Last week Games Workshop quietly updated their FAQs and Errata page for Kill Team, updating older FAQs and, in a surprising move, adding several new ones, covering not just the kill teams in Octarius and Chalnath, but also the White Dwarf kill teams that have been published for Thousand Sons and Adeptus Mechanicus. Overall there isn’t a ton here – most of these are minor corrections and typo fixes, but it’s worth bringing them to players’ attention.
So without further ado, let’s dig in to what changed.
The Core Rules
There’s only one change in the new update here, and that’s to Blast: Blast X now only affects other operatives that are visible to the original target and not in Cover – so if there’s a wall between your target and another model they don’t get hit through it. Note that this doesn’t interact with Indirect, which only removes Cover during the targeting step of shooting.
Additionally, the Designer’s Commentary was updated with several new Qs. Some of these are fairly straightforward – if you have a weapon with two profiles and only one has Blast X, you can perform Overwatch with the non-Blast profile, for example. There are several useful clarifications and actual FAQs addressed in here, so it’s worth giving this a quick read if there’s something you and your group have been scratching your heads over.
Compendium
A few additional changes were made to the Compendium this time around, but almost all of these are additional typo corrections or edits:
- The Deathwatch Sergeant can now take a Deathwatch boltgun and power weapon, instead of having to give up his weapon to take a bolter, or vice versa
- The Imperial Guardsman Medikit gives its operative the MEDIC keyword
- Daemonette Icon Bearers and Horn Bearers now get 4 Attacks with their claws, like the other Daemonettes
- Saviour Protocols no longer works against attacks that hit each operative within a specified range, i.e. area of effect attacks such as remote mines. You also can’t use Saviour Protocols to protect against the follow-up attacks from Blast X or Torrent X weapons.
And as with the Core Rules, there are some new commentary items for Compendium teams, addressing whether Hexagrammic Wards can prevent psychic actions from Warpcoven Tac Ops (yes) and how the Hunter Cadre Stand and Fire Tactical Ploy works – specifically that you don’t get any ranged critical hit bonuses on those shots (relevant for fusion blasters with MW4). Again, worth a quick read.
Kill Teams
There were minor revisions to each of the game’s Kill Teams, including two of the teams published in White Dwarf – the Hunter Clade and Warpcoven teams.
- Dakka boys now have to pick a dakka shoota for their attack when performing the Dakka Dash action. This means you can’t use it to lob a grenade or fire off a harpoon.
- The Final Litany Battle Honour now only affects Ballistic Skill. This is a Spec Ops rule so feel free to ignore it if you’re only concerned with matched play.
- Pathfinder kill teams get the same change to Saviour Protocols as Hunter Cadres, where they no longer protect from blast effects and area of effect attacks.
- The Recon Drone and Pulse Accelerator Drone now have DF 3. It was kind of insane they had 4 to begin with.
- The Medical Technician Pathfinder’s Medic! Ability can’t be used on himself. It now may only be used on another friendly non-drone PATHFINDER operative that’s about to be incapacitated, similar to the rule for Veteran Guardsmen.
- The Purge With Flame Tac Op got an adjustment. A minor change here – you score based off weapons with the Inferno X critical hit rule.
- Faithful Blessing got fixed. I think people understood what was going on here but you can now use Faithful Blessing when you are being shot at to re-roll a defence dice. You could always re-roll a defence dice, but before the rule was mis-worded so you could only use the blessing when making an attack.
- Blinding Aura grants super-Conceal. Blinding Aura now gives friendly operatives in range who have the conceal aura the ability to ignore rules that take away Conceal, like Vantage Point. That’s a nifty little boost when you need to hide from snipers. Also in the Designer’s Commentary they clarify that if used during Overwatch, this act of faith only lasts until the end of the Overwatch action. Additionally they clarify that if using Blinding Aura means that the operative you used it on is no longer a valid target for the attacking operative, your opponent can pick a new target.
- Novitate Hospitaller can’t revive herself. Another standard Change, the Mantra of Restoration has to be used against another friendly Novitate.
- The Sicarian Ruststalker Assassin’s Transonic Blades now do 5 attacks. That seemed like a typo. Big improvement for them.
- A Designer’s Commentary item on Ephemeral Instability clarifies that the rule does not modify operatives’ movement characteristics.
And that’s it. Not as seismic as the changes rolled out in the previous October FAQ that addressed a number of key balance issues (particularly with Custodes), but there are some meaningful things to be aware of here and it’s always good to see Games Workshop treating Kill Team as a real game for competitive play. As always, if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
