The doomed world of Bheta-Decima is a hellish nightmare that has been decimated by the destruction of the Gallowdark, ravaged by radiation and even touched with the taint of Chaos. But on this forsaken planet, an insidious cult works to bring about final destruction when the Star Children come to consume the planet.

In Kill Team Termination, up for pre order today, the Brood Brothers of the Genestealer Cults take on the Hernkyn Yaegirs and fight for survival in games of Kill Team. In this review we’ll be checking out the contents of the Termination box in our full unboxing, and also seeing what is included in the Termination supplement and how both of the Kill Teams do in games. We’ve also built and painted up the new Kill Teams and the included scenery too!

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

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing which you can watch just below or over on YouTube

So let’s dive once more into the watery world of Bheta-Decima as we review Kill Team Termination

Kill Team Termination Unboxing and Review

The latest Kill Team box is here, and this is one that certainly grabbed my attention as it contained two factions that interest me – The Leagues of Votann and the Genestealer Cults along with some nice new scenery

First up we have a new kit for the Leagues of Votann, the Hernkin Yaegirs – These are similar to the Pioneers, though without their bikes and trek out to the frontiers to look for materials and resources that the Kin can use, and you can see this from the look of the models

Equipped in thick coats and carrying an assortment of gear they look as suited to exploring a desolate location for weeks as they are on the battlefield. This is an entirely new kit and perhaps the first sign of a second wave of Leagues of Votann kits to build on the wave at the end of 9th edition. Being a Kill Team kit there’s lots of ways of modelling these with both bare and helmeted heads and options for Ironkin

The other side of the box are the Genestealer Cults Brood Brothers. Using the existing Cadian sprue combined with a brand new Brood Brothers upgrade kit, these look absolutely gorgeous and are a massive step up from the old upgrade frame. There’s lots of really nice details to these and they have their own personality compared to the stock Cadian kit. I painted these in my old orange and white scheme, and it fits as well as it did back when the Genestealer Cults first got released!

The set also includes the existing frame of Genestealer Cults characters – as we’ll see later in the review, the Brood Brothers can choose from these to add to their Kill Team, giving them quite a lot of flexibility when putting together their force. While most Genestealer Cults players probably have a couple of these sets, it’s nice that they are included here for completion in the Kill Team itself

The last plastic kit in the box is the new Plasma Generatorium. You get two of these in the box and they are quite sizable standing at 3 1/3 inches tall and 5 inches long – just be careful when building them that you don’t make the same mistake I did! The instructions suggest gluing the stairs onto them, however they don’t actually need gluing and doing so actually stops you from doing things like stacking them two high (Something that is actually needed in some of the maps in the book). This is another great scenery kit and when they are available individually I feel they would make brilliant scatter terrain for games of Warhammer 40k too!

Like with the last few Kill Team releases we also get bespoke sheets of tokens and card decks for both Kill Teams, which is a much better solution than what we had in previous seasons along with full datasheet cards for every operative – we’ll be looking at these in more detail later in the review!

We do of course also get the full Kill Team Termination supplement, so let’s take a look at what’s inside that!

Kill Team Termination Supplement Review

If you have picked up any other Kill Team sets then you will be used to the format of this book – essentially its a “Codex” for the two forces in the box containing lore, rules and gaming content.

From a lore point of view we get some really interesting stuff here. It seems that the Leagues of Votann are quite daring in their mining operations, and see Tyranid bioships as valuable resources. By cutting one off from the main hive and drawing it towards a remote planet, the Kin can kill the ship, board it and strip it of resources – The ship has already broken down planets into their component parts, so all the resources are there for the taking!

Sadly, for the Leagues of Votann that remote planet is Bheta-Decima, and a Genestealer Cults uprising is currently liberating it ready for the coming of the Star Children. With their ship shot down by planetary defense systems, the Kin now fight for the lives against the insidious Genestealer Cults.

The lore section is great with both information and stories for each faction, and as ever we get lots of narrative hooks for naming and creating your Kill Team and giving them some flavour

Genestealer Cults Brood Brothers

The first of the two factions in the box are the Genestealer cults Brood Brothers. These are Astra Miliatrum regiments that have fallen under the influence of the cults, with various generations of hybrids hidden within their numbers in order to ease the ascension of the cult on the chosen day.

