Kill Team Typhon is the latest expansion for the new edition of Kill Team, this time introducing the Tyranid Raveners and the Servitor Battleclade of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Expanding from the rules in the core box, Kill Team Typhon also expands on the Joint Ops rules with an entire 6 mission campaign for solo or coop players to take on the forces of the Tyranids!

In this full unboxing and review we’ll be checking out the contents of the box, checking out the two Kill Teams and the contents of the Typhon Dossier and seeing what content this adds for solo players wanting to face the terrors that lie beneath Volkus by themselves or alongside a friend

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us this over a little early, if you would like to support the site, then why not pick up your Kill Team goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

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

So without further ado let’s check out Kill Team Typhon…

Kill Team Typhon Unboxing and Review

So first things first let’s take a look at what you get inside the Typhon box. Clocking in at £100, this one feels like pretty good value to me!

Starting with the miniatures side of things we get all the models for the two new Kill Teams in the box. We get two here, the Raveners and the Battleclade, and just like with all the other Kill Teams this season they are unique new kits. In previous editions we had a lot of teams that took an existing kit and gave them an extra sprue to give them the new operative options for use in the game, but that is something that has faded away in the current edition. Instead, each team is a brand new kit which sometimes leans into things that we wouldn’t normally see in Warhammer 40k. Yes, we sometimes get things like the Raveners which will probably live on as a Tyranid kit once it falls out of the cycle of supported teams for Kill Team, but things like the Battleclade are something a little different that we probably wouldnt have seen if not in Kill Team Typhon.

This is essentially a Kill Team representing a techno-archaeologist supported by a battleclade of Servitors that act as fire support for him when he is out looking for Archeotech. the Techno-Archaeologist himself is a returning model, but the kit for the Battleclade itself is very nice. There’s a nice mix of stuff here such as the Underseer who looks suitably weird through to the surprisingly varied Servitors themselves. They look a lot more organic than some previous models we’ve had for them, with more of a “Borg” look than something more robotic. These were clearly once people who have had horrific augmentations to turn them into mindless weapons than robots with organic elements, and feel a lot closer to a 40k version of the tech-Thralls seen in the Horus Heresy. I really hope that these guys get some rules for 40k and I feel they would have quite a different role to other Mechanicus units.

What’s really nice about this kit is that you don’t have to worry too much about which way you build them – all of the different operatives can be assembled from a single kit, and you even get multiple weapons if you want all your standard combat servitors armed with whatever selection of weaponry you want. This is a nice touch, as often in the past there have been Kill Teams that really need two boxes in order to get all the options you might want for your games.

The kits went together really quickly and were great fun to paint up too!

The other half of Kill Team Typhon are the Raveners, a replacement for the old Tyranid kit, and given lots more options to use as operatives for games of Kill Team. You can absolutely build these all as standard Tyranid Raveners if you are looking to just use them for 40k, as each model can build a standard warrior. For games of Kill Team however you’ll most likely want to build all the alternate builds, and each looks nice and distinct, from the hunched and poisonous Venomspitter to the taller and more vicious looking Prime. Most of these models have been integrated into sculpted bases which allows them to be bursting out of the ground, which gives them a lot of character compared to the old models.

I did find a couple of these a little trickier to build compared to the Mechanicus side, but I really enjoyed painting them! From a paint scheme point of view I was a little torn as I have a couple of existing Tyranid forces in a couple of different schemes. I really liked the new blue scheme seen on the box art, but in the end I decided to jump on the Grimdark bandwagon and use a limited pallete to come up with something more “realistic” – well, as realistic as giant alien bugs can be.

What’s nice is that in addition to the Raveners, you also get a full sprue of Hormagaunts. These are used in the missions in the book as NPOs (non player operatives) for use in the Joint Ops games (solo and co-op play) and is a nice little extra for people looking to add to a Tyranid army using this box. As you didn’t get these in the Leviathan box or Combat Patrol, this is a kit that some players wont already have and makes a nice addition to your army. Since the new edition of Kill Team dropped I’ve been hoping that we would get a Joint Ops focused expansion, and I’m super excited we finally have one! We’ll dig into how this works a little later in the review.

