The 2024 Edition of Kill Team has overhauled the game, changing rules, datasheets, and bringing with it an updated set of rules for every team in the game. In this series we’re taking a look at each team, how they’ve changed, and what it means for how they play in the new edition.
Welcome back Kill Teamers, to the re-review of the Farstalker Kinband, the roving Kroot mercenaries of the 40k universe. Given gear from allied T’au forces, but not always syncing up in the way that Vespid auxiliaries may do, the Farstalkers have been given a major overhaul while still keeping all their incredible models.
In this re-review, we’ll be going over the broad strokes of the changes and trying to recontextualize the team in the new edition. We’ll especially note any larger changes that are coming down the line.
Before we dive in, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.
Table of Contents
The Video Version of the Review
We have a video version of this review courtesy of Can You Roll a Crit?
Team Overview
Farstalker Kinbands represent the mercenary forces of the Kroot, who while most often seen in the employ of the T’au, can sometimes range off on their own. The team keeps a similar operative loadout to the one they had in the prior edition of Kill Team. You still have the option of taking warriors and hounds, along with all of your specialists. The team’s archetypes have been moved to Infiltration and Recon, which seems like an upgrade as those archetypes seem to be particularly strong this edition.
Abilities
Farstalker
During the ready step of each Strategy phase, you can change the order, conceal or engage tokens of three operatives not within enemy control range. Additionally you can spend a counteract window to change an operative’s order so long as it’s not in enemy control range.
This is quite the change up from the defensively-oriented Rogue ability from the past. Being able to change engaged operatives to conceal before the action kicks off means your long range shooters can act as semi-silent operatives. The rider for counteract seems a touch odd on a twelve activation team, and that will take some time to percolate.
The Operatives
Kroot operatives remain on the 8 wound, and 5+ save chassis. We’ve still got a reasonable mix of 3+s to hit with a notable inclusion of a pair of 2+s to hit, the Dvorgite Skinner got quite the glow up. The old Kroot have made it through the changes losing group activation, but the inclusion of new equipment should be a huge quality of life improvement.
Kroot Warrior
The humble Kroot Warrior has gained in leaps and bounds with the advent of the new ability Ready for Anything! Each of our warriors can pull extra equipment of Meat, Piercing Shot, and Toxin Shot at will. This makes our warriors respectively harder to kill, more lethal, or more annoying, and our choice between the 6” range scatter guns that hit on 3+s way more tempting. An exciting upgrade for a team attempting to sneak around, strike and fade into the shadows.
Kroot Kill-Broker
The Kill Broker has definitely seen its fair share of reworks in its lifetime. This version has kept the older version of Call the Kill that only grants Accurate 1 against any operative you select during a Strategic Gambit. The new add on is that we can move our Call the Kill token each time that target is incapacitated, which should help the overall team feel that much more consistent. Additionally Victory Shriek grants one operative within 6” to the Kill Broker Accurate 1 permanently whenever you incapacitate your marked target.
Lastly we’ve gotten a pretty large operative stat buff in the 4th attack for the Ritual Blade. Now on Cut-Throat turns the Kill Broker is a genuinely scary melee piece along with the hounds!
Kroot Bow-Hunter
Hawk-eye returns with larger bow tips, but otherwise remains much the same. The Glide Arrow profile is now permanently silent, which is a huge boon to our chicanery. While the Voltaic Arrow has been upgraded to Blast 1 with 3/5 damage, while also sneakily being lethal 5+ inside Volkus strongholds, and ITD. Meanwhile, Energise still provides the ability to activate lethal 5+, and notably if you don’t shoot right away, you keep the lethal 5+ through the end of the turn. This means that Energise and Guarding gives you some potent ITD overwatching that the operative did not have in the past!
Kroot Cold-Blood
Our humble veteran with an extra wound and ballistic skill. The Cold-blood’s Hardy ability to drop crit damage to normal damage, should remain quite potent letting him tango in melee, by keeping him to a 3-tap to kill. While the new Cold-blooded rule has our boy targeting wounded foes with lethal 5+ precision, and injured foes with Rending! Paired with the piercing 1 of our equipment, we can really lay on the damage and execute the weak!
