Loyal readers will remember I thought Kill Team or skirmish scale games were the future, especially for older dudes, with bad eyesight and an extensive painted miniature collection. Alas despite buying two versions of this game, I’ve yet to play it. Today I got a text inviting me to play Kill Team on Tuesday.
So of course I sprung into action, after confessing I don’t know the rules. Apparently there is a three page PDF version, but then you need to choose a Kill Team and there is currently a PDF per official bespoke Kill Team box. Two new Kill Teams, two popular ones are not out for the newest version of the game. There is going to be a box set featuring the Heroes of the Death Guard versus the Heroes of the Ultramarines. I think this inspired Bill to finally break down and invite me again to play “Warhams” as he calls it.
In Bill’s defence he has invited me to play several times, but work has been busy and my back has been killing me. I really must commit to rehabbing it and going to physio more. I’m also supposed to take a course for work, so my time for gaming or painting is going to be limited until well into the first quarter of 2025.
Legionaries Kill Team
I’m not sure when Chaos Space Marines became “Legionaries”, technically only those that existed at the time of the twenty space marine legions are Legionaries or is anyone who has been recruited into one of the Chaos Space Marines a Legionaries? Regardless, loyal readers may remember I planned to switch to playing Chaos Space Marines rather than Death Guard, both because they have a 10th Edition Codex and I can actually field more models using that rule set.
So when Bill invited me to play Kill Team, the obvious choice was to play at least my first game as the Legionaries Kill Team, the veteran Chaos Space Marines. Chaos Space Marine veterans must worship a Chaos God, however they can choose to pledge themselves to Chaos Undivided as well. In the main game I obviously plan to be mostly Nurgle, but I want to use models I’ve collected and painted that are devoted to other Chaos Gods, so for Kill Team, I decided to go 100% Undivided and use models from my other home brew Chaos Space Marine Chapter, the Nefarious Fire.
My Kill Team
I didn’t give team composition a lot of thought. Kill Team is a simpler game, but it has a campaign and an experience system like Necromunda, but it is also an “I go you go” alternating activation game, unlike many Games Workshop games. When Bill and I played Warcry, I was the Night Goblins, or whatever they are calling them these days that GW can copyright. I won almost every single game, as having more models you can activate and do stuff with is important in many skirmish games. I don’t know how it is in Kill Team, but I had no time to think let alone paint so this is my team:
- Chaos Aspiring Champion
- Icon Bearer
- Gunner
- Heavy Gunner
- Legionaries with Bolter
- Legionaries with Bolter
I didn’t have a non-Nurgle model with a plasma pistol. They used to cost 15 points so I just had squad leaders with bolt pistols or combi-weapons in Nefarious Fire livery. Now on the aspiring champion it is apparently a tainted bolt pistol and a tainted chainsword, so we’ll give that a go. I was going to take one Legionaries with a bolt pistol and chainsword but after settling on using a champion without a plasma pistol I decided for looks to use two old OOP Chaos Renegades with bolters. I also had an OOP Renegade with a flamer which apparently is a Nurgle model, but I painted him otherwise as the blister he came in, was not specific. The missile launcher is from the 2nd Edition, he was once painted as a Diseased Son but I stripped him and repainted him.
#MiniatureGlowUP
I didn’t participate in Darren Latham’s latest Instagram miniature painting contest, but as my Kill Team proves many of my miniatures have been given a “glow up” aka a touch up or a complete repainting over the years like this missile launcher Chaos Space Marine. I’ve also collected additional copies of some of my favourite old school sculpts. But the rules favour the new models with the bigger, better, newer, weapons. However as you can see by my Kill Team, I have plenty of painted models with bolters and chainswords and of course flamers and missile launchers. After the painting contest was over I remember to share a link to this miniature gallery.
New Models
The newest model in my Kill Team is the icon bearer. He uses bits from the then new Possessed Chaos Space Marine kit, that is where I think his backpack comes from. The unit champion was painted around the same time and both may have been taken to an Astronomi-con Vancouver, if you look carefully you can see the campaign badges.
Even before I was invited to play Kill Team, I was working on my 1000 point 10th Edition Chaos Space Marine Army and the last model I needed, or thought I needed to field a thematic 1000 point force. I also decided to paint two of the Death Guard Hero models with just bolters. I didn’t think I could convert them to have a Blight Launcher, I already have plenty of models with just bolters. They’ll end up in Jaundice Squad as I want to use squads I didn’t use in our last campaign. New models are lot more work to assemble than the old metal models, though you did have to pin some old metal models.
Rebasing
I’ll finish rebasing six chaos space marine models tomorrow. I have so many models on the wrong sized base now. The adapters do help, but you have to fill gaps and then sand, paint, apply sand or tufts to make the models look better. All these Chaos Space Marines except the one that got the “glow up” are on cast resin bases. A piece of advice I was given, was to rebase my models with more than just dry brushed sand, so that has been another long term goal and why I’ve been a big purchaser of case resin bases over the years.
YouTube
I actually have been saving a YouTube video to share, but then I forgot to share it when I published this post. It is another video from Vince Venturella. I was reminded to share it after having YouTube recommend me yet another video by Vince Venturella, so here are two for the price of one.
Update: Won my game of Kill Team
So this is pretty surprising, because despite buying both previous editions I never played and I’m not even sure I read all the rules. In fact I bought the Compendium and the box set. I thought Bill would win handily but he had not played this edition and maybe was using an unfamiliar Kill Team whereas I basically went with 60% of a Tactical Squad.
When we played Warcry, I generally outnumbered Bill with my goblins, but in this game I had the six man elite team, whereas Bill had the Sisters of Battle Initiates which were more numerous but less armour and most importantly less wounds. I still don’t think being slow aka the Death Guard would be advantageous, but I’ve never had a Krak missile in such a small game. First shot of the game it basically killed an initiate. The flamer, even the humble warrior with bolt gun all did well.

I wasn’t sure why’d you want want a bolt pistol over a plasma pistol, but I did it anyway, on my champion because that was the leader of the squad I had painted. The answer is you can shoot the bolt pistol twice using the Legionaires special rule. You can’t shoot your flamer or missile launcher twice. Or can you, one grey area was after all my guys were done, they could still shoot one least time, that seems to override the rule where you second shot must be with a bolter weapon.
One thing I should have done is printed out the rules, Bill’s phone eventually died so he was using that to look up his model’s stats, so that basically ended the game, with him having only two models in the Kill Zone whereas I had five of my original six. So yeah I enjoyed Kill Team, the game went slow, but armour saves are not as good as in 40K instead high wounds and the ability to do multiple extra actions was what triumphed in our first game. We both had lots of command points (and Bill had faith points), so saving them didn’t seem to have a lot of purpose as there was even a way for Bill to prevent me from doing re-rolls, so playing strategic ploys became my thing, even if they didn’t do much.
I didn’t buy any new models at Sentry Box because I have so many Chaos Space Marines I can easily convert up just about anything I need, but I might get the Legionaires Kill Team box someday, or even just more new models. I did buy a new Monument Hobbies brown paint, as English Uniform Brown is not a great mud colour and I paint a lot of mud and skulls, rebasing my hundreds of old models on 25mm bases.
Not sure when I’ll get these three latest models finished or if I’ll try to do anything for Orktober. Bill wants me to paint terrain now, so I can host Kill Team on my kitchen table, so that is a new priority. Drybrushing is quick and effective for terrain, but we have snow in Calgary so cold weather can mess with rattle cans and drying paint, so cleaning plastic models and priming them may be an issue this weekend.
If you have thoughts on Kill Team or miniature painting you can leave a comment below.


















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