kill team 21 has been out for a while now and i have been loving it it has quickly become my
favorite 4k game it's quick to play i can easily hop from faction to faction and it feels like a
really accurate 40k battle scene i have played many games and every one of them has been a
close and nail-biting battle of strategy and dice i want to get you as excited as i am for
kill team in this video i'm going to take you through every single playable faction
and kill team 21 talk about what makes them unique and give you some ideas of what to buy
hey guys jay here welcome to eons of battle lately all of my free time has been spent
pouring over the kill team compendium as i want to play every single faction in the game this
has resulted in lots of spreadsheets google documents and scribbles on loosely pieces
of paper and i figured that this labor of love is worthy of a video just in case you are not
familiar with kill team 21 some important things to know right off the bat is that it is not 40k
in my opinion that is a good thing i like 40k but it's hard to find the time and it's much easier
to get about 10 models ready instead of 50 or 100 now some important things to know right off
the bat and kill team 21 the list building is different from 40k instead of spending a number
of points you select models from a list this is pretty simple and the kill team compendium
lays out exactly what is available for each faction and the customization for those factions
come in three new upgrades called strategic ploys tactical ploys and equipments strategic ploys let
you spend your command points to get power-ups that last for the entire turn tactical ploys let
you spend your command points to gain powerful one-time use abilities at any point in the game
and equipment are things like better grenades better weapons stat buffs unique war gear
and these are chosen right before the game begins and are kept for the entire game this works out
really well in my opinion because you can try out a lot of different things with the same models
instead of having to hop onto ebay and look for more plasma guns or wishing that an extra heavy
bolter came in the box you can just switch up what stratagems and tactics you're relying on and
change up your war gear also this will only cover the compendium armies the unique armies like the
octerus or commandos and veteran guardsmen and the child tal pathfinders and sisters novitiates
are ready to rock right out of the box and are made for kill team but are balanced against the
compendium army so you don't have to worry about getting tabled if you don't want to play krieg
but getting to the good stuff let's start with the adeptus astartes aka the space marines basically
just a rip-off of starcraft heron and most people's starting point in the hobby back in
kill team 2018 a space marine team was pretty hard to put together and not very good but luckily and
killed team 21 a space marine team is very easy to build and is very good space marines have nine
different units to choose from and i want a bit of everything but not only will that not fit in
the command roster but it'll also get expensive so i will focus on the death watch kill team 5
awesome customizable models ready to play with one box but that leaves you with 15 slots available in
a command roster so i would also try and pick up 5 assault intercessors off of ebay which is
very doable at the moment because of the flood of indominus models and the new 40k starter editions
at all levels so they should be very obtainable for the foreseeable future i think it makes for
an excellent kill team it is what i am playing with now it gives you a hefty melee punch with
the chain swords and the heavy bolt pistols are awesome at killing things when you get into range
and with stratagems like bolter discipline letting you shoot twice and shock assault
letting you fight twice you will find that your three apl will make you a very kelly army throw
two point frag grenades on everyone and you are ready to show everyone why space marines only get
five operatives that's all they need not as flashy as some of the other astartes kill teams you can
put together like grey nets or custodies but most people probably already have the models to build a
space marine kill team and if you don't i would suggest purchasing a box of death watch marines
or five assault intercessors and next up the grey knights the grey knights are the all psycho
anti-demon super elite faction of the astartes and they stand apart from the normal space marines
and the rest of the imperium thinks that they are either a myth or don't even know they exist at all
a granite kill team looks like five dudes a leader called adjust a car and four warriors and what
makes them unique is that they all have access to a unique action the psychic power for one of your
three action points a turn they can either improve their save improve their weapon damage or gain
the no cover rule on their weapons all are good although i think i would always do the better save
every single time because honestly they don't need the help doing damage in terms of guns
don't take the heavy weapon your storm bolters are more than good enough and let's talk about
