Was that spore chimney there yesterday? This weekend marks preorders for the latest and greatest Kill Team box as Tyranid and Adepticus Mechanicus rejoice. Typhon sees specialised Raveners – a brood of aggressive tunnelling Tyranid bioforms – face off against the Battleclade – explorative combat servitors led by a Servitor Underseer and Technoarchaeologist.
Before we dive in, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for sending us a preview copy of the Typhon box for review purposes.
The Contents
Kill Team: Typhon brings us:
- two new teams, the Raveners and Battleclade
- Tyranid Hormagaunt and Ripper Swarm NPOs
- Tyranid Infestation Killzone Upgrade with 15 new pieces of Xenos terrain.
Unboxing Typhon
The Book
- Typhon – contains rules for the two new teams, Typhon missions including NPO datacards for 6 different Tyranid units and lore focusing on Volkus’ infested depths.
The Models
- Raveners: elite Tyranids able to tunnel underneath the Killzone and ferocious in melee
- Battleclade: a thrall of cyborgs armed to the cogs with guns, led by a Technoarchaeologist
Killzone Upgrade: Tyranid Infestation
Play Aids
- Tokens for the Raveners and Battleclade teams.
- Datacards for each team.
- Typhon event cards.
Models
Raveners
Sky Serpent: Raveners come in squads of five models with the option to create specialists or warriors. All five specialists can be fielded in the Kill Team and these also form a new datasheet for Warhammer 40,000 called Hyperadapted Raveners if you were building your new team for dual purposes, you can of course also make some normal Raveners too.
The models are fantastic and as the third iteration of the Raveners, they are a real glow up from their previous models – with some fantastic poses.
Battleclade
DYLON: Plastic Servitors! Hobbyists rejoice, we get weirdos. Six human sized servitors, two larger constructs, and a pair of Magos… one of whom is returning from Blackstone Fortress. There’s some great options here, with neat bits of kit. But seriously, servitors!
Assembly
Sky Serpent: I chose to build all of the specialists, and found them very easy to put together. There are only a few pieces for the upper and lower bodies; head and of course, six arms. Some were quicker as they are half submerged and don’t require tails to be built.
The upper and lower torsos lock together and I found that doing this and then applying glue afterwards was easier, I also found applying the jaw to the Wrecker’s head difficult but I didn’t dry fit this first and just glue all over the place so maybe a little bit of user error on that one.
NotThatHenryC: I’m fairly sure you can mix and match the bodies and tails, but I didn’t so I can’t be certain. I had enough trouble just getting them to fit, though when you get it right they snap together in a pretty satisfying way… leaving you wishing you’d got glue on beforehand.
Other than the waist joint they go together very quickly and easily. Each one has about 15 parts, which clean up easily without too many mould lines. You’ll have your kill team built pretty quickly.
You get enough generic bladed arms and heads to make them as normal Raveners, but we all made the special Kill Team ones.
DYLON: I couldn’t help but do some small conversions to these guys. I figure they’ll show up in my underhive either as civilians in Downtown Dustup or some other flavor of NPC. As such, I wanted to model them more as a servitor work crew. Their only weapons are the flamer (great for clearing out vents), and the Lascutter… which also feels pretty appropriate for underhive work. Everyone else has claws, clamps, or whatnot. I converted one of the larger Servitors with the metal servo claw from a long-OOP Servitor. With a little cable added, it fits pretty nicely.
COLIN: I went quite a bit further with my converting/augmenting of aforementioned weirdos. I’ve always found the Mechanicum to be a compelling faction in both lore and model range. They are just so otherworldly and bizarre and I decided to lean into that. I built the kit pretty stock, with the notable exception of wrapping their heads in burlap. Set as feral Mechanicum on a verdant world, maybe the organic components had degraded? Maybe I was coming off a couple of pulpy horror novels and didn’t want to paint faces and all that jazz.
The Technoarcheologist and the other Magos got some additional bits from the 40k Mechanicum range, which fit seamlessly with the new models. There’s even a little Vulture from the Chaos Knight kit keeping the Technoarcheologist company!
Painting the Models
Sky Serpent: Tyranids adore Contrast. I’d painted several models from Leviathan with a quick Contrast based scheme and used those as inspiration but like any good hive mind based organism I went with the flow and let the scheme evolve on its own.
I began with an undercoat of Wraithbone and then did an all over wash with Carrioburg Crimson thinned down with Contrast Medium and then used Druchii Violet in the recesses and towards the end of the appendages. To finish the skin I added a highlight of Pallid Wych Flesh.
