Warhammer 40,000 is named aptly after the number of different games and systems supported by model producing giant Games Workshop. There are several different branches of Warhammer lore and settings. The Horus Heresy, Age of Sigmar, The Old World. The most popular though is Warhammer 40,000, also known as 40K. Each setting contains multiple games and play formats.
Traditional Warhammer, full-scale matched play, is likely the one you’ve seen through a shop window. Two players stood at opposite ends of a table, buckling under the weight of 100 plastic models, throwing handfuls of dice large enough to make a casino blush.
Kill Team on the other hand, is a deliberately small scale, skirmish affair. Each player, of which there are usually two, chooses a semi-predetermined team of 6-12 models and fights over a mere 3 objectives.
It’s this low model and table space requirement that makes Kill Team appealling, and has led to success great enough that it’s now on its 3rd major edition.
Who is Kill Team for?
Whether you’re a long-term fan of Warhammer or you’ve never painted a model, Kill Team unites all under one banner:
People who want to play Warhammer but don’t want to spend the money or time painting 50 models for each army. You will still be building and painting a minimum of 6 models, and perhaps a handful of terrain, if you have never done this before: your FLGS or Friendly-Online-Boardgame-Retailer will help you get started with this.
How do I get into Kill Team?
While the game can be made to work with a handful of models and some cut up cereal boxes for terrain, you will be best buying a starter set. In late 2025 you’ve got 2 options, and both of these are best-afforded by splitting them with a friend;
– The budget-friendly Starter Set
– The newest boxed set with proper terrain. Currently this is Tomb World
Whichever you opt for, you will get 2 teams and some terrain to shoot over. If you want to play a different team, such as the Hernkyn Yaegirs: You will need to pick up that team’s box and assemble them.
All team and core rules are available in the Kill Team app from Games Workshop. This is important because there are quarterly balance updates and tweaks.
It should be mentioned that there are thirty-something teams supported by Games Workshop and they plan a rotation to remove some from the supported updates, so it’s worth a search of “classified teams” to inform the decision.
How do I play Kill Team?
Once you’ve got 2 people with a painted team, some terrain and a handful of 6-sided dice: You are ready to begin a game of Kill Team.
You will start by choosing your operatives to play with, the models you can choose are listed on team datacards (included in some boxes) or failing that, the app.
Then, once again with cards or the app, choose a mission and terrain layout. These are relatively straightforward, missions tend to be some variants of point holding or flag capturing and layouts are there to make sure you can’t shoot straight across the board.
Get everything set up and you will eventually have a ‘Kill zone’.
The game takes place over 4 rounds, named Turning Points, during a turning point each of your models will perform 1 ‘activation’. During that activation you will choose your operatives ‘order’ (Are they standing up ready to shoot, or skulking around to hide) then take as many actions as it has ‘APL’. Actions can be moving the distance indicated by its MOVE stat, capturing an objective marker or, and this is where the fun begins, shooting an enemy operative.
Shooting is a relatively straightforward affair but it really is riveting. Once it’s been determined if an enemy operative is a valid target (A less straightforward proposition, more on this later) you will roll as many dice as your chosen gun’s ATK stat, with every result of the HIT stat or higher counting as a hit. Your opponent will then roll 3 dice, with results meeting their SAVE stat or higher blocking any of your successful hits. 6s are always criticals, critical shots must be blocked by critical saves or 2 normal saves. All unblocked hits will deal the first number of the gun’s DMG stat (Or the second number in the case of a crit).
This DMG is removed from a model’s WOUNDS.
This simple system of D6s generates a lot of oohs and ahhs and is absolute box office for everyone at the table. Between someone missing their “sure thing 5 dice on 3s” weapon or a defender getting a handful of 6s to completely nullify a previously-guaranteed death there is always something to gasp about.
You will notice on the above datacard that the weapons have ‘WR’ (Weapon Rules) which are keywords that have various effects when using that weapon. These can vary from re-roll opportunities, to instant effects upon rolling a 6 to the “Piercing 1” listed above which will remove one of the target’s SAVE dice before they are rolled. These are simple and add to the drama.
Between the shooting and fighting (melee combat, similar to shooting but you take it in turns to choose between using your dice to hit, or remove one of your opponents dice), you will be attempting to complete the given mission. These are usually straightforward control of a point but may add nuance like increased value to the point in your opponent’s half of the board.
The final score is determined by a total of the three “Ops”, Critical, Tactical and Kill. Critical is the mission, Tactical is a personal mission chosen in secret, and Kill is a simple table on the proportion of your opponents squad that you’ve incapacitated
What’s bad?
Bloat
Kill Team is incredibly bloated. You will do each of the following before any game can start.
– Choose your team of operatives
– Roll for “initiative” (Who makes selections first)
– Choose 4 pieces of equipment, from the list of 11 generic and 4 faction-specific.
– Secretly select a Tactical Op from the 6 available to your faction.
– Secretly choose a “Primary Op”, this is a 50% points boost to one of Critical, Tactical or Kill.
– Place your squad on the map, alternating between players dropping ⅓ of the team at a time.
– Choose 1 of 3 “Scouting” options, these are minor benefits like a short move or free ability. These have a rock-paper-scissors effect that will determine who plays first.
In addition to these set-up steps that are the same for all teams, each team has an excessive list of special abilities. These aren’t just the aforementioned Weapon Rule keywords, these are often multi-paragraph powers with their own pools of resources.
A good example is the Novitiate’s Faith mechanic. Each round they gain a number of points equal to half the surviving team members, these points can be spent on one of 3 effects that each manipulate rolled dice in different ways.
On top of these team-wide effects, each team tends to have a number of “specialist” operatives that have their own passive or activated abilities. Sometimes as many as 5 on a single operative.
Then on top of that, each team has 8 “ploys” that are activated abilities costing a “Command Point”, of which you generally get 7 per game.
All of this combined makes the game very hard to teach and learn, there’s simply too much going on, and much of it is unnecessary.
Rules Confusion
The basic rules of the game are simple but due to the nature of playing with models and uneven terrain, there are a thousand things that need defining before play. Stuff like “Can I shoot through this window?” or “Can this be climbed?”. And that’s without getting into the headache of determining Line of Sight. “Can the head of this operative see any part of that operative’s model?”. This inevitably causes arguing over whether it matters that the tip of their gun barrel may be visible.
I mentioned in the “How do I get into” section that a Starter Kit contains most of what you need. This is generally true but you will often still be relying on the app to get rules updates and balance patches, rendering any cards or books you’ve purchased obsolete. There’s also important FAQ in these rules addendums that clear up ambiguity present in the original rules.
The other confusion will come from tracking everything. There are helpful third-party sites and tools for doing this but they are not official or sanctioned, and Games Workshop have even gone as far as to DMCA some of them to shut them down. Ultimately you will likely need a few sheets of paper or a spreadsheet on the side to track various effects, numbers of points (Such as the aforementioned faith) or the remaining Wounds of each operative.
Conclusion
If you are fine with some setup and rules headaches, there is a lot to love in Kill Team, and it’s a way to get into Warhammer that doesn’t cost thousands.
