Reviewing the first narrative box release for Kill Team!
Welcome to today’s Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team article where I review the Ashes of Faith box set for Kill Team! The first Narrative-focused release for the game! I go over what’s in the box, as well as covering the 2 new Inquisition and Chaos Cult kill teams!
I’ve also done this article as a video you can check out here:
What’s in the Box
Inside the Ashes of Faith box, you get a lot of stuff: the Inquisitorial Agent Kill Team along with 5 Sisters of Silence and 5 Scions, the Chaos Cult Kill Team, Ashes of Faith rulebook, narrative rulebook, building instructions, then narrative cards and stickers as well as game board for the narrative campaign. For £95, it’s a great deal. Especially when you consider that’s the price for all the 23 Chaos Cult models alone.
Narrative Content
As the first narrative release for Kill Team, Ashes of Faith actually has a pretty in-depth campaign system. You get lots of cards split into several decks for both kill teams included in the box. These are divided into: Scheme cards, Conspirator cards, and Ruse cards. You also get Investigate and Persuasion cards too with a giant card sheet to track all your progress. You get (apparently re-usable) stickers you can place on this with your cards to track everything for your campaign.
With the campaign, you have a campaign round with stages 1 to 4 covering each game and then after 6 games you play a final mission called the Ritual. So effectively a campaign lasts 7 games total. Over the course of those 6 prior games, they rack up benefits for each player based on how much territory they control and rewards they reap, buffing them for the final mission.
For each mission, you play in a different territory. You get several of both territories and missions, allowing you have to very varied killzones and games to play on. The territory rules are great as they can also allow you to theme your game boards around them. Overall just really nice.
Kill Teams
Now I’ll briefly go over the 2 kill teams included in the Ashes of Faith box. If you want a more in-depth review I have videos on YouTube for them both.
Inquisitorial Agent Kill Team
I’ve done an in-depth video covering all of the kill team’s rules here:
Inquisitorial Agent kill team are our first look at the Inquisition in the game! They are a kill team consisting of your Interrogator leader, servo skull then either 5 or 10 Inquisitor operatives. If you go with 5, you can then take an ancillary support consisting of 5 to 6 operatives depending on your choice of faction. Inside the box you only get 7 Inquisition models meaning you’ll need 2 boxes etc if you want to run only an Inquisition kill team.
The biggest thing about this kill team is that they can take a roster of 30 and their ancillary support, as well as any Tac Op archetype. Generally you’re going to run only 7 Inquisition models and an ancillary support. This is very interesting as your ancillary support lose all their faction keywords, equipment and abilities (unless printed on their datacards) but they get this faction keyword instead, meaning they can be buffed by your own Inquisition operatives and buff them (so a Vet Guard Comms can give +1 APL to your Interrogator etc).
Operative-wise…your leader is possibly the worst leader in the game? He has some interesting buff/de-buff mechanics but I find the offensive buff works better with the Servo Skull. If the leader at least had +1 to hit on all profiles it would be a little more tolerable but the Interrogator oddly turns out to be likely the weakest operative in your kill team.
Gun Servitor is great. +1APL near any operative and it has a powerful selection of guns. My favourite is the plasma cannon. The multi-melta is nice while the heavy bolter is disappointing but a plasma weapon with blast is just too good to pass up.
Your Pistolier is another great operative. Scoped plasma pistol has a decent infinite range profile along with great close-range profiles. Being able to double-fire both pistols at red range is amazing. Always take this operative. With this, your Gun Servitor and Ancillary Support, your kill team can have 3 sources of plasma!
As for your Sisters of Silence and Tempestus Scions in the Ashes of Faith box…they kinda are just plain. No real special rules or unique operatives, effectively copy/pastes from the Compendium. Scions just go to hitting on 4s. While 5 Sisters of Silence do offer an interesting choice for melee presence, the Scions are just confusing. Kasrkin are straight-up better unless you really want 25mm bases over 28mm. Results in the Inquisition Squad kill team being weaker if you only use what you get in Ashes of Faith.