Screamer Pink is a great paint with awesome coverage and I used this for the sinew and Rhinox Hide for all the claws, I could have chosen black but I think the dark brown keeps a lot of warmth to the models.
For the chitin I worked my way up through Zandri Dust, Ushabti Bone and Screaming Skull, painting these on in a feathered method before adding some Rhinox Hide speckles for some texture and variation.
After adding the eyes and tongue, I added some yellow areas to the Tremorscythe, Felltalon and Venomspitter, beginning with Averland Sunset and adding increased amounts of Dorn Yellow.
These were relatively simple and quick to paint and I’m really pleased with the outcome.
NotThatHenryC: Yep, loads of contrast went into these for me too. I wanted a very pale scheme, like they’d never seen the sun and I wanted them to look alien, so I avoided any warm colours. Instead I based the palette on the nighthaunt contrast colours.
I sprayed them white and used Briar Queen Chill, thinned about 50/50 with contrast medium, for the skin. Exposed muscle got Nighthaunt gloom and claws and bone got Dreadful Visage.
I started out with the carapace in Dreadful Visage as well but the effect looked too washed out. I decided to go way darker, with Leviadon blue. I think this works well but then I happened to look at the box and I was a bit embarrassed to find that I’d basically ended up with something almost exactly the same.
I did actually use some non-contrast colours on the poison parts of the Venomspitter and Felltalon. These got various bright greens.
For the bases I went for greys to match the Volkus board, with earth where they had broken through. I have been trying out some dirty down moss so they got a bit of that too, reactivated with water and spread around a bit.
I hadn’t painted any Tyranids since a game called Tyranid attack many, many years ago. These were fun and I’m glad to have another kill team painted up.
DYLON: I too love Contrast, and believe it or not, the Battleclade work pretty well with it. I used my usual Zenithal base coat. Undercoats are in Black Legion, Armor panels in Iyanden Yellow, and the skin with Gulliman Flesh. I mixed up a glaze of Blood Angels Contrast and Skeleton Horde to glaze around the plugs and areas that join with the augmentations, to make it look irritated.
Battleclade Servitor. Credit: 40khamslam.Otherwise, tubes were painted with Black Templar, metals painted up with Runefang Steel and washed with Nuln Oil, and then any yellow metal song chipped with Dryad Bark and stippled with Runefang Steel. Lenses got a quick coat of black, line of white and glaze of Warp Lightning finished with a white dot and coat of ‘Ard Coat. Red armor panels were done in Blood Angels Red Contrast.
Overall. This kit is pretty great. I really like the weapon options and variety of heads to choose from. They’re Ad Mech without being too over ornate or cluttered with crenelating. Assembly goes quick with joints being straightforward. Detail is well delineated so painting them isn’t too hard.
Killzone Upgrade: Tyranid Infestation
Assembly
NotThatHenryC: You get two identical sprues of Tyranid Terrain in the box, from which you can build a bit of Tyranid terrain.
There’s quite an assortment of big claws, egg sacs, brood nests and other weirdness. Two of the big claws, one from each sprue, are designed to be stuck together and optionally stuck on top of one of the nests to make a big spiky thing.
Painting the Models
NotThatHenryC: I prioritised speed with these so I got a big brush out and lots of contrast paint. I wanted these to look marginally darker than my subterranean Raveners so I used Nighthaunt Gloom and Leviadon Blue as my main colours, sometimes using a second coat to add shading in recesses. There’s some Briar Queen Chill on the bony sides of the brood nests, with a feathered second layer towards the bottom to create a gradient. Aethermantic blue went on things like the gestation sacs and the holes in the nests, funnels etc.
These pieces aren’t based exactly but there are bits of broken rubble around lots of them. I painted these in greys to match the Volkus board, as I did with my Raveners.
Overall I’m very pleased with how these bits have come out, given how quick they were to do.
You use the pieces combined with Killzone Volkus to create maps for Joint Ops and matched play games. You get maps for all these in the book, or of course you can set them up how you like.
I think these could also be used to create really good area terrain for 40k, perhaps to count as forests. Get a base the right size painted to look like rubble and scatter a few of these things on there. They’d blend in thanks to their “bases” and you could move them about if they got in the way of models.
Gallery: Can You Roll A Crit’s Raveners
Gallery: HappyRaccoon’s Battleclade
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