Welcome back, Kill Team fans! Games Workshop released a new balance Dataslate today, handing out both substantial buffs to underperforming teams as well as some extensive nerfs to the overperforming ones. We’ve got quite a bit to cover, so let’s jump right into it!

Universal Updates

Approved Ops Tournament Companion

Very simple update here, just added the new teams to the current season.

Universal Equipment

A whole new equipment option was added! Players can now select the Breaching Charge universal Equipment option, which lets you perform the Breach action for one less AP once per game as though you had the ‘breach marker’ keyword. Teams without access to easy breaching options on Tomb World are going to love this.

This is especially good for 2APL teams as they can’t usually move and Breach unless they use a special operative (who might want to do something else) or do shenanigans with APL. Now you can have some red shirt warrior blow the wall down, letting everyone else do fun stuff.

Killzone: Tomb World

Another change around breach points here. As a part of the action restrictions, you cannot perform this action for less than 2APL during an activation/counteraction in which it performed the charge or shoot action, keeping 3 APL teams much more honest with their breaches and action economy.

HappyRaccoon: Notably with the breaching charge generic equipment this clarification/nerf is going to be more keenly felt across the whole board.

CYRAC: Really happy with the discount breach nerf, it was getting quite toxic with the teams that had easy Piercing 2/-1AP mission actions. The extra new equipment is great too, although frustrating that only currently half of the teams have it on the app.

Approved Ops 2025

Both Flank and Retrieval saw changes this time around, designed to make them trickier to score. Flank only gives out the 2VP bonus for holding the same flank as the previous TP at the end of the 4th TP, and Retrieval’s mission action cannot be done if you’re already holding a marker. Retrieval’s change here isn’t too significant, it’s probably still very easy to get at least 4 points off of this one each game, but now scoring 5 or 6 on Flank is considerably more difficult.

HappyRaccoon: The easiest operative from retrieval’s silliness was the Canoptek Cryptek and she was already stopped from the shenanigans. So this just trims out that possibility space entirely.

CYRAC: While it’s good to see actual nerfs to Tac Ops, for Flank it should just be you have to control both flanks every TP for max points. With the current change it goes down to a reliable 6 points to a reliable 5 points, maybe 4 if unlucky. It’s still too good as an action point free cost Tac Op.

NotThatHenryC: I played a fairly depressing game with my Stealth suits against Flank lately. I agree this change probably turns an automatic 6 points into sometimes only scoring 5. Big teams can probably still easily win both flanks on TP3 though.

Team Updates

Credit: Dan "Swiftblade" Richardson

Canoptek Circle

Canoptek Circle needed the nerf bat pretty badly, and boy it looks like the rules team did not hold back here.

Obelisk Node Matrix only gives Accurate 1 now.
Canoptek Control cannot let you teleport farther than 2” now and more importantly cannot be done as a counteraction.
The Reanimator’s reanimation rule changed significantly, reducing the reanimated and Reanimator operatives APL by one for the following turning point and forcing the reanimated operative’s dash to end within the Reanimator’s control range or on your node matrix.
The Macrocyte Warrior took a beating, reducing the attack stat of its claws and both tesla profiles by one, and reducing the damage of its Gauss scalpel by one on both profiles. It can now only ever do 1 damage when it explodes on death.

Some pretty significant changes here that absolutely will knock Canoptek off from its throne atop the metagame, though all of these changes together are severe enough that it's hard to say where the team will end up once the dust settles. Likely, only time will tell.

CYRAC: While Canoptek’s damage output has been reduced, they still control the Kill Op amazingly well and remain a very grindy team. I think we’ll see less of them now but I don’t think this actually makes Canoptek lose its S Tier status.

Wolf Scouts

More big changes here to the other team dominating the meta:

Storm’s Bite no-longer works when Retaliating, only when Fighting an enemy that’s within your Storm.
Savage Fighters now only works when Retaliating - notably meaning Storm’s Bite and Savage Fighters never work together.
The Pack Leader can’t use Counterattack or Savage Fighters if Grizzled Veteran saves them in melee.
The Wolf can Guard… though it still has no guns obviously.

These are pretty big changes that will make Wolf Scouts far more vulnerable to enemy melee. Previously, any melee team with 4 attack dice had an awful time charging into the storm. You’d lose an attack dice, get parried out and then take Savage Attackers and Counterattack. Now you might actually kill a Wolf Scout with a charge. The Pack Leader is far more reasonable and possibly quite vulnerable to double-fighting enemies.

