Games Workshop - Kill Team: Octarius (2021 Starter Set)

Product Information

Next up we have the Plastic Ork Kommandos, and again these are absolutely dripping with character – Sadly my frantic week of painting and review writing didn’t leave me enough time to finish these guys before the article had to go live, I did manage to build them up to show what they look like assembled!

Battles then follow the same core rules as Matched Play missions – which I do feel it makes Spec Ops the best way of playing Kill Team as not only do you get the full core game experience, but you also get the fun narrative content on top of this! The roadmap GW released extends well into the future, with releases similar to Octarius being teased at least once every three months. Contains 17 new terrain pieces including ruins, platforms, and scattered refuse for creating your own ramshackle Ork shanty town. As you take turns doing this your pool of dice will shrink as the fight goes on, so seeing an opponent with lots of hits you may decide to simply use your single hit to do some damage, or instead if you re badly wounded you might use your hits to reduce the damage coming into you. Combined, these issues have stoked up the (always smouldering) fires of fan anger about how GW packages out rules content.What makes up the difference, as it did with the original Kill Team starter set back in 2018, is a staggering amount of handsome, easy to assemble terrain. None of these pieces of terrain, however, have obvious moulds or indentations to guide where you are supposed to attach these supports. Finally at the end of the Strategy Phase players can reveal a Tac Ops card – these are the semi-randomised secondary objectives created using the card decks mentioned earlier – the key thing here is that you don’t have to reveal to your opponent what they are, but some can only be scored after revealing them – meaning that you are always guessing what secondaries your opponent might be trying to get into position to score.

However, what the players need to keep in mind is that there are also Tactical Ploys that can be used during the battle and use the same pool of CP to play. For all that charm, though, I found some unexpected aggravations while building and exploring Octarius’ acres of plastic loveliness. Credit where credit’s due, the Octarius box is heaped with extra bits and pieces to help you get your first few games of Kill Team up and running. The current releases roadmap suggests we can expect, at a minimum, two new Kill Teams every three months until next June, with all the rules and accoutrements they bring – so keep an eye out, and you might strike lucky with dedicated rules and models for your favourite army soon enough. First things first: the Kill Team 2nd Edition Core Book, and the Octarius supplement (both included in the Octarius box set) are a couple of the spiffiest-looking books GW has ever produced.Sure, you can take “operatives” with special traits (like a comms guy, for example), but thanks to the new Fire Team rules and the Compendium, you’re still locked to fielding only the models from that one Fire Team. Elite operatives clash in close confines, engaging in furious firefights and deadly duels, and the fate of billions hangs in the balance. Its platform, the rig itself, and its pillar can take some pushing and pulling to get to line up properly. If you don’t feel like reading everything below, I’ve stuck a tl;dr at the bottom in nice big letters so you can’t miss it.

When not pressing buttons at Wargamer HQ, you can often find him impatiently painting miniatures; half-finishing strategy board games against himself; or drinking lager in the bath with a Horus Heresy audiobook playing.No, thanks to those Fire Team rules, you’ll probably have to use either the Kill Team provided in the actual launch box, or bite the bullet and commit to the dull Fire Team selection rules which let you play models from only one or two units. Missions and Narrative Campaigns are now a real and proper thing, and form the heart of the newest edition of Kill Team. Strategic Ploys are army unique and give you some cool bonuses – for example adding 1 to save rolls for that turn.

I do intend to go back in with some more detail, but they are really great models and give us some much needed Ork scenery to expand our collections with!You’ll be shunting your Heavy Intercessors around the board and rolling to hit and to wound, and that’s about it.