Mandragola’s many Kill Teams

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Your hot metal effect is very well done and really cool.  Was your decision to make the plasma yellow an attempt to reduce the colour palette of the models?

[Mandragola]

2 hours ago, Dr_Ruminahui said:

Your hot metal effect is very well done and really cool.  Was your decision to make the plasma yellow an attempt to reduce the colour palette of the models?

Yes. I’d like to do some OSL on these guys but I don’t want too many colours going on. I’m not sure how a red/orange glow will work on them but it could be fun to try. 

[Mandragola]

My ITD set is finished now. I spent some time picking out details like skulls, cables , lights and screens, after daubing on a whole pot of dirty down rust. 
 

 

I painted yellow bars over the doors. These are the width of the opening, so should help with seeing where doors are and working out LoS. 
 

 

Not sure what I’ll do next. I’ve got BD and Tomb World to work on. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

At first I thought the yellow bars over the doors were kind of weird - but on second thought, that's a really great idea.

[Mandragola]

On 10/15/2025 at 1:08 AM, Dr_Ruminahui said:

At first I thought the yellow bars over the doors were kind of weird - but on second thought, that's a really great idea.

Thanks. I agree it’s a bit jarring but it helps avoid “oh I didn’t realise there was a door there” moments during games. There’s often a bit of a compromise between appearance and functionality, especially for terrain. 
 

My deathwatch played their first game on it last night, against Imperial Navy Breachers. Came away with a win, mainly just due to deathwatch being stupidly powerful and not any major skill on my part. You really do feel the small number of operatives you have with Deathwatch and even a single casualty is always a bit of a disaster. Still they killed an awful lot of Breachers and a win is a win. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

They are also less offputting from an angle like in your recent picture and as they would actually be viewed during a game, as that lets you see the matching doors and there's a lot more going on with other minis, etc.  Or to put it another way, they are a lot more jarring when you can only see the top of the walls and not the rest of the battlefield.

 

Even if that weren't the case, its still a good idea from an "ease of play" perspective - which I am all for.  I'm a big fan of the use of tokens, markers, etc - anything that reduces the tax on my overstretched memory.   I want my mistakes to be because I was an idiot, not because I forgot some modifier or whatnot - or didn't notice a doorway.

Edited October 16 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Mandragola]

I’m slowly working my way through the Templars, while inevitably thinking about future projects. 
 

For the next Kill Team set I’m really interested in the Tau. I played Tau in 40K ages ago and I’ve always liked stealth suits. They just seem like a team that’s right for the game - probably more so than pathfinders or auxiliaries ever were. I’d like to try painting them in digicam, which I’ve tried on vehicles for Heresy but never anything as small as a single figure. 
 

I’m not a space Viking fan so the wolves aren’t so interesting. However I do have an unfinished Phobos team, some of whose members could easily work as the equivalent wolf scouts. I have a crazy-ish idea of converting an AoS lord imperitant and her raven dog thing to be the rune priest and wolf. I play Raven Guard in heresy so the team could be a “modern” take on Mor Deythan, possibly. 
 

Today though I got my tomb world sprues out and started assembling them. I’m about half way through that process. The stuff fits together way more easily than Gallowdark does. And there’s also my Beta Decima board to paint. Plenty to do then!

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I think both the new kill teams are great, though I can well understand that one of them may not be up your alley - myself, I both teams more as nice models than as ones I myself would want to own.

 

Look forward to seeing your stuff as it progresses.

Edited October 18 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Mandragola]

I played a practice game with my nemesis claw on Tomb World for the first time last night. It didn’t go well, partly because I was up against Canoptek Circle controlled by one of the world’s best players and partly because we got a lot of rules wrong for breach points. An interesting game but it took ages looking stuff up and still getting it wrong. 
 

 

The biggest problem was the breach point rules.  My opponent thought he could put razor wire down blocking them and did, as you can see here (if you can see the basically invisible breach points!). This made entering this room almost impossible. It shouldn’t have been possible to put the razor wire there though as breachable walls actually have access points before they are breached, just like hatches. Wire can’t be placed within 2” of access points. 
 

Additionay, we didn’t realise you can do hatchway fights through breach points, but in fact you can. The rules in the core book don’t mention this but the version in the tomb world dossier is updated and includes breach points. 
 

With all these mistakes it was very hard for me to interact with enemies in this room. It might have been a closer game otherwise. Oh well. 
 

Nemesis claw felt much weaker after their nerfs in the WCW pack. Vox scream is almost useless in close quarters now you need visibility - particularly against necrons that can walk through walls. In midnight clad never triggered now it gets cancelled within 8”. Their time might be done, sadly.