Kroot Cut-Skin
The melee specialist of the farstalkers, the cut-skin remains unchanged, outside of the light nerf of ceaseless melee attacks. A powerful operative against 7 wound targets that tends not to do much against 10 wound operatives as our 3/4 damage melee just doesn’t punch up too well. Savage Assault remains the same, only allowing us to fight twice against the same operative. A thoroughly whelming operative that may see some more benching this edition.
Kroot Heavy Gunner
Some of the sweetest weaponry this side of the 40k universe is wielded by the Heavy Gunner. The Dvorgite Skinner lost an attack, gained a pip of normal damage and lost cumbersome, meaning we can no longer pop a trophy to move, shoot, and dash back to safety. I think this is mostly offset by the increase in damage reliability, and has more play on Volkus and ITD. In the old edition the Londaxi Tribalest existed in a strange place requiring far more babying before it could hit its true potential. Luckily for us the change to the Prey strategy ploy means we’ll be triggering the Rending rule of this weapon far more reliably. I suspect it’ll still be the skinner show, but against the new Astartes there’s a strong argument for trying to land 5 damage hits, making all our later 3 damage hits more valuable.
Kroot Hound
Hounds remain our melee missiles, tasked with retrieving Kill Markers, with Gather, and murdering the 7 wound operatives with their Ripping Fangs. There is still some strong value in trying to line up Bad-tempered counter charges on ITD and even on some chunks of Volkus where visibility is low. You still need to be on engage to do it, so those situations tend to be few and far between. However the new Farstalker ability can sneakily line this up at the start of turning point 2.
Kroot Long-sight
Sniping opponents from the other side of the board has never felt so good. With the loss of 2+s to hit across most teams, any operatives with 2s will feel that much better. The Long-sight has lost the permanent concealment that many teams have been hit with, but the Long-sight ability remains ever useful. Now that vantage points count as cover, a quick move to the top of Volkus may be even more useful especially since the Rogue strategy ploy can keep our engaged sniper safer than many others.
Kroot Pistolier
Gunslinging seems to have taken a bit of a hit, but we did gain a huge chunk of movement in the process. Our Dual Kroot Pistols have dual profiles, one Focused for cracking harder targets with ceaseless and Lethal 5+, the other Salvo for firing upon two separate targets. We can now load up our focused profile with piercing or toxin shots, meaning we can reliably stack damage or apply stun! Additionally the move to 8” pistols improves the threat range of our Quick Draw ability, which means we project more threat range than ever before. One cheeky trick is to move up the Pistolier into an aggressive turn 1 position, with a backup hound, only to Farstalk at the ready phase of turning point 2 to create a strong counter position against an opponent’s initiative.
Kroot Stalker
Our sneaky melee guy who can strike twice in melee if we finish a charge, while only moving 6” instead of 8”. He remains a strong counter punching piece or CQC unit that can dominate a building. Don’t forget on Volkus that you ignore doors for the purposes of control range visibility, meaning you can line up situations to hit a Stealth Attack that players are not paying attention to. This is also a strong Trophy operative because he’s got a scatter gun, which is relatively reliable damage.
Kroot Tracker
Tracking has never been this easy! Marked for the Hunt grants the powerful seek light rule against any in its control range. We no longer cover a massive area with our token, but we can be much more surgical laying on the damage where it makes sense. Additionally From the Eye Above remains an APL boosting ability for a friendly operative within 6”. Getting used to the trackers range especially on Octarius, or other terrain sets with light, will let you pummel foes who try and seek cover.
The Ploys
Farstalkers have made it into the new edition with a fair number of important changes while remaining much the same as they did before. Our “new” Farstalk ability switched places with the Rogue strat ploy, which continues to ignore Saturate and lets us retain defensive saves better in cover. With the pull back of piercing 2 across the board, we may actually find ourselves wanting Rogue as our natural ability! Cut-Throats returns to give all our melee attacks 1 more, letting us pivot into a melee horde quite easily against 7-8 wound operatives with 3 attacks. Our shooting buff Prey continues to get Balanced, and now also adds Severe! Notably, since the restriction to movement happens until we shoot, we can position aggressively then retreat into the shadows without too much issue! With critical hit rules on our Heavy Gunner, Toxin Shots, and Hunting Rifles, this can really let you punch above your weight class once enemies are in sight. Bound makes its return as our mobility ploy, allowing us ignore the first vertical distance of 2” on a climb, which makes all terrain under 2” of height effectively invisible on bounding turns. Notably on ITD and on Volkus Strongholds it makes our operatives flow like water through the boards!