All of the boxes for this edition of Kill Team have included scenery pieces for use with the Volkus terrain set, and for Kill Team Typhon we get something really cool in the form of some Tyranid Scenery! People have been crying out for some more Xenos terrain, and Tyranid Spore Chimneys and Nests have often been high on the list of things people want to see. I’m happy to report that Games Workshop have done a fantastic job with these – you get 2 duplicate sprues and use these to build up the variety of pieces you can see in the images above. I reckon with a couple more of these sprues and some larger infested looking pieces you could put together a really cool and thematic 40k board. For Kill Team these essentially sit around the Kill Zone to represent either spawn points or targets for your Kill Teams to eradicate the growing Tyranid threat on the planet. There’s nothing to stop you from using these in other Kill Zones too, and we’ll chat a little later about how the Dossier talks about adapting the content inside for your other games.

As with the other Kill Team boxes, you also get an assortment of card components including tokens and cards for both of the Kill Teams in the box. You also get a deck of Typhon Event Cards and NPO profiles. We’ll chat about these a little later in the review, but essentially these are used in your Joint Ops games to generate effects during the game in place of the NPOs using ploys, and the profiles cover not just the models included in the box, but also some other Tyranid models from the Combat Patrol in order for existing Tyranid players to have a more diverse range of adversaries in their games.

The Kill Team Typhon box also contains a full supplement dossier that acts as the “codex” for the two forces in the box, having the complete rules for both of these Kill Teams along with some additional gaming content.

If you’ve picked up any of the previous Kill Team sets then you’ll know what to expect here. The first third of the book is dedicated to lore, diving into the two Kill Teams contained in the box with background, narrative and insights. I love the world building here, especially when it comes to the new operatives and the “why” forces like these would clash on the planet. I particularly liked the fact that there’s whispers that the Tyranids may have been dwelling underneath Volkus for a long time and that the vibrations of the giant defense weapons is actually the thing that has awakened the slumbering Vanguard creatures. As expected by the Imperium and whispering of this is quickly stamped out and penalised!

So how do the two Kill Teams operate? Well we’ve got a nice mix of two different forces here with varied play styles, some of which are very different to existing Kill Teams that we have had in the past.

Starting with the Battleclade, their main gimmick is their Noospheric Network. This essentially allows you trade 1 APL on the model you have activated in order to grant another Servitor model a free 1AP action. This is really cool and opens up a lot of possibility on the battlefield. While theres some obvious stuff you can do here such as attacking or moving your operatives around, or maybe interacting with a mission action in order to gain the upper hand, there’s also some subtle stuff that will start to become apparent after a few games such as doing something like changing an operatives order in reaction to how the battlefield is playing out.

You’ve got quite a few things that interact with this – for example the Underseer can be used grant a servitor a free 1 AP action without having to spend is own APL to do so, and the Technoarchaeologist himself as a similar rule that allows him to change his order and/or make a free action for a short list – this gives your Kill team more actions than you would expect, and also gives you a lot of flexibility in shifting around APL in order to get what you need done. There are restrictions of course, such as not being able to use this more than once per operative, but it essentially means that your opponent is going to have to watch he positioning of all your models to make sure you havn’t got anything sneaky lined up.

The Auto-Proxy is a handy operative that gives friendly models Saturate, as long as the Auto-Proxy can see the target, and on top of that he has an ability that can turn off Obscured for the target and give friendly models Seek Light too.

The Breacher Servitor is cool, he can basically punch through walls! You place a breach marker when he does this and friendly models now count that part of the terrain feature as accessible. Who needs doors when you can just punch a hole in a wall?

In addition to standard and heavy servitors with a range of weapon options, you also get access to a Technomedic who can save models who are about to be killed, give them a single wound and dash them towards the medic. On top of this, they are also able to heal D3+3 wounds as an action (though it does call out that this can’t be used on models that have been saved from death that turn – so no topping up someone who has cheated death)

I really like these guys and think It’s going to be fun to play mind games with your opponent as you move your servitors around the battlefield.

The other half of Kill Team Typhon is of course the Raveners, and these are also an interesting and different Kill Team. These are super elite, with only 5 models with 20 wounds each, but are still pretty fragile with only a 5+ save.

What makes these guys work is the Burrow and Tunnel rules. With this you are allowed to set up three Raveners under ground ready to burrow up during the game from your tunnels. When you set up you get to place a tunnel marker, and then each turning point going forward you get to place an additional tunnel marker within 5″ of the last one, until you have a total of 5 markers down. The tunnels run beneath these markers with lines joining them all, and this interacts with your burrow rules, allowing your Raveners to pop up out of the tunnel and a lot of your ploys and actions keying off this. Your opponent is going to want to be careful about standing near these tunnels, but that’s going to be difficult as the Tyranid player will absolutely be trying to tunnel under objectives and key locations on the battlefield – and even just the threat of a 20 wound combat monster popping up is enough to throw their strategy.

