When opposing kill teams clash in the close confines of your typical mission area – or killzone – melee combat is almost an inevitability. Accordingly, we’re continuing our series of Kill Team articles by looking at how your operatives are going to cope when the chainswords and choppas start swinging.
While melee weapons have many of the same characteristics as the ranged weaponry we took a look at yesterday, the quick and violent nature of close combat means survival is more a matter of split-second decisions and honed instinct than carefully aimed attacks. Rather than the attacker taking their shots and trying to slip past their target’s armour, both fighters roll their melee attacks simultaneously.
Starting with the attacker, the combatants then alternate, choosing whether they want to use a successful hit to inflict damage or parry one of their opponent’s hits, cancelling it out. This means that every fight is a strategic dance of death where powerful attacks are turned aside at the last minute, and heroic soldiers throw themselves on enemy blades to land a desperate last-ditch blow.
Getting embroiled in a melee is especially deadly as, unlike ranged combat, armour saves won’t help you here – in such close confines, finding an exposed joint or aiming for a foolishly unprotected head is comparatively easy. The only thing standing between an operative and the whirring blades of a chainsword is their own fighting skill, and this gives true close combat specialists a real moment to shine.
Don’t worry, fans of power swords and other especially choppy pieces of kit – your weapons still retain their iconic lethality thanks to the Special and Critical Hit Effects. Take the aforementioned power sword, for instance, whose Lethal (5+) rule means you’re scoring critical hits at twice the normal rate* of the humble bayonet.
Of course, you can't hack your opponent into little pieces if you don't get close enough to them in the first place, so how do we go about that?
We've had a few questions about how movement works in the new edition. Effectively, it has evolved. Distances are now measured using cleverly designed gauges which are broken down into four increments – 1", 2", 3", and 6" – each of which corresponds to a different shape. Units move in increments of 2" (denoted by ◯), and most have either two or three ◯.
This new system makes navigating terrain much easier – the cost to climb a ladder or vault a barricade is usually ◯, so most troops can move 4" in total if they also cleared an obstacle during their turn. Using the nifty gauges speeds everything up massively, as there's no need for fiddly measuring of exact vertical distances.
Distances in Kill Team are ultimately still measured in inches, so you're very welcome to stick to your trusty tape measure if you prefer.
Who will you throw into the maelstrom of close combat? Will it be that poor Kommando Grot we saw during the latest Warhammer Preview Online? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and come back next week as we continue to peer into the juicy innards of Kill Team’s latest evolution. In fact, speaking of all this close combat, it feels like our Guardsmen from Krieg are missing something important…
* Critical hits are normally only scored on dice rolls of 6.