Kill Team Tomb World Review - The Original Kill Team Joins The Purge

The next season of Kill Team launches with a brand new box, featuring a new setting, new kill teams, and new missions. In this article, we'll take a look at the new kill teams and what else Kill Team Tomb World adds to your games.

Kill Team is a skirmish wargame set in Games Workshop's larger Warhammer 40,000 setting. As a skirmish game, Kill Team features a small number of elite troops, fighting special operations battles, rather than huge battles fought with entire armies. We've covered Kill Team in depth since the first edition, and you can read our review of the current Starter Set here.

The Awoken And The Purgers

Kill Team Tomb World, although a huge box, is an expansion for Kill Team, and while it contains a lot of content, it requires a copy of the Kill Team core rulebook, dice, and a measuring tool to use. As with previous expansions, it adds 2 brand new kill teams, a new set of non-player operative miniatures and missions, and because it's the start of the new season, it includes the core terrain for this season's kill zone.

The full box contents are:

• Kill Team Tomb World Dossier
• 10x Adeptus Astartes Deathwatch Miniatures
• 8x Necron Canoptek Circle miniatures
• 13x Necron Warriors and Canoptek Scarab Swarm NPO miniatures
• Datacards for both kill teams
• Tokens for both kill teams
• Tomb World game board, scenery pieces, and event cards

The included non-player operatives (NPOs) and event cards are for use in the Joint Ops: Tomb World mission pack for cooperative or solo play. This pack has players battling AI-controlled Necrons. The mission pack has 6 missions and 3 maps for joint ops, and the rules and 3 maps for player vs player games, with the added complication of AI-controlled Necrons.

With the returning Gallowdark-style corridors of kill zone Tomb World, the rules for close quarters fighting are included, along with rules for the unique scenery pieces the box contains, like the teleporter, hatchways, and breachable walls.

Seasonal Changes

Kill Team Tomb World is the start of the next season of Kill Team, which means that the kill team rotation previously detailed by Games Workshop will come into effect. We should expect a full updated article on which kill teams are legal for tournament play, but all kill teams with existing rules in this edition will still be balance updated and can be used for any games outside of tournaments.

With the new season, we also expect the Kill Team Approved Ops 2025 card pack to release alongside Tomb World. This card pack updates the Tac Ops for the 4 archetypes, along with new and returning Crit Ops and the standard Kill Op. It also includes new map layouts for Killzones Volkus, Bheta-decima, Gallowdark, and the new Tomb World.

Suffer Not the Xenos To Live

Before Kill Team existed as a game, the Deathwatch used the name to describe the temporary groups of Space Marines pulled from every chapter to serve in the Deathwatch's core function of eliminating the Xenos threat. These Space Marines don black armor during their service, leaving only one shoulder pauldron painted in the colors of their original chapter. They then get access to the intelligence and specialised wargear that allows the Deathwatch to serve their purpose.

The Deathwatch kill team has access to 11 operatives, but fields 5 in a kill team. This gives you a huge amount of flexibility going into battle, allowing you to tailor your forces to respond to your opponent. The Tomb World set includes enough sprues to let you build 10 Deathwatch marines, allowing you to build nearly one of each type (having to make a choice between 2 of the 3 Gravis armored marines). This means you can build 2 entire Deathwatch kill teams for games of Joint Ops using the Tomb World or other joint ops rules.

The standout Deathwatch marines for us, and our first Deathwatch kill team loadout, are the Watch Sergeant, who can use a strategy and firefight ploy once per battle for free. The Blademaster Veteran, who wields a Xenophase blade and can fight against every enemy in its control range. The frag cannon-wielding Bombard Veteran who has 2 fire options, the very high damage shell or the torrent ruled shrapnel. The Gunner Veteran, armed with a heavy plasma incinerator, and the Marksman Veteran, who can go on guard to punish any enemies moving into their view, and when using the close quarters rules, immediately go back on guard after performing a shoot action.

All the Deathwatch Marines can perform 2 shoot or fight actions each turn, and can also perform an additional (but different) single point action when they counteract. The Deathwatch also have access to special ammunition, which can be used once per turning point to add 1 of 7 special rules to a shooting attack.

Dreams Of A Dynasty

The Necrons are the robotic undead of a long-forgotten empire, sleeping in tombs and awakening when disturbed. Serving the forgotten masters of this sleeping empire are Crypteks, engineers who seek to further their own agendas, whilst serving their masters. The Canoptek Circle kill team are led by a Geomancer Cryptek who can change the form of matter to move through physical barriers, or aggressively to utterly destroy their targets. Supporting the Geomancer are Canoptek constructs, mindless thrawls acting out their will.

The Canoptek Circle has a fixed kill team roster, led by the powerful Geomancer who can use their abilities to damage all operatives near a scenery piece, and move them, or any other friendly operative through walls. The Canoptek Circle deploys 3 obelisk node tokens at the start of the game. These tokens can be used to control uncontest objectives and also create a node matrix if they are within 6 inches of another node, boosting the kill team's abilities if friendly operatives are within the node matrix.

Backing up the Geomancer are 2 Tomb Crawlers, which are large mobile weapons platforms, 1 Accelerator, who can boost other Canoptek operatives' action points by 1, 1 Macroctye Reanimator, who can heal and resurrect other operatives, and 3 Warriors, who aren't very durable, but can damage nearby enemies when killed, and respawn at the start of your turn in your dropzone.

Kill Team Tomb World Final Thoughts?

Kill Team Tomb World is a fantastic start to the new season. The box contains enough miniatures for 3 kill teams (2x 5-man Deathwatch and 1 Canoptek Circle kill team), plus 13 extra NPO miniatures for solo and cooperative play, along with enough scenery to fill a game board with walls to capture the claustrophobic feel of a Necron Tomb.

As a Space Marine player myself, it's great to see the original kill team finally represented, and the fact that you get enough miniatures to build 2 whole Deathwatch kill teams out of the box gives you an insane amount of variety when putting your roster together, or play joint ops straight out of the box. The Canoptek Circle kill team are also very interesting, with a powerful leader and 2 strong weapons platforms, with the respawning warriors that your opponent will never fully get rid of. They offer a thematic Necron experience, as you can throw warriors at your opponent without a care.

The copy of Kill Team Tomb World used to produce this review was provided by Games Workshop.