The Legionary Kill Team is a faction for the Games Workshop tabletop skirmish game Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team. They are available as part of the Kill Team: Nachmund expansion set.
The Heretic Astartes, or the Chaos Space Marines, are sworn enemies of the Imperium of Mankind. Whether they are descended from the Legions that fled to the Eye of Terror after rebelling against the Emperor 10,000 years ago or they’ve recently fallen to the temptations of Chaos, the Chaos Space Marines worship the Dark Gods of Chaos and seek to gain their favour through feats of combat.
Some worship Khorne, the God of Rage, and charge roaring into battle whenever and against whomever they can – Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, if it is spilled in his honour.
Some worship Nurgle, the God of Decay, steadily advancing across the battlefield with a grin on their face with unshaking faith in the slow corruption of all things by their venerated Grandfather Nurgle.
Some worship Slaanesh, the God of Excess, seeking the most extreme sensations and emotions, often opting for theatricality and dragging out the torment of their foes rather than going straight for the kill.
Some worship Tzeentch, the God of Magic and Change, channeling the psychic powers of the Warp in the endless quest for knowledge and improvement through mutation.
Finally, some choose to worship Chaos Undivided, declaring allegiance to no specific Chaos Gods while willingly receiving the boons from any God noticing them.
Clad in corrupted, ancient versions of the power armour the Imperium granted them, the Chaos Space Marines are superhuman warriors skilled at both melee and ranged damage, and many of them have specialized in using unique weapons to gain the attention of the Chaos patrons.
In the game, the Chaos Space Marines are an elite Kill Team with many different options, including terrifying melee weapons, huge guns, psychic powers and a vast array of synergies from the Marks of Chaos each Legionary in your kill team can take to pledge allegiance to a specific way of Chaos worship.
You can get this Kill Team via the Kill Team: Nachmund box set.
If you like having many different options and being able to change your playstyle a lot between games, the Legionary Kill Team might be the right team for you.
Abilities of the Legionary Kill Team
Chaos Blessing
Each operative in a Legionary Kill Team must have a Mark of Chaos keyword, which grants them a bonus in the game depending on which Chaos God from which they receive their mark.
Khorne grants the ability Wrathful Onslaught, which lets an operative turn a normal hit into a critical hit each time it fights in combat if it didn’t otherwise roll any critical hits in that Fight action – a good ability for your Chosen, Butcher, Anointed or Shrivetalon operatives.
Nurgle grants Disgusting Vigour. When a shooting attack targets an operative with this mark, you can turn one normal save into a critical save in the Roll Defence Dice Step of that at attack – a defensive buff that’s good for any specialist in your Kill Team that might be the target of enemy sniper fire.
Slaanesh grants Unnatural Agility which adds Triangle/1 inch to an operative’s Movement characteristic. This is a great buff for any operative, but it’s especially useful for your melee-based operatives, just like Wrathful Onslaught.
Tzeentch grants Empyreal Guidance, and it lets you retain one attack dice with a roll of 5+ as a critical hit each time you make a shooting attack with a Tzeentch-marked operative. This one is a must-have for a Gunner with a meltagun, since it gives you a better chance at doing its 4 mortal wounds per critical hit!
If your operative declines the favour of any specific Chaos God and instead chooses to be Undivided, that grants that operative the ability Vicious Reavers, which lets you reroll one attack dice in any fighting or shooting attack roll if the target is within Pentagon/6 inches of the Undivided operative. For melee operatives and pistol users, this ability is potentially the best of the bunch.
While all the Chaos Blessings are good and come with no disadvantages in the shape of debuffs, be aware that, due to rivalries among the Chaos Gods, some Marks can’t coexist in the same Kill Team: Khorne-marked and Slaanesh-marked operatives are mutually exclusive, and the same goes for Nurgle-/Tzeentch-marked operatives.
