7 TOP TIPS FOR NEW KILL TEAM PLAYERS - These Tips Helped Me & I Hope They Help You Too!

hey welcome to tabletop skirmish games I'm Lee and in this video I thought it'd be really fun to share seven top tips for new kill team players since the into the dark box set came out I've been having a great time with kill team this new setting in the Gallow dark is perfect being aboard the space Hulk is just awesome I used to play Space Hulk and space Crusade as a kid on my Commodore Amiga and this is bringing back all that Nostalgia so really enjoying playing it and so I thought in this video I would share with you seven top tips to help you pick up the game and get started with it now I haven't been playing by the rules for almost a year since it came out I quickly got fed up with a few parts of it but I've got over those issues now and I'm really glad I've given it a second chance and been playing the rules by the book I've not been home brewing it at all been playing it exactly as written and I gotta say it's an awesome game now really enjoying it so hopefully this video is going to help you to have as much fun as I am with this new game okay let's get right into it and we'll start with tip number one and this is to start with the simple kill team using your favorite models now I found the rules and kill team could be quite dense there's lots of layers to them and when you start adding in a complicated kill team you've got a lot to think about strategic ploys tactical ploys tacops equipment abilities all the different operatives sometimes up to 10 different ones so with all that in mind when you first start playing the game that's quite a lot and that's what put me off when I first started playing I really wanted to recreate something like war cry where I could have lots of different kill teams like I did with the war cry War bands and then play lots of different games in a kind of pick up and play scenario but I found with kill team you have to invest a bit more time in it you have to play it more often keep on top of those rules and really learn your kill team before moving on to the next one but there's ways around it you can start with something a little bit easier so some of the ones like the death core of Krieg you know the veteran Guardsmen they can have so many different operatives you don't have to play all those you can just choose to play them as regular veterans and then just throw in one or two of the special operatives and use the special rules for each of them that's one way of doing it but something that's really worked for me is using the intercession Squad rules which are quite new and they came out just around the time that into the dark was released and this has changed the game for me and it also made me be able to use the models I already had and loved so here's my Imperial fists and I just grabbed some from my 40K Army here's some of my intercessors and I also wanted to use some of my eliminators but the bases were a bit bigger than the rules stated for the intercessors and kill team which didn't really matter that much but I thought it would be cool to take these models and also one of the assault intercessors that I was using and then build something completely unique specifically for kill team so I grabbed a intercessor box from scratch built five of them models all with the bolt guns or bolt rifles and I use some of the sniper bolt rifles from my Eliminator pack that had spare and I'm going to use those as proxies for stalker bolt rifles and then I just use one of my assault intercessors that had spare from another kit and put together a six-man team now the rules for these intercessors are a lot easier than some of the other kill teams and so if you download the intercession Squad kill team rules like I'm showing you on here it really is simple as you go through it the tacops there's not too many to look at and you don't need them if you're playing open play anyway unless you want to use them then you've got the abilities and so you can just choose two of the abilities here for your kill team and then the data cards are actually quite Slimmer similar when you're using the bolt rifles the stats are very much the same the the sergeants are a little bit different and as you can see I just flicked past it but here you can see there's a lot more weapon choices but once you choose those weapons even worry about two so I've Got the Power Fist and I've also got the bolt rifle for my intercessor sergeant and then as you go through you can choose between the salt intercessor Warrior and then you can have one assault intercessor Grenadier and then for the intercessors you can have a Warriors and then you can have one Gunner so as you look at these Warrior and Gunner stats here again very similar you know you're attacking with four attacks your ballistic skill and weapon skills a three plus and then the damage is very similar too and there's only a few special rules there's not that many critical hit rules and the abilities are super simple as are all their characteristics you know movement three APL three you're only activating one at a time and then your defense and saves three and three plus with 14 wounds nice and simple and so when you've only got six models to think about and all the stats are quite similar it makes it really easy to play them so you don't have to worry that much about their rules and you can concentrate on the rules of the actual game which I think is brilliant and that's really helped me and as we go through you don't even need to use equipment and so yeah I think for me the intercession Squad changed the game alongside into the dark and you know the Temptation might be to look at the chart here that you can see that rates the win percentages for the kill team so you might think oh I want to go for one at the top and then initiates they've got a 62 win rate so that might be cool but for me I want to go with something