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.
The Vespid Stingwings come to Kill Team, giving us another T’au subject species in plastic and a new Kill Team where everything can buzz around the board like enraged wasps that know you have a pear… and you better give it to them.
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 This Review
If you’re interested in watching a video version of this review, we’d recommend this video from Can You Roll a Crit?:
Strengths
Neutron Blasters – Neutron Blasters are 3/3, but with Devastating 2 (so crits immediately do two wounds bypassing all saves), and you can stack several other bonuses on that (if you move or FLY you gain Piercing 1, taking away an enemy defence dice, if you don’t spend a Communion Point you gain Accurate 1, automatically retaining one dice as a success) and you can further buff with Strategy Ploys or Communion Points makes Neutron Blasters a very nasty ranged weapon.
Strategy Ploys – There are some very good strategy ploys that give you rerolls when shooting or extra saves. Your strain leader makes one of your strategy ploys free if he’s still alive. This gives you a decent CP economy, even if there are two ploys (Aerial Agility and Airborne Predators) that you want to have turned on pretty much the whole time.
Flying About – Fly lets you remove models from the table and replace them in the killzone within the distance horizontally of their Move or Dash, and this means no climbing, no needing ladders, no jumping off things and getting hurt. It makes it easier to get on Vantage points even with a simple Dash move.
Weaknesses
Low Save – 5+ saves are not great. The Aerial Agility ploy helps, giving you an extra 5+ save against normal hits that get through until you successfully save one, but it’s still not great, and normally seen on factions that have more models to put on the table.
Communion – People will look at Communion and say ‘I can spend a point to get a reroll’ but you have to spend a point to shoot a target that isn’t the closest, charge a target that isn’t the closest, shoot something more than 8” away, or perform Pick Up/mission actions. You get D3 points a turn and they don’t carry over. Keeping the Oversight drone alive gives you another +1 point, but it’s still a very limited resource.
Faction Rules
Vespid Stingwings come loaded with more faction rules than the average team, even in Kill Team 2024, where team rules have become more common.
Table of Contents
Neutron Charge
If you move or Fly with a model with a neutron weapon (so anything except the flamer) then that weapon gains Piercing 1.
Given you have a highly mobile team that excel at traversing terrain, and Communion means a lot of your operatives will need to be shooting at the closest model, then you will be moving to position them and getting the benefit of this, which helps you out a lot against elite power armour teams.
Communion
Communion places four major restrictions on your Stingwing operatives that you can ignore by spending a Communion point. You get D3 Communion points per turn, an additional one if the Oversight Drone is in the Killzone, and cannot carry them over between turns.
These restrictions are:
- When performing a Shoot action you must select the closest target within 8″ (excluding enemy operatives within engagement range).
- When performing a Charge action you must select the closest enemy operative.
- You cannot select a target over 8″ away for Shoot actions.
- You cannot perform Pick-Up actions or Mission actions.
You can additionally, when a Stingwing operative is performing a Shoot action, expend a communion point to reroll a single attack dice.
This is fairly restrictive, and I think is the major factor in preventing Stingwings being as oppressive in Kill Team 2024 as Pathfinders were in Kill Team 2021. It means that placement of operatives and the order you activate them is critically important, as you’ll have a maximum of 4 Communion points (plus a free one for the leader from his hat) and in missions with Pick Ups/mission actions you’ll have a even more difficult time, though on Gallowdark maps where you’ll often be engaging at 8″ or less and have points to spare.
Fly
Fly lets you remove the operative from the Killzone and place them within the horizontal distance they are moving (though Charge moves do not get bonus movement).
This means you’ll never need a ladder. You can bounce onto Vantage points, skip over walls, and charge models that are behind terrain or intervening models that would normally protect them. It means you can mug wounded or vulnerable models, and Fly lets you get within 8″ in order to Shoot without using Communion points.
Structure
You have to take a Strain Leader and Oversight Drone (sorry, you are being watched), and can select eight other operatives, with the limit of one of each apart from Warriors, which you can have as many of as you like.
