When Smurfs Attack

Illuminati Champion Vorsprung Teknik led a Kill Team sweep through the ruins of an old battlefield and cult centre, looking for sport and slaves. He placed his chaos marines in a line with orders to comb through the ruins with a bike on each wing to run around the structures to cut off any retreat.

However, Sgt Shaun of the Ultramarines had two squads of assault marines with jump packs ready to ambush the Illuminati. And so the stage was set for an epic clash of good versus evil, true blue versus puky purple, loyalists versus traitors .... continue until word count target achieved.


I have placed the casualties in a line on the right. Things have not gone so well for the Illuminati. The high mobility of the smurfs allowed them to defeat my forces in detail, first the bikes, then the infantry.


By the end of the fourth turn the Illuminati were down to Teknik and one bod. At that point they made a strategic advance to the rear and abondened the field to the Ultramarines - accursed Smurfs.

Congratulations to Shaun who outplayed me.

There will be a rematch, shake fist, utter foul chaos oaths etc.

Kill Team - Battle Missions - A Review

I picked up the Battle Missions book when it came out and was pleased with it. It reminded me very much of an old style book I had by Charles Grant, which had a whole series of randomscenarios for pickup games.




However, today I want to talk about one of the three 'extra' scenarios at the back of the book - Kill Team.

This idea has been around for a while. The idea of using small forces for a quick game of 40K on a small table. This is the latest incarnation of the idea by Jervis Johnson and it is quite brilliant. Jervis has obeyed the simple rules of KISS - or Keep It Simple Stupid!

Kill Team is a 200 point game where players select a force from 0-2 Troops, 0-1 Elite and 0-1 Fast Attack. I have found it useful to allow choices from understrength squads or it can be difficult to use points.

You play until a player loses half the number of figures/bases/vehicles are destroyed, whereupon he takes an army morale test at the start of his next turn using the highest Leadership in his army, subtracting one from the leadership for each additional turn. The first army to fail the test loses.

There is only one special rule - Every Man for Himself. I will quote it in full: "All models operate as individual units in this mission, even if they were chosen as part of a squad or squadron. In addition, when a model shoots or fights in an assault it may split its attacks up amongst any eligible targets if desired."

That's it - just one simple rule change and everything falls into place. Jervis is a bloody genius. The implications can be tricky to get your head around. One temds to revert back to squad-thinking.


Anyway, a game is shown below. Iused my muty guardsmen bolstered by a single ordinary chaos marine and one heavy weapon base with missile launcher. My opponent Shaun, used Eldar, basic troops and snipers. This is actually the third game we played - we had trouble interpreting the one special rule in the first two (I was also comprehensively beaten in those).


One point is that you need plenty of terrain. This shows my set up forces in a quarter of the board.


My forces advance in two waves with a couple of flamethrowers in the front wave. Shaun's snipers shot up some of my troops but missed all the important targets -- hur, hur.


My flamethrowers, grenade launcher and chaos marine did the biz. I used the missil team as a sniper with excellent results. I lost about ten troops out of twenty-seven. Shaun's Eldar started with seventeen and failed his second morale test.

This really is great fun. It allows you to try unusual forces and combinations. A game last about an hour.

Jervis - you are a bloody genius mate - finally, a 'kill team' that works.