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 Hunter Clade, Kill Team of the Adeptus Mechanicus, bringing radiation and bad vibes across many kill zones. The Clade have a bevy of new tools, and I’m excited to get a fresh set of eyes on those tools.
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. Especially noting 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.
The Video Version of the Review
If you’d like to watch a video review of the team, you should check out the following, courtesy of Can You Roll a Crit?
Team Overview
We are now a fully 10-operative team, without the ability to grab 11 operatives. Our leader options have opened up with some shifts on firefight ploys, alongside some new equipment tools. We’ve also regained the ability to sport 3 heavy weapons, with some terms and conditions.
Abilities
Doctrina Imperatives
As a Strategic Gambit you can change which Doctrina Imperative is active for a given turn, each has an Optimisation and Deprecation, across the whole kill team.
- Protector Imperative: Ranged weapons gain Ceaseless while your melee hits are all worse by 1. Excellent on the first couple of turns when you expect to nail a couple of shots but aren’t in melee range. Or if all your melee pieces are incapacitated.
- Conqueror Imperative: Melee weapons gain Ceaseless while your ranged hits are all worse by 1. You’ll be finding reasons to do this especially if you’re running a full screech of ruststalkers on their Accelerant Agents turn.
- Bulwark Imperative: Re-roll defense dice of one result. Effectively Ceaseless defense rolls, which are quite powerful. Unfortunately the loss of 1” of movement across the board will probably make this somewhat of a non-starter unless you’re in a position to play more defensively.
- Aggressor Imperative: Add 1” of movement, but worsen defensive saves by 1. On turn 1, we wouldn’t be surprised to see this get a lot of play, as getting into position for turn 2 is massive, while being able to launch some ruststalkers or melee pieces that extra inch remains a staple.
- Neutral Imperative, nada!
The Operatives
Ad Mech make their return with the same 10 wound Sicarian chassis of two varietals: a melee monster, or a mixed threat disruption piece on a 4+ save hitting on 3+s. The smaller Skitarii cohort come with two different abilities with mediocre melee while hitting on 3+s with ranged attacks. The two types have different focuses, and without the roster restrictions of KT 21, you are allowed much more variety in loadouts! Let’s get into the warrior choices as the chassis will be used in our specialists.
Skitarii Vanguard Warrior
Our humble radiation soaked warrior, able to project a 2” bubble of -1 to hit with Rad-Saturation, that doesn’t stack with injury. It’s backed up with a Radium Carbine, a rending shot with 2/4 damage that hits on 3s. Generally these guys are used to project injury bubbles when our melee pieces head into battle, and grab mission objectives. The 7-wound 4+ save chassis isn’t all that defensible, so don’t expect them to take much heat.
Skitarii Ranger Warrior
Rangers are the harder hitting shooters of the Skitarii warriors, when backed up by Targeting Protocol and a stable position your rifles can definitely punch above their weight, getting Lethal 5+. That means our Galvanic Rifle with four attacks, 3+s to hit, 3/4 damage backed up by Piercing Crits 1 can be pretty spooky to almost anything. Heavy (Reposition only) means we’re more mobile than last editions truly Heavy weapons.
Sicarian Infiltrator Warrior
Our tech pieces remain pretty flexible, with 10 wounds, and bevy of Mar’s finest weapons of war. The Flechette Blaster has moved over to the truly Silent annoyance role, with 2/2 damage and Saturate. While the Stubcarbine, remains pretty powerful bolter fire with Ceaseless making putting rounds down range reliably. Meanwhile we’re given access to two melee options with the Power Sword remaining the obvious favorite. Taser Goads remain four attacks on 3+s with 3/4 damage with Lethal 5+ and Shock, a technical downgrade from the Stun of old. While Omnissiah’s Imperative ploy does allow some Taser Goad shenanigans, getting multiple high quality attacks with a power sword remains a better defense. We are allowed to freely load out both weapons, so maybe there is room for an annoyance piece with Flechette Blasters and Taser Goads blasting out no re-roll bubbles from Neurostatic Interference.