Chaos Cult Kill Team
I’ve done an in-depth video covering all of the kill team’s rules here:
Chaos Cult Kill Team are our effective second Chaos Cultist kill team, depending on how you want to compare them to Blooded. The kill team consists of 5 Dark Commune and then 10 Devotees which can later mutate into different possessed operatives. With the Ashes of Faith box you get the full kill team, which is great!
The Chaos Cult Kill Team is the largest in the game, starting at 15 operatives. They can also take Seek and Destroy or Infiltration which is a great combination for such a large team currently. Each strategic phase you can mutate a number of Devotees or Mutants equal to the turning point (note it currently doesn’t say once per turning point but this is likely an oversight). So on TP1 you can mutate once, TP2 twice and so on.
An operative the mutates cannot mutate again so no quickly becoming a Terror! You can also mutate a Devotee into a Mutant when they survive a combat they dealt damage in or via your leader doing it as an action. Remember, you still can only have 5 Mutants and 3 Terrors at any one time. When you make your first Mutant, you select a trait that they will all have for the game. When you make your first Terror, you select a second trait that stacks for all your Terrors.
Your Cult Demagogue is your Leader who is incredibly important and is effectively a support/buff leader. Offensively she is not great but that’s not her role. Accursed Benediction is what you use to get your mutations rolling so you have 2 Mutants at Turning Point 1. Then Induce Slaughter and Incite Urgency make her a great force multiplier in TP2 on wards as she hunkers down near the mid-board.
Blessed Blades (you get 2 of them) are interesting combat units. They come with power weapons but hit on 4s. Ideally, they charge into ongoing combats. They can also activate at the same time if within red of each other which is really good at cutting down your activation numbers.
Mutants are your mutated mid-point. They are 7 wounds with a +5 DPR (Damage Prevention Roll). They have decent melee with Relentless but love fighting with supports. Mission actions cost more to do with Mutants so don’t get rid of all your Devotees. They’re pretty good but with how fast you make Mutants, I hope they get changed to a +6 DPR instead of +5 like with Gellerpox Mutants.
Ashes of Faith Overview
Overall Ashes of Faith is an amazing box for Kill Team, especially as Kill Team’s first narrative release. The campaign system is very extensive and fun to play, even if one player loses all their lead-up games, there’s still a chance they can win in the end. It will just be extremely hard to. The kill teams inside are also both very interesting. Well-balanced yet still pretty strong. Chaos have the edge but the Inquisition do really well once you factor in ancillary supports from other kill teams outside the box.
One major downside with the Inquisition is a lot of the operatives share the same body, so 2 operatives are split between a single model. Representing the models you want is easy enough via conversions but I just built the other 4 operatives (Questkeeper, Enlightener, Hexorcist, and Penal Leggionnaire) with the Necromunda Hive Scum box set. Does the job pretty well.
Pros:
- Great narrative campaign and content for Kill Team
- 2 strong, balanced and thematic kill teams in the box
- No terrain with lots of models inside for the price
Cons:
- Inquisition are a little limited from the box, either needing another sprue or better ancillary supports not included in the box
- Sisters of Silence and Scions feel a little too bland
So would I recommend this box? Yes if you can actually find it somewhere that isn’t a scalper (sigh). As a single buy box, Ashes of Faith is Great. Amazing narrative content with lots of value from the models alone. £95 is a great price point. I actually like that there is no terrain in the box and instead that has been used to give us more miniatures as well as lots of card stock for the campaign elements. Both kill teams in the box are great additions to the game too.
If you want to pick up Warhammer 40,000 Kill Ashes of Faith you can pre-order it directly from the Games Workshop website or use my affiliate link at Element Games to net you a 25% to 15% discount at no additional cost to yourself while helping to support me and my work.
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That’s pretty much it from me. So until next time, no matter how many times you lose faith, remember there’s always a chance to win via your beliefs as long as you can roll a crit!
Can You Roll A Crit? 