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.
Hello, friends, and welcome to another Goonhammer faction review for Kill Team 2024. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at the latest rules for the Hand of the Archon.
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
Hand of the Archon returns with their original configuration of 9 operatives, including enough specialists to only need one warrior. The specialists are generally as good and as auto-take as they were before, although the Disciple of Yaelindra is not as abusive as before.
Hand of the Archon generally plays a little slower than before, no longer having access to the free dash that they could have with their old “Fleet of Foot” ploy which is completely gone now.
Hand of the Archon remain extremely killy, and they’re still somewhat fast with native 7” movement, which makes them well suited for their available archetypes of Recon and Seek and Destroy.
Abilities
Power From Pain
Power From Pain has been significantly improved since you now gain pain tokens by injuring enemies as well as from incapacitating them. Incapacitating an enemy that had a wounds characteristic of 12 or more earns you 2 pain tokens, just as before. Interestingly, if you incapacitate an enemy in one shot, you get fewer pain tokens from that operative than you would get if you injured them first and then killed them later during another action. I guess that makes sense though if you really think about it… Anyways, Pain tokens can be spent in 4 different ways.
- Dark Animus. Use during a friendly operative’s activation, before or after performing an action to gain an APL. basically the same as before, slightly cleaned up wording.
- Accelerated Rejuvenation. Use during a friendly activation or counteraction to gain d3+1 wounds. This kinda makes up for the loss of a flat out 6+++ feel no pain, more on that later.
- Vitalized Surge. Use immediately after incapacitating an enemy operative: use this ability to perform a free dash action, even if you’ve performed another action that would normally make a dash action ineligible.
- Stimulated Senses. Instead of allowing you to re-roll a single die, it’s essentially ceaseless, although missing the ceaseless keyword. I guess technically that means stimulated senses would stack with ceaseless, given the opportunity. This is also the only invigoration that you can use in the same activation as another invigoration.
Rifles
Splinter rifles gain Accurate 1 if you haven’t moved yet. Note that you can move after shooting though and that’s just fine.
Generally nothing here is a super insane change from before. The wording is generally cleaned up, and the rifles ability is new to Hand of the Archon. .
The Operatives
Hand of the Archon Operatives feel very similar to before, and are very comparable to other Aeldari teams. 2apl, 7” movement, 4+ save, 8 wounds, hitting on 3s in shooting and melee. You are limited to 2 darklight weapons throughout the team, which makes the blast pistol a much less appealing choice since it now only has a damage profile of 3/4.
Kabalite Archsybarite
The Archsybarite maintains many available loadout options (blast pistol and venom blade; splinter pistol and venom blade, power weapon, or agonizer; or splinter rifle and array of blades) as well as the Cunning ability, which allows you to gain 1cp if you pass at the first opportunity to use a strategic gambit in the strategy phase. This seems especially amusing to me in terms of the missions such as Power Surge which requires a player to activate an objective as a strategic gambit. If both players pass to end the strategy phase, there is no active objective, and the scoring potential then goes down for both players for that entire turning point.
Kabalite Agent
The Kabalite Agent is your basic warrior with a splinter rifle and array of blades. Your equipment options have the potential to transform even a kabalite agent into a formidable melee and shooting threat. The flexibility here makes a Kabalite Agent a valid choice in terms of replacing a specialist, especially considering their Sadistic Competition data sheet ability, which allows a single kabalite agent to gain a pain token once per turning point whenever any other operative on your team gains a pain token.
Kabalite Crimson Duellist
The Crimson Duellist is hardly changed, but definitely includes one subtle but definitely substantial nerf: the Crimson Duellist ability that allows her to fight twice must target the same enemy with both fight actions. Otherwise, she still gets 4 attacks on 2+, 4/5 damage, Brutal, Tangle. Tangle allows you to parry two enemy successes with a single die. The Crimson Duellist also retains the Brutal Display ability, which allows you to select an enemy within 6” and visible to a victim that you kill in melee, and mark them with a brutal display token that means that operative cannot control markers or perform the pick up marker mission action.
