Hive Storm First Impressions, plus Novitiates and Hearthkyn Salvagers Tactics

Transcription
SPEAKER_00:

Hello friends and welcome to another episode of just another Kill Team podcast, connecting Kill Team communities across the globe. If you're passionate about the tactical skirmish game that brings together strategy, lore, and creativity, you are in the right place. Don't forget to hit that like button, subscribe, and stay updated with our latest episodes. If you want to support the show, check out our Patreon. Your support means a lot to us. Follow us by using the social media links in the podcast description for all the latest news and be sure to leave a review to let us know what you think. Thanks for tuning in. Here's today's episode.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, we're here. We're rolling. Welcome. Yeah, we've got Chris here from Alabama. Hello. One of the tournament organizers in the South. How's it going, man?

SPEAKER_02:

I can't complain for a Sunday. How about you guys?

SPEAKER_03:

It's been a busy weekend for Kill Team.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, extremely busy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've missed out on a lot of the Discord chatter as I've been pretty much nonstop working until a little bit ago, but I watched the preview and read a couple of opinions, and I'm here and ready to share more opinions.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we've got Hive Storm, the great gun, you know, taking a page out of effectively Helldivers, I think. You know, I don't think that they use Helldivers as the assumption because I'm sure this graphic was done well in advance of Helldivers ever being conceived. Just from how I understand physical production costs and timetables. However, seeing a big gun that, you know, it did give me some did give me some Helldivers echoes because we did. There is a mission like that on Helldivers. There's actually two of them. you can load a gun and then another one you fire an icbm and you get the big the big wash of dust and as a tau player i gotta say i'm very excited because it's been it's been a hot minute since those vestibule models came out and i never bought them when i was a kid because they were ugly as sin impossible to find metal models and you know what they had quite the glow up

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, even back then they were terrible looking models. You know, they're really not such a hotness. But these new ones do look very cool.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they're awesome. How old are the old ones?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, they were old.

SPEAKER_03:

They were like a year or two old when I was a kid, when I was like 16. So they're probably like, oh, they're pushing just under 20. Not quite as bad as Eldar. You know, well, Eldar models can drive at this point. But as far as the baseless accusation goes, if this edition, for whatever reason, focuses in on jump pack models, you know, there's a large skew of things that are jump pack adjacent that definitely need updates on the 40k side. And so if that is the through line that they're going to run through on this edition, there's no real reason to believe that there would be. Right. You know, this is a new venue with new stuff. But if those baseless accusations and rumors are to be believed, maybe new warp spiders, those would be pretty hot.

SPEAKER_00:

The Jump Pack Boys, Storm Boys. That'd be cool.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, Storm Boys, the Warp Spiders, getting new Raptors, because while the Raptors, I think, model-wise hold up pretty well, their legs are a little bit short, so getting new ones there would be pretty hot.

SPEAKER_00:

And they are still pretty like old models. Like a lot of the chaos range has been refreshed and they do look like reasonably a decent bit better. That'd be a cool, like a five man jump back team. I think I've said that a couple of times would be a super cool kill team. On that note, assault intercessors.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, those would be cool. And I guess they already exist, so they could just make rules for them, pretty much.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it'd be really easy. It already has room.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a little hungry spru.

SPEAKER_00:

And then people like me that are kind of on the verge. Yeah, it's just like I've been like on the verge of getting a squad of those for a while. And like if they had rules and kill team, I would just like go buy a box today.

SPEAKER_02:

people like me that are kind of on the verge yeah it's just like i've been like on the verge of getting a squad of those for a while and like if they had rules and kill team i would just like go buy a box today yeah you know they want to sell more stuff so

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. What were some of the things that jumped out to y'all from the from the preview video? I actually even took notes. I'm going to pull them up.

SPEAKER_03:

I think, you know, looking at the Vespid side, some of the things that they mentioned, you know, while moving, you get to boost some of your skills. So maybe you get better ballistic skill. Maybe you get better armor penetration. I think they in the video specifically called out as you move, you improve your gun. So I doubt it's damage, but it could be cool if it was an AP thing. So maybe it goes from nothing to P1 to AP1. There could be a nice way to show like if you move more, like maybe there's like movement ranges where you get the thing. um the other thing that i thought was pretty cool was just how the models like you've got the stealth suit and the helmet and they integrate into the vespid and they mention how you give out command points maybe kind of like a hernkin's hernkin role where you have a couple points and then if you give those points you can do mission actions and you can fully control your model or maybe it's just like within six of the helmet it's hard to hard to really piece out what's going on especially without the rest of the skeleton so i think right now it's very easy to jump to conclusions because there was a single picture that shows the new scouting options and it says you know one is a new equipment two i think is a free stratagem so on the strategic ploys you get a free one and then three is the three inch dash or fly or recon dash but it's very hard for us to actually know if anything is good or bad based on just that one small snapshot on.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. Fly seems to be different. Just assumptions based on how they treated boy dancers. And there's a whole team of Tanner Lyon models with Fly. Probably slightly different. Maybe more like 40k.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, where you're paying diagonal inches. It could just be like how the Void Dancers work right now, where effectively all of your movement penalties are just two inches, which would still be pretty powerful if you had a whole team of it. Because as we've seen in our week-to-week podcast on Patreon, the Void Dancers haven't actually done that much worse over time. They are not going to win any big tournaments because they're crippled by being eight models. But being able to avoid a lot of the penalties of moving around objects is a thing that you can bake into how you imagine playing them and is still very powerful when you do it correctly. yeah

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and this terrain seemed pretty dense, so the ability to move a little bit faster definitely adds up.

SPEAKER_03:

yeah my my big thing is that the terrain looks freaking sick and i'm super excited to just get my hands on a new set of terrain that finally we can give up on octarius on some level because i'm tired of playing on it

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it looks like a welcome replacement talk, Terry. It's better than anything has gotten close to before. I think it's going to be well-received. People are hopefully going to love it, get a lot of it floating around, and be the new standard.

SPEAKER_03:

I am kind of curious, Chris, on the Alabama scene, what kind of terrain do you guys use? Are you guys using a mix or is it like tons of Octarius? Because, you know, big GW events are all Octarius. And I know a lot of other events kind of use Octarius-ish events. What do you guys like in Alabama?

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, it's mostly mixed, so it's ITD and either a mix of Octarius or similar style terrain. We've used Chaunoth stuff, but not all of the heavy terrain in there, just because it's a little bit too heavy. But pretty standard tournament terrain, I would say.

