The wait is finally over! This weekend marks preorders for the Tomb World box, giving us new embiggened Deathwatch Veterans and some new Necron weirdos too. 

It only took two editions and the better part of five years, but we’ve finally got a new Deathwatch Kill Team in Kill Team. The new Kill Team: Tomb World boxed set brings us a Deathwatch team, a new Necron Canoptek Circle team, and a new Close Quarters terrain set for the Necron Tomb World. There’s a ton here and it’s sure to have a major impact on the game moving forward.

Before we dive in, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for sending us a preview copy of the Tomb World box for review purposes.

The Video Version

If you’d like to watch a video about the contents, we’d recommend this one from Can You Roll a Crit? Then come back here for more written goodness and insight into the assembly.

The Contents

There’s a lot in this box – two teams, an entire terrain set, a book, and a set of ops cards. There are also some extra models here we aren’t really reviewing; in addition to the two kill teams, there are some extra Necron Warriors and Scarabs here, just for the Joint Ops: Tomb World Mission Pack.

The Book

The set comes with the Tomb World Dossier, which has rules for Canoptek Circle and Deathwatch kill teams and the new Tomb World terrain. It’s a pretty solid book, and follows the same quality and layout we’ve been accustomed to with other releases. The Close Quarters: Tomb World rules are in here (more on those below), and rules for running Joint Ops games against the Necrons. 

Kill Zone: Tomb World

The big draw of this box is the new “Into the Dark” terrain set for the Tomb World. This set packs a number of walls and doors for players to work with, and largely mirrors the same Gallowdark terrain kit… with two key differences, noted below:

• Breach Points. The two A1 sections of wall you get in this set have built-in breach points. Those weren’t part of the original Gallowdark terrain kit, and only showed up later, in the Soulshackle expansion. You can play these without breach points if you really want, or need parity. Note that if you’re trying to use the old terrain, you just won’t have these.

• Different short walls. That said, this could be an issue – your Short Walls are different here – Instead of the standard B2 piece, “Short Wall with Hatchway,” you have “Short Wall with Breach Point.” Again, you could remove the breach points on this before the game to make additional walkways, but you’re basically losing two sets of doors here that you’d normally have if you use the old Gallowdark terrain. Likewise, there are two extra sections, B4 – “Short Wall with Pillars,” so you have two more pieces to work with in this set when making walls. 
• Extra stuff. In addition to all of that you also have teleportation pads and a few extra doodads, though it’s not 100% clear to me that these will see regular competitive play, especially if they aren’t included in future sets and are replaced with other doodads, similar to the barricades from the original Into the Dark expansion.

So what does this mean? Well it means that the terrain isn’t quite interchangeable. It’s not the end of the world, but the original Gallowdark terrain had two more sets of doors and nothing breachable to work with. You can easily design layouts for events that can use either, and I think having both is fine as well. 

The Rules

CYRAC: The Tomb World Killzone rules basically mirror the Gallowdark rules but with the re-introduction of breachable walls, light scatter terrain, as well as teleportation pads. Otherwise Hatchway Fighting and Operate Hatch actions work exactly the same. I know some people will be upset about them not being “Operate PORTAL” and “PORTAL FIGHT” but I really like the standardisation here, especially with how it’s covered in the rules. Just helps with future proofing and bringing on existing players. Doors also just pop out now once open, no need to awkwardly move models around when doors are opened. Just pop ’em out and put them to the side of the killzone. Makes gameplay much better.

The scatter terrain is nice too, albeit all being Light terrain. I would have liked the larger pieces being Heavy but that’s more so due to GW flooding the game with Seek Light.

The breachable walls can be breached for 2AP or 1AP if you have the right keyword or a P2 weapon without Blast/Torrent. Operatives within an inch on the other side are all -1AP on a 4+ each. Then walls become accessible points. You can’t door fight through these but they’re still nice. My only issue is with the killzone layouts with Tomb World from the narrative content, breachable walls seem to be all next to each other and kind of in almost “useless” places that won’t add much to games. 

