We recently looked at how to put together a kill team using the finely balanced, points-free system and examined the forces you can choose from in the upcoming Kill Team: Compendium. Now you’ve got your team of specialists at the ready, it’s time to dig into the missions they’ll be embarking on in matched play games in the new edition of Kill Team.
Matched play is a game mode that focuses on providing the most mechanically balanced games possible, ensuring that you and your opponent have a level playing field to test your strategic nous against each other. The strategic decisions begin before your models even hit the tabletop, so you’ll need to bring your A game to emerge victorious on the battlefields of Kill Team.
The core of the matched play experience is the mission you’ll be undertaking. There are nine to choose from in the Kill Team Core Book’s Critical Operations mission pack, and each one provides special actions and mission objectives that can dramatically alter your plan of action. For example, in Consecrated Ground missions, you can power up operatives that place themselves in harm’s way by controlling objectives at the end of each turn, or Turning Point.
With a variety of missions available, you may worry that your kill team might not have the right tools on their brand new datacards for the job, but matched play has you covered. Instead of selecting your team before deciding the mission, you bring a roster of up to 20 operatives to the table and build your kill team to suit the objectives at hand.
Need a hard target cracked? Bring the Gunner with the meltagun. Is assassinating the enemy leader a top priority? Make sure the Sniper is coming along.
Now both you and your opponent get to see which faction the other is bringing before selecting your operatives. This change means that kill teams with multiple unit options (such as the Adeptus Astartes or T’au Hunter Cadres) can play some canny mind games when choosing who to deploy.
With the mission decided and the kill teams chosen, commanders pick which Tac Ops they want to try to score for extra victory points. Tac Ops are secondary objectives that are generated in secret, forcing your opponent to guess what you're trying to accomplish during the game.
For instance, you may be looking to take out a particular enemy operative from the start.
Or perhaps you’re going to opportunistically rifle through their pockets for vital intel.
Imagine your foe's surprise when a particularly nimble operative sprints through their lines and disappears off their killzone edge for a hefty chunk of victory points.
Many more tactical choices are ahead of you before the mission gets underway – such as setting up additional barricades and choosing extra equipment for your operatives – but you’ll have to pick up the Kill Team: Core Book when it arrives for pre-order next month to discover all of the juicy new rules.
Join us again later this week as we take a look at the narrative campaigns which take your kill teams from a ragtag group of raw recruits (comparatively, anyway) to hardened veterans over the course of their careers.