We are venturing once again into the depths of the Gallowdark, and with such a warm name, who wouldn’t want to meander around the mechanical monstrosity that is this ancient spacehulk?!
Kill Team: Shadowvaults is here and the Officio Logisticarum (otherwise known as the Warhammer Community Team) kindly sent is a copy.
As is now the norm, the new Kill Team box features a hefty amount of terrain and two brand new kill teams, and damm, does one of them make my trigger finger twitchy.
The Necrons are back and this time they are lead into battle by Hamanet the Relentless a mighty Cryptek. Hamanet is of the Tsarakura dynasty, a relatively small dynasty but one with a secret. While it may appear that the overlords are in charge of the Tsarakura it’s in point of fact a hidden cabal of Crypteks that steer its destiny, of course thanks to their power over the sorcerous technology this is unknown even to the very overlords themseleves.
It might night seem like a big deal but it brings a welcome piece of character to the Necrons that I appreciate, as my I’ve a tendency to find them rather dull and flat as a faction. I’m away that this attidude to mostly down to the fact that the vast majority if my dealings with the shiny skeletons comes from ramming monoliths with wave serpents back in 5th ed. Their character and background has been hugely expaned over recent editions and Shadowvaults continues this.
Hamanet requires a valuable artifact that has found its way into Gallowdark, this device is essential to awaken a tomb world of the Tsarakura, a key piece in furthering the dynastys ascension.
Hamanet has many tools in his arsenal and while I don’t want to spoil all the fluff the group has much more personality than I expected. The deathmark in particular is a chilling example of his kind and he’s easily my favourite model from the Necron killteam. Then again, we all know how much I love a marksman, even if he’s more machine than man now.
That artefact I mention that Hamanet is so warpbent on retrieving, well, it’s currently in the possession of The Kasrkin. The elite shocktroops of Cadia. At the behest of an inquisiton the Kasrkin entered the Gallowdark deep in the past when the Necrons were seen as naught by a fanciful myth. Well, that myth has become all too real for these nobel Cadians (Sorry, if my bias is showing). Time moves differently in the warp, the spacehulks return to real-space may have taken an age but to those aboard, mere years have passed.
Sgt. Pavlo doesn’t know what the artefact she and her squad have found is, all they know is the xenos want it, which is all the more reason to not let them have it.
It’s this Kasrkin Killteam that got me really excited, the models are fantastic and come with a range of weapon and equipment options that mean they are ready for any task. If theres one thing that makes my hobby heart pound it’s when a model matches perfectly with its fluff description.
If I’m being honest the entire Aeldari model range is pretty much this personified but the Cadian shocktroopers provided in Shadowvaults are an incredibly close second.
These models look every bit the part and I can’t wait to fold them into the Astra Militarum army i’ll be building once the Cadia stands box is released(My wallet broke before the guard did).
I usually pick a favourite model from each Killteam in these articles and I honestly can’t when it comes to the Kasrkins, each is a perfect represention of its battlefield role. As always I don’t got into rules too deeply but the Kasrkin have a great little mechanic to even the odds against the living metal menace infesting the emperors realms, veteran points.
Essentially, these points let you modify a roll by +1 per point spent. You an only modify one dice per roll (Say you roll 3 attack dice, you can spend as many points as you like on one on the dice, but that dice only) but it could make all the difference when it comes down to waging war in the terrifying and restricted confines of a space hulk. It’s not much, but again, it’s gameplay taking fluff into account and I can’t wait to blast a tin-man in face and watch the eerie green light fade from its eyes.
The terrain in Shadowvaults fits the setting much like the ‘Into the dark’ set. It’s nothing groundbreaking and at first it looked a tad flat to my ‘Munda eyes. However, each mission in the Shadowvaults details how to lay out this terrain and after reading through them it’s actually fantastic. Far too often terrain can just becomes background with no real import on the mission, this couldn’t be further from the case as Shadowvaults missions and terrain combine to make the space hulk come to life in a way that not even the legendary ‘Space Hulk’ boxed game did all those years ago.
If you’re enjoying the current seasons of KillTeam then Shadowvaults is an essential purchase and I’ll be spending a lot of my gaming time in the Gallowdark bringing death to the enemies of the emperor.