those storm bolters you get a storm bolter and you get a storm bolter you all get storm bolters four
attacks hitting on threes re-rolling any and all misses every time for free that is just cheating
and on top of your storm vaulters everyone gets access to a smorgasbord of attractive
weapons which are all good but i would suggest the nemesis falcons the double swords because
guess what they get to do that's right reroll any and all misses every time for free again cheating
if you want an absolute powerhouse of space marine team look no further the grey knights came to play
so what's it buy easy a grey knight strike squad box now the box comes with 10 guys so best case
scenario is you make a friend who also wants to play grey knight and you go halfsies that way
you get a pretty great kill team for a pretty good price next up talons of the emperor aka custodies
these guys got smacked in the bum with a nerf bat pretty hard dropping from 4 apl down to 3
but i think it was for the best they're still pretty disgustingly powerful why play custodies
2 up saves your guns hit on twos your swords hit on twos and 18 wounds apiece and because you
watch way too much tts there are two flavors of custodies and they have access to the sisters of
silence for your golden boys the sword and shields are disgusting giving you a four up invulnerable
save and whenever you parry you remove two defenders dice instead of one which will almost
always leave your opponent defenseless but your gun is stuck with a six inch range and with such
a limited number of models you need to be able to shoot at whatever you can see luckily the guardian
spear is also really really good i would say that custodies are the ultimate blunt force instrument
for dudes that will not die and will kill whatever they touch but i wouldn't do that four
dudes will not give you that new unique flavor i would bring two golden boys and five sisters
a seven man astartes kill team is unique if you want to be double tap in bolters i would take
space marines and if you want to absolutely crush and melee i would take grain granites
if i want to play custodies i want two absolutely indestructible chads walking up the board flanked
by some bolter babes that's what makes the custody special in my opinion now on the sisters do you go
flamer or bolter now the bolter is the safe choice but the flamer is really cool but on a 6 inch
range it's going to mean that you will often miss out on shooting so bolters are the better choice
also taking two fire teams of sisters of silence would make for a hilarious custodial's kill team
with no custodies might be worth looking at so what to buy one box of custodies will totally get
you playing but i would suggest going with the box custodies and one box of prosecutors next up the
adeptus mechanicus the lovable robots of mars these mechanics scientists and engineers also
love guns and they bring lots of wonderful ranged weapons to bear on the foes of the imperium
the admek are really unique in the imperium lineup of teams if you like good shooting
with a shockingly good melee punch these are your lobotomized buddies they have four units available
to them this guitare rangers and vanguard and the sikarian infiltrators and rust stalkers
the rangers have good guns and have armor penetration on sixes but they also have the
heavy rule and having half your team needing to stand still to shoot is sub-optimal
luckily their helmeted buddies the vanguard are more forgiving they may only have laz
guns but they are much better shots than guardsmen hitting on three ups and their flashlights rend so
you'll be critting all over the place both the troopers have their place and you can bring tons
of sweet heavy weapons the plasma cavalier is brutal the foot sloggers are fun but things get
absolutely wild when you look at the long legged weirdos the sicarians they are very similar and
are built from the same kit the gas mask wearing rust stalkers are close combat nightmares who get
5 attacks with amazing weapons and will easily slice and dice almost anything the heads shaped
like disc infiltrators are where things get really interesting they have good fighting and good
shooting they give up some of their close combat skills for the option to have an amazing pistol
or decent rifle they also have weapons with lethal and stun which makes for a really cool combination
they are both so amazing i think it's a coin toss which is better and the ad mech have a
couple more things that make them shine all their strategic and tactical toys are great
and absolute game changers and the mechanicum can get greedy with a super special piece of war gear
the data tether with this little doodad a model can spend an apl to gain a command point
you just get it there's no limit pop this every turn and let that model be a battery
so what to buy it's pretty hard because i think it's all gold one boxes katari will give you a
great 10 man kill team and if you want to add sick rants you'll have to get a box of those and if you
want to run all sicker and you got to pick up two boxes but it's pretty tempting and you know
what else is tempting that's right our patreon if you like the videos we make and you want more the
best way to support us is by becoming a member of our patreon over there you'll gain access to
