Kill Team’s latest season is well under way, with the operatives from Tomb World causing a major splash, while Dead Silence and Shadowhunt loom over the horizon. To keep the action fun and balanced as new kill teams join the fray and old stalwarts flex their strength in the killzone, regular updates tweak the rules to help even the playing field. It’s time for the next round, and Leila from the Kill Team… team… is here to run through what you can expect.
Leila: Kill Team has seen incredible change recently. Killzone: Tomb World and Approved Ops 2025 have provided players with many new experiences while playing competitively. These changes keep coming with this new balance update! While the meta is still shifting to accommodate the new Approved Ops, there were still some teams that were overperforming – or underperforming – in win rates or making it to podiums, which we’ve addressed here.
Affecting all teams is the change to the Smoke Grenade Universal Equipment option. Combining the powerful obscuring rule with total removal of the Piercing weapon rule was always a strong option, but it gave a particularly outsized advantage to low operative, durable kill teams who could use it to avoid their natural weakness, Piercing weapons. To mitigate this, Smoke Grenades now only reduce the effectiveness of the Piercing 2 weapon rule to Piercing 1, meaning Smoke Grenades have no impact against Piercing 1 weapons.
That said, one elite kill team was struggling in the last quarter. After reducing the oppressive Dueller Chapter Tactic of the Angels of Death, it became clear that their other options for this rule weren’t pulling quite enough weight, so many have received additional benefits to make their impact on the table more significant.
Kasrkin kill teams have also consistently struggled to remain within a healthy win rate. To support Cadia’s heroes, three of their firefight ploys have been reworked to provide much more consistent threats in the killzone, reduce the requirements for their use, or better work with the new Approved Ops 2025’s Initiative Cards system.
The Scout Squad kill team, conversely, was seeing more difficulty with their strategy ploys. Their previous ploys were simply too limited in their effectiveness, and making an impact with them required using too many Command Points for each option. Now, their Gunfire Ambush and Blade Ambush ploys have been combined into one new Ambush ploy, letting you choose between shooting and melee once the action has started. The new Adaptable Training ploy allows you to swap the orders of multiple operatives to get them back to safety, while Stealth Relocation now allows a greater number of operatives to move in the Strategy phase.
Other kill teams were simply overperforming in the last quarter to such an extent that we could expect them to thrive in the new environment as well. Amongst those with reductions are the new kill teams from Tomb World: Canoptek Circle and Deathwatch. These changes from their dossier bring them in line with the current version of the game, applying principles from the previous balance updates to the new teams like reducing healing, damage reduction, and restricting 4 APL activations.
Warpcoven has had a near uncontested position of strength this edition. The newer super-elite five operative team fills a better archetype for the team rather than trying to continue to rein in the unstoppable sorcerers of the Thousand Sons, so their operative count has gone down by 1, though you can still take plenty of Tzaangor if you’d like to keep those higher activation counts.
Sanctifiers have had an undeniable level of strength since their introduction to the game. Their flexible mobility and durability has made it difficult for their opponents. As such, the Ministorum Sermon now only affects higher damage attacks, meaning smaller weapons are more likely to injure the team. The individual operative quality has also been brought down, with specific strengths of the Confessor, Preacher, and Salvationist operatives most directly targeted.
The Necrons of the Hierotek Circle have also had an oversized impact in the last quarter. The interaction between Reanimation Protocols and the kill op meant they were always playing a few points ahead of their opponent. To address this, Hierotek Circle operatives now count as a smaller team for the purpose of the kill op. Each operative incapacitated now counts for a full point in the kill op, making it much more achievable for opponents to score well.
Thanks, Leila! The quarterly balance update can be downloaded below.
Kill Team quarterly update
Download here
