Ender Takes AdMech to Kill Team
We had one of those very familiar hobby chats recently: congratulations, faction talk, a bit of rules tech, and of course some light complaining about how a game really plays on the table.
This time the spotlight was on Ender, who brought Battleclade / Adeptus Mechanicus to Kill Team.
Wilini immediately asked the important question: who did you play? The answer was AdMech, and honestly, we get it. Even when a faction is supposedly not sitting at the top of every tier list, sometimes the models and the vibe are enough. As Wilini put it: they may not be considered amazing competitively, but they look fantastic — and that earns respect.
That part feels very familiar to us. Sometimes the hobby decision is not about picking the mathematically best team. Sometimes it is about choosing the army that simply looks cool on the table and makes us want to paint, play, and learn.
Learning Kill Team the hard way
Ender also dropped a neat little lesson from the game. He said that when both players are just watching each other and nobody wants to expose their operatives, one of the key tricks is using 3 AP for a dash, a shoot, and a move. In practice, that means popping out, taking a shot, and then getting back to safety before the opponent can properly punish it.
And apparently it worked on him twice.
That is exactly the kind of small tactical discovery that tends to stick with us after a game. Not a huge cinematic moment, not some impossible dice spike — just that one interaction where suddenly the board state makes sense in a new way.
“Hide Team” discourse returns
Of course, not everyone in our group is equally sold on Kill Team.
Michał summed up his feelings in a very direct way, joking that he seems to have an allergy to KT, and that this kind of description makes it sound more like “Hide Team” than Kill Team — a game of camping and not peeking out.
Honestly, fair enough. That tension between careful positioning and actually committing to a fight is probably one of the biggest dividing lines in how people feel about the system. Some of us really enjoy the cat-and-mouse aspect, the threat ranges, and the sequencing puzzles. Others hear “dash, shoot, move back” and immediately lose all enthusiasm.
And that is also part of the fun of group hobbying: we do not all need to love the same things in the same way.
Round two and a suspicious need for Kommandos practice
Later, Ender posted who he was facing in round two:
He also added that if only he knew someone with Kommandos, maybe he could get some practice games in.
A totally subtle hint. Absolutely no agenda there.
Final thoughts
What we like about this little exchange is that it captures a lot of what event play looks like for us:
- excitement after a result,
- faction loyalty over pure meta chasing,
- small tactical breakthroughs,
- and the eternal debate over whether Kill Team is tense and clever or just advanced hiding.
Either way, Ender was out there with AdMech, learning the angles, getting surprised by movement tricks, and already thinking ahead to the next round. That is the good stuff.
If we manage to get those Kommandos reps in before the rematch, even better.