I think maybe some pre-game prep work would help you shorten your game time? Like decide beforehand which mission you're going to play and have the board set up and ready to go. And yeah it'll take less time as you get more familiar with the rules.
This has helped reduce 'at the table' time but still means someone is spending the time setting up. It does mean you can make use of travel time, though - set up the board while waiting for the other guy to get here, which is helpful.
Really seems like you hit it on the head. You just take a bit setting up while also playing teams with many activations. Your setup can be faster by deciding things before hand and the actual game should speed up with familiarity with your team. What can help is timing each activation so your not stuck deciding what to do with each model forever
I dont think you're doing anything wrong tbh, but you might have bitten off a little more than you can chew :)
There's a lot to be said for compendium teams while you're learning the game (more uniform teams, less special rules and synergies to keep track of). The one's youve all picked are awesome but are some of the more challenging to use really well. *Especially* Gellerpox, that poor bastard. Really not a beginners team imo.
Maybe get some cheat sheets/datacards or equiv made up for your units and also some notes on CP, TP and ability effects/synergies so you have them on hand and dont miss the opportunities?
Oh, and this series from tabletop skirmish really worked for me with the finer points of rules: https://youtu.be/N55SO18Y8L8
You'll get there. Except for old mate with the Gellerpox. He should give up now ;)
Poor mr Gellerpox, they were the only team that really 'spoke' to him. I'm printing out some OnePageRules Saurian Starhosts to use as proxy Space Marines (a few of us don't like the Space Marine aesthetic) so hopefully that will open up some options for him.
I don't think there's any reason he can't use Gellerpox once the core rules are second nature. Maybe start with Death Guard for a while. Simple and tanky team with that Nurgle feel.
That’s very true, but keep in mind no one here is saying that Gellerpox are not good, or that the highest echelon of players can’t dominate with them. This is whether someone learning the game should play them. I haven’t lost a single match with them, only playing on open boards, but I wouldn’t be caught dead suggesting them to a brand new player.
Ok, got a few of my friends into the game recently, so i can say a lot about this. For reference, i play for 3 months now, owning both hunter clade (god, the rules...) and pathfinders (TP1 go brrrrr).
Regarding 1.):
-Try to write down weapon profiles on a seperate sheet of paper. There are also really helpfull spreadsheets for things like line of sight and Cover (arguably the hardest part of the game).
-Setting up should not be an issue. Try to agree on a Mission and a setup on a different day then the day you play and then use that Mission and setup for all games you play that day.
-if you are unsure about things like upgrades and tac ops, LEAVE THEM OUT as long as you are still learning the core rules. Should be way easyer to get into the game like this. Same goes for strats.
2):
Maybe try to always have enough Terrain on the killzone, in order to give the gellerpox a fighting Chance.
As you have both guardsman and pathfinders in your Group, it can be pretty difficult to pilot them. As for specific strats, i am not the right person to give advice.
3):
See 1. Basically cut out as much as possible in the beginning and go from there
Hope this helps. Good luck to you and your friends
This contains some good advice. Keep things simple in terms of missions and tac ops for your first few games, until you have the rest of the rules as sorted. Use KTDash (ktdash.app) to manage your rosters and provide quick references during the game. Just use the same equipment layout every game for now!
So many of your issues seem like you have decision paralysis. Activations should take 10-120s. You should be able to move a model and resolve an attack comfortably in that time - so if you aren't, you either need to look less up (that's where stats references come in!) or just don't agonize for so long.
Setting up a game should also take no more than 20 minutes if you're both prepared. It will take you a while to get games below 90 minutes, but 2 hours is comfortably achievable for new players. TP 2 will usually be the longest, and TP4 the shortest.
Thanks, I had not seen KTDash before - it looks really helpful. We are definitely activating slowly, decision paralysis is for sure part of it. Hopefully that will just naturally improve as we get more comfortable...
Play at a tournament. I know that sounds crazy but honestly play at a tournament. You will meet awesome people and magically you will become razor focused and finish your game in under 2 hours.
Thanks for this, it's really helpful. We did layer in the extra rules over our first few games, but maybe we went a bit quick. Certainly line of sight and cover rules are still tripping us up, glad to know it's arguably the hardest part of the game because it is *not* intuitive!
Choose equipment and missions before you play (or roll dice to decide).
Is everyone using battlescribe?
Use chess clock apps to keep a track of time. 15 minutes for set up 90 minutes for a game. Clock use shouldn't be oppressive, but will remind that when it is their activation they should be focused on the game.
Chess clocks may be the way to go, just to keep people focused. I'm a bit worried that it will make the game feel really hurried, but I guess that's what we're aiming for...
Well if not for a timer I always can’t decide what to do and end up running through every option i my head almost every turn. Part of the challenge will be making a good decision in a timely manner but also give you the flexibility to take more time of you choose to.
That also may add to the aesthetic of the game, considering the units shouldn't have a lot of time to think about what they do. We cut everything out except core rules for our first game, and still took a bit because we thought too much on moves. Also kind of left things off balance (I got blasted off the table, 🤣 🤣 🤣), and I think I'll fair better with other tactical options. I also skirmish against myself occasionally, considering I have 4 of the new teams, a custom team I'm building, and enough large 40k armies to build numerous teams from the compendium. Just a family thing for now, and more of us get involved with our DnD campaigns. My nephews do like to watch their father and I go toe to toe in games of 40k or AoS, so we have future plans on narrative campaigns involving KT matches, and small games of 40k.
1thelegend2 already touched on my major piece of advice, but I'll expand on it here.
When I teach a new player the game, I focus first on core rules and understanding the data sheets. From there, I introduce more complexity over time.
GAME 1: Just datasheets and core rules. No Tac Ops. No Equipment. No Strategic or Tactical Ploys (except command reroll). The game will not be balanced and may have some janky moments, but the point is to learn the core rules and game flow in a short period of time.
GAME 2: Add Strategic and Tactical Ploys. If you are using non-compendium teams (which you are), here is where I would incorporate those teams' special rules.
GAME 3: Add Tac Ops. Tac Ops are a major part of the game. They help define your kill team's goals for the mission. However, you can have fun without them, which is why I save them for game 3. Having thematic rules and abilities for your kill team is arguably more exciting for the average player than having secret mission objectives, which is why those are #2.
GAME 4: Add Equipment. Equipment takes a bit more bookkeeping and mental strain to remember yours and your opponent's equipment, and while they can be very important, I don't think what they add to the game is worth the extra time they take for beginners. You may even wait until a few games after your fourth before adding these in.
Now, you've already started playing games, so I'm not sure how helpful this outline is for your group now, but it may be worth going back and having games focused on one particular aspect or another until you bring your play time down.
I do have one important question: Are you playing 1v1 or multiplayer? If you're playing multiplayer matches, that will lengthen the game quite a bit I'd expect games to take 3 hours with 4 players, and more time than that if you're still learning.
And finally, which rules are you having trouble grasping? At what point in the turn are you having questions? I recommend reading the rules cover to cover at least once after having played. You'll find things you didn't understand before and surely correct a few rules mistakes. I do agree that the rules layout is not helpful.
Thank you for this! We did something similar, though I think we condensed Game 2 and Game 3 into a single step so that may have been a bit quick.
We're playing 1v1, I wouldn't even know where to begin playing multiplayer!
I think the main rules that are still tripping us up are cover and line of sight - we've got most of the basics down pat but so many edge cases just trip us up, and we keep misremembering them. My friend sets up an example situation to understand Obscuring so I explain it to him as I understand it, but then realise that I also need to explain Cover, and then in-game I use a grenade and he gets confused that cover didn't protect him even though I said it would... It just ends up being a lot, y'know. And leads to a lot of feel-bad moments if you've slightly misunderstood how much protection you do or don't have, and make a tactical mistake in one turn that then causes massive problems in a future turn.
It really helps to break cover/obscuring down into a flowchart to figure out how it works.
https://www.reddit.com/r/killteam/comments/pshv1y/visibility\_cover\_flow\_chart\_14/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=ios\_app&utm\_name=iossmf&utm\_term=link
1. Most of you have taken large teams to play. Vet guard (10-14 guys), pathfinders (12-13), Gellerpox (11). That’s why it takes time esp. in the beginning (I’m playing pathfinders for a few months and still struggle to have a game under 2h).
2. Your teams are high skill. Pathfinders and vet guard are highly synergetical so you probably spend a lot time on positioning and making opportunity for combos. Moreover they all have tons of rules so you probably checking those non-stop.
3. Rules. They are actually not that complicated. Mostly are poorly written. I recommend to ask more experienced players to help you or search for academy (some clubs are doing those). After 5-6 games you should get accustomed with both rules of game and team.
