Review: Kill Team: Nightmare

In the 2nd boxed expansion of this season of Kill Team, two dreadful factions clash amidst the chaos of Gallowdark’s collision with the forge world of Bheta-Decima. Featuring the dread-inducing Nemesis Claw of the Night Lords and the fiendish Drukhari Mandrakes, this packed box is accompanied by an imposing Generatorum Hub terrain piece and enhanced by nine new missions and narrative twists. Find out more in our review of Kill Team: Nightmare.

Kill Team: Nightmare can be preordered from Saturday, April 6, 2023. It goes on sale two weeks later, following a two-week preorder window. Please note that these kind of boxes have only one production run, so it’s available until stocks last.

Included in the box are:

• 10 Chaos Space Marines with a new Night Lords upgrade sprue
• 10 new Drukhari Mandrakes
• a Generatorum Hub terrain piece
• the 96 pages Kill Team: Nightmare rulebook
• datacards and custom tokens for both teams
• a Chaos Space Marine transfer sheet

Night Lords Nemesis Claws review

The Nemesis Claws Kill Team of the Night Lords Legion combines the existing Chaos Space Marine Warriors sprues with a brand-new upgrade sprue. The 10 Chaos Space Marines already offer a variety of options, including bolters or swords and bolt pistols, various special and melee weapons, as well as interchangeable heads and backpack modules.

On the new Night Lords sprue, you’ll find the following components:

• For the Night Lords Visionary (Kill Team leader) a special head, left hand with Nostraman chainblade, special pair of shoulder pads, and a cape that inserts in the Chaos Space Marine Champion’s backpack slot
• For the Fearmonger a special head, left arm with tainted blade, right arm with scoped bolt pistol, and a flask
• For the Skinthief a special head, a special pair of shoulder pads, a special chest plate, and a pair of arms with two-handed Nostraman chainglaive
• For the Screecher a special head and a pair of arms with lightning claws
• For the Ventrilokar a special head, a right arm with icon displaying the torse of a mutilated Astartes, and a left arm with chainsword
• Additionally, there are also 8 winged helmet heads, 2 bare heads with winged half-masks, 10 shoulder pads with Night Lords iconography, and 3 empty shoulder pads

With the upgrade sprue, there are enough parts to upgrade each of the 10 Chaos Space Marine models. However, the Nemesis Claw Kill Team, like the Chaos Legionary Team, only includes 6 models. You have the Visionary as leader, plus 5 Nemesis Claw operatives. Apart from the operatives you can build with the upgrade sprue, you can also have a Gunner with flamer, meltagun or plasmagun, and a Heavy Gunner with Heavy Bolter or Missile Launcher. Apart from basic Warriors, each operative can be selected only once.

Drukhari Mandrakes

The Dark Eldar/Drukhari Mandrakes set includes 10 models. Similar to the plastic Incubi and the recently released Aspect Warriors, you’ll receive 5 different bodies spread across three small sprues, each duplicated twice.

A set of 3 sprues with 5 models can be assembled as follows:

• Mandrake 1 can be built as either a Nightfiend or a regular Warrior. There is a choice of 2 right arms, 3 left arms (either with blade, sickle, or huskblade for the Nightfiend), regular head or Nightfiend head.
• Mandrake 2 can be built as either a Chooser of the Flesh or a regular Warrior. There is a special head and two-handed baleblade for the Chooser, and a choice of 2 heads and 3 left arms (either with one of two blades, or sickle) for the Warrior.
• Mandrake 3 can be built as either a Shadeweaver or a regular Warrior. There is a special head and a pair of arms with a cape of darkness for the Shadeweaver, and a choice of 2 heads and 2 right arms with blades for the Warrior.
• Mandrake 4 can be built as either an Abyssal Mandragore or a regular Warrior. There is a a special pair of arms for the Mandragore and a choice of 2 heads, and a head for the Warrior and a choice of 2 right arms with blades
• Mandrake 5 can be built as either a Dirge Maw or a regular Warrior. The Dirge Maw has a special head, there is also a choice of a pair of a right arm with sickle and a left arm with balefire, or a left arm with balefire that can be combined with 1 of 2 right arms with either sickle or blade
• There are also two small base decoration pieces, a little rock with a piece of vine, and a skull with some vine

The models continue the design of the old Mandrakes from metal or Finecast seamlessly, but appear more dynamic, and the fire and smoke effects are more intricately sculpted. It’s noticeable that this kit was designed more with Warhammer 40.000 in mind. They stretched out to turn every cosmetic piece into an excuse for a special operative, yet there isn’t as much variation as with other Kill Teams. The Mandrakes Kill Team list has only 6 different operative types. You need to field 1 Nightfiend leader and 8 operatives, but each of the five special operatives can be included only once. As there is no reason not to take those, each Mandrake Kill Team will effectively be the same.

Generatorum Hub review

As is customary with the current season’s Kill Team and Warcry boxes, Kill Team: Nightmare also includes a terrain piece. This time we get a Generator Hub, which is a quite substantial piece with a footprint of 26 x 23 cm (see also the image of the contents of the box above). This allows the Hub to cover a significant portion of the hazardous sea zones on the board. Additionally, the round platform and antennas from the Killzone Bheta-Decima can be combined with the terrain piece, although the missions from the Kill Team: Nightmare book do not provide for this. Visually, the terrain piece matches other Mechanicum terrain.

My only criticism is regarding the casting quality. It appears somewhat blurry, which was more common with terrain pieces produced externally by Games Workshop in China in the past.

Kill Team: Nightmare manual and accessories

The softcover rulebook comprises 96 full-color pages and follows the typical mix of content found in Kill Team expansion books. It offers new lore on the setting and the two included Kill Teams, rules for both as well as 9 new missions and additional rules for narrative twists.

Value

Unlike Kill Team: Salvation (review here), Kill Team: Nightmare is priced slightly higher at £85 / 110 € / $140. Compared to previous boxes, there is no longer a complete gaming board with terrain included, but only a single terrain piece, which reduces the overall percentage of savings. However, the smaller-format Kill Team boxes now also include data cards and tokens, which Games Workshop typically sells separately.

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