Thankfully, though, GW has generously provided Wargamer with free review copies of both Octarius and the Compendium – so I can share my thoughts on how the thing turned out, who I think it’s for, and – ultimately – whether it’s any good.

There’s a huge amount of faction- and warzone-specific stuff contained in the Octarius book, so we won’t get into it here. Sometimes, I found myself double checking which shape was which, or accidentally measuring a square instead of a circle. I guess there’s nothing to stop you from converting the pants off your chosen Fire Teams, but it’s not quite the same as having unique figures and units making up your team. If the Kill Team Roadmap is anything to go by, these rules probably won’t appear until well into the future and will require you to spend more money to obtain.Again while we get a list in the book I imagine we will see more warzone or army specific ones added in the future. Combat Gauges: The new edition of Kill Team uses a simplified measurement system to create fast, dynamic games. Will the brute strength of the greenskin menace overcome the Astra Militarium’s grimmest – and, possibly, grimiest – trench-faring warriors? Get straight into the game with a double-sided game mat, two decks of 27 Tactical Ops cards, and 10 dice.

However, the new era of Kill Team that the box heralds includes many changes to the way the game works that will leave many fans feeling hard done by. With time being a precious resource, there’s loads of games to play and not nearly enough time – but with only a handful of models on each side and a small gaming footprint I can see Kill Team being a regular addition to our gaming rotation. DF is a measure of the unit’s ability to avoid attacks, and is the number of saves a figure can make each time they are fired upon. And, while the Compendium does actually offer a fair stack of cool-looking faction specific Strategic and Tactical Ploys, Equipment options, and more, to give your Grey Knights, Tau, or Death Guard Kill Teams flavour – I can’t help but notice there’s also an awful lot of blank space among its dozens of pages of phat datacards – each of which takes up the same half-page slot, regardless of whether it has several special rules to fit in, or none at all.

If you’re an avid Kill Teamer, I can’t imagine how gutting it may well be to have to sit by as months roll on, waiting for an announcement for new rules for your favourite Kill Team faction. For ranged combat, the shooter will roll a number of dice equal to the attacks characteristic of that weapon looking to roll equal or higher than their BS – any roll of a 6 is a critical hit however, which both does more damage and is harder to negate. GW grabbed attention quickly when its July 9 trailer for Kill Team: Octarius showed Death Korps of Krieg troopers battling Ork Kommandos – two quite famed units, for recently less-loved factions, which had never before received their own kit in plastic – and the final models most certainly do not disappoint. And, since no faction’s Kill Team can consist of more than two Fireteams, this means quite a few of the currently available Kill Team configurations can simply only have one or two types of miniatures in them. But there have been some quite significant changes to Kill Team with the announcement of the newest edition – and a lot of them have not been well received by the community.

However, the board is good, well-made card that folds and unfolds easily enough before and between uses.Kill Teams of around 10 models jostle for control of a key objectives in tight and dense terrain as they try and set up beneficial vantage points while out manoeuvring their opponents in deadly skirmishes. The current releases roadmap suggests we can expect, at a minimum, two new Kill Teams every three months until next June, with all the rules and accoutrements they bring – so keep an eye out, and you might strike lucky with dedicated rules and models for your favourite army soon enough. Plus, you’ll get more tokens, cards, dice, and measurement tools than you can shake a trench shovel at .