Warhammer 40K: The Chaos Kill Team Rules Could Mean Improvements Are Coming
Is Games Workshop is bringing some improvements to Chaos Space Marines and using Kill Team to test them? We think so!
Aside from their Marines getting a second wound Chaos Space Marines could use some help. GW knows this. What better way to test the waters than to roll out some new rules in Kill Team? Sure, Kill Team and 40k are different games now but that doesn’t mean GW can’t learn from what works. These new Chaos Space Marine rules are a good check on the “flavor” of each chaos mark. It’s a good way to test out some changes without tipping their hand on what’s coming in the new codex.
New Improvements For Chaos Space Marines?
Again, these abilities aren’t going to be 1:1 translations. Kill Team and 40k are two different games now so direction copy/paste of rules doesn’t work. However, maybe we can extrapolate out some of the direction GW wants to go for the new book based on the Kill Team abilities. And even if we’re off, it’s still a fun thought experiment anyhow. Also remember that these are the bonuses for just getting a Chaos Mark. These bonuses would be applied to your standard Marked Chaos Marine units.
We’re going to skip over both Nurgle and Tzeentch marks. Those two sub factions already have their own codexes and their marks in Kill Team are “translated” from one game to the other already. Instead we’re going to focus on the two marks that don’t have a stand alone codex: Khorne and Slaanesh.
Khorne’s two teasers were for their “Faction” ability and a ploy. Wrathful Onslaught essentially converts one hit into a critical hit. Blood for the Blood God adds one additional damage if the model charged. Both of these could be translated over to improvements for Khorne Marked units.
While we’re spitballing, how about some new Berzerker models?
The first ability could go a few ways. It could generate extra hits as a “critical hit” could be viewed as different things. Maybe Khorne Marked units could get bonus additional hits on 6+ to hit. Or maybe it’s additional AP on 6s to hit to account for making a “normal” hit become a “critical” hit.
As for the second ability… it’s +1 Damage on their attacks the turn they charged. Blood for the Blood God is a fairly clear-cut ability. If marked units just get both of these for being marked that’s a nice boost.
For Slaanesh Marked units we also got a look at their faction ability and another ploy.
Unnatural Agility adds some extra distance to their move speed. Graceful Killer also adds 1 damage to Critical Damage for melee weapons. So how would these two translate over?
For the first ability it seems like a straightforward movement buff that’s always on. Maybe that’s another bonus to their base move or it could be a bonus to run and charge moves. Slaanesh is supposed to be the fastest ones so that fits.
Graceful Killer is an interesting one. It’s +1 Damage on Crits and since we don’t have crits in 40k, what could that be? Well, using the Khorne idea from above a critical hit would be a on 6+ to hit. So wouldn’t that make it +1 damage on attacks that rolled a 6+ to hit?
Don’t Show Your Cards, Play Them
These abilities are probably way off from whatever final form they take in a new Chaos Codex. Again, we’re just spitballing and trying to read between the lines here. But it would be interesting if the Chaos Marks got a boost in utility and gave entire units a bigger buff.
Perhaps the ploys are just going to be converted into some sort of new/updated stratagems that can only be used by the marked units. That seems to be the direction GW is moving for many abilities anyhow so that could line up. That would also make marked units a bit more focused as well.
Whatever the rules end up being I hope that GW is taking a long, hard look at the CSM rules and really thinking of cool ways to implement them. I do think that Kill Team is a testing ground for rules on top of being its own game. Here’s hoping these are just early tests for the CSM rules.
What do you think? Could these Kill Team Rules be early teasers for what’s to come? How would you “translate” these rules from Kill Team to 40k?
