Welcome back Kill Teamers, to the re-review of the Mandrakes kill team. While they may have had a reign of terror in the middle of the 2024 season, the Mandrakes ended the edition in a middling position. Strong, but only in good hands, while still being trapped in the frail zone against the wider 10+ operative teams. Those stat checks of Fellgor, Scouts, and Brood Brothers really kept the Mandrakes in the shadow of Commoragh for most of the edition.
In this re-review, we’ll be going over the broad strokes of the changes, and trying to recontextualize the team in the new edition. Especially noting any larger changes, that are coming down the line. If you’d like to listen to the author talk over the changes check out the rereview video from Just Another Killteam Podcast below.
Before we dive in, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.
Table of Contents
The Video Version of This Review
If you’re interested in a video version of this review, you can find it on the Just Another Kill Team Podcast channel.
Mandrakes: Eldritch Nightmares of the Drukhari
New edition, no shapes, new movement. The Drukhari have caught the headwinds of the agility focused teams, and gained an inch of movement, pushing them to 7” of speed. The majority of their operatives seem similar, but the team has lost access to Seek and Destroy. Locking them to the Recon or Infiltration archetypes.
Abilities
With Mandrakes releasing in Season 3, most of their abilities remain exactly the same, albeit this time they come with some designer commentary. We’ll go over them quickly, to refresh new players here.
Soulstrike
Mandrakes who shoot, do so against the souls cough apl cough of the opposing operative. Opposing saves are made with dice rolls under the defending operatives APL, with 1’s working as critical successes. Which loosely means the Mandrakes reduce the save characteristic of anyone they shoot at. While the Mandrakes all do 3/4 damage, it does mean it’s hard to really feel safe when getting shot at. For some Mandrakes you cause Stun, which means you can chip away at this save before your opponent makes their defensive rolls!
Within Shadow
We’ll talk about this “ability” first as its really more of a condition for almost everything cool the team can do. Your priority as a mandrake pilot is to keep yourself in shadow as much as possible. To do so, you’ll need to be within 1” of a piece of heavy terrain that isn’t lower than you, be underneath vantage, or be in control range of a shadow portal. There is a small note, that the move to physical 20mm tokens means that there is a larger area that the shadow portal marker covers compared to last edition.
Shadow Passage
Once a turn while starting Within Shadow a friendly Mandrake, can Shadow Passage instead of its Reposition. It is removed from the board, and placed back Within Shadow with the following conditions.
- Can’t be within control range of an enemy
- Can’t be a valid target to an enemy
- Can’t shoot or fight until next turn
Umbral Entities
Ignore Piercing and boost your saves while Within Shadow by 1. This gets you from a 5+ save, to a 4+ save, and means you’ll be able to use the full 3 defensive dice all the time. Nothing new, still excellent in shadow, and poor in the light.
The Operatives
Seven inches of movement is about the biggest change the team has seen in terms of stat changes. The team remains 2APL, 5+ Save, and 8 wounds, with 3+s to hit across the board. Overall it’ll be a buff, but considering the rest of the game has shifted around it’ll be hard to say where the Mandrakes will land in the meta.
Mandrake Warrior
In the wake of buffed warriors, its somewhat disappointing to see the mandrake warrior remain much the same. Having full power swords in shadow is nice, but nothing else changes. We gotta take em, so let’s love em.
Mandrake Nightfiend
We’ve lost our 2+s to hit, while keeping everything else that made the Nightfiend such a polarizing operative in the last edition. Harrowing Whispers remains annoying, forcing a roll off for each enemy that tries to activate within 6” of the fiend, get above that operatives APL and someone else has to activate. The 5+ damage shrug of the Oubliex remains the same, all in all this comes out as a minor nerf.
Mandrake Abyssal
Functions the same as before. Granting Balefire tokens to 1 operative visible to the Abyssal and backed up by the same great 5 attack shooting weapons. The Abyssal’s balefire defends against enemy fire, or removes cover saves from opponents. Remember that the interiors of Volkus strongholds and Gallowdark confines, mean your blast profile is a strict upgrade to the burn attack!
Mandrake Chooser of the Flesh
The chooser remains the lynchpin of the team, though the proliferation of 3 APL leader operatives means that we can more often angle to harvest a juicier soul. When you fell an opposing operative with your Baleblade of Part Collector rule, you gain a Soul Harvest token, 2 for a 3 APL kill. Future activations with any friendly Mandrake can consume a soul harvest token to become a 3APL operative permanently or heal 2d3 wounds. Games for mandrakes are often won or lost depending on whether or not you can have a couple Mandrakes in the end game with 3 APL to teleport, and steal objectives. The changes to scoring in this edition give us no reason to change this expectation.
Mandrake Dirgemaw
Our boy the Dirgemaw gets a pretty large nerf compared to his antics in season 3. Now his ADHD has been tamed, and Haunting Focus must be used to first harm its target, before you can mess with an opponent. With the Haunting Focus dissipating if you can’t hit your target. This removes the old play pattern of haunting someone, then injuring someone on the opposite end of the board to have the Dirgemaw play defense on the whole board. Pareidolic Projection remains the same, and will continue to mess with people. Horrifying Scream can still penetrate light cover, with the Seek Light rule, but is otherwise unchanged. Overall nerfs across the board on this Mandrake!
