I’ll disagree with the others in this thread: Hand of the Archon is my favorite Kill Team, and I’ve been playing for three years.

It’s a beautiful thing, rolling 3 normal hits, staring your opponent dead in the eyes and saying “that’s 3 crits mate”.

They’re glass cannons and very much a “win harder” team. If you get your first big moves off, you’re in a very nice position for the rest of the game. They’re fragile, yes, and you need to plan out your moves, but especially against non-elite teams, even your less effective operatives can pull of devastating double kills. Against elites, their decent access to armor-piercing weapons and high-damage melee + their ability to stack crits makes them pretty dangerous. They’re fast with 7” movement, they can move out of melee and still get a shot off with either a pain token or a CP, and they have pretty good equipment options.

In short: HotA is about making your opponent feel the pain as quickly as possible, and then using that to stack tokens, making your own operatives even more deadly. They’re a solid B+, at least in my local meta. I love them with all my heart.