that I enjoy playing and that's not too complicated so if you don't want to go with loads of operatives then just pick something like the intercession squad or even use something out of the compendium even though the compendium kill teams are being replaced by all the new ones like the um blooded Pathfinders Fireball Strike Team they're replacing some of the ones from the compendium and it did say in an article recently that there's going to be a lot more coming out that will be doing the same thing So eventually that compendium will be phased out but we can still play it so I'm going to do an Imperial Guard kill team from it for my catacans and if they're not that good does it really matter if I'm not winning all the time with them as long as I'm enjoying myself having fun and using the models and like then I think that's really cool and the compendium is often a lot simpler than these newer ones so that's my first tip and I think a really good way to start playing the game by allowing you to have a quite a simple kill team so you can focus on the rules of the game learn those first and then you can start adding in more complex rules for the kill teams you play if you haven't picked up your copy of into the dark yet but would like to or any other hobby products please check out my sponsor Firestorm games I'll put a link to their website in the description down below where you can save up to 20 on all your hobby products they've also given me a code to share with you where you can save an additional five percent and that's down there in the description too that runs out the end of September though so getting quick if you want to make that extra saving it'd be awesome if you check them out because you don't only support them but you also support the channel as I get a small commission from every sale made so if you do have a look thanks so much I really appreciate your support all right now we're on to tip number two and my tip number two is to ignore the shapes so I did a video let's talk shape so I went through it I had an almost year-long hate of these shapes it put me off the game completely um but I'm over it now and so I did a little poll and thanks so much if you joined in the poll on YouTube and I just asked whether you love or hate them and the results came in 58 hated 42 loved them so you know it's not as big a divide as I thought it might have been so that you know it's not that bad and now I'm playing it often and I'm sticking to the rules and I'm not trying to convert the shapes into inches and I'm not even worrying about the shapes to be fair um it's a lot easier and it makes a lot of sense once you stop thinking numbers stop thinking inches stop even thinking shapes and then just focus on color that's when things start to get really intuitive and easy and then you're not trying to convert the the color to a shape to an inch in your head when you're reading the rules just simply go own by the color and then using your combat gauge and it's just made it so much simpler so yeah first put off by this intuitively it didn't make any sense you know you've got six inches but you've got a pentagon with five sides all that was confusing I put this together which I thought made a lot more sense to do it like this but to be honest you just got to get over the shapes over the numbers as well and then just think colors and when you start thinking colors things run a lot easier so that's my tip number two right now we're on to tip number three and this is to practice against yourself using the same kill teams something I did when I first started playing was to try and play two different ones I was trying to play the death God Creed against the orc Commandos and yeah there's a lot of rules for each of those kill teams so trying to learn both of those sets of rules while trying to learn the rules of the actual game and then practicing on my own it just wasn't working it wasn't happening and so once I decided to come back to it and try the rules again I said something so I'm not gonna do that so what I've been doing is using the same kill teams so I've took my intercessors from my Imperial fists and then I've got the Imperial fist which I've painted in Raptor colors and then I played the two against each other because then I'm only half to worrying about one set of rules I've Got The Identical operatives on each side and then I can really get to grips for their rules and almost learn it off by heart quite quickly and then focus on the game rule so that's really helped that's probably something that's you know got me playing in it a lot quicker than certainly when I first started when the game came out with the octarius set another thing I did was just focus on the terrain because a lot of the terrain rules affect the game in a big way it's a big part of it and so I set out different Maps using different pieces of terrain and then I used those two kill teams against each other again just learning how the different terrain works in the game so I've spent quite a bit of time on this and it's time well worth spending and you know you've got to invest some time in Kill team to learn it properly and that's something that I failed to do when I first started playing I was treating it like war cry it's not totally different I'll do a another war cry kill team comparison video soon because I think that would be quite fun to do um because now that I've given it another go I'm seeing it in a whole different way and so I think that's that's going to be an interesting video to do soon but yeah try different terrain really learn those terrain rules and I think into the dark is really helping because you haven't got to worry about Vantage points and most of the terrain is heavy so it's going to have the same rules so that's really good too I think this has changed things up big time and I think I'm gonna also do another video where I just focus on into the dark and