Why Didn't Kill Team Stick for Me?

Why Didn't Kill Team Stick for Me?

Let's start with why I started learning Kill Team in the first place. My buddy Biff introduced me to the Warhammer 40k Conquest LCG (Living Card Game) online. At that point, I knew almost nothing about the 40k universe except that it existed and was the basis for StarCraft. I hadn't really played a competitive card game since Magic: the Gathering and Pokémon (which I really loved and played constantly from elementary school through high school), but I was willing to give it a shot. It took almost no time at all for me to decide I liked the game enough that I needed to buy a physical copy of it.

*Side note: I'm a very tactile person. While I can play games online, I don't enjoy it nearly as much as playing in person. Oftentimes, I don't really enjoy it much at all because I find it difficult to keep track of all of the components without having them in front of me.*

Anyway, Biff and I bought into Conquest HARD. It was my first experience with an LCG, but man, do I love the model. In contrast to a TCG (Trading Card Game), a consumer knows exactly what we're getting when we buy a pack of cards. I don't need to buy ten packs and just hope I get the cards I want, or go online and hunt them down individually. The LCG model is far more friendly to a consumer's wallet, but also really levels the playing field because no one card is more rare than any other. We bought two sets of everything so we could each build the deck we wanted to build.

I won't delve too deeply into the mechanics of the game here, but one of the things I loved were the different factions and how each had its own feel. There were so many options and the design reflected the lore as I had come to understand it. This is good game design; I want factions to play the way they *should* according to the fiction behind them. I was discussing this with my friend Roger recently with regards to how The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 was a fine game, but could've been published with just about any theme and basically been the same. It doesn't have a feel that's so specific to the lore that it couldn't be any other game. And so it feels like a weakness in the design, even though the game itself is solid. So I learned more about 40k through playing Conquest on a very regular basis.

Then: DISASTER. The agreement between Fantasy Flight Games (designers and publishers of Conquest) and Games Workshop (owners of the intellectual property) expired and was not renewed. Conquest was dead, and I was real broken up about it. Biff and I tried some other games that we hoped would scratch that competitive itch that Conquest did, but none of the other LCGs came close. So I decided to revisit Star Wars Armada. The game seemed to be going strong, we both like Star Wars, it was a competitive, two player game (like Conquest), and there were Organized Play events, just as there had been for Conquest. I was able to play Armada far more often than Biff, so I'm the one who ended up sticking with it. I learned to really enjoy playing a miniatures game after first being intimidated by how seemingly complicated and intense minis games could be.

This is where Kill Team makes its appearance. My friend Damien talked to me about it because he was going to give the reboot a shot. It's all the things I liked about 40k (cool minis and lore) while addressing the reason I didn't want to play 40k (100 point games instead of 1500 point games). 1500 points is simply way more game than I'm interested in. To say nothing of the fact that I would have to buy, assemble, and paint all 1500 points of said army. PLUS, I like more than just one faction. That's quite a lot more investment than I was going to make. So Kill Team sounds perfect for me!

Damien was kind enough to put together a Tyranid army for me and slap some paint on it. We went to our local GW store, he taught me how to play, and I had a good time! I decided to buy into T'au. Built the Stealthsuits, assembled them, painted them in the scheme I wanted. Overall, I was happy with them! I played with them exactly once against my buddy Biff, him fielding some Drukhari. And then I didn't ever play Kill Team again. What in hezmana happened?

Saying "hezmana" gave me license to tell y'all that if you've not watched Farscape, you really should.

Well, there were a couple of things. The first is that I was still playing Armada, and was enjoying it more than actual Kill Team. I say "actual" because I was still in love with the notion of playing Kill Team! I wanted to join league play, get better, etc. I was reading blogs and watching YouTube videos about tactics. I'm a subscriber to my childhood friend, Phil, better known in the 40k world as The Glacial Geek (check him out on YouTube; he's a damn lot of fun!) and watched everything he put on his channel. But I didn't fall in love with the game mechanics right away. Having never played 40k previously, I was used to Armada wherein everything I need to know about the game is right in front of me rather than in a book. It felt a little more fiddley. So while I wanted to play more, I enjoyed other games more. Given that I was running my own small theatre company while being a stay-at-home dad, time was at a premium, when I had time to play games, my choice was simply never Kill Team instead of Armada, Descent, or some other choices.

The second is...wait. That last paragraph basically encompassed everything. I loved the idea of the game more than the actual game itself, I had limited time owing to my family and work, and I ultimately prioritized other games ahead of Kill Team. Then COVID rolled around. I decided I wanted to get back to painting and also needed a little retail therapy. So I thought I'd try out Death Guard! I got my Plague Marines, Poxwalkers, and Blightlord Terminators. I assembled them and actually tried to use magnets so I could customize weapons. I was very proud of myself for this small step! I began painting some Plague Marines, and then...some depression kicked in real hard and I stopped. They just sat on my desk, and I wasn't touching them.

I realized that I wanted to enjoy the game, but I simply didn't enjoy it enough to make time for it. I'm ok with not being good at a lot of games. But for games like Armada and Kill Team, I want to be good at the game, which means plenty of practice, which I simply couldn't afford. It's not that the rules are necessarily overly complicated or anything like that. With Kill Teams of only 100 points and anywhere from 4 or so to 10 units, it really is fairly digestible. With more games under my belt, I'm sure much more of the game would've come to me more quickly than it had been. But at the end of the day, not a lot of it was really particularly intuitive, so it would require an investment of time and energy I just wasn't willing to make for a game that didn't wow me. I know they're about to reboot Kill Team again under the name Kill Team: Octarius, and I'm willing to give it a chance. It's certainly possible they've changed it enough that I'm willing to finish painting my Death Guard or dust off my T'au, and give it a shot. I'm hopeful!

But I think the iteration of Kill Team that I played prior to Octarius was simply a game that I really wanted to enjoy rather than being a game I actually enjoyed. I've run into some of these over the years, and there are some I play anyway, hoping that I'll come to enjoy them.

Much like this movie, that honestly grew on me the more I watched it with my kiddo!

But there are others that I simply didn't spend my time playing again. Some were simply poor design, and some simply weren't my taste. I wouldn't say Kill Team is poor design; I'll just say it's more dice dependent than I want from a game that I thought would really reward good tactical decisions, and there are simply other games I'd rather be playing with the limited time I've got for games.

That said, pre-order for Kill Team: Octarius starts today and runs through the weekend. GW has promised to honor ALL pre-orders made in that window. So maybe it's time to give KT another shot!