Savage Ambush is the new firefight ploy on the block, letting us mimic Mandrakes, and strike first in combat so long as we have terrain in our control range. Considering our ability to pivot into 4 & 5 attack melee pieces, this can really give some fits to other melee teams, when our focus is to just tie up opponents in combat. Slip Away returns to let us fall back for 1 AP, which remains ever powerful, allowing us to use enemy gunners as staging points for later movement, alongside lining up strange angles to steal objectives. Especially alongside Poach which allows an operative to ignore controlling requirements to do mission actions. An especially potent ability when winning initiative, as it can let you springboard into opposing territory to steal a cheeky loot, or otherwise. Lastly Vengeance for the Kinband returns to let our birds perform their best impersonation of John Wick, granting us Relentless against an opposing operative that incapacitates a friendly operative. Suicidal Kroot Hounds enraging their owners remains a strong play especially into opposing elites who will reliably take some chip damage from Hounds! Letting a lurking Long-sight or Londaxi tribalest go crit fishing!
Equipment
Piercing Shot
Once a turn you can give a Kroot Rifle, Scattergun, or Dual Pistols (Focused) the Piercing 1 rule. Historically the Kroot have struggled against Astartes, and this pattern looks to continue. When paired with the handful of warriors you may end up taking, this can allow us to focus fire on opponents who are static and counteracting. Against 5+ saves, this can probably be skipped as you’ll be wanting to close in against those targets.
Toxin Shot
Once a turn in much the same as the Piercing shot, you can grant a weapon Lethal 5+ and Stun! Considering the new Prey ploy and most Astartes teams being unable to avoid APL penalties, this opens up a line of attack against the chonky marines of KT24. Having a couple of warriors lie in wait only to open up with Toxic prey shots seems to be mighty annoying, and letting our scatterguns in on the action is big game!
Meat
Once a turn, when you activate an operative not within opposing control range you can heal D3+1 wounds, excluding hounds. In Kill Team 2021, Meat was always on the wrong target, so turning this into a floating equipment should feel like a huge buff! Now keeping a warrior alive has value, especially if you can get an uninjured activation afterwards. Useful when you expect small arms fire, less so against Aeldari and their myriad piercing 2 options.
Trophy
Once per battle, an activating operative not in opposing control range can add 1 to its APL, excluding hounds. The loss of a second or third Trophy is going to be keenly felt by this team, especially on the confines of the Gallowdark, where Trophies often let the team push into rooms quite aggressively. This still remains incredibly powerful, and I expect this to be taken every game.
Geneseed for the Shapers
Let’s not mince words here, the Farstalkers have always struggled to solve the Astartes in older editions of Kill Team. Our mixture of low piercing, 8 wounds, and cagey play means we’re probably pigeon holed into looking at Infiltration, and specifically implant or surveillance. Luckily for us on turns where we win initiative we can Poach objectives away from the mighty Astartes, while the Farstalker ability and Prey ploy allow our Long-sight and Tribalest take shots looking for criticals.
I’d expect a solid game plan to revolve around lining up a Vengeance for the Kinband against early on-comers, and then backing away to a strong side of the board. This allows us to game the kill op, while letting our melee guys get some use out of Savage Ambush to stall out opposing charges. All in all this is going to be the biggest nut to crack of the edition, and if you can figure it out, the Kinband will make you feel at home. Able to tango with almost any other opposing stat line, especially with the renewed focus on cheeky objective play.
Final Thoughts
Farstalkers remain a high finesse team, that has a history of strong objective play, flavorful operatives, and banging models. There is no end to the creative uses of the team, and the new Farstalker ability lets us get some silly shots off only to end up hiding again the following turn. Against the melee hordes, and shooting hordes we remain quite the powerful team, but the Astartes and Orkoid threats remain problematic. However with Poach and Slip Away ploys we remain quite elusive and good at scoring.
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