SPEAKER_03:

So everyone's looking forward to the new terrain. What do you guys spot on the Tempesta Scions spot? From the way Elliot was talking about some of these drop events, could be pretty annoying. You know, he did specifically call out Meltaguns, Meltabuns, and Crackernades. Just basically popping out of low orbit and just dunking people while you're following these drop tokens, which definitely, while he was describing them, reminded me of Fortnite or any of these other drop-in games that have been popularized over the last, yeah, maybe decade of gameplay on PC games.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, that looks like a really cool mechanic. So kind of like for anyone that hasn't already heard, it sounds like generally you can place a few drop tokens and you can move them around and you remove some of them so it kind of zeroes in on where you're landing. And then when you have an opportunity or when it's time or when you're forced to or whatever, then you can put an airborne unit on that token and it can be up to a third of the team, I think is what he said it was going to be.

SPEAKER_03:

Instead of 30 the team. And if we have 10 models, it'll be like three or four model. Or it would be three models probably.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'm hoping that the footprint or the area you need to be within when you can drop on the token is not too far, too wide. But just given that one of them can drop into engagement range, if you can just put all those tokens on objectives, then you're literally saying, hey, wherever you go, I'm going to drop down, double strike you, probably kill you, take the objective. That seems kind of crazy, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_03:

I wonder if they're going to be at the 8 operative line or the 10 operative line. Because at 8 operatives, a single dude who can come out of drop and immediately kill a dude is good, but immediately gets punished and maybe it's fine. Whereas at 10 models, it will, I suspect if all of the assumptions about how kill team kind of function right now continue, then 10 models with a third of them dropping in probably will feel a little overwhelming. If it's 8 models or 9 models, it's not that bad. because you only get like two models dropping at a time and it's you pick the precursor and like a melt to mine and you kind of adjust from there but it's really hard for us to make any real guesses it's all we're all in baseless assumption territory right now

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. You know what? I'm going to say it here. Nine models is what I'm expecting.

SPEAKER_03:

And one of those is going to be a servo skull, which they did call out in that 30 minute segment on Warcom can double shoot.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's going to be interesting. Hopefully it's slow. It looks kind of slow.

SPEAKER_03:

I wouldn't be surprised if it was stationary. Yeah, it could be. I suspect it'll move around a little bit, but maybe it'll be like a four-inch move, and then it might have the servitor role, where if you don't have someone within three inches or six inches, it can only get one APL. But the fact that he did say that it could double shoot with a Laz volley, you know, five attacks, if all of the rules come over from Kill Team 2021, five attacks on fours or threes, three, four damage, P1, is a real profile, especially if you can do it twice

SPEAKER_02:

Speaking of four inches, how do you feel about four inches instead of two circles?

SPEAKER_03:

it's time you know it's time for us to finally move into the realm of actual numbers it was great at gen con i was teasing new people while i was doing demos like obviously we all know that a six inch should be determined by a five five-sided shape and then if you add in one circle you get nine a nine inch thought range it's all so obvious everybody but i'm glad we're finally free free of the ridiculousness of these shapes that make absolutely no sense.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I didn't hate playing with them, and I kind of got used to it anyway, but teaching new players, especially if they come from 40K or other Warhammer games, it's just, it's not the best way to transition into a new game.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no new players were giving the shapes any slack at all. They're just like, why is it shapes and not numbers? And we're like, that's not the thing you're supposed to focus on. And now we just totally don't have to worry about that at all.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, learning numbers.

SPEAKER_03:

We do get two entirely new sprues, according to what they showed off in the box. You get two different token punch-out sheets. We've got, instead of moving them from the triangles, we have the semi-circle things that attach to our bases, which is kind of neat. And then we have physical tokens for terrain, which I am not looking forward to personally as far as transporting, because now I have to carry around a big box of jangly stuff. Are you talking about the smoke grenade things and all that? smoke grenades ladders heavy heavy barricades it looks like wide heavy barricades small barricades ladders take you know barbed wire like i got no idea what we're doing and i have no idea how that equipment is going to get used but having to carry more stuff is going to be kind of annoying i think yeah

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I guess you could just plan to use one or two and throw them in with your models. Be like, you know what? I'm really just only going to do barbed wire these days. Or just like only ladders. I don't know. Two options. Just a couple things to bring. But then also like, I'm assuming there's going to be a starter pack. Like if the starter pack maybe has like the terrain sprues and the tokens or something. If it's going to be like universal equipment that everyone's going to want to have. You probably want that available in more than just the launch box.

SPEAKER_03:

I think they did call out that there is going to be a separate release that comes out pretty soon, which is that sprue of terrain plus the punch to punch out tokens. And it does sound like they're really going to make sure that the game is accessible, because right now, I think the biggest issue I've had over the last year of Kill Team, I don't know if this has been the case in Alabama, but it's definitely been the case in New York, is when a new person wants to play the game, you're like, well, let me get this extra box, these three books, look up this thing online for the FAQs and the downloads. and then when you get onto the table well make sure that your opponent it's just like an infinite spread of things that just people their eyes roll into the back of their heads and you're like i thought this game was supposed to be chill yeah yeah yeah it's definitely extremely

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and we try to make stuff available for people that come in and want to try the game, because we have a good bit of extra terrain and teams. But yeah, not having online rules and having to go different places to find different bits is definitely not the best. I was going to say, the starter set at least was nice for Kill Team 2021. It's still something that I would recommend people to get if they don't have anything and they want to start for cheap. So hopefully they have something like that for this edition.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, agreed. Pretty jazzed about the concept of the rules all being available for free online starting day one. Because before it was like people would be like, I want to play Necrons. What book do I need? It's not like immediately obvious by the name of the book. And like the book is kind of expensive. It has more than what you need if you're trying to do just one thing. Not great for casuals. So this is, yeah, super, super, super enormously way more accessible. Like especially if you've been in the game for a while and you haven't like looked at the scope of how hard it is to get in. This is a huge upgrade.

