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 to the church of the Four Armed Emperor! Today we will be covering The Wyrmblade, elite Genestealer Cult Insurgents. The Wyrmblade were introduced early in Kill Team 2021 as part of the teams that received their rules through White Dwarf. During most of the edition they remained a strong, but often less played team. This was in part due to their rules being slightly complicated, and being on the more expensive side of Kill Teams thanks to some of their operatives only coming in blister packs. By the end of the edition a small array of buffs and a general increase in popularity had seen the team rise to the Top 5 in terms of winning percentage and representation at the podium. With the release of KT24 and the looming threat of more Elite teams, will this notoriously hard hitting, but delicate, team retain the ability to stay on top?
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
We have a video version of this review courtesy of Can You Roll a Crit?
Team Overview
At its core the Wyrmblade have not changed much conceptually, remaining a mid to close ranged horde team with mostly 7 wounds, +4 to hit, and 5+ save operatives. While the ability to change from Conceal to Engage in the first TP is no longer theirs alone, their new abilities and ploys still remain focused on hitting their opponents hard and gaining the early momentum. With this in mind this is definitely a team for players who want to keep their opponent guessing and on the back foot as they still have plenty of nasty tricks up their tattered sleeves. For veteran players their abilities have seen a lot of changes, and I’m happy to say almost all of them are improvements.
Special Rule: Familiar Territory, Cult Ambush, and Cult Agents
Cult Ambush is essentially unchanged, now granting Ceaseless to operatives that either switch from Conceal to Engage, or were not visible to enemy operatives when activated. Familiar Territory now replaces the Hiding ploy allowing the player to place one third of his team (neophytes only!) off the table. Operatives hiding in this way may either be expended or placed on the table wholly 6 inches from your Drop Zone and more than 6 inches from enemy operatives, this counts as a Reposition action. If the operatives are not brought in on TP2 they are considered incapacitated.
Cult Agents has received a small buff, now ignoring Saturate, meaning your operatives will always get their double retained normal saves, OR critical success.
Team Composition
The team’s composition, like most of them, remains entirely unchanged from KT21. It still acts as a +14 operative horde team, however in almost all cases there will be 12 operatives on the table thanks to the ability to take up to two Cult Agents who use up two operative selections. This gives the team more “list building” options than most of the teams, putting them in the same category as Brood Brothers and The Blooded. Cult Agents, in addition to the rules provided by this rule, are slightly chonkier with 9 wounds, 4+ save, and hit on +3 or better along with having a much wider array of skills and weapons than their standard counterparts.
Playing This Team
Playing Wyrmblade, like many horde teams, is about planning your own destruction, but whereas teams like The Blooded or Brood Brothers have a lot of synergy between their individual operatives making them vulnerable to key loses, The Wyrmblade can project threats from almost any avenue. At the same time they have access to many ploys and abilities that make their operatives harder to target or predict where those threats will come from. This being said, once an enemy has closed the distance with them they’re one of the most fragile teams on the table, and very vulnerable to high volumes of standard bolter fire or Blast weapons. With this in mind it is important that you space your operatives out properly to minimize losses, while still having them in position to deal maximum punishment.
What’s Changed?
For veteran freedom fighters there is a lot to cover here. We already hit on the team’s core ability, but like many of the Year 1 Unclassified teams their ploys have received an extensive rework. Crossfire and One With the Shadows, the two least popular ploys of the previous edition, are still around with minor rewording to now be in line with the new rules. Meticulous Plan and Writhing Ingress, the once per game ploys, have been replaced by The Day Is at Hand and Divert and Disappear. Now you may be thinking that it might have been a nerf to lose two of the best ploys the team had, but what has been gained in return is pretty impressive. The Day Is at Hand now grants all Wyrmblade operatives +1 to their melee atk profile and Rending on their Shooting attacks in an activation in which they go from Conceal to Engage. Now, while I wish this read as “benefit from Cult Ambush” this is still a massive buff as it basically means you gain these benefits IN ADDITION to being Ceaseless. As if this wasn’t enough Divert and Disappear allows for three operatives to perform either a free Dash or Charge (3 inch max) action in the Strategic Phase. Cult Agents count as two uses of this, BUT may also perform the Fall Back Action (at -1 APL cost on their next activation). Gaining even one of these ploys by themselves would have been a significant buff, getting them in place of two ploys that were a one time use and drastically less useful in the new edition is downright swimming in it.
