2025 has been the year of Kill Team for me, brought on by a perfect storm of two factors. First was the new edition, acting as the perfect entry point to the game. Second was the birth of my first child coupled with a very busy period at work which understandably limited the amount of time I can responsibly dedicate to my hobby.
In the spirit of the year of the Kill Team, I’ve spent the past few months getting into the game, painting teams, and engrossing myself content related to the game. I also picked up tickets to attend the Kill Team tournament at the Dallas leg of the Warhammer Open. It’s local enough to me that I can make the drive in an afternoon, and the previous Warhammer Opens I’ve attended for 40k have been my go-to recommended event for folks who can’t get out to many events, which as it turns out is now me.
Before Dallas, I want to get some quality reps in, and I’m very fortunate that Houston has an active community centered out of Goldmine Games who are hosting a three-round event on the one Saturday in May I can feasibly do. Plus, it means I can have breakfast with the family, play in the event, and then be home in time to help with the kiddo’s bedtime. After checking with my wife to make sure my swiss cheese brain hasn’t forgotten about some other obligation, it’s all systems go for MAYhem.
Selecting My Team and Event Goals
Initially, I’d planned on running Hand of the Archon. I played Mandrakes extensively in the first part of this year to prepare for my first Kill Team event, Clutch City 2025. While I had success with them in my practice games, I learned the hard way that Mandrakes can be a team where things can go wrong very fast and I struggled with their across the board 2 APL on Gallowdark, and got my ass beat 0-5 at the event. But I did win best photo, so technically, technically my Mandrakes were winners that weekend.
Still, I worried that I don’t quite yet have the finesse as a player to really get the most out of Mandrakes, but I liked the elf playstyle, especially in a meta full of elite teams. So, I got in practice with Hand of the Archon, as their offensive firepower could make up for their fragility while also having good tac op options. But the most recent balance dataslate hit them hard, and I decided to focus on a different team for MAYhem, and by extension Dallas. After considering giving Mandrakes another go, I instead decided to say “if I can’t beat the elite meta, join the elite meta” and went with Nemesis Claw.
Nemesis Claw is a very good team, in a metagame that’s highly favorable to elite teams like them. When I first picked up the new edition, they were the team I learned with, and their I find their gameplan of sulking in the shadows before getting up close and violent is very appealing. Plus, the Night Lords books by ADB whip, so this was an easy pick.
I decided to make my goal for MAYhem a humble one- get some good reps in with Nemesis Claw, and go 1-2. The folks at Goldmine have been very friendly to me, but it’s also absolutely a club full of sharks. Honestly, this is the ideal environment to get better at the game, one where people will politely dumpster you and then happily tell you how you can improve in an earnest, encouraging manner. While 1-2 isn’t asking for much, after having just gone 0-5 in March, peeling a win off of these guys feels like a good step.
Plus, if I’m bringing Nemesis Claw to MAYhem then I’m also committed to bringing Nemesis Claw to Dallas, where I’d like to put in a solid performance. No top table dreams here, just a honest man’s record of 4-3 or 3-4. So even if I go 0-3, I want all the practice I can get.
I pack up my bozos, kick out the jams, and make my way down to Goldmine Games. It’s a bit out of the way for me as LGS go, about a 40 minute drive without traffic, but I like to come out here whenever I have a good excuse to. The shop’s owner, Mike, is friendly and his store is often so well stocked that it’s almost biblically excessive. That’s barely a hyperbole, when his shelves are full it’s hard to find a current Warhammer product Goldmine doesn’t have on hand. I’m even pretty sure there’s still a Smaug up for sale there. Fucking Smaug.
I arrive with about fifteen minutes to spare, chat with some folks I know and check the roster of teams. It’s a mean list of teams being played on the 12 man roster. There’s a hard skew into elites, with half of the players running some sort of power armor team, and I’m one of three Nemesis Claw players. There’s also some other meta boogeymen out to play today, with two players running Goremongers and one running Sanctifiers. I start to get a sinking feeling about that 1-2 record I was hoping for. I’m going to have to play some really sharp Kill Team today to even walk away with one W on the scoreboard.
Round one pairings go up, and we’re pulling the band-aid off early and pairing right into Goremongers.
Round One: Cameron’s Goremongers
Starting the event off spicy!
The mission is Intel, which I’m alright with, but the Killzone I’m playing on here is Gallowdark and that makes me a bit nervous. I’ve been struggling in my practice games to balance my aggression on Gallowdark, and stumbling on how my threat ranges change because of hatchways. I also keep not utilizing guard like I should. Fortunately, my last game on Gallowdark was a really effective example of how guard can be used as a strong offensive tool, and I’m going to try and use that here into Goremongers. I go with Implant as my tac op, figuring since I can’t kill a Goremonger in one shooting action and most my shooting is short ranged anyways, this should be a solid scoring choice.
