History TabletopGame / Warhammer40000KillTeam

* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: Units designed specifically for ''Kill Team'' tend to represent the more obscure aspects of the ''Warhammer 40,000'' universe that wouldn't fit neatly into the releases for the base game - from Rogue Traders, to Imperial Navy marines, to Eldar Corsairs and Traitor Guardsmen.

* SelfDestructMechanism: One of the upgrades available for the Brute player in the 4th Edition ''Warhammer 40,000'' version of the game is the 'Doomsday Device', a weapon of last resort designed to destroy the battlefield to prevent the Kill-team from completing their mission. The Brute player could activate this device once there were more Kill-team models on the board then Brutes, resulting in a random chance of the battlefield exploding at the beginning of each turn.

* VideogameFlamethrowersSuck: {{Averted|Trope}} even more than in the parent game. As well as retaining the main game's automatic hits, the 2018 Kill Team rules make the weapon's short range less of an issue than in ''Warhammer 40,000'' due to smaller playing area. In addition to this, the Demolitions specialist has access to the Level 2 skill Pyromaniac that increases the likelihood of wounding with flamer weapons. Their main weakness remains that their lack of armor penetration.

* EliteTweak: Heavily encouraged by the 2018 version rules via Specialists. In most standard and competitive "Matched Play" set up a player's deployed team must include one Leader specialist and may include up to three different specialists after that. Campaign play opens up the ability to level your units up, with the unit costing more points with each level. In general, every specialism favors certain play-styles, unit types, and gear, such as Sniper to increase the the chance of hitting with a high strength or damage weapon, or Demolition with auto-hit weapon such as flamers or weapons which ignore cover penalties to hit. Then there are outside the box combinations such as combining Sniper with weapons that risk damaging the unit on a hit roll of 1, such as overcharged plasma guns, to make them safer to fire by allowing a free re-roll. Or Demolitions with a model using a sniper rifle type weapon that inflicts additional wounds on a wound roll of 6+, since Demolitions has multiple traits and tactics which boost the final result.

* ArbitraryMaximumRange: More so than the regular game. Regular Warhammer 40,000 effectively tries to portray a condensed battle and can be easily argued from a fluff standpoint that the events are happening on a much larger scale (with models representing approximate positions, or effectively someone observing a battle on a tactical map from an HQ). Kill Team is effectively scaled down to battles happening on a single city block, or one part of a military or industrial compound, or only one part of a star ship among several small units in a few minutes. Weapon Ranges are kept the same as the original for the sake of easily learning the game, but also adds a "Long Range" rule which imposes a penalty to accuracy beyond half of the weapon's max range.

* ShortRangeShotgun: The 2018 version. While Shotguns or Shotgun-like weapons are not any shorter range in terms of measuring here than in regular Warhammer 40,000, because the rules impose a -1 penalty To-Hit beyond half range, this means most shotguns have a Short Range of 6", but most have a rule which makes them hit harder at short range. That said, because Kill-Team is effectively played on a much smaller scale than regular 40k, effectively shotguns (and all weapons by exention) are shorter ranged here than even regular 40,000.

** The crown winner of this however, is the T'au's Pulse Blaster which instead has three firing modes with different ranges and destructive power and manages to avert, play straight, and exaggerate it to the point of parody depending on said setting. Its Long-range has a max range of 15" with an optimal range of 7.5", which is pretty decent, but weaker than using a Pulse Carbine or Rifle. Its Medium range is shorter than an Astartes Shotgun, but doesn't have to be half-range for the strength and armor penetration increase. Its Close Range setting, which hits harder than some heavy machine guns (including the 1"/25.4mm explosive shell/mini-rocket firing "machine gun" that is the Heavy Bolter), but has the comically short max range of 5" and optimal of 2.5". And considering that models whose bases are within 1" of each other are considered to be in Close Combat and can't fire any non-pistol weapons in such situations, this means it has only about an 1.5" of between "can't fire at all" and "can't easily hit the target".

* ArbitraryMaxRange: More so than the regular game. Regular Warhammer 40,000 effectively tries to portray a condensed battle and can be easily argued from a fluff standpoint that the events are happening on a much larger scale (with models representing approximate positions, or effectively someone observing a battle on a tactical map from an HQ). Kill Team is effectively scaled down to battles happening on a single city block, or one part of a military or industrial compound, or only one part of a star ship among several small units in a few minutes. Weapon Ranges are kept the same as the original for the sake of easily learning the game, but also adds a "Long Range" rule which imposes a penalty to accuracy beyond half of the weapon's max range.