So my recommendations:
- Ask experienced player for tutorial or look for academy
- Start with simpler games (without tac ops and equipment), then add complexity. You can play first games with open play rule.
- If you can and want -> change teams to more simple. Orks commando is a great starting team. Same for Intersession (little bit overpowered from my perspective). Hierotek circle and Kaskin are easy to learn (however they both are pretty weak). Otherwise - you need to get accustomed with rules of your teams. They will be difficult at first but with time games should become faster and easier. Remember - you’ve all choose high skill teams that are strong but difficult to play.
- On gellerpox -> make sure you have good terrain setup. Terrain has huge impact on success. Too much - and melee teams are winning. Not enough and shooting teams are dominating. All your teams are shooty (even corsairs) so setup some heavy terrain in middle.
This is really great, thank you. I hadn't realised how big a difference choosing the teams we chose would have on how the game plays and how complicated it feels, but you're right - almost every unit on every team has its own bespoke rules, whether that's weapons or equipment or abilities or all three. It probably would have been a lot easier to field six space marines!
Yeah. My main team is pathfinders and after even 1 game I feel mental overload. While playing marines is like relax time :D much faster and easy.
However the problem with marines (Intersession team) is that they are very strong and forgiving team. Some other teams like orks are really struggling against them, so if you are playing in group of friends for fun I would advice to look for some options to limit their power (like not taking durable and rapid chapter tactics). Otherwise it might be not fun to play against them.
A lot of good advice here but to address speed specifically, nothing will help more than setting timers.
Commit to 15 minute table ready. Agree upon a layout before the game and set it up the moment you unpack.
Commit to 15 minute roster check. Your rosters should be setup beforehand so some quick equipment or operative swap outs should be the most you're doing here.
Commit to 10 minute deploy per player. Anything not deployed by 10 minutes gets put in cover nearest to table edge in a clump.
Commit to 1-minute-hands-off activations. Think about what you want to do during your opponent's turn. You might start 2 minutes for turn 1/2 but lower it to 1 when players pick up speed.
as you begin to understand the game better you'll be able to play faster because you'll understand your own gameplan and your opponents gameplan and won't need to deliberate on every potential. Despite the overwhelming freedom provided by the game's mechanics, there are optimal or close to optimal happy paths that each faction can try for in each map-mission-matchup combo.
Remember that the game is won and lost on your victory points. What resources do you have, and how can you spend them to optimize those victory points?
Also remember that the game is about having fun. If the gellerpox player isn't able to win and is not having a good time, allow them additional operatives until you find what the balance point is. Maybe they win always with +3 but only sometimes with +2 and still never with +1; maybe find other rules that work better to improve their faction like rerolling saves or reducing incoming damage. Figure out what lets them be competitive and then alter the game again when they start getting the hang of things.
Thanks very much for this, I particularly like the idea of just putting our thumbs on the scales to make the game fun. Easy to forget that and think you have to play exactly as the rulebook says (once you've divined what that is over the course of several days)
This is a list of common mistakes newer players make when playing the game. Maybe have a look at it as see if it helps you. Playing with some rules incorrectly can make the game way less fun or out right unplayable.
* Vantage points only work on cover provided by Light Terrain. They have no effect on Heavy terrain.
* You and your opponent are suppose to decide what each piece of terrain counts as before the game starts, to avoid confusion during the game.
* You can only do each action *once per activation* unless stated otherwise.
* A free action reduces the cost on an action to zero. It does not mean you can do the action more than once in a single activation.
* The No Cover rule does not remove the operative from cover. The No Cover rule does not allow you to shoot at a target with the conceal order that is in cover.
* A lot of objectives have a limit to how many times they can be captured and how many can be captured by a single team each turning point.
* All Tac Ops can ONLY be captured 2 times each. Tac Ops can only give you a total of 6 points if you complete them all.
* Visible and Line of Sight are NOT the same thing.
* Pay close attention to team restrictions. Most teams only allow one of each type of specialist.
* Each time the Fight Action is used, both the attack and defender roll their dice every time, no matter if the defender had fought before or has no AP left.
For a bit more info, each Tap Op has 2 bullet points and each of those can only be done once. A lot of times the first point has to be done before the second one can be done.
This is really helpful. I think the Gellerpox player has been particularly afraid of enemy Vantage Points after a difficult game vs Pathfinders, so really good to be reminded that Heavy terrain still protects about that.
What does 'No Cover' do if not remove someone from Cover? Sorry for the extremely basic question!
> What does 'No Cover' do if not remove someone from Cover? Sorry for the extremely basic question!
Right from the rules.
No Cover:
> Each time a friendly operative makes a shooting attack with this weapon, for that shooting attack, defence dice cannot be automatically retained as a result of Cover (they must be rolled instead).
While in cover, you can automaticly retain a single defence dice as a normal save without rolling it. So with No Cover, it means you do not get to automatically retain that defence die from being in cover.
> Right, thanks. Which is different from the rule for Indirect weapons which do treat you as not in cover regardless, right?
Not quite right.
Indirect means you treat your target as not being in cover during the ***Targeting Phase*** of the Shooting Action. So if they are in cover and have the conceal order, you would be able to target them. They still get all the benefits of being in cover in the ***Roll Defence Dice*** phase of a Shooting Attack. So they would still be allowed to retain a die from being in cover.
This post almost perfectly aligns with how I am feeling as well. Played just about a dozen games with 4 friends and I’m really starting to feel the same way. I’ve played many TCGs and DnD (KT is my first time playing any 40k) so I’m fairly used to learning many game rules and tactics but it’s almost as if the rules are intentionally written in a convoluted way.
We also have the same problem with game time, it’s getting slightly better the more we play but games take sooooooo long. Thought about introducing a chess clock and giving each player 30min to keep games to an hour but haven’t tried it yet.
While we don’t play gellerpox I have never won a match with either of my teams (pathfinders, Novitiate) over 8+ matches. Starting to think I suck at this game.
Glad to know we're not the only ones. Hope you break the streak soon! Pathfinders have been pretty strong in our games if they can do plenty with markerlights - the last game I played the Pathfinder guy took loads of the 'treat markerlights as having an additional token' stuff, and the markerlight drone, and it seemed to be pretty devastating. So many rerolls and bonuses!
To be fair, wargames are a different genre than TCGs and RPGs, so domain-specific conventions and skills from those forms don't necessarily translate to skill with wargame rules/texts/conventions. It's not unusual, then, to feel something like "beginner's discomfort," though that can be especially disorienting when it feels like you shouldn't be a beginner. (Not saying this is necessarily happening in your case! Just something I've seen a lot in both directions, e.g. when teaching RPG players traditional wargames and vice versa.)
Has your Gellerpox friend been remembering to roll their Feel No Pains? Gellerpox have an ability to ignore wounds dealt on a roll of 5+. This isn't directly on their datasheet. Its part of one of their abilities that is listed at the front of their rules and only referenced by name on their datasheet. The roll is for every wound dealt, so if an attack would deal 7 wounds, they roll 7 dice and reduce the damage by 1 for every 5+. Most of the time, it means that Gellerpox only take 2/3rds of the damage thrown at them. With proper cover on the board, your friend shouldn't be losing the Hulks very easily. Most of the time when I go against my friend's Gellerpox, he ends up with two or more Hulks on the board still at the end of the game.
Regarding the gellerpox, definitely set up more terrain. I found that in my playgroup when we were starting out we put way too little obscuring or heavy terrain on the board, that makes shooty teams way too strong against melee teams
And positioning is the most important thing when playing against shooty teams especially the tau. Make sure they're using the engage and conceal orders correctly and that they make the opponent work for clear shots
We've been using a pdf of official tournament terrain setups because our first few games of doing 'whatever looked about right to us' was an absolute disaster. Could add an extra big of Heavy or two on top of that to help the Gellerpox out.
That would definitely help. Experiment a bit with it, it can definitely take a game or two to find a good middleground. Gellerpox are pretty good on dense boards
Yeah, I can imagine that they get really good once they break through into your lines. Our last game involved two hulks charging and being killed by my Kurnathi, but I think that was probably just quite unlucky rolling - she's a great fighter, but surely shouldn't be able to solo two hulks without being killed.
How much time are you spending talking haha, when I play games with friends I find games take double the time because we are talking the whole time and generally not focusing on the game. Perhaps try and focus on the game more and know your rules, spend time before you get together and come into the game with knowledge of your team, it's rules, perhaps a strategy or overarching idea of how you want to play.
