Review the new Season 3 for Kill Team!
Welcome to today’s Warhammer 40000 Kill Team video where I cover the new start of Season 3 with Kill Team Salvation and the Bheta-Decmia Terrain Box! I go over everything in each box in-depth from the kill teams, new card accessories, terrains and rules! 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 Boxes?
Inside the Salvation box, you get tons of content: the Kill Team Salvation rulebook, 2 sprues of 5 Striking Scorpions and Scouts, the Bheta-Decima terrain accessories, Tac Ops and rules cards for both kill teams, transfers, card tokens and datacards for each operative!
The new cards are super useful, ranging from equipment, ploys and Tac ops. They’re all tarot card sized so will fit any appropriate card sleeves and deck box. The operative cards are about A6, almost a bit too large, but are great to finally have. I assume these are box-exclusive and won’t be available when these kill teams are eventually broken down for individual release.
Killzone Bheta-Decima is the new terrain for season 3 of Kill Team. This is the new Mechanicum-themed terrain and is actually compatible with the previously released Mechanicum terrain and Necromunda terrain, unlike prior Kill Team terrain sets. The flat platforms can be built with hatches while the tower has a new top to fit in with the new terrain.
The pillars plug into the floors and can stack to double height, although this is more applicable for more terrain sets and scaling with other game systems. I’ve done this myself, as it makes transporting, storing, and painting the terrain much easier.You also get 9 objective markers but these are pretty much for visual looks only as they have no gameplay use for Kill Team.
Inside the box you also get a new gameboard. This board is effectively the same size as season 1 gameboards, unlike the previous season’s board for Into the Dark which had its own unique dimensions. The board is two-sided, one side is a big rectangle with a smaller inner rectangle representing the hazardous area, while the other side has the hazardous area split into two halves with a small area of land in the middle.
Kill Teams
Inside the Kill Team Salvation box you get both the Scout Squad Kill Team and Blades of Khaine Kill Team. I’ll cover both briefly here but I go more in-depth via videos for each appropriate kill team.
Scout Squad
The Scout Squad are a Kill Team of 9 Operatives with access to Recon and Infiltration. Their faction Tac Ops are all about board control and getting early kills, effectively representing their role on the battlefield. Their unique ability is Forward Scouting, which are resolved after the setup operatives step. You get to 5 points to spend on each ability as per the brackets allows for said ability. These are all varyingly powerful and require observation on your opponent’s positioning and battlefield setup to get maximum usage out of.
Scouts have a base stats of 2APL, 4+ save and 10 wounds. It makes them quite tanky. Your leader is 3APL as he is a full Space Marine, and has a nice ability that grants a friendly operative he is visible to when he activates to give them +1 APL. He also is your best reliable melee fighter with the Chainsword. Your Scout Hunter is a mobile threat that excels when he can pull off a grapnel assault as he basically goes to 5/5 damage in close combat.
Otherwise your general Scouts can take either a boltgun, bolt pistol and combat knife or a shotgun. I actually prefer running 2 boltguns and a melee scout but having a balance of all 3 or 3 shotguns can work too. I just prefer having more long range threat with the scouts.
Overall the Scout Squad reward good positional and battlefield observance, requiring good usage of their faction abilities to secure you the win early and secure board dominance.
Blades of Khaine
The Blades of Khaine are a weird fusion team of the following Aeldari Craftworld Aspect Warriors: Striking Scorpions, Dire Avengers, and Howling Banshees. The kill team consists of an Exarch and 7 Aspect Warriors. Tac Ops reflect this team working as a combined force working towards a similar goal or a team of a singular Aspect. Each Aspect Warrior also has an Aspect Power you can use once per turning point during an activation for the applicable operative, these are extra powerful abilities that give you lots of flexibility and tools during your games.
Operative statlines are a bit…unique for the typical Craftworlds player. Everyone has 8 wounds and a 4+ save with 3APL while Exarchs have 9 wounds with a 3+ save. Striking Scorpions have the excellent Mandiblasters which trigger every time they perform a fight action, doing 2 mortal wounds to the target each time. This lets the Scorpions quickly kill varying types of enemy operatives. Howling Banshees have something similar but instead of doing mortal wounds, instead give -1 to hit in close combat. Dire Avengers keep their compendium ability of overwatching at no penalty although for some reason have lost balanced from their Shuriken Catapults.
Overall the statlines are good but it feels like gameplay balance was prioritised over narrative. For example, Striking Scorpions have always had a 3+ save so it’s very strange to see them locked into a 4+ save. Melee Aspect Warriors only being 4 attacks too is very strange as it results in weird scenarios where other dedicated melee operatives out-fight them, it feels weird for Striking Scorpions and Howling Banshees being 4 attacks instead of 5. Dire Avengers being nerfed vs their compendium counterparts is also very strange.
Despite this gripes as a long time Eldar player, the Blades of Khaine are a fun and flexible kill team with lots of tricks and paths to ensure victory.
Narrative Rules
Inside the Salvation rulebook you get more narrative rules for your narrative campaigns and games for Kill Team. You get a huge map for your campaigns as well as expanded narrative rules representing the new season and terrain. It’s all quite comprehensive and a great continuing expansions we’ve been receiving for the narrative side of Kill Team.
