The vicious Night Lords take on the shadowy Mandrakes on the doomed planet of Bheta-Decima in the latest Kill Team expansion Nightmare, up for pre order today.

In this full review we’ll be checking out the contents of the new set, seeing what they look like painted up and diving into the full Nightmare supplement to see how they perform in game and how they look to play.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us free early review copies to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Kill Team goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We have also filmed a full video unboxing of the set which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado let’s start exploring terror tactics with our full review of Kill Team Nightmare

Kill Team Nightmare Review and Unboxing

After the Striking Scorpions and Space Marine Scouts fighting in the previous Kill Team box, Nightmare takes a different path in being based around 2 more sinister forces, the Night Lord Space Marines and the Drukhari Mandrakes.

Both of these Kill Teams are really fun to put together, but let’s start with the Night Lords. As expected this is the standard Chaos Space Marines frame with an extra sprue that allows you to build them as the operatives for the Nemesis Claw Kill Team, a sadistic band of Night Lords.

The sprue is great with shoulder pads with sculpted detail and the iconic winged helmets along with a host of weapon options and optional parts that really capture the brutal terror tactics of the Night Lords. I really hope that this upgrade frame is available later by itself, as with just multiples of that upgrade frame you would be able to put together an ace Night Lords force for 40k (Which sadly will be a little expensive to do if it is only available boxed as the Kill Team) – you do get a couple of spare heads, but not nearly enough to outfit an entire army, even if you bought multiples. The Chaos Space Marine kit is still great, and this upgrade frame goes together with it seamlessly.

The other kit in the box are the Mandrakes, and these have been really fun to work on too. While not a massive departure from the previous models, the fact that this is a plastic set of 10 makes it a lot easier to use these in larger numbers and much better to work with than metal or finecast.

You do get a lot of different weapon options (Which make up the different operatives in the Kill Team) but this also adds some nice variation when using these for 40k too. At the time of writing this review I don’t know if the 40k profile will change, though I suspect it will be updated with some new options in line with this kit when the new Drukhari Codex is released for 10th Edition.

The final plastic kit in the box is the new Generatorium Hub, and this is much bigger than I originally expected, taking up a good chunk of the box. As you can see from the above photos, it stands a good distance higher than the models allowing this to decently block line of sight while also having some movement paths and bottlenecks through it to lead to some interesting gameplay. It also is pretty quick to get build up only consisting of a few parts while also being something than can easily be base coated and dry brushed in order to get it battlefield ready.

I really hope that we see more terrain like this added to the range, I just wish that the Bheta-Decima box was more widely available, as if you want to play through the missions in this box then you are really going to need that Kill Zone box too! Hopefully they are back in stock when this set is up for pre order however, as I’m regretting not picking it up when first available.

I also want to give a shout out to the paper components in the box. Games Workshop have been making a move away from single use plastics in their packaging, with shrink wrapped cards and books becoming a thing of the past. In Kill Team Nightmare we see something similar to what we saw with the recent Tau Army Set with the book and cards all contained within a card wallet that not only protects them from the plastic parts, but also doubles as a way of storing them all together.

Like we saw with the last box we get bespoke card token sheets for each of the two Kill Teams – I really like this as I feel theming the tokens to the warbands gives them some identity and allows them to include tokens for kill team specific effects and abilities. We see this done in Marvel Crisis Protocol, and I’m very happy that Games Workshop have followed in this way too.

There’s also cards for all Tac Ops, Equipment and Ploys, which makes managing your Kill Team easier than it has been before, and reduce time spent filliping back and forth through books as you have all the important information to your hand in card form. I really like this and hope we see some card packs released for some of the older Kill Teams, as this is a massive quality of life improvement for players.

As always we also get a full Nightmare supplement included in the box, this acts as a “codex” of sorts for the two Kill Teams, containing all the rules and information on how to use them in game – we’ll take a look at these in a little while. It also contains more lore about the battles on Bheta-Decima and about the two Kill Teams, along with some short stories and flavour. As someone who has never played a Drukhari army, I found this an interesting read, and left me tempted to see if I can put together a full 40k force revolving around these shadowy, supernatural beings.

From a gaming content point of view we also get all the usual missions and spec ops content for both of the forces in the box, as well as a full breakdown of all the rules for the scenery in the Bheta-Decima box as well as for fighting on the watery environment of the planet. While some players will already have this from the previous box, its good to see it included for those who are jumping straight in with this one.

Night Lords Nemesis Claw

So let’s have a look at the two Kill Teams starting with the Nemesis Claw

These are essentially a specialist Chaos Space Marine force consisting of 6 operatives (One of which has to be a Visionary)

They all get access to a unique ability “In Midnight Clad” which makes a Nemesis Claw that is in line of sight of the enemy obscured if all the following are true: They have a Conceal order, they are within Triangle of terrain or are under a vantage point, and they are more than pentagon from the enemy. This makes it much easier to sneak up on your victims as the enemy is going to have to close the distance to be able to see you.