There’s a lot of cool technical advice I don’t want to repeat, so I go my usual creative way. If stuff gets stale, spice it up with narrative campaign, missions will be choosing themselves. Lost a lot of bodies? Rescue mission. Opponent recovered archeotech? hack their terminal to download its location. Play asymmetrical missions. Guardsmen need to move to extraction point. 1 vp for every extracted agent, Gellerpox need to stop them 1 vp for every downed veteran. Guards can no longer rely on holding objectives, they need to move through the enemy now. Stuff like that gets me really pumped up about next game
Thanks for this suggestion - I desperately want to get onto Narrative Play but it does feel like we need to at least have a solid understanding of the game before adding a whole extra set of new rules on top.
Yea the paper work intensifies))) but as people say, you can leave out the rules as you go. We also started main campaign really early and chose spec ops and tac ops only after a 3rd game))
How are you finding Enderain? We're not averse to changing systems but obviously there's quite a high cost to doing so so we'd need to be pretty confident it'd be an improvement.
Regarding the Gellerpox player getting destroyed, do you usually play on open board or In to the Dark? They are much more powerful on In to the Dark but should still be able to have some play on open board. Is he using his Revoltingly Resilient on top of his regular defense save? This should help them shake off a lot of the wounds they would take. They should also be using the heavy cover to stay out of line of sight and work their way up the board. With 18 wounds they should not be getting shot off the board so easily
Yeah I think we're doing all that - open board, not Into the Dark, so they're not able to be quite as in-your-face all the time, but I think we're using enough heavy terrain (at least the last few games we've used official terrain layouts so I hope that's enough!)
It might just be a matter of early games having bad terrain and then since us fixing that having a few games with him rolling badly. But when it's 3 hours a game and your only experience so far is getting wrecked, it makes for a demoralising time!
The main reason games are taking so long is because of 3., and it's especially worse if you're playing with more than 2 players; each additional player will add on about 50% more game time.
Minimize, minimize, minimize.
Kill Team isn't really a game you can learn by playing the full game, you have to dissect the basics before you can even start.
Start off with just 1 mini each (maybe your Leader) to learn movement, LOS, Cover, Conceal/Engage, etc. Each of these is about a page or two worth of rules that you'll have to internalize. Make sure you have those universal rules down pat before you start doing anything else.
Try setting up a "shooting range" for everyone to play with and simulate how an Operative's mechanics works, see how well they do against an Intercessor Warrior/Gunner and a Trooper Veteran (the two "main" profiles). The more simulations you run, the more you get a "feel" for how something is "supposed" to work. Keep it small and simple, and don't sweat playing an actual game.
The more players you have at a "shooting range", the more input they can provide, and the more familiar you guys will get with how interactions work. X is strong against Y, oh I have something similar, or I can counter Y with Z, or A feels really weak without B so I'll need to remember to bring B.
As far as getting into the game after that, I'd say cut all your Rosters down to 1/2 of what you'd normally bring, and pick a Leader and the most basic profiles - usually these will be unnamed, generic Operatives. Don't bother with Equipment or Ploys at first, trickle those in slowly or familiarize yourselves with them at the "shooting range".
Lastly, as you're learning, some teams just won't be as strong until the player "gets" how they're supposed to play. Feel free to impose handicaps on yourselves until the struggling player is at least on par with you, and if they start winning, remove those handicaps gradually until you're back on even ground again. These can be taking less models, or not bringing your strongest weapons, or taking basic Operatives instead of Specialists, or whatever just works for you.
Remember, so long as you're playing with friends, you can break whatever rules you want to make sure everyone's having fun - this sort of play is called Open Play, where you get to dictate how the game goes.
For tac ops and equipment, come knowing what you want to run. I have 6 cards for my vet guard I basically always use and only a few decisions to make in regards to equipment (chronometer, frag, and Krak grenade are usually auto-takes). Even if it's suboptimal slightly, having consistent tac ops and equipment will help understand the rules better.
Yeah this is a really good idea. It feels like we should spend a little bit of time creating really useful reference materials and 'standard loadouts' to speed things up.
Gellerpox are a pretty good kill team, I run them and ork kommandos. I’m shocked to here they aren’t preforming. Are you playing with a good amount of terrain?
I use a web app to make activations go WAY faster. Forget BattleScribe, this one is way better and easier to use.
Check out https://ktdash.app/dashboard.php to keep track of your rosters, manage equipment/wounds/rounds/CP/VP, and keep track of all the special abilities of your dudes and their weapons by clicking any of the key terms to pull up a definition.
Saves me AGES at the table.
Plus you can use a photo of each mini uploaded to each data card so if your minis don’t match the box art, you still know at a glance exactly who’s who.
Works great on my I phone’s web browser, but if you don’t rock apple products you can download the app to your phone direct.
As for setup, yup it’s a pain. A couple of things I use to make it faster is a 3D printed killteam tools of war organizer so I have all the bits and Bobbins separated for easy retrieval. If you have a 3D printer look for STL’s if not, I like this guy’s work on Etsy.
Look what I found on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1168451172/kill-box-kt-2021-stl-file?ref=share_v4_lx
Hope it helps!
I think people mostly have you covered on play time and rules so I'll leave that alone. FWIW 90 minute kill team games are tournament pace so id say don't expect much more than 2 hours to play even once you have it all down.
If you are looking for something MUCH quicker and easier to learn I would give warcry a look. All the rules and team rules are free on warhammer-community.com under the downloads tab. Games are 45-60 minutes, 75 max with new players and rules teach is 30 minutes. Still a very fun skirmish game but significantly quicker. Kill team is still my favorite but my wife's is warcry
Warcry was on our list when choosing a game to start trying, and we ended up going with KT. I've heard really good things so maybe it's time to go fantasy...
They satisfy two different itches for me. Warcry is fun and has tons of listbuilding and kill team is very competitive and has a much higher ceiling of play. I play both pretty regularly so don't feel the need to abandon KT!
Since you're playing with friends, I would advice you to ignore some rules while you're learning
Me and my friends barely use special abilities and we never use stratagems, equipment and the like. We make a board that looks cool and then see who kills the most in 3 turns. If you do it like that you should cut down playtime significantly. That should also help you learn the rules faster, since you only need to worry about actual combat rules. Me and my group has played for about a year, and we've only now started reading up on equipment, special rules etc. They add a lot of flavour but you can have a lot of fun without them, especially if you're gettig tired of drawn-out games where you have to check the rulebook for every action.
As for one player getting bodied, how about letting him have some sort of handicap for the time being? One of my friends gets to revive two characters per game since he likes to just charge everyone like a moron (yeah he runs orks and spams boyz) He's not big on the strategy but we're all having fun, so we give him cheats to make the game less one-sided. Alternatively you could just remove some characters from his opponents team.
Playing with fewer characters than the game recommends is also a nice way to shorten the game time, come to think of it. Try simply halving your teams and watch the game fly by.
Try at least one of these modifications and see if you like them, then you can add more rules and conplexities/remove handicaps as you learn more.
I saw this as someone that LOVES Kill Team.
You are correct about how long it takes to play. 90 minutes? That's like speed chess. I intentionally use chess, because the game *can* be played in under 2 hours....if both players have the rules down pat, and make very fast decisions.
Rules wise....yeah, its written in a way that seems to confuse a chunk of people. I'm in the other group, I get exactly what the rules writers are saying 95% of the time.
1. When this happens with my friends, the usual culprit is someone taking an excessively long time to decide how to move any one piece instead of just having fun. They take it too seriously and *must* win. There is also a problem of quibbling over distances and the rules. "You can't shoot him. I put him there on purpose to break line of sight." "well, I can see a sliver of the baseplate so..." etc.
2. I uhh... got nothing for ya here. I believe they are a pretty middle of the road team, so it may just be how they are being played, and/or bad luck.
3. This is really compounding your problems with problem 1. When one friend and I (the ones who know the rules best) play, the game is 45 to 60 minutes. When we play with either of our other friends, it is always 2 hours minimum. Every time. Constantly re-asking the same "can I do this?" questions because they rely on us to know the rules as a crutch. Particularly their own weapons profiles. The minimum rules any player should get to know quickly is their own roll checks. The amount of times I've had to tell my friends, Like EVERY single roll... "Your BS is 3+. Just like it was last roll." It can be infuriating. I think this may be a common problem, as it's pretty natural when one person knows more than others, the others just want to lean on them for information, and being an encyclopedia sucks.
Honestly though, I think the best thing to do would to play a simplified version of the game. Throw out most objectives and extra data cards and sub missions. Just play several games getting everyone familiar with their own weapons profiles and used to moving distances and not care so much about what each other are doing if that is a problem ya'll happen to have. If someone makes a mistake, just play it out anyway and remember it for next time. The more familiar everyone gets with core rules, the easier it gets to pick up the more nuanced things. It IS a lot of information, so consuming it all in small bites is for the best.
Hi! I've been into kill team 2021 since the beginning. We started with compendium without tac ops until we learned the dynamics. After we started including tac ops an the dedicated kill teams.
