Mördermannschaft

After reading the kill team rules from battle missions and thinking about preparing a guard list, I wanted to do something to highlight how badly written the mission rules are. I'm not one of those guys who will bad mouth GW up and down constantly. Many of the decisions they've made lately and material they've released is, in fact, very high quality-better than ever, even. That being said, though, I'm becoming increasingly unexcited about all of the games supplements being released. Apocalypse is fun every once in a while, but doesn't give the return on time invested that I'd like to see. Cities of death is barely relevant as most of the rules there have been incorporated into the main rules. So you get stratagems and new missions. Still fun, but a little meh. Planetstrike is just plain awful. It is so strongly balanced in favor of the defender that it isn't fun to attack or defend. Although I have yet to use it, Battle Missions doesn't look much better, either. Most of the missions seem to be skewed heavily to one side. If I showed up for a tournament and found out that those scenarios were being used, I would probably go back home. Soon we'll be getting spearhead, promising lots of vehicular combat and mechanized armies. I already play that game. It's called fucking 5th edition.

Anyway, back to kill teams. This thing is very poorly thought out. When trying to make a list of my own more questions came up than answers. If each man is a unit on his own, how does the psyker battle squad perform, can transports carry more than 1 person, blah blah blah? You get the idea here.

The balance is all sorts of out of whack too. MEQ armies gain huge advantages from getting to give 3 team members USR. Here is my terminator with FNP. Now compare that to giving a guardsman the same. Doesn't seem fair, does it?

Most English speaking sites aren't giving too much lip service to this (or any) mission in the new book, so I had to go all the way to Germany(well and Ireland as well) to find somebody playing this mission. I'll translate the relevant parts of this thread for you which will highlight some of my frustrations with Kill Teams.

Crazy_Irish-

You may know me from such films as...
Oh, that started wrong.

Some of you already know me from Warseer, but others may not. The
time has come to collect tactics/army lists for the Kill Team special mission
from the new W40k supplement "Battle Missions."

I'll begin with a little 200 point IG Veteran troupe, soon to be known as
"a lorry load of volunteers"

Veteran squad: Heavy Bolter (weapons specialist)~so not good against vehicles and pointless to shoot at a single infantryman, flamer (move through
cover), grenade launcher, plasma gun~if you really must take plasma, maybe this dude needs the fucking FNP, veteran sgt (feel no pain power fist),
chimera (heavy bolter, heavy bolter, storm bolter, dozer blade)~more HBs, what the fuck. Would rather see ML and spend excess points elsewhere- 195
points.

As you can see, as IG normally do, shoot lots of guns and get the PF
Sgt in CC when necessary.

Now you

Dragon_King-

@Crazy: How do you rule on vehicles, can only one man get in?
In my group we'll probably take the same restrictions as the old Kill
Teams-rules. No vehicles, that'll help...

Crazy_Irish-

We probably won't allow BCM(? not sure what this abbreviation stands for, definitely not body cell mass...), but will allow vehicles. Because you can only put 1 model
inside.

Dragon_King-

I was thinking the following:
No vehicles with armor over 32 (Front+side+rear)
No model with over 2+ save/3+ ward
No model with over 2 wounds
No more than 20 models (it should be specialist commandos, not "I flood the
board with recruits and grotz)
Maximum 1 infantryman with heavy weapon
Maximum 1 infantryman with a flamer weapon
Maximum of 1 vehicle

Too heavily restricted?

I would experiment with playing a few truescale marines, and 6 grey
knights, with a justicar and psibolter. I mostly play against IG, so would
be outnumbered 3-5 to 1.

Uebergefreiter-

Sounds sensible to me. Maybe 20 models is too little (EG: 20 standard
guardsmen = 100 points). Closer to 30 would be better.

To the list from the crazy Irishman:
Looks good. But, the fist on the sergeant looks a little funny...I
never buy them, not even for kill team.

The rest of the thread goes into some specifics about army lists that people are planning on using. Not very exciting, and you should be able to pick up on it without speaking German.

So a couple of points that are raised here- the system is fucked and the players are not happy with it. They may not be saying it directly, but look at how they're forcing extra restrictions on the game to try and balance it. Probably wouldn't do that to a system that you like would you? Thanks GW for taking another $25 on a book that I won't be using. I think I just lost my boner for 5th ed kill teams. Maybe it's time to bust Necromunda back out to satiate my skirmish bloodlust.