Disciple of Yaelindra
The Disciple of Yaelindra is the most reworked operative on the team. The Torment Grenade is no longer the most obnoxious grenade in the game, as it requires an actual enemy who must be visible and within 6” to target. No more poison grenades hitting multiple targets through walls. The Torment Grenade still splashes out and hits other targets within 1” of the original target, and it still poisons the target, just as before. It’s slightly cleaned up by the fact that the poisoned enemy now takes damage when they activate, instead of during the ready operatives step of the initiative phase. The Disciple of Yaelindra’s Stinger Pistol is now essentially a normal gun: 4 attacks on 3+, 3/5 damage, range 8”, Lethal 5+, and Stinger. Stinger causes incapacitated enemies to explode, dealing d3 damage to each other visible operative within 2” of it before removing that operative, which can subsequently cause more operatives to daisy chain explode using the stinger rule. Note that this doesn’t rule out damaging friendly operatives, so be careful.
Kabalite Elixicant
The Kabalite Exlicant has the same stats and weapons as a Kabalite Agent, but also acts as your medic and your comms. The Elixicant also has an additional shooting profile: stim-needler: 3” range, 3+ to hit, 0/0 damage, lethal 3+, stun.
Combat drugs is still a datasheet ability that offers a buff to your entire team, but the options are slightly different:
- Painbringer. Whenever an attack dice inflicts damage of 3 or more on this operative, roll one D6: on a 6, subtract 1 from that inflicted damage. This is strictly worse than before.
- Adrenalight. STRATEGIC GAMBIT. Select one friendly operative that has this combat drug to gain one of your pain tokens. This sort of makes up for lack of fleet, especially because you can often get away with only one or two models needing that extra movement from the dash, and it also solves the problem of Hand of the Archon really having trouble getting started since they had no access to 3apl operatives at the start of the game in 2nd edition kill team. This choice really seems like the best choice overall to me by quite a bit.
- Hypex. You can ignore any changes to this operative’s move stat from being injured. This is actually pretty good, but also boring. I like Adrenalight way more.
The Kabalite Elixicant can also Administer Drugs, which allows you to heal an operative for 2d3 or change the active drug on a single operative, which could potentially result in the world’s clumsiest comms interaction.
Kabalite Flayer
The Kabalite Flayer is basically the same as he was in KT21: Insensible to Pain reduces incoming damage by 1, he doesn’t have any ranged weapons, and he can hand off pain tokens to allies within 6” once per turning point after he strikes with a critical hit in melee. He fights with a 4 attacks on 3+ 4/5 damage ceaseless profile in melee.
Kabalite Gunner
The Kabalite Gunner can run with a blaster or a shredder. Both weapons are 4 attacks on 3+ and deal 4/5 damage. The blaster has piercing 2, and the shredder is rending and torrent 2”. Both are pretty solid.
Kabalite Heavy Gunner
The Kabalite Heavy Gunner has been stealthily improved over the KT21 equivalent with the loss of the unwieldy keyword on the Dark Lance. The Dark Lance is now 4 attacks on 3+, 6/7 damage, piercing 2, and heavy (dash only) which is a very strong profile. Especially if you start with a pain token to allow for a very reliable kill using the Stimulated Senses Invigoration. The splinter cannon is ok: 5 attacks on 3+, ⅗ heavy (dash only) and Lethal 5+. You can also fire it in a sweeping profile, which trades one atack die for Torrent 1”. The Dark Lance seems insanely better.
Kabalite Skysplinter Assassin
The Kabalite Skysplinter Assassin is pretty similar to his previous profile. He has two shooting profiles: Razorwing and Shardcarbine, as well as maintaining the Omen datasheet passive ability as well as the Mark and Merciless Hunter active abilities.
The Razorwing is 5 attacks on 4+, 1/2 damage, saturate, seek, silent, which makes for excellent harassing fire against any target. The Shardcarbine is 4 attacks on 2+, 2/2 damage, devastating 2 and Lethan 5+. Hitting on 2s here is pretty strong, and the devastating 2 synergizes nicely with the strategy ploy Mark and From Darkness, Death.