Favoured of the Dark Gods
Some Legionary operatives have the ability Favoured of the Gods, you can use one Strategic Ploy with the same Chaos God affiliation as this operative’s Mark of Chaos without paying a command point. Undivided operatives can use Hateful Assault or Malicious Volleys for free since they don’t get access to any of the God-specific Ploys, but those two are also pretty great if you’re getting them for free.
Operatives of the Chaos Legionary Kill Team
While the sprues in the Kill Team: Nachmund box let you build 10 Chaos Legionaries, you can only have 1 leader and 5 Legionary operatives in your kill team. You can choose from the following:
Legionary Aspiring Champion (Leader, 1 per kill team)
The Aspiring Champion is one of 2 leader options for the Legionary kill team, and it’s the one that most resembles other leaders in power armour: It has 13 wounds and a 3+ save.
The Champion has a Ballistics and Weapon Skill of 2+for most of its weapons , and for its weapon loadout, you can choose between a Plasma Pistol/Tainted Bolt Pistol (go for plasma here) and one of four melee weapons.
The Power Fist has a massive damage profile of 5 normal and 7 critical damage and can only be blocked by critical hits, but its the only weapon for the Champion that has a Weapon Skill of 3+. The Power Maul has the Stun critical rule, and the Power Weapon scores critical hits on a roll of 5+, which is always a good thing to have in your arsenal. Finally, the Tainted Chainsword has the Parry Hook special rule, which lets it use normal hit rolls that you parry with in combat to discard enemy critical hits rather than normal ones. This is great for survivability, but since you’re already pretty durable, you might want to go for something with a larger potential damage output instead.
The Aspiring Champion also has the (very cool) In the Eyes of the Gods ability that grants it a +1 bonus to its Action Point Limit every time it incapacitates an enemy operative until the end of its next activation, and the Favoured of the Dark Gods ability (see above) that gives it a free Strategic Ploy corresponding with its Mark of Chaos every Turning Point.
The Aspiring Champion is a good combat Leader that can be equipped in many ways, and if you’re building your team from your existing Chaos Space Marines army, this is probably the model you already have – but I would still always go for the Chosen as my leader (see below).
Legionary Chosen (Leader, 1 per kill team)
The Legionary Chosen is your second option for a leader for your Legionary Kill Team. It has the same basic statistics as the Aspiring Champion, and the same ranged weapons, even though it has a worse Ballistics Skill of 3+. However, the Chosen’s melee weapon, the Daemon Blade is an upgrade compared to the Champion: it has 5 attacks, hits on a 2+, does 7 critical damage and scores critical hits on a 5+, making it a “best of both worlds” fusion of a Power Fist and a Power Weapon.
The Chosen has the ability Favoured of the Gods just like the Champion, as well as Daemonic Aura which reduces the distance an enemy operative within Engagement Range of the Chosen can move in a Fall Back action by 2 Circle/2×2 inches (an excellent ability for a combat leader) and Soul Feast which makes the Chosen heal 2 wounds for every combat in which it inflicts critical damage.
All of this adds up to a very cool leader, both thematically and mechanically: The Chosen has been, ahem, chosen by the Dark Gods to obliterate the heroes and leaders of other factions, and to this end, it boasts great melee fighting power, survivability and the ability to keep enemies from running away from the swings of its Daemon Blade.
Legionary Warrior (5 per kill team)
The Legionary Warrior is the standard operative of your Legionary Kill Team, and the only operative you can take more than one of in your kill team. With its Action Point Limit of 3, 12 wounds and a 3+ Save, it’s as formidable as they come for an operative in power armour, and its weapon options are also pretty straightforward: You can go for a Boltgun and Fists or a Bolt pistol and Chainsword.
Which of the two loadouts you go for really depends on what you’re otherwise bringing in your Kill Team, but here’s the problem: there’s really no need to bring a Legionary Warrior in your Kill Team at all! You can field 5 operatives in addition to your leader, and you have 8 to choose from, all of which have more utility than a Legionary Warrior.
