How to Pick a Special Ops Kill Team

New Kill Team players often ask “how can I pick a team with a Special Ops vibe?” This article looks at Special Operations in fiction and real life, and explores how their traits are modeled in the game.

Special Ops in Fiction and in Life

Commandos in the Guns of Navarone, or WCW attendees?

The 1961 film The Guns of Navarone perfectly embodies the fictional elements of a special operations Kill Team: a group of Allied commandos infiltrate an island in the Aegean sea with the goal of penetrating a Nazi fortress and destroying its guns. The group relies on stealth, specialized training, experience, wits, teamwork, and luck.

I’ve picked an inspiration that predates the Splinter Cell aesthetic by forty years to show that special operations don’t have to be confined to modern tacticool — and this can give us a broader selection of Kill Team factions from which to choose.

A NATO document provides common attributes for special operations:

• High tempo. Get in, achieve the mission, and get out before the adversary knows what happened. Then hit him again.
• Disruption: Preclude the adversary from conducting successful countermoves.
• Deception. Create the impression that there are too many forces for the adversary to counter effectively.
• Early presence. First on the field.

To this list, we might add:

• Specialization. Each member of the Special Operations Force should be highly trained and have its own unique set of skills.

Most of these elements were present in the fictional story of WWII commandos, and fortunately, all of them can be replicated with game mechanics set 40,000 years in the future.

In-Game Mechanics

An ideal Spec Ops Kill Team should include as many of the following mechanics as possible, translated from the Spec Ops attributes:

• High-Tempo. This could include 3APL, or free mission actions — any ability that lets you accomplish the mission more efficiently than your adversary.
• Disruption. Keep the enemy from achieving its objective — which usually involves killing you. This could include throwing obscuring smoke grenades, or reducing the enemy’s APL with shock grenades.
• Deception. Charging from conceal, or changing operatives and orders in the scouting phase.
• Early presence. Features such as forward deployments, or extra scouting options. We could even extend this concept to units which can flip an opponent from concealed to engaged.
• Specialization. Operatives should have various roles such as comms, or a medic, or even a sniper.

The Top Three Special Ops Kill Teams

Based on the NATO list and our fictional inspiration, three teams stand out: Phobos Strike Team, Kommandos, and Pathfinders.

Phobos Strike Team

Alpha Legion. Source: bell of lost souls

Games Workshop missed a marketing opportunity by calling this faction “Phobos Strike Team” — if you were going to dream up rules for the Alpha Legion this is pretty close to what you’d want. No matter what you call them, Phobos are not only the sneakiest of Marines, they’re the sneakiest Kill Team. Every single Spec Ops criteria has at least one feature implemented in the rules.

• High-Tempo. Not only are Phobos 3APL, but Vanguard allows them to perform a mission action for one less AP. Loot is the most action-intensive (and therefore spec op) of all missions, and Phobos are at home here.
• Disruption. Phobos have all the tools to disrupt an adversary’s plans. Don’t want to get shot? Throw a smoke grenade and you’ll be obscured. At only 3EP you can afford to take three. Want to disrupt your adversary’s mission? Take shock grenades to reduce AP in a 4" bubble. For a spicy, swingy game that you won’t forget, take five of these against Chaos Cult. Want to shut down re-rolls? The Voxbreaker does this in a 12" bubble. Want to deny the adversary control of a vital resource? Reivers invoke Terror — described in the rules as a “counter-sensory barrage” — for 0AP. And the biggest disruptor of them all is Omni-Scramble: if an Infiltrator can see an adversary, he can force that adversary to delay its activation.
• Deception. When you face Phobos you won’t even know the enemy’s disposition until the end of the Scouting phase. Phobos can stay One Step Ahead by swapping out an operative at the end of the Select a Kill Team step. (Nobody does this, but it’s fun to know that you could). Even after all operatives are deployed, Phobos can redeploy two operatives with Elite Reconnaissance.
• Early Presence. Not only does Elite Reconnaissance allow you to deceive your adversary (see above), you can use it to take an additional scouting option — use it for a dash to get that much closer to a critical objective or vantage. Grav-chutes give you a 4" move as if you can fly. And Vanguard gives you an extra inch of movement and allows you to ignore the first 2" of any obstacle to be first in the field.
• Specialization. Every operative has a job to be done: marksman, helix (medic), saboteur, minelayer… the list goes on, and most of the roles mirror those found in classic commando movies like The Guns of Navarone. A capable Phobos player changes the team based on the adversary and the mission.

Not only does Phobos tick all the boxes, it’s so well designed that the spec ops features interact and stack. Want to have a 5APL operative? Hold my Amasec, we’re going to 7:

1. A Reiver with Vanguard moves (1AP). He’s already forward deployed because he has a grav-chute.
2. During the move the Reiver operates hatchway (1AP) to open a door.
3. The Reiver dashes (1AP) onto an objective.
4. The Reiver activates terror (0AP).
5. The Reiver loots (0AP) the objective.
6. On the next activation, an Infiltrator Commsman shouts into his Comms Array “no matter what comes through that door, shoot it!” The Reiver goes on Guard.
7. A cult devotee opens the door and the Reiver shoots and kills it.

OK, that was technically 5AP, then the Reiver did some neat stuff on other operative’s activations. But if you don’t think that’s cool you’re tired of life and should go play Carcassonne.

Phobos is the team with which I won my Golden Ticket, and the team I’m taking to the World Championships. While it’s far from the strongest team in the game, it’s the best embodiment of the ideal spec ops team.