The teleportation pads also are new. These work by teleporting an operative to the opposite pad whenever they do an action that causes them to move. You can only have 1 operative on a single pad each time, and when they teleport, they move to the other pad. They can’t be used TP1 and if operatives are on both pads, they swap places when the other teleports. They seem fun and strong but fall into an issue that breachable walls have, which is that they’re not in the best of spots. You can do funny things with 3APL, such as dash to teleport, shoot someone, then reposition to teleport back.

The Terrain

Rob: Look, this is what you’re really here for. Those rules are fine, and there are some key things to note in terms of how they differ from standard Gallowdark Terrain if you want to proxy a set, but most of you want to know about the new terrain. 

I really liked the Gallowdark/original Into the Dark Terrain set in terms of how it looked. The terrain looks great, and how it goes together is pretty clever. That said, it’s also a pain in the ass, especially when it comes to taking it apart and putting it back together in a new configuration – it’s bad enough that events rarely do it, and instead just have a set ITD layout for multiple rounds. Which is honestly fine, but it’s not ideal if you’re playing Boarding Actions and every mission wants a new layout.

So I’m incredibly pleased to say that this new kit absolutely blows the old one out of the water in terms of its construction and planning. Everything about it retains the fantastic detail and thoughtfulness of the original Gallowdark set while having a much simpler, more intuitive construction that fits great and makes for easier tear-down and re-assembly. It’s about ten times better than the Gallowdark Terrain.

Terrain Assembly and Painting

Rob: Assembly here was incredibly straightforward; the parts all assemble quickly and only have one way they can go together, which is great. To help you with the process, they’ve also helpfully stamped big matching letters on the inside of the terrain pieces, an added nice touch that I really appreciated. When the terrain does assemble, it’s either by pressing into the various round gemstone sockets in the pillars, or for the pillars, it’s using a simple hinge system that feels very solid. You’ll probably want a thin piece of metal to push pieces apart with later on but on the whole this all assembles and breaks down much faster and easier than the Gallowdark set. 

Something to note is that the tolerances here are much more forgiving; to the point where I think you should prime the terrain separately and you don’t have to file anything ahead of time. I primed my walls on sprue and they still fit together like a dream:

Painting the terrain is easier and faster than the Gallowdark Terrain was, but it’s still pretty time consuming. I opted for a fairly quick process of “prime black on sprue, then cut out and zenithal prime with The Army Painter’s Angel Green primer. This was my second time using TAP primers (I used Wolf Grey for my Space Wolves a few months ago), and once again I was very impressed with the result. It went on great even in Houston humidity (50% these days), and the result looks very solid.

Then I edge highlighted with Warpstone glow and did the corners and glowing orbs with Moot Green. It’s very simple but captures the classic Necron green feel and won’t make me want to die when I paint it a lot. If you wanted to make this even easier, you’d drybrush the Warpstone Glow instead of doing edge highlights like a sicko.

This terrain is great and I’m looking forward to painting the rest of it. I’ve already started on the next sections and while there’s a lot of it, I expect I’ll finish it pretty quickly.

The Non-Terrain Models

As mentioned, this box comes with two new kill teams, plus an additional set of Necron Warriors and Scrabs for running the co-op missions. Those are nothing special, just the standard Necron Warriors who include scarabs on their sprues.

Deathwatch

Aside from the terrain, the ostensible stars of the new box are the Deathwatch Veterans, which updates the most recent/final “small marines” kit in the range, replacing them with their Primaris equivalents. Just like the original Deathwatch Veterans boxed set – still one of the best boxes Games Workshop has ever made – this new kit comes loaded with extra bits and shoulder pads to help you customize your squad and mark them as members of dozens of different chapters. 