SPEAKER_03:

It's honestly just like this huge change from the Games Workshop side, because I know obviously we've been playing, I've been on and off with Games Workshop stuff for a long, long time. And this feels like a big shift between Age of Sigmar, 40k and Kill Team all kind of moving in the direction of let's make sure that people can play our game and then the mini stuff will happen organically. Because people who want to play mini stuff, obviously GW has a good spread for minis. But now if you want to play, we're not going to put this huge wall and if you want to buy stuff, go for it. but the game will help drive the sales just because the game is sick yeah i'm very excited does anyone have any like top things that they're looking forward to from what they previewed on the hive storm stuff before we hop into maybe some of the topics for today's podcast Thanks for watching.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, let's see, I have written a couple things down, but maybe we checked it all out. Um, yeah, I mean, like, we kind of already talked about the models look cool. He said the core rules are slimmed down. So hopefully that's easy to read, easy to get through. Um, solo and co-op mode, amusing.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I thought the prisoner situation from the White Dwarf actually was a pretty nice intro event for players because we ran an event where we did the prisoner situation where there's one Psyker and 10 goons and you fight two opposing kill teams at the same time. And those teams' job is to go get the Psyker and pull him off the map. And you play him in the dark, so the vision rules are pretty basic. And then as you play the game, the prisoner gets to basically run administrator for the two players and you can show off all the mechanics and at the end of it, someone gets to feel like they did a thing. Unless the prisoner manages to score a win, which from what we've seen is very, very hard as a 10 wound model with 10, 7 wound, 5 up save dorks that everyone hits on 4s.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that mission was fun. Definitely fun for new players. But yeah, I would, I guess, agree that the co-op stuff is pretty cool. I'm excited to kind of use that to teach people how to play. And maybe hopefully not have to explain stuff like obscurity and things like that. We'll see how that plays out.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I'm very curious to see how new obscurity plays out, whether or not it actually goes away or it becomes slimmed down. So it's just not as overbearing because I think right now it does represent a very big level up when a player starts thinking about not just cover, but obscurity. And it does let you feel like, oh, man, I'm making these important decisions. And it is nice, especially when things can ignore obscurity. But it is also one of those things that people just hate because you're like, what? You shoot me and then I just can't shoot you. That's rude.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that and the fact that those rules are... It's kind of like for the 40k issue, where you have rules in four different documents, and it's, you know, oh, did you download the correct version of it? Like, if you go in the latest FAQs in Erratas, there's no mention of the vantage point obscurity rule, where even players that are grinders don't know that rule. Like, no, yeah, if you're on top, you don't get obscurity, but if I'm below, I do get obscurity from you. is really weird and convoluted.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I've always described it as if you're standing on top of the box, you can still be obscured by the floor underneath you. But everyone shooting up at you can see you just fine. That doesn't make it any easier, but at least it is consistent. So it sounds like Alabama has got a pretty good tournament scene if you guys are getting into the nitty gritty on the vantage stuff, because that is obviously a rule that a lot of players misplay. so for anyone who doesn't know you know even though things are going to be changing out pretty soon it sounds like when you're shooting on top of a piece of vantage the thing that you're on top of does obscure you so a lot of octarius shots or if you're standing on top of a munitorum container if you take a shot across the thing generally you're actually obscured because there is you're not able to shoot past a one inch bubble around your base which can be very upsetting especially when people walk into it and you're like well sorry you can't shoot i'm just gonna blow you up but intervening pieces of heavy still do the thing yeah so while the thing you're on top of doesn't do anything everything else still does it so it can be a situation where people think they learn it and then it shows up as oh actually i learned it the wrong way and now i'm dead

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, one of the fun ones is Octarius Scrap Piles, where you can dash and then charge over. And it's one of the only occasions in which you can do any move other than a charge in the same activation.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I am looking forward to seeing how that new terrain interacts with maybe some of this kind of stuff, because I assume scrap piles are going to go away, especially if they don't reprint Octarius anytime soon. Although personally, I'm glad I'm done with Octarius. I've been playing on it for two years and the missions have been played around for so long. I'm looking forward to hopefully they go the way of 40K and they reduce a number of objectives just to really make sure that people can't just sit in the background and just try to play a 3-3 split. yeah some like four five and six objective missions maybe even three

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, odd number is nice because it really forces you not to have a draw.

SPEAKER_03:

Gotta have a plan. Gotta have a plan to get in there. And I think one of the screenshots they showed on the Hive Storm release was something around one of the missions being a kill tally, so definitely really putting the focus on kill team and not points team.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's one of the things they mentioned in the interview as well, was we're putting the kill back and kill team, score points by killing things, universal thing.

SPEAKER_03:

Meanwhile, Jason's been doing that for the entirety of the year with Intercession Squad, Phobos, and all sorts of Marines just turning on Engage and just blowing people up.

SPEAKER_00:

That's true. I mean, it is called Kill Team, and I just always took that personally.

SPEAKER_03:

What is the actual meta out in Alabama like? I think in the wider meta, elites have obviously taken a bit of a licking and wider teams have done much better. I'm curious how the Alabama scene shakes out. Are Brood Brothers and Mandrakes taking over over there as well? Or do you guys have a wider spread? How's your player base?

SPEAKER_02:

Definitely a wider spread, and we don't have, we don't really have like meta chasers. I don't even really consider myself a meta chaser, but I do pretty much buy almost every set that comes out. So I have access to most teams. But yeah, I would say most people just kind of play, they stick to one team or two and try to get better at it. But they're not always playing the best team that comes out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I honestly think that's like the best way to actually get good. There's a lot of good players that just like stick with the team. And there's so much nuance to learn within every team that there's a lot of value from just playing it a lot.

SPEAKER_03:

As long as the team is good and can play the game, generally you don't need to go meta chasing. However, there's never been a real issue with, ah, this Brood Brothers stuff is really good right now. If I can do the solid basic plan of using their best tools very easily, maybe it's fine. But there are players like Shane, you know, of Command Point, who took a small tournament last weekend at Salt City, playing Felgor, a team that's been nerfed a million times now, and he was still able to make a clean sweep through the tournament. because it turns out dying more than once is definitely still a powerful ability, even if you get nerfed. Yeah, 100%. And it's not even just that. I think some older teams still hold up pretty well. Pathfinders had to take a couple nerfs. Obviously, we're going to talk about Novitiate today because, Chris, that's the team that you say is near and dear to your heart, you have the most experience on, and they've obviously been nerfed a couple times, but at this point, they haven't really been touched for a while, and Faith Dice remain very, very powerful.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh yeah, they're so great. I would say they actually got a few buffs maybe in the past year.

SPEAKER_03:

You think the metagame has shifted around the novitiates in a way where the novitiates can hang out a little bit more at the upper ends of the tables?