Spec Ops Rating: 5/5

Kommandos

A sneaky lad

“Good enuf” in the first year of competitive Kill Team, Kommandos were my 2022 suggestion for your first kill team. Still dominant in the second half of 2023, Kommandos are the best written team in the game. With only minor balance tweaks, Kommandos have been consistently fun to play — and play against — for two years. In the team’s first year most players ran them aggressive and stoopid, but recently they’ve excelled as sneaky ladz, winning a top spot on our spec ops list.

• High-Tempo. While Kommandos are only 2APL, Comms boy and the Nob provide two extra sources of APL. And I got a plan, ladz lets comms boy perform a mission action for 1 less AP.
• Disruption. Like Phobos, Kommandos have smoke and stun grenades. And Kommandos have multiple threat bubbles: the bomb squig and breacha boy with dynamite shut down large swathes of the board to all but the bravest opponents. Every time you fight a Kommando, you have to wonder whether it’s going to just a scratch to stay alive only to implant you for a VP.
• Deception. Kommandos tend to telegraph their movements. But every Kommando is a throat slitta and can charge from conceal.
• Early Presence. Kommandos can Sneaky Git up to three times. In fact, the only difference between Kommandos being “pretty OK” to dominating the meta was someone asking “hey, what if I sneaky git THREE times?” This is as much early presence as the game can bear and will likely get nerfed soon. But even if sneaky git doesn’t survive the next dataslate intact, SSSSHHHH! ensures concealed Kommandos will dash into place TP1 or TP2. Not to mention you can add climbing rope to any Kommando for 1EP.
• Specialization. While Kommandos lack a medic, every lad has a job. Breacha boy delivers the dynamite, Snipa boy finds da best spot, and the Grot scores your secondaries.

Spec Ops Rating: 4.5/5

Pathfinders

Not pictured: Pathfinders

Not only are Pathfinders among the hardest teams to play well, their pick rate has fallen off because they struggle Into the Dark. But with a new season on the horizon, if you want to play a Spec Ops team Pathfinders are worth a look.

How do they stack up against our Spec Ops list?

• High-Tempo. Pathfinders are only 2APL, but they have a Communications Specialist who can signal for 1 extra APL. And the Drone Controller can, uh, control drone for layered actions.
• Disruption. The Transpectral Interference Pathfinder can System Jam to reduce an adversary’s AP by 1 — disrupting your plans for this turn. It can also use its multi-spectral sensor to ignore obscuring. Who cares if you’re hiding? And you’ve never had your plans disrupted until you’ve hunkered down trying to figure out where the Assault Grenadier Pathfinder plans to throw his fusion grenade.
• Deception. Not so much. Pathfinders tend to start all engaged and telegraph their moves.
• Early Presence. Pathfinders dominate the board early game. The drone controller forward deploys a drone — almost always on vantage — via drone scout. A TP1 recon sweep gives every operative an extra dash as long as the operative is within 6" of a board edge. And the Shas’ui declares Mont’ka TP2 to give every engaged operative a free dash when it activates.
• Specialization. Much like Phobos, every Pathfinder has a unique job — except there are a dozen of them.

Perhaps you struggle to picture fish with cow hooves as operators. I do too. While this article isn’t primarily about aesthetics, you shouldn’t pass by Pathfinders just because you’re not a gundam guy. Elysian Drop troops are the same size and can perfectly proxy as Pathfinders. Someone, perhaps you, is waiting to win “best painted” with a team of sneaky Elysian Pathfinders.

Spec Ops Rating: 4/5.

Best of the Rest

If Phobos, Kommandos, and Pathfinders aren’t your jam, there are several other Kill Teams worth looking into:

• Kasrkin. With the Reposition Strat Ploy for extra mid-game movement, Seize the Initiative for a second chance at going first, and specialists ranging from Sniper to Medic, Kasrkin are flexible and easy to learn. And if you want to lean in to the spec ops aesthetic more than the spec op rules, this is the team for you.
• Imperial Navy Breachers. These guys have a drug-bust SWAT team vibe, but with tools like the C.A.T. Unit — which can flip an enemy unit to engage — the Hatchcutter’s ability to breach through walls, and Lock it Down, which helps you control objectives, Breachers might fit our spec ops list.
• Imperial Guard. Scions have Special Forces right there in the name and can perform a mission action for one less AP. But this team lacks the specialization and counter-measures available to our top Spec Ops teams.
• Corsairs. Plunderers, Light Fingers, and Aeldari Raiders keep this team efficient, fast, and killy.

What about Wyrmblade?

Not spec ops but hoo boy

Wyrmblade ticks many of the boxes for our Special Ops list:

• Meticulous Plan lets them perform mission actions for one less action point;
• Hiding allows them to forward deploy; and
• Slink Into Darkness changes an order to conceal.

But Special Ops Forces are usually engaged in counterinsurgency, while Wyrmblade plays on the side of the revolutionaries. (Day of Ascension is a knock out story about a Wyrmblade proletarian uprising). You could have an amazing narrative campaign with one of the top Spec Ops picks trying to suppress a Wyrmblade revolution. And as of Q3 2023 they’re due for a buff.

What about Scouts?

As of this writing, Scouts aren’t released and their rules haven’t been previewed. Based on the preview images I’d be surprised if they don’t fit most of our Special Ops requirements. If they do, I’ll update the article accordingly.