Battle Report: Plague Marines Vs AoD

A friend and I have been learning kill team for a few months, getting in matches where we can about once a month, starting with the starter box learning matches and adding rules from there one match at a time once we finished the learning sequence. This match was our first full-rules match (using approved ops but not any additional kill zone rules). Overall I was quite happy where I'm at with my play at this early stage, though I think a lot about the game in-between matches and have a lot of full 40k experience, but I'm sure I have an enormous amount of room to grow. I'll get actual pictures of my kill team when I get a chance, that somehow got missed and the lighting at home is rubbish for that.

We use a local shop and usually it has a Volkus terrain set but most of it was missing this week so...we had to use some best approximations, which make a bit of placement and such I mention here odd, if there are points where more experienced players are confused with placement notes. We also probably made some mistakes, I imagine.

Picture taken at the very end of the game, but you can see the terrain we used. I was using my 5th? edition plague marines I modeled into the kill team. I have a modern one as well, but it's fun going retro.

First full rule match (adding tac ops and ploys)

• Approved Ops 2025 (with me using an adapted 2024 tac op)
• Crit Op: Secure
• Map Selection: Volkus 2

Team selection: 
Me - Plague Marines.  All minus heavy gunner.  Plague rounds, bells, ladders, Heavy barrier.

Opponent - AoD.  Captain, gunner, heavy gunner, assault intercessor, sniper, grenadier
Purity seals, 2x krak grenade, tilting armour, 2x ladders.

https://preview.redd.it/fqrugzviuc5h1.png?width=743&format=png&auto=webp&s=fc59bb2c378260d058d760a0dadf611393186715

I won initiative and so deployed first and took the second activation.  I placed my warrior on the top floor in feature A,  (which our terrain had in poking into my DZ) and the other 5 were in a line in D (ladder ascending to A and to get over F (not 100% sure if that was legal).  They were not ultimately needed for what I did. I placed a heavy barrier in my territory's objective there in the mid line.  He started with the Captain, sniper and assault behind L (with ladders in that building), and the grenadier, gunner, heavy gunner in C.

TP1 I moved my bombardier to mid field behind the heavy terrain to hold that objective and the warrior to the hidden cover in the front of A so I could move-shoot-move on his sniper a floor lower and distribute poison where possible, and be ready to drop down to the midline objective.  I moved my other 4 behind the 'I' scatter terrain in prep to take the top left building for Seize Ground.  He moved his commander/assault/grenadier into that building, the sniper onto the roof of E and the two gunners forward under the sniper/set up on the mid field objective.  He hit my 4 grouped operatives with a frag grenade, causing like 12? damage across them.  I healed a chunk of this afterwards on my champion, who ended up being the most injured.

TP2 "Multiple things happen at once."  I charged my fighter into the captain/assault/grenadier and flailed them all, poisoning the captain, did some damage to all.  I continued to move my units in, heal my champion (who was pretty fucked up from the grenades, actually, it was close) and position to support.  The plague caster poisoned his grenadier? Otherwise mostly positioning followed. My champion maxed his +3 wound heals from these combats while staying in conceal behind a wall.

With multiple of his models in control range of my fighter, he can't just fall back with any of them to shoot at my fighter, the rest of my guys in the area are in conceal and cover so it just would open him up to get gunned down as he backs out of the fight. If he decides to swing blows at me...they face a brutal weapon with a lot of power behind it. He tries with his captain, but I roll well, he rolls poorly, and is left with one wound, to die next turn to poison.

He moved his gunner into A and planted a banner.  I moved grenadier in to contest it, he brings in his heavy gunner, fucks up the bombardier but not enough to kill him that activation (but close, and now I'm facing 2 full health operatives). I managed zero damage with a blight grenade and the bolter against them, so no poison.

He fell back with his champion at some point, this TP or the previous, wanting to get me to shoot him and give him some counteract but I left him to die on his own from poison.

TP3 Opponent activates first, and goes to attack my bombardier who dies instantly so I suicide ploy poison both gunners.  He moved his heavy gunner between ruins in his territory to shoot through a door into my plague caster (around rubble G). 

