Welcome to a Kill Team review! Here on Path to Glory we love Underworlds, obviously, but we also love other games, and today I’m going to talk about the new Ork Wrecka Crew team that is coming out for Kill Team 2024. This is in the Brutal and Cunning box alongside the Ratlings team, and brings our second Ork team to the game, the first once since Octarius and the Kommandos! Kommandos represented the sneaky, stabby Orks, while these guys are louder. Let’s dive in!
Intro and Faction Rules
The Wrecka Crew is an 8 operative Kill Team, where two of the operatives must be Bomb Squigs, so we’re looking at 6 “real” Operatives. That puts them firmly on the elite side of things. You’re required to take your Boss Nob and two Bomb Squigs, then you get to choose 5 from the following: Demolisha, Fighter, Krusha, Gunner, and Rokkiteer. Fighters and Gunners can be taken multiple times, which is potentially quite good, but more on that when we get to them.
The team has the archetypes Security and Seek and Destroy. These are two good options, especially as the Wrecka Crew is a really aggro team, so S&D will be nice for them. Considering Security for Contain against slower teams as you barrel across the board is a very reasonable option, but ultimately Tac Ops are selected on a game-by-game basis. Suffice to say, the Orks get two good choices, so I think they will be happy with this.
Wreckas get two Faction Abilities. Wrecka Rampage lets you build up a Wrecka point every time you roll a 6 on an Attack Dice. You can build up to 6, and you can spend one at any time to turn a Miss into a Hit. That’s pretty good, especially as your shooty boys have pretty mediocre Hit stats, and it makes you melee boys very, very scary. Expect this number to go up and down a lot during your games.
Tanked Up is arguably the more important rule, however. Being an elite team, you may be surprised to note that your Operatives only have APL2. That’s a big issue for low model count teams, but Tanked Up makes you APL3 as long as one of your first two actions during an Activation is Shoot or Fight. That’s a lot more limiting than just being APL3, but you need to work around it otherwise the team will simply run out of Actions and be unable to keep up.
Operatives
For operatives, let’s start with the Wrecka Boss Nob. Your Leader is 14 Wounds on a 4+ save. That’s not quite Space Marine level, but it’s fairly close. He also has two profiles to choose from. Rokkit Pistol and Smash Hammer gives you a really strong melee weapon. 4 dice hitting on 3+ with 5/6 Brutal is very good, and washes most models in the game with average dice. The base pistol is really only ok. It’s got good damage with 4/5, but it also hits on 5+ at Pistol range, so it’s not exactly something I’d rely on to kill this every time you roll dice, but it can soften targets to Charge or finish off something an ally shot. Blast 1” has some utility, especially on Gallowdark where it gives the gun Lethal 5+, but 1” is a small radius and you’ll rarely hit more than 2 targets with it, if that.
The other loadout is the Choppa with twin Pistols. The Choppa is notably worse than the Smash Hammer, but it’s still a solid melee weapon, effectively being a Chainsword without Rending. You’ll require more successes/crits to kill anything with 9+ effective wounds, but against anything 8 or less it’s basically the same (as long as you don’t whiff). The Pistols get significantly better, gaining Ceaseless on the Focused profile to notably bump up the accuracy, or you can use Salvo to shoot two targets, which alongside Tanked Up can let you roll a lot of dice in a single Activation.
I recommend either magnetizing to have both, or getting an extra one, since both loadouts are great. If you have to pick one and want to go a single box build, I think the Choppa and twin Pistols would be my choice, but I can see arguments for either.
Additionally, the Boss Nob gets Wrecka Boss, meaning he gets a Wrecka point every time he Shoots or Fights, on top of any 6s you may roll. That’s a nice boost, and can allow you to order your Activations for maximum point generation and usage. All in all, a great Leader.
Next let’s talk about our two regular troopers. First there there’s the Fighter. You can take any number of these, and they’re not bad. They have 2 less wounds than the Boss Nob, but otherwise have the same stats and have the same Smash Hammer, just without Pistols. That’s a solid enough statline already, tough but not unkillable, with just enough melee prowess to dominate most things, though they will likely lose to hyper-specialized melee Operatives who can multi-parry or strike first.
