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 Kasrkin, the Imperium’s finest elites, fearless in the face of danger. Even amongst the ruins of their beloved Cadia, the Kasrkin have returned to Kill Team 2024 with one of the most sizable reworks across the team. Only time will tell if their new Skill at Arms will live up to the Elite points, but it certainly looks to be a more fun team to fight on the battlefield!
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.
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
We’re still using ten operatives, with similar gunner restrictions. However players are probably quite pleased to find out that everyone now hits on the 3+s their special forces training would imply! We’ve lost access to the recon archetype and are now going to have to choose between Security and Seek and Destroy.
Abilities
Skill At Arms
As a Strategic Gambit select a Skill at Arms for all friendly Kasrkin operatives to have until the Ready step of the next strategy phase. Each one of these boosts the team in a powerful way, much the same as the Death Korps orders do, however we get to skip the range restrictions!
- Light ‘Em Up: Gain Severe when shooting against opposing Ready operatives. Excellent when you have some shots lined up, or you have positioned yourself in a way to snipe those shots. Particularly powerful on our Sniper, and Melta Guns as guaranteed crits mean we can expect solid output on those activations.
- Strike Fast: Whenever you reposition add 1” to our move stat. Powerful on tp1, or any turn where you need to get the perfect angle. Notably this will not trigger on charge or fall back actions, so this is mostly for getting into trouble.
- Ice in Your Veins: Cadia’s finest take -1 damage on the first die of 4 damage in any damage sequence during a turn. This is worded so you get this benefit during pretty much any roll attack, roll defense dice situation, and historically these sorts of buffs make break points incredibly gnarly to hit. Ork’s coming in hot will be much less threatening when you can take the hit, and have someone Cover Retreat.
- For Cadia: Add 1 to the atk stat of melee weapons to a maximum of 4. Sucks that our leader can’t get up to 5 attacks and be a menace, but a nice buff considering we’ll almost always be wielding some combat daggers. It won’t turn us into a melee horde, but we can at least make it cost our opponents when the come into our lines.
The Operatives
Kasrkin are a 10-wide 8-wound 4+ save team, sporting 3+s to hit in shooting, and 4+s to hit in melee. Which puts them firmly in the finesse territory, as we cannot brute force our way through teams with melee. The biggest change between editions is going to be the move to 3+s to hit, which is a sizable upgrade in some respects. Losing guaranteed dice manipulation will sting sometimes, but honestly this is a less toxic play pattern.
Kasrkin Trooper
Our troopers once got to spend a single elite point for free making them great frag grenade caddies, however the KT24 boost has come. Elevating the trooper with Adaptive Equipment once a turning point free Smoke or Stun Grenade! Notably we can only use one of each, each turning point but nothing stops an APL boosted trooper from pulling two pins and letting loose with some shock and awe. With some of the changes to our Demo-trooper, taking a pair of utility grenadiers with hot-shot lasguns may end up being a pretty popular choice.
Kasrkin Sergeant
The Schola Progenium’s best have gained an extra APL, to keep us in line with some of the other finesse-y teams, such as Novitiates. We’re tasked in each match up with either grabbing the Power Sword, or the Plasma Pistol as neither load out gives us both. Meanwhile our new ability Tactical Command is a 0AP action that lets us select a friendly Kasrkin to switch to a new Skill at Arms or move our re-roll enabling Clearance Sweep ploy marker elsewhere on the board. I suspect the plasma pistol and chainsword combo will be the all comers choice, with the power weapon coming out when looking at 10-wound operative teams. Tasking a hidden kasrkin with Severe, or +1” of movement when your opponent least expects it with Tactical Command, is sure to be a favorite move of excellent scholars of war.
Kasrkin Combat Medic
A standard medic, with truly nothing crazy to write home about. Keep him within 3” of a gunner you send out as bait, so they can run back to safety when they see return fire. Pop a Medikit for 1AP to heal a friendly operative 2D3 wounds, as long as they weren’t Medic!’ed the same turn. His Hot-shot Lasgun does hit on 3+s so every once in a while he’ll pop a shot off, and it might count. Overall this guy doesn’t do too much into melee focused teams, but he holds his own in shooting match ups.
