Kill Team Guide: Command Points Tips and tricks

The departure from 40K for Kill Team is that Command Points (CP) are generated every round rather than having a big stockpile of them at the beginning of the game. It's much more dynamic and makes using special abilities feel more involving, and doesn't punish experimentation so much within the game itself.

I much prefer this system. Tactics have revitalised a lot of 40K, and in Kill Team you’ll be able to use more per turn. It also means those situational Tactics will actually get used! Quite often there will be a specific Tactic (or Stratagem in 40K parlance) which is cool, fluffy, and only ever useful once in 5 games. You’re likely to forget it when it could be its most useful, and even if the opportunity arises, you’ll be saving your CP for your pre-planned strategy.

This is far more dynamic as a system, and you can experiment from turn-to-turn, as opposed to messing up a whole battle!

The ways of generating CP are below with the two in brackets being dependant on your Force build:

• Battle-forged Forces gain 1 per round
• You gain 1 for every 10 points you are below your opponents Force value
• Unspent CP accumulate over the game
• (Your leader generates 1 per turn)
• ((Lvl 3 Veteran Specialists generate 1 per turn which can only be spent on Veteran Tactics))
• ((Lvl 2 Comms Specialists can generate 1 CP on a 5+ per turn))
• ((Lvl 3 Leaders can recycle CP on a 5+))

The methods in double brackets shouldn’t be relied upon in Matched play, unless you’re planning on using my Home Brew alteration, but your Leader should be kicking out an extra CP for you until they get killed. The CP generated by the other Specialists disappear after the round, and don’t accumulate.

In general you can expect 2 CP a turn, and you’ll find that that all the Tactics in the game cost 1 or 2 CP to use. As such you can expect to be using one or two Tactics per turn. Here’s the details on how to use them:

• You can spend CP on a Tactic in any phase.
• You can use any number of Tactics in a phase.
• You can only use a specific Tactic once per phase.

With that in mind, I wouldn’t recommend hording CP to spam in a later turn. You’ll be limited by the options you can use, and unless you really plan out an alpha strike (such as using a variety of damage buff Tactics during the shooting phase), you won’t get the effect you’re hoping for.

That said, it’s nice that CP can accumulate over the game, so that players don’t think anything will be wasted. With the way the game works you’ll be in situations where you simply might not be able to spend the CP on your Tactics every turn (lose line of sight, or your key shooter gets shot first etc.), and this will alleviate some frustration.

Reader Insights

More from Chris Noble over on the Twitters, who had this to add about the injury Rolls:

If your model is being shot or stabbed then your opponent is the one who makes the injury roll. So you can’t expend the Command Points saving Your Dudes. (You can If you take damage another way, such as falling off a ledge). So stay obscured and re-roll armour saves.

I have to admit I thought the Controlling payer rolled for injury (as it says on page 32 under Injury). Thanks for pointing this out Chris! I’ll add this to the Injury guide page. If you ever do think I’ve missed something, please let me know. I teach these games to new players, and any mistake I make in the rules can expand out into the new generation of players!

We’ll move on to talk about the basic tactics, their uses, and their relative value to players.

Until next time!

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