The only real case in which you would go for a team of Warriors would be to equip them with Boltguns, give your leader the Undivided Mark of Chaos, and then use Favoured of the Dark Gods to use the Strategic Ploy Malicious Volleys for free every Turning Point to make all those boltguns shoot twice. That’s not a terrible strategy at all, but you would be missing out on all the special weapons and abilities of other operative types that it’s not really worth it (or all that fun).
Legionary Icon Bearer (1 per kill team)
The Legionary Icon Bearer is a Legionary Warrior in all things except for one ability called Icon Bearer which, like most other icon bearers in the game, lets the operative count its Action Point Limit as being 1 higher for the purposes of determining who controls an objective marker.
The Legionary Icon Bearer is definitely better to bring than a Warrior, and can be good for holding objectives, especially with the right Mark of Chaos (Slaanesh for reaching far away objectives, Nurgle for surviving while holding back objectives, and so on).
Legionary Gunner (1 per kill team)
The Legionary Gunner has access to 3 different special weapons: The Flamer has the Torrent Special Rule, allowing it to hit multiple targets, the Meltagun does 4 mortal wounds on a critical hit and does 6 normal damage (among other things – the Meltagun is always my favorite pick for Gunners), and the Plasma Gun can overcharge to gain Armour Penetration 2 at the risk of causing mortal wounds to your Gunner.
All of this is just like most other Imperial/Chaos Gunners in the entire Kill Team game, but what makes the Legionary Kill Team version of the Gunner interesting is how this interacts with Marks of Chaos: You can take a Tzeentch mark to score a critical hit on a 5+ on one of your rolls, which is excellent for Meltaguns, or an Undivided mark to re-roll an attack dice for Meltaguns or Flamers, making the Legionary Gunner a bit better than many other standard Gunners.
Note, however, that none of the Gunner’s weapons are bolt weapons, so you can’t use them for Malicious Volleys.
Legionary Heavy Gunner (1 per kill team)
The Legionary Heavy Gunner has access to 3 different special weapons, all of which has the Heavy Special Rule, so they can only shoot in an activation in which they haven’t made a move that’s not a Dash.
The Heavy Bolter has the Fusillade Special Rule that allows it to distribute its attack dice among multiple adjacent targets, as well as the P1 Critical Rule that gives it Armour Penetration 1 if it scores any critical hits. Add to this the option to use the weapon for Malicious Volleys because it has “bolt” in its name, and you have a pretty effective weapon for dealing with crowds of smaller enemy operatives.
The Missile Launcher has two firing modes: Frag has a Blast radius of Circle/2 inches for area damage, and Krak has high critical damage and an Armour Penetration 1 Special Rule, making it a versatile weapon as far as heavy weapons go.
The Reaper Chaincannon is unique to the Legionary Kill Team, and it’s good: It has 6 attacks, rerolls hit rolls of 1 and has the Fusillade Special Rule, which means it has a high potential damage output that can be distributed among multiple targets.
Considering that you’ll often have the option to perform Overwatch actions with your Legionary Kill Team due to its low model count, it’s definitely worth bringing a Heavy Gunner in your team to do either high single target damage or spread chaos with area damage multiple times per Turning Point.
Legionary Anointed (1 per kill team)
The Legionary Anointed is an operative that functions quite unlike any other operatives in your kill team: It has a Bolt Pistol and all the usual statistics, as well as a good melee weapon called Daemonic Claw that has the Rending Critical Rule that turns one of your normal hits into a critical hit if you’ve rolled any other critical hits, but it is its special Ability that makes it stand out.
Unleash Daemon is a once per battle transformation that the Anointed can undergo. When it undergoes this transformation, it can no longer Pick Up, Shoot or perform Overwatch actions. It gains the ability regain to ignore a wound on a roll of 5+, it can fight twice in an activation, and its Daemonic Claw scores critical hits on a 5+ and gets to reroll hit rolls of 1. That’s quite an upgrade! Combine it with something like the Khorne Mark of Chaos, and the Anointed will score so many critical hits it’s ridiculous. The only downside to this is that there’s only a difference of 1 point of damage between its normal and critical damage, but it’s still great.
