The 2024 Edition of Kill Team has overhauled the game, changing rules, datasheets, and bringing with it an updated set of rules for every team in the game. In this series we’re taking a look at each team, how they’ve changed, and what it means for how they play in the new edition.
Welcome, Kill Teamers, to the review of the Nemesis Claw in Kill Team 2024. Arriving late in the last edition, these sneaky, scary Night Lords were comfortably the best elite team – though that really wasn’t saying much. Now they have crept out as the first elite team we get to look at in the new edition, perhaps setting a standard of other teams to come. In this re-review, we’ll be going over the team’s abilities, operatives, ploys and equipment, and then looking at how they will play in the new edition.
Before we dive in, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing a preview copy of these rules for review purposes.
As a relatively recent addition to the game, the Nemesis Claw have seen only fairly minor changes in the new edition. People who know them from Kill Team 2021 will broadly recognise this team’s abilities but should watch out for some subtle, but important, differences. The most obvious of these will be the change in wounds – every operative gained two wounds, meaning that most of your operatives have 14 wounds and the Visionary has 15. Additionally, the team now has access to Seek and Destroy (kill stuff) and Infiltration (carefully avoid killing stuff) Tac Ops and has lost access to Recon in the process.
Table of Contents
The Video Version of the Review
We have a video version of this review courtesy of Can You Roll a Crit?
Abilities
The core abilities for the Nemesis Claw have changed quite a bit. Notably they’ve gained an entire second ability: Astartes.
Astartes
This lets your operatives fight or shoot twice during an activation – though only with bolt weapons and not the Heavy Bolter. So this almost replicates the old Nightmare Manifest ploy, except it’s always-on for free.
Additionally, you get to counteract while under Conceal orders as well as Engage. This is excellent for a team that’s likely to get to counteract a lot. Your nasty, sneaky heretics will be able to move a bit, perform mission actions and perhaps kill things with the occasional door or hatchway fight, while hidden from view.
It’s interesting that the ability is called simply “Astartes.” In time we’ll see if other flavours of Space Marine get the same thing, and that wouldn’t shock, given how this feels a lot like a standard pair of Strategic Ploys which every Marine team had access to in Kill Team 2021.
In Midnight Clad
A Nemesis Claw operative is Obscured if they are >6” from any enemy that they are visible to and either within 1” of Heavy terrain or under a Vantage. In the old rule you had to be on Conceal but Light terrain used to trigger it. And of course, Obscuring isn’t the same as it was, so this will be quite different.
It’s very hard to kill an Obscured marine from far away, meaning your opponent would be ill-advised to switch to Engage to start firefights with Midnight-Clad operatives. There may be some great positions on Volkus where your guys can lurk on the middle floor of a big ruin, with good lines of sight but obscured from retaliation. If only more of them had long-ranged guns!
The Operatives
Let’s have a look at this gang of sadistic killers then. Pretty much all of the Nemesis Claw operatives have had changes in the new edition. On their own each of these would look quite minor but across the team it’ll make a bit of a difference, very possibly influencing the operatives you select.
You get to take six operatives: the Visionary and five others. As usual it’s one of each specialist, one of each kind of gunner and as many warriors as you want – zero. You’ll have to decide whether to drop a specialist to take a second gunner.
Night Lord Visionary
The leader combines good fighting abilities with excellent support, both toned down somewhat from Kill Team 2021. He now hits on 3s and his plasma pistol is much less good, with only 3/5 damage on standard mode and Piercing 1 in both profiles, meaning he’s much less likely to one-shot other elites now.
Prescience is his truly unique ability. Every turn he generates D3 points (which you can save up from turn to turn). These can be spent on Portent to ignore a normal hit, Foreboding to skip an activation and the Premonition action to generate a CP. Each can only be done once per turning point meaning you can’t skip multiple activations now. Portent used to be able to block crits but not any more.
Even so, with 15 wounds now and Portent to help keep them, the Visionary remains an extremely tough operative, a good source of extra CPs for your team, and Foreboding is still great.
Its possible we’ll start seeing Visionaries with weapons other than the plasma pistol and chainblade. I think there could be cases where a bolt pistol and power fist looks like a good idea. The fist is Brutal, which combines nicely with the new Portent. Enemies will have to decide whether to use a crit to hurt you or as the only way to parry a punch. A power sword, which has Lethal 5+, would let you parry crits, ignore a normal hit and do decent damage. You can fire the bolt pistol twice but I think it’ll be pretty rare for the Visionary to do so, given he’ll often be using AP on Premonition to gain CPs. Maybe on later turns against hordes the bolt pistol can shine.
Night Lord Fearmonger
This guy condemns enemy operatives to a slow, agonising death if they have the audacity to try and play the mission, or sometimes just for fun. He has various ways to inflict Terrorchem Poison, which makes an operative lose D3 wounds every subsequent Ready step.