From a gameplay point of view the kill team consists of a Brood Brother Commander and 9 Brood Brother Operatives. In addition to this, you can take 3 additional operatives or tactical assets from a separate list:

Brood Brother Troopers – Just your basic Brood Brother if you dont have any other models

2 Psychic Familiars – Counts as 1 choice

Magus – Counts as 2 choices

Primus – Counts as 2 choices

Patriarch – Counts as 3 choices

Interference – This Asset allows you to reduce the APL of an enemy fighter within pentagon of the killzone edge

Lookout – Gives units within circle of a chosen model a Crossfire token (More on this later)

Reinforcement – Allows you to add a Brood Brother Trooper to the board during the battle

This gives the Brood Brothers a lot of flexibility in what they take and also gives you an excuse to paint up the nice Genestealer Cults characters that are included in the box!

Their main mechanic is “Crossfire” which represents how coordinated and drilled the cults are. Basically these work a little like marker lights – if a Brood Brother shoots a target then that target gains a crossfire token, this can then be spent by another friendly model shooting the same target in order to reroll an attack dice. This makes it worth taking some cannon fodder to “spot” targets for your heavier weapons to open up on later in the turn.

Their Tac Ops are pretty simple – Clandestine Elimination has you trying to incapacitate targets while you are out of line of sight of other enemy models, Militant Leadership has your leader recording a tally of each wound they cause, with them completing their Tac Op once the tally hits 12, and Meticulous Preperation has your cultists completing a “Prepare for Ascension” action on objectives in order to score VP

So let’s take a look at the Kill Team!

The Brood Brother Commander is your basic leader who has a nice selection of weaponry (Including a 4 attack Dam 4/6 Lethal 5+ and Balanced Power Weapon and Claw combo). His main ability however is being able to dish out Crossfire tokens during the Strategy phase, allowing you to maximise the damage you can do without even needing to make those “tracer” shots first

The Brood Brothers Agitator is a close combat unit with Stun who is able to ignore the damage from one hit one per turning point, and in addition while he is nearby enemy units, your own Brood Brothers that target those units can get the benefit of Crossfire even if the target doesn’t have a token to spend.

The Gunner is your standard special weapon choice with an option of Flamer, Grenade Launcher, Meltagun or Plasma Gun.

The Iconward has some familiar mechanics, firstly it increases the APL of models near objectives for the purposes of control, and secondly it allows an incapacitated operative to make a free action once per Turning Point.

The Knife Fighter does what it says on the tin, he fights, with a knife! He’s actually pretty nasty too with 4 attacks dealing 3/4 leathal 5+ and Relentless, and can also charge out of conceal making him a great pick to silently pick off targets for the Tac Op. Also, then an enemy deals a successful hit against him in melee he deals 1 mortal wound back to them.

The Medic works in the same way as similar operatives with the ability to stop operatives from getting incapacitated and healing operatives – however the book does exclude the Patriarch from being affected by him.

For those who like making things go BANG we have the Sapper – this guy has ranged demo charges, but can also use an action to plant explosives, then a second action to detonate them dealing 2D6 mortal wounds to everything within circle – what’s really cool is that as soon as he hits 0 wounds he hits the plunger and detonates the explosives as a free action in true cinematic style!

The Sniper also does what it says on the tin, with a MW3 dealing sniper rifle, perfect to chain with a crossfire token to reroll hits

The Brood Brother Veteran is a tough bodyguard unit armed with a combat shotgun. He can force units shooting other units to shoot him for 0CP (Usually this is a tactical ploy) and each time he loses a wound, on a 5+ he ignores it.

The Vox Operator can both buff friendly units by increasing their APL and limit enemy units by reducing their GA to 1 and making it so that they cannot activate until everyone else has – perfect for holding up your opponents decent unit until you can take them down.

We also get a vanilla Trooper with GA 2 (So worth taking a pair of them)

On to the special choices we start with the Psychic Familiars – these are always counted as being concealed while they have the order regardless of terrain, and can full back for one less action point – they can also perform mission actions within engagement range and can also move through operatives. They also have GA 2 so both of the critters can activate

The Magus is a powerful leader who massively improves your Brood Brothers – all friendly units get a 5+ invulnerable save, cannot be injured and cannot have APL negatively modified. This has no range limitation and affects the entire board making it insanely good! He alsohas a couple of psychic actions – one reduces the APL of a target, while another keeps dealing 2 mortal wounds to a target until they suffer 8 wounds or you roll under their APL – A great pick!

The Primus is another Leader option, this time packing some decent close combat stats and the ability to fight or shoot twice a turn. he can also generate CP and once per turning point he can have you add 1 to the roll off for initiative, or re roll it entirely if you didnt have initiative last turn. Pretty good, but I think the Magus is better

Finally we get the big guy himself, the Patriarch. Clocking in at 21 wounds with a 4+ invulnerable save, this thing is going to take some serious taking down. He also has 4 action points and can split this between two different activations if it wishes.

