It’s finally here – after months of waiting and playing through a fairly unbalanced meta, we’ve finally received the first real balance update to Kill Team ’24. Updates for Kill Team have trickled out via the app and the WHC site. A lot of the top-performing teams were nerfed substantially, while a few less successful teams were buffed. There are also some changes to the core rules Volkus terrain. Unlike prior updates, there’s no centralized dataslate this time around – instead, changes have been made 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
For those of you who’d rather listen to people talk about the changes we’ve got a conversation between Just Another Kill Team Podcast, and Can You Roll a Crit below!
Core Rules Changes
Before we dive into the faction changes, there were some notable changes to the core rules that are worth covering here:
- Counteract: The biggest change here is to Counteract, which can no longer be used to perform the Guard action and limits Flying operatives to 2” of counteracting.
- Weapon stat changes now only take effect at the end of an action, while weapon rule changes take place immediately. This is relevant in certain rules interactions, i.e. the Brood Brothers Cult Devotion ploy.
- Volkus terrain rules have been clarified, and the dreaded lonely surveillance floor has been removed. Overall these are good clarifications that even open up a movement lane on the large Volkus stronghold.
- The Approved Ops tournament companion was added, giving general advice on how to run events such as rules decisions, pairings, rankings, and mission selection.
- Heavy Barricade received a slight buff – they can now be set up wholly within 4″ of your Drop Zone. A welcome change, but still not enough.
The Big Changes
We’ve been clamoring for a balance pass for a while now – the game needed some big balance adjustments to make horde teams more viable and bring down some of the elite teams at the top. Here are the biggest changes in this update.
- Chaos Cult – The ability to turn two operatives into Torments in a turn returns, along with Accurate 2 on the mutants and Torments from the Fervent Onslaught Strategic Ploy. For the three Spanish players still attempting to play the team, it’s time to get back on the Cult horse.
- Death Korps – All Guardsmen orders now grant the Ceaseless weapon rule (or the equivalent thereof in the case of “Dig In!”). Siege Warfare grants Accurate 1 in addition to Saturate. This does a lot to return the faction identity to that of a shooting team, though time will tell if these changes will enable it to crack Astartes consistently.
- Gellerpox Infected – Techno-curses now come with different infection ranges for different operatives! While won’t move the needle much, the move back to a 4+ roll for the Revoltingly Resilient faction rule will probably help quite a bit, and that’s in addition to Plague Bellows now allowing you to use a defensive roll of 3 as a success while being shot at. Overall, this is a positive set of changes.
Credit: Pendulin
- Hierotek Circle – Big changes have been made to Reanimation Protocols, which now put you back into play with 1 wound. Along with this change were nerfs more or less across the board to the stuff Hierotek players were using most often. Psychomancer now operates with a smaller shield bubble (4″), and the Technomancer’s heal was reduced to 2D3 lost wounds. Meanwhile Tesla weaves have been nerfed to only being usable once per turning point, giving cause to all the melee hordes to rise up from their early graves.
- Hunter Clade – Huge changes were made to the Doctrina Imperatives faction rule, in that at the end of the Select Operatives step you select one Imperative as your Primary Mode. This lets you ignore the Deprecation rule for that Imperative once per battle when you select it as a Strategic Gambit. This also came with some wording changes to make the juiced imperative work as expected.
- Inquisitorial Agents – The Agents of the Inquisition caught some big nerfs, putting the piercing spam back into the proverbial safe as teams are no longer allowed to have more than one weapon with the Piercing 2 weapon rule, and can’t have more than three weapons with Piercing X (excluding Piercing Crits X). Alongside the big nerf is a slew of ease-of-access nerfs, including the removal of tome-skull respawn, mystic operative double casting, and servo-skull free mission spam. When you combine all this with the removal of the free dash from the Kasrkin, it’s likely the team has seen its time in the top tier of factions come to an end.
- Legionaries – We knew there were going to be some big changes here, and this update delivers. These are mostly in the negative direction, and that seemsmore than fair. Slaanesh marks now focus on your operatives being better, but if you get surprised by an opposing charge you no longer get the fight action debuff. The ignore piercing rule for Nurgle got a massive nerf as meltas straight up ignore the change RAW, though it’s hard to know if this is what they intended. The warrior spam tricks have been removed, as you can only have one mark shift per battle with the Infernal Pact ability, and you can’t start as Tzeentch and move to Khorne.From a play standpoint, the most important nerf here is to the Icon Bearer, who now has to taint objective markers to gain 1 CP. This means the days of starting turn 2 with 7 CP are gone.
- Novitiates – The Sororitas team was hit with some nerfs which probably leave them dead in the water now. It’s harder to trigger damage mitigation, alongside fewer hits to trigger off of. Along with lower heals means the team is much squishier. With the rise off aeldari the fragility of those 7 wounds is going to feel front and center.
- Vespid Stingwings – The Vespid received a large buff to their Communion faction rule. Operating Hatches are now free from communion requirements, and communion points roll over each turhning point. The Counteract changes we mentioned earlier will limit your flying shenanigans but the team should still function better. The Oversight Drone also provides more utility for offense, granting Lethal 5+ on top of Saturation. This makes Vespid a lot better into Legionaries and Warpcoven as their Piercing 1 when moving ploy used to get turned off entirely, but now becomes Piercing Crits 1, often with Lethal 5+ and some devastating wounds as well.