Sicarian Ruststalker Warrior
Ruststalkers return as the melee nightmares of old, with some diminishment. We’ve lost the ability to kit them all out with free traversals, though we’ve kept an element of that the Omnissiah’s Imperative firefight ploy. Wasteland Stalker, still allows us to retain saves in shooting, while our melee profiles remain the same. Chordclaw & Transonic razors with 4/5 damage and balanced remain the favorite against 8 wound and under operatives and Astartes. Reliably murderizing anything with 3 hits and granting us enough hits to generally survive an Astartes charge. Transonic blades are the choice going into 10w operatives like Scouts and Kommandos, where our 4/6 rending profile lets us hit the 10w breakpoint over three hits more reliably than the 4/5 damage of the claws. These guys are some of our scariest pieces and using them to line break is critical!
Sicarian Ruststalkers Princeps
The move of Control Edict as a firefight ploy rears its head here, with a newly invigorated Sicarian leader. With Canticle of Destruction allowing any Rustalker fights within 3” of the princeps to deal 1 additional damage on the first critical. We’ve still got Wasteland Stalker, and the combined profile of the Chordclaw and Transonic Blades sports 5 attacks hitting on 3s, for 4/6 damage with Balanced and Rending. This means we’re reliably executing any 7 wound operatives in melee on our first strike during a Conqueror Imperative turn.
Sicarian Infiltrator Princeps
Canticle of Shroudpsalm, allows infiltrators within 3” of the princeps to have super conceal. Unfortunately our weapon loadouts are equivalent to our warriors, so this princeps is probably going to be benched more often than not. There is a stronger argument against any team that relies on re-rolls as a massive field of 6” no attack rerolls with some amount of super conceal is more tempting there. Especially with Flechette Blasters taking a bunch of silent pot shots.
Skitarii Ranger/Vanguard Diktat
Our comms man operative with the same loadouts and our warrior variants. Able to dole out +1apl to a visible friendly operative within 6”, as long as the diktat is outside of enemy control range. We’re never leaving home without one of these, though now the choice between Vanguard and Ranger is more pronounced. With Scouting Protocol letting us reposition our ranger diktat and Debilitating Irradiation’s vanguard buff. I suspect this should be a ranger as comms operatives tend not to enjoy being in the thick of things, and the strategy phase dash on offer with scouting protocol is very powerful.
Skitarii Ranger/Vanguard Gunner
The same ranger/vanguard chassis with relevant abilities make their return, with the Targeting Protocol’s Lethal 5+ providing more dps, and the Rad-Saturation allowing us to add more annoying injury bubbles. We’ve got three separate gunner options, and the ability to take them all once again! Arc Rifles remain the same, firing Stunning 4/5 damage shots on a 3s. Plasma Callivers see the same nerf other plasma guns were hit with firing with either 4/6 damage and piercing 1, or 5/6 damage with Hot, Lethal 5+ and Piercing 1. Which makes the new Transauranic Arquebus sliiightly more appealing, its got 2 profiles for stationary or mobile firing positions. With stationary being Heavy it has 4 attacks, hitting on 2s, with 4/3 damage and Devastating 3, Piercing 1, and Severe. Mobile firing lets us take a dash action, but downgrades us to 4 attacks, on 3s, with 4/3 damage, Devastating 2, and Piercing 1. Notably the Targeting Protocol for the rangers lets us really ramp up the damage the arquebus puts out with Lethal 5+. The choice between gunner chassis are really up in the air right now.
Skitarii Ranger/ Vanguard Surveyor
Our anti-obscurer returns with appropriate abilities, and the Spot ability. Unlike other auspex variants elsewhere in this edition we have no 8” range restriction, and we still grant Obscured. We now also grant Seek Light against the target as well, which means the surveyor represents a true menace. The firing operative does need to be within 3” of the surveyor to get the benefits, but any number of friendlies can get the benefit. This means against teams you out activate you can do a small carousel of friendly models getting the benefits in turn. Ranger surveyors can really be spooky with the addition of Lethal 5+ to the package of seek light, piercing crits 1, and ignores obscurity.