It’s also got some nice tricks – for 2 AP it can Mind Control a target, putting it under your control and allowing you to do a free dash with it before you open fire on your enemy with its own unit. In addition, you can also change the Patriarch’s order for 1AP

I really like the Brood Brothers and think they capture the feel of Genestealer Cults

Hernkyn Yaegir Kill Team

The other Kill Team in the box are the Hernkyn Yaegirs, led by a Theyn and having 9 other operatives they are a little more vanilla in their construction than the Genestealer Cults, but they still have some nice abilities. To represent the fact that these guys are scouts and explorers, you can set up 3 of your team within circle of your drop zone with a conceal token on them, or if you are fighting on the Gallowdark you can have 3 operatives do 2 actions each out of move, dash and operate hatch – this makes the Kin very quick in close quarters games!

The Hernkyn also generate resource points every turn based on how many operatives are alive (2 points for 6+ members, 1 for 3-5 and non for any less) – friendly operatives can spend these points to either increase their APL by 1 or heal D3+1 wounds.

Their Tac Ops have you incapacitating fighters who haven’t activated yet, incapacitating targets that have incapacitated one of your operatives or stopping enemy models from getting within circle of an objective. A nice thematic Tac Ops set which leans into the grudge vibe of things

So let’s take a look at the Operatives!

The Theyn is the Leader, and his role is as a resource generator, with him adding 1 point to the pool each turning point. He is also pretty hardly, having 9 wounds and the first time he is incapacitated he instead is left with 1 wound and cannot be incapacitated for the rest of the turn.

The Bladekyn is another unit that can charge out of Conceal, and again with cinematic flair can attack with his knife when taken out in melee

The Bombast is a duel pistol warrior who scares enemies with his accuracy – he get’s a free shoot action before operatives are activated each firefight phase, and when he incapacitates a target there’s a good chance that all models within circle have their APL reduced by 1 – this can really scupper plans when using his free shoot action.

The Gunner has some great weapon profiles, and is allowed to reroll dice results of a nominated number if he stands still (You could re roll every dice that shows a “2” for example) – this is a little more limited than being able to pick any dice to reroll, but with 5 shots you could luck out here and be able to re roll most of them.

The Ironbraek is a minelayer who operates in quite a different way to the Genestealer equivilent. Rather than a once per game explosion, his mines consist of double sided tokens that are flipped over when a model moves near them – some of them are blank for simply trying to scare the enemy away, but if a mine is revealed a model takes 3 mortal wounds and then a D6 is rolled, if the result is under their save then they take additional mortal wounds equal to the dice roll.

Riflekyn are the Kin snipers and like their genestealer Cults equivalents have a 3MW sniper rifle. They also have cloaks that give them additional defense dice while in cover or can opt to retain a crit when in cover rather than a standard save.

The Tracker is an operative sporting night vision goggles who can be used to see enemy operatives – anyone not ready within pentagon cannot be obscured and are treated as if they have an engage token. In addition when shooting them he can reroll all dice of a picked result in the same way as the Gunner

Finally we have warriors, they are GA1 but have a decent spread of weapons.

Both Kill Teams look really good fun to play and certainly feel like the narrative they are trying to capture

Gaming Content

Much like the other Kill Team books, Termination has a range of Spec Ops rules, missions and terrain rules for all the scenery used in the missions in the book – this means that even if this is your first Kill Team supplement that you have all the rules content that you need in order to run the mission shown here.

Again however the main barrier for both new and existing players will be access to the Killzone Bheta-Decima set. All of the missions in each of the books this edition has revolved around that set, and a lot of the individual pieces from it are tricky to get hold of individually. I really hope that next season the terrain set is more readily available, as it really does limit playing the missions with the recommended set up. While you can of course just swap the scenery for something else, Kill Team is very much about how the terrain is laid out and its interactions with the Kill Teams.

If you do have the terrain however there’s a load of new content to get your teeth into.

Summary

This is another great Kill Team set with some awesome models and some nice new pieces of terrain. I’m really looking forward to trying them out in battle, though with the lack of Bheta-Decima terrain they will most likely be fighting in the Gallowdark!

As ace as the models are, I’m really looking forward to us getting a change of scenery and a new Kill Zone for us to fight over. Rumours whisper that in the next season we’ll be focusing on units that can fly, and I’m interested to see what that means from a terrain point of view. We’ve had the close quarters confines of the Gallowdark and the platforming of Bheta-Decima, I’d really like to see some more vertical action with the kinds of environments that we saw in the original release of Necromunda. Fighting over multiple floors with units buzzing around from rooftop to rooftop would be awesome, and I can’t wait to see if it happens!

Kill Team Termination is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 15th June

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