SPEAKER_02:

I think it was actually a lot easier right before Cultist came out, when the meta was more mid-rangey and elite. Now that it's mostly, you know, go wide team, it's a little bit harder, of course, because you're outnumbered.

SPEAKER_03:

That's true. Novitiates being 10 models, 7 wounds, 4 up saves, means that they really can't take too much of a punch, but they do have one of their better tools of blinding aura, which is meaning they don't take punches.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and it's always fun to explain how that interacts with vantage points and all this stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, in general, Novitius is kind of one of those teams that I'm like, I've always been a little spooked by him, just because it can really, really mess up your day if you fall for the blinding aura. It's really easy to just catch people out with that. Even after you fall for it a couple times, and then you just fall for it again in the same game. It's a strong ability.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm actually curious, Chris, you know, you're one of the leaders of your scene. How do you do you play novitiates? And when you play those intro games with players, how do you kind of walk players through the gotchas of novitiates? Because novitiates are a team with a lot of gotchas. And for any listeners who don't know them really well, you know, it'd be kind of interesting to see how you would teach those people to play around your rules.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they have a ton of gotchas. And obviously, if I'm teaching the game or if I'm playing local games, the weekly games and stuff, I pretty much don't play Novitia. I only play them in tournaments because they can be frustrating to newer players or even somebody who's just trying to have a good time. It's not fun to sit there for an hour and say, well, you know, I can do this. This team can do that. So I can't do this. I can't do this. Like, yeah, sorry. but in tournaments I usually try to go over everything that I can do and all the cheese at least it's obviously it's hard to explain every scenario of things that I can do and like when it comes up in a game I say hey you know careful remember I can back of the ash with these two flavors so I have like a 15 inch range so you know maybe don't worry about that cover so much because I'll be within two inches of you type stuff but there's a lot of gotchas so Thank you.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, the power of the pair of Purgatuses, one of them shooting like a bolter is always going to be something that's very powerful. Do you have a way that you would describe Novitiates to a brand new player? Maybe like a one in one minute spiel of like, what are we what's the vibe of the Novitiates?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, man. They look extremely unassuming, and their stats are all pretty weak, but they actually hit like trucks, and they have a ton of tricks. They're like one of the trickiest teams, for sure, in Kill Team. And one of the hardest hitting teams. Like, you actually trade pound for pound with the best offensive teams in the game, easily.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like that flamer is so, so reliable. It's five dice on twos, re-rolling ones, three, four Inferno tokens. And Inferno tokens do mortal wounds at the end of the turn. So it's like, you can roast a Space Marine with that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, sometimes it's 10 attacks. Plus the Inferno Tuggets. So I've definitely one-shotted Legionaries with just the Flamers, with Defenders of the Faith into first activation and just murder it. Yeah. And then your Plasma Leader is probably the best gunner in the game. Unlimited range, hitting on twos, guaranteed. You're like 90-something percent to kill anything in the game, pretty much, except for the Nightmare Hawks.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and you've got dice manipulation and re-rolls, so it really is just totally bonkers. And then that with Defenders of the Faith is totally insane. If you can pull it off, at the very end of the turn, run out and stand on an objective and shoot someone, and then when the turn comes back around and you've just been stockpiling your CP, use your Eyes of the Emperor for unlimited range and Defenders of the Faith so that you can activate with a free shoot or fight before the turn starts, So it doesn't matter who has initiative. You just shoot again with this super plasma. Like against elites, it's just like, it's an easy way to kill two space marines guaranteed. Just no problem.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they're pretty insane. I always feel like when I'm playing them, I'm playing chess, and a lot of times when I lose, it's definitely because of mistakes I made. Because you really have a way to guarantee just about anything you want to do. Like, if you have a plan and you execute it correctly, it will happen just because of the faith points. So really, a lot of times when you lose, it's just because of the mistakes you made. You never get unlucky playing them. Obviously, they're fragile, so you're kind of trading the insurance of killing stuff with also dying very easily. So if you make mistakes, you get punished really hard. So that's one of the drawbacks.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they do kind of have some deceptively high durability against things that don't have AP, because a 4-up armor save with rerolls ends up actually being more reliable than 3-up armor.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. If you don't have any AP or P1 or anything like that, they're very tanky.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think high AP and using AP where possible is actually one of the biggest tips against Novitiates. Sure, everyone knows that AP is really good, but when the Novitiates can strip and re-roll your dice, just doing three normal hits or four normal hits is not generally going to do enough against their four-up save. It sounds like maybe it should go down, but when you can re-roll or force a miss to go into a normal save, you really want to be looking for criticals and AP to actually reduce the amount of dice that your opponent is allowed to roll, because no fish shapes. Cheat!

SPEAKER_02:

We don't cheat, we just slightly bend the rules.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, the faith of the emperor lets you adjust your dice. And you know what? It turns out that's very good when your opponent is just landing normal hits.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I would say their greatest weakness is definitely melee. So if you have a few operatives that can, and really almost every kill team has a few melee-centric operatives, you just need to fight them the right way, keep your distance and then close in and kill them in combat.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the tough part is getting there because the flamers just, like, can get the... They can non-reciprocal threat range you, and then same with the eviscerator character with the, like, 20,000 inch charge.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the penitent is a pretty good counter to that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so it definitely feels like kind of more of like a hang back. Like don't, if you're staging threats in the mid board, that is too aggressive because you can really just catapult people. So you just like catapult from the back, hit people from like non-reciprocal threat ranges.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and it is hard to counter that range because, you know, on a terrace, you can try and block doors, but then I can block doors on the other side, and then you have to go all the way around to, you know, get rid of my threat. There's a lot in play to all maps, except for a bit of Decima.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think Novitiates in the past had struggled when Intercession Squad was able to reduce damage and Legionary was able to cut you down to two damage and then the Flamers weren't nearly as scary. Nowadays, those days are mostly gone. So Novitiates do hunt in a better zone than they used to. Unfortunately for them, Commandos and Felgor still exist and those guys two-shotting any of your seven-wound operatives still remains mighty annoying for a Novitiates player.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, all the Horde melee matchups are pretty scary.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. In those situations, do you have models that you like to send as bait to get your opponent to come out? Or are you mostly relying on your non-reciprocal threat ranges on your penitent and the pair of pergodic to really get the jump on your opponent?

