has that kill team been sat on a sprue in a cupboard?

Since the box set originally came out. My pile of shame is as Byzantine and inefficient as something out of 40k itself. I've got stuff in there that's been in there far longer waiting for it's time to shine. My backlog is the real Long War, the Traitor Legions have got it easy. 

[Rusted Boltgun]

More faction teasers on the Community today, including Teams that will leave the game earlier .

 

War Comm Imperial Kill Teams

 

I am probably the only person who was hoping for an 'easier' game of KT this edition. This is the game of 40k I want to play above all others and have invested the most time (and money) in but struggle with the cognitive load.

 

I was even hoping to attempt a tournament but was worried that that my opponents would just end up getting fed up with teaching me the game.

 

Anyhoo, Jr and I have fun playing our 'lite' version and we're looking forward to seeing if this version really is any simpler/ easier to pick up. The ruler distances are the same (numbers, icons, colours? Who cares?! It is defined by the ruler!) and there are lots of words....

 

And for those of an Astartes bent they end with....

 

Stay tuned for some intel on Space Marines later this week

 

 

[zulu.tango]

Along with the War-Com article teasing new teams rules, unscrupulous warp daemons have conspired to leak the new core-rules. 

Happy to say that they've cleaned up a LOT of the rules to make the game even easier to teach and play. They've eliminated a lot of the fiddly rules, and polished what was already a great game engine. I'm VERY excited for the new edition, even more excited once I saw art for what appears to be tank-busta orks on one of the pages. 

 

[Azaiel]

Angrons red behind!

Any urge I had to play the new KT just went out the airlock.

The amount of rules is just silly. The Arbites Castigator has three(!) separate abilities that does different things and hes just one of 10-ish in a Kill Team. The Kasrkin have four Skill at arms options to choose from on top of whatever rules each operator has. And it goes on and on, this is what other wargame rules creator like Alessio S call a rookie mistake, that rules creators try to cram in as much details/rules that they possibly can instead of trimming the fat. More rules doesnt mean a better game.

[lhg033]

 

Since the box set originally came out. My pile of shame is as Byzantine and inefficient as something out of 40k itself. I've got stuff in there that's been in there far longer waiting for it's time to shine. My backlog is the real Long War, the Traitor Legions have got it easy. 

I can relate far to well to this.

I am certain that I can lay my hands on models on spruce that are likely 20+ years old if I go into the loft

[zulu.tango]

 

Angrons red behind!

Any urge I had to play the new KT just went out the airlock.

The amount of rules is just silly. The Arbites Castigator has three(!) separate abilities that does different things and hes just one of 10-ish in a Kill Team. The Kasrkin have four Skill at arms options to choose from on top of whatever rules each operator has. And it goes on and on, this is what other wargame rules creator like Alessio S call a rookie mistake, that rules creators try to cram in as much details/rules that they possibly can instead of trimming the fat. More rules doesnt mean a better game.

Kill team might not be the game for you. 2nd edition transitioned the game from 40k but smaller to teams of specialists, each typically having their own unique abilities. For my money that's where the fun has come from, though I can understand where others don't share that same perspective.
There are also a wide variety of teams, from the "stat-check" teams with fewer specialists to the all specialist teams, and those that fall in between. In my opinion finding a team that fits your playstyle is part of the fun, made even easier by all team rules going online for free in 3rd edition

[ThePenitentOne]

 

Angrons red behind!

Any urge I had to play the new KT just went out the airlock.

The amount of rules is just silly. The Arbites Castigator has three(!) separate abilities that does different things and hes just one of 10-ish in a Kill Team. The Kasrkin have four Skill at arms options to choose from on top of whatever rules each operator has. And it goes on and on, this is what other wargame rules creator like Alessio S call a rookie mistake, that rules creators try to cram in as much details/rules that they possibly can instead of trimming the fat. More rules doesnt mean a better game.

 

KT 21 has many KT's and operatives that are equally complex. Not much difference between the two.