CYRAC: While melee teams and elites breathe a sigh of relief, the size of the storm as well as the Frosteye and medic remain huge issues that were seemingly ignored (not to mention faction equipment). Are these good first nerfs? Yeah, but still don’t address the core issues of Wolf Scouts. Hopefully these changes do more than just reduce Wolf Scouts from a 65% global winrate to a 60% winrate team as we’ve seen repeatedly in the past.

Deathwatch

Several changes here, all making this very strong team less powerful:

Veteran Astartes changed so it always costs 3APL to fire the Melta Bomb plus any other weapon.
Also for Veteran Astartes, you can’t Fight and Shoot in the same Counteraction.
For Specialist Ammo Piercing 1 becomes Piercing Crits 1, while the Rending option is removed entirely.
The Long Vigil ploy now requires your operative to be wholly within your territory.
The Shield that Slays now requires your operative to be wholly within enemy territory and now only affects Normal damage of 4 or more.

Big changes are you can’t now sit safely in melee after your activation, kill your enemy in a counteract and shoot one of their friends. Taking the option of Rending away from the plasma incinerator is a good move too. The nerfs to the ploys means you can’t sit on the centreline and benefit from both, while Shield that Slays is much less effective. This is maybe a bit less severe than what Canoptek and Wolves have taken but it still adds up to quite a big hit.

CYRAC: All that work done to SIA when it would have been a much better fix to just limit it to Bolt weapons, as even the Tomb World dossier clearly describes. A very un-thematic move, considering how thematic Kill Team loves to be. Otherwise, the big nerfs here are no fighting and shooting in the same counteraction, as well as Long Vigil and Shield that Slays not stacking if you’re on the centre-line/not wholly within. Considering how Deathwatch lost about half of its playerbase to Wolf Scouts, it’s not looking good for Deathwatch, although they will be much fairer to handle for a lot of other kill teams now.

Mandrakes

The World Championship boogeymen, who converted 3 of the 4 players into the top 16. Since that showing the Mandrakes have continued their rampage throughout the metagame, racking up strong scores week to week. These changes bring them in line with their contemporaries, and trim some of their hate pieces down to size.

Nowhere to Hide, no longer grants the extra charge distance. It's still a massive mobility boost, but no longer quite as far reaching.
Leaders Harrowing Whispers can only be done on each operative once per turning point and cannot be stacked with the Dirgemaw’s interrupt.
Dirgemaw no longer removes APL changes.
Chain Snares standardized with everyone else to work once a turn.

Overall these amount to fairly large changes to the most obnoxious parts of the Mandrakes power levels. 9” charges through multiple terrain features, infinite chances to cancel activations, and loss of comms were all big pain points when battling through the Mandrake rules. They’ll still remain strong with the mix of extra dashes, power swords, strikes first, and surprise blast. However you’ll have some more staging opportunities.

Nemesis Claw

Only one change here, which brings Chain Snares in line with other teams by only working once per turning point. So once you prevent a model from falling back, other engaged models can leave as they please.

Kasrkin. Credit: SRM

Kasrkin

Kasrkin have gone through multiple major buffs this edition and have still struggled, but thankfully the design team hasn’t given up on them yet, with one more round of some eyebrow-raising rules changed that might finally give the team the injection of juice it finally needs.

Kasrkin now have the Rapid Fire faction rule, which lets you shoot with your hot shot lasgun, laspistol, or bolt pistol twice in an activation if it does not move. However, this rule does exclude the Guard action.
The Light 'Em Up Skill at arms gives all ranged weapons severe, no restrictions.
Elimination Pattern and Neutralize target now work against an operative being scanned or who cannot retain any cover saves
The Sergeant picked up the Veteran Leadership ability, giving your team two Skill at Arms choices as long as he is alive.

These are great changes, and give the Kasrkin faithful some much needed relief into some of their worst matchups, like Goremongers or Fellgor. Kasrkin have always leaned heavily on their shooting, and with their special weapons picking up severe alongside operatives in the back throwing out silly numbers of Lasgun shots, Kasrkin might finally have the ranged prowess to stay alive in a melee focused metagame.

HappyRaccoon: Notably with 2 skill at arms active at all times, you can imagine the threat range of the Kasrkin much like the Aeldari teams. 7” movement, with options to full on 3APL. Against teams they out activate you can line up the pretty clean guaranteed last activation into first action of the next TP. Brutal stuff!