SPEAKER_02:

I generally have some bait models because I pretty much never played the medic in those matchups and that comes in for a militant who actually has a pretty good melee profile at 4-3, 4-5 balanced. So that's usually one of the trade pieces. One for one with commandos is not bad. It's bad when you get two for one, which definitely can happen with Krumpum and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's definitely a team that has some rough matchups, but for the most part, against the 10 wound and the 14 model teams, you've still always got some play. Obviously, VectGuard and Pathfinders generally tend to run a couple issues just because they out-activate you and they can punish you a little bit. But like you said on Octarius, if you hide behind doors, you can at least not get shot until you go in first. So it's really about threatening the two-for-ones where you can, because you've got a couple models that can do, you've got two models that can comms and then you've got the leader who's got the ap2 two up save plasma gun when especially when you give it the eyes of the emperor to give it infinite range so you've got a lot of good threats to run amok with

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, there's definitely plenty of opportunities to do for one in the 14 and 12 model matchups for sure.

SPEAKER_03:

But one of the other teams that you've been playing as of recent history has been Hearth Consolidators, a team that, as far as me and Jason can tell on the week-to-week stats, have kind of had a little bit of a resurgence. They were taken at the World Team Championship by Alexa, I think the World Championship winner, where he won. I think he only lost one matchup. Maybe he didn't even lose that one matchup. And they've been doing well. Out in the Midwest of America, there's a player, Dylan Gee, who came to ACO, got, I think, third, but was in contention for first place. running around on the Hearthken Salvagers doing their thing. Where do you kind of position the Salvagers in the meta right now?

SPEAKER_02:

I like them. I think they're really good. They kind of remind me of Navitions in a way. Maybe that's why I like them so much. They're just a little bit more resilient. And they're also more versatile because your whole team could just be a melee threat if you want them to be, which is kind of crazy with the knights. Plasma Knights are so good.

SPEAKER_00:

So what's the biggest thing that kind of glues the vibe to make them feel like novitiates?

SPEAKER_02:

I think it's the fact that they don't look crazy on paper, but they have a bunch of tricks, and they punch up. Their melee is really good because of the plasma knives that you can give them, and their shooting is obviously really good. You don't cheat dice with faith points, but you do get a bunch of crits. And with Proximate Firepower, you hit on threes and you crit a lot. and novitiates kind of like to push up the board and you can't play i think people play pretty slowly with uh harkin before and i mean obviously they're slow there are slow teams it's hard to play fast but you really want to push up and be aggressive with them yeah the knives help you get

SPEAKER_00:

because the knives help you get there. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I guess the grudge tokens is the mechanic of just getting tons of free crits is pretty similar to the faith token of just like, you can also guarantee success.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, 100%. You got the reroll token stuff. There is so many tricks with that team. Yeah. Might have more tricks than innovations, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, one of the biggest differences, obviously, is mobility, because you've got the Daka dash on the Pergottis, and you don't really have anything like that. The closest you have is the jetpack dude, but that's just one guy, and he can't really do the 12-inch jump and still shoot or fight.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, he can shoot at least, but yeah, he can't fight. I guess maybe he could on Into the Dark boost and then Hatchway Fight or something. Oh, yeah. Definitely more limited as far as that goes. But you have crazy stuff like the grenade. You can just zone an area out. There's so many tools. I like teams that have a lot of tools, like a nice kit. I feel like art's going to have one of the biggest kickbacks, I guess.

SPEAKER_00:

They've got access to ignore obscuring in two different ways. There's the gunner that just passively does it built in. And then there's, who is it? The surveyor places a token. Yeah, and like the way that surveyor token works is actually kind of like better than any of the other like Auspex mechanics, because you just place a token anywhere. You don't need to see it. And then anyone, any enemies within range of that token, it's, what is it? Like three inches? It's like a pretty big bubble even. Yeah. Can't be obscured. So then you like if people sort of cluster up and it doesn't even have to be that far. Cause this is going to be like a six inch bubble. You can get a capture, like multiple enemy operatives in it. And then you can just like.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and the way that's...

SPEAKER_00:

Light them up for like just peeking corners and non-reciprocal shots.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep, and no cover with P1 is really good. Like, all your guns are super deadly. Especially with the auto-crits. No joke.

SPEAKER_03:

Especially with the auto crits. Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned that you like teams with a wide toolbox, and Hearth Consolvagers have some of the most techs per operative, I think, in the entire game right now. Do you have any tools that you find yourself using all the time? I know you just mentioned the Grenadier, and we talked about the booster a little bit on the jump pack, and Jason just talked about the no obscurity bubble, but that's not it. There's even more tools than that. Do you have one out of the rest of the operatives that you find yourself using often? Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, good question. Honestly, any operative just with deploys you have to because you can move dash and shoot something. You can do free mission actions with the lugger and charge and fire. There's so many different things you can do. I would say probably just getting a free shooter fight action is the biggest one. But even snagging objectives on death is kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's actually a fun spot because on the more recent FAQ, they actually just opened up the window for a worth it. So if you have the dozer who can strike on death, it creates a new window after you strike and remove an operative where you can still call worth it. So a dozer who's about to die can strike with his one remaining hit, kill his opponent because there's no one left. He can slam the button before he passes on objective and say it was worth it and then disappear along with your opponent and score an objective.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's that's pretty much.

SPEAKER_00:

second that's totally bonkers what is this worth it is that like a tactical ploy

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it lets you make a mission action when you die, basically. So you either hit on death, kill the thing that just killed you, and then you still get to loot.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, wow. I don't know how I haven't come across that.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I don't think that that ploy came up nearly as much as it may come up now with the dozer. But yeah, it's in there. It's a tool that you can use.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that was actually going to be one of my questions. Like, do you play the dozer? He seems like one of the cooler guys on the team. I'm curious if you play him and if you think he's cool also.

SPEAKER_02:

Depending on the matchups I do play, it really does depend on what you're up against. The ability to move things off objectives can be valuable. I would say he's one of those flex slots though, like he's not my... whatever. Yeah, he's not like an auto-take.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, he's not looking at auto-take.

SPEAKER_02:

But that definitely makes him a little bit better.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, there's definitely some fun positional stuff you can do with the dozer where you can push people off objectives or now you can die on an objective. So it makes a very good objective holder, especially against the melee horde armies. So like something like Felgor or Brood Brothers or Blooded who want to come in and touch you. You can set up a dozer and really give your opponent an awkward time if they try to steal an objective from you, right?

