40k: Kill Team Update 2 + Inquisimunda

Gee, it's been a while. It's hard to type when your fingers are covered in superglue and your keyboard is covered in tiny plastic shavings. Don't worry, I'll be back soon enough.

The augmented warriors of the Adeptus Mechanicus look down upon their enemies and/or try to count the number of visible skulls on nearby buildings.

The Perfidious Eldar fight the Even More Perfidious Eldar.

The full terrain collection at the moment. The 1'x1' modular board segments very useful.

Kill Team (2018) is, essentially, a randomness-minimization game. You want to take as many good chances as possible and make your opponent take as many risky chances as possible. It's like chess.... except that a captured piece has a 50% chance to not be captured and you need to roll to see how many squares a Bishop, Knights, or Queen can move in a turn. And sometimes someone booby-traps your Rooks.

It's fun but it's not terribly deep. Some people on G+ were rumbling about using it as an RPG. I don't think it really works. Random chance is such a large component of the game that it's next to impossible to generate a narrative. The design space also feels very cramped. Everything is high-powered, slick, and superficial.

So while a Kill Team game is a fun way to burn an hour, I'd like to try to find a more interesting rules set. The rules used by the Inquisimunda/Pilgrym bloggers seem to very appealing rules set, given that it produces games like this. The rules are GLOG-like, in a way; cobbled together, highly adaptable, not really a system so much as a series of hints and hand gestures.

Vehicles from WarGameExclusive

Proposed Game

I haven't playtested this combo but I intend to give it a try.

Combat Rules: YakTribe's Necromunda Community Edition
I'm tempted to try out X-wing style alternative activations and see how badly it messes with the rules.

E.g. In the Movement phase, all models move in order of Initiative, lowest to highest, passing between players in the event of a tie. In the Shooting phase, all models shoot in order of Initiative, highest to lowest. So models with high initiative have a decent advantage; they get to react to other models' moves and get the first shots off. This should make the game feel a little more tactical and limit the dreadful waiting-around time that infests Gamesworkshop products, but it'll probably play merry hell with Overwatch and all that. We'll see.

Character Creation Rules: Iron Sleet's Rule of 12 (as summarized below)

Step 1. Take the basic Necromunda profile but with zero Wounds:

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld
4	3	3	3	3	[0]	3	1	7

Distribute the following:

• 12 Wounds (so 12x 1 wound models, 4x 3 wound models, etc)
• 12 x +1 to any characteristic (max of
• 12 skills from Necromunda (PDF pg. 69 - 91)
• 12 pieces of equipment, armour, or weapons that aren't standard. All models come with a lasgun and a knife by default. (PDF pg. 33-57)

E.g.

I'd like to build a team with a Space Marine at its core. How much would a single Astartes cost?

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld
4+1	3+1	3+1	3+1	3+1	6	3+1	1+1	7+2

Skills: Dodge (6+ save against all attacks), Combat Master (gains bonuses when outnumbered), Killer Reputation (causes fear), True Grit (reduces injury rolls), Juggernaut (can shrug off impacts), Hip Shooting (can fire pistol or basic while moving)

Equipment: Power Armour (3+ save, includes photo visor and infra-red goggles, 4 items), Boltgun (1 item), Combat Knife (0 items), Frag Grenades (1 items), One-in-a-Million Weapon (1 item)

12-6 wounds: 8 wounds remaining
12-9 characteristic upgrades: 2 upgrades remaining
12-6 skills: 6 skills remaining
12-7 items: 5 items remaining

Just one Astartes (properly kitted out) eats most of my points. The rest of the team might be chapter serfs, servo-skulls, recruited guardsmen, Alpha Legion cultists, etc.

Compare this to Kill Team, where a single team might have 5 fairly unimpressive Deathwatch marines, each with a single wound and a less-than-spectacular impact. A Space Marine should feel like an ancient unstoppable god-warrior wearing a personal tank.