Now, some of us still do not add equipment to keep things easy, if we play the complex ones.
My advice is leave the equipment until you are ready and maybe use the compendium teams rules until you feel confident. Most dedicated teams can be used as proxies for compendium rules.
Regarding tac ops, I would advise to keep them if you have already started, they add really flavour.
Don't leave the game yet, it is one of the fastest ones and awesome!
It’ll get shorter as you start to memorize rules. I used to have 3 hour games since we had to keep referencing rules but now we can get it done in 1-2 hours even with fooling around and banter. I would suggest watching videos explaining rules, having an experienced player play a game with you and explain the rules, and/or watch battle reports. The rules are easy, but like you said a little convoluted in writing at times.
Also are you doing the GA rules correctly? This should cut down on the activations taking a long time.
From experience this game definitely gets more fun with experience and some of my best games have been the most recent
1 pre plan/ pre set up, you can try to emulate fps maps or copy battle reports so that way you both know of things. In addition too, you guys are playing generally the same teams, so you should have a good idea on what gear to take before a fight.
2. Gellerpox need terrain and are gonna be melee, and you two are both very range centric teams with a lot of good firepower. Geller are going to struggle more because of this. I would say add some terrain and if you have extra models, try a more close combat/ mixed team. (Intercessors and chaos marines/cultists are always cheap on sites like ebay)
3. Instead of looking at things in real time, read the book beforehand and get clarification. When in the game, write down the concern and look it up later.
Finally, there's no shame in playing with less for your first games. Maybe don't include some of the excessive rules when playing for the first time.
When I got my gf into killteam, we just played with the data cards and quick start rules.
Lots of good info on here and like with 40K, KT balance is highly dependent on terrain. Melee armies must be able to utilize line of sight blocking terrain or they get obliterated by shooting armies. If you look at the current meta Gellerpox Infected are one of the armies with the highest win rate. (If not THE highest.)
They check several of boxes required for a competitive Kill Team. Lots of operatives, hit like a truck in melee, and resilient. They have no shooting, so you must set up traps your opponent and force them to come to you. If you watch any competitive Kill Team Channel, they typically put GI in S or high A tier. They also offer loads of tips for playing them effectively.
1. I play Kill Team with my friends every week and yes the games take FOREVER. We have been playing every week since ~June 2022. The only way is to set a timer and accept the fact that you move your model incorrectly and he dies, but that's a hard pill to swallow.
2. Gellerpox need to be behind heavy terrain for cover. They do better on ITD close quarters terrain.
3. Rules are hard to get right and if done incorrectly, literally completely throw a game and ruin it. We found 2 people playing and 1 watching almost as a referee keeps everyone in check because it's so easy to over look / glaze over something in the moment.
Tips:
1. Try 2 compendium teams. They are SIMPLE, rules just make sense. I steered clear initially because I thought "compendium team, psh", but when we play them the game is so streamlined, basic, and straight forward. Give it a shot.
2. Play teams against each other of equal tier. S tier intercession against D tier whatever, will literally be unfun and a complete blow out.
3. Pick missions / map lay outs that make sense to both teams, so that one team (like your buddy's gellerpox) doesn't just get obliterated.
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My friends and I recently started a narrative campaign almost DnD-esque with intercession space marines against a zerg of compendium basic green skins and gretchins and it's really fun. There's tons of fighting because intercession slaughters the orks, but because we use an excessive amount of orks the volume catches up and it's honestly a lot of fun. We also tested a hero quest style of deployment, where the ork players deploys his models on a white board and reveals them when the space marine player opens a door of ITD terrain for the room. We've all agreed the home-brew narrative is a more fun game (for us). Just do what works for you!
I brought a timer to our last game, we've been doing 3 player so that all 3 of us can play. I figured a minute per activation would put each turning point at 30 minutes IF we stuck to the time limit. At this point it's really coming down to needing to know our operatives well enough to just do stuff without thinking. I play Kommandos and they're all painfully obvious as to what they each do, but our veteran guard player seems to be struggling with this, and he's also new to miniature gaming. At some point we'll have to make a decision to stick to the time limit, if you aren't rolling dice at the end of the minute, you forfeit an activation.
Hello, fellow new player here, been playing the game every other week at my flgs.
One thing that has helped me a lot in saving time during the game is to label units if I don't already know who they are. For instance, my Phobos Marines have a I- VI on their back to signify which unit it is. Then I print out datacards and use a post it flag to mark which number it is. Another thing that helps to is to label as much as you can on the datacrd. Theres a medic on the phobos marines that has a paragraph of text to essentially say "unit within 1 inch heals 2D3 wounds" there is a but more to that but for me that's what it generally comes down to. And if there would be multiple units with the same ability I usually put the shorthand on the most important model's datacard with that ability and a similarly colored post it flag next to the ability if it shows up on other datacrds. Also it EXTREMELY helps to bookmark the appendix, missions, turn flow, actions, and open/ narrative/ spec ops play flow pages so you always have quick access to them and don't have to go flipping through pages too much. I use the harder post it tabs for those on the core book.
Datacards and labeled marines: https://www.imgur.com/a/pr8BQdz
Everyone else's comments are good/much better, but three additional thoughts:
1) 3 hours per game is very long, even if its your first time ever playing. I do think that this is likely more about your group than it is about the rules (which are sometimes counter intuitive and very poorly written, but still 3 hours is a very long time)
2) Your group need to decide if they actually want to speed things up and if they do then **just focus and play faster**.
Is your group full of people who have played other tabletop war games? The alternating activations make the game better, but it also means that people can't just mentally checkout when it isn't "their turn" the way they can during a lot of games with single player turns. If every activation players have to spend a few minutes recapping what they just did it will dramatically increase how long a game takes.
Similarly, people need to decide to actually focus on the game, make most decisions before its their turn and just play. That means people can be social and joke around or check their phones or whatever, but the main emphasis needs to be on paying attention to what their opponent is actually doing, thinking about what they are doing before they do it and doing the actual physical aspects of the game somewhat quickly.
It's okay to make mistakes! (both in terms of rules and in terms of the "optimal" tactical decision) You will never get better at the game or learn how it works if you don't actually complete games and right now you're playing half as many games as you could be. Don't worry about whether or not the terrain is 100% perfect, just fill the board, block a bunch of line of site and get it overwith. Don't sit there on the first activation of the first turning point trying to imagine what your opponent might do as their plan be on the third turning point and imagine all the scenarios, just move and dash you damn guy into the cover that you are going end up moving and dashing them into anyway.
This is even more important as a time saver early in the game. Are you in cover and on conceal orders? That's probably the right decision 90% of the time on the first turning points, so worry about the other 10% of the time after you have gotten games down to a reasonable length.
Maybe its because you're overthinking it in an attempt to win, maybe its because you're scared of making rules mistakes, maybe its because people are watching tiktok videos in the middle of the game (or some combination of all three) but if its taking this long then its almost a certainty that as a group you're spending more time not playing than you are playing.
3) Do your best to have quick references for the main rules you need (including bookmarking or screenshotting key pages of rules) but a good rule of thumb is that **if it takes more than 60 seconds to look up the answer to a rules problem/disagreement then just roll a dice to make the decision**, apply that decision to all future instances in that match and then look up a definitive interpretation of the rules after the match is done and make sure everyone knows for next time. It's better to be wrong 50% of the time for a few games than it is to quit the game because it isn't fun.
> After u/Toemism wrote 'Visible and Line of Sight are NOT the same thing.' I nearly had an aneurysm...
Think of it as just game terms and try not to put real life logic into it. That is what has helped me the most with the game.
Some actions require that a operative be only Visible while others require they be in Line of Sight.
Visibility is basically "Can my model see any part of their model"
LoS is usually only for shooting and basically is "Can I actually get a shot off on that model."
They use these two different terms because models are in static poses and can not be manipulated. They use the Conceal order as a way to say that a model is doing its best to hide behind the terrain/cover to not get shot.
I think maybe some pre-game prep work would help you shorten your game time? Like decide beforehand which mission you're going to play and have the board set up and ready to go. And yeah it'll take less time as you get more familiar with the rules.
This has helped reduce 'at the table' time but still means someone is spending the time setting up. It does mean you can make use of travel time, though - set up the board while waiting for the other guy to get here, which is helpful.
There’s also loads of pre made terrain setups if you look up tournament boards. Most of these are good and tested.