Break Stuff gives you some utility, however. You can punch holes in walls to let you walk through them as if they were doors (not Gallowdark walls, of course), which is very good for a team that wants to move around and get stuck in. You can also straight up destroy Equipment terrain, which is situational but potentially very good. Smashing down Barricades on top of objectives is great, since you can set that point up to be shootable once you leave or die. I think a canny player will really get to control a lot of boardspace with this ability, and on top of the quite solid melee power, this is a great operative to have.
The other trooper you can take multiple of is the Gunner. This is a surprisingly decent shooting piece with two options. They can either take a Rokkit Launcha or ‘Eavy Rokkit Launcha, which are similar, except the ‘Eavy hits better but has Heavy(Dash only), making it slower but more reliable. With Damage 4/5 you can do a surprisingly good amount of ranged damage for an Ork team, though with how swingy 4+ and 5+ hit dice are, don’t expect to remove a model every Shooting activation. But sometimes you’ll roll hot and/or have the Wrecka points to smoke things off the board in a single shot, which is great. Again, Blast 1” isn’t exactly massive, but it is occasionally very useful (full range Blast with solid damage makes horde teams terrified) and awesome on Gallowdark maps.
Speaking of Wrecka points, Kompetitive Streak is a nice way to rack up some extra points by focus firing, giving you even more chances to spike damage by turning misses into hits. Honestly I could see bringing multiple Gunners fairly often, they won’t always perform but when they go hot, your opponent will notice.
Our first specialist melee Operative is the Demolisha. This fighter has the same basic statline, but comes with a Tankhammer. The Tankhammer is… an interesting weapon to be sure. The standard profile is basically the Choppa your Boss Nob has, but once per game, you can Detonate it, dealing direct damage through saves. D6+6 direct damage (or 2d6+6 on a crit) instantly kills Guardsmen equivalents, has a good shot at killing most Xenos, and only has a small chance of killing the Demolisha in the process, though he will be left Injured and likely easy pickings for follow up shooting. Still, if there’s something you absolutely, positively need to kill, and you have 3 Wrecka points, you can almost always do it with the Demolisha once per game.
Additionally, Reckless Temperament reduces incoming damage to help keep him alive a bit longer, which is nice, making this guy something your opponent really needs to think about pouring some bullets into lest he absolutely wrecks their favorite Operative in one go.
The Krusha is your other specialist melee Operative. Knucklebustas are really good, effectively being the Smash Hammer with Shock (great for parrying) and Smash, which lets you shove around your opponent every time you strike with it. This Operative is really, really good – you are guaranteed killing anything with 10 wounds or less in two hits, and anything bigger is getting hurt really bad and displaced as well.
Armoured Up isn’t quite as good as Reckless Temperament on the Demolisha, basically just making your opponent get less Crits if they rely on Abilities to do so, but it’s still nice and will save you some grief against some teams that love their Lethal 5+, Rending, and Severe.
The Krusha will be a staple for your games. While the Demolisha has one big ability that it does and otherwise is good, the Krusha is great all the time and will be a real menace once it closes the distance.
Our last Ork Operative is the Rokkiteer, who is the only shooting Operative save your basic Gunners. This Operative gets two different loadouts. You always get the Rokkit Launcha, which is the same as your regular Gunner, but then you choose between the Rokkit Rack and the Pulsa Rokkit. The Rokkit Rack is a bit more straightforward – you get a one shot version of the Rokkit Launcha that has Relentless for full rerolls and Blast 2” instead of Blast 1”, with the minor downside of being Heavy(Reposition). This is really great for catching out Horde teams and removing 2-3 small operatives in one go if they group up, or just to get a reliable shot once per game with the rerolls, which also get you Wrecka points and stack with them.
Alternatively, the Pulsa Rokkit is a bit stranger. It does no damage initially, but instead, you shoot at the ground and build up Pulsa points (starting with 1 free one, going up to 4). Each point increases the radius on your Pulsa by an inch, and after all the dice are resolved, everything within range takes damage. So while this is not massive spike damage, capping out at 3 on a fighter, it is guaranteed damage through Saves, and also leaves a marker that reduces Move and Hit, which stacks with Injury.
