The new edition of Kill Team is being played up and down the country. I’ve really enjoyed what I have played so far, and I’m really happy with the rate of stuff being reboxed.

Today marks the preorder of the first new expansion to Kill Team, Brutal and Cunning, which pits the small yet nimble Ratlings against the greenskin menance, the Orks. Along with two brand new warbands we also get some brand new scenery and missions.

Our thanks to Games Workshop for sending us this box to unbox and review for you folks. The box is up for preorder right now. You can save some pennies and help us out massively by following one of our links through to Element Games and placing your preorder in there hands!

Let us waste no more time, we need to get Krump’in!

Unboxing Kill Team: Brutal and Cunning

Firstly, if you would rather watch me unbox this big old box, then you can do so by watching the following video. In the same video towards the end you’ll see our finished work.

First and foremost, we have two brand new Kill Teams, both crammed full of character and options. You can check out the sprues below:

My mission was to build and paint the Orks and the scenery, whilst Matt tackled the Ratlings.

The Orks had some really fun different alternative bits, like for example your big Rokkit guy could have either one massive rocket, or multiple smaller rokkits. Both Kill Teams were really fun to assemble, with Matt only commenting that just a couple of pieces were a tab fiddly (but then that will always be the case with little minis!).

The Ratlings have minis to represent trip wire, which is awesome! Love the fact equipment are getting minis in this edition of the game.

The final two sprues were scenery. Same sprue, x2, so between them you can make 4 stockade walls and two bunkers. You also get some crates which are the perfect fit to press against the walls of the stockade, so that your Ratlings can fire out of the window. The sprue also comes with some parts which attach to the Volkus scenery, but more on this later.

Sprues aside you get a lovely shinny Dossier with all the Kill team rules, as well as new missions and lore. You also get a full token sheet which includes tokens for both Kill Teams. You also get a pack of cards for each Kill Team, which includes all the datasheets, ploys and equipment. Oh, and you get the latest Ork transfer sheet too.

All the paperwork for Brutal and Cunning comes in a lovely dossier type folder, the same as Hivestorm.

Kill Team Rules

Time to look at each of the Kill Team’s in a little more detail…

Wrecka Krew

The Wrecka Krew are Tankbustas in all but name, and are great at taking on large targets, such as scenery. The models are ace, and I’ve really enjoyed painting them so far. Sadly I didn’t get to finish the unit, but I have managed to paint 3 of them (base rims aside and nearly finished a Squig!)

In a game of Kill Team you can take:

• 1 Boss Nob
• 2 Bomb Squigs
• 5 Krew Members (any number of Fighters or Gunners, but only one of each of the specialists, which are the Demolisha, Krusha and Rokkiteer).

They have not one, but two faction rules:

• Wrecka Rampage – When shooting, fighting or retaliating, any rolls of a 6 you retain you gain a Wrecka point. You can spend 3 of these points to turn a fail into a normal success. You cannot have more than 6 points.
• Tanked Up – Whenever one of your operatives (minus Squigs) has an Engage order performs a Fight or Shoot action you can add 1 to its APL until the next activation.

Alongside the datacards for the different operatives, it makes the Orks very punchy and a scary prospect. They have some very suitably Ork-ish ploys and equipment which further lean in to the demolishing nature of this Kill Team.

Ratlings

They are back! How long has it been since we have had new plastic Ratlings?

Like the Tankbus…erm…Wrecka Krew, Kill Team seems the perfect fit for bringing back out units that need new models.

GW have done a fantastic job on these minis. As good as the Orks are, the Ratlings steal the show for me and I cannot wait to paint some to add to my Cadian regiment. Matt has kindly painted our review ones however, and he has gone for the scheme of the Death Korps! (he has a large Forge World army of Death Korps and is super excited for the incoming new units in the new year!).

He’s done a fantastic job.

So how to they fare in Kill Team? Let’s look at what you can take in a Kill Team:

• 1 Fixer
• 10 Operatives from an extensive list which includes Bombers, Hardbit, Raider, Sneak, Sniper, Spotter, Stashmaster, Vox Thief, Big Shot, Battlemutt, Ogyrns (yes Ogryns!) and Bullgryns (YES BULLGRYNS!). Phew!

You cannot select more than 3 of these operatives combined Up to 3 times, instead of selecting one of these operatives you can select one ploy to cost 0CP for the battle. Other than Bullgryn, Ogryn and Snipers, your Kill Team can only include each operative once.