CYRAC: Hey you know when you end up buffing a team too much? Uh…yeah. The fact that shooting with Seize the Initiative wasn’t changed too is quite worrying. If we’re playing a game for vibes and thematicness, sure, this is great. Overall it is quite a worrying picture but the melee teams like Goremongers and Fellgor still was Kasrkin.

Angels of Death

A small but mighty change, the Angels have been down in the win rate doldrums barely scrubbing it out week to week.

Heavy Intercessors gains a bolt pistol, functionally granting the operative the new ability to shoot twice.
No more restrictions of Eliminators and Heavy Intercessor selections, Hero hammer is back on the menu.

Small change, but it does shake things up quite a bit especially in close quarters maps, where the eliminator was already a strong pick. The Heavy Intercessor and Eliminator can hold your back line objectives while the captain and his 3 goons fight the front line. When backed up by Hardy and Resolute chapter tactics you can brutalize some of the newly buffed mid-sized teams.

Necrons Hierotek Circle Kill Team

Hierotek Circle Kill Team. Credit: Pendulin

Hierotek Circle

Two changes, one of which matters a lot. Now, if Necrons get back up again they don’t count for the enemy’s Kill Op. They are still weirdly counted as a 5 Operative team, but now Necrons only count as killed while they are incapacitated.

Also, far less importantly, Interstitial Command can only remove and replace a model 2”, bringing that in line with the other moves it causes.

Exaction Squad

A few changes here, mostly quite minor:

The Leashmaster now selects two attack patterns for his dog.
The R-VR command action changes one of those attack patterns.
The grenade launcher now has 5 dice, making it look like a pretty scary gun.
The Revelatum Operative’s Spot Action works on a visible enemy within 8” and benefits your whole team if they shoot at that enemy.
Manacles only work once per turn, like the other similar equipment Mandrakes and Nemesis Claw have.

Hearthkyn Salvagers

The Salvagers haven’t been the same since their initiative stealing was nerfed in this edition. With the change over to the new initiative system that play style has ended up in the rearview, and with it they’ve lost ground compared to the Yaegirs.

Need Keeps got a small boost, granting Balanced if your operative already had 4 attacks.
Kognitar’s Tactician ability now also grants Balanced.
Climbing Rig equipment now function like mini grav packs, cutting all climbing costs to 2” and removing drop costs entirely.

These are actually pretty large mobility changes to the 5” movers, with the change over in movement systems of this edition. Removing drop costs entirely give the Salvagers more room to get onto vantage points, get around light terrain, and more. Combined with the extra re-rolls scattered across the team which punches up the reliability and the original short kings might have another shot at greatness.

Imperial Navy Breachers

Two nice little buffs here:

Close Assault now adds 1 to both profiles of shotguns and heavy shotguns, and also lets you swap two misses for a hit, when firing within 3”.
Overwhelm Target now lets you decide when you activate either operative using Breach and Clear to get an APL boost, rather than when you first declare it. This gives you the ability to see how the first operative gets on with just 2APL before committing the CP for the second.

So a slight improvement here, with a bit more threat to 8-wound operatives.

Death Korps

A fairly small set of changes to a declassified team was certainly not on the bingo card, but it's a welcome sight to see.

In Death Atonement allows for an order change on the way out, letting your surprised operatives always get the last laugh.
Leader gains the Bring It Down strategic gambit which provides punishing against an enemy operative.
Bruiser gains the ability to strike once on incapacitation.

Overall a small set of buffs to a flagging team, well past its hey days. The Bruiser still remains an oddity with its weird profile, but does provide a nice speed bump now to melee opponents. While the other buffs make things a little less awkward to use. Punishing isn’t the biggest upgrade but it does help when chucking dice.

James Kinband

Farstalker Kinband

Damage buffs across the board, along with the Canid style-standardization to make the ability more usable. Farstalkers have struggled to find footing against the melee-centric teams, and these melee buffs should help.

Blade profiles are now 3/5 instead of 3/4 across the board. Letting the team get some lucky hits in when counter punching.
Kroot Hounds can now change their order when counter charging opponents, clearing up some of the awkward staging that the team was forced to do.

These won’t sway things too much into the Kinband’s worst match ups, but it should help against the more 50/50 match ups that are littered throughout the metagame. Threatening lucky kills into Aeldari, and having Kroot Hounds reliably counter stage will definitely get some value. While the Astartes remain strong match ups that you still need to play perfectly.