So basically you choose between once per game utility or once per game better gun. Which one is better is really up to you, I think both have uses, and really depends on the board, the enemy, and your gameplan.
The final Operative type are your Bomb Squigs, which are just the cutest little pets. These will be familiar to most long-time Kill Team players, as they are exactly the same as the Kommando team’s Bomb Squig. For those unfamiliar, you get a pretty squishy operative that can’t do mission actions or use equipment, and doesn’t count for Kill Ops, but has the most amusing ability in the game where it just blows itself up with what is effectively a 1” Blast Krak Grenade.
Look, you have to take two of these. They’re not great, they can never be on Conceal, but they don’t give your opponent anything for killing them and sometimes they trade out way above their weight class by charging in, hitting, and then blowing up. They’re not the best thing in the game, but they’re also not the worst, and you will always find a way to use them to annoy and punish your opponent if you’re good enough. Learn to love the little biters.
Operative Thoughts
For an elite team, you get a decent spread of Operatives. Since you can take multiple Fighters and Gunners, a second box can actually be quite useful as it lets you build out teams that are completely focused on Melee or Shooting depending on the mission and opponent, but out of one box you get a pretty solidly well rounded team just by building one of each Operative type. A second box lets you also build the different versions of the Nob and Rokkiteer if you don’t want to magnetize them.
I don’t think there’s any bad Operatives here, though sometimes you may decide to leave the Demolisha at home if you don’t think the Detonation will trade effectively, and maybe you’d rather take two Fighters over a Fighter + Gunner. But a lot of that is personal choice and your own vibes!
Faction Ploys
Ploys are very important to Kill Teams, and Wreckas are no different. Waaagh! is the rallying cry for Orks in general, and this Ploy is nice and straightforward. Everyone gets Balanced in melee. That’s great! Not much to say, just use it when you expect to Fight with two or more Operatives, which is… a lot of the time.
Tuff Gitz lets you get a defensive reroll against shooting if your Operative has an Engage order. This is great, since a 4+ Save isn’t terrible but a reroll makes it much more reliable. I can see popping this on Turning Point 2 or 3 to get some extra durability after making early Charges, especially on maps like Bheta-Decima where there’s less places to hide.
Destruction is another simple one, you give all ranged weapons Saturate. This isn’t as good as Waaagh! giving Balanced, but it is a measure of accuracy, especially if your opponent takes lots of Barricades or the board is dense. I think this gets used less, but it definitely is worth considering in certain circumstances.
The final Strategy Ploy is Amped Up is really, really nice later in the game. It’s a team-wide heal for everything with an Engage Order. By Turning Point 3, that should be basically your whole team, and you likely will have some damage on your 12 Wound models. Healing out of Injury, or healing out of one-shot range is really, really effective, so do some math during the Strategic Phase to see the impact of using this. I think it probably gets hit once per game, but that depends on a lot of factors.
As for Firefight Ploys, we start with a familiar (and oft-hated) classic. Just A Scratch makes a return from the Kommando team, much like Bomb Squigs. It is effectively the same, letting you ignore one Normal Damage Dice for a CP. This has always been a big deal for Kommandos, making them even tankier than they might let on, and Wreckas are even tougher, so this can and will make certain damage breakpoints very hard for your opponent to hit. Excellent.
Demolition Job lets you put down a Marker when you kill something and get effectively free extra Wrecka Points when you Shoot or Fight things near it for the rest of the turn. This is… potentially really good, as you can get free extra hits, but it depends on a lot of factors, such as positioning, remaining Operatives, what else you want to spend your Points on, etc. I think it’s fine, but I can see skipping it a lot of the time in lieu of other Ploys.
