Eric: As a teenager, one summer I decided I wanted to learn all of the trick taking card games, a genre that I found strangely fascinating (I suppose this tells you a lot about me as a teenager and the rural midwestern world of the United States where I grew up). I learned the rules for Spades, Pinochle, and Pitch. I sort of learned how to play Bridge. I at least read the rules for Whist and Euchre. At the end of the process, though, I found myself feeling confused. In theory, I knew that the variations between these games should excite and engage me. In practice, I was at a loss to differentiate one from the other. None of them could really hold my interest.

That is probably a strange place to start my review of Games Workshop’s newest offering, Kill Team! A re-release of a variant of Warhammer 40,000, the game’s big selling point is its size. Unlike the sell-your-car-budget armies of its larger cousin, in Kill Team each player uses a small band of 5-20 miniatures to do battle in a space designed to fit on a kitchen table. As I’ve played around with it, though, I find myself at a loss as to what to say.

Kill Team is, at the same time, an exhausting incremental iteration on a tired system… and the best thing Games Workshop has released in years.

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