40K Skirmishing

I’ve been thinking a lot about playing skirmish games with 40K lately.

This is, I think, entirely the fault of Battle Missions.  I’ve yet to get in a game of Kill Team myself (in fact, I won’t be able to pick up my copy of the book until this evening), but I’m very excited about giving it a spin.  I expect I’ll be able to play a few games at Madicon, for sure.

Sons of Taurus has a pair of KT battle reports that are worth checking out.  (They’re also a great example of why I much prefer that format to video battle reports.)

It’s also stirred up a lot of interest on RPG.net’s Other Games Open forum, my primary gaming forum.  A number of alternative options for playing with skirmish games with 40K figures have come up, and I thought I’d share them here.

I haven’t played (or really read all the way through) any of these, but I’ve flipped through them all.

Thunderhawk Down requires the 5th Ed rules, but Brutal Conflict and Death Squads appear to be stand-alone.  Thunderhawk Down and Brutal Conflict appear to have pretty complete sets of armies, while Death Squads is a little light (with several listed as “Coming Soon!”).

For the heck of it, I threw together a chart comparing armies each game supports:

Army

System

BC

DS

TD

13th Company

Y

Black Templars

Y

Blood Angels

Y

Chaos Daemons

Y

Y

Chaos Marines

Y

Y

Daemonhunters

Y

Dark Angels

Y

Dark Eldar

Y

Y

Eldar

Y

Y

Y

Imperial Guard

Y

Y

Y

Kroot Mercs

~

Lost and the Damned

Y

Y

Necrons

Y

Y

Orks

Y

Y

Y

Space Marines

Y

~

Y

Space Wolves

Y

Y

Tau Empire

Y

Y

Tyranids

Y

Witch Hunters

Y

I’m definitely going to give Brutal Conflict and Thunderhawk Down a read-through (Death Squads is a bit too verbose for my tastes, and I don’t have any of the armies it supports) and will probably give them a spin when the shiny-newness wears off of Kill Team.