JD: Anyone familiar with recent Marine releases shouldn’t expect anything new here, you are getting two identical Deathwatch sprues that allow the construction of ten Marines, each body essentially granting one of two operative options. There are some minor mold line issues, but otherwise they assemble and paint up just like their standard box counterparts. There is a wide selection of shoulderpad options, however you might need to go to your chapter of choice upgrade sprue to get your desired match up. You will want to magnetize at least one of the Gravis options, as there are three Gravis operatives available to the team but only two Gravis bodies available in the box. Lastly, you receive a ridiculous number of unhelmetted Marine heads that cover the widest range of Chapter ethnicities that we have seen yet, which is fantastic for granting your Marines the diversity one would expect from a fighting force drawn from across the entire galaxy.

I really like these models; they contain nearly every aspect of the previous Deathwatch sprue with a few noticeable absences such as shotguns, but otherwise are a complete improvement as the size difference between the old line and the new one becomes more apparent. Every Marine has the right amount of “extra” whether it’s their exotic weaponry, or simply the extra gubbins and tacticool bits on their weapons that mark them as the elite amongst the elite. 

Liam: It was almost inevitable that a new Deathwatch sprue would have fewer options overall than the old one, just because the old one was at the peak of the pre-8th edition design style of “toolbox” kits absolutely crammed full of every conceivable option and that isn’t really how it’s done any more. As JD notes, the Deathwatch shotguns disappear from existence, but the sprues are still pretty stuffed. There’s three Tacticus armour Marines here, one Phobos-armoured, and one Gravis; since you get two sets of sprues, that’s really six, two, and two of each. The kit threads the needle of Kill Team releases pretty well – four of the five models have exactly two options, so one box builds the whole team. The only one not like that is the Gravis-armoured guy, who can take either a frag cannon, the Infernus heavy bolter, or be a Breacher, so for Kill Team purposes you’ll probably want to magnetise at least one of those to avoid having to get another set just for that one guy.

There’s a fabulous range of heads here and a lot of different choices for shoulder pads. That said, do note that the need to have some of the pads in different sizes means there’s a couple of gaps that you might not expect – Blood Angels and White Scars only have Phobos-sized pads, for example, so you can’t build a Blood Angels Sergeant. I mean I did, because I had a bunch of BA pads lying around, but you can’t do it just out of this one kit.

I also just wanted to pick out one really neat bit of posing – the model that has either the heavy thunder hammer or the mace and shield is cleverly set up so that with the hammer he’s taking a big swing, while with the mace he’s leaning back to take a blow on the shield and then counter-swing.

As a side note, I am interested in what the set-up of this kit means for how these will work in 40k and whether there’ll be a new datasheet that replaces the existing one and matches the contents of this box – but that’s a conversation for another article.

My major gripe with the kit is that the mold lines are pretty full on – I’ve built some Plague Marines recently and these are worse than those, and the Nurgle boys are a full 8 years old now. Otherwise it all builds very cleanly, and there’s some neat little bits to help do things like match up ammo feeds to weapons, which can be a bit of a trial. Putting that aside, it’s a great kit, and I’m looking forward to getting the rest of the models painted and on the table.

Canoptek Circle

The Canoptek Circle give us a new set of Necron models to work with, the most notable of them being the new Geomancer, who more or less continues the Kill Team tradition of giving us a team with a Cryptek. In addition to the Geomancer are two Crawlers, three Macrocyte Warriors, a Macrocyte Accelerator, and a Macrocyte Reanimator.

If it looks like these kits have a lot of spindly little bits well, they do. You’ve got a mix of small, delicate cables that can be easy to break when you’re clipping the sprue and tiny taloned arms/legs with small contact points – both with the models and their bases. It’s the opposite of the Deathwatch kit in that regard.

Swiftblade: To the surprise of absolutely no-one, while the Geomancer is an incredibly cool model that is a fantastic centerpiece for the Necron half of the box here, good lord is it awful to assemble.

