Warhammer 40,000, the peak tabletop hobby, my white whale. I’ve been a board game enthusiast my whole life and have often stared longingly through the windows of my local Games Workshop, watching players with their measuring tapes and armies of immaculately painted figurines, wondering “could that be me?” but never taking the plunge.
No other game in history, board game, card game, or otherwise, has required the level of commitment that Warhammer 40k does. In terms of time investment, financial investment, and skill development as a tactician and miniature painter, not to mention catching up on decades of lore, Warhammer 40k can seem impenetrable from the outside.
If you’ve ever wanted to play Warhammer 40k but been too overwhelmed by it, Kill Team is the game you’ve been waiting for. Here are my impressions of Warhammer 40k: Kill Team as a total novice to the game. Spoiler Alert: I’m DEEP into Warhammer thanks to this game.
A Sample Pack Of A Massive Game
Kill Team has been around for a long time as an abbreviated game mode for Warhammer 40k. In Warhammer 40k, every unit has a point value based on how powerful it is. Each army will be made up of potentially hundreds of units costing thousands of points.
Kill Team is billed as a series of skirmishes that play out in the shadows alongside these large scale wars. These are the missions that specialized units go on with small teams, typically less than 10, with point totals usually less than 100.
Right off the bat, you can see how this would be an ideal way for new players to dip their toes into the world of Warhammer. The investment is much smaller, the rules are much easier to learn, you can play at home on the same table you’d play any other board game on. Despite being “scaled down”, you are truly getting a small taste of the full Warhammer 40k experience.
The Warhammer Kill Team Starter Set has (almost) everything you need to play Kill Team: two squads, a board, terrain, markers, a ruler, and the core rule book. A word of caution however for the total novice: don’t expect to crack open the box and start playing like other board games. It’s still Warhammer, and part of the hobby is building your army, even though your army is only 6 units.
First Time Experience
Removing the tiny pieces from the sprues, filing down the tabs and mold lines, dry fitting them, and finally gluing each section together until you’ve built a complete unit is meditative experience that you really need to try for yourself to understand. The assembly book is very easy to follow and I was surprised to see how many variations of poses, parts, weapons, and positions were possible with each unit. The number of ways each model can be assembled is truly baffling and I can see how much individualization and personality go into each person’s army.
As a first-timer, it was a bit overwhelming trying to decide how to build each one, especially not really understanding the effects my choices would have. If I could do it all again I would have absolutely read the rule book first before putting them together. Here’s a pro tip: the box comes with blank character cards wrapped in plastic. Unwrap them and you’ll find pre-filled out cards for every single unit. Had I found those sooner I would have built all my guys to those specifications, making it easier to learn. I could still totally use those character cards to play the game, it’s just that my models didn’t totally match the weapons and equipment they had on the card.
I loved putting these together. I think if I never found a group to play with, I would still enjoy collecting models and assembling them. I never realized I was into modeling, but there’s something so pure and serene about putting Warhammer figures together; you’ve just gotta try it.
Playing Kill Team
Assembling the models turned out to be a far less overwhelming experience than I anticipated, so I was hopeful that playing the game would be a similarly digestible experience. The rule book that comes with it is a hefty manual, much longer than the rule book for any board game I’ve ever played. As it turns out though, the rules themselves are actually quite simple to learn.
The book is filled with lore, advanced rules, and breakdowns for every faction/unit type it’s possible to play as. With the starter set, you only need to learn the turn order and flow of the game and the two armies you’re given; the space marines and the fire warriors.
What I like so much about Kill Team is how easy they make it to start small and build on your knowledge over multiple sessions. They encourage you to start with a practice round of just 2 vs. 2 to learn the basics, then they introduce you to a simple starter mission to play. Each mission in the book adds layers of complexity and nuance. Eventually, you can start customizing your team by giving them gear and specializations, granting access to new abilities and strategies. But it all starts with a very simple game: I have my team, you have yours, this is the objective, try to win.
All you need to play Kill Team is your units and some dice. Any surface can be a battlefield, any objects can be obstacles. Kill Team allows so much room for creativity and unique play sessions and does an amazing job at drip-feeding you information until you’re comfortable and ready to learn more.
The Start of Something Beautiful
Kill Team can really take you as far as you want to go. There are tons of official expansions, battlefields, and premade teams to collect, but you can also freely build your own teams and game modes using the rules provided in the core rule book.
I had a lot of misconceptions about the difficulty and complexity of Warhammer before getting into Kill Team and I’m so pleasantly surprised to discover how accessible this game really is. I feel like I can learn at my own pace and invest as much as I want into it. Warhammer is an incredible hobby because you really get out what you put in, and Kill Team is absolutely the perfect place to start.
This is the first of a large series on Kill Team and Warhammer we’ll be doing here on TheGamer. As a novice, I’m excited to share what I’ve learned about assembly, painting, playing, and collecting Warhammer in order to hopefully help more people get into the hobby. If, like me, you’ve stared longingly through the window of your local hobby shop wondering if that could be you, then let me be your guide to the wonderful world of Warhammer.
A copy of Warhammer 40k: Kill Team was provided to TheGamer for this review. You can check out Kill Team and all of Games Workshop’s products on their website.
