As part of the Kill Team: Nightmare set, the 41st millennium’s most over-the-top spooky guys are brought bang up to date; no longer are they reliant on a frankly hideous resin upgrade sprue to get their batwings and scary skulls on.
Kill Team: Nemesis Claw represents the continuation of a growing trend within Kill Team sets, whereby “normal” units are packaged with an upgrade sprue that has all the bits and pieces needed to turn them into a custom kill team, and there is plenty of customisation to be had with these guys using the new Night Lords specific pieces and the bits already in the Chaos Space Marines set.
The upgrade sprue contains:
15 Night Lords heads, including fully helmet (big bat wings and all), half-helmeted, some gnarly alternate helms, hooded, and masked.
1 Stitched skin cape option for the CSM backpack
2 Claws
1 Nostraman Chain Glave
1 Frankly absurdly over-the-top chainsword with a big old ribcage on the hilt
1 Less over-the-top chainsword
1 Special pistol
1 Blood drippy flensing knife
Arms to go with the special weapons
1 Icon pole with corpse to put on it (gnarly)
1 Front Torso with a stitched skin apron, severed hand, hooks, & various blades hanging off it
11 Shoulder pads with Night Lords icon
11 Blank shoulder pads
2 Special shoulder pads with skins and hooks for the Skinthief
1 Night Lords hipflask thing
To me, the most important things here are the winged helmets and special shoulder pads; they are what make Night Lords look like Night Lords, after all. Compared to the fugly resin upgrade sprue of yore, these elements look fantastic. The detail is as sharp and precise as you’d expect from a modern CAD designed kit, and the substitution of these two bits goes a really long way towards changing a regular Chaos Space Marine into a seriously spooky sadist.
The special Skinthief character is suitably over the top, with his skin apron and skins hanging from his shoulder pads and a big menacing chainglaive (although the head of the chainglave could have been bigger, as it is it looks like a slightly smaller chainsword with a very long handle). The skin cape for the boss is also sufficiently ridiculous. These guys really are the House Bolton of the 41st millennium; they cannot get enough of flaying people.
There are some elements that I don’t like, though; it’s not all lightning bolts and rainbows. The claws are really long, and in my opinion they look worse than the standard lightning claws that ordinary Space Marines have. I’d have preferred a pair of those instead of these long skinny things. The special chainsword with the ribcage looks a bit dumb; I skipped it in favour of the power fist that is included with the normal CSM kit. I also really don’t like the whole “corpse hanging from the banner” thing, to the extent that I built the banner and just skipped the whole corpse aspect, but that’s just my own personal feeling; I don’t really like body horror in general and for me the corpse pole takes it a bit too far. These are really just design complaints and they’re all pretty minor. If you’re buying a Night Lords kit, you know what you’re getting, and if you like these things, there’s nothing to complain about; it’s as well designed as the rest of the kit.
So there you have it, the new Night Lords models are really nicely put together, those who like that aesthetic spooky edgy aesthetic are going to have a lovely time with that upgrade sprue. Ave Dominus Nox indeed.
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