Kill Team 2021

[Primarch]

Just finished watching the Tabletop Minions podcast on the Compendium (there is one for the box set as well).
https://youtu.be/mQwjIKPj5SM

In summary:
If you don't want to buy the boxed set and just want to play with what you already have, you'd better like vanilla.

[The Other Dave]

I like Tabletop Minions in general, if he’s been grumpier than usual lately, but it seems like he’s really focusing on the space marines to make his point? (And, to be fair, a lot of people have space marines, but still.) They’re the force with the fewest options thanks to only being able to bring one fire team*, and it’s a weakness, but basically everybody else can be nearly as free in list building as they were in 2018. Also bringing out the second-year-release WarCry faction books is comparing apples and oranges in a few different ways.

For everything I own, it seems like I can make a perfectly cromulent kill team with plenty of choices. Death Guard sure, I have loads of them, but also the firstborn marines I have for advanced space crusade, the tyranids I have for ASC, and heck even the guard who can barely scrape a full team together - they were unusable in a competitive way in KT 2018 because I don’t have 8 plasma guns.

*If they’d used the same system the DG and Thousand Sons do, and let Marines take 2-man teams of Primaris, with a free fifth leader model if you take two Primaris teams only, the problem would be basically solved, and I’m really not clear on why they wouldn’t have done that. :shrug: TBF, marines had a very similar problem vis a vis limited loadout in KT2018 as well, it’s an artifact of the way Primaris are set up for 40K not scaling down well.

[Jye Nicolson]

Marines might benefit from the roster system, in that throwing four different fire teams on their roster and taking the most appropriate one for the mission/opponent could let them skew harder than normal.

Say you take Heavy Intercessors and Reivers for skew misisons and Deathwatch as more of a Takes All Comers for example (and you'd still have room for another full fireteam or extra Deathwatch options or whatever).

[me_in_japan]

Huh. Looking at what you can use in this game, it’s clear that my expectations of it were well out of whack. That’s fair enough - that’s on me. I didn’t play the earlier edition of KT, and maybe that coloured my expectations. I had assumed it would allow you to:
use a selection of minis from your 40k collection
to
represent a small group of operatives
doing cinematic flavorful stuff on a smallish table.

Points 2 and 3 seem to be there, but point 1 was way off base. I can’t use most of my stuff. Like, 90% of my stuff. Obviously tanks and suchlike would be silly. I think bikes etc would be doable, but I can see how they could become tricky to manage rules-wise. But the fact that huge swathes of infantry are missing? Eh? If I wanted my Eldar to all be guardians, I’d have chosen the mass-infantry army (ie Guard. Or maybe marines.) Where are the aspect warriors? The incubi and mandrakes? Where are the death jesters? And where the hell are my entire Corsair army? (Nope, not gonna let it go. They were expensive.)

Bah.

Humbug.

[The Other Dave]

Yeah, Eldar are definitely hurt by the fact that the bulk of the "fun" bits of their army are still (still!) Finecast only, but that doesn't really explain why Banshees would be out, since they're plastic now. (It also doesn't explain why Rangers are OK but Mandrakes aren't...)

It looks 100% like they looked at KT2018, where to have a competitive kill team you'd often have to get one model each out of 4 or 5 different boxes (very expensive for both new players and the "just buy a box of an army you don't yet own" people already into 40K) and instead purposefully limited a single fire team to "what you can get out of a single box". There seem to be some narrative elements in the decision of what can be on a kill team and what can't (as you say, no bikes and such), but some gaps are still hard to explain.

[Jye Nicolson]

It does seem like the stuff you can play from the Compendium is *very very similar* to KT2018 at launch, just organised differently. There is some extra stuff but it's erring on the side of more factions than more datasheets for factions.

In particular the Aeldari stuff seems identical to 2018 for all three factions? I would have thought Banshees might get welcomed to prime time in honour of their new kit but it does not seem to be the case.

I am pretty satisfied for Drukhari though, as I can just play off the shelf with the team I have without having an incentive to change anything. I would 't mind my Wracks and Incubi making the cut at some point, but I feel like this time the promise of just using your 40k stuff is coming through.

[Primarch]

Just wait for the Eldar Vs. X boxed set that will eventually/possibly be released. Between the details they have dropped about continuing to support the game and the reviewers all saying that it feels like the game is designed for specialised Kill Team sets like the Krieg and Kommando set, hopefully every army will get it's day in the sun.

[The Other Dave]

Compendium force battle reports are starting to come out.

GMG has a video one here (Marines vs AdMech), where they (typically for them - not that I really begrudge it considering the sheer amount of content the dude gets out) get a lot of rules wrong and forget a lot of stratagems - usually with the net effect of making Marines easier to kill - but you still get the idea.

Goonhammer has a text one here (Marines vs Thousand Sons) which probably gives a better idea of how the game works.

I dig it. I appreciate that the game looking really strong even with forces that don't have many equipment options on the board is cold comfort to the people who want to be able to use more of their collections - the fact that I'm really spoiled for choice in unit selection with Death Guard is probably making me more copacetic than I ought to be.

[Mattb]

I didn't play the original KT so I'm excited to try this out - being able to just use my existing models instead of going out and buying a whole bunch of unique kits is a pretty massive plus to me. There's pretty much no reason not to try it at least once.

Is there anywhere I can see which models will actually be usable though? I'm really hoping I'll be able to use my Stormtroopers for a thematic Inquisition killteam.

[me_in_japan]

@MattB - the rules for what's useable are all in the Compendium. CanYouRollACrit has some very in depth information included in his review, as well as a good deal of the pages just scanned and posted on his site* Or, y'know, there's always the Russians, if you're inclined that way. From what I gather, based on reviews I've read, the options are pretty limited, and are largely based on what plastic box sets are available for 40k, rather than any actual game-related tactical value or lore-based reasons. I suspect that the ability to use minis from existing 40k armies is a bit of a temporary fudge, and that as new supplements are released (which I believe will be once per quarter**) the datasheets/units included in each supplement will supersede whatever was printed in the Compendium.

*There really are a lot of datasheets here. John (the guy who does CYRaC) is well known in the Warhammer:Underworlds community, and has produced a series of very informative articles over the years. He does a youtube thing now, too. The thing is, he's accustomed to showing the Underworlds cards in his reviews, as you kinda need to show what you're talking about, and you literally can't play without the actual card. Kill Team, however, is a different beast, and I hope GW are cool with him showing off so much of the book. I dunno - for all I know it may be fine. He may even have their blessing to show em off *shrug*

** This is what I read, but given the number of 40k armies, even at two-per-box, that's going to mean a very long wait if you happen to run one of the armies that comes towards the end of the release schedule.