Reviewing the missions in Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team!
Greetings and welcome to an article for Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team where I review and rate each mission for the game from best to worst. Read on for my recommendations to play and what missions to avoid, useful for players and TOs alike!
I’ve also done this article as a YouTube video which is more in-depth that you can check out here:
How I’m Rating the Missions
It’s a fairly simple mission rating comprised of 3 parts. Best missions are those which I feel offer a good test of player skill while utilising the mechanics of the game to their best. Okay missions have good and bad points but are generally fine to use. Worst missions are those I’d advise to avoid due to their flawed nature.
The missions featured will be those found for matched play as pictured above.
Best Missions
Loot and Salvage is a great mission which rewards aggressive play as you have to spend AP to control points, with each limited to 3. The main tactic for this mission is to actually try and claim one of the three closest primary obectives in your opponent’s half so you gain more on the primary than they do. It also rewards Group Activation 2 operatives who shine on this mission via their ability to claim two objectives via a single activation. Loot and Salvage can be a little broken with kill teams that can forward deploy but this mission exemplifies the qualities of the Kill Team game.
Awaken the Data-Spirits is another 6 objective mission but you don’t need to hold all the objectives to win. The Uplink objectives are worth VP based on how many appropriate Firewall objectives have been disconnected. This results in a mind game between players on who Disconnect Firewall first and who controls the Uplink objectives. There’s no point burning the Firewall objectives first if your opponent then controls the Uplink objectives. It’s a really interesting mission that forces smart usage of AP and objective control for really tense and fun games of Kill Team.
Escalating Hostilities is also a 6 objective mission (notice the theme?) and also probably my favourite mission in Kill Team. Turning point 1 gives you 6 objectives, the start of turning point 2 changes it to 4, then from turning point 3 on wards there are only 2 central objectives. While there is no AP mechanic for controlling the objectives, this slow advance towards the center of the board rewards balanced combat and shooting kill teams as eventually you’ll have to fight it out in the middle for primary supremacy. Really fun and is great for pretty much every kill team to play.
Secure Archeotech is my final best pick. This 6 objective missions revolves around spending 1 AP for Disengage Tech and THEN paying 1 AP to use the pick up action on that objective. You gain 1 VP for Disengaging and gain 2 VP at the end of the game for holding an objective via pick up. This mission is the only one that lets you use the pick up action on an objective. Disengaging doesn’t matter too much, the real goal is to control objectives at the end of the game. Once again this punishes people who rush onto objectives to immediately disengage them as then your opponent has the chance to clear that objective and now pick up that objective themselves. Encourages smart play and mind games until the end of the game. You can even do stuff like claim your closest objective and run away carrying it until the end of the game so it is unreachable from the opponent but they can also do the same to you.
Okay Missions
Seize Ground is your kind of standard mission. 6 objectives which are controlled at the end of a turning point and not lost control of until an enemy comes to claim it, allowing you to advance away from them. However, one flaw of the mission is it can lead to stalemates as it’s difficult to max out the primary, which isn’t really that bad but just something to be aware of. Outside of that, Seize Ground is fine and balanced.
Domination is a good but deeply flawed mission. It has 5 objectives that you claim via an AP and control until your opponent uses Claim Ground on that objective. You gain 1 VP for controlling 2 objectives, 1 VP for controlling more than the opponent, and 1 VP for each of your opponent’s objectives you control which makes maxing out the primary quite difficult. All of this is fine however, the biggest problem with the mission is the 9 inch drop zones. Having drop zones this big allows melee teams to easily advance and makes some Tac Ops really easy but the biggest problem is for TOs as you basically end up putting Vantage Points in drop zones (which is always a bad idea). The best work around I’ve seen is TOs deploying Vantage Points so that the defensible light cover parts are outside the drop zone. Apart from the drop zone mission, Domination is still a good mission to play.
Duel of Wits is a 5 objective mission. 2 of the 3 central objectives are made to be priority objectives by each player each turning point. Each priority objective can then have the Gambit action performed on them to give you 1 VP AND 1 CP! Then the player who controls the most objectives gains 2 VP. So this mission is hard to max out but becomes a little worrying with bespoke kill teams who love being able to get more CP. If the additional CP wasn’t here, I think the mission would be better as compendium teams really feel the pain. Otherwise it’s an okay and interesting mission to play in Kill Team.
Worst Missions
Consecration is a 5 objective mission with quartered drop zones. Each objective lets you do the Consecrate Ground action once per turn, giving the operative who does it +1 APL AND +1 defence. The APL only counts for the turn and determines who controls the objective. The biggest problem with this mission is the 3 central objectives are 5 inches apart meaning if you have a 32mm base or larger, you can contest AND control 2 objectives at once if you’re in the middle of one of the 3 central objectives (such as between the bottom and middle objective or the top and middle objective. While you won’t be able to Consecrate 2 objectives with 1 operative, you can consecrate a single objective then move in-between both with your boosted APL to ensure your opponent cannot Consecrate the unclaimed objective. This is why I highly recommend not playing this mission, just too abusable.
Master the Terminals may be the worst mission in Kill Team. It is only 4 objectives and, starting with the attacker, players choose a number between 1 to 4 for each objective and depending on that number, the corresponding objective turns off for that turning point. You spend 1 AP with Divert Power to claim that objective too. The problems with this mission are two-fold. First, it highly favours the attacker will always make objective 1 the closet to the defender’s drop and, secondly, it makes the issue with symmetrical terrain even more problematic as the defender is at a double disadvantage. Kill Teams with advance deployment options have more work-around for this mission but Master the Terminals is deeply flawed and unbalanced. An additional 5th central objective or not being able to turn off objectives during turning point 1 that are closest to drop zones would be a big help. My advice is to avoid using this mission as a TO.
Kill Team Mission Overview
So there you have it, my (kinda) brief review of each mission in Kill Team. While the Worst missions are stuff I advise not playing, they’re fine for once in a blue moon if you’re doing regular tournaments (such as using the worst missions once every 6 to 12 months etc) as only playing the best missions all the time would get boring. Still the best missions are ones I highly recommend and find really fun with the okay missions just slightly behind. Overall I find the spread of missions really fun for Kill Team although I would have liked to seen more missions that utilise the pick up action.
Until next time, no matter how many objectives you control, it still won’t help you roll a crit!
Can You Roll A Crit? 