I end up clearing out the seize ground building (top left of map), heal up the champion more, and start positioning to wipe him by moving the fighter to flail both sniper and heavy gunner, killing neither even with melee, but still damage them and keeping the fighter safe from both of their shooting.  Overall he loses his sniper and remaining gunner during this phase as well, ending with just the heavy gunner.  My icon bearer dies from the sniper (jumped down, ran mid field, shot very hot with the pistol).

TP4 Mop up.  He activates first with heavy gunner, hurting my fighter but not killing him.  I kill him, secure the last objective and remove his banner, denying any points for the round.

Final Scores: 
Me - 19.  Plague Marines

• Crit Op: 5 + 3 (Primary)
• Tac Op: 5 (Seize Ground) 
• Kill Op: 6 (wiped TP4) 
• Total: 19

Opponent - 8.  AoD

• Crit Op: 3
• Tac Op: 2 (Plant Banner)
• Kill Op: 2 + 1 (Killed Bombardier and icon bearer TP3)
• Total: 8

Discussion: I think I did pretty well here while learning.  

• Deployment: I deployed well with a death ball mass and 2 positioned to cover the other flank, send poison and reposition to support either flank as needed.  I had some degree of being exposed in TP1 to stage my entry into the building and took damage because of him moving his grenadier over (the terrain we had didn't make it apparent where he could easily move as a door wasn't physically on the building, but I would have probably kept the decision anyway).  Cloud of flies should have been used. It was hard to get my champion and icon bearer close enough to do much (though the champion tanked and was healed for 14 damage through the fight, so he did his job there + took a crit op action, but he never left conceal due to positioning/poor health).  It was a little tricky to reposition the icon bearer to help the other flank without being hit by the sniper/heavy gunner but that's just how that is. Another situation I could have tried to depend on cloud of flies, but I'm happy overall.

• Op Play: I wasn't going to get a perfect score on Seize Ground because I did have to push him off of it, but I did so by the end of TP3 so that's pretty damn good.  I was confident in my ability to hold 2 objectives well so having the crit op as my primary was a decent choice, especially as I could have focused more on redeploying around that if I needed to without having to worry about his tactical choices as much as I would have had to running at his DZ and taking a building on his side for Seize Ground.  

• Target Priority: I focused his captain first, then his assault intercessor, and avoided LoS with his sniper and gunners.  He had some movements with the gunner and sniper that did get firing lines and did do some damage, but I minimized it and limited any damage he managed.  I am happy with my order here.  Especially with use of charges, I ended up making this fight like he was coming at me 1-2 at a time instead of in larger groups, which was very effective.  I also had every operative poisoned by TP3, and I think? before any of them activated (besides the normal gunner).

• Positioning/Activation Order: As mentioned it was a little hard to get my icon bearer and champion in position to do a lot, the latter mostly due to him being low health and I wanted him alive so used very good positioning to get his +3 wounds a turn from local enemy damage, so that was acceptable. He was still in a position to counter charge if needed.  The icon bearer was a bit far back to get in position (around his about to die but alive captain) to tag one of his objectives in TP2.  I could have done better there.  But otherwise my activation order was pretty good to get critical plays in where I needed to, especially with the tactical charging I did to keep his guys locked down.  He had to use CP twice to change doctrine to mobile to reposition. Some better use of nurglings may have also helped here but I was not feeling highly threatened by the operatives I was in range of to use it, at the times I could.  

• Ploy Use: As mentioned, nurglings could have been useful.  I did not end up using cloud of flies once.  I considered it but just didn't end up really needing it at the start of a given TP (could have saved the icon bearer but couldn't see that attack coming).  Contagion was very useful, and did have an impact.  The one poisonous demise I used was very useful for poisoning his gunners out of my LoS.  Virulent poison was used once.  Curse of rot I used once to good effect, blocking two rolls and damaging him.  Sickening resilience was used at least twice, and command reroll once defensively, to good effect.  So overall I used all firefight ploys and was very happy for them to be there. I used nothing for specific damaging use (like lumbering) and did end with 3 CP, which I was mostly keeping for defensive purposes, but It either wouldn't have mattered when I used them due to dying anyway or living anyway in the end of TP3 to TP4.  Overall, happy with my actions here but will be using cloud of flies in the future, especially when running in a group.  

