The Nachmuch Gauntlet is on the verge of falling! Abaddon the Warmaster has forsaken Vigilus and instead has his claws set upon the Sanctus Wall – the last line of defence on the Imperium side of the Cicatrix Maledictum. However in Kill Team Moroch, up for pre order today, we see that many of the Astra Militarum forces deployed in defence of this vital strategic location have actually fallen to the forces of Chaos and have pledged in the name of The Warmaster! Can an Ultramarine Kill Team deal with his Militarum Traitoris threat before it is too late?

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us an a free copy of Kill Team Moroch for  review purposes. If you would like to help support the site then why not order your copy of Kill Team Moroch through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We have also filmed a full unboxing, so if you would rather watch this review than read it you can do so below or over on YouTube

Still with us? Then let us head to Moroch and see what heresy is happening!

Kill Team Moroch Unboxing and Review

Kill Team Moroch is the next expansion for the new edition of Kill Team, this time featuring our first new Space Marine Kill Team the Phobos Strike Team facing off against a new Chaos threat the Blooded Veterans of the Militarum Traitoris both fighting over the recent Battlezone Fronteris scenery!

So let’s take a look at what is in the box

The Battlezone Fronteris terrain had mostly passed me by, but I have to say it is absolutely gorgeous! Relatively quick and easy to put together with minimal clean up needed due to some big chunky parts makes these a really nice set of terrain to have not only for Kill Team but for games of Warhammer 40k too! You get some good value in the box too with the separate kits retailing at a combined £135 (Though the big box containing them all contains an additional Hab-Bunker that is not included here)

While I have not had the chance to paint this up yet, you can see how big the finished kits are and they will look suitably impressive on the battlefield! Spraying Mechanicus Standard Grey, painting in the metals and detailing then giving a recess wash of Agrax should get these on the tabletop in no time at all! One of the best things about these boxes has been the fact that we are slowly collecting a range of decent scenery types that are perfect for expanding the scenery collection

As with the other Kill Team sets we also get a double sided board to place the scenery on, and again multiples of use can be used to create playing surfaces large enough for games of Warhammer 40k!

So on to the Kill Teams themselves, first up we have the Adeptus Astartes Phobos Strike team, while the Kill Team only has 6 models, you actually get 2 of the Phobos frames with enough to build 10 bodies. This is combined with the upgrade frame in order to make all the various operatives contained in the book. Now admittedly these are a little less showy than some of the other Kill Teams we have got in the past, however there are some cool parts on the upgrade frame that give them a subtle but distinct look compared to the standard Phobos marines.

The star of the show for me however is the Militarum Tratoris Blooded Kill Team, and this has me very interested indeed about how these guys fit into the upcoming Chaos Space Marines codex. What surprised me was the fact that this is not in fact a “bespoke” Kill Team kit, but instead a full Traitor Guard sprue (With all the options available to a current Imperial Guard army) with an upgrade sprue with the Kill Team specific options. To me, this seems that we will either get a “Blooded” profile in the Chaos Space Marine codex with all the cool upgrades on the Kill Team sprue and perhaps the option to take a traitor guard detachment by using the kit without the upgrades to represent a standard squad – similar in how the Voidscared allowed two different units to be built. Also with all the Horus Heresy hype on the horizon this could be a great source of a traitor lost and the damned army for that too!

As you can see they are absolutely gorgeous models! By using some spaces from Blackstone Fortress I was able to assemble every different operative type with minimal conversion work – just make sure to dry fit any combinations of bodies and arms not covered by the instructions, as some will need a little cutting – but on the whole they are fairly interchangeable.

Accompanying them are the Enforcer and Ogryn from Blackstone Fortress, which is a promising sign that we may see other kits from Blackstone crop up again in future such as the Ambul and Zoat!

As usual you also get full assembly instructions for everything in the box, transfers for the Marines and the full Kill Team Moroch supplement, which we will be digging into next…

Kill Team Moroch Supplement

The Kill Team Moroch Supplement book follows the same pattern as the previous Kill Team books giving players lore on the Kill Team in question, rules for using the new Kill Teams found in the box, full rules for using the included Kill Zone scenery and a series of 9 missions that are narratively themed around the contents of the box. This time we have the Phobos Marines fighting traitor guard on the world of Moroch…

The Lore

In the Moroch book we learn that things in the Nachmund Gauntlet have gone from bad to worse. Vigilus has been left to it’s fate, and Abaddon is instead focussing on the Sanctus Wall, the last line of defence on the Imperium side of the Cicatrix Maledictum. Due to the imminent arrival of the forces of Chaos, the Imperial forces have taken a series of worlds that used to act as agriculture sectors to feed the system, and instead fortified them as a defensive line to hold the Warmaster at bay. Unfortunately, the agents of the Alpha Legion have been at work infiltrating the Imperial lines, spreading the seeds of dissent and drawing entire Astra Miliatrum detachments under the sway of Abaddon. With these tainted forces stationed on the very frontier that the Imperium is desperately trying to hold, it wasnt long until they played their card and caused as much chaos as possible on the front lines themselves. It’s at this point where a Space Marine Phobos Strike Team is deployed to deal with the threat.

As with the previous books we get the full rules for each of these new Kill Teams included, so lets take a look at what they get!

