Are you a player of Kill Team and want your hands on the latest updated Tac Ops cards alongside missions and handy reference cards? Then the Kill Team Critical Ops card deck, up for pre order today, is perhaps what you’ll want to find under your Christmas Tree!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free review copy to check out a little ahead of release! If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself money too?

So what exactly is this set? Well the new edition of Kill Team exploded onto the scene last year, and has gone from strength to strength with quarterly boxes being released to expand the Kill Teams available, add new Kill Zones and even new rules such as the Space Hulk setting of the Gallowdark seen this season

But one thing we haven’t seen is any update to the Tac Ops cards included from the original rulebook with Octarius

This box of cards sets out to do three things – Firstly, it updates the Tac Ops cards – acting as sort of a “Chapter Approved” for Kill Team by balancing and adjusting the Tac Ops based on the last year of games.

Secondly it acts as a way of quickly generating missions with on the fly by generating them using cards, in a similar style to the Tempest of War cards for Warhammer 40k

Finally, it also contains game reference material to make playing games of Kill Team as easy as possible!

From a map point of view we get a total of 9 maps along with another card with a map key, used to randomly generate a map layout at the start of the game. If you have played Warcry or Tempest of War you will know how quick and easy this is with a card deck.

In a similar way to both of those games, there are also 3 missions that are used in conjunction in order to generate different scenarios. For quick pick up games I’ll certainly be using these cards to make creating a game quick and easy!

A fold out sheet is included with the Matched Play game sequence and some variant ways of generating the missions rather than just drawing them randomly out of the deck – which also makes this quite nice for tournament play too!

Also included in the box are some nice reference materials, cards to show the Scouting order and rules – making this really easy to use without having to check in the rule book. There’s also a card that lists the matched play game sequence to ensure you are completing things in the correct order. This is certainly something I’ll be including in my bag for events!

3 cards are also included to use for the faction specific Tac Ops found in the supplement books

Speaking of Tac Ops however – the big draw to this set is the updated Tac Ops cards that replace those in the core book

We see some cards updated – for example “Hold the Line” is now “Hold them back” and is scored when enemies are not wholly within your territory rather than within pentagon of your drop zone, or Execution for example now requires you to select an operative to be the executor and a target to be their victim rather than simply being based on number of models killed by each side

We also see some Tac Ops switched out for entirely new ones, Stalk Target is a fun one that requires you to select an enemy operative, and you score if if you end a turning point with a friendly operative concealed within square of them! Surge Forward is another new no nonsense one based around trying to get 4 APL worth of operatives into your opponent’s drop zone.

In the same way that The Generals Handbook or Chapter Approved mix up the missions and win conditions for games of Age of Sigmar or 40k, it seems that this card deck looks to do the equivalent for games of Kill Team. This is a great thing if they continue to do this going forward, as it keeps the game fresh and looks to tweak and adjust any Tac Ops that perhaps could be abused or didn’t work as intended – this also gives players more variety in how they play the game, with the newly added cards being something new to try out and explore, which can only be a good thing!

I’m very impressed with this deck, and really think it will be something that most Kill Team players will want to pick up to add to their collection – assuming these stay in permanent stock it is also a great way to pick up these required cards if you missed out on the core starter sets that included them, and means that with these, a rulebook and and of the 2 faction and scenery boxes you can jump right into playing games of Kill Team.

Kill Team Critical Ops Cards are up for pre order today and are released Saturday 17th December

Games Workshop provided Sprues and Brews a free copy for review purposes

Published by Matt Crowther

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