Line of Sight, Cover & Control Range, Explained
A plain-English rules guide, with diagrams
Three spatial rules decide most Kill Team firefights: whether you can even see a target, whether it's in cover, and what its control range does. Here's each one, with a diagram.
Visibility & line of sight
To shoot an enemy operative, it must be a valid target. The core check is line of sight: from the active operative, can you trace a line to the target operative that isn't blocked by terrain? Heavy terrain in particular blocks visibility. If you can't see it, you can't shoot it.
Cover
Terrain comes in two weights, and they protect an operative very differently:
- Light terrain gives a target in cover a cover save — it can retain one of its defence dice as a normal success without rolling it. It's still a valid target; it's just harder to hurt.
- Heavy terrain goes further: an operative that is Obscured by Heavy terrain — where the parts of it you can see are behind or right up against the terrain — is not a valid target at all and can't be shot, unless the attacker is within 2" of it.
On top of all that, any operative on a Conceal order while in cover can't be targeted at all — whether the cover is Light or Heavy (see our Conceal vs Engage guide).
canishoot.it has detailed, worked visibility & obscured examples for deciding whether you can shoot a target. It's a Warhammer 40K tool, but the way visibility and obscuring work carries over well.
Control range
An operative's control range is the area within 1" horizontally and 2" vertically. It matters constantly:
- An enemy within your control range is engaged in combat with you.
- You use control range to contest and hold objective markers — compare how many operatives each player has within control range of the marker.
Common questions
Yes. Conceal only protects an operative from being targeted while it is in cover. A Concealed operative with no cover can still be shot.
Generally yes for a valid target in cover, though some weapon rules (such as those that ignore cover) remove the benefit. Always check the specific weapon rules in play.
An enemy inside your control range is engaged in combat with you — control range is the measurement Kill Team uses for combat, markers, and several actions.
This guide explains the rules in our own words as a reference aid — always confirm the exact wording against Games Workshop's free official Kill Team rules for tournament or rules-critical play.
"Can I shoot that operative?" — just ask
Arbitro is a free AI rules assistant with the Kill Team 2024 core rules built in. Describe the situation and it'll walk you through it, with a cited source.
Ask Arbitro a Kill Team question →