Mandrake Shadeweaver
Syntactically the shadeweaver is much cleaner now, with wording changes to put its annoying edge cases to rest. Shadeweaver’s Shadow Passage actions leave behind Shadow Portal tokens before and after they teleport, which can be used by Mandrakes as many times as they wish during a turn. Notably these tokens now have a 20mm distance so the portals and the shadow they provide has increased! Meanwhile the Weave Darkness smoke grenades remain powerful, but considering that you can be shot within smoke, they’re not the safety they once provided.
The Ploys
We’ve got the same powerful offering that exist in the older edition for Mandrakes, which makes sense seeing as they were probably written alongside this newer edition of Kill Team.
Creeping Horror remains an ever powerful out of phase movement enabler, letting one concealed Mandrake within shadow to perform a dash after an opponent expends an operative. This can no longer be used on turn 1 which is probably for the best, as it’s incredibly powerful when you wouldn’t be punished for being on a conceal order on turn 1. Gloaming Shroud continues to let you retain a defence die as long as you are Within Shadow which will continue to help those 8 wounds go the distance in a shootout. Look out for situations where you can set yourself up to be in cover, and within shadow to really frustrate your opponents. Blade in the Dark lets us copy the Kommando’s concealed charge shenanigans, so long as we start or end within shadow. The primary use case of turn 1 pressure is gone, but considering that you can retain extra dice against vantage points. There’s room for you to finish a fight and keep 2-3 cover saves against vantage point opponents which will really make a mandrake hard to shift. Meanwhile Inescapable Nightmare lets you re-roll whenever you’re making an attack roll if you’re within shadow. An excellent ability that allows you to get out of dice trouble.
Slither out of Sight let’s us flip from engage to conceal, at the end of an activation if we are within shadow, you’ll know when this is worthwhile, generally when trying to hide a shooter. Soul Feast is important to keep a wounded operative at a high wound count! Letting us heal based on the number of strikes generally getting us 4-6 wounds. Nowhere to Hide is one of the trickiest ploys, letting us ignore terrain as if it were not there, and can let you get some extremely cheeky long charges. Lastly Shadow’s Bite lets us resolve the first attack dice once per turn so long as we are charged while within shadow. This remained incredibly clutch against opposing melee specialized teams, as we can strike first with our scary melee profiles in our further afield operatives.
Equipment
Chain Snare
Now a global upgrade to the team, that lets every Mandrake on the battlefield attempt to block an opposing Fall Back action from being completed. Particularly powerful against wider less melee focused teams, like Death Korp or Pathfinders. If you do cancel that fall back, the AP is refunded so be prepared to get fought instead.
Shadow Glyph
A reasonably large nerf to the team, a single operative each turning point that begins its activation Within Shadow, can be concealed regardless of other rules. We used to be able to kit out a couple operatives, and weren’t restricted by the shadow requirement. You’ll know when you have a reason to use this, just make sure to position the turn prior to be in shadow!
Soul Gem
Once a turn Blast 1” for a Baleblast weapon profile. Don’t forget that means you get lethal 5+ inside of Volkus strongholds, and in the Gallow Dark. I suspect there won’t be too much use to this, but it’s nice to have this floating across all operatives each turn. Letting you fire it off when an opponent is caught slipping.
Bone Darts
Once a turn silent range 6” shooting profile? Sign me up! Bone Darts might not represent too much damage, but giving everyone a silent weapon once a turn will probably give people fits. The rending means that when you’re getting a reroll from Inescapable Nightmare you could always spike a big chunk of damage!
Soul Harvest Gameplan
The core issues for Mandrakes, have always been teams that either out activate us or out last us. With the new counteract phase and 7 inches of movement, we can really attempt to line up a plan that puts the hurt into an opponent quickly. Looking into the Recon Tac Ops, we have Confirm Kill or Plant Beacons that stand out for a Mandrakes gameplan. With how lethal we’ve historically been, we can definitely confirm kills. However with Shadow Passage, and Portal tokens I suspect we’d be able to pull opponents into strange positions only to disappear without a trace. Confirm Kill plays nicely with the Kill Op, and will mean we can shirk the mission somewhat.
Prep for a cagey turn 1, where we send our warriors forward to aggress on turn 1. Aiming for shots where possible, but focusing on getting waves of operatives set up for the middle and back field objectives. Remember we’ll be trying to snag those kill markers while minimizing the risk to your 3 APL soul harvested operatives. If we can weaken someone for the Chooser to take a late kill at the end of TP2, we can then roam about the rest of the game with 3 APL operatives.
The rest of the game is going to come down to denying your opponent the 5th kill, while poking and prodding from afar. Remember that while obscurity is annoying for us, we are shooting against an opponent’s APL so even elites will take a reasonable amount of chip damage. While an operative within shadow can defend most objectives between better saves, and Shadow’s Bite. Ideally you ruin anyone’s attempt to Kill you while scoring an attritional kill plan.
How’d they make it over?
The mandrakes suffered a small selection of nerfs, but otherwise made it over with a few scratches. In their position in the broader meta, their old boogeymen of scouts have retreated, and horde teams have weakened. While the soul strike ability still remains potent at chipping down opposing elites. Unfortunately that’s where the good news on the killing ends, as Elites have been boosted in massive ways, with double shooting able to overwhelm our defensive options, and 14 wounds being a difficult to shift statline.
I suspect the Mandrakes will remain a strong team but time will tell if they’ll be able to reliably tango with the new elites… or if they’ll be relegated to more passive plans against those Astartes!
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