Terrain Rules
For Bheta-Decima, the terrain rules are found in the Salvation rulebook but these will also be available online on Warhammer Community when they are released after pre-order. Gantries are the main terrain you’ll see as you get 8 in the box. These are basically more flexible vantage points, still costing 2 white to climb but being more flexible to move up and around. You also get an upgraded ferratonic furnace which is scalable from the bottom of its base and has 4 barricades effectively providing light cover.
Hazardous Areas is the new rule introduced for this killzone. If shooting across the ground and your target is more than 2 white away, they count as being obscured. While great on paper, teams that ignore obscuring become a little too powerful. A simple fix is you are not visible instead of being obscured. Note, the hazardous area has no effect when shooting from above or across gantries, we’re back in 3D land after all!
Other rules are that gantries automatically obscure the target if in the way and that barricades can be setup upon them following the normal range rules for placement. This just gives you more cover and means you aren’t dependent on the fortify option in scouting to stay safe. Hazardous Areas cannot be entered at any time too, although this only applies to operatives and not, oddly, barricades. This means you can place barricades overlapping or even deeply in the hazardous area! Everything barricade floats, at least in this new killzone it seems.
The biggest problem is the reliance of jump tests. Jump tests work via rolling a d6 as per the core rules. On a 2+, you function normally. On a 1, which cannot be re-rolled, you end up stuck in place with all remaining movement lost. This needs an urgent fix as having entire game plans ruined due to rolling a 1 is…not fun to say the least. My change is just spend a CP if you roll a 1 to auto-pass as it can be incredibly frustrating to curtail your movement and gameplans due to a single d6 roll.
You also get 9 new critical operation missions using the Bheta-Decima terrain and terrain found in the Salvation box. No narrative missions this time. Once again, when these items go on sale after pre-order, Games Workshop have stated on Warhammer Community that we will be getting a free PDF update to combine these with Crit/Approved Ops so these missions may not be used much at all once that drops for us all.
Overall most of the missions are alright, they use the terrain well to provide new and interesting challenge. Out of all the book missions over the years, they’re the best one. There is…one quite bad mission but the other 8 are all very solid and fun to play.
Season 3 Overview
Overall, Kill Team Salvation and Bheta-Decima are interesting new additions to Kill Team and a great start to Season 3. While some people are upset at the boxes being split up, it does help newer players as well as those buying all the boxes. Salvation is £80 while Bheta-Decima is £75, which is £5 cheaper than Octarius was on its own for the terrain release as well as £15 cheaper than the standalone Into the Dark terrain box. This adds up to about a £45 saving if you buy Bheta-Decima, Salvation and the (presumably) 3 following Kill Team boxes.
Pros:
- Split boxes making it easier for newer players as well as those wanting either boxes seperately
- Fun new terrain that adds great verticality to Kill Team games
- Terrain is easy to paint, store and build as well as being compatible with other Games Workshop terrain ranges
- 10 models of each kill team effectively giving all the new models you need while also being great plastic updates
- Thematic and balanced rules for each kill team
- Card accessories and tokens which make rules referencing and tracking abilities quick and easy
Cons:
- If buying only the terrain and just Salvation, with no other releases for the season, then technically it is a more expensive buy-in
- Blades of Khaine has no Dire Avengers or Howling Banshees so it becomes quite expensive to build a fully competitive Kill Team
- Hazardous Area rules need some slight refinements just to make the overall experience more balanced (see: jump tests, they need an immediate change/errata)
- If the PDF update requires the terrain accessories, which aren’t sold with the Bheta-Decima terrain, to be used then it kinda forces players to buy the terrain and team boxes together.
In summary, would I recommend both Kill Team Salvation and the Bheta-Decima killzone? Yes! If I hadn’t received them as review copies, I would have bought both. Despite being apprehensive at first, after reading the rules and playing a lot of games with the new terrain, it’s lots of fun and a great change from the time we’ve spent in 2D land with Into the Dark. It’ll be even better if we get some rules adjustments for stuff like obscuring etc as well as a certain flying team being brought in-line.
As for the 2 new kill teams, both the Scout Squad and Blades of Khaine are lots of fun, thematic while also being decently strong. They’re safely in the mid-line for power, although both teams could use some minor buffs to match them with the other kill teams released currently. Scouts just need in-built suspensor systems for their 2 heavy weapons and the leader’s ability to not need visibility. Blades of Khaine need Striking Scorpion and Howling Banshees at 5 attacks with Dire Avengers regaining balanced on their Shuriken Catapults. Despite all this, these two new kill teams are really fun and actually excel quite well at playing in the new environment as well as on ITD and open killzones.
Once again, the addition of cards and tokens is amazing. This was something sorely needed since kill team originally release so its great to finally have physical cards of operatives stats, ploys, equipment and Tac Ops. Especially as all of them, sans operative datacards, are tarot sized.
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That’s pretty much it from me. So until next time, no matter what happens in the high seas of Kill Team Salvation and Bheta-Decima, remember there’s always a chance to win that clutch jump test as long as you can roll a crit!
Can You Roll A Crit? 