my thoughts about playing it so far now we're on to tip number four so you've been practicing on your own you've got used to the rules now it's time to play as often as you can against as many people as you can and this is going to be great fun because you're gonna get to go against other kill teams now nothing wrong with having a look at the rules to have an overview has how your enemy might play but also fun to have a surprise and don't look at how they're gonna play so when you come up against them you know it could be quite interesting and then you're really on the back foot and you don't know what to do so that I think that would be a really interesting way to go about it but it is tempting to have a look if you've got their rules and see who you're going to be playing but yeah playing as often as you can against as many people as you can across different boards is a really good way to go you kind of figure out what rules you're getting wrong you can help each other give each other tips advice and try out all different boards and stuff so really fun and then of course the social aspect of the game is huge that's something I didn't have when octarius came out but now playing at my local game store every week it's just changed the game the Hobby in fact completely for me I'm enjoying it so much more so definitely get out there get those games in and meet new players who is excited about playing the game As You Are number five is don't be afraid to make mistakes and I think this is something that I've never been afraid to do really I've been in business self-employed for over 20 years now and I've made so many mistakes but from those mistakes I've learned so many things that have helped me and I think if we can apply that to what we do in our games it's going to be the same thing so don't be afraid to make mistakes it really doesn't matter it's the only way you're going to learn and then you know as long as you don't make those mistakes again and keep repeating it then it's cool I mean it's no problem but I make mistakes all the time on the channel just the other day I was talking about the kill team balanced data slate and there's some rules on there that came out on the previous data slate but I hadn't remembered it or I didn't check it and so you know I was reading things out as if they were new but in fact they've been out for a what three months now so but again if you're new to the game you're not gonna know that and me coming back and playing the game as a new player I'm that's how I treat myself now as a new player to the game I think you're not going to know about all these things so it you know you're gonna make make mistakes on your journey to learning them and the same with the intercession Squad I made a huge mistake with this were the abilities you can see that you've got different sections here now I read it as you choose two sections so I was taking this section and this section for example and having six abilities when really you just pick one like the gene wrought resilience and but then choose one of the abilities in bold from it so it's either unyielding durable or Hardy whereas I was taking all three and thinking that was one selection so I totally messed that up so you know this is gonna happen it's just funny it doesn't really matter you know we're not playing in competitions we're just having fun but again once you realize you've done it wrong don't do it again next time that's the key and another mistake we made when we were playing was with a tactical Ploy the re-animation protocols we know that's like no command points now so that's great but because it was no command points we're using it a lot so my opponent was was like reanimating every single necron that had been taken down so you know that was wrong we can only use the Tactical Ploy once per Turning Point except for the re-roll so you know once you learn it though you're not going to do it again so expect to make mistakes and there's a great um quote that I always think about if you don't make mistakes you don't make anything that's by Joseph Conrad and I think that applies to all aspects of life but certainly into the game so you know we're trying to have fun we're trying to learn the game we're going to make mistakes along the way but it doesn't really matter and there's another quote he says it's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes I suppose a bit snarky from him but you know it's a lot of Truth there for sure now we're on to tip number six and this is to layer up the rules so I think you don't have to start playing all the rules at once you can start with like simple open play for sure definitely do that and then start building up you don't have to worry about taking in your equipment then you haven't got battle on us to worry about and a lot of the things that come into the narrative aspect of the game and so you can just do that nice and slowly and then when you're ready start a narrative add equipment and then build up that way but the same with the Strategic and tactical ploys in the first few games we didn't use those so we just kept it really simple and just used what was on the data cards and then also the basic abilities that came with the different kill teams as well so that really helped and then once we got into it we started adding the Strategic price add in the Tactical ploys and then going from there and again you could start off with the simpler operative especially if you're playing veteran Guardsman go with the just the basic operatives and then start introducing more and more of the Specialists to have more more abilities in game that way too so yeah I think that really is a great way to start if you've never played before don't worry about trying to do everything at once just build up slowly and that brings us to tip number seven review your games and so once you've played a game I like to take down some notes get feedback