

All with an APL of 3 (2 for Heavy Intercessors) and 11 wounds (12 for Primaris, 18 for Heavy Intercessors). Outside of the Tactical Squad, Scouts and Deathwatch, Primaris units are limited to what they can take. Space Marines, as hinted to earlier, suffer in-terms of selection. Now I’ll briefly go over Kill Teams, their datacards and loadouts. While understandable, it is a shame to see and only results in dedicated Kill Team units (such as the Ork Kommandos and Death Korps of Krieg) growing even more in power when compared to Compendium kill teams.

There are none in the Kill Team Compendium book, probably meaning those will be reserved for dedicated Kill Team releases. Outside of all of this, this biggest notable thing is the lack of faction Tac Ops and specific Spec Ops rules.

Not being able to mix and match does suck but on the other hand, this helps with balance and lowers the bar of entry to Kill Team. For example, Space Marines and Necrons struggle heavily in this department. The biggest losers are units that have very little selection when it comes to their own Warhammer 40,000 boxes and units. You still have a lot of choice thanks to your 20 operative roster and it does overall level the field in terms of power. Overall, I still find kill teams easier to build and more balanced overall. Still, this is generally balanced by operatives not being able to be spammed anymore. For example, if your operative has the choice between only a bolt pistol and plasma pistol, there’s no reason to not ever pick the plasma pistol, the stronger option just always wins with no cost involved. For example, while you may alternate between a gunner with a plasma gun or a melta gun depending on your mission and the opponent, certain loadouts become no-brainers with the removal of points. One big drawback is the loss of comparison between certain upgrades. While this is a drastic change, I find it overall to still be balanced while also making it much easier to make competitive and balanced kill teams for the game. Specialists have also gone, being limited to narrative play in Spec Ops campaigns. Despite this, generally specialists cannot be spammed so gone are the days of bringing multiples of the same special weapons whether it be plasma gun spam to frag cannon spam and so on. Gone are points and instead are fixed teams and loadouts, partially limited by what comes in a unit’s box. As hinted by Games Workshop and the Octarius book, Kill Team construction has changed.

The Kill Team Compendium book contains all the rules for pretty much all the factions within Warhammer 40,000.