SPEAKER_02:

push them off the objective and then they retaliate and kill you, you can still tap the objective after you die. Maybe you didn't have the APL to do it before, but you can still do it for free from one CP, I guess. Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff you can do.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, effectively, you get an opening where the dozer can charge, kill a guy, and then because there's no one left on there, you can worth it now. So make sure anyone who's interested in Hearthkin to, you know, fire away and do that because there's not a lot of teams that can have tricks like that. As far as some of the other tools that you've got access to, you've got some of the best guns in the game. And one of the things that we like to call it is fun little tricks. So the plasma beamer for anyone who doesn't realize, make sure that you're always looking for shots on grudge targets with the plasma beam because you do basically get a guaranteed chance at some d3 mortal wounds right

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that thing is deadly. You can play around it, but if you don't play around it, you'll be in for a rude awakening for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

For anyone that doesn't know, you draw a line straight from where you're shooting through the target that you're shooting, and then that line can harm other people, sprinkle a couple mortal wounds when you get some crits.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and it's not like a one time, it's not one or more crits, every crit. So if you have a bunch of Grudge tokens and something that's in line, you can get a bunch of D3s.

SPEAKER_00:

That could like fully kill a weak or injured operative.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. And one of the.

SPEAKER_03:

One of the fun little stories on Kill Team history is that when the team was first released before they released the first FAQ, everyone was wondering how the Plasma Beam worked. And a lot of people thought it was, you know, you would always hit the main target. You'd hit the guys in front or the guys behind it or maybe some other weird combination of. But you would always hit the original target with those D3 extra wounds. And then on that first FAQ, they're like, ah, it turns out the main target never gets hit by the beam. It's always the people in front and behind him. Fun little piece of Hearthkin history.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I would say if you get a few crits on that target with AP2, it's probably dead anyway. But I'm sure it's come up a few times where that definitely mattered and was played incorrectly.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and the Salvagers definitely have been the recipient of a lot of buffs. I think the newest one is Forcefield, where the first time an attack does four or more damage, you get to shrug the first four damage attack. And that's definitely got to have helped the Hearth and Salvager players who've been playing them all over the world.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, those changes were huge. Being able to play your leader a little bit more aggressively through this is super nice because you want to obviously get in with the multifaceted threat of good melee and good shots.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, have you found any big situations where some of the new buffs on Hearth Consalvagers have come up in recent history?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the minus one damage on objectives is definitely... It messes up with a lot of melee weapon breakpoints, and it kind of makes you a three-hit, then barely seven two-hits, which is huge. That is huge. Especially when you have a plasma knife, and you're getting charged, and you get two crystal grudges, and they're the ones that die after charging you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, a two to three hit difference is a 50% increase.

SPEAKER_03:

It also gives your opponents a lot more fail cases when they go into melee with four attacks, right? So unless you have five attacks, there's a lot of times where, oh, suddenly you're either taking more damage or sometimes you just don't kill a dwarf. And now you've got an angry dwarf and you're choosing between a grudge or getting stabbed by a knife.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not fun when you charge into something and you have to parry. Like, oh, that was not the plan.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and getting into a shootout against the Hearthen Salvagers tends not to be a winning combination, because while they hit on fours, generally you'll have hit your strategic ploy, which is while you're within six, get plus one ballistic skill. So generally, the Hearthen Salvagers want to be in close, taking shots and charging while your opponent is doing the same. And if you're getting a chance to trade back and forth and you're getting to reduce a little bit of damage, you are making the breakpoints very awkward, as the Hernken Jaegers have shown on their end, where reducing the first hit by two damage generally means that they're not dying all that often and everyone's allowed to get a heal. But the Hearth Consolidators, they get a medic. So in those shootouts, they do have the ability to just trade up just like some of the other teams with medics.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, Jaegers are pretty crazy. I haven't played against them much, but they're pretty cracked. I played against somebody who tried them for the second time, maybe, and I didn't really look at the review or the rules and stuff.

SPEAKER_03:

It is a team that requires you to look at so many different things because each of your optos has a huge brick of text, because I think on release they were thinking, well, you know, you only have four inches of movement, so it's going to take a little bit more work for you to work on stuff. But nowadays that has kind of gone away and they have a lot more power, you know, moving up with four, five inches. All their guns are really good. Being able to get grudge tokens means that you really are a good shooting team and enough plasma knives means you're respectable in melee.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, your melee a lot of times is 5-5, just because of all the grudge tokens you can stack on a target. You get a bunch of rerolls if you want.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that can end up being scary against any target. I was playing Intercession against Salvagers a week or two ago, and there's an Intercessor that has four Grudge tokens, and it's like, oh yeah, if you melee me, you just get all crits. The Tilting Shield will solve that, but if you don't, it's a bad time.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's definitely a matchup where stacking tokens on one operator is obviously very...

SPEAKER_00:

What do you think are some of the toughest matches for the Salvagers? And some of the easiest?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, easiest... I don't mind playing against swords, because you still have a decent amount of bodies, and you're not as fragile as novitiates, so you can trade 2 for 1s or 1 for 0s a lot more often. Definitely more 2 for 1s, just because you probably don't die from the first retaliation. I would say tougher would probably still be the aggressively good melee teams. Or even something like Galar Pox if your opponent is really good and spaces things out correctly. It's where they make it so you can't two-for-one them as much. It's a little bit more complex. We had a ploy to shoot into melee, maybe.

SPEAKER_03:

Or something like where the Hearn can get to shoot as your opponent makes a charge. You can have a guy cover for you. But unfortunately, the Hearth Consolidators don't get that. They just have to tough it out with their operatives.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'm not going to complain. They're good where they are, I think.

SPEAKER_03:

And they're actually one of the teams that theoretically kind of plays around with the roster restrictions a little bit. Who knows if that's going to change with Kill Team 24? You know, it does feel like a lot of the newer teams on release have kind of done away with the roster system. So I'm curious to see if Hearthcan Salvagers on the new edition are going to run into roster restrictions.

SPEAKER_02:

That's interesting. I didn't think about that. Hmm. Not an issue for novitiates.