Kasrkin Demo-trooper
Once a favorite, now probably in the range of hard to justify. The demo-trooper’s physical mine token means it can never cover an objective marker in its entirety, which means its primary job of old is off the table. You can still make doors harder to use and certain terrain avenues less interesting, but given the cost of taking a shorter ranged gun and the now-lower overall damage on the mine, it’s a hard pill to swallow. The Demo-trooper does make a good holdfast inside of Volkus Strongholds with his blast padding letting you re-roll against the lethal 5+ blast/torrent rules, but otherwise I expect to skip out on him.
Kasrkin Gunner
The highlight of our team, letting us select the right tools for any job. The new flamer profile means we’re often going to have a way to get some damage out of it with four attacks on 2+s 3/3 damage, with 8” range, Saturate and Torrent 2”. The Grenade Launcher, Meltagun, and Plasma Gun’s have the same profiles as other teams, hitting on 3+s. With call outs to the meltagun being particularly devastating during Light ‘Em Up turns! Meanwhile the Hot-shot Volley Gun gains the new Sweeping profile losing an attack and gaining Torrent 1”, for four attacks on 3+s 3/4 damage, and piercing crits 1. Its Focused profile is a devastating 5 attacks with the same profile, and can definitely punch a hole through anything with severe in its back pocket. Don’t forget we get a selection of four of these, when combined with the sharpshooter, so grabbing the right profile for the map and opponent is critical! Short ranged stuff for ITD, high piercing for good saves, and torrent profiles for the hordes.
Kasrkin Recon-Trooper
An important part of our old load out and a continued must take. The recon-trooper gives us access to our most powerful strategy phase ploy, Relocate, free each turn as long as he is the selected operative. Additionally his Auspex Scan ability remains ever useful, though only applicable to an enemy within 8” of the recon-trooper. The utility of relocate means we’re always taking this guy, so get used to keeping him as close to 3” of as many operatives as possible to really make that free ploy feel like cheating!
Kasrkin Sharpshooter
Honestly a pretty large disappointment here, as our sharpshooter’s best shots are now truly Heavy. We’ve also lost the ability to stay permanently concealed, so it’ll be hard to find a useful spot for our sniper to stay camped out in. I’d expect to take this far less often than our gunners now, but if you can find a sniper nest quickly then our Camo Cloak’s extra saves could be an outsized thorn. I’d primarily be interested on Volkus if I have the 3rd story vantage close to home, otherwise I’d probably pass.
Kasrkin Vox-Trooper
The most powerful piece in our arsenal, and good use of his Battle Comms 1AP ability will make or break the Kasrkin Commander. You can use the ability twice in an activation, which means you can make plays for the future by backloading APL on expended operatives. Alternatively you can push the tempo of the current turn up by letting a gunner move, shoot, and score. Creative decision making and knowing when you can turn up the pressure is important.
The Ploys
Kasrkin ploys have seen a couple re-imaginings, but not in the strategic sense. We’ve still got the crit-centric Elimination Pattern, granting us benefits against targets not in cover. Whether or not the hot-shot lasgun’s new Piercing Crits 1, or the hot-shot volley gun’s Piercing 1 will be worthwhile will depend on how easy it is to get a shot not in cover. Engage from Cover, is an upgrade over safeguard, letting us re-roll 1 defence dice while our operatives are in cover. With the drop in overall piercing this edition this may be worth another look especially against Death Korp or Pathfinders. Clearance Sweep makes its return with a massive increase in size, between the 20mm marker and the 5” radius we are now getting balanced whenever we want. Relocate also returns, letting us position aggressively and back off when we lose initiative, or swing for the fences if we win initiative. Being able to keep bubbles of kasrkin within 3” squad coherency bubbles remains critical for commanders, and if you can do it with your recon-trooper even better!
