More on Kill team: looking at the original version

This post was spawned from the responses of my Previous post Horde Armies and their effect on kill team. I understand some will not agree with my assessment and that is cool too, but I am trying to explain why I feel the way I do.

While I agree that it is epic to have marines facing a horde and overcoming the odds, which is great from a story perspective. The Mechanics of the Battle missions version of Kill Team will make this nigh impossible.

As I said previously the horde teams don’t break the game but they certainly skew it. Horde teams also get the advantage of an extremely high break point.

The bottom line is that I am not found of the idea of a horde kill team; it has to do with expectations and past experiences.

Let’s take a look at the original 4th ed kill team rules.

Kill Teams were only allotted 160 points to build upon
Kill team members were chosen individually not as squad choices.
Kill Teams were a single unit that had to maintain coherency.
Kill teams could not have more than 12 models total
Kill teams could not contain vehicles or multi-wound models
No 2+ saves
Only one model may have a heavy or template weapon
No weapons over strength 7 or with more than two shots a turn. (I totally forgot about the 2 shots rule)

The enemy was not a kill team but too the form of a certain number of 3 man Brute squads; with the most numerous being the IG with 10 three man brute squads.

There were six different mission types and objectives, plus a veritable ton of purchasable special rules.

So that was how the original Kill team was done.

Now we have the Battle Missions “all bets are off” version kill team. While I like the every man fore himself rule, the increased points, the lightened restrictions in team building and the USR specialists.

Things I am not fond of:

The “bottle test” mechanic if you are under half strength, especially if horde teams are allowed.

I dislike that the teams are purchased as squad selections, not individual models.

The only mission presented is a kill your opponent no objective format.

Final thoughts:

The more I look at the two versions of Kill Team; I am starting to think I am going to need to combine and run a modified version of both, only picking the best parts. The 4th ed version has character, the Battle missions one is a soulless slug fest.

On Friday I will look to tackle this problem head on.