Surprise! You wait ages for a balance update and then two come along together. As in January, the updates for Kill Team have trickled out via the app and the WHC site without an article to announce them – yet. The changes are a bit more minor this time and tend to focus more on clarifications and fixes rather than things that will cause big swings to the meta… though to be honest our opinion on this might change as we go through this review.
Again, there are also some changes to the core rules and there’s no centralized dataslate, just changes to each team PDF and the core rules, with change logs at the back of the faction pdfs.
In this article we’ll look through the changes to the core rules and each of the teams and talk about what they mean for the game.
The Video Version
If you’re looking for a video recap of the March update, John Rees over at Can You Roll a Crit? has done a great job covering everything:
Core Rules Changes
Before we dive into the faction changes, there were a few changes to the game’s core rules, terrain and missions. We also get quite a big FAQ on the core rules.
This isn’t especially clearly laid out. You get the 1.2 updates at the beginning, then the FAQs, then a section on old updates and then another bit of 1.2 updates looking at the Approved Ops pack. Text in either blue (clarification) and magenta (balance) explains why the change was made, not when it happened. It’s a bit clunky and will mean going through several pages to get the full rules.
There are even two versions of the rules for Heavy Barricades on the same page, one saying they have to be within 2” of your DZ and the other 4”. The 4” one is probably right.
- Key Principles. Damage. If you can do multiple actions when an operative dies you have to choose one to apply, not do all of them. The choice of which to do is made by whoever’s operative just died, not the player with initiative. Dropping any markers they might have isn’t counted for this damage.
-
-
- Language clean up around incapacitation and its timing windows is a welcome change. These changes appear throughout the teams.
-
- No more Inside/Outside – There is a core rule change that appears throughout the teams and in the core rules, relating to the inside/outside cover concept. Now a singular terrain feature can provide either cover (for the save) or obscurity (for the removal of successes). This removes some of the most annoying positional tricks from players’ arsenals and gives a couple teams some new strengths.
- Approved Ops Pack – Plant Beacons now measure through walls on ITD to check whether the beacon is >6” from any others. No more shutting doors and putting beacons on both sides of them.
- Universal Equipment – You now can’t put a portable barricade within 2” of a door even after moving it. That’s going to be quite an issue on ITD as most operatives aren’t fast enough to move a barricade from >2” on one side of a door to >2” away on the other side.
Standardization Changes
Most of the minor changes are lumped into the standardization of wording. In an effort to not repeat ourselves too much we’ll talk about what sorts of changes those are, then note which teams got which sorts of changes.
- Bodyguard Rules – Just like blast weapons’ cover/obscurity rules, bodyguard ploys work in similar ways. Treating the new target with whatever cover/obscurity rules the original target would have. This is probably a net nerf for any affected teams.
- Chaos Cult, Pathfinders, Brood Brothers, Blooded…
- Do X on Incapacitation – Cleaning up the do something when incapacitated to “, before it’s removed from the killzone”. Which clarifies when to do things for these ploys and abilities.
- Teams: Plague Marines, Chaos Cult, Death Korp, Phobos, Hearthkyn, Brood Brothers, Pathfinders, Starstriders, Kasrkin, Exaction Squad, Novitiates, Gellerpox…
- Climbing UP – Climb rules now specify that climbs only work in upwards direction, axing an old Kill Team 2021 to 2024 discussion point.
- Teams: Void Dancer Troupe, Farstalker Kinband, Hunter Clade, Chaos Cult, Phobos Marines, Scouts…
- Smoke and Retargeting – Retargeting rules now work the way people would intuit, with cover and obscurity working off of the one doing the targeting.
- Teams: Brood Brothers, Hierotek Circle…
- Auto-retain Rules Clarified – Accurate and other retain rules are now called out as generic successes and failures, without die facings. These are important for teams like VDT, which care about die values. Remember that rending treats a normal as a critical, but doesn’t change its die value. Notably auto-retains cannot be re-rolled which was obvious but is explicit now.