This interacts really well with their ploys which can allow models standing on tunnels to burrow off the board ready to come back somewhere else later, or cause damage on anyone unfortunate enough to be standing on a tunnel when a Ravener pops up next to it!

The Ravener Prime interacts with enemy APL, counting it as 1 lower for scoring objectives, and also making pick up and interaction actions cost additional AP. On top of this they have a gambling mechanic that has you roll a dice – if you roll higher than the turning point number you gain 1 CP, but roll lower than it you take damage. This is a nice way to farm some CP at the start of the game, but can be a little risky as the game progresses.

The Felltalon and Venomspitter are similar, which both having a poison mechanic – but one more geared at Melee and the other ranged attacks. Poison is basically a status that causes anyone who has it to take D3 damage when they activate – which can be a real problem for more fragile Kill Teams. The Felltalon can also cause a spike of D3+2 damage to a nearby enemy and give them a poison token, which is really nasty.

The Tremorscythe is your burrowing threat, being able to charge when it has a conceal token which is nice – it can also interrupt enemy models as they pass tunnels to pop out and attack them, making this a nice psychological threat to make the enemy worry about getting anywhere near tunnels.

Standard Ravener Warriors are more effective against wounded targets, gaining Lethal 5+ when they fight one, and the Wrecker takes less damage from attacks and also gets to have a roll off with the opponent whenever they strike, with you causing 3 additional damage if you win that roll off! With lucky rolling that could cause as much as 8 damage per strike.

Like with the Mechanicus, this is another really fun Kill Team that works a little differently to ones we have seen in the past. GW have done a great job here of giving both of these more unusual forces some thematic rules that really represent the way both of these forces would operate on the battlefield.

Missions – Joint Ops

One of the most exciting things about the new edition of Kill Team was Joint Ops – This allowed players the possibly for both solo and co-op gameplay by creating a system that had NPOs (Non Player Operatives) that the players are playing against. There’s no complex “AI” tree or anything like that, simply a rule of action guidelines detailing how those Operatives would most likely react and the simple rule of “Do whatever would be worse for you”. In essence you are playing against yourself, and if you play in the spirit of the game and always do what would be worse for your Kill Team in that given situation it leads to fun and engaging gameplay that actually makes you better at Kill Team as you have to think about the progressing situation.

In Kill Team Typhon we get a new branching series of missions that allow players the change to face off against the Tyranid threat. Now, Joint Ops has a lot of wiggle room. If you want to have a Games Master playing the Nids you absolutely can, you can tweak the numbers, bring different models and create your own profiles – but Typhon gives you a great starting point with a range of different profiles for a number of different Tyranid creatures – Hormagaunts, Rippers and Raveners (which are included in the box) but also Barbgaunts, Termagants and Von Ryan’s Leapers. You can absolutely just play with the contents of the box – but by including the profiles for a few other creatures (That are easily picked up in the Combat Patrol) it gives you some fresh and varied options for your games.

6 Missions are offered here using the Volkus terrain and the Tyranid Terrain included in the box which gives you a nice mix of different scenarios to play through. While from a narrative point of view these are written using the Kill Team in the box, you can of course use any Kill Team, split this between two players, or even both use half of two different Kill Teams.

In place of the Tyranids using ploys, instead a deck of cards is included – one is drawn whenever the Tyranids would get the opportunity to use a ploy, and these have additional effects that impact the game. I really like this as a wild card that adds a little unpredictability to proceedings.

I love the concept of these games playing against the game itself, and it gives you a nice change of pace from more traditional Matched Play games. If PvP is more your vibe however you don’t miss out as the Dossier also includes rules for using the NPOs as a “third force” in your standard versus games. These NPOs have in large the same rules as those in Joint Ops games, but with clarification given as to which side they will attack and which player gets to activate them. In practice it means that generally they will try and do terrible things to whichever player is nearest, making this a really fun wrinkle to your standard games.

6 new maps are provided using the Volkus terrain, but there’s nothing to stop you adapting these for other Kill Zones – just make sure that the Tyranid elements show a similar spread to the suggested missions.

In summary, this is probably my favourite expansion to Kill Team so far. We’ve seen a nice mix of different content this season, with each expansion introducing new ways of playing rather than just another couple of standard missions. I like this approach as it makes each set that comes out fresh and it’s own thing, rather than just being more of the same. I’m excited to see what we have coming up for the future of Kill Team, but Kill Team Typhon is a cracking box and to me is well worth the £100 price tag.

Kill Team Typhon is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 28th June

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

Published by Matt Crowther

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