• Equipment Use: Ironically poison vents would have ended up being more useful than ladders, since I didn't fully understand their deployment restrictions.  I would have ideally replaced the ladders with blight grenades, probably.  

• Operative Commentary: 

  • Fighter: MVP - A fucking monster.  Charging 3 and locking them there and starting with flail to cause some initial damage and poisoning without being able to be hit back was fantastic.  I was lucky he lived through that TP but because of how mean he is and the enemy being locked in combat so that even if one of them backed up they couldn't have shot him while he was still in combat, it was very hard to remove him (and then the plague caster healed him too).  He did this again with a dual charge to the sniper and heavy gunner, and while he didn't kill either of them due to low rolls, he did put them in the same position of having to fall back and not being able to shoot into the close combat.  Very instrumental.  Using this similar role for warrior (because he's a bit tankier) and champion (also quite lethal and decently tanky) is important to keep in mind for the right situation.
  • Champion: Didn't do tons in this match, but he tanked 14 damage and did a crit op action, and helped with tac op via APL.  He stayed in conceal the whole time (which was nuts), but I do expect this to be quite the rarity.
  • Icon bearer: Gave free contagion (very useful) and was a body.  Not much else this game.  Had CC gone differently against my favour, he went have likely gone in to contribute but as I was aggressive in CC and him only having pistol range limited him.
  • Warrior: Under performed but in the end he threw out mild chip damage and cancelled plant banner.  I think he was more useful in the role I wanted him to have then a heavy plague gunner would have been.  The bolter was indeed inconsistent due to good saves by my opponent, but that's how bolters go.
  • Plague Caster: Tossed out some plague tokens (sooo nice to do that from conceal and through combat via his ability) and heals.  Only left conceal at the end to finish his sniper.  Not the MVP like he often is, but damn useful.
  • Bombardier: sacked on dice, but he claimed then contested an objective, poisoned two and claimed a crit op.  Hard to be mad about that.

• Remembering Rules: I don't think I forgot anything, and any mistakes we figured out pretty much right away as we played.  I had my interpretation of ladders wrong and remembered a couple I had to check a few things I didn't know like verticality of control zones and objective stuff, but that's it.

• Mistakes and Learning: I think it's pretty minimal here, besides where I noted the proxy terrain choices made it hard to see where all the doors were and such, but it wouldn't have changed tons.  I'm overall happy and don't think any real mistakes were made I can think of, on my side.  A bit more precision placement/movement, but I overall did quite well there.

  • Next time I want to keep in mind the possibility of using more disposable units to initial charges to lock units down, and mix this with nurglings to really cut down what he can do.

• Opponents Play: He did better with his grouping/not sending single marines out to die without support than in previous matches, though his force being mostly split into 2 was still under supported against my death ball, especially with me locking them into melee and hitting the captain first so it's like I was hitting them one at a time.  His sniper was well positioned, but I avoided him and had him under some threat.  The heavy gunner wasn't really as well positioned, though I think he deployed those first, and the rest of my models all got deployed on the opposite side, so I don't blame him there, it just ended up being a grouping issue.  I think he was split between stopping my tac op and securing his, and especially with our denser terrain with much more limited firing lanes, his shooting based units really limited his damage.  I think his best bet would have been to dedicate more to stopping my tac op, or scoring his, but not both at the same time, then he could try to crush a couple of my operatives with local superiority and send the band on its way to the next priority, which is what I did.  Kill op for primary did not work out well because he was split in two (and I ended up disabling any groups he had) and the shooting just wasn't well matched.  Kill op as a primary is always so risky given that it puts more of the initiative on my side. A melee heavier team would be a better fit for fighting my team in this instance, fighting in this denser terrain, and to pursue his kill op as a primary. But this runs with it's own struggles as I can force him to charge less important operatives and then counter charge with fighter/champion, and any grouping gives me good targets for heavy gunner, plague caster, and blight grenades. We'll see how it goes down.

Overall, it was an educational game and a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to getting a few more reps with different crit ops before moving into kill zone specific rules, and theeen testing out our other kill teams.