 

Also, while I'm dealing with anxiety over edition churn and I'm not without my own complaints, but I googled Alessio S, and I can't even be sure I've found the guy you're talking about. Again, I'm not a corporate shill for GW, and have plenty of my own issues with the company, but it amuses me to no end when upstart influencers, twenty and thirty-somethings call out a company that has navigated the industry for four decades and utterly dominated it for the last two decades as a rookie.

 

We may not like many of the things they do. That's valid- call them out for the things you think they get wrong; by all means tell us why you think they're wrong and I assure many of us will agree.

 

But don't call them rookies, or naive, or stupid. The company could buy and sell you or me ten times over. Whether or not we like what they're doing, they are the undisputed world heavy weight champions of miniature games, and if Alessio S was 1/100th as successful, I wouldn't need to google him to know who he is.

Edited September 9 by ThePenitentOne

[lansalt]

I have to agree with the above comments about giving loads of rules to each team defeats fixing the core rules to make them easier to understand and play.

Players into the tournament mindset will love it, I guess. But not more casual players like me that liked the simplicity of the Compendium despite its flaws.

[Rusted Boltgun]

Alessio Calvatore, I think it is, @ThePenitentOne.

He's an ex-GW staffer who worked on WHFB and LOTR, 40k and one of the three responsible for Mordheim.

I saw an interesting interview with him on The Painting Phase a while back. 

 

As I noted earlier, I'm struggling with the cognitive load of KT and keyword modifiers to individuals doesn't help but I've been thinking that I just need to learn how to layer the rules and chill out a bit. l'll see how the Hivestorm rules pan out. I want KT to work out for me.

[Blindhamster]

I love rules layering, it’s also smart from learning the game perspective. Remember they already said it’ll be modular so you can use base rules and then layer on more things later

 

but yeah, rules layering is cool because you can create some interesting personalisations and also be creative in play

Edited September 9 by Blindhamster

[zulu.tango]

Fully Agreed on the Layering, Its how I teach new people to play Kill-Team.

Typically the first game is just learning the core-mechanics of activations/actions/turn-order. Just play with primaries and have fun shooting and stabbing. Second game I like to introduce the secondary objectives, ploys, and faction rules. Finally a "full" version of the game with all the operative abilities. Each game can be 2-3 rounds rather than the full 4, and by the end of the third session most people fully understand how to play.
After that its just learning teams, most of which have overlap in their individual specialists so the knowledge from one can be transferred to others. A coms specialist is a coms specialist. Even if their specifics change a bit their core ability is transferable enough that I can have an opponent say "that's my coms guy" and pretty much know what it does. 

The new edition has stripped out a lot of the more fiddly aspects of the previous edition (you can now move through friendly operatives, shooting/cover is more cleaned up, TP1 orders work the same as TP3-4) so it should be easier to learn than ever!

[INKS]

KT has become kinda complicated. And not always for the better in my opinion. That being said I look for the teams with less rules and or are just easier for me personally to understand. We all learn and retain differently. Sometimes I will play a game against a more complicated team and it feels like a gotcha moment. (It isn't for the record, just feels that way because I don't know their rules). You just shrug it off best you can and play on. the more you play the more you'll have these moments and you are certainly less likely to forget it happens an or a team does X.

 

Having solo play added should help with a good way to learn the rules at your own pace. Practice does make it all easier. Hang in there.

 

 

[ThePenitentOne]

Because I play 40k like a role playing game, I sometimes WANT gotcha moments.

 

If I start a unit in KT as Novitiates and graduate it to 40k, literally every enemy that unit has fought has been in a game I've played.

 

None of this "I've been a warrior for a thousand years so I know everything" - that's an end state, not a beginning. A lot of people who play stand-alone games will say that their army has been fighting forever because being stand-alone players, unit growth and experience isn't a factor in their games. If I played stand-alone games (yawn), I'd probably be tempted to do that too- I certainly did it in second and third; fourth started to show us there could be more to the game than a disconnected series of battles, but that idea didn't peak until Crusade came along in 9th.

