Learning Kill Team, Part 2

On to the rest of the Kill Team rules booklet. Close combat is next. Our heroes (and villains) are out of ammo but still pissed at each other. Here goes.

This scenario includes a bit of a solo mechanism this time - the Plague Marines must move to attack, and may not fight defensively. Fighting here works just like shooting, with both sides rolling - except that the defender rolls his attack dice instead of a set three, and that both sides may choose either to nullify their opponent's dice (as the defender does in shooting) or to do damage with them instead. Also, the use of dice is alternate and one at a time. A little more tactical, then, as you can seek to block your opponent's crits, for example, or instead use your own crits for extra damage.

Again, the bad guys get reinforcements; the Plague Champion
will appear in the upper right corner if either of his men are slain.

Turn 1:

• Blue Captain moves 9".
• Green Fighter charges Captain.
• Green Fighter scores one hit (!) of five dice (needing 3+), doing 4 damage. He has the Severe special rule, which allows him to change one hit to a critical, doing a further +1 damage.
• Blue Captain doesn't need to spend any of his four hits on defense, does 20 damage back and eliminates the Fighter. Even with his Disgusting Resilience that gives him a chance to take four of those damage points off, he only had 14 to start with.

Yeah, this game can be swingy. Both figures have the special ability to fight twice in a round, but here it's not needed.

• Blue Intercessor moves 9".
• Green Icon Bearer charges Intercessor.
• This is a simpler fight. The Intercessor, fighting with fists, scores four hits, one of them a crit. The Icon Bearer gets a crit and a regular hit.
• The Icon Bearer does 5 damage with his crit.
• The Intercessor blocks the Icon Bearer's second hit with one of his own.
• The Intercessor now does 10 damage with his remaining three dice, reduced to 9 by Disgusting Resilience. Not enough to kill.

End of turn. Since one of his men has been slain, the Plague Champion turns up.

Turn Two:

• Blue Captain moves and charges Green Champion. A battle for the ages?
• Blue Captain gets five hits, including two crits. Green Champion gets four hits, including one crit.
• The Captain's powerfist has Brutal, making it harder to block, but the Champion isn't blocking anyway. The Captain uses one crit to do 7 damage.
• The Champion uses his crit to do 6 damage.
• The Captain uses his other crit. Unfortunately, the Champion had 15 damage to start with.
• The Champion uses a regular hit to do 4 damage, killing the Captain.

I just realized I forgot to move my Assault Intercessor last turn. He moves up and charges the Icon Bearer. Taking three damage to himself, he does enough back to kill the Icon Bearer.

Time to find out how multiple combats work in Kill Team...

Aaaand looks like they don't. The Champion will thus charge the Intercessor, who is closer to death, more poorly armed, and thus an easier target. The Champion may fight twice in an activation, so if he survives he can then go after the Assault Intercessor (who fights with a chainsword instead of fists), but that guy can fight twice too, so the Champion is unlikely to win out here.

• Champion charges Intercessor.
• Champion rolls three hits, one converted to a crit.
• Intercessor scores one (1) hit.
• Under normal circumstances, the Champion would use his first hit to block the Intercessor's hit; under the solo rules, he is instead forced to attack, so he does six damage to the Intercessor, not quite enough to kill him.
• In exchange, the Intercessor's 3 points of damage from his one hit finish off the Champion.

What if the Champion could be played by choice rather than autopilot? He could have instead blocked that one hit, thus surviving with one HP to the next round, while doing 10 damage with the other two hits and killing the Intercessor. This is where tactical play comes in.

Let's imagine he has. He now has a second fight to adjudicate, against the Assault Intercessor. Again, as the attacker, he goes first - but he only rolls two hits, not enough to kill the Assault Intercessor before the good guy starts hitting him.

Bad luck. At this point, he can only survive if the opponent scores only one hit, and the opponent scored five in this case. However, he does have that Disgusting Resilience save. He fails the first one. Game over.

I think I've got the hang of it now. Some of the special rules for weapons are relatively complex and I'd prefer it if they were on the datacards, but that's okay - for one thing if I mess with this to make it suitable for 20th century there probably won't BE much in the way of special rules anyway. I'll look into the Astra Militarum and Genestealer Cult rules for inspiration there.

Next time, a "full-fledged" game, which includes orders, action points and all the special rules.