Our firefight ploys have been the biggest reworks, starting off with Seize the Initiative which now needs to be done at the end of the turning point. Which means you need to make the call on a turn’s future importance before you see the roll off! You can now make your opponent re-roll their die, which can be a fine distinction, but with fewer CP in general it might be harder to find the time. Cover Retreat is our new toy, with an old name, and boy howdy is it a big toy. When we perform the Fall Back action within 6” of a ready friendly Kasrkin, that ready Kasrkin can take a free shoot action! Lining this up with a hot-shot volley gun or other heavy hitter is incredible, and having your vox-trooper set up a fall back, and mission action backed up by a free shoot, simply cinema. Neutralise Target returns with a small nerf, needing the target to both be expended and not in cover, to get the benefit of relentless shooting. You’ll be looking for chances to have this matter, but between balanced from clearance sweep, and severe from light ‘em up, you’ll probably be sorted long before you burn the CP on this. Give No Ground is another new one, with a strange enough use case, where a single 2APL kasrkin automatically gains control of an objective against exactly 2APL worth of enemy APL contesting an objective. It does come with an end of firefight activation window, which can play havoc with an opponent’s predictions, but as it only works against other 2APL operatives this feels harder to line up than I’d like.
Equipment
Foregrip
Non-pistol ranged weaponry that you fire within 3” of your operatives, gains Accurate 1. Considering our access to re-rolls and 3+s to hit, this may not be all the useful, but the guaranteed hit on a meltagun is always welcome. Probably not an always take, but if you think you are going to be in range, it’s nice to have.
Long-Range Scope
If you’re shooting at someone more than 6” away from you with a hot-shot weapon you gain Critical Saturate. Doesn’t quite work well with the idea of foregrips, so probably best to stick to an either or, loadout. Better against softer targets that need cover to get through shooting.
Relics of Cadia
Once a turn, when you miss twice in a shooting step, you can discard one of them and retain a success. Makes your perceived floor of hits about 3 successes, 4 on a hot-shot volley gun, which can be enough on turns where you’re landing the right hits. Especially on a meltagun with Severe online.
Combat Daggers
All operatives get an upgraded melee profile of 3 attacks on 4+s 3/4 damage. We’re probably always taking these as we’d like to chip off more damage when charged, and against smaller teams we want to be able to set up some charge, fight, and shoot activations. Against 7 wound teams, using For Cadia with an APL boost, means you’re a spooky mixed threat.
Tactical Play, in Tight Confines
We’ve got the tools to manage Astartes level threats in a fair fight, so let’s narrow in on a game plan and approach against our historical nemesis the Kommandos. 11 operatives with a suicidal bomb squig backed up by enough brawn to tank some shots, and chop us to little bits is always going to feel like a rough one. We’re going to focus on the crit op, and make that our primary op, considering that I expect many Kommandos will go for the clean 6 points of a kommando grot surveilling us. We’ll take security, hold them back, to force the kommandos into our territory and into the open.
During turn 1 we aim to stay safe and send operatives in 3” coherency bubbles for playing the primary mission, with gunners in each group. Making sure we have some operatives covering each piece of backline terrain, to watch for an incoming grot. Depending on how our opponent lays out through the course of turning point 1, we can pop Seize the Initiative to give us an easier chance at taking the opening action. Our goals from there are to go out, delete the scary operatives, and try to do a controlled demolition while tagging crit ops.
Keep an eye out for situations where an ork gets stuck in melee, especially if you use Ice in Your Veins, for tp2, to make those charges hurt a little less. That means on tp3, when you fall back, you’ve got some new openings to Cover Retreat, and nail those greenskins with some hot-shots. This has always been a rough match up, and we expect nothing else, so good hunting out there!
Final Thoughts
Kasrkin made the edition switch more or less redesigned to play from the ground up. The loss of elite points means they are far less obviously reliable, and need to play the game much like everyone else. There is far more tension in their set up now, wanting to hunt after ready operatives, and we’ve still got the movement shenanigans to do it. Our new Skill at Arms ability means we’ve got a reasonably deep toolbox that we can shift around at a moments, or sergeants, notice for new situations. While our new ploys let us open up opponents who thought our weak melee couldn’t be used to our advantage. The rough matchups still look hard, and Astartes continue to loom as an important part of the metagame to manage. All in all I’m looking forward to getting a couple games in on the new Kasrkin rules soon.
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