Reviewing the newest Kill Team box for season 2!
Welcome to today’s Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team video where I review the Gallowfall box set for Kill Team! I go over what’s in the box, as well as covering the 2 new Beastmen and Votann kill teams plus the new terrain rules! Thanks goes to Games Workshop for providing this to review for free. As always I aim to be honest, impartial and constructively crticial.
I’ve also done this article as a video you can check out here:
What’s in the Box?
Inside the box you get your standard contents: Hearthkyrn Salvager kill team, Fellgor Ravager kill team, the Gallowfall rulebook, instruction guide, bases, Into the Dark terrain, Gallowfall terrain upgrade sprue, and a double-sided game board.
Kill Teams
Now I’ll briefly go over the 2 kill teams included in the Gallowdark box. If you want a more in-depth review I have videos on YouTube for them both.
Hearthkyn Salvager Kill Team
I’ve done an in-depth video covering all of the kill team’s rules here:
Hearthkyrn Salvager kill team are our first look at Leagues of Votann in the game! They are a kill team consisting of 10 operatives (a leader and 9 other operatives). For this box, they are the kill team that comes with the new upgrade sprue, while the rest of the unit is made from the Hearthkyn Warrior box.
Tac Op selection gives you Recon and Security, which is an alright mix of Tac Ops. Notably for your roster, you can have up to 3 gunners on your kill team, which you will likely always take. Outside of that you have no real restrictions. Your leader can also take the fabled Plasma Pistol and Plasma Sword option without any restrictions compared to other kill team rosters, which is nice.
Grudge Tokens are the main ability of the kill team. Enemy operatives get them every time an enemy operative incapacitates one of your friendly operatives, so a single enemy operative could have multiple Grudge Tokens. These tokens change your normal hits into crits, whether it be in shooting or close combat, for each Grudge Token the enemy has. Overall it’s pretty neat. Steady Advance is alright too but basically is the balance dataslate general rule.
Operative-wise, generally everyone has 7 wounds with a +3 save and BS 4+. This is an interesting change as in Warhammer 40,000 Votann have 2 wounds with a +4 save and BS 3+. I assume this may have been changed for Kill Team due to balance reasons but I really like this change. It makes Votann really good at withstanding a shoot-out as 8 wounds and BS 3+ may have been too much to deal with at 10 operatives. Generally everyone can also either have a Bolter or Ion Blaster. Due to Grudge Tokens, I prefer Ion Blasters on everyone unless your opponent has lots of invun saves.
The Gunner is the main work-horse of the Hearthkyn Salvager Kill Team. The Plasma Beamer can be hilariously damaging via its beam rule if you get multiple crits off, the Rotary Cannon is awesome due to ignoring obscuring, the Missile Launcher doesn’t have Heavy which makes it very mobile and damaging, while the Manga Rifle is your Space Marine killer but costing 2AP to shoot due to being Unwieldy (with no Heavy!).
The Lugger is a great auto-include too.Not only does it give you 5 extra EP to use but I’ve Got It makes it very efficient for action point-heavy games. Re-Equip is very interesting though. This action literally defies WYSIWYG. For 1AP, you change the weapons a model is equipped with. This lets you basically only need 1 Leader operative on your roster but it can be interesting when used on your Gunner to change their weapons to suit your in-game needs to be more mobile or a suprise weapon change against a key enemy operative.
Fellgor Ravager Kill Team
I’ve done an in-depth video covering all of the kill team’s rules here:
Fellgor Ravager Kill Team are our first full unit of Beastmen in Warhammer 40,000. They are a kill team consisting of 10 operatives (a leader and 9 other operatives). For this box, they are the kill team made up of completely new models! We had them in Blackstone Fortress but these miniatures are very different from each other, which is good as these new models look much better.
Recon plus Seek and Destroy are your Tac Op selections, which is probably the best combination at the moment. Your leader can have a Pistol and Chainsword or a Plasma Pistol and Bludgeon. Somehow, the space cows have learned how to harness the power of a sun…in their hands.
For the rest of your operatives, you get 9 unique operatives and 1 general Fellgor Warrior. This basically means you’ll always be going with a Leader and 9 specialists. As a result, you only need 1 box of Fellgor Ravagers to have a full competitive Kill Team which is great.
Ability-wise, Frenzy is probably the most broken faction ability I’ve ever seen for the game. I go into this in-depth in the video review, but basically every time a Fellgor Ravager would die, they Frenzy instead. They then only are incapacitated when the conditions on the right are met. This is…insane when you see the rest of the kill team. Being immune to range damage while Frenzy is wild. You can’t do mission actions or pick up actions but…you can still contest and control objectives.
My biggest gripe is that the Beastmen still Frenzy even if you fight them first in combat, which just feels very unfair. Unless you can kill Fellgor Ravager operatives during their own activation (or they all start on engage for some reason), this is effectively a 20 operative kill team that can be utterly immune to ranged damage.