This makes the team really easy to build – you build the leader and drone, one of each specialist, and everything else is warriors. It means it’s a one box kill team, as you still have a spare warrior and can take a specialist out and replace them if you don’t like them, but you don’t need a second box (like Brood Brothers or Veteran Guard, etcetera) to get all the various options.
Operatives
Strain Leader
You only get one option for Leader, and it’s essentially a Warrior with 3+ to hit instead of 4+, and two important abilities.
- The Strain Leader can spend a Communion point during it’s activation for free due to their totally cool hat the Tau gave them.
- When selecting operatives for the battle you can also select one Strategy Ploy. This Strategy Ploy will be 0CP as long as the Strain Leader is in the Killzone and not in the control range of an enemy operative.
This helps you with two limited resources, Communion and Command Points. The Vespid have really good Strategy Ploys and making one of these free is great and helps you use two Strategy Ploys a turn.
Oversight Drone
The Oversight Drone is not going to be winning any prizes as a combat model, but is important for three reasons – it provides you an extra Communion Point each turn, it can be used as an initiative sink to burn an activation when you want to, and it can give all friendly Stingwing models within 6″ Saturate, which stops the target operative they are shooting at automatically retaining a defence dice for being in cover.
A nice buffing piece, fast with an 8″ movement and actually surprisingly resilient with a 2+ save that ignores Piercing and the ability to not be targeted at all if in cover and on the Conceal order. This means your opponent will have to wander over and punch it.
Longsting
The Longsting is the team sniper, with the incredibly nasty Neutron Rail Rifle. This has two fire modes, standard (where you can move normally) and aimed (where it’s heavy and you can only Dash). Aiming hits on 3+ not 4+ and gives you Lethal 5+ to get those important crits, which as it’s a neutron weapon are Devastating 2. In addition the Neutron Fragment rule poisons any target it damages but doesn’t kill for D3 damage each turn.
It’s a great sniper model that can fire on the move, and with Fly can quickly bounce up to Vantage points to take advantage of them.
Shadestrain
A stealth operative that if it has the Conceal order cannot be targeted from over 6″ away, it also packs a 3+ armour save that can’t be reduced by piercing, and retains cover saves as critical successes. Armed with a sawn off Neutron Rifle with an 8″ range and a single Neutron Grenade, it can use it’s survivability to get close enough to use them.
Skyblast
The Skyblast packs a Neutron Grenade Launcher that is a great anti-horde weapon with Blast 2″, has all the benefits of Neutron weapons like Devastating 2, and which puts Neutron Fallout markers within the control areas of their target which inflict D3 damage if a model is within 2″ of them during their activation.
So it’s great for putting chip damage on hordes and getting a second bite of the cherry by getting an extra D3 on them when they activate and try and get away from the chunks of glowing green rock sticking out of the ground.
Swarmguard
What if you gave an eight-foot wasp a flamethrower? GW has the answer.
The Swarmguard is another great anti-horde model, and while it’s packing the only non-neutron gun in the team, flamethrowers got a bit of a buff in 3rd edition. It also has access to Skytorch, where it flies over targets laying a trail of fire on them if it Repositioned during the activation, so you set up your Reposition to fly over as many enemy as possible (in a straight line of course) and then burn them in your Shoot action with Skytorch.
Warrior
Your standard jobber elevated to greatness by Fly, great strategy ploys and the neutron rifle it carries. Communion keeps it from being too oppressive, but it’s an impressive standard combatant in a team where you’ll normally have four of them bouncing around the killzone.
The Warrior Instincts rule means that if you don’t spend a Communion point, you get Accurate 1 with your Neutron Rifle. With Neutron Charge and the Airborne Predators Strategy Ploy, this means your humble warrior bug gets an automatic success when shooting, rolls 3 dice on 4 + (rerolling one) and then Piercing 1. Which is going to put enemy operatives in the dirt.
Strategy Ploys
Hardened Exoskeleton
When fighting or retaliating, Vespid Stingwing operatives (who aren’t droney the friendly drone) who take a normal hit of 4 damage or more take 1 less point of damage.
If you’ve got into melee with something that does normal damage 4 then it’s fairly likely you’re getting squished, because it means the opponent has a power weapon or something else suitably impressive that is generally 4/6 or 5/7, and you aren’t walking off a couple of taps from that, especially if they’ve got a critical success.
