--- title: "Kill Team v1" subtitle: "A boldly belated review" author: Seth publish_date: 2025-02-06 08:00 date: 2025-02-06 08:00 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: kill-team-1600x800.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: blog tag: [ gaming, tools, scifi ] --- My 1st edition **Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team** is one of those books that I actually feel lucky to have purchased. I could have easily not purchased it. But I did, and I still have it, and that's good because 7 years after its release it's still one of the best introductory products into **Warhammer 40,000** and maybe even into wargaming. Here are the many reasons why **Kill Team** 1.0 is one of the best ways to play 40k. ## 1. Datasheets included I love a wargame book that's self-contained. In 208 pages, **Kill Team** 1.0 includes a little bit of lore, rules, and stats for each army you can play. In just a single book, you have all the rules and datasheets you need to play the game. There's no additional downloads, no app, no supplemental books to purchase. You just grab your **Kill Team** book and play. Admittedly, even though 14 Factions are provided, the army stats include a mere fraction of all possible Factions in 40k. Notably, there's no datasheet for Orks, Adepta Sororitas, Adeptus Arbites, Votann, Adeptus Custodes, Imperial Agents, Legends, and so on. It's a reduced list, but I think there's a lot of value to sometimes restricting choice. Whether you're a new player or a longtime Warhammer wargamer, even 14 options is a lot. It's actually refreshing, sometimes, to have just a few (or 14) choices. More importantly, for an experienced player it probably doesn't matter anyway. In the book, you choose models to be a certain kind of **Specialist**, which boosts their stats and provides situational bonuses. What that means is that the "special rules" in this book are universal, entirely independent of Faction. Model-specific details, like Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill and Strength and Wounds and weapons, are pretty well represented in the book. If you have a vast 40k collection and really want to play a Faction that's not in the book, then you can just grab a miniature and browse through the datasheets until you find a profile that seems appropriate. Or just make up your own datasheet using the book's listing as examples. It might take some experimentation and playtesting before you get it exactly right, but in my experience it's pretty easy to cobble something together. ## 2. Little skirmishes A wargame usually requires 30 to 60 miniatures on each side of the battle, because it's designed to mimic combat between entire armies. **Kill Team** is a skirmish game, though, so your deployable "army" is just 8 or 10 soldiers. When you want to build a kill team, you can basically just pick up a box or two of models of the Faction of your choice, and you're ready to go. You have to calculate points as you assemble your models, and consider which weapons you can afford to include, but that's no different than building an army for any other game. The Factions included in the book: * Adeptus Mechanicus * Astartes * Astra Militarum * Asuryani * Death Guard * Deathwatch * Drukhari * Genestealer Cults * Grey Knights * Harlequins * Heretic Astartes * Necrons * Thousand Sons * Tyranids ## 3. Rules in just 28 pages Rulebooks can be deceptive. Even though the rulebook for 10th edition **Warhammer 40,000** is something like 300 pages, the _rules_ are actually only 60 pages. The **Kill Team** 1.0 rules start on page 16 and end on 44. That's just 28 pages. You can read the rules in an afternoon, and then play. The bulk of your effort is committing your army's stats to memory, because the rules are neatly summarised on page 20 and again on 208. ## 4. Evergreen One good thing about physical books is that they continue to exist even after a game has been incremented or discontinued. **Kill Team** 1.0 is a complete game. You can buy a handful of miniatures, assign them a datasheet profile, and play. That's not any different than any other physical game book, of course, but then again **Kill Team** 2.0 is a moving target, with a new "seasons" being released every now and again, and lots of new potential kill teams. I appreciate the new releases because those kill teams are fun to play (even if I do cheat and play them with 1.0). Nothing's wrong with **Kill Team** 2.0 but the way it uses shapes instead of numbers to indicate movement strikes me as odd, and frankly I just feel like **Kill Team** 1.0 with its Specialist rules and detailed datasheets and random tables is just the right fit for my gaming style. There's enough crunch to occupy your time when you're thinking about gaming, and it's simple and self-contained enough to make your game quick and enjoyable. ## 5. It's Warhammer 40k Games Workshop somehow manages to make their games uncannily consistent. 1st edition **Warhammer 40,000** (**Rogue Trader**) feels surprisingly similar to 10th edition **Warhammer 40,000**. Even games that go wildly off script, like **Blackstone Fortress**, benefits from established terminology and internal logic. When you learn a game set in the 40k universe, you learn how games set in 40k work. Sure, a flamer might work differently, or the numbers for damage might change, there may be a different sequence of actions you can take on your turn, but once you learn the game language you're using the same mechanics for a different process. **Kill Team** isn't exactly 40k, but then again it basically is. Regardless of what edition of 40k you play, the turn sequence is awfully familiar: 1. Initiative 2. Movement 3. Psyker 4. Shooting 5. Fighting 6. Morale Different, but the same. ## Kill Team Regardless of version, **Kill Team** is an impressive wargame. It's not the perfect skirmish wargame. It could have totally generic datasheets based on soldier roles instead of actual miniatures, with a separate weapoons chart so you could piecemeal your stats. But it's a strong game, and it's got the strength of the 40k setting and Citadel miniatures. And because it's got so much support from Games Workshop, I think it's one of the easiest ways to get into wargaming. Get the book, get a kill team, and go to battle.

All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.