In the deployment phase, Cameron goes hard on deploying near his home territory objective, deploying four operatives on that flank, including his most dangerous combat pieces, the Blood Herald and Skullclaimer. Once I figure out he’s deploying in force there, I decide that I do not want anything to do with that room full of pain. I’d be better off letting him have it and focus on the other two objectives rather than trying to sacrifice my whole team trying to fight him off that one objective. I focus on the middle room with four operatives, with my Ventrilokar close enough to his home objective to potentially put pressure on it and keep him honest, and deploy two operatives near my home objective side.
He beats me in the scouting step, and elects to let me go first turning point one. I play pretty cagey here, not pushing up too much to prevent some big charges, but I do decide to make some aggressive plays by going on guard with my Fearmonger on my home objective side and Heavy Bolter in the central room. Cameron pushes into the central room and his home objective. His two operatives on my side of the board stage at the door in order to not eat any shooting from my Fearmonger, so already my play is paying off.
Cameron gets the turn two initiative, and pushes forward to do a Recon action in my territory and reveal his Tac Op. I make a very simple, but important play here by poisoning my home objective with the Fearmonger, which acts as a huge deterrent for Cameron to charge me, as well as hit him with my first Implant using my Ventrilokar. Using Preysight, the Heavy Gunner moves up and picks up a Goremonger behind light cover, a good start for me. He charges me with the other Aspirant staging in the room, and I manage to survive by the skin of my teeth. I charge in with my Screecher, but absolutely wiff the charge, and my Screecher is left on low health while his Aspirant is fairly healthy. It’s a very bad spot, and Im suddenly very nervous about the rest of the game as Cameron stages for a big push on TP 3.
TP 3 isn’t looking too hot for me either. Cameron picks up my screecher with his blood herald, and in return my Skinthief tries for a double kill by charging an aspirant and then shooting a heavily wounded Inciter. Instead, my Skinthief rolls so poorly that he gets killed by the aspirant. Having totally disgraced themself on the field of battle, the Skinthief is removed from the table in shame. This will haunt the Skinthief all day.
I try to get my visionary to take out his herald, but my dice are not warming up at all and my Visionary is left on dangerously low health. The game isn’t lost yet though, my Ventrilokar is tied up in a combat but still healthy and the Fearmonger has been farming me some points on crit op like a champion. I also make sure my heavy gunner is in a good spot if I win initiative despite getting hit with a stun grenade.
Fortunately, I win initiative TP four and make up for my game-long bad dice luck. I fall back with the Visionary using Return to Darkness, and promptly pick the Blood Herald up while severely wounding his Skullclaimer. The Ventrilokar kills the goremonger locking him in combat before charging the impaler on Camerons home objective and killing it as well. My Fearmonger cleans up on my flank, and one last implant later I manage to come into a commanding lead.
Result: Victory, 18-12
Off to a great start! I wanted to get at least one win today, and I got that dub right off the bat. I can get my face caved in in games two and three, and as long as I learn something I’ll have done everything today I wanted to do.
The TO ordered pizza for the event, so lunch is as tasty as it is quick. I get to chat with some guys who’ve come down today all the way from San Antonio. We talk about how their first rounds went, the state of the game, and that there’s likely at least one Night Lord in any given warband tasked with being the quartermaster because they know how to work whatever the grimdark equivalent of Excel is. Honestly, it’s probably just Excel.
Pairings go live, and I’m excited immediately, as it’s a rematch from my last event against Gabriel, who won the last game we played at Clutch.
Game 2: Gabriel’s Scouts
For round two, the mission is Coordinates, and we are playing on Volkus.
I think it would be easy to underestimate Scouts here, but Gabriel is very hot on them coming to the table, and last time I played him he was pretty mean with his then off-meta Novitiates. I still decide to go with Champion as my tac op, which I honestly think is a mistake looking back based on how defensively Gabriel would play. The plentiful heavy cover on Volkus is awesome for my Nemesis claw though, so I’m cautiously optimistic of my odds.
