Media - space marines - Page 1

A photo of a game of Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team. The board looks like the metal of the inside of an ancient steampunk starship, and the terrain is a bunch of walls all connected together in the same steampunk style to form number of interconnecting rooms. At the bottom left closest to the camera are my six converted all-women Space Marines clad in deep red armour and at the top left are the five similarly-armoured Space Marines of the Deathwatch in dark blue armour. Lastly at the top right are the eleven miniatures of the Sanctifiers who are basically just regular humans but religiously fanatic and just wearing robes and brandishing holy books and flamers.

In the office again today, this time for after-work Kill Team. My Angels of Death vs. the Deathwatch vs. Sanctifiers.

It was one of those games where my dice rolling was just fucked, on multiple occasions I needed 3s to either hit something or or save something, and rolled all 2s. I can't even tell if my game plan was decent or not because the rolling was so shit. I left before the game was finished because my train was coming and I was down to one single miniature left and was not even slightly going to get anything but dead last, ugh. I don't mind losing as long as the game is decent, but this was decidedly not. 😞

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Posted on 2 February 2026, 20:45

A photo of the game board for the full Warhammer 40,000 game. The board itself is red desert, and all the terrain on it is ramshackle Mad Max-esque junk terrain, or stepped hills that have been painted to look like they're in a desert. On the left are the so-called Tyranids (which are actually 3D-printed proxies that look kind of Tyranid-esque in that they're clearly xenomorph-type aliens but for legal reasons are not actual Tyranids) and on the right are the shameful Space Marines.

A photo of the much-smaller game board for the Combat Patrol game. The board itself is grey urban ruins, and the terrain is a mixture of Warhammer 40,000-looking ruined urban buildings, and a set of grey stone ruins that look like it might have come from some sort of fantasy game. On the left are the absurdly heavily armoured golden Custodes, of which there are all of eight in total, and on the right are the mechanical hunched-over zombie-looking Necrons.

Today I went over to a friend's place to hang out and watch a couple of games of Warhammer 40,000! (I have my mind full with Kill Team, plus I absolutely cannot be bothered painting that many miniatures to make a single full 40K army so I'm happy to just observe.)

The first game was a full-sized game of Tyranids versus absolutely shameful Space Marines, they were mostly unpainted and three-quarters of them were held together with Blu-tac. The second was an introductory game of 500-point Combat Patrol for a friend who hadn't played before, Adeptus Custodes versus Necrons, and both games were absolutely one-sided blow-outs. The Tyranids won 29 points to 4, and the Custodes wiped all but three of the Necrons off the board by turn 3, oof.

It's also hilarious how large the boards are versus Kill Team... the cut-down Combat Patrol game which was just two players is still double a regular Kill Team board, or the standard size you'd use for a three or four player game, and the full game board is just HUGE. I used to play 40K way back in the day and know it's a 60"x44" board but the vastly smaller scale of Kill Team has made me forget just how big that actually is. 😅

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Posted on 31 January 2026, 18:58

A photo of the game board at the start of the battle. It's all ruined industrial-looking concrete buildings with rusty pipes everywhere. On the left-hand side is my terrain that has on top of the ruins and in various spots down the sides snow that's fallen and collected so it looks extra desolate. At the far-right are my converted all-women squad of six Space Marines clad in huge blood red armour, in the top-left are the six Death Guard who are all hulking and pustulant and gross in green armour, and at the bottom-left are the twelve Ratlings, who are essentially hobbits with sniper rifles.

Went over to a friend's place today for a game of three-player Kill Team, my Angels of Death versus Death Guard versus Ratlings! I would have liked to take my shiny new Wyrmblade but I haven't read the rules for them at all yet so I figured I'd stick with my trusty Space Marines (plus, fewer miniatures).

Two of us have fully-painted sets of the terrain from the Hivestorm box so we decided to break that out for a change from our standard close-quarters Gallowdark map, and we played the "loot" objective, where you once you gain control of the objective marker that's it for the turn and nobody else can take it, which added a whole extra level of tactics to everything. I ended up squeaking out a win, the final score was 6-5-4, but in part because one of the objectives at the beginning of the last turn had my leader, the Death Guard leader, and the Death Guard Icon Bearer all on it waiting to see what the outcome of the imminent fight was to determine who was going to be able to control it. Instead, one of the Ratlings snuck up and used their special ability that allows them to make mission actions (in this case looting the objective) even if the objective is contested, so that meant that neither me nor the Death Guartd could take control of it, so I activated another operative instead and stole the objective that one of the unactivated Ratlings was on! My other objective was far enough away from everyone else that they couldn't get it, so I ended up being able to get two victory points from that and I vaporised the Death Guard Icon Bearer with my leader's plasma gun. She survived the counterattack from the Death Guard leader's plasma gun thanks to some poor rolling on his part, which also meant that he was denied another two kill points, and I ended up coming out on top in terms of kills as well!