Their Tac Ops lean into this sneaky playstyle – Sow Terror has you having to incapacitate an enemy within circle of an objective marker, Dread Tale Dark Rumour has your operatives getting within Pentagon of the opponents kill zone edge, with bonus points if they are also within pentagon of an enemy, and Hunt the Weak has you take out an enemy model with exactly 7 wounds who is further than pentagon from any other enemies

Their Leader is the Visionary, and he has a cool mechanic where instead of using a strategic ploy you can generate a prescience token – these tokens can then be used to discard your opponents hit dice in combat, or to skip an activation when it would be your turn to activate an operative, essentially making your enemy do two activations before yours.

The Fearmonger is an Operative with the “Terrorchem” rule – this basically poisons targets that you do a critical hit to, making them take D3 Mortal Wounds in each Ready Operatives step – which is some really nice persistant damage ticking over. He can also poison an objective, which then causes this on the first enemy who gets near it

The Screecher is a handy debuff unit that reduces the BS and WS of enemies within square by 1, and also causes lethal hits on a 4+ to anyone with less than their starting wounds

The Skintheif leans into the Terror Tactics vibe of the Night Lords by making it so that when he takes someone out of action, he can select another fighter and that fighter is unable to perform mission actions or pick up as they are overwhelmed with fear – he’s also pretty resiliant as he reduces all incoming damage by 1

The last unique option is the Ventrilokar who can be used to manipulate enemy units – either to reduce their APL, change their order or force them to make a dash – this is really nasty and is a great way of pulling people into the firing line of another unit!

Like with Chaos Space Marines they also have access to Warriors, Gunners and Heavy Gunners

Mandrakes

The Mandrake Kill Team has 9 operatives (One of which has to be a Nightfiend) and these guys have a lot of special rules that make them quite different to play compared to other kill teams.

Being creatures of Shadow, the Mandrakes have a number of different rules that kick in if they are in shadow – this is when they are within triangle of a terrain feature, if they are under a vantage point, or are within triangle of a shadow portal (Something that you can summon during battle)

While in shadow they all have a 4+ inv save, which drops to 5+ when they are not in shadow, and for 1 AP a Mandrake can teleport to any other shadowed area on the board – which is really cool and thematic.

Their guns also work differently, with saves based on the APL value of the target instead – a roll equal or less to APL is a save, each roll higher is discarded and 1s are crits.

As for Tac Ops, Death from Darkness has you doing a charge, incapacitating an operative and ending in shadow, Shadow’s Reach has you controlling a heavy terrain piece in your opponent’s territory and Haunting Manifestation has you spooking the enemy by getting a Mandrake within square of them at the end of a turning point

The Nightfiend is the leader and has the Harrowing Whispers rule which means if you can roll over the APL of an enemy within pentagon then they cannot be activated. In addition, after they incapacitate a target they ignore the next damage inflicted on a 5+, making them pretty tanky.

The Mandrake Abyssal can give a Balefire token to a target (friend or foe) for 1AP, if given to an enemy then whenever a friendly Mandrake shoots them the damage is increased by 1 and they gain the No Cover special rule, and if given to a friendly model then they reduce incoming damage by 1

The Chooser of the Flesh gains Soul Harvest tokens for taking down enemey operatives, these tokens can then be spent to either heal friendly models or increase their APL by 1 – a nice interesting take on a healer by making it much more aggresive.

The Dirgemaw gets to pick a target in the strategy phase, and then whenever that target activates, the Dirgemaw gets to go before him – this comboes really nicely with this Pareiodolic Projection ability which makes a target count as being injured and stops its APL from being increased in any way

The Shadeweaver is one of the key tools to your Kill team in that for 2 AP he can perform a free Shadow Passage to jump to another shadow, and also create a Shadow Portal before or after he moves, setting up your other operatives to be able to move around the board better. He can also create pillars of smoke for 1AP, covering your other Mandrakes

Finally the Mandrakes also get a generic Warrior, these guys get to increase their critical damage while within shadow.

Summary

This is another fun Kill Team box with two really interesting teams and a great piece of terrain. While maybe not one for new players, the Mandrakes in particular offer a very different play experience and have lots of sneaky abilities for experienced players – also they are drop dead gorgeous models and are a joy to paint up.

I’m really enjoying this season of Kill Team, but I can’t help but feel you only get the most out of this box if you also own the Kill Zone box too, and with that out of stock since the previous box was released then I do feel that will leave some players disappointed when they open the book to find that all the missions require the contents of that box to play. Yes, you can create your own – but part of the draw of Kill Team is fighting over these environments. I really hope the scenery gets restocked, as my recommendation for players who want to experience the missions really does depend on if you have that box

For those who just want to use the models in their own games though, you get some amazing models with some fun and thematic rules that really capture the background that they are going for with these kill teams

Kill Team Nightmare is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 20th April

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.