* EliteTweak: Heavily encouraged by the 2018 version rules via Specialists. In most standard and competitive "Matched Play" set up a player's deployed team must include one Leader specialist and may include up to three different specialists after that. Additionally all units are locked at Level 1 experience, granting them their specialism's default trait and one tactical ability activated with Command Points. Campaign play opens up the ability to level your units up, as detailed below. In general, every specialism favors certain playstyles, unit types, and gear, such as Sniper to increase the the chance of hitting with a high strength or damage weapon, or Demolition with auto-hit weapon such as flamers or weapons which ignore cover penalties to hit. Then there are outside the box combinations such as combining Sniper with weapons that risk damaging the unit on a hit roll of 1, such as overcharged plasma guns, to make them safer to fire by allowing a free re-roll. Or Demolitions with a model using a sniper rifle type weapon that inflicts additional wounds on a wound roll of 6+, since Demolitions has multiple traits and tactics which boost the final result.

* LaserHallway: One of the upgrades available to Brute squads in 4th Edition ''Warhammer 40,000'' version of Kill-Team is the Las-Trap, sophisticated alarms, represented by red string markers in the game itself, that made it more likely for the Kill-team to be discovered if they tough them.

* OnlyAFleshWound: Like many Creator/GamesWorkshop {{Gaiden Game}}'s, when a model looses their last wound in the 2018 Edition get to make an Injury Roll to see what happens; if successful they "walk it off" and continue to function without being removed as casualty. However such wounds still deal damage, and models with flesh wounds have a harder time hitting the enemy, dodging fire and on subsequent Injury Rolls have a harder time "walking it off". Space Marines (and their Chaos Counterparts) have a special rule that lets them shrug off their first flesh wound's penalties, while Necron's Reanimation Protocols can let them instantly revive on the worst possible Injury roll.

* OnlyAFleshWound: An actual rule in the game. Kill team members who suffer their last (and often their only) wound instead get an Injury Roll to see what happens; if successful they "walk it off" and continue to function without being removed as casualty. However such wounds still deal damage, and models with flesh wounds have a harder time hitting the enemy, dodging fire and on subsequent Injury Rolls have a harder time "walking it off". Space Marines (and their Chaos Counterparts) have a special rule that lets them shrug off their first flesh wound's penalties, while Necron's Reanimation Protocols can let them instantly revive on the worst possible Injury roll.
** Played with when using the campaign rules. No model is ever considered to have been outright killed in combat until the after-battle results. Even units that failed their injury roll or removed immediately from battle because of some ill-fortune are considered "Out of Action". Units that remained in the battle but gained one or more flesh wounds need to first roll to see if it really was a minor enough wound to walk it off or if it was something more serious that adrenaline, first aid kits, combat-stims and sheer toughness and willpower let them fight through until the battle ended, and thus marking them as "Out of Action" as well. Then, all "Out of Action" units have to be rolled in a Casualty table, with four results. Dead, Convalescence (have to stay out of the next battle to recover), Full Recovery (no drawbacks), and finally Hard Knocks (the unit not only makes a full recovery, but also learns from their failure and gains bonus experience points if they're a specialist).

There have been a number of different versions of the ''Kill Team'' rules over the years, beginning with a short set of alternate rules in the 4th Edition ''Warhammer 40,000'' Rulebook that altered the core game's rules for the smaller skirmish-based battles. When 4th Edition was updated to 5th Edition, the Kill Team rules were removed but a number of events adapted their own ''Kill Team'' rules. In 2016 ''Kill Team'' received its first boxed game release that used the 7th Edition ''Warhammer 40,000'' rules as a base with alterations included in the box set's supplemental rulebook. 2018 saw the release of the first standalone Kill Team game that based its rules on the 8th Edition of ''Warhammer 40,000'' but included them in its own full ''Core Manual''. The 2018 version of the game has received a number of supplements of its own including ''Kill Team: Rouge Trader'' and ''Kill Team: Commanders'' in 2018, and the competitive gaming expansion ''Kill Team: Arena'' released in 2019.

* BadassCrew: All versions of the game see the player take command of a small squad of troopers, specifically chosen to perform covert and high priority missions, often behind enemy lines, often accompanied by specialist soldiers with skills particularly suited to the mission. Over the course of a campaign, the Kill Team can become even more badass by earning ExperiancePoints that can be spent on extra skills.

* EliteMooks: The Doom Squad[[note]]not to be confused with the DoomTroops trope[[/note]] upgrade for Brute squads in the 4th Edition ''Warhammer 40,000'' version of the rules represent enemy tropes who had been specially trained for close combat, making them more powerful than your average {{Mook}}. In-game these powerful troops had superior close combat stats to other Brute squads.