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Posted on 18 January 2026, 19:36

In the office for a game of Kill Team today! We did three-player, which I much prefer over 1v1 because I feel like there's less pressure since your opponents need to split their attention a bit.

It was the new Canoptek Circle and Deathwatch teams from the Tomb World box versus my Angels of Death, and unsurprisingly I came last, final score was 9-6-4 to the Necrons. The Necrons only got two victory points from objectives, everything else was from kills and their regenerating wounds is surely going to get nerfed in the next balance update because jesus christ. I got the leader down to 7 wounds (from a start of 14), and one of the Tomb Crawlers down to 9 (from a start of 21!) and both of them ended up healing all of the wounds later on. It's also worth noting that it ended up basically being the two Space Marine teams pincering into the middle towards the Necrons, so the Necrons were fighting on two fronts and they still ended up winning. The three Necron Warriors were annoying too because they don't count towards getting kills for victory points, and one of them comes back each turn if you kill them!

Granted, this wasn't helped by me forgetting my rules multiple times, and the Deathwatch having two melee operatives that did almost nothing the whole game. 😅 Still, it was overall a fun game though even though I lost horribly, there weren't any streaks of absolutely shockingly poor rolling for anyone.

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Posted on 1 December 2025, 21:16

A photo of the battlefield at the beginning of the game. It's played on a roughly six-by-four foot play mat that's decorated like grass, and the terrain is almost fantasy-looking, there are some sections of hills and a bunch of various stone ruins. Closest to the camera are the orange-clad Space Marines, including two large walkers (the Dreadnaughts) and a gravtank with a big lasgun on its turret), and on the opposite side are the hordes of "Tyranids", which all look like a cross between crabs and the actual Tyranid models. There are a ton of small ones, and two HUGE ones that a towering over everything else.

A closeup photo of one of the large "Tyranid" units ( I don't remember what it was, but it's all chitin and huge claws and if it was actually alive and real size would scare the fuck out of you) towering over a squad of Space Marines.

Today started with me hopping on the Metro first thing after breakfast to go to Crows Nest to pick up my last two fully serviced and restrung guitars (the Ibanez JIVA10 and the Epiphone SG Standard), then I headed over to a friend's place for lunch (it was tuna mornay and it was gooooooood) and to hang out and watch a game of Warhammer 40,000! It was Space Marines versus "Tyranids", where the Tyranid miniatures were some custom 3D-printed alien crab things. They didn't end up doing the final turn because the Space Marines were already ahead 50-35 and it wasn't going to be possible to bridge that gap.

There was some hilarious dice rolling though, including a squad of 20 Termagaunts firing their Spinefist weapons at a squad of Space Marine Scouts, which involved rolling forty dice. 😂 (The Scouts ended up dead, unsurprisingly.)

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Posted on 8 November 2025, 18:38

A photo of a sheep standing behind a waist-high chain link fence nomming on some grass.

In the office today for after-work Kill Team! On the way to the train station this morning the sheep were out having a good nom and I said hello and they all stared blankly at me haha.

The Kill Team game itself was Plague Marines versus Angels of Death, I've really struggled to figure out how the Plague Marines were meant to be played and had a REALLY frustrating game week before last where I conceded before the end of turn 2. This game was the complete opposite of that, the final score was 11-3 and I wiped out every single enemy operative and lost none in return!

I can't claim too much credit though because my friend who was playing against me had read the Plague Marines rules and gotten a sense of how they worked, and kept reminding me of stuff and making suggestions. He's generally played a lot more Kill Team than I have so has the concepts and tricks down a lot better too, and plus he deliberately took a fairly melee-focused roster which meant that with my Contagion strategic ploy he was always at -1 to hit, which it turns out is surprisingly powerful. He also had a couple of terrible rolls, like rolling five dice for one of his nasty melee warriors and four of them being failures. 😬

Still, I'm feeling a bit better about them, I just need to play them more, though I also need to figure out some method of organising myself so I don't keep doing things like forgetting strategic ploys that I've paid command points for.

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Posted on 5 May 2025, 20:20

The closeup of the moment the Bomb Squig exploded. The Space Marine captain is standing behind a waist-high barricade, his Power Fist held back behind him partially like he's exhorting his squad and partially like he's about to punch something, and he's aiming a plasma pistol forwards. On the other side of the barricade is the Bomb Squig, a red, squat, very round four-legged creature in mid-run that doesn't even come up to the height of the barricade. It has a landmine strapped to its back and a grenade held in its mouth.

