Kill Team Shadowvaults is the first expansion for Kill Team Into the Dark. It follows the same format as the previous Kill Team expansions introducing 2 brand new kill teams, the Astra Militarum Cadian Kasrkin, and the Xenos Necron Hierotek Circle. There is also a new kill zone that builds upon the close confines of the space hulk Gallowdark, Killzone: Shadowvaults. In this article, we'll have a look at what's in the box, and talk about the 2 new kill teams and kill zone.

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. You can check out our full guide here if you want to know more about Kill Team. If you want to check out the Kill Team rules before you buy, Games Workshop has made the core rules available to download for free.

Kill Team Shadowvaults is an expansion pack for Kill Team, so the Core Rulebook and accessories are required to use this set. It includes the core Gallowdark rules, along with the same Galowdark scenery that Into the Dark had. This means the Shadowvaults can be used without first picking up Into the Dark, but it does expand on the Into the Dark Kill Team season.

The Shadowvaults campaign book is split into several chapters, the first, Shadowvaults, details the lore and narrative of space hulks, specifically the Gallowdark and the Ark of Hamanet, which the 2 factions of this expansion are fighting over. The next chapter contains the background for elite Cadian Kasrkin and Necron Hierotek Circles kill teams, along with narrative ideas and hooks to flesh them out.

The core of the book is the datacards, abilities, special rules, ploys, and spec ops details for the 2 new kill teams included in the set. These are different kill teams from those previously presented in the Kill Team Compendium, and we look at both in detail below.

The book closes with Killzone: Shadowvaults and Killzone: Gallowdark and close quarters special rules for all the Gallowdark scenery in the box, Gallowdark rules like the condensed environment which make weapons with the blast, torrent, and splash traits deadly in the cramped corridors, and rules for the new Shadowvaults scenery, including the robot and sentry turret. It also has a Critical Operations: Gallowdark Mission Pack (repeated from Into the Dark), a series of 9 matched play missions. It also includes Shadow Operations: Shadowvault, a series of 9 narrative missions that makes use of the Killzone: Shadowvault, which aren't as fairly balanced for matched play.

It doesn't include the Gallowdark Expedition rules for running a campaign, so if you haven't picked up Into the Dark and want those rules, you will need to pick up Into the Dark or the rulebook separately if it's made available later.

The Astra Militarum Cadian troops are known as hardy warriors, their planet was the first line of defense against invading Chaos forces until it was lost. But their troops still live on, battling around the galaxy, and the Kasrkin troops are veterans of an already elite troop.

The Kasrkin have 8 different troop types and can field 10 operatives in games. You can build all of the different troop options out of the box, but as they can field 4 Karskin Gunners, you will need to make some choices of armament building out of the box. You can build all troop types from one set, but only 3 of the 5 heavy weapon options, or 4 if you chose not to make the Sharpshooter. We detail all the options below.

The Kasrkin start the game with 10 elite points, which they can use to boost attack dice rolls, only 1 dice per attack, but you can spend as many points as you wish to change the dice by 1 per point.

The Necrons are an ancient race, long forgotten, who are now rising from their tombs as soulless robotic husks, driven by their desire for galaxy-wide conquest. Yet, even though the race shares the desire as a whole, they haven't forgotten their rank structure and jealousy of others, and the Hierotek Circles represent elite units, hand-picked for special operations by the Necron Dynasties to steal, sabotage, and destroy, more covertly than their usual ways of wars and sometimes against other Necron Dynasties.

The Shadowvaults sprue allows you to build a Technomancer as your kill team's leader. Other leader options are available to purchase separately. You can also build 1 Plasacyte Reanimator and 1 Plasmacyte Accelerator. The sprue contains enough to build 5 of any combination of Deathmark and Immortal Guardians, with their 2 weapon options, or alternatively 1 Apprentek, 1 Immortal Despotek, and 3 Deathmark/Immortal Guardians.

All of the Necrons have the ability to heal 2 wounds a turn with their Living Metal special rule, making them very durable and forcing opponents to focus fire on single operatives rather than spreading fire and wearing them down.

Shadowvaults includes the same great Gallowdark space hulk scenery that Into the Dark had, along with a new Shadowvaults scenery set, which allows you to build the weapons locker, security panel, camera, equipment pile, bomb, sentry turret, and robot for use in the Killzone: Shadowdark rules. All of the scenery is completely interchangeable with the Into the Dark set, allowing you to build up a larger claustrophobic space hulk over the course of this Kill Team season.

This means that if you don't have Into the Dark, you can enough scenery to fill a standard Kill Team Gallowdark board, without having to pick up Into the Dark, but if you already have Into the Dark, it does duplicate the Gallowdark scenery, which will allow to fill 2 linked boards for some large scale space hulk exploration.

This also ties in with the upcoming boarding actions rules for Warhammer 40K, which will require two sets of Gallowdark scenery to play. With both Into the Dark and Shadowvaults, you'll also be able to play the boarding actions just by picking up the rules when they're released.

The copy of Kill Team Shadowvaults used to produce this preview was provided by Games Workshop.

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