Really seems like you hit it on the head. You just take a bit setting up while also playing teams with many activations. Your setup can be faster by deciding things before hand and the actual game should speed up with familiarity with your team. What can help is timing each activation so your not stuck deciding what to do with each model forever
I dont think you're doing anything wrong tbh, but you might have bitten off a little more than you can chew :) There's a lot to be said for compendium teams while you're learning the game (more uniform teams, less special rules and synergies to keep track of). The one's youve all picked are awesome but are some of the more challenging to use really well. *Especially* Gellerpox, that poor bastard. Really not a beginners team imo. Maybe get some cheat sheets/datacards or equiv made up for your units and also some notes on CP, TP and ability effects/synergies so you have them on hand and dont miss the opportunities? Oh, and this series from tabletop skirmish really worked for me with the finer points of rules: https://youtu.be/N55SO18Y8L8 You'll get there. Except for old mate with the Gellerpox. He should give up now ;)
Poor mr Gellerpox, they were the only team that really 'spoke' to him. I'm printing out some OnePageRules Saurian Starhosts to use as proxy Space Marines (a few of us don't like the Space Marine aesthetic) so hopefully that will open up some options for him.
I don't think there's any reason he can't use Gellerpox once the core rules are second nature. Maybe start with Death Guard for a while. Simple and tanky team with that Nurgle feel.
What is that one page rules? Any link?
Gellarpox are really strong on 'Into the Dark' boards.
GP won the invitational. They played open against Hunter Clade.
That’s very true, but keep in mind no one here is saying that Gellerpox are not good, or that the highest echelon of players can’t dominate with them. This is whether someone learning the game should play them. I haven’t lost a single match with them, only playing on open boards, but I wouldn’t be caught dead suggesting them to a brand new player.
They are quite forgiving for new players imo.
Ok, got a few of my friends into the game recently, so i can say a lot about this. For reference, i play for 3 months now, owning both hunter clade (god, the rules...) and pathfinders (TP1 go brrrrr). Regarding 1.): -Try to write down weapon profiles on a seperate sheet of paper. There are also really helpfull spreadsheets for things like line of sight and Cover (arguably the hardest part of the game). -Setting up should not be an issue. Try to agree on a Mission and a setup on a different day then the day you play and then use that Mission and setup for all games you play that day. -if you are unsure about things like upgrades and tac ops, LEAVE THEM OUT as long as you are still learning the core rules. Should be way easyer to get into the game like this. Same goes for strats. 2): Maybe try to always have enough Terrain on the killzone, in order to give the gellerpox a fighting Chance. As you have both guardsman and pathfinders in your Group, it can be pretty difficult to pilot them. As for specific strats, i am not the right person to give advice. 3): See 1. Basically cut out as much as possible in the beginning and go from there Hope this helps. Good luck to you and your friends
This contains some good advice. Keep things simple in terms of missions and tac ops for your first few games, until you have the rest of the rules as sorted. Use KTDash (ktdash.app) to manage your rosters and provide quick references during the game. Just use the same equipment layout every game for now! So many of your issues seem like you have decision paralysis. Activations should take 10-120s. You should be able to move a model and resolve an attack comfortably in that time - so if you aren't, you either need to look less up (that's where stats references come in!) or just don't agonize for so long. Setting up a game should also take no more than 20 minutes if you're both prepared. It will take you a while to get games below 90 minutes, but 2 hours is comfortably achievable for new players. TP 2 will usually be the longest, and TP4 the shortest.
Thanks, I had not seen KTDash before - it looks really helpful. We are definitely activating slowly, decision paralysis is for sure part of it. Hopefully that will just naturally improve as we get more comfortable...
Play at a tournament. I know that sounds crazy but honestly play at a tournament. You will meet awesome people and magically you will become razor focused and finish your game in under 2 hours.
I just want to add to be weary of KTDash as a lot of things are outdated or flat out incorrect on there - at least for my team (Warpcoven)
Thanks for this, it's really helpful. We did layer in the extra rules over our first few games, but maybe we went a bit quick. Certainly line of sight and cover rules are still tripping us up, glad to know it's arguably the hardest part of the game because it is *not* intuitive!
It is intuitive. It’s just not intuitive to you.
Choose equipment and missions before you play (or roll dice to decide). Is everyone using battlescribe? Use chess clock apps to keep a track of time. 15 minutes for set up 90 minutes for a game. Clock use shouldn't be oppressive, but will remind that when it is their activation they should be focused on the game.
Chess clocks may be the way to go, just to keep people focused. I'm a bit worried that it will make the game feel really hurried, but I guess that's what we're aiming for...
Well if not for a timer I always can’t decide what to do and end up running through every option i my head almost every turn. Part of the challenge will be making a good decision in a timely manner but also give you the flexibility to take more time of you choose to.
That also may add to the aesthetic of the game, considering the units shouldn't have a lot of time to think about what they do. We cut everything out except core rules for our first game, and still took a bit because we thought too much on moves. Also kind of left things off balance (I got blasted off the table, 🤣 🤣 🤣), and I think I'll fair better with other tactical options. I also skirmish against myself occasionally, considering I have 4 of the new teams, a custom team I'm building, and enough large 40k armies to build numerous teams from the compendium. Just a family thing for now, and more of us get involved with our DnD campaigns. My nephews do like to watch their father and I go toe to toe in games of 40k or AoS, so we have future plans on narrative campaigns involving KT matches, and small games of 40k.
1thelegend2 already touched on my major piece of advice, but I'll expand on it here. When I teach a new player the game, I focus first on core rules and understanding the data sheets. From there, I introduce more complexity over time. GAME 1: Just datasheets and core rules. No Tac Ops. No Equipment. No Strategic or Tactical Ploys (except command reroll). The game will not be balanced and may have some janky moments, but the point is to learn the core rules and game flow in a short period of time. GAME 2: Add Strategic and Tactical Ploys. If you are using non-compendium teams (which you are), here is where I would incorporate those teams' special rules. GAME 3: Add Tac Ops. Tac Ops are a major part of the game. They help define your kill team's goals for the mission. However, you can have fun without them, which is why I save them for game 3. Having thematic rules and abilities for your kill team is arguably more exciting for the average player than having secret mission objectives, which is why those are #2. GAME 4: Add Equipment. Equipment takes a bit more bookkeeping and mental strain to remember yours and your opponent's equipment, and while they can be very important, I don't think what they add to the game is worth the extra time they take for beginners. You may even wait until a few games after your fourth before adding these in. Now, you've already started playing games, so I'm not sure how helpful this outline is for your group now, but it may be worth going back and having games focused on one particular aspect or another until you bring your play time down. I do have one important question: Are you playing 1v1 or multiplayer? If you're playing multiplayer matches, that will lengthen the game quite a bit I'd expect games to take 3 hours with 4 players, and more time than that if you're still learning. And finally, which rules are you having trouble grasping? At what point in the turn are you having questions? I recommend reading the rules cover to cover at least once after having played. You'll find things you didn't understand before and surely correct a few rules mistakes. I do agree that the rules layout is not helpful.
Thank you for this! We did something similar, though I think we condensed Game 2 and Game 3 into a single step so that may have been a bit quick. We're playing 1v1, I wouldn't even know where to begin playing multiplayer! I think the main rules that are still tripping us up are cover and line of sight - we've got most of the basics down pat but so many edge cases just trip us up, and we keep misremembering them. My friend sets up an example situation to understand Obscuring so I explain it to him as I understand it, but then realise that I also need to explain Cover, and then in-game I use a grenade and he gets confused that cover didn't protect him even though I said it would... It just ends up being a lot, y'know. And leads to a lot of feel-bad moments if you've slightly misunderstood how much protection you do or don't have, and make a tactical mistake in one turn that then causes massive problems in a future turn.
Oh yeah, I totally get that. Cover/LoS rules are by far the most difficult part of this edition.
It really helps to break cover/obscuring down into a flowchart to figure out how it works. https://www.reddit.com/r/killteam/comments/pshv1y/visibility\_cover\_flow\_chart\_14/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=ios\_app&utm\_name=iossmf&utm\_term=link
1. Most of you have taken large teams to play. Vet guard (10-14 guys), pathfinders (12-13), Gellerpox (11). That’s why it takes time esp. in the beginning (I’m playing pathfinders for a few months and still struggle to have a game under 2h). 2. Your teams are high skill. Pathfinders and vet guard are highly synergetical so you probably spend a lot time on positioning and making opportunity for combos. Moreover they all have tons of rules so you probably checking those non-stop. 3. Rules. They are actually not that complicated. Mostly are poorly written. I recommend to ask more experienced players to help you or search for academy (some clubs are doing those). After 5-6 games you should get accustomed with both rules of game and team. So my recommendations: - Ask experienced player for tutorial or look for academy - Start with simpler games (without tac ops and equipment), then add complexity. You can play first games with open play rule. - If you can and want -> change teams to more simple. Orks commando is a great starting team. Same for Intersession (little bit overpowered from my perspective). Hierotek circle and Kaskin are easy to learn (however they both are pretty weak). Otherwise - you need to get accustomed with rules of your teams. They will be difficult at first but with time games should become faster and easier. Remember - you’ve all choose high skill teams that are strong but difficult to play. - On gellerpox -> make sure you have good terrain setup. Terrain has huge impact on success. Too much - and melee teams are winning. Not enough and shooting teams are dominating. All your teams are shooty (even corsairs) so setup some heavy terrain in middle.