I love the fact that you can take Ogryns/Bullgryns, allowing you to run the Abhumans of the Guard together. It gives your Kill Team some close combat punch.

They have the one Faction rule, Scarper, which in short allows you a free Dash action after each of your enemy’s activations. Their’s a few caveats, such as you cannot move within 3″ of an enemy operative and each operative can only do it once per turning point and the rule is only applicable to Ratlings, not Ogryns.

As you may imagine, both sets of ploys help to buff your shooting, whilst also allowing you to reposition to try and stay out of harms way. They get so many different operatives, with really cool unique abilities. They are very different to any Kill Teams I’ve played before, and could be a little tricky, but I think if you stick with them you’ll be rewarded with a really fun gaming experience.

New Missions and Campaign Rules

The book contains a new campaign layout so that you can utilise games with the Brutal and Cunning scenery pieces.

This leads to the one disappointment with the book, and box in general. You only have two ‘missions’ in the book, and by missions the difference really is the map layout. Now, I get you are somewhat limited to the deployment of the bunkers and stockades, however I’d have liked at least 4 different layouts/missions with differing objectives.

You only set of mission rules, which is basically holding the centre of the battlefield (thus holding the compound) and taking out enemy operatives.

With that said, the content that is within the book will be really fun to play. The two maps feature your two strongholds, connected to the stockades and bunkers making a large building footprint that is completely enclosed. This looks really cool on the tabletop and really gives the feeling of a siege. I’m already imaging how much fun this will be to play with not only the Kill Teams in the box, but also a lot of the available Kill Teams. Perhaps the Inquisition trying to sneak there way into a Chaos compound? Or a Drukhari raiding party seeking to crack open an Imperium facility?

You also get a whole host of new PVE rules and NPC behaviours, that work along with the new scenery. I really need to give this a mode a go, as I think it’ll be a heck of a lot of fun.

Finally, there is half a page dedicated to Ruses that you could add to your PVP and PVE games to shake them up a little. These vary from extra equipment, to game changing rules, such as:

• Night Assault: When an operative is shooting, the target is obscured unless one of a number of criteria are true, such as being within 6″, wholly within the Defenders drop zone or if the target is a stockade.
• Preliminary Bombardment: During the first turning point the Defenders have some debuffs to reflect them coming under heavy bombardment, such as reducing their movement, whilst the Attacker cannot enter the Defenders drop zone.
• Command Station: At the end of the Select Operatives step, Defence gains an additional CP

I wonder if they have included these Ruses to mix up the one scenario in the book?

Using the Brutal and Cunning Scenery

The stockades and bunkers are designed to be used with the Volkus Kill Zone, first seen in the Hivestorm box and now up for preorder today on it’s own. You could potentially use other scenery you have, however it would be easier to use Volkus.

I painted up our scenery from this box in the same scheme as my Volkus buildings:

The scenery pieces in this box do not connect to every building from Volkus. Thanks to a couple of little extra ‘bits’ on the sprue you can press the end of the stockades to your strongholds (the two large pieces from the Volkus scenery set). To better give you an idea of how this works/looks you can check out the 10-15 second video clip below:

Whilst I really like the fact that GW have thought about the process of connecting the scenery kits together, it isn’t an ideal connection point. I’d have like a flush finish between the connecting point bit of plastic and the end of the stockades, much like the other side of the connecting plastic bit connects with the stronghold. I imagine we may yet get more expansion sets for Volkus that will utilise these same connecting points.

Summary

I believe this box is going to retail around the £85 mark which, IMO, is a good price. You get two complete Kill Teams, with tokens and cards, and a little bit of scenery. My one main gripe is the limited scenarios/missions that are within the book. Only having two makes me feel a little short changed.

I love both sets of Kill Teams though, and the scenery is great. Yes it would have been nice to be able to position the stockades and bunkers somewhere other than against the strongholds, but it does look epic when it’s all together.

Like with many of these boxes, it all depends on what you want. The maps/scenario that we do have do look really fun and it looks awesome on the battlefield, but if you don’t like either of the Kill Teams then it may be a hard sell. But those two Kill Teams are epic!

Our thanks again to Games Workshop for sending us this review copy. Ensure you preorder your copy from Element Games to grab a bit of a discount and help us out here at S&B HQ too!