from my opponent you know what was good what did they enjoy the most was there anything they think that wasn't quite right and then just take the notes down and then you can look at that later on check the book at home and go over it again preparing yourself for next time so looking at what worked what didn't work that's a great way to go did you set the terrain up properly was there something you missed out One Gamer played was the airlock game for example and I didn't notice in the first time I played the airlock that the doors are locked and you can't actually open them so that was a big um a big Miss there but in the next time we played it we made sure those doors um were locked so we played them as locked whereas the first game we play them as unlocked so you know little things like that is just all part of the process then it's what rules weren't you solid on so it was their rule you weren't sure about you were playing it but in the back of your mind you're thinking that doesn't seem right so again go home check the rule later have a look in the books go online reddit's really great for people helping each other so I can definitely recommend that and also um you can just add a question on my videos I'm doing little short videos on YouTube now and Instagram Facebook Twitter and tick tocks you're gonna see me everywhere and then there's going to be little short videos where you send in a question for a rule and then I'll do my best to answer it in a short one minute video so look out for those and then you can also look at what improvements can you make for next time so can you play differently can you add a different operative you know things like that but mostly just getting those rules right and making sure in the sequence of play certainly in the beginning you're going through those steps in the open Play sequence properly and ask for help and you know this is really important if you're in a little club or you go down to your local game store there's always going to be someone who's happy to help take you through the rules and ask any questions you've got so yeah always ask for help and again if you've got any questions you can always ask me too it wouldn't be a top tip video without a bonus and my bonus tip is to have fun I think with kill team there is this thing where you can be maybe a little bit more competitive or at least I'm finding that I'm finding I want to win more than I'm doing War crime war crimes don't care because it's all fun and narrative but in Kill team I find I want to win a little bit more but I just finding that balance between wanting to win but enjoying yourself and having fun and not worrying if you lose and so you don't want to become a total rule Hound where you're worrying about every little thing to get an advantage or you know you're going crazy over that I think for me the narrative is the best part of these games any tabletop Skirmish game and I really want to enjoy myself whether that means losing or not obviously winning is much better um but you know in these games it's more about setting the scene and letting the story unfold on the tabletop and that's what I really enjoy so and have fun and at the end of the day you've spent a lot of money on your set you've got it ready you've unboxed it you've had to prepare it all get the terrain painted so it's ready to go you know you've got all your combat gauge painted you've done it in your maybe faction colors like I have here and then you've done all the little barricades as well to match in with them and then you've gone through all the rules for your guilty you've painted your kill team got them ready to go so you know you want to go and have fun and not worry too much certainly about making mistakes definitely about losing but just have a good time and you know get those models you spent all that time with on the tabletop and let the stories tell themselves if you haven't seen it already I've got a complete how to play rule series for kill team up on my channel and that includes some updated videos for the into the dark Gallow dark rules so that's going to give you all the close quarter rules hatch ways all that kind of thing so that's all there for you to watch so hopefully that's gonna help you to start playing as well and so you can use that alongside reading the book to see the rules actually being played out on the tabletop so yeah they're up on the channel already I'll link to them at the end of the video and also in the description down below so hopefully that will help you to start playing quickly too but that's it that's my top seven tips for new players to kill team and I really hope this has been helpful and you've got something from it if you've got any tips I'd love to hear about it so let's all know in the comments section below be great to read what you think but for now thanks so much for watching if you liked the video please hit that like button subscribe for more videos like this one and don't forget to hit the notification bell too to join me here next time on tabletop skirmish games I'd like to say a huge thank you to my patreon supporters who make these daily videos possible and if you're interested in joining the community it'd be awesome to see you there and I'll put a link for that in the description down below

Channel: Tabletop Skirmish Games

Views: 25,456

Keywords: Warhammer, Warhammer 40000, Warhammer 40k, games workshop, space marines, how to paint kill team, paint kill team, into the dark, paint Militarum, how to paint warhammer 40k, Warhammer kill team, kill team, space hulk, kill team moroch, gallowdark, kill team into the dark, kill team phobos, kill team marines, kill team terrain, kill team new edition, kill team data cards, kill team books, Warhammer 40k kill team, new kill team, kill team 2.0, kill team tips, new player

Id: 5CVo-jV_Oak

Length: 21min 5sec (1265 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2022