Review the next box of Season 3 for Kill Team!
Welcome to today’s Warhammer 40000 Kill Team video where I cover the continuation of Season 3 with Kill Team Nightmare Box! I go over everything in each box in-depth from the kill teams, new card accessories, terrains and rules! Thanks goes to Games Workshop for providing this to review for free. As always, I aim to be honest, impartial and constructively critical.
I’ve also done this article as a video you can check out here:
What’s in the Boxes?
Inside the Nightmare box, you get tons of content: the Kill Team Nightmare rulebook, 2 sprues of 5 Mandrakes and Night Lords Chaos Space Marines, the Nightmare (shot tray) terrain accessories, Tac Ops and rules cards for both kill teams, transfers, card tokens and datacards for each operative!
The new cards are super useful, ranging from equipment, ploys and Tac ops. They’re all tarot card sized so will fit any appropriate card sleeves and deck box. The operative cards are about A6, almost a bit too large, but are great to finally have. These are box-exclusive and won’t be available when these kill teams are eventually broken down for individual release.
Kill Teams
Inside the Kill Team Nightmare box you get both the Nemesis Claw Kill Team and Mandrake Kill Team. I’ll cover both briefly here but I go more in-depth via videos for each appropriate kill team.
Nemesis Claw
Nemesis Claw are a great but somewhat power-crept kill team. Their faction ability is highly situational and only really useful TP1. While have 3 archetypes is too much, faction Tac Ops are quite…eh with faction Tac Op 3 being almost useless due to the lack of 7W teams in the game right now.
Operatives are very powerful. The leader’s delay ability is incredibly strong and frustrating that the issue with elite teams is only dealt with in this kill team. The Screecher is a great combat unit, becoming a menace to fight. The Ventrilokar is also hugely powerful, being able to force enemy operatives out of position or at -1APL while also being a banner himself.
Equipment-wise the team has flayed skin for 2EP that turns off all enemy re-rolls within blue which is huge. The team also gets grisly trophy for some reason which feels like Legionary are just outright replaced. Regardless, Nemesis Claw are the best elite team in the game right now, even with their heavy melee focus.
Mandrakes
Mandrakes also have 3 out 4 archetypes for some reason. Abilities are also huge and expansive. WIthin Shadow is so easy and feels way more forgiving than the Nemesis Claw ability. Also you can teleport and also go from a 5++ to a 4++ while within shadow. Soulstrike is also crazy, it kinda skews the Mandrake shooting too much and really should have just been stun with no cover.
Leader is also crazy, a +5 Just a Scratch along with a good chance to delay multiple operatives within red. Chooser of the Flesh is a huge momentum piece, able to give APL to friendly operatives after killing which makes the Mandrakes incredibly oppressive once 1 or 2 operatives go to 3APL. Normal warriors are good too, effectively gaining power weapons while within shadow.
Mandrakes are an incredibly powerful team. They also break ITD which is very weird as it feels intentional, definitely a case of focusing on narrative over balance here. They can be incredibly oppressive to play against, especially with access to super conceal along with free dashes and all their mobility tricks. They still have some checks but they dominate the majority of the field right now.
Terrain and Narrative
The Nightmare shot tray is alright and works like ITD walls for cover. It’s fine but I feel it fits better on really big ITD maps or on Open maps. The big thing added in narrative rules is swimming! This allows more movement and dynamism to Bheta-Decima and should be implemented into the main game mode. Sadly, I doubt it will. It’s wild how much better swimming is for BD and I never knew I wanted it so much until now.
You also get a slew of narrative twists for swimming as well as 9 narrative missions using the new terrain piece.
Overview
Overall, Kill Team Nightmare adds 2 very nice kill teams to the game along with an interesting terrain piece and some nice narrative additions. Nemesis Claw are great for elite player loyalists while Aeldari and melee players alike will love the Mandrakes. Wish there was less power creep though.
Pros:
- Split boxes making it easier for newer players as well as those wanting either boxes seperately
- 2 new great looking kill teams
- 10 models of each kill team effectively giving all the new models you need while also being great plastic updates
- Card accessories and tokens which make rules referencing and tracking abilities quick and easy
Cons:
- Deffinetly a sense of power creep which is worrying if the trend continues for future Kill Team releases with Season 3 after the great Salvation
- Mandrakes are hard to tell apart
- Feature terrain piece is not great for Bheta-Decima due to size
In summary, would I recommend Kill Team Nightmare? Yes! If I hadn’t received it as a review copy, I would have bought it. Both kill teams are powerful and offer new ways to play while also being very competitive and full teams without needing to buy more models
Once again, the addition of cards and tokens is amazing. This was something sorely needed since kill team originally release so its great to finally have physical cards of operatives stats, ploys, equipment and Tac Ops. Especially as all of them, sans operative datacards, are tarot sized.
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That’s pretty much it from me. So until next time, no matter what happens in the high seas of Kill Team Nightmare, remember there’s always a chance to win that clutch jump test as long as you can roll a crit!
Can You Roll A Crit? 