Legionary Butcher (1 per kill team)
The Legionary Butcher is another melee-focused operative for the Legionary Kill Team. Its Double-handed Chain Axe looks like it has a pretty bad Weapon Skill of 4+, but its Vicious Blows Special Rule allows it to reroll 1s in combat if the Butcher is the attacker in that combat, and if you performed a Charge action in the same activation, it can reroll all of its attack dice. Combine that with the Strategic Ploy Hateful Assault to fight twice, and the weapon’s Reap 2 critical rule that deals 2 mortal wounds to enemies adjacent to your target for every critical hit, and you have an operative that’s pretty sure to take down at least one enemy operative whenever it charges.
Furthermore, the Ability Devastating Onslaught prevents enemies from supporting each other in combat against the Butcher as well as increasing the Engagement Range around the Butcher to Circle/ 2 inches when figuring out how enemies can Fall Back, Dash and Normal Move close to it.
With all the rerolling this operative already has access to, it might be a good idea to take a Mark of Slaanesh (for extra mobility) or Nurgle ( to improve survivability) for it, unless those are incompatible with the rest of your Marks of Chaos.
Whether the Butcher is better than the Anointed or Shrivetalon is really up to your playstyle, but there’s no denying that a critical damage of 7 with such good access to rerolls and the ability to fight twice puts the Butcher up there amon the highest potential combat damage outputs in the game.
Legionary Shrivetalon (1 per kill team)
The Legionary Shrivetalon is a melee characeter, but it’s more focused on disrupting enemy plans than just dealing raw damage. Its Flensing Blades score critical hits on a 5+, which is of course really good, but the actual purpose of this operative is to be found in its Abilities and Unique Actions.
Vicious Reflexes allows the Shrivetalon to start resolving succesful hits before the enemy even when the Shrivetalon is the defender, forcing your opponent to think twice about attacking it in combat. Horrifying Dismemberment lets you subtract 1 from the Action Point Limit of a nearby enemy operative every time the Shrivetalon incapacitates an enemy operative. Both of these are great for holding objectives or discouraging the enemy from entering a specific area of the killzone to perform a Mission Action.
The Unique Action Grisly Mark allows the Shrivetalon to place a mark on the ground that makes the enemy use an extra Action Point to perform Pick Up actions close to it, as well as working as a reverse Icon Bearer, reducing the Action Point Limit of nearby enemy operatives for the purpose of controlling objective markers. This is a once per battle action, but since the Shrivetalon can leave the Grisly Mark behind and go somewhere else without disrupting its effects, it’s always worth using.
Legionary Balefire Acolyte (1 per kill team)
The Balefire Acolyte is the psyker of the Legionary Kill Team, which means that it can manifest psychic powers, but can’t take the Khorne Mark of Chaos, since Khorne really hates magic.
He’s pretty good in melee for a psyker, with a Fell Dagger that causes 2 mortal wounds to the target on every critical hit, but of course, the psychic powers are what the Acolyte is all about: Fireblast is a shooting attack that does Blast damage, has the No Cover special rule and does 1 mortal wound to each enemy next to the target for every critical hit.
Malign Influence gives Lethal 5+, No Cover and Brutal to all weapons of one visible friendly operative for the duration of one Turning Point – a great way to make the Butcher even more ridiculously hard-hitting!
Life Siphon is a shooting attack that can heal a nearby friendly target for up to 3 wounds if you resolve at least to attack dice against the target you’re shooting at – so essentially a vampiric healing gunshot.
The versatility of the psychic powers makes the Balefire Acolyte an auto-include in most Legionary Kill Teams.
Have you painted this Kill Team?