some behind the scenes voting on what models i paint live here on youtube a live hobby hangout
every week some terrain stls and more with that said it's time for the sisters of battle
next up the ecclesiarchy aka the sisters of battle these are nuns with guns and boy are
they really good nuns with some really good guns you get twice as many bodies as space marines all
with space marine saves and space marine guns and if for some reason you don't want that you can go
with giant chainsaws the sisters of battle are a frighteningly survival team of 10 battle sisters
or 10 repentia or a 50 50 mix now battle sisters have access to heavy weapons in a heavy flamer and
a heavy boulder and i think sisters might be the only team i would consider taking it heavy is an
incredibly limiting rule where you cannot move and shoot in the same turn but you have 10 sisters you
can probably let one of them drag around the heavy bolter and they have a stratagem to turn off heavy
but i would avoid using it the sisters have lots of good stratagems and you're going to want to use
them every turn all you need is a sister of battle box these models are gorgeous some of the best
games workshop has ever made that's the obvious choice but for my money i went with repentia
i love melee combat and kill team and repentia can absolutely wreck any model they can catch also i
would skip argoflagellance there may be a smidge better than the repentia but they can't pick
up objectives in an objective based game so skip sisters of battle went from a finicky afterthought
and killed team 2018 to a really solid pick and kill team 21. woo or should i say oowoo i would go
with a box of battle sisters or a box of repentia next up the ostremilitarum aka the imperial guard
basically the regular human soldiers the guard are one of the most popular factions out there
with the most lore and any guard player will tell you that guard has the best memes a fix bayonets
now these are tricky and you might think because they got the veteran guardsmen in the octarus box
there's no reason to take the index fire teams but i don't think that's true there is some cool stuff
here if you go with two guard fire teams you get 14 bodies and 5 heavy weapons yep you will have
a proper horde running around with a sniper rifle flamer multi-gun plasma gun and grenade launcher
sprinkled in for good measure guard may be squishy and armed with the often memed upon laz gun
but they do get access to orders essentially they get one free strategic ploy a turn
that really helps it can keep your command points free to use your tactical ploy and bring it down
which helps you re-roll hits and basically guarantees you will take down the target another
big difference in compendium imperial guard is access to the tempestus scions you get 10 guys
whose last guns have transformed into bolters and if you use your equipment to give all 10 of them
scion blades all of a sudden they're pretty good in combat too if you go half and half 7 guardsmen
and 5 scions you can get kind of greedy with the special weapons and take 5 in total and that is
probably what to do a little bit of everything all of the time so what to buy i would go with a box
of militarium tempestus scions and then a second box of militarum tempestus scions there's just
something magical about the uppsal scion list it's very tactical but there is definitely something to
be said for the canadian shock troops as well next up heretic astartes aka the chaos space marines
let's be honest the cooler of the space marines if the adopted cisterns was an ice cream it would
be vanilla and chaos would be mint chocolate chip with nails in a bread bowl with no spoon
heretic astartes don't get access to the fancy armor of the thousand suns or the toughness of
nurgle but they do get one more dude and that can make all the difference in an objective
game six marines with a smattering of special and heavy weapons and all of the same abilities that
their loyalist cousins get but they do have some tactical ploys that really show off how
mean the cast marines are veterans of the long war is a hilarious ability where if you whiff
no matter if it was a shooting attack or a comet attack you get to try again if at first you don't
succeed stab stab again and warp infused might not seem like much but it can give you one last hurrah
ignoring penalties to apl yay cool whatever but you are not injured shoot that plasma
gun on full blast throw that grenade like it's going out of style not being injured is awesome
six cast based marines is sweet but they also get access to cultists if you take a cultist fire team
you drop down to three marines but i think it's still worth it they're pretty fragile but you get
eight all of a sudden you have 11 bodies on the board cultists don't set the world on fire seven
wounds bad save bad gun but general activation too so you'll get to activate two in a row not bad for
trying to focus one thing down or dog pawing on an objective to secure it and two of your cultists
can have special weapons the stubborn is good but two flamers running around could be a lot of fun
and pack a surprising punch and the models are so small that with good positioning you can literally
