Last week we got a close look at what the Vespid Stingwings are bringing to the table in Kill Team: Hivestorm, and now it’s the turn of their sworn enemies – the Tempestus Aquilons. These highly trained daredevils are the pinnacle of humanity’s special forces, and bring an entirely new, mobile playstyle to games of Kill Team.
Unlike the Vespid, who flit around on insectoid wings and can soar over walls like they’re nothing, the Tempestus Aquilons are equipped with grav chutes – ingenious devices that slow a soldier’s fall enough that they can leap out of aircraft or off tall buildings before guiding themselves onto a designated landing zone. While all members of the Militarum Tempestus are capable of deploying via grav chute, Tempestus Aquilons raise this high-risk manoeuvre to an artform.
The Drop Insertion ability is at the core of the team’s playstyle, which mixes chance-taking and bravado with elite close-range marksmanship. Rather than entering the killzone as a single squad, two thirds of the kill team’s operatives can be assigned into drop groups that start the mission high in the clouds, at the other end of long vertical pipes, and other detached areas. The Grav-chute special rule allows them to ignore vertical distance while falling.
These groups are also linked to the two Drop Markers placed into the killzone when their associated operatives are chosen.
Once assigned in this way, the Drop Markers can each be moved 4” in the Strategy Phase of the first and second Turning Points, and any Tempestus Aquilons who are activated while set up above can be placed in the killzone within 3” horizontally of either marker – though this counts as taking a Reposition action for the activation. Aquilons have unparalleled freedom to exploit the enemy deployment and get their troopers in advantageous positions, whether setting up at the highest peak of a tricky terrain feature or behind the walls of an awkward room in Killzone: Gallowdark missions.
There are limitations to such powerful deployments: one marker is removed during the Ready step of the second and third Turning Points, condensing your options, and you must have set up more than half of your operatives by the end of the first Turning Point.
Hitting hard and fast after a Drop Insertion is at the very core of how the Tempestus Aquilons play, and a number of their Strategic Ploys and Firefight Ploys support this philosophy by powering up your shooting. Sudden Offensive lets you wrest the momentum of a Turning Point away by supercharging the first few operatives you activate, while Hot Drop gives freshly arrived Aquilons plentiful re-rolls when they blaze away at a close-range target.
As befits a kill team of elite soldiers, even the standard Aquilon Troopers have unique skills. They are masters of deployment and add extra flexibility whether they set up in the killzone or up above, either by scoring a free Reposition action or getting to drop in further away from their Drop Marker than other operatives.
All this combines to make the Tempestus Aquilons a highly technical team which rewards commanders who know when and where to drop an operative, and who can choose the right moment to invoke their momentum-shifting abilities. Some extend your reach even further, like the Drop Augury equipment that allows you to shift a Drop Marker before deploying a model, but other times simply going first is the best way to secure a game-winning play – a gamble the Remote Overseer tips heavily in your favour.
We’ll have even more to cover from Kill Team: Hivestorm next week, including a jaunt through the city dominated by the Massif Ballistus and rules for the exciting new equipment pieces we saw during the reveal. Make sure to drop in!