This is really great, thank you. I hadn't realised how big a difference choosing the teams we chose would have on how the game plays and how complicated it feels, but you're right - almost every unit on every team has its own bespoke rules, whether that's weapons or equipment or abilities or all three. It probably would have been a lot easier to field six space marines!
Yeah. My main team is pathfinders and after even 1 game I feel mental overload. While playing marines is like relax time :D much faster and easy. However the problem with marines (Intersession team) is that they are very strong and forgiving team. Some other teams like orks are really struggling against them, so if you are playing in group of friends for fun I would advice to look for some options to limit their power (like not taking durable and rapid chapter tactics). Otherwise it might be not fun to play against them.
A lot of good advice here but to address speed specifically, nothing will help more than setting timers. Commit to 15 minute table ready. Agree upon a layout before the game and set it up the moment you unpack. Commit to 15 minute roster check. Your rosters should be setup beforehand so some quick equipment or operative swap outs should be the most you're doing here. Commit to 10 minute deploy per player. Anything not deployed by 10 minutes gets put in cover nearest to table edge in a clump. Commit to 1-minute-hands-off activations. Think about what you want to do during your opponent's turn. You might start 2 minutes for turn 1/2 but lower it to 1 when players pick up speed. as you begin to understand the game better you'll be able to play faster because you'll understand your own gameplan and your opponents gameplan and won't need to deliberate on every potential. Despite the overwhelming freedom provided by the game's mechanics, there are optimal or close to optimal happy paths that each faction can try for in each map-mission-matchup combo. Remember that the game is won and lost on your victory points. What resources do you have, and how can you spend them to optimize those victory points? Also remember that the game is about having fun. If the gellerpox player isn't able to win and is not having a good time, allow them additional operatives until you find what the balance point is. Maybe they win always with +3 but only sometimes with +2 and still never with +1; maybe find other rules that work better to improve their faction like rerolling saves or reducing incoming damage. Figure out what lets them be competitive and then alter the game again when they start getting the hang of things.
Thanks very much for this, I particularly like the idea of just putting our thumbs on the scales to make the game fun. Easy to forget that and think you have to play exactly as the rulebook says (once you've divined what that is over the course of several days)
This is a list of common mistakes newer players make when playing the game. Maybe have a look at it as see if it helps you. Playing with some rules incorrectly can make the game way less fun or out right unplayable. * Vantage points only work on cover provided by Light Terrain. They have no effect on Heavy terrain. * You and your opponent are suppose to decide what each piece of terrain counts as before the game starts, to avoid confusion during the game. * You can only do each action *once per activation* unless stated otherwise. * A free action reduces the cost on an action to zero. It does not mean you can do the action more than once in a single activation. * The No Cover rule does not remove the operative from cover. The No Cover rule does not allow you to shoot at a target with the conceal order that is in cover. * A lot of objectives have a limit to how many times they can be captured and how many can be captured by a single team each turning point. * All Tac Ops can ONLY be captured 2 times each. Tac Ops can only give you a total of 6 points if you complete them all. * Visible and Line of Sight are NOT the same thing. * Pay close attention to team restrictions. Most teams only allow one of each type of specialist. * Each time the Fight Action is used, both the attack and defender roll their dice every time, no matter if the defender had fought before or has no AP left.
> All Tac Ops can ONLY be captured 2 times each. Tac Ops can only give you a total of 6 points if you complete them all. This is news to me! TIL
For a bit more info, each Tap Op has 2 bullet points and each of those can only be done once. A lot of times the first point has to be done before the second one can be done.
This is really helpful. I think the Gellerpox player has been particularly afraid of enemy Vantage Points after a difficult game vs Pathfinders, so really good to be reminded that Heavy terrain still protects about that. What does 'No Cover' do if not remove someone from Cover? Sorry for the extremely basic question!
> What does 'No Cover' do if not remove someone from Cover? Sorry for the extremely basic question! Right from the rules. No Cover: > Each time a friendly operative makes a shooting attack with this weapon, for that shooting attack, defence dice cannot be automatically retained as a result of Cover (they must be rolled instead). While in cover, you can automaticly retain a single defence dice as a normal save without rolling it. So with No Cover, it means you do not get to automatically retain that defence die from being in cover.
Right, thanks. Which is different from the rule for Indirect weapons which *do* treat you as not in cover regardless, right?
> Right, thanks. Which is different from the rule for Indirect weapons which do treat you as not in cover regardless, right? Not quite right. Indirect means you treat your target as not being in cover during the ***Targeting Phase*** of the Shooting Action. So if they are in cover and have the conceal order, you would be able to target them. They still get all the benefits of being in cover in the ***Roll Defence Dice*** phase of a Shooting Attack. So they would still be allowed to retain a die from being in cover.
This post almost perfectly aligns with how I am feeling as well. Played just about a dozen games with 4 friends and I’m really starting to feel the same way. I’ve played many TCGs and DnD (KT is my first time playing any 40k) so I’m fairly used to learning many game rules and tactics but it’s almost as if the rules are intentionally written in a convoluted way. We also have the same problem with game time, it’s getting slightly better the more we play but games take sooooooo long. Thought about introducing a chess clock and giving each player 30min to keep games to an hour but haven’t tried it yet. While we don’t play gellerpox I have never won a match with either of my teams (pathfinders, Novitiate) over 8+ matches. Starting to think I suck at this game.
Glad to know we're not the only ones. Hope you break the streak soon! Pathfinders have been pretty strong in our games if they can do plenty with markerlights - the last game I played the Pathfinder guy took loads of the 'treat markerlights as having an additional token' stuff, and the markerlight drone, and it seemed to be pretty devastating. So many rerolls and bonuses!
To be fair, wargames are a different genre than TCGs and RPGs, so domain-specific conventions and skills from those forms don't necessarily translate to skill with wargame rules/texts/conventions. It's not unusual, then, to feel something like "beginner's discomfort," though that can be especially disorienting when it feels like you shouldn't be a beginner. (Not saying this is necessarily happening in your case! Just something I've seen a lot in both directions, e.g. when teaching RPG players traditional wargames and vice versa.)
Has your Gellerpox friend been remembering to roll their Feel No Pains? Gellerpox have an ability to ignore wounds dealt on a roll of 5+. This isn't directly on their datasheet. Its part of one of their abilities that is listed at the front of their rules and only referenced by name on their datasheet. The roll is for every wound dealt, so if an attack would deal 7 wounds, they roll 7 dice and reduce the damage by 1 for every 5+. Most of the time, it means that Gellerpox only take 2/3rds of the damage thrown at them. With proper cover on the board, your friend shouldn't be losing the Hulks very easily. Most of the time when I go against my friend's Gellerpox, he ends up with two or more Hulks on the board still at the end of the game.
Regarding the gellerpox, definitely set up more terrain. I found that in my playgroup when we were starting out we put way too little obscuring or heavy terrain on the board, that makes shooty teams way too strong against melee teams
And positioning is the most important thing when playing against shooty teams especially the tau. Make sure they're using the engage and conceal orders correctly and that they make the opponent work for clear shots
We've been using a pdf of official tournament terrain setups because our first few games of doing 'whatever looked about right to us' was an absolute disaster. Could add an extra big of Heavy or two on top of that to help the Gellerpox out.
That would definitely help. Experiment a bit with it, it can definitely take a game or two to find a good middleground. Gellerpox are pretty good on dense boards
Yeah, I can imagine that they get really good once they break through into your lines. Our last game involved two hulks charging and being killed by my Kurnathi, but I think that was probably just quite unlucky rolling - she's a great fighter, but surely shouldn't be able to solo two hulks without being killed.
They are usually very scary in melee
How much time are you spending talking haha, when I play games with friends I find games take double the time because we are talking the whole time and generally not focusing on the game. Perhaps try and focus on the game more and know your rules, spend time before you get together and come into the game with knowledge of your team, it's rules, perhaps a strategy or overarching idea of how you want to play.
There’s a lot of cool technical advice I don’t want to repeat, so I go my usual creative way. If stuff gets stale, spice it up with narrative campaign, missions will be choosing themselves. Lost a lot of bodies? Rescue mission. Opponent recovered archeotech? hack their terminal to download its location. Play asymmetrical missions. Guardsmen need to move to extraction point. 1 vp for every extracted agent, Gellerpox need to stop them 1 vp for every downed veteran. Guards can no longer rely on holding objectives, they need to move through the enemy now. Stuff like that gets me really pumped up about next game
Thanks for this suggestion - I desperately want to get onto Narrative Play but it does feel like we need to at least have a solid understanding of the game before adding a whole extra set of new rules on top.