The Ploys
We’ve seen the most changes to our ploys when returning to the hunter clade. Mostly for the better, as each ploy is stronger but unfortunately locked to our operative types. Debilitating Irradiation expands our Rad-Saturation rule to decrease normal damage characteristics against friendlies while being affected to a minimum of 3. Scouting Protocol allows all concealed Rangers more than 6” from enemies to take a free dash on any turning point after the first. A powerful ability for turning point 2, especially if you drag out the arquebus and have ladders floating around. Neurostatic Interference still stops re-rolls of attack dice against any enemy operatives within 6” of our Infiltrators. While Accelerant Agents still juices up our Ruststalkers with a free fight action, and the ability to fight twice. Historically useful to allow us to charge, fight, and score; while also allowing us to blend a pair of unwilling victims.
Our fight fight ploys have also seen a facelift, giving us a bevy of actually interesting ploys, that we’ll be trying to find uses for. Control Edict our old Skitarii Princeps ability, has been moved to a firefight ploy, and a restriction on the number of Sicarians we can activate. The ability to flexibly chain activate operatives was key to our older successes, and remains important now. Scrapcode Overload allows an infiltrator to mess the opposing control score on an objective by -1. Interestingly enough this ploy gives us an interrupt if an enemy operative activates within 3” of an infiltrator, which makes the sneaky infiltrators that much more annoying. Command Override lets one operative change is Doctrina Imperative for the turning point, giving us the ability to pivot when we need it. The new Omnissiah’s Imperative lets us amp up an operative for d3+1 damage. Empowering the doctrinas with more powerful rules, protector gains Severe, conqueror lets us strike twice, bulwark gives us 4 defense dice with a better save, and lastly aggressor lets you ignore the first 2” of climb. The imperative boost is going to be incredibly swingy with the conqueror boost looking particularly impressive if you can fight twice! Knowing when to take that d3+1 wounds is probably going to be a massive part of piloting the new hunter clade.
Equipment
Rad Bombardment
Once a battle, starting from turn 2, you can select the opposing drop zone, or an objective marker to launch some rads at. Each target in the dropzone, or within control range of the objective has 2 D6 rolled against them. One is targeting a 4+ to subtract APL, and the other is targeting a 6 to deal d3 damage. If an opponent has vantage above any part of the models base, you subtract 1 from the roll, making the damage impossible to hit. I suspect this will be more fun, than functional, but if a player is particularly wary of leaving their drop zone on turn 1, its nice to have a stick to hit them with.
Redundancy Systems
Once a turning point, an operative that is activated outside of opposing control range, can heal d3+2 wounds. This is particularly nice considering we had to spend CP on this last edition. Additionally the higher heal count means we’re often dropping the injured status which is critical for surprising opponents.
Refractor Field
Once a turn, you can drop the piercing rule by 1, at the start of the roll defence dice step. A powerful defensive ability that seems hard to leave home without.
Extremis Mind-Link
Once per battle, you can Control Edict for 0cp, and when you do you can activate the pair in any order, and activations can intermingle. You’ll never leave home without this, and this will probably lead to some of your coolest plays. Imagine launching a rad-saturation vanguard into an opposing marine, while a ruststalker follows up for a soft fight. Afterwards you can still shoot with your vanguard! Especially cool on ITD/Gallowdark where you can open doors and not waste AP!
Murderize Imperative, Target Hostiles
The Confirm Kill tac op seems perfect for our high lethality team, letting us murder opponents with reckless abandon and not care too much for the opposing kill op tally. Take the best load out for blending the opposing chassis type, lay down the radiation and blades to your hearts content and have a grand ole time.
Alternatively with the newer infiltrator mass silent chicanery you can elect for a slow and annoying approach. Staging infiltrators everywhere and stopping opposing re-rolls, especially potent against 4s to hit teams. Use the silent profiles to goad opponents into strange positions and vanguards on objectives to tank opposing charges. Eventually going for a late game recover items board layout after chipping opponents down.
Final Thoughts
The Clade have seen a reasonably massive re-work from their KT21 heady highs. Gone are the days of ignoring deprecations, and being forced into a Skitarii Princeps. We’re not locked into 10 operatives, but have been given more flexibility in those loadouts, and more reasons to take different operative types. Unfortunately that is also backed up by all our strategy ploys being much less flexible, and our Ruststalkers losing some movement shenanigans.
I think the team looks incredibly fun though and am excited to take them out for a spin. Imagining fun uses for some boosted APL operatives during an Extremis Mind-link has me excited to look for possibilities. While our new Princep options give us far more room in operative selection.
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