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Warhammer Twitch Preview - Octarius Mission Briefing

Rumours have been swirling of a new edition of KIll Team for a little while now. And to be honest, Kill Team desperately needed a rules update. It being just the normal Warhammer 40,000 rules with some extra stuff tacked on; made it so that the small skirmish game was more complex than the base game. Hopefully, these will be simplified enough that I can get the wife back into it!

The stream kicked off with some trivia questions, like you sometimes see at the cinema before even the adverts start. I didn’t do too badly on the questions I’m proud to say, I always enjoy the little tidbits and the ten questions were a bit of fun. 

And the stream proper kicks off with a cinematic! Bits of it we will have seen in Warhammer Animation trailers but now we see it in it’s full gory glory as the Death Korps of Krieg face off against some Ork Kommandos. Our boys go down hard but they put up a hell of a fight against the Orks and in the end, they get the job done! But seriously, the animation in this is glorious and I hope we continue to get cinematic trailers like this, and the one they did for Age of Sigmar Dominion, for all the major releases.  Hopefully, what we saw are renditions of the actual models in motion, because that bomb squig looks… da bomb. 

Kill Team getting a new logo to match that with the new Warhammer 40,000 one, I wonder if that means we will ever see a new edition of Apocalypse again? It's a bit sad that it kind of just faded away. Anyway! No time for that dour attitude as we are actually getting some plastic Death Korps of Krieg and what looks like a new set of Ork Kommandos! Between those and the Gaunt's Ghosts it’s shaping up to be a good time to be a Guardsman. Well maybe not an actual Guardsman but certainly a good time to be an Astra MIlitarum player. Was that an actual Ork sniper?! Looks like the Kill Team: Octarius box set is going to be off the chain! That Ork terrain is looking really cool as well. Between the Mekboy Workshop and this, you can almost have a proper Ork shanty town. Really, it’s just nice to see some non-Imperial terrain for a change. 

Onto the two included Kill Teams themselves, the Orks are looking as cool as ever. Really channelling that 80’s and 90’s cheesy action film vibe. Especially the Nob with the cap and grin looking the spitting image of certain muscular action heroes. But the rest of the team have a lot of character as well, like the grot with the grappling hook! The grapple-grot? And yes, that is an Ork sniper! They do exist! The Burnaboy looks like he has an oven mitt to hold his flamer! These guys look like so much fun, that perfect “Orky” vibe. 

The Death Korps are also looking fantastic, Games Workshop have done a great job injecting a lot of character into a group of soldiers all wearing the same clothes and faces covered with gas masks. You can easily pick out at a glance who the leader is, who the demo guy is, who the medic is, etc, etc. There is a lot of detail on these guys, especially the Hardened Veteran whose bionic arm can be seen under the sleeve of their uniform. The colour scheme is very reminiscent of the blue that French soldiers wore during the First World War, and I’m sure that someone like Vallejo or Ammo of Mig will do the actual blue that they wore. Plus, as they’re trench fighters there is ample opportunity to make some dirty and muddy. 

Bomb shell though is that this is a limited release, whilst the separate kits will be available “in the future” we do know that Games Workshop take their bittersweet time to actually make them available. How long did it take for the Honoured of the Chapter Space Marines to become available outside of Indomitus? Not to mention the set is £90 for ten guys, which was half the cost of the Indomitus box. In which case, I may have to grab this on launch day even though I’ve no plans to collect Orks. Currently, anyway. Although from the unboxing the included art print does look pretty lacklustre, we did only see one side of it though. I know that’s an odd deal breaker, but I really enjoyed the art prints that I got from the Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress core box set and Kill Team: Rogue Trader.  They did say that it would “probably” be available separately but the prices on warhammerart.com aren’t great to be honest.

Rules-wise, it seems that Kill Team now uses some measuring gauges rather than actual measurements, that is to say, you won’t need a tape measure. The stats look completely different rather than just being slightly modified from Warhammer 40,000. For example, in this new edition a Kriegsmarine has seven wounds, assuming that’s what the W stands for. So no more faffing about with Injury rolls. This really does look like a completely different game to the current edition. 

Wouldn’t be a Games Workshop stream without some Warhammer 40,000 reveals. Looks like the next War Zone is Octarius. For those not in the know, the Octarius sector became a massive war between Tyranids and Orks after an Imperial Inquisitor basically tricked a Hive Fleet into attacking an Ork world, in the hopes that they would annihilate each other. Unfortunately, the Tyranids got beefed up from all the biomass they could consume and the Orks got beefed up from all the fighting going on. Bad news for everyone else then. A little disappointing that the promo shots show a lot of Imperial forces. I guess Xenos factions can’t have anything to themselves! 

And finally, we have another butt load of Orks on the way. After everything that was revealed in Warhammer Fest for the Orks, any Warboss is going to be over the moon as these look to complete the Beast Snagga range.

  • First up in the Kill Rig, which is a massive squig driven chariot of death, complete with psyker chained to the top of it to smite fools. Supposedly, the kit is the same size as a Baneblade. Can alternatively be assembled as a Hunta Rig.

  • Next is the Beastboss, who effectively is the warboss for the Beast Snaggas. Dude looks awesome with a massive chopper and some sort of targeting squig on his shoulder.

  • Beast Snaggas are getting another special character in the form of Mozrog Skragbad riding his Great White Squig. Apparently, he must have lost a fight pretty badly for half of him to look like the Terminator. I definitely love his Predator style wrist blades. Can alternatively be assembled as a Beastboss on Squigosaur. 

  • New Boyz kit! Looks good with lots of options. Personally I was never much of a fan of the old squatting boyz, these new guys are practically standing straight! 

  • At last, sme new Deffkoptas. Not seen since the Assualt on Black Reach box, Not sure they’re part of the Beast Snaggas as they don’t use vehicles. They do look cool though, and would feel at home in a Speedfreakz force. 

  • And finally, yet more terrain for the Orks in the form of a Big ‘Ed Bossbunka. The head of an Ork Gargant turned into a command post. And in typical Ork fashion it's bristling with guns. 

Ork players don;t have long to wait, the Beast Snaggas box set is going on sale for pre-order next weekend. Almost a shame I don’t collect Orks with all these awesome releases. 

Absolutely last but not least, it wouldn't be a Warhammer reveal if Space Marines weren’t involved somehow. Looks like the Black Templars are getting a Codex supplement very soon!