Battleclade

Another of the weaker teams catches a bunch of buffs, aiming to make their abilities work more often:

Noospheric Network now just works by spending 1APL to transfer power, at any time during an activation.
System Exorcism can give you back the APL lost through Transfer Power.
Phosphor Blasters get Blast 1, which is pretty cool for ITD.
The Underseer has a whole new action instead of Noospheric Spur, which is gone. Instead the Datacoronal Accumulator action lets you roll a D3 and earn a CP if the result is equal or less than the number of objectives contested by operatives within 6” of the Underseer and/or the Auto-proxy - including themselves.
The Electromantic Capacitors equipment now works all the time, not just for Ready operatives.
Neurocyclic Reserve Cells let you Transfer Power for 0APL and no-longer prevents your operative from fighting or shooting.

So yeah, you get more CPs now and also have fewer hard choices to make when you Transfer Power around between your operatives. Neurocyclic Reserve Cells is now kind of a double-shoot option, letting you potentially inflict burst damage on a target.

Hunter Clade

Nothing to see here, outside of the clarification on oval base movement.

Imperial Fist Scout Squad. Credit: 40khamslam

Scout Squad

Quite a lot of stuff here again, for a team that’s really been struggling:

The Tactical Manoeuvre Forward Scouting option now works twice per game.
Adaptable Training works on operatives over 4” from the enemy.
So does Stealth Relocation.
Raw Physiology now adds 1” to a scout’s Move stat as well as removing penalties to its stats, perhaps allowing some 9” charges.
Astartes Training now works like a proper space marine. Two fight or shoot actions, costing a third APL if you want to double-shoot with a heavy bolter, missile launcher or sniper rifle.

We don’t know if tinkering with a few ploys is enough to really push Scouts from the doldrums. This is a team that has pretty much always struggled and the writers seem nervous about buffing them too much. Have they been put off by that one time towards the end of 2.0 when they went mad and gave all of them power swords? Oh well, better than nothing.

Warpcoven

Small buffs to the former masters of Kill Team 2024. Bringing their melee-centric khopeshes back up to 5 attacks, and letting the Brotherhood of Sorcerers ploy grant Ceaseless. Just in time for the anti-pskyer Celestian Insidiants to hunt the once lords of Kill Team. The buffs are fairly good, but unlikely to swing the team into relevance in declassified tournaments.

Corsair Voidscarred

One change - the Shade Runner can now do a warp jump in the same activation as a Dash. That’s pretty cool as it dramatically increases both its threat and its ability to get around to perform all sorts of missions.

Elucidian Starstriders. Credit: SRM

Elucidian Starstriders

Somehow the Starstriders pick up a whole load of changes. They do need it, to be fair.

You get to do four Warrant of Trade options, with updates to the following:
- Coerce now always makes your opponent set up their whole team before you do, instead of that being an option you could choose. Additionally, you can choose to set up all your equipment first or make them do so.
- Explore allows D3 of your operatives in your drop zone to reposition at the start, within 4” of your drop zone.
Stake Claim now lets you retain a fail as a normal success or retain a normal success as a crit instead.
Survivalist can now be used in control range, lets you ignore changes to its APL stat and can now be done multiple times per game for each operative.
Elucia Vhane’s Reputation to Maintain rule now gives you a CP or a fifth use of Warrant of Trade.
The Canid can now switch to Engage to do its Loyal Companion charge.
Hot Shot Capacitor packs now work on the Voidmaster’s relic laspistol, making it a 3/5, Lethal 5+, Piercing Crits 1, Hot weapon.

It’s nice to see this old team getting some love. It’s clearly not going to make a huge difference to the meta but it’s good news for the few people who play them.

Ratlings

Triplicate buffs to make the Ratlings much easier to use. The fixer’s strategic gambit has been opened up to target any opposing operative, regardless of visibility. While your special equipment no longer has activation restriction so you can boost your hit roll, and get severe simultaneously. Taken holistically you can dynamically say “BOOM HEADSHOT” on demand once a turning point reliably.

Credit: Sky Serpent

Hand of the Archon

The somewhat forgotten Aeldari team of the last three month play period, they've received a small but potent buff that should boost them a fair bit.

Leader gains Torturous Vision ability, which grants a Pain token when initiating a Fight or Shoot action, when the leader doesn’t have a pain token already.
Adrenalight is now a Ready Step ability, instead of a Strategic Gambit.

This set of changes is a buff for the leader, and the overall lethality of the team. Along with a kind of sidegrade with the Adrenalight. Against teams where some extra strategy information is useful, losing out that fake gambit is notable. However, always getting the pain generation means you can easily pass to generate CP with the leader's ability. With ceaseless back on the menu since October these guys and gals have gotta have some juice.

