Things that are easy to miss

Captain McBadass has contributed this list of things that are either easy to miss, or easy to mess up.

"Also for all the other Kill Team players, I've been rereading the rules and I've noticed a few things I think everyone, myself included, have been messing up.

1. Running is affected by difficult terrain.

2. Leaders and only leaders are characters and are therefore subject to challenges, look out sir, and precision strikes.

3. You declare ALL charges on a model before overwatch happens, and then all wounds from overwatch are applied to the closest charging model.

4. A unit in combat with a knocked down or stunned model may not direct any attacks to those models if there is a standing enemy model also in base to base. Also if you have a knocked down model and a standing model engaged in the same combat, the knocked down one may crawl away 3 inches if his turn comes before or at the same time as the standing one.

5. Unless it says so in the mission objectives, Running Away does not automatically mean a loss. You can actually still win through mission objectives despite running away.

6. When charging through difficult terrain, you still roll 2d6 for distance, but that distance is halved just like normal movement and running.

7. Grenades are one use only. Which means if you charge through difficult terrain you need to say whether or not you are using assault grenades. And if you do, you no longer have them for the rest of the game.

8. If a blast weapon scatters into a wall, it detonates at the wall, hitting anyone there as normal.

9. You can still charge an enemy if you can't get into base to base with it as long as you can get into base with a friendly unit in combat with it, but if you are only in base with a friendly unit, you can only get a max of one attack."

Early lessons

After playing a few games with my Iron Hands, against Raven Guard (BOO!), Tau, and Death Guard Terminators, I've learned a few things.

The most important thing I've learned is that the tide of the game ebbs and flows. You can be doing really well, and then suddenly your kill team loses their forward momentum and you're left wondering what just happened. The game isn't over until the victory points are tallied. You may realize that, with secondary objectives, that it's a tie, or that the person that appeared to be losing just squeaked out a win.

Another thing I learned is that, if you're playing with the option injury table (Knocked Down, Stunned, Out of Action), then Instant Death weapons are HUGE! Normally, a combi-plasma or power sword would just paste one of my marines off the battle field. However, with the possibility of becoming a casualty only being 1/3, weapons lose a lot of their effectiveness if they do not cause Instant Death. It's good that there isn't a whole lot of Strength 8 stuff out there, but it can really put a bull's eye on the head of anyone carrying a Thunder Hammer, Power Klaw, or Missile Launcher.

Perhaps the hardest thing to learn is that this game is meant to epitomize the "Rule of Cool". It's not meant to be a broken, Win-At-All-Costs game. It's supposed to be a fun and action-packed narrative. The rules of 40k are already fairly unrealistic in certain aspects, and bringing it down to skirmish level makes it even harder. It's important to recognize when what you're doing loses a bit of the spirit of the game in the quest to get that win.

And probably the harshest reality of the game is that, even if you win the battle, you could come out of it in worse shape than the guy that lost. My first "official" game in the campaign saw my lexicanum librarian suffer a serious chest injury, dropping him to Toughness 3, while leveling up to Strength 5. I don't see him lasting too much longer unless he levels up and gets the +1 Toughness to get back to 4.