Aerial Agility
When an enemy operative that is counteracting, that moved or was set up shoots a Vespid Stingwing operative, each normal success that would inflict damage is ignored on a roll of 5+ (to a maximum of 1).
Kill Team is a game about movement, so there’ll be a lot of running and gunning, and an extra layer of saves helps keep your operatives alive.
Airborne Predators
Whenever a Vespid Stingwing operate Moves or uses Fly during its activation, its weapons have Balanced until the end of the activation.
Gold Star, 100% use all the time, select this as the 0CP ploy when selecting your Kill Team. It’s a reroll for everything if it moves or flies, and you can fly on a dash so your Longsting can do a little jig up on it’s Vantage point and then reroll on it’s sniper rifle and also get Piercing 1. Also note it’s all weapons, so it includes melee weapons and gives you a reroll in Fights when you Charge.
Tactical Ploys
Ocelli
When an operative performs a Shoot action in an activation where it used Fly, you can treat it as being 3″ higher than it is and being on a Vantage Point. Basically you hover above the battlefield to get a shot off with the advantages of a Vantage point.
Darting Flight
Use when an operative performs the reposition action. The model can move an additional D3″ when moving or being set up with Fly, but you can’t Shoot or Fight. Useful for getting out of dodge, and you could do a pick up and then Darting Flight to get even further away.
Neutron Overload
Use when you resolve a Critical Success from a shooting action. If the target is within 4″, inflict an additional D3 damage. Great if you know you’ll be leaving a model with 1 or 2 damage points from the dice you’ve got to make sure they die.
Vicious Venom
Neutron Overload, but for melee. When resolving a critical success use to inflict an extra D3 points of damage. Given how tactical resolving fights can be, you can use this to finish your opponent, or pressure them to spend dice that would hit you back on cancelling your normal hits in order to stay alive.
Equipment
Looks like the Vespid fell in with a bad crowd, because all their equipment is Bug Drugs. And they get some good stuff.
Neurostimulant
When rolling for Communion Points, roll 2D3 and select which one you want to use. Makes Communion Points less swingy, and makes it more likely you’ll have the maximum available to spend each turn. This is a must take in my opinion.
Convergence Stimulant
Once per Turning Point a friendly Vespid Stingwing model can perform a mission or Pick Up action without spending a Communion Point. A must take for missions with Pick Ups or mission actions.
Accelerant Stimulant
When a friendly Stingwing operative (except for droney) performs a Charge or Dash it can move an extra 1″. If it uses Fly for the action, it can be set up an extra inch away. So 9″ Charges, 4″ Dashes and 7″ Flying Charges.
Aggression Stimulant
When a friendly Vespid Stingwing operative Fights, they gain the Ceaseless rule. This is an absolutely must take, because rerolling dice in Fight actions is great.
Suggested Roster
This is really simple, as you should just build them out of the box with one of each specialist and the rest warriors. This gives you a full team and a spare warrior model for if you decide you just don’t want to use one of the specialists.
Final Thoughts
Vespid Stingwings combine a great looking kit with great rules. Communion helps stop them being overwhelming in a way that a faction where the basic gun is essentially 3/5 can be, and these aren’t going to be the nightmare Pathfinders were in Kill Team 2021. The faction has good fundamentals, some excellent Strategy Ploys that completely overshadow their Tactical Ploys, and some great Bug Drugs to iron out some of the issues they have and give them even more rerolls.
Individually Vespid are still 9 wound 5+ save models, so don’t leave them out where the bolters can get them, but they’re a great team for rapid repositioning. They’re also stronger on outdoor maps as opposed to Gallowdark, where many of the advantages that Fly gives them just don’t apply. Vespid are a fairly simple team to pick up as there aren’t eight different specialists and weapon profiles to learn, and the ploys and tactics you want to use can be fairly usefully applied across the team. They’re a move-and-fire team that reward thinking about positioning, but which isn’t too complicated with it.
One last piece of advice: Don’t undercoat them black and paint them a light colour. It generally won’t go great for you.
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