- Teams: Vespid, Blooded, Pathfinders, Fellgor, Inquisition Agents…
- Treated As – Explicitly things that are treated AS are equivalent for anything with restricted actions. Think bomb squigs and hatchway fighting.
- Teams: Kommandos, Wrecka Krew, Starstriders, Farstalker Kinband, and any other good boys
- Movement Stat changes DURING an action combo – If an operative’s movement stat changes during a movement where it combos with another action, the movement stat is kept at the starting value until it is completed. Notably anyone can interact with this rule on ITD during mid-reposition operative hatchway actions.
- Teams: Void Dancer Troupe, Blades of Khaine, Tempestus Aquilons, Farstalker Kinband, Elucidian Starstriders…
The Big Changes
Despite having the quarterly balance dataslate at the end of January, there were still a lot of unanswered and ambiguous situations. Thankfully now we have had a lot of those issues added, oddly with some random buffs and nerfs too. Ideally these would be synchronized with balance dataslates but we’ll take what we can get if it means overall improvement for Kill Team.
- Void Dancer Troupe (Nerf) – One of the big losers of the change set, void dancers lose the ability to treat climbs as 1”, and now only get 2” for a climb. Effectively cutting an 1” of their most tricky charges.
- Imperial Navy Breacher (Nerf) – Lose the ability to take 2 Melta Gunners, which seemed obvious, but is now explicit.
- Mandrakes (Nerf) – Dirgemaw used to be able to do a pretty gnarly double activation if you killed it target. Now your opponent explicitly gets to activate someone else, and the dirgemaw ability can’t be stacked with the Nightfiend’s ability. Trimming away the most annoying play states that mandrakes can rig up is probably a net positive, even if it is a nerf to the team.
- Hernkyn Yaegir (Nerf) – Mines from the Ironbraek now follow the restrictions of other mines, and the In Position Ploy follows the same 2” shooting exclusion that normal shooting implies.
Minor Changes
Most of the minor changes are lumped into the standardization of wording. In an effort to not repeat ourselves too much we’ll talk about what sorts of changes those are, then note which teams got which sorts of changes.
- Hierotek Circle (Nerf) – Technomancer loses the ability to enchant both ends of melee/ranged options and now explicitly enchants a melee or ranged profile on a singular operative. Steadfast is clarified when interacting with APL modifiers.
- Plague Marines (Buff) – The leader now explicitly heals up to the damage it deals, making it very clear the leader should heal 3 wounds any time it strikes a poisoned target. Additionally you can’t poison your own operatives with the poison rule, which seemed obvious but was not explicit.
- Wrecka Krew (Nerf) – Wrecka Points will not generate if you start a sequence with 6 points, but will generate when you start with 5. So the incentive is to never have 6 Wrecka points when you start an offensive sequence.
- Brood Brothers (Nerf) – Psychic Familiars now note they must be Concealed to get the benefit of not being fired upon. Probably RAI becoming RAW, but technically a nerf.
- Warp Coven (Buff) – Fate Itself is My Weapon when changing a die out, marks that die as whatever it was. Meaning you cannot retain the changed die as a critical or normal unless it would be. A very minor buff, but important against crit-retain teams like fellgor or void dancer troupe.
- Nemesis Claw – Timings for hazy ploys and abilities standardized. Team got a minor buff in that they can generally get both cover and obscurity as obscurity comes from their ability.
Overarching Thoughts
HappyRaccoon – As far as FAQ/Erratas go this one is a pretty excellent one. Making more of the developer commentary and intentions more obvious, and smoothing out the more annoying language of the edition. The buffs and nerfs all feel pretty much like a side effect of standardization, with Nemesis Claw coming out strangely as one of the better teams. Strong teams like Legionary and Warp Coven remain strong, but getting guidance on some of the most annoying rules is great!
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
