Sssh, do you hear that? It almost sounds like 22 elite operatives soaring down from the sky, but that can’t be right – our schedule says it’s time for a Kill Team preview, and we don’t remember any [[TRANSMISSION DISRUPTED]]
Warning, Imperial citizens! The world of Volkus is under xenos attack, but fear not – the valiant Militarum Tempestus have sent their best to keep the skies clear. Elite operatives are landing across the city, and all able-bodied commanders are required to take up the Emperor’s sword in the latest explosive boxed set for Kill Team – Hivestorm.
Kill Team: Hivestorm isn’t just a new expansion – it’s the launch of a whole new edition of Kill Team, the fast-paced game of spec ops skirmishes. Updated rules make it even easier to pit your squad of elite specialists against the best the galaxy has to offer.
We’ll get into the biggest changes a bit later – for now, have a look at the first of the awesome kill teams included in Hivestorm – the Tempestus Aquilons.
Tempestus Aquilons
All Tempestus Scions are trained in the art of aerial drop deployment, but Aquilons are those units that exclusively thunder into battle on roaring grav-chutes. They are selected for their self-sufficiency, intuition, and raw aggression, which makes them ideal candidates for dangerous special operations against the enemy’s own elites.
Like their fellow Scions, Aquilons are equipped with finely wrought carapace armour and armed primarily with hot-shot las weapons – most commonly hot-shot lascarbines – that hit much harder than the standard Imperial lasgun. Their preferred strategy of dropping right into the middle of enemy lines requires intense close-quarters training, leading many units to deploy specialists armed with melta carbines, plasma carbines, and other short ranged weapons.
They’ll be putting every one of their skills to the test on Volkus, as the T’au Empire has sent waves of their own drop troopers into the fray, drawn from the ranks of their alien auxiliaries.
Vespid Stingwings
Though less widespread than the Kroot, who make up a large percentage of the T’au Empire’s auxiliaries, the Vespid are afforded no less respect by the Fire Caste due to their resilience and combat utility. They were initially introduced as small teams of support troops armed with vicious neutron blasters – short-ranged weapons that used the Vespid homeworld’s unique crystals to project deadly radiation. Their deployments have since grown to encompass a wider range of battlefield roles, and all are armed with wondrous Earth Caste inventions.
Fire Caste commanders soon discovered that Vespid made for excellent kill team operatives, matching predatory instincts with keen alien cunning, and the ability to operate for an unparalleled amount of time without resupply or assistance. Dedicated Shas’ui handlers connected to the Strain Leader’s communion helm by an MV44 Oversight Drone allow for complex strategies to be immediately relayed to the unit, leaving the job of executing their sabotage and assassination missions to the winged warriors in the field.
This prestige affords Stingwing kill teams the chance to test experimental technology, such as extremely lethal neutron grenade launchers and ghost rigs that render Shadestrains invisible, This new versatility makes the Vespid a force to be reckoned with, and a perfect opposition for the Tempestus Aquilons.
The Terrain
Volkus is a highly developed Imperial world dedicated to churning out armaments and is littered with massive hive cities nestled in between orbital defences like the skyline-dominating Massif Ballistus – the so-called Great Gun that points starward. These environments provide operatives with plenty of cover to fight over, and Kill Team: Hivestorm comes with 14 pieces of terrain that make up Killzone: Volkus, split between sprawling strongholds, bombed-out ruins, and patches of heavy and light rubble.
Many of the ruins are multi-leveled structures, giving the airborne Aquilons and Stingwings plenty of places to exercise their skills in the skies. Missions lay out these buildings in order to create myriad tactical challenges, with objectives scattered between exposed killing fields and crumbling walls.
Core Book and Hivestorm Dossier
A new edition means new rules, and they’re all contained in the brand new Core Book. Everything has been rewritten from the ground up to make the lore and rules clearer and easier to read than ever before, with design notes and examples in the margins to clarify any tricky situations that might occur.
In addition to the Core Book, Kill Team: Hivestorm Dossier contains all of the rules you need for using your Tempestus Aquilon and Vespid Stingwing kill teams, along with a wealth of missions, universal equipment rules, and background lore for both kill teams, the wider war on Volkus, and how life there warps around the Great Gun.
A softback edition of the Core Book is included in Kill Team: Hivestorm, and a separate hardback version will be available at a later date, while the Hivestorm Dossier can only be found inside the Hivestorm box.
Upgrades and Accessories
In the current edition of Kill Team, each player has their own barricades that they deploy before the game begins, and Kill Team: Hivestorm ups the ante with a whole pack of new physical assets for your operatives. The classic barricades return alongside barbed wire obstacles, ladders, smoke grenades, and plenty of other gubbins to try out, and this is also where you’ll find your plastic range markers – redesigned with an extremely Warhammer amount of skulls.
These elements are joined by a set of Approved Operations cards, which collect all of the information you need to play fast-paced Matched Play games of Kill Team in one convenient place. This is also where you’ll find all of your Tac Ops, Mission cards, and map keys, along with handy leaflets laying out six different terrain layouts for Kill Zones Volkus, Gallowdark, and Bheta-Decima.
Both the Kill Team Upgrade: Equipment Pack and the Approved Operations Card Pack are included in Kill Team: Hivestorm, and will also be available separately at the time of release.
To cap it all off, Hivestorm comes with two large pop-out token sheets, one for all of your essential Kill Team needs and one containing bespoke tokens for the Tempestus Aquilons and Vespid Stingwings. With a combined 147 tokens between them, encompassing everything from order trackers and APL modifiers to Aquilon drop markers and Stingwing neutron grenade tokens, you’ll find keeping track of your operatives even easier than before.
As you might expect from a new edition of Kill Team, there’ll be some rules changes coming for your existing miniatures, and we’ll be covering all of those in much more detail soon. We can reveal that a range of Datacards will also be coming separately for your kill teams, and we’ve some other juicy tidbits we can’t wait to show off – keep your oculars trained on Warhammer Community in the coming weeks.
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