The Quick & Dirty: Kill Team: Typhon is one of the most ambitious boxes Games Workshop has produced for the current edition. It closes out the season with two very different kill teams : the Tyranid Raveners and the Adeptus Mechanicus Servitor Battleclade, alongside a full solo and co-op campaign that finally makes the Joint Ops system feel complete. The value is excellent, the models are fresh, and the missions add real longevity. Neither team is broken, both are fun and balanced, and together they make this the strongest box of the season.
What’s in the Box
Typhon is a dense package. Inside you get full bespoke kits for both Raveners and Battleclade, plus a sprue of Hormagaunts that serve as NPCs in Joint Ops. There is also a substantial set of Tyranid infestation terrain, bringing classic Forge World designs into plastic for the first time. You get spore chimneys, brood nests, mounds, gestation sacs, roots, vents, and capillary towers. Two full sprues mean you have more than enough to build a thematic board, and the flexibility to mix them into Volkus or even Gallowdark boards. The Typhon Dossier provides complete rules for both teams, new event cards, data cards for NPC Tyranid creatures, and a branching six-mission campaign. At the price point the box feels packed with value. Both teams are genuine one-box builds, the terrain is useful outside of the expansion, and the narrative content goes far beyond what Kill Team has had until now.
Faction Identity and Game Plan
Servitor Battleclade – Adeptus Mechanicus
The Battleclade are a reactive gunline built around Noospheric Network. Their core trick is trading APL to grant other servitors free actions, chaining activations in ways that punish mistakes and generate huge tempo swings. They thrive on sequencing, layering omniscan tokens, stripping obscurity with the Auto Proxy, and deleting enemies with heavy weapons. The Technoarchaeologist anchors the team with permanent Ceaseless on tagged enemies, the Underseer fuels the network with bonus counteracts, and the Technomedic keeps your best guns alive. They are slow and struggle when rushed, but in defensive missions or against elites they feel oppressive, flooding the board with marine-level firepower from cheap bodies.
If you are looking for a more detailed breakdown of the Battleclade, see our faction deep dive here.
Raveners – Tyranid Vanguard
Raveners are the first true five-model elite team in Kill Team. Each operative has 20 wounds and moves 7”, but the fragility of a 5+ save means they bleed when focused. Their identity revolves around Burrow and Tunnel: you start with a tunnel marker in your deployment zone and add another each Turning Point, building a network that lets Raveners appear, strike, and vanish. The Tremorscythe is the star, interrupting enemies near tunnels, while the Felltalon and Venomspitter spread Poison that chips away activations. The Wrecker and Prime add durability and objective control, but the truth is Raveners are defined by pressure. Opponents must constantly calculate where a monster could erupt from the earth. Their weakness is time: tunnels do not truly reach mid-board until TP2, so against defensive opponents they often come online too late. Still, when they work, they feel cinematic, thematic, and terrifying.
If you are looking for a more detailed breakdown of the Raveners, see our faction deep dive here.
Rule Interactions That Matter
Noospheric Network is more than efficiency. It lets AdMech players break sequencing, flipping orders or chaining mission actions to outpace opponents. Done right it makes servitors feel like pseudo-Astartes. Burrow and Tunnel is a mini-game layered on the board. Raveners redraw the battlefield every turn, forcing opponents to choose between defending objectives or avoiding tunnel hotspots. Poison alters combat math dramatically, saving Raveners whole swings and sparing them return damage. Both teams shine as reactive predators. Battleclade punish overextension, Raveners punish complacency.
The box also includes expanded Joint Ops rules, event cards that replace ploys with unpredictable twists, and clarified rules for NPC Tyranids as third forces in PvP. Three-player Kill Team genuinely works here: NPCs menace both players equally, creating dynamic games that feel fresh compared to standard duels.
Loadouts and Equipment
Battleclade offer a wide mix of weapons in one kit: melta, flamers, phosphor blasters, heavy arc rifles, and heavy bolters. You can tailor them to match your meta, which is rare for one-box teams. Raveners can be built as a mix of melee and ranged specialists, each with a defined role. Too much melee leaves you vulnerable to kiting, too much shooting loses the pressure tunnels create. Both kits provide full flexibility without forcing duplicate purchases, which is a huge plus.
Tac Ops and Missions
The Typhon Dossier expands Joint Ops with six branching missions that can be played solo, co-op, or PvP with NPCs as a disruptive third force. For Raveners and Battleclade specifically, Tac Ops remain a challenge. Battleclade are stuck with Recon and Infiltration, and while Recon is playable (Plant Beacons is almost auto-score with network chains), Infiltration is still weak. Raveners have Seek and Destroy plus Infiltration, which is worse: Seek works, but Infiltration is close to dead. Narrative players will love Typhon’s campaign depth, but competitive players will find Tac Ops the main weakness of both teams.
Matchups and Counters
Battleclade excel against elites. Marines, Custodes, and other high-value targets collapse when multiple servitors chain Accurate, Ceaseless, and Saturate fire into them. They are weaker against fast melee teams like Harlequins or Striking Scorpions, who exploit their 5” move and fragile 4+ saves. Raveners thrive against static gunlines, forcing them to abandon safe lanes, and they chew up hordes with Poison. They fold against elites with strong saves or high-volume shooting. Custodes in particular are brutal matchups for both teams.
Hobby Notes
The models are excellent. Battleclade lean into grotesque body horror, closer to Horus Heresy tech-thralls than robotic drones. They are unsettling, characterful, and great fun to paint. Raveners replace an aging kit with dynamic sculpts bursting from the ground, integrated bases that bring their tunnels to life. Both teams paint quickly but reward attention to detail. The Tyranid terrain is the highlight: spore chimneys, nests, and growths finally give Kill Team proper xenos scenery, long requested by the community.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Excellent value for two complete teams plus terrain
- Battleclade are a deeply tactical, combo-driven faction
- Raveners are cinematic and thematic with unique mechanics
- Joint Ops expanded into a full solo and co-op campaign
- Three-player rules make for dynamic, casual game nights
Cons
- Raveners are fragile, with poor Tac Ops and delayed tunnels
- Battleclade are slow and difficult for newer players to pilot
- Infiltration archetype remains a drag on both teams
- Terrain is excellent but limited in scale unless you buy more sprues
Should You Buy It
Yes. Kill Team: Typhon is the strongest expansion of the season. It delivers two balanced, thematic teams that reward practice without being broken, and it finally gives solo and narrative players a real campaign framework. For competitive players it offers variety and depth; for casual players it adds replayability and cinematic missions. The terrain is gorgeous, the models are fresh, and both teams are genuine one-box builds. If you want Kill Team to surprise you again, Typhon is essential.
Till next time, best of luck on your Path to Glory.