I deploy my team in a way to split my focus between the left and right flank objectives, with my hope being that I can converge on the center objective in his home turf later in the match. Gabriel keeps his team behind the stronghold and ruins, and then gets a little cute by deploying a mine in a narrow alleyway near my home objective. During the special Scout setup step, he places a booby trap on the other end of the same alleyway to try and control my movement, places two trip alarms in places he does not want my heavy gunner to try and set up at, picks up a diversion use to hit my APL, and shuffles his scouts around with some repositions. Gabriel knows what he’s doing, if I try and go all-in on pressure and just gutpunch him with my power armor dweebs it will go badly for me. I need to get tricky to out-wit the trickster.
TP one is pretty normal setup stuff, except for the fact my poor Skinthief once again embarrasses themselves by pushing too far forward and catching a shotgun blast to the face. He saves poorly and is already injured going into TP 2, which I don’t love! I also make one of the most important plays of the game for me on TP one, which is poisoning my home objective.
TP two I lose initiative, but keep the scout who blasted my skinthief in range with a Vox Scream. The skinthief charges in and rolls well this time, picking up the scout who went after him and even surviving a round of shooting from another scout operative. I selected my Fearmonger as the Champion this turn and start looking for a way for a high likelihood kill that will keep me safe, and after some thought I find one from a very unusual angle.
Remember that mine I mentioned? There’s an expended scout about 3” away from it, and I reposition my Ventrilokar to within 6”. I finally get to live the dream, and force the scout to walk on his own mine before dashing to safety. The Fearmonger repositions, shoots, and dashes again for an easy kill.
Meanwhile, we are both playing a game of footsies over the right flank objective in the stronghold. Diversion means my Screecher doesnt have the range to get a charge or krak grenade in, but my missile launcher keeps Gabriel away from moving in and sacrificing guys without needing to. As for the rest of the turning point, the scout sniper picks up the wounded Skinthief and my Visionary gets into position for Champion next turn.
TP3, I carefully move in to the stronghold to set up with the heavy gunner, who gets bully charged. The Screecher gets hit with yet another APL reduction via a stun grenade, and the Visionary wiffs a plasma pistol shot badly before barely surviving a sniper round. I manage to get another point off of champion with my counteract, at least.
When it’s time to activate my fearmonger, I’m initially stumped. Gabriel has done a great job positioning his Scouts outside of both my threat and visibility, and my kill-brain is struggling to see where it can enact great feats of violence. Then, I was hit with a moment of clarity: a voice in my head, crying out “Do the Crit Op!” Remembering this, I reposition dash back to my home objective and hit it with a coordinates. TP 3 ends without very many good options into Gabriel as far as scoring a double kill with Champions goes, but I do feel pretty good about my odds on the Crit Op, as Gabriel hasn’t come out enough to threaten me, nor has he had any good opportunities to do his Tac op, Recon.
TP four, I pick up a kill with my Ventrilokar for Champion and put a coordinate tick on the central point after killing the scout locking up my gunner. His heavy bolter tears apart my Ventrilokar, and his sniper murks my fearmonger. In the end, it’s just my poor screecher and gunner, but thats all I need to tie him on the kill op. We had about the same success on our tac ops, in the end the fact I put a coordinate tic down on two objectives to his one makes all the difference here in another tight match.
Result: Victory, 12-9
Twice as successful as I thought I would be! I’m extraordinarily pleased with this result, especially since both games one and two were tight. I hadn’t imagined I could win this event, but once it’s in my grasp I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little hungry for it. I watch the last match wrapping up between Kommandos and Nemesis Claw, which narrowly goes to Nemesis Claw, before the pairings notification goes up and I pray I don’t pair into sanctifiers.
Round Three: James’s Kommandos
I’m thrilled to play James. I’ve known him for a few months now, and I’ve come to know them for two things. The first is being one of the most effective community organizers I’ve ever met, managing to keep a crowd of a dozen people consistently coming down to play Kill Team on a Friday night for weeks at Goldmine as well as becoming one of the most influential figures on Kill Team in Texas as a whole. The second thing is that James is a ride-or-die Kommandos player. He’s played most other teams, but the Kommandos are his special boys, and have been through good times and bad. He’s a faction expert, if there ever was one. This was going to be a good time.
The good time is almost spoiled before it begins when I learn we will be playing on Bheta-Decima, but one player asks if they can switch with us, since they’ve played the same board twice in a row. Now, I’m on sweet, sweet Volkus again, baby, and we are playing Loot.
I swap out the heavy gunner for a gunner with a plasma gun, since I would prefer to have more mobility in this matchup, but keep the rest of my team unchanged. I also decide to go with Implant again, since it worked well for me in the first game. We both deploy pretty defensively behind our strongholds, and in TP one neither one of us goes loud, sticking with conceal and setting up for the next turn. The most aggressive play either of us makes is me putting my punished skinthief behind the stronghold door, and James sending a Kommando to the center objective to set up for loot. I also poison my home, its worked so far, why stop now?