We would love to have show it on this page!
All you have to do is send my some files. You can read more about how to make that happen here.
Ploys of the Chaos Legionary Kill Team
The Legionary Kill Team appears to have a wider selection of ploys than other Kill Teams, but, buyer beware: Many of their ploys are locked to specific Marks of Chaos, so in reality, their choices are limited. For example, only one of their Tactical Ploys are Chaos Mark-neutral, so choose your Marks wisely.
Strategic Ploys
Hateful Assault
For the duration of one Turning Point, all friendly operatives can Fight twice in an activation if they don’t perform a Shoot action in that activation.
Malicious Volleys
For one Turning Point, this Strategic Ploy lets your operatives perform two Shoot actions in one activation as long as they didn’t Fight in the same activation and are also using bolt weapons (boltguns, boltpistols, heavy bolters etc.) for those Shoot actions.
Blood for the Blood God
Khorne-marked operatives only. For the duration of one Turning Point, each friendly Khorne-marked operative does 1 additional damage the first time they strike after performing a Charge action.
Perpetual Aggression
Khorne-marked operatives only. For one Turning Point, each friendly Khorne-marked operative can make a move up to Square/3 inches after fighting in combat, and this move can be made into Engagement Range of enemy operatives and must end up within such range of an enemy operative if possible.
Mutagenic Flesh
Nurgle-marked operatives only. Subtract 1 damage from each hit doing normal damage against friendly operatives with the Nurgle mark for the duration of one Turning Point. It can’t make a normal damage amount go lower than 2, however.
Implacable
Nurgle-marked operatives only. Changes the status of Nurgle-marked operatives for one Turning Point, so that they aren’t treated as injured, retain their normal Ballistics skill while performing Overwatch actions and ignore negative modifiers to their Action Point Limit.
Graceful Killer
Slaanesh-marked operatives only. Adds 1 to the critical damage of the melee weapons of Slaanesh-marked operatives for one Turning Point.
Delicious Agony
Slaanesh-marked operatives only. For one Turning Point, this lets Slaanesh-marked operatives resolve two succesful hits at once rather than one the first time they resolve a succesful hit when fighting in combat against an injured enemy operative.
Protected by Fate
Tzeentch-marked operatives only. For the duration of one Turning Point, Tzeentch-marked operatives can retain a failed save as a normal succesful save against an enemy shooting attack if they already retained any critical saves against that shooting attack.
Aetheric Ward
Tzeentch-marked operatives only. For one Turning Point, Tzeentch-marked operatives have a 4+ invulnerable save.
Tactical Ploys
Veteran of the Long War
Can be used after a fight attack in combat or a shooting attack. The operative making that attack can repeat it if the target didn’t lose any wounds from the first attack.
Unending Bloodshed
Khorne-marked operatives only. Can be used when a Khorne-marked operative is incapacitated by an enemy operative in combat. The incapacitated operative can roll one dice to attack with one of its melee weapons against an enemy operative within Engagement Range before being removed from the killzone.
Mutability and Change
Tzeentch-marked operatives only. Adds 1 to the Action Point Limit of a Tzeentch-marked operative.
Malignant Aura
Nurgle-marked operatives only. For one Turning Point, enemy operatives within Square/3 inches of the selected Nurgle-marked operative must subtract 1 from their Action Point Limit.
Sickening Captivation
Slaanesh-marked operatives only. Subtracts 1 from the Action Point Limit of one enemy operative within Square/3 inches of the selected Slaanesh-marked operative.
Equipment of the Chaos Legionary Kill Team
Aggression Stimulants
This allows the bearer to reroll one of its attack dice if it has performed a Charge action in the same Turning Point.
Frag Grenade
This is a standard frag grenade, doing Blast damage in an area with the Indirect special rule, ignoring cover when determining valid targets.
Krak Grenade
This is a standard krak grenade with the Armour Penetration 1 rule as well as the Indirect special rule.