 

I much prefer campaign play, where the first game that I play a game against Nids is literally the first time it fought Nids. Those nasty SHOULD surprise my women, and challenge them- if there isn't at least one gotcha moment there, it flies in the face of the Narrative I'm trying to create. But the NEXT time we fight them, we know more, and maybe we earned some upgrades with XP and it's us that surprise the Nids.

 

In D&D, I used to tell my players that the experience for them would be more immersive if they DIDN'T read the Monster manual- you shouldn't KNOW that soap disperses Aboleth goop unless you've already fought an Aboleth or you know someone who has. Players who DID read the rulebook to learn every monster's weakness often had to make a knowledge check before their player knowledge could be used by a character.

 

The abject terror that I am feeling with the new edition is that all the kick ass Narrative play that we had in KT 21 via Spec Ops will be either gone entirely, or not be available for free along with the basic datacards and bare minimum that you need to play. So you can play for free, but you can't PLAY for free. The whole reason I've been so negative since this announcement is that Warcom hasn't said one way or the other whether or not narrative campaign play options will be supported and accessible at launch.

 

The second we get this information, I can either flip my script to positive, or I can curse GW and cut this game loose. I've played since Rogue Trader, but I took 6th and 7th off because of the way GSC and Sisters were treated- I came back in 8th because GW learned what I needed and delivered it. I was prepared to walk away from 10th too because my experienced peaked in 9th, but Crusade continued continued to be good enough, and the game was good enough. 

 

But if KT kills or weakens Spec Ops, GW will have to rely on y'all to feed their shareholders, because from where I stand, any stand-alone game, no matter how "good" isn't worth the investment in time or money that it takes to play.

Edited September 9 by ThePenitentOne

[Matrindur]

I don't think the link itself was posted here yet?

 

https://new.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/1fcol8u/kill_team_hivestorm_leaks/

 

Somebody apparently got hold of a box and is trying to sell it and this person on reddit reached out for images on a bunch of stuff

Edited September 9 by Matrindur

[HeadlessCross]

 

No, sorry, but I disagree completely. It's emphatically not about playing with only your personal friends, it's about not insisting on the worst potential future as the only possible one - people are literally choosing this reality and thus it becomes that way, simply because people believe it will.
There is aboslutely no reason to hold the belief that real people will refuse to play a pickup game against your Kommandoz in 13 months.

 

Edited to add: I realise I might come off as a bit dismissive, but that's very much not my intention. I'm not trying to pretend there's no problem; I'm just offering a suggestion for a solution - because the alternative seems to be no solution.

I know Forge World models was sometimes (emphasis on sometimes) an issue back in the day, when it came to pick up games, but I don't think anyone is really going to turn down a pick-up game with a team that has actual, official KT24 rules (and remember, GW has specifically said that they will keep updating them for balance), if there's a fellow hobbyist who wants to keep playing them.

People are saying things like "this has killed all talk of Kill Team in my area" and I don't mean to say that that is not true - I absolutely believe that it is. I'm just saying that that is a perfect example of people as a community saying "noone is going to want to play against my Kommandoz in 13 months, so we might as well not bother with this game that we all enjoy" rather than saying "well, I'll still be happy to play with/against Kommandoz in 13 months, so it'll probably be alright". Again, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and it's completely unnecessary. 

Or maybe GW shouldn't be switching out what models you're allowed to use on some "season" system, food for thought. 

[Mogger351]

 

Or maybe GW shouldn't be switching out what models you're allowed to use on some "season" system, food for thought. 

They're GW's designs in their game system, they can do what they like. 

 

There's a heap of reasons detailed in this thread why it's better for the state of the game.

 

No game will get continued investment/support when you never need to buy anything and to expect otherwise is silly.

[Antarius]

 

Or maybe GW shouldn't be switching out what models you're allowed to use on some "season" system, food for thought. 