TP two James takes initiative, but I vox scream the boy on the center objective, forcing him to push up with another one of his Kommando boys to do the action.
What followed over the next few activations is nothing short of wild. I activate my now twice dishonored Skinthief, who is howling and itching to take life.
The Skinthief charges one of the two Kommando boys on the objective, though it takes two fights to get the kill. I then use Proclivity for Murder to dash and lock up the other expended boy in combat through the window, keeping me safe from shooting. James sees this play, and sends in his Nob to deal with it. His dice are cold, and the Skinthief has something to prove. I take out the Nob after taking some damage. My gunner picks up his Slasha Boy behind light cover by running up some vantage terrain, blasting the poor Ork, and dashing down to safety. James, a little stunned by losing three operatives so quickly, sends his breach boy in to deal with the Skinthief and he rolls not a single hit, even after a reroll. I kill him on the retaliation. After making sure he got his second loot in, and getting his Kommando Grot to perform a Surveillance action on my gunner as well as hitting me with a stun grenade, James decides he must kill this Skinthief and decides to commit his snipa boy to the combat. Once again, doesn’t roll well enough to kill me, and I take out a FOURTH operative with the Skinthief. Finally, the bomb squig charges in and bites the Skinthief’s heavily wounded ankles, killing him. The Skinthief goes down a hero, totally redeeming themselves from all the past failures of the day.
James’s determination to kill the Skinthief nearly costs him the game, but I make two key mistakes here. First, on TP 3, I didn’t immediately go after the Kommando Grot. Despite the stun grenade, my gunner could’ve still run up the ladder and shot the grot to death, or bully charged him and kept him locked up with chain flails. Instead, when James gets initiative, I vox scream his Kommando on his home objective so I may have the chance to loot it myself, and the Grot gets away. Had I voxxed the grot and killed him there, it would’ve been legit a six point swing in my favor.
Secondly, I don’t get aggressive enough at the end of TP 2 and into TP 3. With James down five operatives so early in the game, I should’ve gone all-in on pressure right then and there and just overwhelmed him. Instead, because I try to be cagey and I don’t get many kills in the back half of the game, and James can crawl back up on the kill grade with his Rokkit boy as well as keep in the game with the crit op.
I also missed my shot to implant on TP 2, as I’d planned to do so with my skinthief, and forgot to implant with the fearmonger TP 3. I fortunately did remember TP 4, but still, rookie mistake. Ah well.
Result: Loss, 12-16
James crawled his way back from the loss, but the stuff with the skinthief is so wild and his thoughts on how I could improve my gameplan in the future is very helpful, at the end of the day my mood is still sky high. I watch the end of the game between the other Nemesis Claw in the top running and Sanctifiers, and it turns out yeah, Sanctifiers are still horseshit.
I end up in fourth place, but I do pick up best painted, which rips. I’m now two for two on winning prize support at the Kill Team events I’ve played in, baby. Batting a thousand, don’t mind the asterisk.
Looking back, I’m very pleased with myself on how I did at MAYhem. I won two games and played pretty well in all three, and learned lessons in how to improve going forward. Plus, I feel confident in Nemesis Claw going into Dallas, this is a really powerful team that I can pilot to a decent showing at the Warhammer Open. I’ll see if I can sneak in a few more reps with them, of course, but these Night Lords have the juice to win for me even if I cant get in any more practice.
The folks over at Goldmine deserve a shoutout for running a great event with MAYhem returns. I’ve been to a few of their Friday night get togethers now, and it’s awesome to see such a dedicated player base for a specialist game like Kill Team. Congratulations on the well run event, and congratulations to Aiden for winning undefeated with his Sanctifiers (the folks at MAYhem boo’d him first actually for winning with Sanctifiers, followed by a polite applause, then a second round of boos.)
I call my wife to let her know I’ll be home earlier than we thought, and swing by Burger King for a bite to eat. I get my whopper meal (with cheese, no pickles, no onions, and an ice-cold coca-cola), and roll up to the drive thru window. There, on the counter, I see a crown, the coveted Burger King paper crown, the headwear of a winner. The attendant gives me my food, takes my money and asks if I’d like any ketchup or a crown. I respond “No ketchup, but I’ll take the crown please”. The attendant gets my drink, and makes sure I wanted no ketchup. “Yes, no ketchup, but I want the crown please.”
The poor woman puts the crown in my grabby hands, I wolf down my tasty burger in the parking lot, and I ride off into the sunset, the king of Kill Team, until proven otherwise.
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