- Warpcoven – Warpcoven may have received the largest volume of changes of any team, with a number of nerfs. This was all, frankly due but don’t let that fool you – the team still looks fairly strong. Most notably, the brutal combo of a completely safe sorcerer bursting from a Volkus stronghold, blasting someone, then rewinding to a concealed position 9” away has been removed.Rubrics have gone back to a 3+ save, and while that’s somewhat disappointing to see in terms of balance maybe it’s for the best. Tzaangors were also nerfed, losing the free mission actions with Relic Hunters now being once per battle, similar to the Inquisitiorial Agents. In the same vein as those Inquisitorial teams, a lot of the flexible stuff has been trimmed here – multi sorcerer damage mitigation, multi-rule mindburns, duplicate boons, and more have been scaled back. However the core of the Tzeentchian way of a flexible team with tons of rules remains, and we expect Warpcoven to still be among the best teams in the game following this update.
Minor Changes
Not every change was massive: A number of smaller tweaks were made to teams to adjust them up or down.
- Blades of Khaine – Minor buff to Dire Avengers. Accurate is a terrible rule on a team that has Rending on all its pistol options, making Balanced the logical improvement.
- Farstalker Kinband – Buffs to the intended play pattern for the team, but with the removal of the piercing toxin shot combo. Prey going to ceaseless + severe if you’ve gotten a kill is a compelling change. The team’s slew of changes amounts to minor updates, while losing their current coolest trick. Balanced + piercing does do a fair approximation of the ammo overload that was allowed before.
- Fellgor Ravagers – One small change here, requiring the friendly operative be visible to the Shaman to use their Mantle of Darkness action for Super Conceal.
- Hand of the Archon – Minor change, Cunning can no longer interact with the mission pack (approved ops, so primary mission, and power surge), which is a meaningful buff meaning the team is often starting at 4 CP.
- Imperial Navy Breachers – Minor change, but a big buff to brace for counter attack. Making the team more about defending your half. Probably won’t move the needle but helpful for die-hards.
- Nemesis Claw – Nerfed in ways that mostly help Wreckas and Hand of the Archon. Comms Jammers now only blocks APL gain within 3”, not 8”. With no other changes these sneaky murderers may do quite well, as other elites fall back to earth.
- Plague Marines – Minor nerfs on psychic spam in counteract, and Contagion on the icon bearer is only free if they’re in enemy territory. It won’t work on TP1 and it’s a risk to get there for the start of TP2.
- Scouts – Minor changes, in a new scouting action that will let you have an extra APL during a single activation. Along with targeting ocular letting a second operative take a boosted shot with L5+ and saturate.
- Tempestus – Minor changes to efficacy of ploys. Should make the team able to play outside of turn 2 during the drops. Hot drop working when you drop from vantage is excellent but probably won’t move the needle too much.
- Void Dancer Troupe – Range limitation on mirror of minds. Team probably comes out of the Astartes nerfs as a big winner, while the clowns have already been very threatening against the Astartes heavy meta.
No Changes
About half the teams in the game didn’t see any direct changes, but there are a number which are worth commenting on because of how other changes affect them.
- Brood Brothers – Designer Commentary that applies to Cult Devotion, but is also addressed in the Core Rules changes.
Hearthkyn Salvagers, Hernkyn Yaegir – neigh, with the note that their worst matchups in novitates is now very approachable. With critical hits now working properly.
Kasrkin – inq agents specific text has been removed. Fair enough, and doesn’t change the actual teams play, only the inquisition pairing.
Mandrakes – Mandrake teams received no direct changes, though the structural changes to volkus terrain means that the mandrakes will actually need to work for their surveillance points, instead of starting off at +9 VP.
Pathfinders – There were no changes to Pathfinders directly, however the loss of power from their two worst match ups, and the prevalence of 8 wound aeldari should preset a huge boon in power rankings. Historically 4/5 guns have performed well against 8 wounds.
Phobos – This team is clearly Perfect, and now are perfectly situated to murder the entire meta now that their worst match ups have been hit. Though Hand of the Archon remain almost impossible for them to deal with.
Overarching Thoughts
HappyRaccoon – These are not all the changes I’d hoped for, but they do a good job of cleaning up some of the most egregious power level from the top teams. While still presenting those teams as viable choices in the metagame. Week to week stats have shown Eldar and mixed hordes as viable team choices, and these changes look to accentuate these trends. I’d expect fellgor to also get a boost as their worst match ups are much more approachable now, looking at legionary’s losses in combat, and they seem perfectly position to prey on 8 wound operatives.
NotThatHenryC – I don’t know if these are the exact changes I’d have gone for but in general I think they’ve taken the right approach, with some quite heavy hits to the over-performing teams and a few buffs lower down the pecking order. I don’t imagine they’ve got everything perfect and I agree that elves might look a bit too good right now. That said, my Nemesis Claw have been taking elves to bits lately, and escaped with only a minor and very fair nerf to vox jammers. As is often the case, look to the teams that were near the top and escaped nerfs this time to see who’ll be best in future. I don’t think any of the teams that got buffs have had quite enough to make them proper contenders, though it should feel quite a lot more fun to play them, knowing you’ve got more of a chance.
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