I'm not in charge of GW, but if I meet the people who make their business decisions and they ask me for pointers, I'll be sure to pass it on 

Again, my advice is merely a suggestion for a personal/community-driven solution to a perceived problem, offered in good faith and with the best of intentions. I don't offer it to be mean to people for no reason, but because the alternative really isn't "somehow GW changes their business strategy". Rather, the alternatives that I can see are "be unhappy with your hobby" or "quit playing Kill Team". Another possible solution would be "boykott GW", I guess - but I'm honestly doubtful whether that would work or if anybody is even proposing that (in any case that would seem to require far more organisation and unity of purpose on part of the community than playing with a kill team that has official rules but is not tournament legal).

It's not that I "like" the current model or that I'm somehow defending it - on the contrary, I think my personal opinion of GW's business strategy is completely irrelevant and inconsequential. It's just that I don't like letting GW's business moves dictate whether I'm happy with my hobby or not and I think it's a shame if other people feel that they have to.
There's absolutely no pressure to employ my advice, although I do of course present it because I believe, based on my experience with this hobby and other people, that it actually works - a personal point of view which you are of course 100% free to disagree with.

Edited September 10 by Antarius

[Emperor Ming]

So none of the intercessor lists are classified

[Rusted Boltgun]

 

So none of the intercessor lists are classified

As above, news on Astartes is due this week.

[Gaz Taylor]

My two pence as somebody who has been playing Games Workshop games for 30 years and has drifted away from 40K but is very interested in Kill Team.

 

I fell in love with 40K when I saw my first Squat on a trike in a computer shop in Dudley. It was the days of Rogue Trader and wouldn't be long before 2nd edition appeared and blew my mind. There have been all sorts of models and rules over the years, with varying degrees of shelf life. This is nothing new and and frankly has gotten worse (yes I'm still grumpy about getting the AOS Flesh Eaters Court Set for Christmas to find out shortly after the new edition gave the battletome a shelf life of months).

 

But I'm not annoyed about the GW announcement about the cycle of Teams to be used in Kill Team. I can see why some people would be annoyed but I think from a pure cost point of view £40 for at least two years play isn't bad. I'm sure people spend more than that on video games with DLC (my son does over a year!!). And that's only if you look purely from a competitive point of view as you can still play and use the models afterwards and use them in games of 40K. There's nothing stopping people now from playing 40K second edition apart from like minded people. If you have a gaming club, there's probably all sorts of games being played outside of 40K and GW games. 

 

Anyway, I'm excited about this new edition of Kill Team. GW have made it clear what is happening (free rules, set teams for X period) and I think this is brilliant. At the moment, I'm thinking about getting a big Really Useful box which will have Terrain and Board, plus the rules and my kill teams. I can then play this whenever I want or it's easy to transport to games. I'm not going to fixate on the negatives, which to be honest, is what GW have done for years but it's nice they've been really clear about it. Life is too short to be annoyed about toy soldiers.

[phandaal]

 

So by the end of the edition, and if they keep the pace there would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 50+ teams

 

I do not play Killteam, so I was confused about this stuff until now. Are the rules set up so that only full "teams" can be taken? No building a team one model at a time?

 

If so, that does sound hard to keep current rules-wise.

[sitnam]

 

 

I do not play Killteam, so I was confused about this stuff until now. Are the rules set up so that only full "teams" can be taken? No building a team one model at a time?

 

If so, that does sound hard to keep current rules-wise.

 

That's essentially I, you take a set number of operatives with no points values involved. You do get some list building with operative types, espcially amongst elite teams where you might run 5-6 out of a ten man kit. Gunner options

[HeadlessCross]

 

They're GW's designs in their game system, they can do what they like. 

 

There's a heap of reasons detailed in this thread why it's better for the state of the game.

 

No game will get continued investment/support when you never need to buy anything and to expect otherwise is silly.

I'm sure GW thanked you for your continued support with Legends in 40k LMAO