The Geomancer stands out as one of the most frustrating builds I’ve had in a long time. Just looking at the model itself, it’s pretty easy to suss out what issues are going to arise putting this guy together. A model with a faux-levitating effect with his pose high off the ground, holding another faux-levitating obelisk, with a slender body and lots of very small connections. While I didn’t have too many issues assembling the body or even the snake appendage, once the instructions have you try to put the two parts together it becomes clear that the model’s very top-heavy, which makes waiting for the glue to cure without the torso toppling over a test in patience. The staff is ostensibly supposed to act as the balance here, connecting the torso to the base, but that would be too easy. The arm joint itself isn’t as secure as I would’ve liked for a load bearing part, and the location of where the bottom of the staff is supposed to join the tail and base is difficult to parse from the instructions. Fortunately, once the whole thing comes together it’s surprisingly stable, but they may as well include some Advil with this guy, it’s going to give you a headache.

The Tomb Crawlers and Macrocytes are fortunately much easier to put together. The Macrocytes in particular come together in a flash, each having only a few parts. Surprisingly, the guns and doodads on top don’t appear to be locked to a certain model, all of them slotting into two holes at the top of the main body, meaning you could have some variation in your poses here if you really wanted to, but they aren’t really visually distinct enough that most folks would notice. This also means that you can swap weapons on these guys without the need of magnets, but the guns are so same-looking that I think no one will notice or care. 

The Tomb Crawler is very similar to their smaller cousins in terms of ease of assembly, but it does have my other major gripe with the kit. The guns on these guys aren’t very magnet friendly, as they connect via a strut that is sandwiched between the two halves of the main body. You could probably figure it out with some chop work here if you were truly keen on being able to swap the loadouts, but magnetizing a model is already something I don’t love doing anyways so any sort of additional complication is google to turn me off entirely to the attempt.

While the act of putting these guys together ranges anywhere from “uneventful” to “agony”, painting them is a real treat. The variance of the models on the team makes it easy to avoid the sort of burnout painting the same guy eight times might otherwise, and each model strikes a nice balance between detail and simplicity. Even the Geomancer, the fanciest boy on the team, is still fairly spartan compared to similar leader type models in the modern Warhammer range. There’s plenty for seasoned painters to flex their skills with on Canoptek Circle to make them really pop too, like the Obelisks on the Geomancer, the battle damage and glowing orbs, and even some scarabs to paint for fans of Warhammer lil’ dudes.

These models look excellent, and have been a fun time to paint so far, but be prepared for the slog that is putting the Geomancer together. Clear out an evening and find something long to listen to while you work, you’re gonna be here a while.   

Final Thoughts

Rob: This terrain set absolutely whips ass. It took everything they did well with the Gallowdark terrain set and keeps it, while fixing all of the issues. I need two immediately to run boarding actions, and probably like four if I want to do big narrative events set in Necron Tomb complexes. Hopefully we see this set get multiple releases because I suspect it is going to fly off the shelves.

I’m also regrettably going to have to buy several of those Deathwatch kill teams as well because they look so goddamn cool and it has been too long since my Deathwatch army got the love and attention it deserves.

CYRAC: Overall I’m a huge fan of Tomb World. Two amazing looking kill teams with an amazing brand new terrain set. It cannot be said enough how much better this new terrain is to set up and use compared to the old Gallowdark terrain. Finally we don’t have to sacrifice our hands to the terrain gods. The only downside is it is harder to paint but the set looks amazing regardless. It’s also very interesting and fun to play on.

Swiftblade: A real worry of mine was that when the new season came around, we would lose Gallowdark and not have a good replacement for that Killzone. Fortunately, my fears were unfounded. The era of Kill Team fans eating real good with every release is certainly coming to a middle

Tomb world’s biggest success is that it’s just better Gallowdark. The scatter terrain for light cover alone is a huge improvement, and then we get spoiled by the easier assembly, breachable walls, and teleport shenanigans. The Deathwatch are also just a slam dunk too, nailing the fantasy of the team with their assembly and providing so many different heads and shoulder pads to really make each operative feel like your dudes. The Necrons, while very cool, are the least exciting part of the box, but that’s not really their fault as much as it is the fact that everything else is so great that “pretty good” pales in comparison. This box looks like it will be a great way for folks to jump in on the new season of the game, or even take the plunge and start playing KT24 proper!

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