Warhammer 40K: Kill Team – Bring On The ‘Movie Marines’
Games Workshop needs to unleash one Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team upon us all in the new edition: A Movie Marine Kill Team!
Before we get TOO far into this, I just want to say up front that a Movie Marine Kill Team would break the game. And it shouldn’t be allowed for competitive play. This should be a 100% optional and completely silly Kill Team — at least in terms of power on the tabletop. Now, with that out of the way, what the heck are Movie Marines anyways?
Movie Marines
Movie Marines are a classic idea by this point. They are sort of a joke idea that gets bounced around but the idea is simply put as this: “What if the Marines you could field actually fit their lore?” If we’re going by that standard than a Kill Team of Movie Marines is probably in the neighborhood of 1-3 Marines on the tabletop. And each one is a basically an army unto himself!
Now, before you think I’ve just pulled this idea out of the air, this is a concept that has it’s roots waaaay back in White Dwarf. GW actually published a Movie Marine list as a fun joke.
If you look at their stats for each Marine and their weapons you can see just how ridiculous they are. The Special Rules are also a trip to read through. But that’s the entire point!
Now, we’ve actually got an article about running them in 10th Edition. But I say that GW needs to shrink the scope and recreate them for use in Kill Team. And I know exactly who they could use as a template…
Movie Marines? More Like Video Game Marines
Like MANY of you, I too have been joining my battle brothers and slaying out in Space Marine 2. To me, it’s just good clean gory fun. Once you get over the mechanical differences of Space Marine vs your typical shooter I found it to be great visceral gameplay. And I think that’s what a Movie Marine Kill Team should be going for.
One of the biggest limited factors for a Movie Marine list is their numbers — as in the lack of them. Again, if GW balanced Space Marines around being forced to only field 1-3 of them, but still have the impact of FULL Kill Team, I think they’d be on the right track. In my opinion, I think they have the mechanical concepts already implemented from Space Marine 2. The key thing is the way the Space Marines “heal” via Executions. I think if a Movie Marine Kill Team had a special rule that allowed them regain wounds from combat and/or also give them some extra actions (to account for their low numbers) then we’d be on the right track!
Without the Kill Team rules in front of me, it’s a little hard to come up with any hard rules or stats. Thankfully, those are going to be available online very soon. That’s another reason I’m tossing this idea out there. While I know it’s not easy to just whip-up some rules and publish them for GW, I think a White Dwarf article and Movie Marine for Kill Team update would be a fantastic way to implement them.
Again, looking at the examples rules above, we’ve got precedent — it can be done! The best part is because the Movie Marines aren’t supposed to be meant for Competitive play they don’t need to be perfectly balanced. I’m okay with them being a bit on the busted side. Especially with those solo play/joint-ops missions coming up…Just tossing that out there GW.
The idea of playing Movie Marines with the Kill Team Joint-Ops missions sounds like an absolute blast. Make it happen GW!