Being injured does suck but the kill team somehow has ways around that and still effectively hit on 4s in combat, making them still really hard to deal with in melee while Frenzied. If Frenzy only triggered from shooting attacks and any critical strike (shooting and combat) would kill a Frenzied operative, I think the ability would be alright. As it is now though, Frenzy is way too over-tuned.
Your general Warrior (that you will never take) shows off the crazy bulk of this kill team. Everyone has 10 wounds and a 5+ save (those belts are really tough?). Everyone basically being 4/5 damage with 4 attacks on 3s probably means Ork Kommandos are going to contact their lawyers for impersonation fraud. Just a crazy good profile that Frenzy warps into an unbalanced combination.
Your Leader is quite great too. While the Plasma Pistol is just some nice ranged threat, Call the Attack is what makes him amazing. This works every strategic phase and it’s overly generous range lets entire groups of Beastmen dash up every turning point. On Into the Dark this is crazy while open play limits it a bit depending on where terrain is. Still, I’m shocked this isn’t a once per game ability but…considering the rest of the Fellgor Ravager kill team, I really shouldn’t be surprised.
Next we have the Deathknell. His magic gong gives him a +4 save and his tiny club somehow does 4/5 damage. Being serious though, his Icon Bearer ability is great for objective control while his sick War Gong beats downgrades crit damage to normal damage if he’s within blue of friendly operatives. He can also spend an AP to bust out a really sick tune and get a +3 invun. Sit him behind your Beastmen, securing objectives, while he makes them even harder to kill and reach that Frenzy threshold.
Terrain
For this set, Gallowdark is falling into a planet. As a result, everyone is trying to escape to the drop pods! Included in the terrain this time are also a bunch of medical stations and stasis pods. Oddly, out of all the terrain this season, I find the Gallowdark terrain is great to use as objective markers for Warhammer 40,000. Probably the most useful terrain sprue outside of the ones in the original Into the Dark box.
As for the missions, a lot of them combine multiple sets of ITD for long narrative games set around trying to escape the crashing space hulk. I really like this approach. Sure, missions aren’t too balanced but they are very thematic and fun. I love the addition of decompressing and exploding rooms, which ensure you rush towards the drop pods as soon as possible.
The rules for the terrain are all great and tie into the missions excellently. They also offer hilarious situations where both players continuously fight over the drop pods as the entire room decompresses. Excellent stuff.
Gallowfall Overview
Overall, Gallowfall is a fitting conclusion to the Into the Dark Season (2) of Kill Team. The Hearthkyn Salavager Kill Team are a great kill team. They’re well-balanced with lots of tools to use, making them suit a nice defensive playstyle that rewards you for hunkering down a bit up the board and punishing the opponent for getting near. The Votann are just so well-designed and I really like how they’ve been presented. They’re still great a shooting but not oppressively so, while also being flexible enough to punish anyone thinking they’re a pushover.
The Fellgor Ravager Kill Team, on the other hand, is a complete role-reversal. This kill team rivals original Pathfinders in terms of power. They’re easy to collect and way too powerful. I’m not sure you can beat them on Into the Dark and even playing on open is rough. They mince elites and hordes with Void-Dancer Troupe barely having a chance due to Cegorach’s Jest ploy. Honestly, if you want to play competitively and win events, this is the team for you. Only need 1 box and you’re golden. Amazing baseline stats with great specialists and then overcharged with Frenzy. Just end TP1 with multiple charges for TP2 and GG. If Frenzy was changed as I suggested above and all the Beastmen had -2 wounds on every operative, this kill team probably would have been strong but fun to play with and against.
The narrative content is really good too. A great set of thematic and fun missions that really evoke the setting of the box. I also like the terrain too, although my main plan is to use it for objective markers and display/terrain boards.
Pros:
- Two great new kill teams, both miniature and rules-wise
- Great narrative content with good terrain
- Both Kill Teams are competitively strong (with one being much stronger than the other)
Cons:
- Fellgor Ravager Kill Team probably needs an emergency nerf, an easy contender for best kill team in the game currently
- Repeated Into the Dark terrain, potentially hurting those who buy each box
So would I recommend this box? Yes! As a single buy box, Gallowfall is still really good. The narrative content is great, making missions fun and balanced with the new terrain and explosive action. Both teams are also really nice visually, the Votann kill team have really grown on me and I’m currently painting up a full helmet-only roster. The Beastmen are also really easy to paint, especially with contrast paints. Balance issues aside, Gallowfall is great for both casual and competitive players.
If you want to pick up Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team Gallowfall you can pre-order it directly from the Games Workshop website or use my affiliate link at Element Games to net you a 25% to 15% discount at no additional cost to yourself while helping to support me and my work.
Check out my Discord as well as my Patreon too if you want to give me some more support!
That’s pretty much it from me. So until next time, no matter how many times you fall, remember there’s always a chance to survive re-entry as long as you can roll a crit!
Can You Roll A Crit? 