Adeptus Astartes Phobos Strike Teams

The Phobos team has quire a lot of variety and model options available to it – firstly you pick a Sergeant from among an Infiltraor, Incursor or Reiver – These all have an ability that is used to generate CP, with the main difference between them all really being the weapon options.

You then get to pick an additional 5 operatives out of Commsman, Helix Adept, Saboteur, Veteran, Voxbreaker, Marksman, Minelayer and Infiltrator, Incursor or Reiver Warriors.

Bearing in mind that the kit contained in the box can build 10 models, this actually gives you a wide assortment of operatives you can pick from, giving you a lot of versatility to your options for your Kill Team.

We get some cool abilities such as Guerrilla Warfare, which allows them to swap their order for 1 AP. Theres also some ace ploys such as being able to shoot or fight twice, which is very powerful in games of Kill Team, There’s even a tactical ploy that lets you swap out a member of your kill team once you have seen what the opponent has brought, which is pretty cool!

Let’s take a quick look at the members of the kill team

Infiltrator Commsman – Allows another visible operative to take a free action they have not yet performed, handy to get someone into position or interact with an objective.

Helix Adept – a nice healer unit who can also stop a downed operative from being incapacitated

Saboteur – Can plant explosives that can be detonated causing damage to nearby targets, sadly can’t be detonated as overwatch though!

Veteran – Is an interesting one, basically you can choose to give his gun 2 special abilities picked from a list including things like MW1, Rending and Lethal 5+

Voxbreaker – This guy is very cool as he can essentially make a target count as having an Engage order, really scuppering any units lurking in conceal!

Marksman – This guy can be used to make an overwatch action mid way through an enemy operative’s activation, potentially sniping them as they pass!

Minelayer – Does what it says on the tin, can set mines that then detonate when an enemy gets within Square of them

Blooded Kill Team

The other Kill Team in the box are the Blooded, who are essentially Traitor Guard Vets. These have some pretty interesting mechanics revolving around Blooded Tokens – these are basically generated at the start of each imitative phase, the first time an enemy is incapacitated in each turning point and the first time an enemy is incapacitated within range of a Blooded member. These tokens can then be given to your operatives to allow them to retain a hit when shooting or fighting, and one can be under the “gaze of the gods” to instead retain a crit! This is a really cool way of putting some threat on some relatively weak individual operatives, and pretty scary when given to something like the Ogryn!

This is a pretty big kill team as you can take the Chieftain and 9 operatives, then either an additional 4 standard troops or take the Enforcer and Ogryn!

Let’s take a look at what they all do:

Grenadier – pretty straight forward, lobs grenades!

Butcher – A decent close combat unit with Lethal 5+, generates Blooded tokens when he strikes and heals himself on a kill

Commsman – standard com extra AP utility but can also be used to move Blooded tokens between operatives

Coprseman – A healer/buffer combo, basically has 3 different stims, one that heals, one that gives melee weapons relentless and one that gives operatives a 6+ wound shrug

Enforcer – motivates injured operatives to ignore the negative effects (I guess he will do worse to them!) and can also dish out a free action to another Blooded for 1 AP

Flenser – is another nice combat unit who can charge from conceal

Gunner – all the same weapons available to Death Korps gunners!

Ogryn – This big fella is scary, it does mortal wounds on the charge, rocks 16 wounds and hits like a truck in combat, stick a blooded token on him to make him even scarier!

Sharpshooter – Standard camo cloaked sniper!

Thug – Bit of a tank, reduces damage taken on him by 1, also has a brutal club for whacking people with!

Trench Sweeper – This guy can raise a shield to allow him to reroll all defence dice – nice unit to get across the board between cover

Trooper – General grunt with lasgun

Chieftain – nice range of weapon options and if he has a blooded token he gets to fight as if under the gaze of gods, allowing him to retain a crit when shooting!

Kilzone Moroch

We also get full rules for all the scenery in the box – nothing too unusual here, just clarifications on how the scenery interacts with the missions and how some of the objectives revolve around certain pieces of this set. I have to say I love the look of this stuff though and I’m tempted to pick up another few kits to make a full 40k board out of it!

We also get a full 9 mission pack that allows you to use this scenery for your games of Kill Team – as ever detailing the maps and layouts that you need to use with this set. Keeping with the cinematic nature of kill team, very often the terrain features will act as the objectives in the missions with Kill Teams trying to send an important message or get to the landing pad for example – which adds some great interaction with the physical terrain pieces.

Summary

So what do I think of the new Kill Team Moroch box? For a start the scenery inside the set is worth the price of admission alone, offering some very recent scenery to use for our games of Kill Team. As for the miniatures, while the Marines are a little less overt compared to the other recent Kill Teams we do get a nice assortment of parts to allow you to identify them as their role while still making sure they retain the lines and silhouette of the Phobos Marines.

The real star of the box for me however are the Traitor Guard, finally giving us a plastic kit for something people have wanted for a long time – In fact between these and the Death Korps kit we are well on the way to recreating Vraks in plastic! The Blooded have loads of options and these are expanded even further with the Kill Team upgrade sprue giving you tons of customisation!

The first year of the new edition of Kill Team has been excellent, and I hope that Games Workshop keep these release style for the foreseeable future with lots more teams, scenery and sets to tie then all together.

Kill Team Moroch is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 4th June

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes

Published by Matt Crowther

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