Your first month of Kill Team
Kill Team rewards patience. Here's what actually happens in your first four weeks (assembly, primer, paint, your first game) and when each part starts to feel less like homework.
By Colin B. · Published June 4, 2026
Kill Team has a reputation for being complicated. It is, but not in the way people warn you about. The rules have depth, but they’re learnable. The painting has a curve, but it’s satisfying in a way spreadsheets and screens aren’t. The real challenge in month one is sequencing: doing things in the right order so nothing blocks anything else.
Here’s what the first four weeks actually look like, week by week, with the things that matter and the things you can safely ignore.
Week 1: Assembly
The box arrives. Resist the urge to start painting immediately. Every beginner wants to skip assembly and get to color, and every beginner regrets it. Paint the model assembled, not the other way around.
Open the sprues. You’ll see plastic frames covered in parts connected by thin gates. Your first tool use: the sprue cutter. Clip as close to the part as you can without cutting into it — leave a tiny nub, then clean it with your knife. Cheap cutters leave white stress marks in the plastic; a proper flush cutter (the Tamiya is the standard) leaves nothing visible.
Mold lines are the thin ridges running along every part where the two halves of the mold met during casting. Scrape them lightly with a hobby knife at 90 degrees to the line — not dragged, scraped. This takes five minutes per model and makes the paint job look twice as good.
Use plastic cement, not super glue. Plastic cement chemically welds the two surfaces together; the join is stronger than the plastic itself. Super glue is brittle and parts pop off mid-game.
Assemble all your models before you prime anything.
Week 2: Primer and First Paint
Prime your assembled squad before painting. Without primer, Citadel paints will chip off the first time you pick up a model. GW’s spray primers are formulated for their plastic and are reliable. Chaos Black is the default for most dark-armored factions; Grey Seer if you’re using Contrast paints.
Spray in a warm, dry environment. Below 50 degrees F, or in high humidity, the primer frosts and ruins the surface. Outdoors in good weather or in a ventilated garage is ideal.
Let it dry overnight before painting.
Then: paint one model before the whole squad. Not to practice, not as a test — paint it because finishing a single model tells you more about what you actually want to do next than any amount of planning. You’ll discover which colors you like, which you don’t, and where you need more practice.
The three-step workflow every beginner should know:
- Base coat: block in the main colors with one or two coats of base paint. No need for perfection; just coverage.
- Shade: brush Nuln Oil over the entire model. Watch it flow into every crevice. Let it dry completely.
- Drybrush: load a stiff drybrush with a lighter version of your base color, wipe 90% of it off on paper, then lightly drag it across raised edges. This picks out highlights automatically.
That’s it. Three steps. A model painted this way looks good (not competition-worthy, but good). Finish your whole squad with this method before adding complexity.
Week 3: Your First Game
Play your first game before your squad is fully painted. Seriously.
The rules in Kill Team have layers. The turn structure, activation order, action sequence, and special abilities are all interconnected. None of it lands from reading alone; you need to play through it and make mistakes in context.
Set up the starter terrain. Place both squads. Play through the first three or four rounds with the rulebook open, looking things up as questions arise. This is normal and expected. By round three, you’ll stop needing the book for the basics.
Key rules that trip up almost everyone in the first game:
- Conceal vs. Engage order: each operative is either in Engage order (can shoot, counts as visible) or Conceal order (harder to target, can’t shoot). Switch these deliberately, not by accident.
- Cover: if a model is partially behind terrain, it has cover, which makes it harder to wound. Position every model with this in mind.
- Action economy: each operative gets two actions per activation. Moving twice is valid. Shooting costs one action. Overwatch costs one action and carries into the opponent’s turn.
Lose your first game. Lose your second. By game three you’ll have a rough sense of your faction’s strengths, and by game five you’ll be playing intentionally rather than reactively.
Week 4: Building Habits
By week four, the hobby has two tracks running in parallel: playing and painting. Most Kill Team players find they prefer one, and that’s fine. You can be a committed competitive player with grey plastic, or a painter who rarely finishes a game. Most people end up somewhere in the middle.
A few habits worth building now:
Wash your brushes immediately after each session. Acrylic paint dries hard and ruins a brush tip permanently if you leave it. Rinse in water, reshape the tip with your fingers, and store upright with the hairs pointing up.
Keep a wet palette. A piece of parchment paper over a damp sponge keeps your paints workable for hours instead of drying out between models. A dedicated wet palette costs $15 and solves one of the most common beginner frustrations.
Don’t strip and restart models. The temptation to strip your first models and repaint them after you’ve improved is real. Resist it for at least six months. Your early models are how you learn; they should look like early work. Repaint fresh models instead of revisiting old ones.
After a month, you know whether Kill Team has its hooks in you. If it does, the next decision is faction: which operative team to invest in properly, painted to a standard you’re proud of, for competitive or casual play. That’s a separate guide. For now: you’ve started.
Need to actually buy the gear? See our Kill Team gear guide for the starter set, primer, paints, and tools worth buying first.