CYRAC: The Archsybarite’s new ability is great. Pop +1APL at the start of your activation, then charge and fight or reposition and shoot to get a new Pain Token to potentially use on Ceaseless re-rolls. So much great free flexibility.

Plague Marines

Two changes that make it easier to apply Poison to people:

The Poison Vents equipment now affects enemies that activate within 3” of a Plague Marine. You roll a D3 and they get poisoned on a D3, presumably taking damage immediately.
The Virulent Poison ploy now applies Poison automatically, no-longer requiring a 7+ 2D6 roll, to an operative within 3” of one of yours, or within 7” and Visible.

This is fine but nothing huge. Some players would have liked to see the heavy gunner given some help, especially since they’ll probably want to bring the guy for games against Insidiants.

CYRAC: Big change here is with Virulent Poison. Now it automatically works within 7” means that with the Psyker you now have two reliable ways per TP to put Poison Tokens on enemy operatives. It is unfortunate that Poison Vents are effectively useless now but give and take.

Plague Marines (Photo Courtesy of Musterkrux)

Final Thoughts

Swiftblade: I’m pleasantly surprised that Games Workshop took such big swings at Canoptek and Wolf Scouts here. In my experience, GW prefers to nerf the problem children in its various games with a light hand over several balance patches, rather than going in and dealing with it decisively. Its very welcome here, and I think both teams are brought back down to a much more manageable place. I wonder if Canoptek got hit maybe a little too hard here, but Necron teams always have a weird way of crawling back when folks think they’re down and out. How very thematic.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this dataslate. I do hope that we get one more pass on Murderwing and Insidiants before release, as I’d like a ruling on the Relic Stakethrower for Insidiants and a restriction on Carving Blow to only work once per TP. Still, I think we have a very exciting metagame on our hands now with the changes to the game here, and I can’t wait to get in there to try it out!

NotThatHenryC: I agree the changes are good, and ought to level out the uneven meta somewhat. Nobody is happy about the dominance of the top three teams and GW have swung very hard at them. Canoptek Circle are a shadow of their former selves. Wolf Scouts can now be charged, just in time for Murderwing to do so. If anything I’m now even more concerned that Murderwing will rule the meta till itself getting brought level, but we’ll see.

Not everyone can be happy of course and I’m sad to see no help given to my poor Stealth team. I’d have liked to take them to a tournament this weekend but honestly I wouldn’t enjoy a day of four games with them at the moment. It feels like work!

HappyRaccoon: GW made a ton of changes, and kept the promise of classification not being a legends-style out to pasture situation. All the strongest obnoxious lines got slapped pretty hard, and the struggling mid-sized teams all got some reasonable power level changes. With the addition of two new teams, we’ll see if we’re in a mid-sized metagame, or the elite-centric metagame we’ve been at. Me personally, I’m excited to play some Kasrkin and Stealth Suits into the new stuff! In case you’ve made it this far and want to hear what the rest of Just Another Kill Team Podcast are saying check us out at https://open.spotify.com/episode/4I9yjkR83BVNNCFV7iIVIe?si=wO_iuIwXRvq7dU2BelBB7Q

CYRAC: After lots of thought and discussion, I feel this is a super middle-of-the-road Dataslate. Sure we got more buffs and some nerfs but I still feel it wasn’t enough. With how bad the state of the game is competitively, it’s disappointing and confusing GW didn’t go harder on Wolf Scouts and Canoptek as we have had lots of reliable data to prove how oppressive these teams are. It definitely feels like GW won’t fully nerf teams until they have had at least 6 full months of play (sometimes even 9 to 12 months, see Hierotek and Warp Coven), which is quite depressing.

There’s also confusing omissions to nerfs such as with Chaos Cult and Fellgor, with the latter seemingly being ignored because GW feels Flank is what was making Fellgor too strong? Then we have teams who weren’t buffed at all. Stealth Battlesuits could have enjoyed a minor buff and Gellerpox would have liked anything, especially considering almost no one is playing that kill team globally now.

There are good changes here such as with Tomb World, Breach, Tac Op changes, plus mostly good faction buffs, but the game needed a braver and bigger Dataslate to help bring back confidence and hope to Kill Team for the overall playerbase. I feel that in one to two months time, people will be wishing this Dataslate did more. Especially with Celestian Insidiants and Murderwing hitting into the meta.

I have a full video review if you want to get more of my thoughts on the Dataslate:

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Tags: Kill Team | 40k | Warhammer 40k | Dataslate