Merciless Hunter allows you to shoot with both of your shooting profiles in the same activation, or you can choose to use the Mark action for 1ap which grants you seek light and ignore obscuring. You can’t use merciless hunter in the same activation that you use Mark.
The Omen remains a potent passive ability, which allows you to mark an ally who re-rolls all 1s or an enemy who must re-roll all 6s.
The Ploys
The Strategy Ploys are pretty similar to how they were before.
Blade Artists gives rending to all melee weapons on your team. This is unchanged. This synergizes nicely with your equipment options and ploys, allowing any operative on your team to become a potent threat in melee.
Merciless Sadists replaces fleet, which grants you Balanced when shooting or fighting against a wounded enemy. It is important to note that this does not apply to retaliating in melee, and that an operative is wounded even when missing only a single wound.
From Darkness, Death allows you to retain a normal hit as a critical hit against an enemy that wasn’t a valid target at the start of your activation. Since it isn’t the Severe keyword, this would stack with severe, as well as add additional critical hits on top of naturally rolled critical hits. You can charge a concealed enemy in cover and benefit from this ploy, since before you charged, they were not a valid target. Strangely though, the Skysplinter Assassin has a harder time benefiting from this ploy since the Razorwing has the Seek keyword, making anyone he can see a valid shooting target. In such a case, it is best to appear from completely out of line of sight to synergize nicely with your shardcarbine shooting profile.
Denizens of Night became way different: instead of granting super conceal in your deployment zone, it grants you a situational defensive die re-roll. This requires the Hand of the Archon model to have intervening heavy cover, or be under a vantage, and not be within 2” of any enemies.
The Tactical Ploys are pretty similar as well.
Cruel Deception allows a hand of the archon operative to fall back for 1apl less, which allows your gunners to escape melee and continue firing. Pretty strong.
Use Devious Scheme as a reaction to your opponent using a firefight ploy: next time they use it, it costs an extra CP.
Heinous Arrogance is unchanged: allowing you to skip an activation. Use this to get the last activation in a turning point. This can often be just as important as having the first activation in a turning point, and should not be taken lightly.
Prey on the Wounded allows you to re-roll any or all of your dice against a wounded target. Tag an enemy with the Razorwing to wound them, and then smoke ‘em with a blaster for a nice little combo.
Equipment
Chain Snare
This equipment potentially denies enemy operatives from falling back. When they would attempt to do so, roll 2d6 (or 1d6 if that operative has a higher wounds stat than you) and if any results are 4+, that operative can’t fall back. No AP are spent.
Wicked Blades
Is a very simple selection: every operative that is equipped with Array of Blades gains an extra attack. Honestly this is crucial to how the team works. With 4 attacks, plus the help of Toxin Coating, From Darkness Death, and Blade Artists, any operative can reliably score several critical hits in any melee.
Toxin Coating
Is a floating buff that you can call on twice per turning point to upgrade any melee to gain Lethal 5+. You always want to use this on the Flayer, and in general this is crucial for turning any operative into a melee monster.
Refined Poison
Definitely the least important equipment option, adding 1 to the normal damage of your splinter weapons is decent, but you don’t have enough synergy to win a shootout in a lot of scenarios, so exposing operatives to attempt mediocre shots is probably a mistake.
Final Thoughts
Hand of the Archon is a very flexible team, with some very strong shooters that are difficult to shoot back, and monster melee threats that can pop out of any operative.
Against elites, it wouldn’t be crazy for the dark lance to easily kill 2 or 3 astartes by poptarting and using re-rolls, plus your melee threats can seriously overperform what you’d expect from their basic statlines.
The loss of double kill potential from the Crimson Duelist especially hurts, since their tougher matchups will be horde teams, and that was an important tool to manage hordes.
Overrun or Storm Objectives might be solid choices for tac ops, thanks to the speed and killing power of the Hand of the Archon.
The Dark Lance and the Skysplinter Assassin came out way ahead, but the Disciple of Yaelindra and the Crimson Duellist got knocked down a peg. The melee threat saturation remained just as strong as ever. Ultimately it looks like Hand of the Archon sits pretty close in power level to where they were in Kill Team 2021, although perhaps relying a little more on shooting than they did before.
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