Warded Armour
Warded Armour gives the bearer a 2+ save until the first time an attack dice inflicts damage to it – then it reverts back to its normal save characteristic. This is useful for surviving a sniper shot or an early enemy charge.
Suspensor System
This changes the rules for the bearer’s Heavy weapon so that the bearer can Move as normal and still shoot, but its movement is restricted to no more than 3 Circle/3*2 inches – a very good upgrade!
Malign Scripture
Can only be used by the Balefire Acolyte. It allows the Acolyte to manifest 2 psychic powers in one activation once per battle. Remember that if you use two psychic powers in one activation, you have to roll a dice when attempting the second one. On a roll of 1 or 2, the Acolyte suffers 3 mortal wounds instead of performing a psychic power. On a roll of 3+, you can manifest the psychic power, but you can’t manifest the same power twice in one activation.
Tainted Rounds
This adds 1 to both normal and critical damage for a boltgun, bolt pistol or tainted bolt pistol the bearer is equipped with.
Grisly Trophy
The Grisly Trophy makes enemies close to the bearer subtract 1 from the Attacks characteristic of their melee and ranged weapons fopr as long as they remain close to him.
Malefic Blade
Malefic Blade is an extra melee weapon for the bearer with 5 attacks and a critical damage of 5.
Tac Ops of the Chaos Legionary Kill Team
The Legionary Kill Team has the Security and Seek and Destroy archetypes, which grants it access to the corresponding Tac Ops in the Core Book. In addition to that, the Kill Team has access to the following faction-specific Tac Ops:
Sacrilegious Mutilation
The first time an enemy operative is incapacitated, this Tac Op is revealed, and you place a token where that enemy operative fell, as well as everywhere an enemy is incapacitated for the rest of the battle. Your operatives can now perform the action Defiled for the Dark Gods while close to one of those tokens. The token is then removed, and the second and fourth time a friendly operative performs this action, you score a Victory Point.
Dark Desecration
For this Tac Op, you select a terrain feature. If at least two enemy operatives are incapacitated next to that terrain feature, you score 1 Victory Point. Additionally, if you have more operatives next to that terrain feature than your opponent at the end of the battle, you score 1 Victory Point.
Savage Butcher
Select one friendly operative, and if that operative incapacitates at least 2 enemy operatives, you score 1 Victory Point. If it incapacitates 3 or more enemy operatives, you score an additional Victory Point.
Playing the Chaos Legionary Kill Team
The Legionary Kill Team is strong and has access to a myriad of ways to do a lot of damage to your opponent, so in many ways, playing them is pretty straightforward. What you really need to consider when building your team is how to make the most of your Marks of Chaos. You can’t really go wrong with the Undivided mark, especially for your leaders, since free double Fight or Shoot actions for everyone is amazing, but otherwise, the extra movement of a Slaanesh mark or the upgrade of a normal hit to a critical hit for combat from Khorne or for shooting from Tzeentch are great picks.
With only 6 operatives on the board, you have to be smart around objectives, especially since your kill team has access to relatively few movement buffs outside of the Slaanesh mark. Consider taking an Icon Bearer or Shrivetalon to improve your chances at holding an objective.
If you’re new to the game, the Chaos Legionary Kill Team can be a really great kill team for learning what works and what doesn’t, since, unlike the other bespoke Kill Teams for the current edition of the game, you can build 4 more operatives from its kit than you can include in a Kill Team. This allows you to change your team between games without having to buy an extra kit, so you can easily experience firsthand what the difference between having a Flamer or a Meltagun is, and what heavy weapons best suit your playstyle.
There are too many fun synergies between operative types and Marks of Chaos to mention them all here, but that’s just another reason this is a Kill Team that can grant you a lot of variation in playing the Kill Team. There’s so many little tricks you can do, even though some of the Ploys you gain from your Chaos marks are also pretty useless, so feel free to experiment!