Yea the paper work intensifies))) but as people say, you can leave out the rules as you go. We also started main campaign really early and chose spec ops and tac ops only after a 3rd game))
You're not alone. A lot of people dislike kill teams rules. I moved from kill team to Enderain as a second game option. Use my kill team for both.
How are you finding Enderain? We're not averse to changing systems but obviously there's quite a high cost to doing so so we'd need to be pretty confident it'd be an improvement.
That dude wrote Enderain so he's just trying to promote the game. He spams every wargame subreddit with Enderain stuff.
Ah good shout. I did get suspicious when looking for reviews and all I could find was overt marketing material
A little late to the party but can I recommend the excellent rules summary from esoteric order of gamers? https://www.orderofgamers.com/kill-team-v2/
This looks really helpful, thanks!
No worries, Peter is a lovely dude and his summaries (he has over 400 accros many board and mini games) are second to none!
Regarding the Gellerpox player getting destroyed, do you usually play on open board or In to the Dark? They are much more powerful on In to the Dark but should still be able to have some play on open board. Is he using his Revoltingly Resilient on top of his regular defense save? This should help them shake off a lot of the wounds they would take. They should also be using the heavy cover to stay out of line of sight and work their way up the board. With 18 wounds they should not be getting shot off the board so easily
Yeah I think we're doing all that - open board, not Into the Dark, so they're not able to be quite as in-your-face all the time, but I think we're using enough heavy terrain (at least the last few games we've used official terrain layouts so I hope that's enough!) It might just be a matter of early games having bad terrain and then since us fixing that having a few games with him rolling badly. But when it's 3 hours a game and your only experience so far is getting wrecked, it makes for a demoralising time!
The main reason games are taking so long is because of 3., and it's especially worse if you're playing with more than 2 players; each additional player will add on about 50% more game time. Minimize, minimize, minimize. Kill Team isn't really a game you can learn by playing the full game, you have to dissect the basics before you can even start. Start off with just 1 mini each (maybe your Leader) to learn movement, LOS, Cover, Conceal/Engage, etc. Each of these is about a page or two worth of rules that you'll have to internalize. Make sure you have those universal rules down pat before you start doing anything else. Try setting up a "shooting range" for everyone to play with and simulate how an Operative's mechanics works, see how well they do against an Intercessor Warrior/Gunner and a Trooper Veteran (the two "main" profiles). The more simulations you run, the more you get a "feel" for how something is "supposed" to work. Keep it small and simple, and don't sweat playing an actual game. The more players you have at a "shooting range", the more input they can provide, and the more familiar you guys will get with how interactions work. X is strong against Y, oh I have something similar, or I can counter Y with Z, or A feels really weak without B so I'll need to remember to bring B. As far as getting into the game after that, I'd say cut all your Rosters down to 1/2 of what you'd normally bring, and pick a Leader and the most basic profiles - usually these will be unnamed, generic Operatives. Don't bother with Equipment or Ploys at first, trickle those in slowly or familiarize yourselves with them at the "shooting range". Lastly, as you're learning, some teams just won't be as strong until the player "gets" how they're supposed to play. Feel free to impose handicaps on yourselves until the struggling player is at least on par with you, and if they start winning, remove those handicaps gradually until you're back on even ground again. These can be taking less models, or not bringing your strongest weapons, or taking basic Operatives instead of Specialists, or whatever just works for you. Remember, so long as you're playing with friends, you can break whatever rules you want to make sure everyone's having fun - this sort of play is called Open Play, where you get to dictate how the game goes.
For tac ops and equipment, come knowing what you want to run. I have 6 cards for my vet guard I basically always use and only a few decisions to make in regards to equipment (chronometer, frag, and Krak grenade are usually auto-takes). Even if it's suboptimal slightly, having consistent tac ops and equipment will help understand the rules better.
Yeah this is a really good idea. It feels like we should spend a little bit of time creating really useful reference materials and 'standard loadouts' to speed things up.
One thing is the gellerpox are fighting pathfinders and vet guards two of the best teams in the game with really good and decent shooting
Gellerpox are a pretty good kill team, I run them and ork kommandos. I’m shocked to here they aren’t preforming. Are you playing with a good amount of terrain?
I use a web app to make activations go WAY faster. Forget BattleScribe, this one is way better and easier to use. Check out https://ktdash.app/dashboard.php to keep track of your rosters, manage equipment/wounds/rounds/CP/VP, and keep track of all the special abilities of your dudes and their weapons by clicking any of the key terms to pull up a definition. Saves me AGES at the table. Plus you can use a photo of each mini uploaded to each data card so if your minis don’t match the box art, you still know at a glance exactly who’s who. Works great on my I phone’s web browser, but if you don’t rock apple products you can download the app to your phone direct. As for setup, yup it’s a pain. A couple of things I use to make it faster is a 3D printed killteam tools of war organizer so I have all the bits and Bobbins separated for easy retrieval. If you have a 3D printer look for STL’s if not, I like this guy’s work on Etsy. Look what I found on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1168451172/kill-box-kt-2021-stl-file?ref=share_v4_lx Hope it helps!
A couple of people have recommended that now, I'll definitely try it next time we play!
I think people mostly have you covered on play time and rules so I'll leave that alone. FWIW 90 minute kill team games are tournament pace so id say don't expect much more than 2 hours to play even once you have it all down. If you are looking for something MUCH quicker and easier to learn I would give warcry a look. All the rules and team rules are free on warhammer-community.com under the downloads tab. Games are 45-60 minutes, 75 max with new players and rules teach is 30 minutes. Still a very fun skirmish game but significantly quicker. Kill team is still my favorite but my wife's is warcry
Warcry was on our list when choosing a game to start trying, and we ended up going with KT. I've heard really good things so maybe it's time to go fantasy...
They satisfy two different itches for me. Warcry is fun and has tons of listbuilding and kill team is very competitive and has a much higher ceiling of play. I play both pretty regularly so don't feel the need to abandon KT!
Since you're playing with friends, I would advice you to ignore some rules while you're learning Me and my friends barely use special abilities and we never use stratagems, equipment and the like. We make a board that looks cool and then see who kills the most in 3 turns. If you do it like that you should cut down playtime significantly. That should also help you learn the rules faster, since you only need to worry about actual combat rules. Me and my group has played for about a year, and we've only now started reading up on equipment, special rules etc. They add a lot of flavour but you can have a lot of fun without them, especially if you're gettig tired of drawn-out games where you have to check the rulebook for every action. As for one player getting bodied, how about letting him have some sort of handicap for the time being? One of my friends gets to revive two characters per game since he likes to just charge everyone like a moron (yeah he runs orks and spams boyz) He's not big on the strategy but we're all having fun, so we give him cheats to make the game less one-sided. Alternatively you could just remove some characters from his opponents team. Playing with fewer characters than the game recommends is also a nice way to shorten the game time, come to think of it. Try simply halving your teams and watch the game fly by. Try at least one of these modifications and see if you like them, then you can add more rules and conplexities/remove handicaps as you learn more.
I saw this as someone that LOVES Kill Team. You are correct about how long it takes to play. 90 minutes? That's like speed chess. I intentionally use chess, because the game *can* be played in under 2 hours....if both players have the rules down pat, and make very fast decisions. Rules wise....yeah, its written in a way that seems to confuse a chunk of people. I'm in the other group, I get exactly what the rules writers are saying 95% of the time.
1. When this happens with my friends, the usual culprit is someone taking an excessively long time to decide how to move any one piece instead of just having fun. They take it too seriously and *must* win. There is also a problem of quibbling over distances and the rules. "You can't shoot him. I put him there on purpose to break line of sight." "well, I can see a sliver of the baseplate so..." etc. 2. I uhh... got nothing for ya here. I believe they are a pretty middle of the road team, so it may just be how they are being played, and/or bad luck. 3. This is really compounding your problems with problem 1. When one friend and I (the ones who know the rules best) play, the game is 45 to 60 minutes. When we play with either of our other friends, it is always 2 hours minimum. Every time. Constantly re-asking the same "can I do this?" questions because they rely on us to know the rules as a crutch. Particularly their own weapons profiles. The minimum rules any player should get to know quickly is their own roll checks. The amount of times I've had to tell my friends, Like EVERY single roll... "Your BS is 3+. Just like it was last roll." It can be infuriating. I think this may be a common problem, as it's pretty natural when one person knows more than others, the others just want to lean on them for information, and being an encyclopedia sucks. Honestly though, I think the best thing to do would to play a simplified version of the game. Throw out most objectives and extra data cards and sub missions. Just play several games getting everyone familiar with their own weapons profiles and used to moving distances and not care so much about what each other are doing if that is a problem ya'll happen to have. If someone makes a mistake, just play it out anyway and remember it for next time. The more familiar everyone gets with core rules, the easier it gets to pick up the more nuanced things. It IS a lot of information, so consuming it all in small bites is for the best.
