My First Game: Week of Kill Team

 My first in-person game with real models, to be precise.

Here you can see the hated foe has been spotted. I was quite pleased to be assigned the table with fully painted and custom terrain, since some of the others were unprimed grey plastic. From what I overheard, painting the Gallowdark set is a rather daunting proposition. I certainly would be wary to try. It is not impossible that my opponent and I were given the table because both of our teams were painted while the loaned teams for newcomers were not. Imagining that to be so somewhat justifies the obscene hours put into getting my team readied.

Being severely tired and also focused on not taking too long with my activations, I only took a few pictures. None of them were of pivotal events in the game, save the last. I tried initially to deploy behind cover, but quickly ran several units out to be unceremoniously shot down. In my rush to paint the team I had not actually read the rules aside from those for team composition, but Kill Team proved about the same complexity as Firelock 198X. Granted, that is the only other wargame I have played, but both do rely more heavily on keywords and a quick time-to-kill compared with battle reports and rulebooks from other games I have looked at.

My opponent was playing his second-ever game and had also almost-but-not-quite finished painting his team. He used the popular "slapchop" method, which I think worked quite well for his figures even if I personally prefer to avoid contrast paints. I wish I could have captured some of the melee bouts, as my Sicarians and his Necrons made quite a dynamic scene with their poses amidst the terrain.

After two initial losses on my end, we began trading kills. Necrons are able to revive, while Cyborgized Humans are not, so after a few turns I was whittled down to a single Skitarii. Despite this, I had managed to hold the midpoint for a turn while harassing the sidelines with my Sicarians, so I had a one-point lead. Unfortunately for me, Necron revival tokens count for objective control so after sacrificing my last Sicarian to clear off his deployment objective I found that he still held it if just barely. In the last turn he took the midpoint, bringing our points to equal. He graciously offered a tie, even though he had killed more units overall. I accepted.

Here is a picture of the last Skitarii, who was also the first painted, hunkering down by my deployment objective. The game took about two hours, not counting setup and emergency last-minute purity seal painting in the store. Next time I hope to print out relevant rules and perhaps write down some notes, since Skitarii rangers are able to freely move out of cover with a command point during the strategy phase, fire with a bonus for not moving first during their activation, and then dart back out of sight. Tactics like that were lost on my painting-addled mind. Of special interest for the future is the potential of running Kill Team from my own house for friends who are adverse to miniature spending. The size of the board and amount of terrain needed was certainly nothing to laugh at, but also much more achievable in my mind once viewed in-person.

But, that will require another team to be painted. Perhaps even two. The prospect frightens and excites me in equal measure.