Mandragola’s many Kill Teams

[Mandragola]

For the Knives in the Dark challenge I’m doing a Ratling team, with accompanying Ogryns and Bullgryns. 
 

I’ve built them, based and undercoated them. I thought I’d start painting with the skin before realising that meant doing the ratlings’ feet, which I’ll inevitably make a mess of as I paint the bases. So now I’m doing the base rubble and will fix the feet afterwards, as required. 
 

 

These are mostly straightforward models but I’m doing the big shot in sub-assemblies. These bullgryns have magnetised weapons and shields, which are out of shot but in a similar state.

 

Ive painted some other Kill teams and have others in progress. I’ll post some pics of those when I get round to it.

 

I do kill team as a game to play so I’ll always be looking to build legal, playable teams. Of course I like to be creative where I can but I will always build stuff of at least the correct dimensions and base sizes. These ratlings are pretty standard but I hope to have a few more unusual bits to show in future. 
 

C+C always welcome, but bough I realise there isn’t a lot to say about some white spray and basecoated rubble. 

 

 

[Mandragola]

The main team I’ve played since I properly started getting into kill team is my Shattered Legion “Nemesis Claw”. These were made from spare heresy bits.

 

I’d planned originally to make just a Raven Guard but that didn’t seem quite right for all the specialists so I added members of other legions. my Skin Thief is a Blood Angel, the Fearmonger is an Alpha Legion who says he’s definitely loyal and the Ventrilokar is a Salamander. It’s about half Raven Guard and half other stuff. 
 

 

Sorry about the trophy. This was the most recent photo I had of all these guys together. 

[Mithrilforge]

Loving this 

a great start to the killteam, very well regimented way of painting models !.

I like your other killteam , very flavourful and well painted , congrats on the trophy  

look fwd to seeing those ratlings and Ogryns done 

 

cheers , Mithril 

[Mandragola]

I did this Brood Brother kill team last year for the Xenos stronghold. They were great in 2.0 but struggle now in a meta dominated by elites and elves. 
 

 

Speaking of Elves, my most recent team is these Mandrakes. I’ve played two games with them so far, in which they chopped up some Kasrkin and Aquilons without much difficulty. I like their play-style so might give them a few more games. 
 

 

I went for a hot scheme, which is wrong but was fun to do. I tried to put Mordant Earth on a couple of the bases to do lava but really didn’t like the result, so I’ll have to do something g different. Not sure what, yet. 

[Lysimachus]

The simplified pallette and OSL on those Cultists is just lovely!

 

 

[Mandragola]

16 hours ago, Lysimachus said:

The simplified pallette and OSL on those Cultists is just lovely!

 

 

Thanks. It was an experiment that came off really well. At first I hadn’t planned to do any red on them but I found they needed something on both sides. 
 

One of the fun things about kill team is that it lets you do schemes you wouldn’t try on a full army. These were certainly an example of that. 

[Mandragola]

Progress update, of a sort. I’ve done a bit more work on my ratlings and they’ve had their first game, vs blades of khaine. It went terribly badly! Here’s a pic from TP1 before everything went wrong. 

 

 

Naturally I’ve responded to this painting challenge by starting various other projects. I’ve built some Indomitus terminators for my existing heresy Raven Guard army and also done a test mini in mk3 for a potential Sons of Horus force. I can feel my ratlings’ rage radiating from their carry case. but what can they really do to me?
 

 

Edit: yes, this is a colour photo. And I still have all my fingers after cutting off the many crux badges.

 

 

Edited March 21 by Mandragola

[Mandragola]

Well I got in another game with the ratlings. This time it was against a new player and his angels of death. It resulted in a 19:6 win. The highlight was my battlemutt killing this heavy intercessor - who to be fair had only one wound. 
 

 

I’ll try to do some actual painting now that I’m getting the hang of the team. I was a bit unhappy with how they did against the BoK but there’s definitely play in these guys. They’re really different, and interesting. 

[Mandragola]

Well I’ve finished another kill team. Not the ratlings I’ve promised. But some plague marines I’ve had in an almost-done state for quite a while now, which was a shame as I had fun converting them from the 8e starter guys. I got round to finishing the many, many bits of detail on them and sticking on some basing rubble.

 

Sergeant and Sorceror.

 

 

Grenadier and plague spewer. 
 

 

Fighter and warrior. 
 

 

Icon bearer - possibly with plague bells equipment. 
 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

Have you thought about doing the classic Kill-Team consisting of the Blood Angels crew from the comic Bloodquest?

[Mandragola]

On 3/31/2025 at 8:49 PM, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Have you thought about doing the classic Kill-Team consisting of the Blood Angels crew from the comic Bloodquest?

I haven’t read bloodquest so no. However I do have a load of WIP marines. 
 

For Angels of Death I’m using up something a bit similar though, in a way. My idea is a tiny crusade of Black Templars, whose army set I unwisely purchased a while back. Subsequently I’ve got hold of a lot of other fun bits of sword brethren and things like that. 

Here’s my captain and the two sergeants I’m most likely to use I think. I’ve got others.  
 

 

Here are some of my marines. I think the heavy intercessor is pretty cool. 
 

 

Im a bit held up with the eliminator. I need to do a bit more GS work on his cloak. 
 

 

I'm doing grimdark style on these again. Starting with brown and then sponging on the black. To be honest they’re quite low down my current priority list. They’ll be certified for years so there’s no rush. 
 

On the other hand my Phobos team, who I’ve owned since Molech came out, won’t be eligible to come to all events so soon. I’m attempting to do something a bit like my Brood Brothers, with a strong light source (or maybe two if I do a second). I’d quite like to get these guys done next. Or at least some of them so I can get them on a table. 

 

 

By the way I don’t want to give the impression that I’ve actually done any work on these guys lately. This is just where I got to, months ago, before being distracted. 
 

I got my new plague marines on a board on Sunday against Phobos. Managed a win but only really because my opponent took wiretap. That 5” move was pretty terrible with all the climbing you have to do on Volkus, though if I was better with the team I’d be able to plan my moves to mitigate that. This really made me want to play Phobos so maybe I’ll paint them more. 
 

 

Ratlings? Yeah maybe one day. 

 

Edited April 1 by Mandragola

[sitnam]

On 2/28/2025 at 5:34 PM, Mandragola said:

went for a hot scheme, which is wrong but was fun to do. I tried to put Mordant Earth on a couple of the bases to do lava but really didn’t like the result, so I’ll have to do something g different. Not sure what, yet. 

 

I use Mordant Earth for my Tzeentch bases and I like the results, but you have to work with it a bit. Some elmers glue + hair dryer really helps the cracks spread 

 

I do love the Firedrakes tho

[Mandragola]

Among my many unfinished teams is Warpcoven. Tonight I painted up a Rubric Marine as a test. I quite like the result but there are loads of other things I should really be working on instead, so I don’t know when I’ll do the rest of them. 
 

[Mandragola]

Took my nemesis claw to a three game, 10 player event at my FLGS today and won the event. 21:5 vs kroot, 18:5 vs legionaries and 16:11 vs hand of the archon, which was my hardest game by far. 
 

I’m not sure how I feel about the current trend of printing trophies. My partner isn’t keen for me to display mine. Nice problem to have, I suppose. 
 

I’ve built my sanctifiers, using a few flagellants to fill out the roster. I used spare death korps arms on a few, then realised novitiate ones are actually better. I might go back and change the original ones to these.