SPEAKER_03:

Definitely not. Novitiates have their 10 operatives. I mean, technically you could take auto guns, but I don't think I've ever seen someone decide to really take a lot of dorks on the Novitiates because they really don't get a lot of value out of just a basic Novitiate.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, as an emperor, you pretty much just take the melee operative and then give her a limited range anyway. Yeah. They did hint at changing some of the data cards, and I wonder if that has to do just with updating the symbols. I mean, obviously, that's going to be a change, putting inches instead of the symbols. But I wonder if they're going to change any of the operatives to match the new rules.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And I mean, like the trends that we've seen in like Age of Sigmar 4th Edition and Warhammer 40k 10th Edition is kind of like this like streamlining where, you know, like 9th to 10th Edition 40k was basically like a bunch of the stratagems instead of being stratagems became datasheet passive abilities. I feel like and like Age of Sigmar 4th edition was kind of a similar vibe I wouldn't be surprised if there was just like every special character has one datasheet passive and then like something that makes the warriors more viable because I mean I don't know I'm always a fan of teams that have a couple warriors because it just kind of like gives you pieces that are easier to just like trade and instigate with Thank you.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think we're looking forward to a lot of stuff on the new edition. You know, obviously, Chris, we brought you here because we want to talk a little bit about the Alabama kill team scene. So how has the Alabama scene been reacting to some of the news from Hive Storm?

SPEAKER_02:

I think it's been mostly positive and not just Kill Team, but also, you know, the other GW adjacent games. So that's exciting because we do want to expand as much as we can on the Kill Team scene. And I think just from that preview that maybe this edition will allow us to have an easier time getting other folks involved in Kill Team. So that's really the most exciting news is just how much more accessible it seems. but yeah how have they what

SPEAKER_03:

How many stores does Alabama play out of? Where are your tournaments? You know, obviously I found you because you were running a tournament in recent history. So where's your local shop? Where are your players at? How big is the group in Alabama that you know of?

SPEAKER_02:

So the local store we play at is Gear Gaming. That's in Hoover, Alabama. And I would say our scene, you know, counting every player, there's probably like 12 to 14-ish players. Consistently, it's more like five, because there's always a different rotation of people that show up every now and then. You know, if it's either because of new games or just new additions coming out, like obviously AOS pulls some players out, and then 10th edition pulled some players out and new ones came in. And that's our core Birmingham, Alabama area. I know there's an area in North Alabama and we have a few players that come to our tournaments and we've gone to theirs. And then South Alabama, there's a couple stores, just one in Dothan and one in Mobile. And I think they're running a tournament there in September. We're also going to run one in September. But I would say those four areas are the main.

SPEAKER_03:

How often do you guys have tournaments? Is it like a monthly thing or a quarterly thing?

SPEAKER_02:

ideally it was a monthly thing but we've had a few we've had a few issues with the weekends not working for like different clusters of players we're like six players to make it this weekend or five and then like the next one other five others but we can never get like a big one and we don't necessarily want to run like a three to five player i mean obviously a three player event doesn't make sense but even five feels you know kind of bad um definitely don't want to have a buy round at a five player event and i found that you know i used to play magic the gathering pretty competitively and the demographic of magic versus warhammer in general is a lot different uh you have magic as young kids usually college age high school they have a lot of spare time not a lot of responsibilities whereas the warhammer group is more definitely you know older with families and It's definitely a lot harder to schedule things. I don't know if that's been your experience in New York or if you've played other games where the demographic is a bit different.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that's generally kind of the same here in Minnesota as well.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think as far as player demographics go, Warhammer tends to skew on the older side. One, probably because we all were kids when Warhammer was kind of popping off when we were younger. It was like we were 14 to 18 playing 4th or 5th edition Warhammer. And then, you know, we stopped playing. And then it feels like there's kind of like this wave of people who are like, oh, what's Warhammer like? And I kind of am expecting Space Marine 2, which looks really cool, to be one of those other inflection points in the near future.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I guess to add to what you said, obviously the buy-in to play Warhammer is pretty high compared to other games, and that definitely affects the demographic.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm hoping that this new edition is going to do a lot of work on at least making that first intro point easier for players. Because I think right now with all the rule books, it just seems insane to tell someone like, oh, it's just one box and like 16 books. So that's not great. So if we can have all the rules online and that's the core experience, then it'll be easy to be like, it's one box. Come play with us. It's fun. And then you can get to the point where people are painting up their guys. and instead of it being a story about some space marines or some vespids that you see on a cinematic trailer it's the story of your vespids in your space marines and that's really i think the part that makes kill team and warhammer and miniature games in general that much more immersive once you're all the way in because it's not just a random story it's not magically gathering where it's the story of these planeswalkers the story of these ones it's it's really your guys you painted them it might be the ultramarines with calgar but it's your squad of ultramarines with calgar so it sounds like the player base is kind of scattered in alabama with a still some work to grow and it sounds like the players are getting a little bit hyped up over kill team 2024 i assume is what we're going to end up calling it because it's the three year on the dot just like the other things do you have any big plans for release events you know it sounds like it's going to be somewhere in the October range? Do you guys have any, are you scheming up any plans in the Alabama area to kind of bring in the newer players?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I would like to, and I probably will, end up running some kind of, not necessarily a tournament, because I think the war tournament also just scares people away a lot. And it's funny, because once people try it and play it, they're like, oh my god, I had the best time. But they just hear the war tournament, and they get kind of turned off or intimidated by it. But maybe setting up some kind of event where it's just a teach-kill team. maybe like a couple Sundays or a Sunday a month or something like that just to get people to show up and even try it again because you never know you might not like it and you might like it they end up showing up again and we can grow the community even more

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we're definitely going. We've got weekly game nights over here, just like casual, like show up and do pickup games. So I'm sure we're going to like, we've got a handful of people that are already doing a great job being community leaders, teaching a lot of players. So like, especially with the solo and co-op mode, like we kind of chatted about at the beginning, I think that's going to be an amazing tool for teaching new players. So we'll just kind of like make sure we have everything on hand to be able to pull that off for new players, learning games, stuff like that. Definitely looking forward to that. The New York Open, it's looking like that might be third edition, probably, unless by October they mean like the very last day.

SPEAKER_03:

Correct. So for anyone who's listening, who's curious what the New York Open is going to be, I am fully dedicated to getting all the rules into my brain and running New York Open 3 on the new edition of Kill Team. Turns out that picking the November-October range has been pretty good for Kill Team because there's generally a big release reasonably around the New York Open, and this year is going to be no stranger to that. I am fully planning to try and run it unless it somehow releases on october 26th in which case maybe we won't but even then i probably would just expect that everybody wants to plan the new edition we'll just do it live and run into all of the rakes and figure it out so for everyone who hasn't gotten your tickets for the new york open you know and you really want to play maybe one of the first couple of tournaments on the new edition in a large at a large scale it'll be there october 26 27th tickets are on sale we'll have links in the podcast description. Be a big tournament pioneer in 3rd edition.