In the Firefight Phase the two best ploys available to the team Slink Into Darkness and Coiled Serpent are untouched with the latter now fully unleashed thanks to any operative having access to Rending. Unquestioning Loyalty also remains but is now equivalent to those found in other teams, being a true bodyguard ability. With Hiding now being part of the team’s inherent abilities A Plan Generations In The Making takes its place allowing a single Neophyte to perform a free Mission Action when it dies, fantastic.
On the operative front the team still lacks specialists in the way the others do, consisting primarily of Neophytes with different weapon options, while all Agents see their “to hit” values drop to +3 with the exception of the Sniper. However, as one of the few teams with access to Web weapons an immediate buff is felt with both the Web Pistol and Webgun nearly doubling to damage 3/4 and gaining the Severe weapon trait meaning they have a near 100% chance to stun an enemy. The Webgun does lose 1 attack, but is boosted to a 12 inch range putting it into competition over the Flamer and Grenade Launcher.
Heavy Gunners have lost the ability to move 6 inches and shoot, returning to Heavy (Dash), however they gain Heavy Weapon Bi-Pod, which grants Ceaseless if they have yet to move during that activation, or Relentless if they already have it. This alone makes these operatives some of the hardest hitting in the game going into TP2, also the Heavy Stubber sees its damage increased to 4/5 putting it into solid competition with the Seismic Cannon.
All Agents have received improvements in their abilities that make up for their reduction in accuracy. The Kelermorph’s Hypersense is now a shooting profile and no longer requires AP to activate, while his primary shooting profile has been boosted to 8 inches and has Piercing 1 instead of Piercing Crits. Heroic Inspiration remains, but you’ll probably forget about it anyway. In similar fashion to Hypersense, the Locus’s Quicksilver Strike no longer requires AP to activate, instead automatically triggering whenever enemies end a movement action within 3 inches of them. Note that the Locus no longer immediately gets to fight giving your opponent the option of doing so if they wish, additionally the Locus’s ability to perform a follow-on charge only triggers off its own Fight Action. Both Sanctus operative’s have had their Familiar’s Soulsight abilities buffed, still requiring an AP to activate, however the buff does not go away UNTIL that enemy is incapacitated or the ability is performed again on a different operative. The Sniper gains the standard movement profile making them much more useful overall, while the Talon’s Dataslate ability has been added as an 2 AP action called Assassinate that provides a 6 inch charge, but allows for any two successful strikes (Normal or Critical) to be performed before the opponent gets to choose.
Lastly, the Icon-Bearer receives a surprise buff that allows any ready Neophyte operatives within 6 inches to either perform a free Shoot Action or the A Plan Generations in the Making ploy for 0 CP. As a nice little cherry on top Neophyte Warriors still have GA2, which used to have the downside of making them 10 activations against other horde teams, but is now an active bonus against Elite teams, giving them less opportunities to Counteract.
The goodies don’t end there as Equipment has also been thoroughly reworked. Cult Knives return, raising all Neophyte profiles to 3/4 damage, identical to their Brood Brother cousins, giving them substantial melee capability over other horde equivalents when combined with The Day is at Hand ploy. Spotlights, a piece almost never taken before, now affect all Neophytes preventing enemies within 6 and visible from being obscured, an incredibly useful buff in an edition that is expected to see a strong return to Smoke Grenades. Blasting Charges act as a once per Turning Point grenade option for all Neophytes seeing its range and +to hit reduced, but in increase to critical damage 5 making it a strong take against opposing hordes or on Gallowdark. Lastly, Explosive Traps gives TWO mine options that can not be triggered by nor harm friendly Wyrmblade models, an incredibly strong zoning option for a team thoroughly armed with abilities that allow it to dictate game flow.
Three Cool Things About This Team:
- Masters of Hit and Run. The Wyrmblade were already a team that embodied the idea of experts in Insurgent Warfare, and their new rules ensure they retain that crown. There isn’t a single bad option for this team.
- Cult Agents. The team’s original claim to fame. The Cult Agents remain the show stealers for this team, and with their new buffs all of them
- Kill Fast, Die Fast. This team is meant for killing, and survives almost purely off of good positioning. With this in mind it has some of the most reliable shooting in the game, and numerous abilities to help you dictate which operatives will be on the receiving end of your opponent’s wrath.
Final Thoughts
As many of you know, The Wyrmblade are basically the reason I got into writing for Kill Team in the first place. They have served me well over all of KT21, and with these changes it looks like they will have at least one more strong year of fighting in the War on Terror.
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