Last night we had another of our semi-regular games of Kill Team, I was too brain-fried from work during the week to play myself so I just observed and my other friends did a 1v1 with the full rules and equipment and everything.

It was Space Marines of the Angels of Death squad versus the new Ork "Wrecka Krew" squad, and in typical Orky fashion the Wrecka Krew were hilarious. We only got through two and a bit turns though we played it out partially into the third and man it would have been close. We did the more casual missions where you've got the primary objective and you also get points for killing the other team, which feels a lot better than the previous edition where you would get nothing for killing your opponent's operatives.

The most hilarious moment came when the Space Marines made the mistake of not fully killing one of the Bomb Squigs (they'd gotten it down to 4 wounds remaining but retreated instead of taking another shot to finish it off because it would have them exposed to a very large rocket). The Squig immediately proceeded to run into the Space Marine leader and explode, dealing TWENTY EIGHT damage to him thanks to the close-quarters rule of blast weapons having Lethal 5+ combined with having a surplus of Wrecka Points to convert failed hits into successes. Because the explosives are a Blast weapon, you also need to roll damage against the Bomb Squig itself which meant it ended up taking a good 15 damage or so as well.

In future we're going to try doing a rotating 1v1 each time so we can actually get through games a bit more quickly and also get used to playing with the real rules rather than the slightly cut-down multiplayer ones.

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Posted on 15 February 2025, 23:29

We were finally able to get another game of the new edition of Kill Team in tonight! Angels of Death vs. Warp Coven vs. Nemesis Claw. We had to call it after the second turn because my friend who was playing the Nemesis Claw needed to go home and get stuff done, so it ended up being 2-1-1 with the Nemesis Claw out in front but they definitely were not going to have won if we'd played all the way through to the end of the fourth turn. They'd lost two operatives and had two more badly wounded, versus my five left almost all of whom were untouched.

Play of the match went to my leader Sister Sarine, who absolutely VAPORISED the Nemesis Claw's Skin Thief operative in a single shot with her supercharged plasma pistol by way of rolling all five dice as crits. 😁 And the triple Chapter Tactics you get for choosing the Assault Intercessor as leader is SO powerful.

Next I need to get around to painting my Malignant Plaguecaster and Heavy Gunner with the Plague Spewer so I can field a team of my trusty Plague Marines again!

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Posted on 22 December 2024, 23:25

We had our first game of the new edition of Kill Team last night!

Only got through two rounds, and we played without equipment—apart from barricades, just to match it from the last edition—but I'm really liking how streamlined the rules are, the new rules for line of sight and cover are SO much clearer now. In terms of actually scoring anything it was a miserable failure on my part, I didn't get anything at all but that was mostly my fault for fucking up my deployment (and I now have a whole new set of chapter tactics I need to remember as well), but that's fine, this was just a "Get used to the rules" game anyway. I am disappointed at how much of a nerf plasma has had though... even when supercharged, my Assault Intercessor's plasma pistol is only 4/5 damage, Piercing 1.

Side note, the Nemesis Claw "You're obscured if you're within one inch of heavy terrain" rule is SO IRRITATING. 😛 At least they can be shot at now, but obscuring still means that you're very unlikely to deal any damage unless you roll really well AND the Nemesis Claw player rolls really poorly.

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Posted on 27 October 2024, 23:39

A photo of Space Marines, three Assault Intercessors and three standard Intercessors, all of them have a metal-looking nameplate attached to the front of their bases with a gothic-looking font for their names: Sister Miraïs, Sister Lucena, Sister Sarine, Sister Genevane, Sister Arabeth, and Sister Dominea.

They're all wearing standard massive Space Marine armour with big shoulder pads painted in a deep rich red, the Assault Intercessors all look like they're mid-stride and are wielding got pistols and chainswords, and one has a grenade in her hand and looks like she's about to lob it. The other three are holding big boltguns, two look like they're in the middle of firing and the third had hers held upright in one hand while she points commandingly with the other. None of them have helmets and they've all got either mohawks or very short cropped hair and various cybernetic implants. Their guns and chainswords are all black and they've got various brown leather pouches attached to their waists. The bases are done up to look like battlefield mud, it's all dark brown and wet-looking and splattered part-way up their shins, and there's some swampy-looking grasses and green goopy swamp water on the bases too.

It's taken like six months but I finally attached the nameplates to my Intercession squad!

...though I guess now with the release of KT24 it's my "Angels of Death" squad now. 😛

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Posted on 26 October 2024, 21:52