His scoped bolt pistol is a bolter with lethal 5+ within 8” and he’s got a nasty knife that poisons its victim on a crit. His terrorchem grenade has a 2” blast, 5 dice hitting on 3s and a 2/0 profile. On a crit the target takes 3 wounds and gets poisoned.
He can also poison objectives, so if an enemy goes into their control range they take 2D3 damage, twice as much as in Kill Team 2021, and also poisons. It can now quite easily kill a 7-wound enemy between the initial damage and the extra D3 it takes at the start of the next turn.
The Fearmonger gains a bit from changes to missions and the new counteract. Poisoning an objective is more important now there are only three of them and he’ll more often be able to poison an objective and score it in the same turn, thanks to counteract. A poisoned objective covers a smaller area of the battlefield now, however, meaning it’ll be easier for enemies to get to within 2” of a Fearmonger to shoot them, or maybe even charge, without getting poisoned.
Night Lord Screecher
The Screecher has always felt relatively fragile to me, so the extra two wounds are certainly welcome.
Only one weapon profile, with five 3+ attacks doing 4 or 5 damage, with lethal 5+ (or 4+ against wounded targets). You don’t get a gun at all. The Screecher ability prevents enemies rerolling attack dice within 3”. You’ve lost the combo with Screecher and the Flayed Skin equipment, which used to reduce WS/BS and prevent rerolls.
Other than the extra wounds, it’s all bad news here compared to Kill Team 2021.
Night Lord Skinthief
The team’s melee bruiser, Skinthief’s Flay Them Alive ability is unchanged but probably a bit more useful in the new edition. Mission actions tend to be required more often, so this could make all the difference in a close game.
Here’s someone who straightforwardly got better. He lost Reap 1 from his Glaive, but that barely matters. Meanwhile, gaining two wounds and keeping his damage reduction makes him a tough, dangerous operative.
Night Lord Ventrilokar
No changes here beyond the extra wounds and longer-ranged pistol. The Ventrilokar has a bolt pistol, chainsword and a corpse on a stick that makes him count as +1 APL (so usually 4) for holding objectives.
The Ventrilokar is all about his Disconcerting Mimicry action. This is a psychic action that lets you pick an enemy operative and either reduce its APL by 1, force it to Dash or change its order. You can do each of these tricks once per game, to any enemy within 6” – note there’s no requirement for Visibility, though on ITD you’ll have to measure around walls as usual.
This staple of the team might be even more effective now AoE weapons like flamers are likely to see more play. You might be able to dash an enemy to a location that maximises the number of operatives hit by a Blast or Torrent.
Night Lords Gunner
Flamers and plasma guns are very different in this edition, so all three probably now have their uses. The Preysight ploy, which lets your team shoot targets hiding behind Light terrain within 6”, is particularly good for the flamer and melta.
The plasma gun isn’t terrible. It isn’t a huge risk to fire with a 14-wound operative and it remains very powerful – albeit unlikely to one-shot elites now.
Gunners have bolt pistols now, which they can use to fire a second shot with the Astartes ability. Occasionally you might be able to use these to put a wounded flamer victim out of it’s misery. Perhaps you could also do some chip damage before firing your plasma or melta, which will grant you a reroll from The Black Hunt.
Night Lord Heavy Gunner
A fairly straightforward operative armed with a bolt pistol and either a Heavy Bolter or Missile Launcher. The big guns are both Heavy (Reposition only), meaning they can move up to 6” and fire, but can’t if they fall back or dash.
The two guns are fairly similar in effect, both with a focused attack for single tough targets and an AoE. The Heavy Bolter has a Torrent 1” attack while a frag missile is Blast 2” but less nasty.
Note that the Astartes ability doesn’t let them fire the heavy bolter twice. In 2.0 I brought down a number of big target like Ogryns by doing this but it isn’t an option any more.
Ace: I love the Missile launcher, and since the Heavy bolter has lost the 2-shoots ability, and plasma gun has lost lethality, it should have a lot more space now with 5/7 dmg or blast 2” 2/4 dmg.
Night Lord Warrior
In theory you can take a basic guy armed with either a bolter or a bolt pistol and chainsword. Don’t. Warriors have an ability that gives them Lethal 5+ vs targets that are Injured or that started out with 7 wounds or fewer. This is kinds of nice, but your specialists are better.
The Ploys
Strategy Ploys
- We Have Come for You causes D3 wounds to a model you charge, so long as that’s the first thing you do that turn. It’s nice to do automatic damage and can potentially combine nicely with (menacing pause…)
- The Black Hunt, which gives you a reroll when attacking a wounded enemy with shooting or melee. I think this could see more use in KT24 simply because it looks like elites are better. This is a good way to kill a wounded marine.
- Preysight lets you ignore light terrain when selecting targets within 6”. This looks useful for flamers and blast weapons, which Nemesis Claw can potentially bring quite a bit of now. The target still gets their cover save.