hide a cultist out of line of sight behind your chaos space marines if you like space marines
but you want to cut your fingers open trying to pick up your own models chaos is for you so what
to buy one box of cast-based rains will give you a great one box kill team with every possible option
and then down the line you might want to pick up some cultists now games workshop doesn't sell the
old cultists anymore but you can still pick up a cult of the abyss box which does come with exactly
eight cultists but you also might want to look over at necromunda i think any of the gangs would
make great chaos cultists next up the thousand suns let's get a little chaotic with the disciples
of zinch and you're gonna notice the trend with chaos-based marine where you'll have a small
number of souped up marines and then an army of pleb cultists a thousand sun's kill team consists
of five rubric marines or twelve zangors or half and half they are a very interesting faction
rubric marines stand out in two ways one a bizarre rule called all is dust where if something shoots
at them with strength three or less which is most off they get a two-up save instead of a three-up
save pretty darn good that's going to make guard orcs eldar space marines basically everything
cry as their regular guns just plink off the thousand sun's armor now the second thing that
makes the rubric special is that their leader the aspiring sorcerer gets access to psychic powers
these give you a lot of options for one apl he can hand out better bolters he can give apl to
other marines that's huge have fun with your 4 apl dude as he shoots charges fights and picks up
an objective now the xangors are pretty much your run-of-the-mill demons 8 wounds 5 open vulnerable
save and decently killy in melee but they do get some surprisingly banging strats for one command
point for one command point they can be even better in combat and they have a strategic ploy
that most armies would kill for for one command point perform mission actions for one less apl
that is super clutch and will win you victory points normal move dash secure objective what
are you a space marine so what to buy it's pretty easy one box of rubric marines that'll give you
a bang and kill team and then maybe down the line you want to pick up some xangors they seem fun too
next up the death guard these guys are dripping with class positively oozing charm and covered in
pus these guys may look like they're melting but they're as tough as all get outs and they are mean
green fighting machines the death guard has some pretty great pros and some cons as well let's get
the bad out of the way first four inch movements they are slow it's gonna be hard for them to get
places and only two bodies in a fire team although you do get that 5th marine the leader for free so
what are your five slow boys going to do well they aren't going to die disgustingly resilient
is a rule made for the plague boys which means every time you are dealt damage you roll a d6
and on a 5 or 6 that wound is ignored and that is after your 3 up save so 30 of the time when
you get hit you shrug it off this makes their 12 wounds feel more like 16 and it is super annoying
to your opponent whose guns are just going to do a little worse than they think the fever fellas have
access to some fun special weapons like the blight launcher and plague spewer but i think i might
be more tempted to take lots of bolters to take advantage of shooting twice with bolt weapons they
are slow might as well shoot twice also a plasma gun is never a bad idea and remember overcharged
plasma has the gets hot rule which deals three mortal wounds when you roll a one but you still
get to roll your disgustingly resilient dice on the damage so overcharge away now you can lose two
year plague posse and replace them with eight pox walkers and it is definitely tempting but they are
very slow don't have any guns and have a 6-up save they do have disgustingly resilient which helps
but i don't see them doing much for you other than camping objectives they are perhaps the perfect
carpet units because they look a little like a tarpon and if they get into combat with something
that doesn't want to be like a guardsman sister or tau they're disgustingly resilient will make
them just that resilient the death guard are a fun and funky festering team of foul farting fighters
so what to buy one box of plague marines will get you everything you need to play a game a kill team
and then down the road you might want to pick up a box of pox walkers they can add some fun
variety to your lists and that was all the available imperium and chaos space marine
factions for kill team 21 keep your eyes peeled for wednesday's video to see the epic conclusion
where i talk about the xenos and demon factions these kill teams have got me really excited
i've already played sisters of battle death guards space marines and veteran guardsmen and they were
all super fun and i feel like after reading all these army lists grey knights and admek might be
in my near future so what do you guys think do any of these teams strike your fancy let me know in
the comments below but that's all for this video i hope you enjoyed and as always thanks for watching