Reviewing the latest annual book for Kill Team!
Welcome to today’s Warhammer 40000 Kill Team article where I go over the new Kill Team Annual 2023! I cover this new book in-depth for all it’s content as well some of the new stuff it brings along! Thanks goes to Games Workshop for providing this to review for free. As always, I aim to be honest, impartial and constructively critical.
I’ve also done this article as a video you can check out here:
What’s In The Book?
Inside this book you get the rules for all the 10 kill teams from Season 2: Imperial Navy Breacher Kill Team, Farstalker Kinband Kill Team, Kasrkin Kill Team, Hierotek Circle Kill Team, Hand of the Archon Kill Team, Exaction Squad Kill Team, Hearthkyn Salvager Kill Team, Fellgor Ravager Kill Team, Inquisitorial Agent Kill Team, and Chaos Cult Kill Team. Unfortunately all these rules are out-of-date with 9 out of 10 teams being changed in balance dataslates over the last 12 months whereas Hand of the Archon have been changed via a post-release errata. Getting no new teams is unfortunate, but all these teams being incorrect at print makes it a hard pill to swallow.
You also get all 9 competitive missions found in the Gallowdark books (which have been super-ceded by the online Crit Ops update) as well as all the narrative missions from every season 2 book. This is great, especially for narrative players who have access to all the terrain upgrade sprues.
The foldouts return, which really help a lot when setting up Gallowdark boards. The front page has a key for all normal terrain while the back foldout page has all the information for the narrative terrain found in each box.
You also get a new expanded campaign system for Gallowdark narrative play which is pretty neat. This makes narratives games even more interesting, although the use of generic playing card icons is kinda disappointing to see yet oddly fitting thanks to the prior shapes. The Gallowdark Expedition is a greater way to explore Into the Dark narrative. You get more rules and specialisms to add to your operatives as well as more places to explore the deeper you go in. A really great addition.
Compared to the 2022 Annual
On its own, the 2023 Annual isn’t too bad but when compared to the 2022 Annual, things get worse. While the 2022 version did re-print all the White Dwarf teams (with some being out-of-date due to balance changes), this was the first place to get them in print form outside of buying the White Dwarfs. We also got 2 brand new kill teams with the Gellerpox Infected and Elucidian Starstriders for both models and rules. Not only this, but the 2022 Annual came with lots more new narrative and multiplayer game modes giving players far more ways to explore Kill Team.
Kill Team Annual 2023 Overview
The Kill Team Annual 2023 is a really weird product. If this was the standardised format for what an annual would be then it would be a lot more tolerable, but it’s a huge miss compared to the 2022 Annual. If we had at least a digital version that you could buy with up-to-date rules and wordings, then I’d love this product. As it stands, the Kill Team Annual 2023 is a really hard buy. It’s great for narrative players who want all the rules in a single place. Players who didn’t buy the season 2 boxes will also probably like this but all the kill team rules being out of date make that even a hard decision.
I can totally get behind the idea of this being the main format of annuals going forwards: collating all the kill teams and killzones from a single season in one book. We just really need an up-to-date digital release too, although this is something Kill Team needs in general.
Pros:
- Collates all the season 2 kill teams and rules in one place
- New narrative campaign rules for Gallowdark campaigns
Cons:
- All the kill teams included in the book have out of date rules
- Mostly all reprinted content, very little new additions
- No digital version
So would I recommend this? If you’ve been buying all the previous season 2 boxes then you have no need for this. Narrative players may want this for the new campaign system and collation of all the narrative missions in one place. New players or players who didn’t buy into the season 2 boxes will find this useful as long as they are aware that all the included kill teams have old rules and that you’ll need to download the free erratas and balance dataslates on Warhammer Community to get the correct information.
If you want to pick up the Kill Team Annual 2023 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.
Check out my Discord as well as my Patreon too if you want to give me some more support!
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? 