SPEAKER_02:

Is it always that weekend, the last of October?

SPEAKER_03:

This year is going to be the last of October. The last couple of years we did it in the first week of November, and that ended up running into issues with the New York City Marathon. So now we've moved it to the last weekend of October to try to get around that. And here we are. We'll see how it goes. Is it Halloween themed? It won't be Halloween themed. We are in a middle school, so it might be a school theme. We might have our TOs with hall monitor sashes just because it'll be fun.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice. I was wondering, is there usually cut-off with, or the cut-off dates for new rules and stuff, is that enforced by GW, or is that usually a TO decision?

SPEAKER_03:

No, it's always been a TO decision. For my part at running ACO and a couple other small events, I have generally understood the rules quick enough where whatever GW decides to do, I will pick as a standard. So the last year at the height of Melee Summer, when the Chaos Cults had just come out, I was not intending to run them at ACO. But because GW ran the event the week before ACO and did run it with Chaos Cults and Inquisition, I also let them in. and then of course chaos cults took uh i think first third and fourth and fifth or something not too shabby you know chaos cults are very good for all of last year and then we got rid of them and then we played commandos for the better part of you know six months

SPEAKER_01:

What'd you like better? Commando's meta or Colt meta?

SPEAKER_03:

I think ultimately Chaos Cult at the local level were never at the height of their power compared to how they got abused at the World Championships, where people were just staging up with two torments at the beginning of turn two, both of them with a damage mitigation bubble that you just couldn't interact with. So I don't think it ever really got that bad. So I think Commandos felt a little bit more overbearing because one, more players played Commandos and two, Commandos are more obviously powerful. so you get to the synergy points for commandos much faster because turns out when they were at their most powerful three operatives all with guns and dynamite sitting on conceal outside of your deployment was just much harder to interact with than whatever most people played chaos cult says i don't know how it was in alabama when they were at the height of their power and when you were touching them chris Thanks for watching!

SPEAKER_02:

I felt bad because I really enjoyed just the team. Like when I saw the spoilers, I got really excited. Like, oh, I'm going to get just boxes. This box is great. It's got a bunch of sprues for... Those are one of the best value boxes, probably. Oh, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03:

It was a good amount of plastic. You got two cool teams. You got like a whole new way to play.

SPEAKER_02:

And I played on a couple times and I'm like, oh this this team doesn't make any sense. I'm just gonna put it off for now. I did play it at ATC last year and then lost the commandos and the...

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think before the World Championships, that was what everyone thought would be the natural counter. But at the World Championships, it turned out that if you have enough heavy, you can actually just stage all of your Chaos Cultists behind pieces of heavy or forward deploy them by using covert guises and basically pushing up your entire army into a spot where commandos, even with three forward deploys, aren't going to shoot you in turn one. And if you can do that every game, it ended up being, oh, it turns out that Chaos Cults are really good.

SPEAKER_02:

Despite what, three nerves at that point or four? Three.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep, yep. And then, you know, right after World Championships, one more big fat one.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think if you count Errata's and FAQ's, it's like five or six murders. Because back when I played him, you know, get down, Mr. President was also really stupid still.

SPEAKER_03:

A team with almost no equal at the height of their power, that's for sure. I think, you know, of the teams that we talked about today, you know, a little bit of Chaos Cults, a little bit of Commandos, and Novitiates, and Hearth Consolidators. Hopefully, all of them will be super fun in the new edition. If Obscurity is less annoying or other things change, you know, obviously on these really dense boards, Novitiates and Hearth Consolidators probably do okay, right? Just because now the movement on the Hearth Consolidators doesn't matter as much, and novitiates still have all their all their tricks and now the pragodises maybe can actually do move shoot dash back into cover right

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's definitely a possibility. I'm really excited to see how it's going to turn out, for sure. I'll be getting a box. Here's hoping.

SPEAKER_03:

here's hoping yeah here's hoping that the great gun in the cinematic trailer somehow makes an appearance as a piece of terrain eventually because that would be a sweet thing to have as a background

SPEAKER_00:

Or like someone make it as part of your display board or something.

SPEAKER_03:

One of the cool things in that cinematic is I think as the scions are dropping into the loading bay, that's actually just the bullet loading bay of the great gun. All right. Well, you know, we're getting towards the end of the podcast. You know, what are we most excited for with Hive Storm and the new edition?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm kind of excited to see if teams get like streamlined and merged together. Like, I mean, I like as far as sisters go, it'd be cool if there was some hybrid version of like novitiates and regular sisters of battle. And like, if that was an option, that'd be cool. Um, or like green skins and commandos being slammed into one thing. That's super, super customizable. Um, like add some more space Marines into the mix. I don't know. Uh, this is totally just, there's unfounded, but that'd be cool. Yeah. I wouldn't mind. What about you, Chris? What are you excited for?

SPEAKER_02:

I wouldn't mind some kind of shake-up like that, for sure. Because right now, we don't really know how much is changing. The biggest change is that kill stuff, and I guess the scouting stuff is different. But I don't know. As far as what excites me most, I think it's still just the free rules and accessibility. I'm excited that I think a lot of new players are going to start playing Kill Team. And that's the biggest factor for a game to thrive, is having people that play the game.

SPEAKER_03:

What about you, Travis? Yeah, I'm personally excited for a new take on Vespid, getting new models that update a thing that I always wanted as a kid because I fought against Necrons back in the day and I really wish that I could have Strength V AP2 weaponry. But now we're playing Kill Team and I'm really excited to get a stealth suit in the mainline game that actually is a Vespid. So very curious to see how those rules look. And who knows, maybe there will even be some other version of a Tau Kill Team with stealth suits and fire warriors, and that could be very cool as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, honestly, stealth suits being like a valid thing would be extremely cool because they are just vibes.

SPEAKER_03:

The vibes are there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, and I have a few stealths that's already painted from Companion Tournament a few years ago.

SPEAKER_03:

All right, Chris, thanks for coming in, talking a little bit about the Alabama scene. Hopefully your next couple of tournaments go well. And, you know, thanks again for coming on, talking about novitiates and hardcamps. Yeah, thank you guys for having me. And thank you listeners for listening until the end.