- Return to Darkness is a whole new ploy for ‘24, letting an operative fall back or reposition. It isn’t allowed to end this move closer to enemy operatives and it must finish either within 1” of Heavy terrain or under a vantage. This still offers you enormous potential to move an operative outside of its activation, ready to get up to who knows what mischief during its own turn – or of course to just escape justice.
Firefight Ploys
- Vox Scream is used when your opponent wants to activate an operative. They can’t, and have to activate someone else. Great if your opponent wants to activate somebody with a melta gun or a nasty melee operative. As it lets you kill them first. A slight reduction in power from the last version is that now you have to pay an extra CP every time you use it after the first.
- Death to the False Emperor gives an operative Ceaseless (which the Screecher already has but ok) when attacking an Inperium model, or Relentless if attacking a marine.
- Proclivity for Murder lets you dash or do a 3” charge after killing someone in melee. This has always been useful but in ‘24 it’s fantastic, because of how counteract now works. If you get a kill with your third APL you can charge again for free, then kill another enemy at a later point. Prior to that you’ll be safe from enemy shooting, especially if you took Chain Snare to stop them running off.
- Dirty Fighter lets you resolve one of your attack dice when retaliating before the attacker, at the expense of losing all your other dice. You get to see the dice before playing it. So if your operative or the enemy is so wounded that one dice will kill them, this can make a real difference. Bonus points for having your Fearmonger apply Terrorchem one more time before he dies.
Ace: This puts a lot of pressure on the opponent and makes it a lot more difficult for him to charge into your models, especially if they can die from one critical die.
Equipment
Flayed Skin stops the enemy rerolling 1s to hit against your whole team if they’re within 2”. Well worth considering against melee teams or on ITD.
Chain Snare is also a global upgrade to the team, that gives every Night Lord on the battlefield a 75% chance to block an opposing Fall Back action from being completed by an enemy with the same wounds stat as your operative, or fewer. 50% in the unlikely event someone bigger than you wants to run away. 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 – though in the case of pathfinders you’ll probably be fine with that. Opponents may well prefer to activate someone else instead of just feeding you.
Grizzly Trophies are actually carried by your opponent’s operatives, in the form of their limbs, heads and so on. Once per game when one of your operatives kills an enemy within 2” (note: not limited to melee) they can decorate themselves with some bits and pieces. From then on enemies within 2” of your decorated operative lose an attack dice from all their weapons. That’s pretty good, especially combined with Portent, The Screecher or the Skinthief’s damage reduction.
Ace: I think it’s a big nerf to the item, since now you need to kill the opponent to get it, it doesn’t protect you anymore before you get at least one shoot/fight, still worth considering though.
The dud might be Comms Jammers. These prevent enemies within 8” from having their APL improved, though they can do it before approaching. There are certainly good cases for this, like stopping someone falling back and shooting, but it feels a bit situational.
Nemesis Claw Gameplan
What will Night Lords do? Anything they want, while slaughtering anyone who gets in their way. Honestly these guys look very powerful at launch.
In the early game you’ll typically want to try and get a kill or two if you can while staying alive. Have the Fearmonger poison something in an early activation, while staying hidden. If you can get a heavy gunner in a middle floor vantage, go for it.
From then on you’ll probably want to be killing lots of stuff. Tie up what you can in melee with Proclivity and Snares, probably using the Skinthief to also prevent someone from scoring, which can really spoil your opponent’s plan.
For Tac Ops you’ve got quite a few good options, though it’s a shame not to have Recon. I like the Fearmonger with the new version of Implant, which now also works at range. If you can Implant an enemy and also give them Terrorchem, either with his grenade or knife, he can get the points and still get the kill – eventually.
Of course we’ve yet to see what the other Astartes do – among loads and loads of others. Will Phobos or Angels of Death have counters to all this, or be even stronger? A lot is still to he revealed.
Ace: I think they should play a very defensive game in the early turns, taking advantage of poison and the threat of charges, and then demonstrate their superiority in combat. All of this with good shooting support from the back of the map, while the gunners remain obscured no matter what, thanks to their passive ability.”
How’d they make it out in the transition?
The Nemesis Claw look pretty fantastic now. While individuals have taken some minor nerfs these are more than compensated by having an extra two wounds each. Elite teams in general will be very happy to see missions with only three primary objectives, the new counteract and less scary plasma guns.
Ace: I completely agree with NotThatHenryC. I think they should play a very defensive game in the early turns, taking advantage of poison and the threat of charges, and then demonstrate their superiority in combat. All of this with good shooting support from the back of the map, while the gunners remain obscured no matter what, thanks to their passive ability.
For anyone playing against Nemesis Claw the best news is that you can probably expect a quick death. Whatever you do, don’t let them take you alive!
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