Proppa Scrap basically allows your Leader or one of your melee Operatives to do two Fights in a single turn. This is excellent, as long as you can line up two Fights either by starting in combat to do Fight -> Charge -> Fight, or if you manage to Charge into two fighters. Notably, your Krusha can Smash push enemies forward and end up in control range of a new enemy, so there’s always that! Also due to the wording on this, you don’t have to use it at the start of the Activation, so you can basically save it and see if you need to use it after you finish your first Fight. I think this is great, and will really be something you want to use 2 or 3 times per game.
Finally we look at Kaboom! While the previous one was for your melee Operatives, this is for your shooting Operatives, giving one of them an extra inch on Blast and also Severe. That’s not as impactful as getting an extra Fight action a lot of the time, but at least once per game you can use this alongside the Rokkiteer’s Rokkit Rack for a fairly reliable 3” Blast, which is awesome. Horde teams cower in fear! Knowing when and where to use this is important, but honestly this team is starting to look very CP hungry.
Ploy Thoughts
This is a very impressive set of Ploys, and honestly I can see use for all eight of them during a single game. Managing your CP will be very, very important. It’s easy to just pop Waaagh! and Tuff Gitz every Turning Point from 2 onward, but then you have 3 really good Firefight Ploys that you want to use nearly every turn as well. For a very straightforward team and very straightforward Ploys, using CP correctly will be one of the biggest points of skill expression.
Equipment
Last but not least we look at the Faction Equipment, starting with Drill Rokkits. Once per Turning Point, trade Blast for Piercing 1 on any Rokkit Launcha. That’s a good trade into teams with good saves, or elites who won’t clump up for Blast to matter. This is a great, simple piece of equipment that will come up all the time. I think it’s an auto-include into anything with 3+ armor, and honestly consider it into anything with 4+ armor. Hordes, though, leave it at home.
Extra Armor turns your models from 6” Move and 12 Wounds (14 on the Nob) to 5” move and 13 Wounds (15 on the Nob). There’s some breakpoints where that’s really important, but losing Movement is rough. I think this depends a lot on the board and specific weapons your opponent has, but I think it’s a hard sell in a game that’s heavily about positioning, especially when you only have 8 models (and only 6 that really do things). Slowing down Charges across the board is rough. I would consider this into, perhaps, other elite teams like Marines who will be closing the distance anyways, but you have to math it out and see if you really want that extra Wound.
Engine Oil lets one model per turn ignore the downsides of being Injured. That’s great! I think this is an auto-take for an elite team like this, where you don’t want one of your few models crippled by Injury. It doesn’t help as much when you have multiple Injured, but if you do, something else has probably gone wrong, and remember you can also use Amped Up to potentially pull operatives out of Injury range.
Then the last Equipment is Glyphs. These are awesome, helping with the aforementioned CP hunger the team has. I feel that a lot of the time, you will Glyph your Waaagh! so your melee is just that much better, but I suppose in a shootout match, just having free Saturate across the board is really, really nice, especially into 5+ Save teams that want to hunker behind cover. This is effectively trading an Equipment slot for 1-4 CP over the course of the game, which is insanely good and I think a required take most of the time.
Equipment Thoughts and Universal Equipment
If you couldn’t tell, I think Glyphs are basically auto-includes, and Engine Oil a lot or most of the time, and Drill Rokkits into about half the teams in the game (and many of the currently good ones). For Universal Equipment, Barricades are nice to stage on certain maps, but you like to run forward as well. A Portable Barricade with one of your shooting Operatives can be pretty cool, though. Explosive Grenades are great for your melee Operatives who otherwise do not have guns, and Utility Grenades can be nice to get Smoke on those same melee Operatives who want to run forward and are scared of being exposed. Ladders seem fairly nice for getting your Gunners onto high ground, but I’m not sure it’s as necessary as it is for other factions, as you don’t have a lot of models to be just squatting one on Vantage.
Ultimately there’s plenty of choices here for Equipment, which is true for any team in Kill Team.
That brings us to the end of this review! I think the Wrecka Crew looks really strong, though they are a bit more technical than some other Elite teams due to how Tanked Up works. Still, once you get used to the Activation flow, they have very, very good Operatives and an extremely strong set of Ploys and Equipment. I think you’ll see these Orks wrecking the table in tournaments to come!
