Games Workshop - Kill Team: Octarius (2021 Starter Set)

Product Information

As with most other GW games, Kill Team keeps the “3 ways to play” mantra allowing different play styles. That does mean that if you so wish you could paint these up in some way – perhaps to mirror the aesthetic of your Kill Team faction of choice? The outcome of the scouting phase determines who gets the first game, and crafty players may be able to bluff and second guess their opponent based on the rewards for each choice. Although it’s not included in this set, it’s important we have a proper chat about this Kill Team Compendium.

If you find something, however, please let us know in the comments – you might help someone else out! I have high hopes for us seeing 40k kits in the future designed with Kill Team in mind featuring optional parts allowing you to make unique operatives and give each and every model in the set their own personality. All of which, to me, makes the question of how to approach Kill Team 2nd Edition something of a no-brainer, for a new player at least: if you can get hold of Octarius, and you’re tempted by the new edition, go for it. However, the new era of Kill Team that the box heralds includes many changes to the way the game works that will leave many fans feeling hard done by. Contains 17 new terrain pieces including ruins, platforms, and scattered refuse for creating your own ramshackle Ork shanty town.Hordes of Orks and Tyranids, set against each other in hope of mutual destruction, only grew stronger and now threaten to spill out of the Octarius sector into surrounding space. This is the first proper release for the new edition of Kill Team, so there’s not really much else pertinent to this new edition available. If you like what we’re doing here you could really help encourage more content with a share on any social media platform.

Having a dead-simple Open Play scenario for beginners to jump straight into is an especially welcome addition – although, for this rather involved skirmish game to be truly beginner friendly, it really needs a free, one-page quick start rules PDF.Open Play as you would imagine is more open, with the rules presenting more of a frame work with the players themselves deciding on any special rules, objectives and storyline along with a basic example mission. By parrying you sacrifice that hit to remove one of the opponents hits, again with your critical rolls being able to remove their criticals. I’m going to break it down into three key parts: the Kill Team: Octarius launch box; the main game of Kill Team 2nd Edition itself, as laid out in the Core Book; and, finally, the somewhat controversial Kill Team: Compendium supplement, which provides new list-building rules for most Warhammer 40k factions. Also, the new Narrative Campaign rules will help your Kill Team grow and become more unique with each battle.

For ranged combat, the shooter will roll a number of dice equal to the attacks characteristic of that weapon looking to roll equal or higher than their BS – any roll of a 6 is a critical hit however, which both does more damage and is harder to negate.

GW’s decision not to include a sheaf of handy datacards for each of the Kommando and Krieg operators (as it did with Dominion, and, significantly, Warcry’s original starter set) feels like a disappointing missed opportunity to bring people into Octarius’ gameplay quicker and easier. Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. It’ll just add insult to injury if and when those datacards arrive later and are sold separately, too.

These combat gauges feature the new system’s symbols and are perfect for slotting into narrow gaps between operatives when a regular tape measure would be too cumbersome. The striking artwork, colour scheme, and general quality finish of this set is quite something, certainly the rival of its recent big-box forerunners Dominion and Warhammer Quest: Cursed City. If you’re reading this review, you’ve probably already seen the various Warhammer Community previews of this set, and you already know these miniatures are something special.This is where Kill Team comes in – a way of playing games of Warhammer 40,000 at a much smaller scale but with a greater level of detail. GW probably has entire warehouses full of the things, so you can hardly blame them for wanting to get rid of a few at every possible opportunity. Next up we have a double sided playing surface – if you have picked up any of the recent 40k or AOS board sets you know what to expect here – these are really handy to have in the box meaning you can get set up and play just on a dining room table! Credit where credit’s due, the Octarius box is heaped with extra bits and pieces to help you get your first few games of Kill Team up and running. Depending on the faction you play, the models you field will have to come from one or two Fire Teams.