Kill Team at Xjoy: one win, two lessons, and a surprise Salamanders haul
Yesterday end3r went to a Kill Team tournament at Xjoy, with a very realistic goal: learn something, survive three games, and ideally squeeze out one win. And honestly? Mission accomplished.
The final result was 1:2 and 8th place out of 10, so not exactly a trophy run, but that was never really the point. Sometimes a good event is one where we come back with more experience, a couple of stories, and a renewed urge to get more games in. This one definitely delivered on that.
Game 1: Murderwing on revived Octarius
The first round was against a familiar opponent who had only just picked up Murderwing and was playing them for the second time. That immediately gave end3r hope that this might be the best chance to secure the planned single win of the day.
What made it even funnier was that they were playing on the old Ork terrain from Octarius, which has apparently been officially brought back by GW. End3r leaned hard into shooting, but because of Plant Banner he still had to push into the Murderwing half of the board. Fortunately the opponent did not put up too much resistance, and by the end of turn 4 every enemy model was off the table.
Final score: 15:5.
A perfect start, and goal achieved in round one already.
Game 2: Tempestus Aquilons and the classic problem of having to go forward
Round two was against Tempestus Aquilons, and this time prior experience actually helped. After getting plasma dropped on his head in earlier games against them, end3r did what any sensible opponent should do: Hide Team for two turns and wait until all the nasty airborne threats had arrived.
That part worked.
The problem was the board layout. Once again it was Octarius, and the mission pressure meant he eventually had to move up. The Aquilons player had plenty of experience and punished every attempt to contest the center. The push forward cost too many models, and from there it was hard to recover.
Final score: 6:15.
Still, this is exactly the kind of tournament loss that teaches something useful. Sometimes the plan is correct, but the table and mission force a sequence where execution becomes brutally difficult.
Game 3: first contact with Raveners
The last game of the day was also the first ever game against Raveners. And as it turns out, tunnel-digging murder beasts that pop out of the ground are the kind of thing we remember very quickly after seeing them once.
This time they played on Volkus, so end3r put the Gunner on the highest point of the map, up on the second floor, hoping to make the most of the firing lanes. But the big mistake came elsewhere: the Headtaker went too far forward, expecting to plant a banner on a vantage point and stay safe from charges.
Unfortunately, Raveners have tricks.
They popped up from underground far enough forward to get into the Headtaker anyway and promptly turned him into paste. The Gunner did his job and shot accurately enough to kill two of the five Raveners, but that was not enough to stabilize the game. On the surface level the bugs were simply too efficient, and models like the Disruptor and even the boss got chewed through without much trouble.
Final score: 6:10.
Not a win, but definitely a valuable lesson. The next game into Raveners should already be much less surprising.
Bonus event photos
We also got two extra photos from the organizer, so of course they have to go in here too.
The real prize: Salamanders for free
And now for the part that made all of us grin.
After the event, during a casual chat, end3r mentioned that he had been looking around for some Salamanders for Warhammer 40,000. Right now he is playing Colosseum at 500 points, but was already thinking ahead to 1000 points. The only problem was the usual one: assembling and painting takes time.
At that point the judge — a member of NorthHammer, the same crew end3r had spent time with at the Polish Championships — casually mentioned that he used to play 40k, and even played Salamanders. But these days he focuses only on Kill Team, and after moving house the old 40k collection was just taking up too much space.
So naturally, he offered to get rid of it.
For free.
After the tournament, end3r gave him a lift home and came back with around thirty Salamanders models, including three characters, among them Adrax, with most of the force already painted to a very solid standard and ready for the table. Which means that about half — maybe more — can probably go straight into next week’s Colosseum league game.
Honestly, at that point the tournament result stopped mattering quite so much.
As wilini put it in chat: painted models for the army might actually be better than winning the event.
We kind of agree.
Final thoughts
So the official summary is simple:
- 1 win, 2 losses
- 8th place out of 10
- mission objective achieved
- several useful matchup lessons learned
- and an absolutely ridiculous post-tournament Salamanders jackpot
That sounds like a pretty successful hobby day to us.
Big congrats to end3r for hitting the goal, getting the reps in, and somehow unlocking the rarest tournament reward of them all: free, painted Space Marines. We would be smiling for the rest of the weekend too.