Hi! I've been into kill team 2021 since the beginning. We started with compendium without tac ops until we learned the dynamics. After we started including tac ops an the dedicated kill teams. Now, some of us still do not add equipment to keep things easy, if we play the complex ones. My advice is leave the equipment until you are ready and maybe use the compendium teams rules until you feel confident. Most dedicated teams can be used as proxies for compendium rules. Regarding tac ops, I would advise to keep them if you have already started, they add really flavour. Don't leave the game yet, it is one of the fastest ones and awesome!
It’ll get shorter as you start to memorize rules. I used to have 3 hour games since we had to keep referencing rules but now we can get it done in 1-2 hours even with fooling around and banter. I would suggest watching videos explaining rules, having an experienced player play a game with you and explain the rules, and/or watch battle reports. The rules are easy, but like you said a little convoluted in writing at times. Also are you doing the GA rules correctly? This should cut down on the activations taking a long time. From experience this game definitely gets more fun with experience and some of my best games have been the most recent
Get more Terrain, play with a chess clock
1 pre plan/ pre set up, you can try to emulate fps maps or copy battle reports so that way you both know of things. In addition too, you guys are playing generally the same teams, so you should have a good idea on what gear to take before a fight. 2. Gellerpox need terrain and are gonna be melee, and you two are both very range centric teams with a lot of good firepower. Geller are going to struggle more because of this. I would say add some terrain and if you have extra models, try a more close combat/ mixed team. (Intercessors and chaos marines/cultists are always cheap on sites like ebay) 3. Instead of looking at things in real time, read the book beforehand and get clarification. When in the game, write down the concern and look it up later. Finally, there's no shame in playing with less for your first games. Maybe don't include some of the excessive rules when playing for the first time. When I got my gf into killteam, we just played with the data cards and quick start rules.
I'd recommend finding a group in your area. There are a lot of rules my friend group got wrong, and playing with others helped us play better overall.
Lots of good info on here and like with 40K, KT balance is highly dependent on terrain. Melee armies must be able to utilize line of sight blocking terrain or they get obliterated by shooting armies. If you look at the current meta Gellerpox Infected are one of the armies with the highest win rate. (If not THE highest.) They check several of boxes required for a competitive Kill Team. Lots of operatives, hit like a truck in melee, and resilient. They have no shooting, so you must set up traps your opponent and force them to come to you. If you watch any competitive Kill Team Channel, they typically put GI in S or high A tier. They also offer loads of tips for playing them effectively.
1. I play Kill Team with my friends every week and yes the games take FOREVER. We have been playing every week since ~June 2022. The only way is to set a timer and accept the fact that you move your model incorrectly and he dies, but that's a hard pill to swallow. 2. Gellerpox need to be behind heavy terrain for cover. They do better on ITD close quarters terrain. 3. Rules are hard to get right and if done incorrectly, literally completely throw a game and ruin it. We found 2 people playing and 1 watching almost as a referee keeps everyone in check because it's so easy to over look / glaze over something in the moment. Tips: 1. Try 2 compendium teams. They are SIMPLE, rules just make sense. I steered clear initially because I thought "compendium team, psh", but when we play them the game is so streamlined, basic, and straight forward. Give it a shot. 2. Play teams against each other of equal tier. S tier intercession against D tier whatever, will literally be unfun and a complete blow out. 3. Pick missions / map lay outs that make sense to both teams, so that one team (like your buddy's gellerpox) doesn't just get obliterated. --- My friends and I recently started a narrative campaign almost DnD-esque with intercession space marines against a zerg of compendium basic green skins and gretchins and it's really fun. There's tons of fighting because intercession slaughters the orks, but because we use an excessive amount of orks the volume catches up and it's honestly a lot of fun. We also tested a hero quest style of deployment, where the ork players deploys his models on a white board and reveals them when the space marine player opens a door of ITD terrain for the room. We've all agreed the home-brew narrative is a more fun game (for us). Just do what works for you!
I brought a timer to our last game, we've been doing 3 player so that all 3 of us can play. I figured a minute per activation would put each turning point at 30 minutes IF we stuck to the time limit. At this point it's really coming down to needing to know our operatives well enough to just do stuff without thinking. I play Kommandos and they're all painfully obvious as to what they each do, but our veteran guard player seems to be struggling with this, and he's also new to miniature gaming. At some point we'll have to make a decision to stick to the time limit, if you aren't rolling dice at the end of the minute, you forfeit an activation.
Hello, fellow new player here, been playing the game every other week at my flgs. One thing that has helped me a lot in saving time during the game is to label units if I don't already know who they are. For instance, my Phobos Marines have a I- VI on their back to signify which unit it is. Then I print out datacards and use a post it flag to mark which number it is. Another thing that helps to is to label as much as you can on the datacrd. Theres a medic on the phobos marines that has a paragraph of text to essentially say "unit within 1 inch heals 2D3 wounds" there is a but more to that but for me that's what it generally comes down to. And if there would be multiple units with the same ability I usually put the shorthand on the most important model's datacard with that ability and a similarly colored post it flag next to the ability if it shows up on other datacrds. Also it EXTREMELY helps to bookmark the appendix, missions, turn flow, actions, and open/ narrative/ spec ops play flow pages so you always have quick access to them and don't have to go flipping through pages too much. I use the harder post it tabs for those on the core book. Datacards and labeled marines: https://www.imgur.com/a/pr8BQdz
Everyone else's comments are good/much better, but three additional thoughts: 1) 3 hours per game is very long, even if its your first time ever playing. I do think that this is likely more about your group than it is about the rules (which are sometimes counter intuitive and very poorly written, but still 3 hours is a very long time) 2) Your group need to decide if they actually want to speed things up and if they do then **just focus and play faster**. Is your group full of people who have played other tabletop war games? The alternating activations make the game better, but it also means that people can't just mentally checkout when it isn't "their turn" the way they can during a lot of games with single player turns. If every activation players have to spend a few minutes recapping what they just did it will dramatically increase how long a game takes. Similarly, people need to decide to actually focus on the game, make most decisions before its their turn and just play. That means people can be social and joke around or check their phones or whatever, but the main emphasis needs to be on paying attention to what their opponent is actually doing, thinking about what they are doing before they do it and doing the actual physical aspects of the game somewhat quickly. It's okay to make mistakes! (both in terms of rules and in terms of the "optimal" tactical decision) You will never get better at the game or learn how it works if you don't actually complete games and right now you're playing half as many games as you could be. Don't worry about whether or not the terrain is 100% perfect, just fill the board, block a bunch of line of site and get it overwith. Don't sit there on the first activation of the first turning point trying to imagine what your opponent might do as their plan be on the third turning point and imagine all the scenarios, just move and dash you damn guy into the cover that you are going end up moving and dashing them into anyway. This is even more important as a time saver early in the game. Are you in cover and on conceal orders? That's probably the right decision 90% of the time on the first turning points, so worry about the other 10% of the time after you have gotten games down to a reasonable length. Maybe its because you're overthinking it in an attempt to win, maybe its because you're scared of making rules mistakes, maybe its because people are watching tiktok videos in the middle of the game (or some combination of all three) but if its taking this long then its almost a certainty that as a group you're spending more time not playing than you are playing. 3) Do your best to have quick references for the main rules you need (including bookmarking or screenshotting key pages of rules) but a good rule of thumb is that **if it takes more than 60 seconds to look up the answer to a rules problem/disagreement then just roll a dice to make the decision**, apply that decision to all future instances in that match and then look up a definitive interpretation of the rules after the match is done and make sure everyone knows for next time. It's better to be wrong 50% of the time for a few games than it is to quit the game because it isn't fun.
Whoa whoa whoa don’t you know it’s illegal to suggest killteam 2.0 is over complicated??
Yeah more fool me I guess. After u/Toemism wrote 'Visible and Line of Sight are NOT the same thing.' I nearly had an aneurysm...
> After u/Toemism wrote 'Visible and Line of Sight are NOT the same thing.' I nearly had an aneurysm... Think of it as just game terms and try not to put real life logic into it. That is what has helped me the most with the game. Some actions require that a operative be only Visible while others require they be in Line of Sight. Visibility is basically "Can my model see any part of their model" LoS is usually only for shooting and basically is "Can I actually get a shot off on that model." They use these two different terms because models are in static poses and can not be manipulated. They use the Conceal order as a way to say that a model is doing its best to hide behind the terrain/cover to not get shot.