In this post we take a look at the format of the new Kill Team Core Book and the Hivestorm dossier from Kill Team: Hive Storm. We share our impressions of the new Kill Team edition from a casual player’s perspective and analyse what has improved and what has not.
The new Kill Team: Hivestorm box can be preordered from Saturday, September 21, 2024. It goes on sale two weeks later, following a two-week preorder window.
Kill Team: Hivestorm contents
Inside the heavy packed box, you’ll find:
- Tempestus Aquilons Kill Team (11 models)
- Vespid Stingwing Kill Team (11 models)
- Killzone: Volkus (14 new and existing pieces of terrain plus double-sided cardboard gaming board)
- the new Kill Team upgrades and accessories sprue
- the new Kill Team Core Book (softback edition)
- the Hivestorm Dossier expansion book
- Kill Team Approved Ops 2024 card pack
- two sheets of cardboard tokens
Kill Team: Hivestorm – the new Core book & Hivestorm dossier
As announced on Warhammer Community, Hivestorm marks the beginning of a new, revised edition of Kill Team with its updated Core Book. Just as the updated rules for existing and future Kill Teams, the core rules will be available as free downloads, which is fantastic. Here on Tale of Painters, as the name suggests, we focus more on the craft aspect of the hobby. However, we’d like to share our impressions of the two new rulebooks from the perspective of a casual player.
For a review of all the models (with high-res sprue images and assembly options) from Kill Team: Hivestorm, please check out this post:
The Kill Team 3rd Edition Core book
The new Core Book consists of 112 pages and is included in Kill Team: Hivestorm as a softcover edition, though it will also be available separately as a hardcover. The layout and graphic design closely follows that of the previous edition’s publications. The book’s first section opens with a brief introduction to the hobby and the game system. This is followed by about 10 pages introducing the Warhammer 40.000 setting, with photography of the most recently released Kill Teams and a few short stories.
Now, let’s get to the core: the rules in section 2. Essentially, the game engine remains the same, but all the rules from the previous edition have been refined, rewritten and fine-tuned. The presentation of the rules is clearer and the structure more didactic. The rules start by explaining the game flow and the phases of a turn (turning point). Then, all of the operatives’ actions are described, before moving on to the key principles, which are listed in alphabetical order. These key principles include concepts like cover and visibility rules, control range, the structure of data cards, and definitions of common terms. This way, players are guided smoothly from the big picture to the finer details. After that, the terrain and Killzone rules are presented, including the new Killzone Volkus, as well as Bheta-Decima and Gallowdark from previous seasons. Note that only the basic Killzone rules are included, not the special rules for the additional terrain pieces that came with previous expansion boxes.
Section 3 covers missions. It features a basic Preliminary Ops mission pack to get you going, with 2 generic layouts and 2 Gallowdark layouts, 3 simple Crit Ops, and the new Kill Ops. The idea is that for matched play, you’ll want to get the annually released Approved Ops card deck, which adds the same level of depth and variety to the 1v1 experience as in the previous edition. The 2024 version of the Approved Ops deck is included in the box but will also be available separately.
New in this edition of Kill Team are 3 Joint Operations missions for cooperative play against game-controlled NPOs (non-playable operatives). The NPOs are model-agnostic, with two different basic behaviour types – Brawler and Marksman – each in three “size classes”. The book provides some examples of suitable miniatures for each class. Finally, there’s a Multiplayer Ops mission pack for up to four players, with 4 generic layouts and 4 Gallowdark layouts, as well as complementary Crit Ops and Elimination Ops.
The final section of the book, Section 4, contains an appendix. For some reason, the overarching game sequence and weapon rules are placed here at the end of the book. I would have preferred these to be integrated directly into the rules section, but that might just be personal preference. No personal preference but a major oversight are the rules for universal equipment, or their lack of, as they are missing from the Core Book. For reasons I can’t explain these can be found in the Hivestorm Dossier expansion book instead.
Kill Team: Hivestorm doesn’t come with a reference sheet with the key rules, which I find bewildering – it’s 2024, and the industry leader still doesn’t include one of these as standard with their all their games.
Hivestorm Dossier expansion book
The expansion books for the new edition have been rebranded as “dossiers,” but they still roughly follow the familiar structure.
The Hivestorm dossier consists of 72 pages. The first section starts with a few pages dedicated to lore, introducing the planet Volkus and its Massif Ballistus gun that forms the backdrop of this season. There’s also background information on the Tempestus Aquilons and Vespid Stingwings. The photo gallery now features a cleaner design, giving more space to the presentation of the individual operative types. Unfortunately, the popular name and demeanor generators have been omitted.
Section 2 contains the rules for the two new Kill Teams, including faction rules, ploys, and equipment. A welcome new addition is a page of designer’s commentary for each team, offering surprisingly in-depth tactical advice. I really appreciate this kind of assistance, as too many games overwhelm players with options and possibilities but don’t tell you where to start.
Finally, in Section 3, there’s the Airborne Assault mission pack, a three-stage mini-campaign with a total of 6 missions. This section also includes the rules for universal equipment, which for some reason didn’t make it into the Core Book.
My first impressions of the new edition
As I mentioned earlier, I casually played the previous, 2nd edition of Kill Team. Kill Team is certainly the most “modern” rule set from Games Workshop (or perhaps the one that feels the least like “classic” Warhammer). It features alternating activations and innovative concepts like Engage/Conceal states, which grants operatives different advantages and disadvantages and keeps the state of the board dynamic. However, some of the good ideas were still a bit rough around the edges, such as the use of misleading symbols for distances and the clunky wording of the cover and obscurity rules.
I’m happy to say that the new edition has cleaned up pretty much all of these issues. The rules are written more clearly, are better illustrated, and are enriched with designer’s notes, all presented in a more didactic order. There are still a few entry barriers, such as occasionally convoluted sentence structures and somewhat unintuitive terms like “turning points” for game rounds. However, overall, the new rule set is much more accessible and strikes a good balance in complexity between the streamlined Warcry and the expansive and cluttered Necromunda.
By now, you’ll likely find detailed analyses of all the changes on other gaming-focused channels and websites, but here are a few new features that stood out to me: Instead of using a roster with 20 operatives, you now assemble your Kill Team at the start of the game from all the available options from the team list. Starting from the second turn, the player that doesn’t have the initiative receives 2 instead of 1 Command Point during the Strategy Phase. Operatives always begin the first turn concealed, but can change orders during their first activation. The engagement range is now called “control range” and is always 1″, and it is also used for determining cover. Group activation has been removed. The Overwatch action is also gone; instead, you can perform any 1AP action (but can only move a maximum of 2″) if your opponent still has unactivated operatives, which gives elite teams more flexibility. Vantage and obscured have been reworked, … and there’s much more.
Conclusion
All in all, the new ruleset has rekindled my love of Kill Team. I enjoyed the gameplay of the previous edition, but there were too many little things that bothered us in the long run. The aforementioned unintuitive rules that we simply couldn’t keep in mind during occasional casual games. And the free digital rules approach sounds great, I hope Games Workshop stays true to their word and doesn’t start to lock essential content behind a paywall after a while.
The only question that remains is which new Kill Team I would like to send into battle in the new edition. Unfortunately, the teams from the Compendium will not receive revised rules, and the teams from the first Kill Team Season will only be legal for official tournaments for a limited time. You can read more about this in this Warhammer Community article.
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